Life (2)
Not long after Seo Yeo became the first of them to bear a child, Lü Bu began to feel the pains of labor.
Judging by when each of them had first shared my bed, the two were practically even, so nothing about it struck me as strange.
If I had to point out a single problem, though, it would be that.
"Jeong Reung... it huuurts..."
"I know. I'm right here."
When her time came, Lü Bu turned frail before my eyes, tears welling up along her lashes.
Watching a woman who never so much as blinked at a blade's edge carry on like this, I could tell the pain was very real. If anything, it was Seo Yeo—who had endured her own delivery without a flicker of expression—who was the strange case.
Gripping Lü Bu's hand tight, I pressed my forehead to hers and spoke.
"Don't worry. However many hours it takes, I'll be right here with you."
"Mm..."
At those words, her trembling seemed to settle, as if she'd been reassured.
Whew. Just as it had been with Seo Yeo, simply standing by and watching was an ordeal of its own.
However sublime the moment of a new life entering the world might be, hard was still hard.
Seo Yeo's delivery had ended unusually quickly. So how would Lü Bu fare?
It was obvious that the longer labor dragged on, the worse the agony would become, so all I could do was pray with everything I had.
When Her Majesty offered sacrifices up to Heaven, I had lent a hand at her side—surely Heaven would find that endearing and help me out in return.
Anyway. That was what I chose to believe.
"Now. Breathe in deeply, please..."
"Mmph...!"
I calmly watched as Lü Bu, drawing strength from my encouragement, earnestly followed Hua Tuo's every instruction. If I started flailing about, Lü Bu would only grow more anxious herself.
All I could do was hope that nothing unexpected would happen.
Thankfully, Lü Bu's delivery ended without a single complication.
If there was anything remarkable, it was that she, like Seo Yeo, finished in remarkably short order—barely an hour, two at the outside.
Considering that labor normally leaves a woman unable to move for half a day straight, it was a startling sight.
……
Look at that.
Even Hua Tuo, who never batted an eye at anything, was for once visibly flustered.
Was that, too, thanks to the extraordinary bodies the two of them possessed?
"Zzz..."
Lü Bu, who had worn the face of someone utterly drained after the birth, was now sleeping soundly with her precious little bundle hugged tight to her chest.
...The problem was that her one free hand had me in a death grip. Whenever I tried to slip away, she would simply clamp down with that monstrous strength of hers, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I turned to Hua Tuo, who was nearby.
"Is there a good way to handle this?"
"You could simply sleep beside her."
"Huh?"
Her matter-of-fact answer drew a flustered sound out of me before I could help it.
Hua Tuo went on.
"What the patient needs right now is peace of mind."
"......"
"You won't be getting any proper rest for a while yet, so why not take the chance to rest now, while you can?"
"I suppose so..."
Having heard her out, I had no choice but to nod.
That raising a child is exhausting work is something anyone who has lived a little knows. And if you had to pick the single most physically draining stretch of it, it would surely be the newborn days, right after the baby arrives.
"Do not forget that she must be nursed every shichen—every two hours."
"Right."
And that was no joke.
A newborn has only just left her mother's womb and cannot yet tell day from night, and since this is the season of her fastest growth, her body demands enormous amounts of energy.
In other words, exactly as Hua Tuo said, every two hours the baby would wake up bawling that she was hungry.
...Aigoo.
As if lying in wait for precisely that thought, Seo Hui—still nestled asleep in Seo Yeo's arms—snapped her eyes wide open.
Vigorous, in a way that didn't quite suit a newborn.
The way she could be sound asleep one moment and bolt upright the instant feeding time arrived left a deep impression on me.
Now, an ordinary baby, hungry as she'd be, ought to cry and wail for her milk...
But Seo Hui was different from those ordinary babies.
……
Far from crying, she simply blinked her eyes open and stared, unblinking, up at her mother.
Naturally, there was no chance that Seo Yeo, with her transcendent senses, would fail to notice her child behaving this way.
Seo Yeo, who had been trailing at my heels with the swaddled Seo Hui in her arms, nursed her with practiced ease, and Seo Hui diligently filled her belly before dropping straight back to sleep without so much as a yawn.
...Was I really supposed to call this a daughter taking after her mother?
Barely making a sound between them, the two left me thoroughly bewildered. Child-rearing is supposed to be a clattering, chaotic racket—why was this so quiet?
"...Baah."
Still, I was utterly powerless against the little newborn quirks Seo Hui showed from time to time—smiling in her sleep, or twitching her eyes, nose, and mouth.
Just what was this cuteness?
Whose daughter was she, to be such a little angel?
