Childbirth (2)
If it came to it, I would run.
Into the forest, drifting wherever my feet took me, whatever — if it came down to it, I'd just run first and figure the rest out after.
That was the plan.
Though looking back on it now, it was nothing but nonsense.
By the time warm water came gushing from somewhere deep in my lower belly, an unpleasant churning sensation rising with it, soaking everything below me through — by then, I had already frozen solid on the spot.
"Now, please wait just a moment! I'll go fetch the midwife!"
"Ah, aah······"
"You must let go of my hand, Saintess! I'll be right back!"
Run, my ass.
For a good ten minutes after that priest scurried off, I couldn't so much as twitch in that bed.
It wasn't that my limbs were bound, nor was the pain unbearable enough to pin me down.
It was more like being caught in a loose noose.
Nothing terribly uncomfortable, nothing terribly painful — but that thick, heavy rope looped around my neck carried the suffocating dread that the moment I tried to slip free of this place, it would yank tight and strangle me. That fear had me crushed flat.
Is that a bit vague?
To put it in man's terms: it felt like someone had gotten a fist around my balls.
The kind of frozen terror of knowing they could squeeze and burst them at any moment.
I'm screwed.
Screwed.
And just what had I been doing all week?
In that stretch of time that felt like an eternity, what had I accomplished beyond wandering around a snot-sized village under the pretense of searching for a way out?
Just as that wave of regret came crashing in —
I had to grit my teeth against a sudden sensation of my inner organs twisting and clenching in on themselves.
"Ghhhhhhh······!"
This is maddening.
The real contractions hadn't even properly started yet, and already I was gasping for breath.
At this point, all I could do was pray the thing would hurry up and come out.
So it's finally beginning, huh.
Speak of the tiger and it shows up, they say.
Along with a squelching, shifting feeling from deep inside, a crushing pressure began to bear down.
So the labor was starting in earnest.
Every year, plenty of women died in childbirth, sure — but I couldn't imagine this Saintess body, built for pregnancy with those wide hips, suffering all that much in the process.
First things first: get this dragon spawn out of my belly, then worry about the rest.
After that, while everyone was busy panicking, I'd slip quietly out the back door.
Scanning the room, I put together a plan that seemed reasonably solid.
"AAAAAAGH!"
Right up until I got my face beaten in, that is.
From somewhere deep within came a wet, splitting crunch-splltch — a sound I should not have been hearing — carried straight through to me by the vibration.
Something had definitely torn.
Whether it was the uterine wall or the cervix or something further down, I had no idea; all I knew was that I was shivering head to toe under an agony like a knife left buried inside me, being carved back and forth.
"Saintess! I've brought the midwife!"
"Oh dear. Your waters have gone and broken all over······. Looks like it'll be soon."
"Aah! Aaagh! Something inside got skewered— no, torn! Ghhk······"
"Stay calm, Saintess. Shall we breathe together? Follow me. Whoo. Haa. Whoo. Haa."
"Whoo, haak. WhoOO······ haa, the hell with this! AAAAAH! I'm telling you something's WRONG!!!"
"It's all right. Everything is fine. You're only feeling it more because you're frightened. Will you spread your legs for me? There we go. Now, let's see······"
Whoo-haa, my ass.
What a goddamn performance.
Here I was, unable to even breathe properly through pain like a blade jammed into my gut and my insides spilling out in strings, and this midwife granny looked as relaxed as a Sunday picnic.
She ambled up to the bed with a pleasant smile, peeled back the blankets, spread my legs, and began peering inside.
And as she reached her hand in for a closer look, her face gradually drained white.
"Oh, oh······"
"WHAT! What is it!"
"Well······ it seems the situation is not so good, Saintess."
"Ha."
With a tremendous effort, I twisted my head — and there it was, between my legs: blood, welling out and staining the hem of my skirt a deep, dark red.
There. See? I told you.
Something is wrong······
Strength suddenly drained from my entire body, and a hollow, empty laugh bubbled out of me.
Of course, that laughter vanished in an instant, crushed under the sensation of something grinding and pressing outward, as if trying to widen the hole it had torn open somewhere inside me.
"AAAAAAA!!! I'm dying! I'm actually dying, AAAAH!"
"Y-you're not dying. Calm down, Saintess."
"How the hell am I supposed to calm down?! It's not your body, so it's easy for you to say! Agh! AAAAAGH!"
Something was pressing slowly, steadily down on my lower belly, and I could feel it — something crawling its way down.
Under normal circumstances, with the inside of me stretched this wide, I'd have been thrashing against the pain of tearing apart — except the problem now was that I was actually tearing.
That little bastard was clearly holding a dagger in each hand, splitting me open in both directions as it came sliding down like a playground slide.
Nothing else could explain this pain of being cleaved apart from both sides at once.
