An Open Secret
When I came to, I was lying in bed.
"Hah—!!"
My mind was still swimming, but everything that had happened before I blacked out was crystal clear.
"Th-they… they all! They all knew!"
Even thinking it over again, the shock hit just as hard. So Emma had been the only one who didn't know? No—now that she knew too, that meant the entire village was in on it…?
I felt hollowed out, and yet somehow lighter at the same time. Keeping the secret had been a constant weight, a low-grade panic that someone would find out. Now there was nothing left to hide.
All I had to do was accept it, and things would get easier.
I knew that. Accepting it was another matter entirely.
"Ugh!"
I rewound everything I'd done since coming back to the village. Nothing stood out. I'd just… acted normally. Completely, boringly normally.
If they'd figured it out from how I looked, then replaying my behavior was pointless anyway…
Looking back on it now, though, the self-defense force kids had always been a little careful around me. I'd vaguely assumed it was because they were worried the curse might rub off.
But if they'd known I was a girl the whole time, that carefulness took on a whole different meaning.
So all of that had been consideration? Kindness? The kids I'd thought of as friends had only been nice to me for that reason?
"I want to leave home…"
I was so mortified I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.
"Y-Yuli?! Leave home?"
"Hiek!"
A voice from right beside me nearly launched me out of my skin. I turned my head and found Emma watching me with worried eyes.
I hadn't been alone?
Had she heard every word of that monologue?
"Nnh…"
Embarrassing! Mortifying beyond words!! And this was all Emma's fault. None of this would have happened if she hadn't been sitting right next to me.
I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. Emma started toward me, concern written all over her face, so I put distance between us.
"D-don't come near me."
I held both hands out to ward her off. She looked at me with those sad, wounded eyes.
"I'm sorry."
Seeing her face crumple like that almost undid me—but I turned on my heel and ran. My foster parents were outside the room; I ignored them.
Bang!
I wrenched the door open and bolted at full speed.
"I hate everything!"
I fled, unable to bear the shame. I locked myself in my house, dove into bed, and pulled the covers over my head.
It didn't last long. I had to kick the blanket off.
"Aaaagh!!!"
What was I supposed to do with memories this humiliating!
I sat up, walked over to the shrine, and gripped the bracelet on my left wrist tight.
"Goddess! I'll be good! So please—give me the power to erase people's memories…"
No. How could I erase the memories of people who were basically family?
"Just… any power that would help the village is fine."
Praying to the goddess always settled something in my chest. A warm, enveloping feeling wrapped around me, soft as a blanket.
A few days had passed since I'd learned the devastating truth. I barricaded myself in my room and avoided every pair of eyes I could. But a few days was one thing—keep it up any longer and my body started to feel like it was rusting, and the food stores were running low.
On top of that, Emma not coming by was strange. No matter how badly she'd messed up, worry should have brought her to my door at least once. She hadn't shown up even once.
I started to get concerned. Embarrassment was embarrassment, but she was family, wasn't she?
I got up, deciding I at least needed to see her face. After finishing my daily prayers, I warmed a little water, soaked a towel, and wiped myself down.
There were no magic tools here that spit out hot water the way they did in the city, and no proper bath facilities either—so showers were a pipe dream in the village. A damp towel was the standard. On nice days, you went down to the river for a proper dunk.
"Hah. I should've saved up and built a shower instead."
All the money I'd blown on books suddenly felt a little wasteful.
I changed into clean clothes and stepped outside. At my foster parents' house, I asked where Emma was. They had no idea.
"I figured she'd gone to you."
According to my foster father, she'd left the house every day—and of course they'd assumed she was heading to mine.
The problem was, she hadn't come to mine at all.
"What do I do?"
I started combing the village for her. Meeting the villagers' eyes was still mortifying, but I couldn't spend the rest of my life cringing, so I toughed it out.
I eventually reached the self-defense force's training ground, where the Instructor was looking after the kids—children around five to seven years old.
"Haven't seen you in a few days."
"Ah—because of, you know, that whole thing. More importantly, do you know where Emma went?"
"Haven't a clue."
Not here either… I paid my respects to the Instructor, played with the kids for a bit, then went back to searching.
After circling the village for what felt like forever, I felt eyes on me.
Right… I'd been feeling a gaze on my back for a while now. At first I'd written it off as just another villager and ignored it, but the stare never let up. That was when it clicked.
Emma, nowhere to be found after a full sweep of the village—and a persistent gaze from behind.
"Emma. Stop hiding and come out."
"Yuli…"
Her muttered voice drifted over.
"Well? Are you coming, or am I never speaking to you again?"
She startled at that and hurried over.
"Never… speaking?"
"I'm kidding. Why didn't you come to the house?"
"Because I was sorry…"
I let out a long sigh. For someone so spacey, she fretted over me more than anyone. How was I supposed to stay mad at her?
I pulled her into a firm hug.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you."
"It's okay."
"I was just embarrassed. I definitely don't hate you, so don't get the wrong idea."
"Really?"
"Yeah. So, uh… you can act n-normal around me."
The next instant she crushed me in a bear hug. She was so strong my bones felt like they were creaking.
"Yuli, Yuli!"
"Ow!"
I yelped in pain, and she let go in a panic.
"You're not a gorilla—you're just strong…"
"Yuli…"
Ah. Mistake. That was supposed to stay inside my head, and it had slipped right out. Emma was glaring at me.
"Sparring."
Her eyes took on a dangerous gleam.
"E-Emma?"
