Hwashin Wedding (5)
"The response is better than I expected."
Honestly, my biggest worry had been how close I'd come to casting the gods as villains.
Even if the story had nothing to do with any real religion, people might still take offense at anything that seemed to spit on the very category of "god."
Back in my old world, myths in the vein of the Greek and Roman pantheons were everywhere. Over here, though, any mythology with that kind of flavor got reclassified as the domain of demon gods or evil deities — never called gods at all.
In that sense, the gods of the Hwashin series occupied a strangely ambiguous place. They stood on humanity's side, holding back the erosion — allies, in theory. At the same time, they regarded humans as little more than an inferior species of a lower order than themselves.
And in a religious culture that treated pregnancy as a blessing, framing pregnancy as something closer to a curse was another potentially dangerous move. The whole reason readers had originally taken the "conception" of a god's flame in the womb as a blessing came from that worldview — and this work had smashed that concept from the opposite direction.
So the religious angle had been my greatest concern. I didn't particularly care if the temples threw a fit, but if readers decided they hated the material, I'd feel bad about it. Still, it wasn't the kind of thing I could casually rewrite without gutting the plan I'd already set, so I'd left it as it was.
In the end, it didn't seem to be a problem. Critical opinion on the religious front was almost nonexistent. I'd expected at least a few people to find it uncomfortable even without any official statement from the temples — but there was nothing of the sort, which I found oddly surprising.
Anyway. I'd drawn what I wanted to draw, the reviews were fine, so it counted as a complete success.
"Well, rewriting the ending this time probably helped in more ways than one."
It also felt a little like I'd survived by diverting everyone's attention elsewhere. If I'd left it as a pure bad ending, that religious unease might have soured along with everything else.
Thinking about it that way, the ending I'd settled on — everyone banding together to save Albedo — really had turned out well.
Then again, the moment the idea hit me, I knew it was the one.
It still delivered the full weight of the sacrifice the story had been building toward, while offering a plausible way to lighten that weight. The result was a happy ending that felt earned — and if readers felt they themselves had taken part in achieving it, so much the better.
It had even been good for merch. Paying money for a womb-tattoo sticker only to watch it flip overnight from a symbol of blessing into a symbol of curse would have stung. Now, though, it had become a mark of sacrifice — taking the curse onto yourself to save someone else. That made it cooler than any ordinary blessing ever could have been.
As a result, sales of the tattoo stickers — which had been winding down — had spiked all over again. Considering that everyone who was going to buy one already had, the surge meant people who'd never felt the need before had found the appeal in this latest work.
And the ones who believed more people needed to wear the womb tattoos to ease Albedo's curse had started recommending the Hwashin series to everyone around them. Overall sales of the series were climbing as a result.
"Instead of just complaining, they're actually doing something about it."
It made sense. They'd been immersed in the stories of kids who'd fought through a hellish world by doing whatever they could rather than wallowing in grievance. If a way to save Albedo was right there in their hands, not using it would have eaten at them. Blaming the gods for creating the situation in the first place felt less urgent than the relief of having any choice at all.
"Incredible."
"Yeah…"
The womb-tattoo craze had been so common at the Academy that I'd gotten used to it — and after Hwashin Wedding, practically the entire student body was wearing them, which had pushed past "familiar" into "impressive." What surprised me now was starting to feel that same chaos outside the Academy walls.
The Academy was always trend-sensitive; that was one thing. But for the ratio of people walking around with womb tattoos outside to be this high…
At this rate, it wouldn't even be strange if Albedo came back to life tomorrow.
"So when are you drawing the sequel?"
"…No idea? I still need some time."
I'd sketched out the sequel while writing the ending — the real final episode — but it had been a rush job, and the finer details still needed work. Honestly, having sold the storage boxes as merch this time around, I also wanted to let the current state of things settle for a while.
"It'll probably take longer than any of the previous sequels."
Even this one had come after a decent gap. The next story would need far more thought and preparation — it might take more than a year. I felt bad for the readers waiting, but better that than rushing out something strange.
"Oh, and I've been hearing this rumor."
"What rumor?"
