First Time (2)
The hand clutching the hem of my skirt wouldn't stop shaking.
The blood that had run down my legs cooled in an instant, spreading a bone-deep chill.
Drip. Drip. The sound of drops of blood falling and pooling on the floor froze me solid. The world suddenly spun, and dizziness washed over me. I had to do something—but I felt every gaze in the room turn toward me, and everything went black before my eyes. All the strength drained from my body, and helplessness took its place.
"Ahh. Ah..."
Even then, my lower belly kept churning, and with a strange, throbbing, deeply unpleasant sensation, I felt another massive gush of blood pouring out of me.
This was it. I was done for.
Looking back, I was probably in a full-blown panic from the moment I first saw the blood.
"Yulia!"
My vision had narrowed to a dark tunnel, and the only thing that came through it was Irina, running toward me with a worried face.
Ah. Where's Tia?
The Tavern Boss is holding her.
Thank goodness.
"I-I'm so dizzy..."
"Lean on me. I've got you."
"Mmhm..."
I kicked off my heels. The soles of my feet were damp—I must have stepped in the puddle.
Letting out a ragged breath, I leaned on Irina and slowly took one step, then another. I didn't even have the presence of mind to check what was ahead of me. I simply surrendered my whole body to her.
"Ha. Haah. Haah..."
"Feeling a little better?"
"Y-yeah. Yeah..."
Once we reached the break room, breathing came much easier. My vision returned to normal, too, and with fewer eyes on me I felt a good deal better. But my pelvis still throbbed, and my head still swam.
"Didn't you prepare for today? Why are you so flustered?"
"P-prepare?"
"Your pad. Sounds like you didn't expect it to come today."
"My period..."
It hit me like a blow to the head.
I bowed my head once more and stared down at my skirt and legs, dyed red. Menstruation. The natural process that visits a woman every month to keep her womb healthy and clean.
Why hadn't I seen this coming? If you asked how I could possibly have failed to think of something so blindingly obvious, I'd have no answer. I simply... never thought of it at all. Was it because I'd gone through childbirth before my first period? I'd been living as if menstruation simply didn't exist.
Stupid idiot.
"Don't tell me. This isn't your first time, is it?"
"..."
I couldn't bring myself to answer. I had no idea what to say...
And then Irina's eyes went wide.
"Oh. Oh my god. How old are you, exactly?"
"I'm not really sure."
"I thought you looked young, but jeez. Unbelievable. What on earth was the Master thinking, hiring someone like you here?"
"..."
Irina quickly fetched a wet towel, knelt down, and began wiping my legs for me. When the cloth glided across the soles of my feet, goosebumps raced up my whole body. The dried blood soaked away into the towel.
Even from a distance the smell of blood was fairly strong, but Irina wiped me down with painstaking care, all the way up my inner thighs, without a single word of complaint. When she'd silently finished every last inch, her gaze lifted to my face.
"Take off your panties."
"Okay..."
"Got a clean pair? Actually, never mind. Just use mine for now."
"Okay..."
"You don't know how a pad works, do you?"
"No."
"Hoo."
When I shook my head, Irina let out a long, deep sigh of a woman utterly at a loss. I had decided to be honest in front of Irina. She was the only one I had to lean on.
"Here. This is a pad."
"Reusable?"
"No, disposable."
"...?"
My mind briefly short-circuited. The pad Irina pulled out and showed me looked hardly any different from the modern ones.
Pads exist in this world, but disposable diapers don't? Aren't they made of pretty much the same materials? If they have the technology to manufacture disposable pads, diapers should be entirely doable...
It was the moment I realized, all over again, just how hopelessly ass-backwards this world was.
"Don't like pads? Want to try a tampon? Or a menstrual cup? They're both a bit trickier to use than pads, though..."
"Do you have those here?"
"No. We'd have to go buy them."
"Then what you've got now. I'll use a pad. Yes."
"Don't sniffle—just say it. What's there to be so upset about?"
"I'm not upset..."
"Aww, there there. Surprised? Did the blood give you a scare?"
"..."
She must have noticed I'd recovered some of my composure, because she immediately started teasing me. Mean little wench. Still, thanks to her, the tears that had welled up receded.
"Watch closely. You stick the side with the adhesive onto your panties. This one's the large size, and your flow's heavy, so you'll need large ones. So put the wider end toward your butt... then unfold the wings on both sides and fold them around. And there you have it, little Yulia!"
"Please, seriously, stop teasing me..."
"Fine, fine, I'm sorry. But sometime soon, the three of us—you, me, and the Master—need to have a serious talk. No matter how I look at it, I don't know if it's right for you to be working here when you've only just had your first period..."
"..."
I clamped my mouth shut. I wasn't actually anywhere near that young, but I decided to let the misunderstanding stand. That worked in my favor, given how little I knew about the female body. If the Tavern Boss felt awkward about having accidentally hired a girl who hadn't even had her first period yet, that was his problem, not mine.
"Tia? I want to see Tia."
"Don't worry. I left her with the Master."
"Does that man even know how to look after a child?"
"The Master has two sons and three daughters."
"..."
In that case, I could rest easy.
