An Unexpected Situation (2)
"W-why is this happening, Mommy...?"
"Uh..."
My mind went white as a blank sheet of paper.
The hem of Tia's skirt, clutched tight in her little fists, had soaked through black. The fabric was dark enough that at first glance it might have passed for water damage, but the moment that metallic, coppery smell hit my nose, I knew. It had started.
And the instant I realized it, I panicked all the harder, utterly at a loss for what to do.
"Uh, uhh. Tia. First, we should... um..."
I tried my best to stay calm. I'd been in exactly the same situation as Tia once. I racked my brain trying to remember what I'd done back then, and nothing came. Oh. I didn't do anything at all.
That made sense, actually. I had frozen up in a panic, and it was Irina who dragged me away and walked me through everything from start to finish. Realizing that my one and only experience had been a complete sham drained all the strength out of me. I couldn't do this. I had neither the ability to handle it nor the confidence to teach it properly.
"Iri—!"
I scrambled to my feet to call for Irina, but she was nowhere to be seen. My throat tightened until I could hardly breathe. My vision narrowed, and sounds went muffled, as if my ears had filled with water. It wasn't even my crisis, yet I had the sudden, suffocating illusion that every eye in the room had swung to me.
When I looked back down, Tia was gripping my hand tightly, her trembling pupils fixed on my lips alone. As if waiting for me to say it was all right, that nothing was wrong. But my pathetic lips could only quiver now and then, unable to force out a single word.
This was all wrong.
Just as that thought crossed my mind and the familiar wave of helplessness began to flood me—
"It stinks of blood. Go clean her up."
"...?"
Tap, tap. Something soft pressed against my back. Leopard, the Hero, was standing there with a displeased expression, holding something out to me. It looked for all the world like a disposable sanitary pad.
No—it was a sanitary pad.
"Take this and go clean her up, quick. She reeks."
"Okay..."
The moment I took the pad, my narrowed vision snapped wide open, and the muffled sounds came rushing back in, clear as ever. Everything I needed to do flooded back into that blank white head of mine. Only then did my frozen limbs start to move. I scooped Tia up at once and hurried toward the waiting room.
"Take off your skirt and panties and sit here. Legs apart a little. There you go."
"Blood... there's so much blood... Is Tia hurt?"
"No. No, Tia isn't hurt anywhere. This is..."
The words caught in my throat. I hesitated, wondering what on earth I was supposed to call it. But the moment I saw Tia's sniffling face, my mouth opened on its own.
"This is proof that Tia is becoming a grown-up."
"Grown-up? Tia doesn't wanna be a grown-up."
"Neither does Mommy. Mommy wishes Tia could stay like this forever, you know. But still, everyone has to grow up someday. Right?"
"..."
Tia gave a small, quiet nod.
She would become an adult woman someday too. I'd never once imagined that the day would arrive when she was barely three months old. Then again, even accounting for her accelerated physical age, this was far too early. Was this what they called precocious puberty?
"You're going to be a grown-up. Just like Mommy..."
"Just spread your legs."
"Mmugh..."
Thankfully, Tia's tears dried up quickly. When I spread her legs to check, the blood had run down as far as her knees, but there wasn't a great deal of it, so wiping her clean wasn't much of a struggle. Once she was spotless, I sat facing her for a moment, my heart a tangled mess. To my eyes she was still nothing but a tiny, adorable baby—yet this child had now had her first period. Her body was capable of carrying a child. The shock was beyond words.
But I couldn't let my anxiety spread to Tia. With hands that wouldn't stop shaking, I took her little hands in mine. It startled me to think when they'd grown so large—they used to fit entirely inside one of my palms.
"From now on, you'll go through this every month."
"Don't wanna. Scary."
"There's nothing to be scared of. Mommy goes through it too."
"Really?"
"..."
I started to answer, felt a little sting of guilt, and gave an awkward smile instead. "Every month" was a bit of a stretch, considering I'd only been through it once myself. And that was after giving birth. Come to think of it, Tia's first period had arrived before I'd even had my second. My seniority in the menstruation department amounted to roughly one month. I was hardly in any position to be dispensing advice on the matter.
But at the very least, to Tia, I had to be a mom she could lean on and trust.
"Look carefully. This is a disposable sanitary pad. Now, the way you use it is..."
Just as Irina had taught me, I unfolded the pad and walked her through it step by step. Since I'd only ever used one once myself, I fumbled a bit in the middle, but nothing went seriously wrong. Tia was sharp—she'd understood in one go.
