Everyone Already Knew
On the way back, I kept falling behind. There was already a gap in our abilities, and with the added weight of our cargo, I simply couldn't keep pace. No matter how light grass and herbs might be, pile enough of them together and the weight becomes impossible to ignore. On top of that, I'd gathered wood for firewood, and that accounted for most of the bulk.
When I couldn't keep up with Emma, she simply took my bag.
"Hurry up."
"U-uh..."
With Emma carrying my bag, my body felt a little lighter and I could pick up the pace. We made it home before the sun fully set.
Arriving at my house — a place that had grown familiar by now — I first sorted through the contents of the bag, and in the meantime asked Emma to boil water for soup.
Emma skillfully lit the hearth and set the water boiling while I organized the materials we'd gathered. Thanks to sorting them carefully during the foraging itself, the cleanup went quickly. Among them, I picked out the mushrooms I'd gathered for today's meal and headed to the hearth.
"The water's already boiling."
I added a bit more firewood to keep the fire going and put the ingredients into the pot.
Soup made with potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms, seasoned with salt and herbs.
One of the things that had truly put me at ease after coming to this world was the food ingredients. From what I'd seen online and the like, medieval times supposedly had no potatoes, no carrots, and generally poor ingredients — but living here, everything turned out to be quite robust. On top of that, the kingdom I lived in had a mild climate, so vegetables could be grown year-round with good yields.
Thanks to that, I'd realized I wouldn't starve to death, at least...
"Here."
I ladled out soup for Emma first.
"Thanks."
I served my own soup as well and grabbed some mushrooms roasted over the hearth fire.
"Alright, let's eat."
Mm — with salt and herbs, even a roughly boiled soup was perfectly edible! Pepper would have been nice too, but it was expensive and I used it often enough that I was conserving it.
"It's good."
"Yeah? Try some of the roasted mushrooms too."
I'd heard that good mushrooms tasted similar to meat, and while I'd eaten my fair share, I'd never found one that good. Still, they were tasty enough.
In my previous life, I would have complained about food like this — but I'd gotten used to it now, so it was fine.
The food sold in the city was expensive, and with all the spices they used, it had a much more stimulating flavor...
If there was one thing I missed after returning to the village, it was that.
Traveling merchants came irregularly, usually only about once every three months. So opportunities to buy spices were few, and I couldn't use them freely.
"Yuli cooks well."
"Ahem. This barely even counts as cooking."
Just throw the ingredients in and boil them thoroughly — that was all there was to it. Making a fuss over something so simple... Still, it felt good that she ate it so well.
After eating our fill, I asked Emma to help with an experiment.
"Okay."
Emma agreed without the slightest complaint or suspicion. First I stoked the remaining fire in the hearth and set out an alchemy pot, filling it with water from a water-generating magic tool.
"I'll ask you to make ointment again today, same as yesterday."
I pulled out a big pile of medicinal herbs from the drawer where I stored materials.
"Okay."
As soon as the ointment and wet compresses were made, the villagers would take them. In particular, the men who got scrapes and bruises from self-defense force training took the ointment, while the older men whose backs ached from farm work took the compresses.
Emma kept crushing and stirring the herbs with a large wooden spatula, her expression blank, so I had no idea what she was thinking.
"Emma, isn't this annoying?"
She just smiled at my words.
I really did feel bad... I hoped I could awaken mana or Holy Power soon. After transferring the ointment Emma made into containers, I cleaned up the used tools and prepared for bed.
"Aren't you going home?"
Even after helping with the cleanup, Emma stayed at the house.
"Sleep together."
"Th-that's—!"
Even if I was a girl now, sleeping together with Emma?!
I'd graduated from that sort of thing ages ago. No matter how much I refused, Emma wouldn't back down. She was someone I couldn't beat with strength either, so there was nothing I could do. All I could do was be careful...
"Haah, fine."
I wasn't giving in because I was scared of Emma! Absolutely not! We lay down together on the small bed and slept.