"That if you put on a womb-tattoo sticker, you actually get cursed."
What kind of nonsense was that?
I let out a hollow laugh, half in disbelief. There was no way sticking on a sticker could give you a real curse.
Rosaria said it while absently stroking her own womb. After hearing the rumor, she'd peeled the sticker off out of fear it might somehow harm the baby.
…Come to think of it, her belly was starting to show.
"What, worried about our baby? Baby, this is Daddy's hand."
"Of course I'm worried."
I'd never understood how she planned to keep attending the Academy while pregnant — until I looked into it and found there was no rule against it. The Academy even had systems in place for childbirth and childcare. That had genuinely surprised me.
Among the nobility, the trend was toward having children later, so it hadn't even crossed my mind. But the Academy was a place where the Order of Mijia's influence ran deep. To keep pregnancy from being treated as a problem simply because it interfered with studies, they'd set those systems up in advance.
In practice, the Academy's longstanding roommate system had kept actual pregnancies rare to begin with, so the provisions mostly existed for students who came back pregnant after a break. Even those cases were almost unheard of — a policy that was barely more than window dressing.
"You're not feeling unwell or anything?"
"I'm ridiculously healthy. And whenever I get a craving, I've got a dad who drops everything and takes me out to eat, so I've got zero complaints about food."
"If it happened all the time it'd be exhausting, but honestly it's only once in a while."
Truthfully, Rosaria barely made things hard for me even while pregnant. If anything, I felt guilty that it was going this smoothly.
"This break, we absolutely have to go together and bow our heads…"
"If it's really too much, we just don't go. Don't worry about it."
"How could I do that?"
"If we show up with a cute little grandchild already born, they won't be able to say a word, right?"
"Why do you keep getting more evil…"
First it had been going before her belly got big. Then going once it was big. And now the plan was to give birth first, show up with the baby, and then announce the pregnancy?
At that point, I had a feeling bowing my head wouldn't be the end of it…
"Being out on a date just the two of us like this is really nice."
"Yeah. Reminds me of the old days."
Today, neither Yuria nor Orca had been free, so Rosaria and I had gone out beyond the Academy on our own — toured an exhibition hall, then spent the rest of the afternoon on a proper date in the capital.
"Ah, I don't want to go back."
"Then how about we invent some excuse and spend a hot night together, just the two of us?"
"I'm fine. I'm not that impatient. And the way you put it, it sounds like we've been holding out forever."
In reality, we were the kind of couple who did filthy things in the club room whenever we got the chance, so there was no real need to force the issue out here. And honestly, with lectures tomorrow, it would have been a stretch anyway.
"Should we head back?"
"Yeah."
And so we quietly wrapped up our date and returned to the Academy without incident. Spending the day nuzzling up to each other had been fun in its own right — and seeing how far the womb tattoos had spread in the wake of Hwashin Wedding had left me feeling genuinely happy.
All in all, it had been just about a perfect day.
"Cali. Cali…"
"Hm?"
The next day, I was in the club room looking over a sample of a manga I'd picked up because it looked promising when Yuria came in looking more urgent than usual. She crossed the room, grabbed my hand, and started saying strange things.
"I—I feel weird…. My body, it's…. Nngh…"
"Are you okay? What's going on?"
But Yuria only twisted and squirmed, letting out soft moans, too flustered to explain anything properly. It was rare to see her like this. What was wrong with her?
It didn't sound like she needed the bathroom — the tone was more like she was asking me for help. So was it something lewd happening to her body?
Her breast training had been in its final stretch lately; her body had gotten extremely sensitive. Maybe her nipples were just brushing against her clothes.
"Haaah♡ Haaah…"
"I asked you what's wrong."
"This… the tattoo♡ The tattoo…"
"Tattoo?"
Come to think of it, after reading Hwashin Wedding, Yuria had started wearing a womb tattoo again for the first time in a while. A white Soul Chain, if I remembered right. But what about it?
"I peeled the tattoo off, but the mark is still there…. And my womb is actually throbbing♡ No matter how I look at it, this is weird♡"
"…What?"
The moment I heard that, the "rumor" Rosaria had mentioned yesterday came flooding back.