She clamped onto my hand and started dragging me. I dug my heels in, but there was no matching her strength. I had no choice but to be hauled along.
We arrived at the training ground. Emma grabbed two plain wooden practice swords, kept one, and shoved the other into my hands—then dropped straight into a stance.
"E-Emma? Let's talk about this."
Where had the usual drowsy, vacant Emma gone? Standing in front of me was a swordsman with fury burning in her eyes.
"Training."
This—this was not okay!
She was already someone I couldn't beat on a normal day. And now her eyes had rolled back with rage? I was going to die.
Something that looked like mana was already gathering along her wooden sword.
If that connected, I was dead for sure. Or if not dead, then thoroughly broken.
I swallowed hard and raised my sword. The moment I did, Emma charged at full power.
"W-whoa!"
I caught the heavy blow on my blade. Somehow I weathered the first strike—but she didn't stop. Blow after blow drove me back until I finally sat down hard on my rear.
"Ugh…"
The sword paths were so chaotic I couldn't even track how the blade was moving.
I could feel the difference in class.
I'd known, but… she really was incredible.
"Ow! Emma!"
One round wasn't enough for her. She hounded me again and again, thrashing me from head to toe before she finally stopped.
She hauled my bruised, pain-locked body home—and only then did the regret hit her.
"Sorry…"
"Honestly. Nice work."
I still managed a smile when I answered. If a little physical misery was all it took to clear the air with her, wasn't that a bargain? I'd been the one who set her off in the first place, after all.
I'd earned every hit.
"You'll keep helping me from now on, right?"
"Yeah."
"That's all I need."
Without Emma and her ability to handle mana, I couldn't keep doing alchemy.
No matter what happened, I was bound to her.
Well—she was family, so that was fine anyway…
I was just glad her mood seemed to have recovered. Still, I really wished she'd start treating me a little more like a girl… I had no idea when I'd turn back into a man, and scars on a woman's body would be such a waste!
Once I'd recovered, I threw myself back into alchemy. I only had a handful of recipes, but even so I kept developing new ones as I went.
First up was an antidote. I'd figured gathering detoxifying herbs and working them into something like a salve would do the trick—but the results didn't match the theory. I got something salve-like, sure, but it had zero detoxifying power.
I mixed in this and that, adjusted the proportions, stumbled through trial and error—and then, suddenly, I had an antidote.
The key was adding a tiny amount of poison. When the detoxifying plants met the toxin and mana together, they drew out a far stronger purifying effect.
Of course I couldn't test it directly on living creatures, but I verified the efficacy by mixing the antidote into various poisons, and by dosing monsters with toxin and then administering the cure.
"Incredible detox power…"
Poisons came in all kinds, but this antidote worked on every type you could find around the village.
It was practically universal…
It couldn't fully neutralize the strongest toxins, but it could still blunt them to a meaningful degree.
"This is broken…"
That was probably a feature of alchemy itself. I'd have to tease out the underlying principles eventually, but for now I carefully recorded the antidote recipe in my expensive paper notebook.
"Experimenting again today?"
"Please."
Today's project was brewing a deadly poison specifically to test the antidote. I already had a poison recipe; the goal was to use it as a base and create something even stronger.
I ran several trials, steadily increasing the amount of toxic herbs, but the results barely changed.
"So just dumping in more toxic herbs doesn't make the poison stronger?"
Raising only the herb quantity threw off the combination entirely. Scaling up both the water and the herbs simply produced a larger volume of the same poison. In other words, toxicity and herb quantity weren't linked. And once again, I was reminded how critical ratios were in a formula.
I committed the important experimental results to memory and diligently wrote them down.
I'd called Emma over first thing in the morning to help with alchemy—and then we hit a snag.
"Yuli. We're out of materials."
Emma said it while prepping ingredients. Ah. I'd been so buried in experiments I hadn't gone foraging…
"It's been a while since we last gathered anything. We should go foraging today."
So much for starting experiments first thing in the morning…
"Okay."
While I packed a bag and gathered my foraging tools, Emma put together a lunch.
"We're just going to grab some things and come right back."
"Snacks."
Ah—so not a full meal, just snacks, huh…? I left her to it and focused on my own prep.
"Got it."
Together we made our way to the edge of the Forest of Delusion, and I set to work hunting for materials in earnest.
Today I focused on toxic herbs rather than medicinal ones, and picked up some edible mushrooms while I was at it.
"Hmm. Should we head a little deeper?"
The outskirts had plenty of materials, but I found myself wanting to try collecting something new.
"Worried."
Emma clearly wasn't thrilled about going further in.
"You'll protect me, won't you?"
"Yeah."
Trusting her completely, I pushed deeper into the forest.
It really was an untouched stretch of woods—strange plants everywhere I looked.
"Oh, I think I've seen this one in the field guide."
I'd harvest it for now and check it properly against the guide once we got home.
Caught up in the unusual plants and flowers, I let my guard slip.
Even with Emma there, I should have kept at least a basic watch—and I neglected even that.
The result: I was surrounded by monsters.
"Monsters…"
I had a weapon, sure, but these were creatures that lived in the Forest of Delusion. They ran stronger than ordinary monsters, and you had to be careful.
The ones that had appeared were a type I knew well.
Boar-type monsters—Rush Boars. Built like tanks, they charged straight at people and slammed into them with their whole bodies.
"Three of them, huh…"
I really hoped Emma would notice and get here soon… Without mana, there was no way to put a scratch on that thick hide. Emma might manage it, but alone I had no path to victory.
I'd just have to hold out until she realized and came running…