Even with the mild climate, winter was approaching, so the nights were cold. Lying in bed together, Emma's warmth made everything feel cozy, and I fell into a deep sleep.
That day, too, I trained with the self-defense force in the morning and spent the afternoon gathering materials and running simple experiments. I'd decided to start by modifying existing recipes. So when making ointment, I tried adjusting the amount of water, or using poisonous herbs instead of medicinal ones.
If I reduced the water too much, the combination failed. If there was too much, the combination time stretched by however long it took for the water to evaporate — and if there was far too much water, the combination itself would fail.
Proportions really were important, it seemed.
By comparison, the poisonous herb experiments produced dangerous results.
"I never expected purified poison would come out of it..."
I knew there was a method of crushing poisonous herbs to extract the toxic components, but it was inefficient and dangerous. This method, however, was more efficient than expected. Crushing and extracting from a hundred grams of poisonous herbs yielded about one small cup of poison, but making poison through alchemy produced two small cups' worth.
Of course, I had to factor in that water went into the process, but it was still impressive.
"This is dangerous."
Emma said that after making the poison. Even looking at it, it seemed dangerous.
"Well, let's just use this when we hunt monsters."
It probably wasn't a strong poison. Still, coating a weapon with it and using it against monsters should produce some effect.
I marked the container of purified poison with a danger label and put it on the top shelf.
When I handed Emma well-dried medicinal herbs and asked her to combine them into ointment, she nodded and immediately lit the hearth. She'd gotten used to it by now — she mixed the ointment smoothly without a word.
Once I'd put Emma's ointment into containers and finished organizing, someone knocked on the door.
"Oh, you were home?"
It was my friend Ted who came in.
"What's up?"
"Came to get some ointment."
Ted grinned and showed me his arm — there was a wound on it.
"Sheesh, try not to get hurt so much."
"You think I can control that?"
"What is there even to get hurt by in this village that you go through ointment like this?"
Unless you were fighting magical beasts or monsters, there wasn't much to get seriously hurt by in this village. And if something like that had happened, the village couldn't possibly be this peaceful...
"You and Emma are the weird ones!"
I tossed him a container of ointment, and Ted snagged it cleanly.
"What about me?"
"You talent monsters..."
Ted snorted a laugh and started heading out. I didn't think I had any talent, but from Ted's perspective, I apparently looked talented too.
Well... come to think of it, I'd almost never lost a fight against peers trained by The Instructor. Having an absurd talent monster like Emma right next to me just made it hard to feel that way...
Then again, the self-defense force was just a side gig for him — farming was his main work — so comparing us was hard either way.
Spending time on this and that, night came before I knew it.
"Emma? Planning to sleep over again tonight?"
For the past few days, Emma had been trying to sleep over instead of going home. We'd shared a bed that one time, but afterward I'd argued that men and women should keep separate rooms, and though Emma was unhappy about it, she'd eventually been persuaded.
The problem was that with Emma staying at the house so long, there were frequent close calls where my being a girl nearly got exposed, and that worried me.
"Is that not okay?"
Since I kept relying on Emma's help with alchemy, refusing wasn't easy.
"Haah, fine."
Watching Emma head off to sleep, I went to my own room. I roughly wiped myself down with a damp towel and lay on the bed.
Am I going to get found out like this?
I had told Emma and the villagers that my body had changed. But that was only about my body having shrunk — I hadn't told them I'd become a girl.
I'd done it partly out of embarrassment and partly because I didn't want to be treated like a girl. But looking back now, I regretted it a little.
If I'd just been honest from the start, I wouldn't have to worry about things like this...
I fretted over it and slept poorly, waking up later than usual.
"Ugh, I need to get moving."
I first took off the clothes I was wearing to change.
"I really can't get used to bras, can I?"
I was pulling a new bra from the wardrobe to put it on when the door suddenly burst open.
"Yuli, still asleep?"
"E-Emma?!"
I couldn't help but be startled. I knew Emma had slept over. But why was she barging into my room all of a sudden?!
Seeing me, Emma's usually blank eyes went wide.
