The fine hairs on Yurie’s cheek were still standing up.

  That “touched” from a moment ago had lodged under her skin.

  It wouldn’t leave.

  Each time the Empress moved, her heavy velvet dress brushed itself with the faintest scrape—

  crackle. crackle.

  Static crackled, breaking the silence into grit.

  She had no gravity.

  In two soundless slides, she closed the distance.

  The way she slid over the plastic ground wasn’t graceful so much as… wrong—

  a gigantic wax doll sliding with its pedestal.

  Above her hovered a crown of twelve stars.

  In this sterile paradise, it announced a rule you couldn’t escape.

  “Come here,” the Empress said. “Poor thing. Look at you—so stained with mud.”

  The voice didn’t come from her lips.

  It arrived behind Yurie’s eardrums first. A vibration dressed up as words pressed into her skull—

  leaving no room for “no.”

  The Empress extended a white arm—so smooth you couldn’t even find a joint line.

  She pulled Yurie in.

  —This wasn’t a hug.

  It was being wrapped in a warm vinyl membrane.

  Or swallowed by the stomach of an enormous cocoon.

  Her breath went thin.

  Her chest wouldn’t expand.

  From the dress brushing her cheek rose the smell of rubber—like brand-new tires left in the sun, volatile and raw. Beneath the sweet fake-flower perfume, that rubber stink was the only thing that felt alive.

  Snap.

  A sting on her skin.

  Static snapped. Her hair roots lifted.

  Clean here hurt.

  “…Let go,” Yurie rasped. “I can’t—breathe.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  She struggled, but the Empress’s arms were soft in a way that swallowed refusal—sealing every route of escape. The tighter the embrace, the more her nose filled with the merciless smell of sterility.

  Being clean.

  Being safe.

  —Here, those were chains that strangled life.

  On her shoulder, the Gamaguchi seemed to thunk.

  Inside, the mud pulsed. Hot. A nasty heat.

  The weight said: Don’t run.

  Off at a distance, Mermi was walking the rim of the plastic pond, yawning.

  No fear. No flinch at the Empress’s threat—

  just a bored stare at the perfectly symmetrical tails of goldfish frozen inside resin.

  “…Selling ‘pretty’ by force,” Mermi muttered, spitting it out. “The worst.”

  Only that voice sounded even a little alive here.

  From the Empress’s empty eye sockets, another thick tear slipped free.

  Tink.

  It rolled to their feet—right where Mermi’s old white-sand mud had mixed in.

  It cooled fast.

  It set fast.

  Honey-colored amber.

  And then—

  the edge of the mud gleamed, slick.

  Not wet.

  Covered.

  Mud, preserved as mud.

  “…Ah.”

  Yurie’s gaze got pulled into the amber.

  Transparent resin. At its center—where light bent and warped like a distorted core—something sat.

  A small white tablet, snapped in half.

  A single score line ran down its face.

  One edge was chipped, and fine white powder was scattered in the resin like snow.

  The instant she saw it, a gritty dust returned to her fingertips.

  I know this.

  …The one I always placed on my palm.

  “If you take this, you’ll feel better.”

  “Come on. Be a good girl.”

  The trembling in her fingers as she brought that small white lump to someone’s mouth.

  A prayer called I want to save you.

  —But.

  By making them swallow it, she took their “noise”—their life—and bought herself relief.

  That cowardly, clouded satisfaction.

  The Empress’s voice came closer.

  “You don’t have to try so hard anymore.”

  “Don’t get scraped. Don’t get dirty.”

  “Here, everything is loved… in its most beautiful shape.”

  A fingertip traced Yurie’s cheek.

  Soft as fruit gone too ripe—

  and yet it held a stillness that refused only one thing:

  the pulse of life.

  Gooseflesh erupted.

  All-affirming kindness slid over her like slick mucus, hiding her whole body.

  Not on her skin—

  under it.

  A sour smell of stomach acid rose up her throat.

  “Get off me…!”

  “…You’re—disgusting!”

  Yurie slapped away the white hand that had been wrapping her.

  Not reason.

  Survival picked the words—an instinctive insult, fired on reflex.

  The Empress’s huge shoulders gave a small tremor, shocked by refusal.

  From the hollow sockets, thicker tears overflowed.

  Tink. Tink.

  Amber hardened near Yurie’s ankle. Honey-color spread thin, stitching floor to sole.

  Cold.

  And yet it stole motion.

  When Yurie tried to step back, her sole bit.

  Skrrk. A thin, ugly sound.

  She tried to peel free. The amber drew threads—clear threads that tugged her foot back. Cold licked up her ankle skin, like a hard film stroking it.

  “Yuri—your foot!”

  Mermi’s shout snapped through.

  Too late. It was already stuck.

  “Who are you saying ‘I want to save you’ to, anyway?!”

  Yurie hurled naked hostility at the Empress.

  The offered hands were still white—still the perfect shape of salvation.

  But to Yurie they looked like needles, pumping preservative into a body—turning it into a specimen that didn’t die, only stopped.

  She snatched up the amber containing the tablet from the ground with enough force to tear her nails.

  Cold sank its teeth into her palm.

  The resin surface sucked at her skin.

  Heat drained out through her fingertips.

  —It hurt.

  The amber thread tugged her ankle again.