Understanding, quite completely, the heart of a father turning into a fool for his daughter, I let a fond smile spread across my face.
I couldn't say how things stood with Seo Yeo, but I did at least remember that Lü Bu, in the original history, never had a son.
There simply are no records of one existing at all.
Unlike his archery—the feat of striking the tip of a halberd from hundreds of paces away while dead drunk—his accuracy (?) in this particular department appears to have been rather poor.
Still, as a stroke of luck amid the misfortune, a daughter does appear in the records: the Lü girl.
The scene where he sent her off to Yuan Shu to seal a marriage alliance, then changed his mind and lopped the envoy's head clean off, was quite entertaining.
"It is a daughter again this time."
"...I see."
And, as though reflecting that very history, the child Lü Bu had borne was a girl.
She had been born with red hair just like her mother's, and staring at that head of baby-red hair felt oddly surreal.
Our family's hair colors certainly were colorful.
Individuality, at least, would never be in short supply.
Still held fast in Lü Bu's grip, I nodded along with a contented smile. Hua Tuo had said I could simply sleep, but I wasn't particularly tired just then.
Then, as if she had felt my gaze, the child—who didn't even have a name yet—opened her eyes.
Red irises, a shade darker than Lü Bu's.
Perhaps because my blood ran in her veins, that vivid crimson seemed to have deepened a little.
"Ah-oo-ah."
The baby stared fixedly at me, then let out a single coo.
Ah-oo-ah?
What was that supposed to mean?
At the baby's babbling, a question mark practically floated up over my head.
...Was she hungry, maybe?
No—hungry babies cry. That's how it's supposed to go.
"Mm... mmh...? What is it...?"
Just as I was debating whether I ought to wake the soundly sleeping Lü Bu, she awoke from her sleep much as the baby had.
I explained in a calm voice.
"The baby's awake."
"Oh! She is?!"
Lü Bu, who had been half lost in a dream, snapped wide awake at once and met her child's eyes.
"O-our baby. Is there something you want?"
Nervous? She was nervous, all right.
Lü Bu spoke in a trembling voice, her tension plain for anyone to see. There was no way a brand-new baby could understand her parents' words...
"Ah-boo."
...Did she understand?
Nah. Pure coincidence, surely.
Then again, whose child was she if not Lü Bu's? There was a distinctly curt edge to that little voice.
Lü Bu had sounded just like this child when we first met, after all.
A newborn doesn't properly recognize anything until three months at the earliest, four at the latest.
The right way to see it is as a fragile state of pure instinctive dependence on adults, without a shred of social awareness.
It would take some growing yet before a baby who recognized her parents playing with her would start beaming out smiles.
"...Ah-oo-ah..."
And sure enough.
Meeting Lü Bu's eyes head-on, the child went soft and squirmy, declaring with her entire body that she was sleepy.
A newborn's daily routine is, quite literally, an endless loop of eating, sleeping, and dirtying herself.
Only once her social sense develops and attachment begins to form does playtime get added to the schedule in between.
...Which was the problem, since it was hard enough already without playtime stacked on top.
Well, for those moments, you simply trust in the parents-only buff: one glimpse of a baby's smile and the strength comes back on its own.
Human beings are imprinted, right down to their genes, to find their children adorable.
It's not for nothing that people squeal themselves silly at the sight of any small animal.
You need to feel that a child is cute for attachment to take root properly, and only when attachment has taken root will you defend her with your very life. Viewed one way, this, too, was simply evolution's method of carrying the species forward.
I spoke to Lü Bu, who was still radiating first-time-mother nerves.
"I think she's sleepy."
"...That's what I thought too!"
Right. If you say so, then that's how it is.
I smiled as I watched her carefully cradle the baby and gently pat her back.
Then Lü Bu tossed a question my way.
"So what are we naming her?"
"Hmm..."
Faced with the question, I stroked my chin and sank into thought.
In countless fan works, Lü Bu's daughter appears under every imaginable name.
There's the fairly famous Lü Lingqi, and sometimes she's called Lü Ji.
Beyond those, there's Lü Geum, Lü Ran, and so on...
In any case, the sheer variety of names is enormous.
So, what name did I settle on?
"How about Yeo Hwa?"
"Yeo Hwa?"
Hwa, as in harmony.
The same hwa as when people say a serpent transforms into a dragon.
There really are figures who use that character in their names, so I considered it a rather decent choice.
"...Yeah. Not bad! Then let's go with Yeo Hwa!"
Hearing the name I'd chosen, Lü Bu nodded, looking satisfied.
Seo Yeo, Lü Bu—every last one of them asks me to do the naming.
...Surely I won't have to name every single child born from here on out?
I could only pray it wouldn't come to that.