"Uh... uh? Yuli's body is weird."
"Ugh!"
I hurriedly put on the bra and clothes to hide my body. Then I grabbed the still-dazed Emma. So it had come to this after all...
I should have been honest from the beginning...
"Haa... Emma, the truth is, I became a girl."
"Y-Yuli is a girl?"
I shook Emma's body hard — she still didn't seem to grasp the situation.
"Sorry for hiding it, but snap out of it."
"Yuli?"
"I'm sorry. I hid it because I thought you wouldn't believe me..."
I said it with my head bowed. In a way, this was the same as confessing that I hadn't trusted Emma.
"Really a girl?"
Emma still looked like she couldn't believe it.
I quietly approached her and showed her my lower abdomen — the smooth area where a man's symbol should have been...
"Uh, it's gone?"
I felt like I might cry from the shame, but I held it in. Even though Emma had seen everything there was to see of me growing up, it was still mortifying.
Emma suddenly clamped her mouth shut, her expression turning serious.
"A girl?"
I nodded.
"Little sister?"
I nodded again. Emma quietly turned around, left the room, and closed the door.
"Sorry..."
I sank to the floor in a daze.
"What do I do now?"
I sat blankly in the room for a while, organizing my thoughts, then suddenly stood up.
I'd been found out, so there was nothing for it... And I didn't even have a way to become a man again...
When I came out of the room, Emma was sitting blankly at the table.
"Yuli?"
"It just happened that way."
"Did you want to hide it?"
"I was embarrassed, that's all."
I'd resolved to train in alchemy and create a Philosopher's Stone to turn back, but I couldn't even use alchemy on my own. So I'd already half given up on going back.
"I'm sorry for deceiving you."
I bowed my head and apologized to Emma.
"I'll properly explain it to our parents too."
I apologized to Emma again and left the house. Then I went to confess to my adoptive father, the village chief.
And then I heard something shocking.
"We already know everything."
"What?"
"Were you planning to hide it?"
"Uh, well..."
My adoptive father's words left me flustered. They already knew?
My adoptive mother was smiling beside him.
"If you were going to try hiding it, you should have been more careful with your behavior and hidden your undergarments better."
"Ah..."
Thinking about it, I hadn't really tried to hide things properly... I'd carried women's undergarments around in my bag as-is and left them around the house. I'd even done laundry... Of course I hadn't hung them out in the open, just in my room.
Had Mother come by the house and seen them...?
"Ahem. Besides that, your Adam's apple disappeared and your voice got thinner, so anyone with decent observation skills would have noticed."
Hearing my adoptive father's words, heat started rising to my face.
"And on top of that, Yuli, you might not realize it, but that figure of yours..."
My adoptive mother swept her gaze over my chest and waist. It was a scrawny body, but it was unmistakably a woman's. Hearing even that, I covered my face with both hands in embarrassment. I was so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so embarrassed.
I'd thought I was hiding it well, but I'd actually been found out ages ago? Or rather, I hadn't managed to hide it at all?
"Th-then, the villagers..."
My adoptive father looked up at the ceiling.
"I told them all. I asked them to pretend not to notice, since you'd have the hardest time of anyone..."
Don't tell me... the villagers looking at me with pity was for that reason? Everyone treating me so well was because they felt sorry for me becoming a girl?
I was so embarrassed my face burned with shame. I was so flustered and shocked that my blood pressure started rising. Whether from the elevated blood pressure or not, my head gradually grew dizzy and my vision started spinning.
"Ugh, ugh..."
So... only dense Emma had failed to notice?
And I'd been shocked just from Emma finding out?
At this point, the fact that my adoptive parents and the whole village already knew was a bigger shock than Emma finding out I'd become a girl.
I'd been so confident that if I just acted normally like always, no one would notice — but thinking about how the villagers must have seen me made me dizzy.
Ah... how am I supposed to live in this village?!
I couldn't control the scorching heat on my face, and at some point my dizzy head went completely blank.
Yeah. I should just die.