I took the panties with the pad attached and slowly pulled them on. Maybe because they were Irina's, they hugged a little tight, but they were far from unwearable. A faint chill made me shiver from head to toe.
Just as I was about to stand, a pain like I'd wrenched my back forced me right back down.
"Aaagh..."
"Does it hurt a lot?"
"Yeah."
"What kind of hurt?"
"I don't know. Everything below my waist is just a wreck. My joints keep zinging, my bones feel like they're whining, my belly keeps cramping..."
"Sounds like some nasty period cramps. Take it easy today. Just call it a day."
"C-can I really do that?"
"Of course. Some girls don't show up without so much as a word, you know. If you wake up hurting too badly, you just don't come in. Besides, on period days you can't do afters anyway."
"Oh..."
So that was why some girls occasionally skipped work without notice, and why their names just got crossed off the day's selection list. I'd wondered if this place had unusually flexible scheduling. Turns out it was all because of periods. The mystery solved, I felt a little lighter.
"I don't have the strength to walk home... I'll go rest upstairs."
"Suit yourself. Get some sleep. Want me to watch Tia?"
"No. I'll sleep with Tia."
Bracing my pelvis with both hands, I hauled myself up with great effort.
I hadn't known period cramps could be this bad. And I was supposed to go through this once a month...
No, wait. With a Saintess's regeneration, my cycle might be different from an ordinary woman's. It could even be shorter than a month.
The mere thought wrung a sigh out of me.
I really, truly hated this.
"Tavern Boss. Hand over Tia, please."
"Oh. Right. Of course."
Leaving the break room, I took Tia into my arms first. It seemed to be true that the Boss had raised five children of his own—Tia had already fallen fast asleep in his embrace sometime along the way.
The cold silence that had lain over the tavern was gone; everyone was laughing, chattering, and tipping back their mugs with lively energy. Now and then I felt a few glances flick my way, but that was all. I glanced down the corridor where I'd been in a panic just moments before—the puddle of blood and the footprints were all gone.
"Sasha cleaned up all the floor!"
A petite, adorable woman with a long horn rising from her forehead gave a little ahem.
A unicorn-type beastfolk, was it? I vaguely remembered hearing that she'd been forcibly struck from the second-round selection list ever since the day she'd tried to serve a customer orally and stabbed him in the stomach instead.
"Thank you, everyone..."
With that brief greeting, I fled up to the second floor. I couldn't bring myself to face the others.
Don't break. Please don't break.
Entering the motel room, I carefully laid Tia on the bed and lay down beside her. My whole body ached as though it had been beaten to pieces. On top of that, I kept feeling as if I were about to burst into tears, which was why I'd had to hurry and flee up here.
"I've... really become a woman, haven't I..."
Finally, the tears spilled over, unstoppable. All this time, I'd believed I had fully accepted becoming a woman. I'd believed I understood it, made peace with it.
But it had all been an illusion.
The day I truly became a woman was today.
Holding Tia tight against me, I sobbed quietly until exhaustion dragged me under.
"I don't understand. If my memory serves, the Human-Demon War ended more than fifty years ago. So why does this village look exactly like one trampled under the Demon King's army?"
A wild expanse of green grassland stretched to the horizon. At its heart lay the ruins of a village burned to the ground, leaving nothing behind but black ash.
A priest in full ceremonial robes clicked his tongue as he surveyed the scene.
"Reports say a Black Dragon rampaged through it."
"A dragon? On a human village? Whatever for?"
"Even after questioning the surviving residents, we were unable to determine the cause at all."
For a dragon—wise and gentle by nature—to attack a village of humans and burn it to ash like this, the villagers must have committed some enormous sin without even realizing it themselves. Perhaps they had persecuted the dragon's beloved and provoked its wrath.
As if that could ever be the case.
Absurd, of course. The priest burst out laughing at his own ridiculous thought.
"The Saintess survived the fire and left the village. However, we have been unable to trace where she went."
"Do the surviving residents know the Saintess's face?"
"We conducted preliminary interrogations, but none of them could so much as recall her hair color clearly. It seems she lived in a distant house, far from people's eyes, and appeared only on the darkest of nights. The village chief, who did know the Saintess's face, died in the fire. We suspected the village's apprentice priest might know her as well, but we could not locate him."
"Hmm."
The priest groaned in frustration and kneaded his temples.
The oracle had descended. It was the first oracle since God Himself had appointed the Hero more than fifty years ago.
Its contents were as follows:
The Saintess's firstborn child shall, in time, become the Seed of Calamity.
There was only one person in this world called the Saintess.
The Church was on high alert, scrambling to find the woman as a matter of the gravest urgency.
Except for one problem: the Church knew neither the Saintess's face nor the name she went by now.
Ever since the Saintess had severed her ties with the Church, she had refused to meet with anyone belonging to it, so nearly everyone who knew her face was already dead or on death's door. Unless she invoked the Saintess's name herself, finding her was practically impossible.
"Summon the Former Hero. There is something I need him to do."
"We shall carry out your orders."
And so there was no other way.
Someone who knew the Saintess's face.
Hiring the Former Hero was the only option left.