"Listen carefully, Tia. From now on, your body is one that can have a baby. So..."
I didn't forget to give her a brief crash course in sex education, either. Looking back, I realized I'd never taught her anything about any of this before. For the first time, it actually felt like I was doing my job as a parent properly.
By the time I'd helped her into a fresh skirt, Tia was smiling shyly through her tear-stained face.
"Tia's a grown-up now too. A grown-up. Same as Mommy."
"Oh, hush. Don't go thinking that makes you Mommy's equal."
"Mmuh."
I started to stand, then stopped and wrapped Tia in a fierce hug. My own tears had come surging up all at once, you see. I buried my face in the nape of her neck and swallowed them back down. Had her back always been this big? She seemed to grow by the day. Ah. If this is where she is at three months old, then maybe growing by the day is exactly what she's doing.
The thought made Tia seem suddenly, bizarrely alien.
"Ah. I'm sweating. Okay, let go now."
"Nyaaah!"
Where had my cute little baby demon gone? I pushed Tia away and got up, peeking out through the gap in the waiting room door. But Leopard was gone. Had some urgent business called him away in the meantime?
I never got to say thank you.
I had disposable pads of my own, of course—I always carried them for emergencies. But in my panic over Tia's completely unforeseen first period, I hadn't just failed to think of grabbing them; I'd forgotten they existed entirely. It was the pad Leopard handed me that got me moving at all. Annoying as the man was, a debt of gratitude was still a debt of gratitude.
Wait, why does that guy carry sanitary pads around, anyway?
The question surfaced out of nowhere. What reason would a man have to carry disposable pads? Unless, maybe, that bastard was actually...
No.
A disbelieving laugh escaped me at my own thought. Ridiculous. That frivolous, freeloading pretty-boy—a woman? I shook my head vigorously and pulled a piece of paper out from between my breasts. The party invitation I'd received earlier. I read the words on it over and over, even though I had no way of telling whether it was genuine or a forgery.
But it didn't seem like the kind of man who'd stoop to tricking me over something so petty.
Huh?
I startled myself. I apparently trusted this Hero fellow more than I thought. Maybe today's events really had changed how I saw Leopard, the Hero.
"Hungy. Want numnums."
"Not 'numnums,' Tia. It's called dinner."
"Din-din, then."
"There's plenty of tomato salad left over, so let's have—"
"Not hungry anymore."
"You little—"
From an unapproachable piece of trash, to someone barely tolerable. Yes. That was exactly it, and nothing more.
"Ah."
Just then, a cramping ache twisted deep in my lower abdomen. Oh, you have got to be kidding me. It had started. And now my cycle was going to sync up with my daughter's.
"Well, I must say, is the construction finally finished?"
"It is. Quite dazzling, isn't it?"
As the envoy stepped into Dragonia Villa, he looked around, letting out gasps of admiration. It was the villa the Marquis had purchased, its expansion completed just the day before. Villa or not, it seemed larger and more lavish than even the Marquis's official residence in the Imperial Capital. Of course, everyone knew full well that whether it was a residence or a villa, the Marquis would hardly ever set foot in it. A man who loved luxury while never once approaching the capital—he already owned more than thirty villas scattered across the realm.
"Just thinking about maintaining this place makes my hair fall out... The maids will work a few days at most before fleeing in droves, retching. I'd stake my life on it."
"Hahaha. Keep up the good work. Ah, come to think of it, isn't there a party coming up soon?"
"We're holding one to celebrate the expansion, but it won't be anything grand. Twenty-odd guests at the outside, I'd say. In truth, it's a loyalty inspection—noble lords aligned with the Dragonia faction in the capital will merely show their faces as a matter of courtesy."
A party with no one to look forward to it, and nothing to look forward to in it. A gathering of acquaintances who would glance nervously at one another for an hour before dispersing. The Marquis had spent a fortune buying the villa and nearly doubling its size, so letting the occasion simply pass unmarked was out of the question—hence this purely ceremonial affair.
"So then, what brings you all the way here?"
"I've come to deliver a letter from the Marquis."
"Hm?"
The envoy drew an envelope from his breast. The Dragonia crest was stamped into the wax seal. The butler accepted it at once and tore it open—and as he scanned the contents, his eyes grew wider and wider.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"It says... the Marquis himself will be attending the party."
"I beg your pardon?"
The two men froze where they stood.
A party attended by the Marquis in person. In that instant, an insignificant little gathering was transforming into a major crisis.