"Th-the head's starting to show! Just a little more strength, Saintess!"
"Pushing HURTS, you biiiitch!!!"
What kind of midwife even is that?
About as useful as a pile of shit.
That priest, holding my hand at my side the whole time, was somehow doing far more good.
Before long, I'd bled enough to soak the entire bed canopy, and my vision began to dim as dizziness washed over me.
No matter how monstrously my regeneration replenished the blood, apparently there was no way to refill the oxygen that had been lost in the meantime.
"Ah. Aahk. Aaaagh······"
"It's almost out now! Just a little more!"
By then, even the strength to raise my voice was gone.
The dragon spawn had come tearing its way down my insides, and now it was scrabbling at the opening as if about to tumble free at any moment.
It felt like my guts were being pulled out of me whole.
My mind was a haze, my lower belly felt flayed to ribbons, my vision was going dark — and yet I couldn't pass out no matter what.
I would have rather fallen asleep and woken up feeling fresh and new.
But unfortunately, my consciousness refused to cut out, right down to the last moment.
"Waaah! Wahhhhh! Waaaaaah!"
"You've done wonderfully, Saintess! Now let's get the bleeding stopped right aw— oh."
Squelch.
Once the head slipped free, that feeling of something snagging inside vanished, and the whole thing came sliding out, smooth as anything.
In that instant, the jammed-up feeling in my chest popped open like a cork, and my vision began flooding back in full.
And the moment the midwife's bewildered voice reached my ears, I squeezed my eyes shut.
She couldn't find words for a long while. Fair enough.
I mean, anyone would be startled if a pitch-black lizard came squirming out of a human woman's—
"S-Saintess. Please, look at this."
"······"
What the midwife held wrapped in swaddling cloth was something entirely beyond my expectations.
An ugly baby.
Wrinkled and shriveled, with stubby little limbs — a genuinely homely newborn.
The little thing was wailing at the top of its lungs and kicking, apparently trying to figure out this whole breathing business for itself too.
The moment I saw that face, the pain abruptly melted away.
My lower belly still felt numb, as though paralyzed — but the grinding, bone-breaking agony from before was gone, wiped clean away.
Half expecting to find that someone had slipped me a painkiller.
"What on earth is this······"
"Ah."
When the midwife drew back the cloth covering the baby's head, there they were — two small black dots set into the temples.
No. Not dots. Horns.
I reached out without thinking and ran my fingers over them; the hard, rough texture sent me snatching my hand back in shock.
"Why······ Why, of all things······ Whyyyy······"
Why did it have to look like this?
Not a filthy lizard, not fully human —
Why this in-between, neither-one-thing-nor-the-other form?
Tears spilled over.
"S-Saintess, please, hold the baby for now. I'll go inform the village chief."
"No. This isn't right. Somebody let me wake up now. Someone please wake me up······"
Staring down at the life wailing in my arms, I shook my head, over and over.
I wanted it to end.
I wanted to give up on all of it, right then and there.
I wanted to go home.
News travels fast in a tiny rural village like this.
In a place where word that one family's kid smacked another family's kid spreads clear across the village in half a day, imagine how fast it travels that the Saintess gave birth to a horned child.
No points for guessing.
The moment the horrified midwife went tearing down into the village, this had to have become the hottest late-night gossip within the hour.
I needed to escape before then, by any means necessary.
But having only just expelled the afterbirth, the aftermath of all that hemorrhaging — the hollowed-out collapse of my lower belly — hit harder than I'd anticipated.
Every time I tried to haul myself upright, pins and needles crackled through my inner thighs, and my legs simply buckled beneath me.
It was only when I collapsed onto the floor, clawing desperately at the ground to rise, that I noticed: my whole body was trembling violently, as though wracked by chills.
That was when I understood.
That this was no condition to be overcome through sheer willpower.
Or maybe my mind had already given out along with everything else. Considering this body's recovery rate, my belly and my insides should have mended themselves completely by now — and yet the phantom pains were still tormenting me.
"Is it true? The Saintess bore a demon's child?"
"Let me see! Show me too!"
"There, there! I knew it all along! One look at that lewd face and I said to myself, she'd whore with a demon for sure!"
The noise outside the window had begun to swell.
Too late now.
At that thought, every last ounce of strength drained out of me, and I collapsed face-down onto the floor.
"Move aside! We must seize the demon's child and burn it!"
"You can't! It hasn't even been confirmed to be a demon's child yet!"
"The village chief saw the demon's horn with his own eyes! So did the midwife! Who does an apprentice priest think he is, talking back to his elders?!"
"You saw it too, didn't you! Was there a horn, or wasn't there? Answer me!"
"Th-that's······ Hnk. It doesn't matter! I can't let you through!"
"You little—!"
The unmistakable sound of someone getting pummeled came clearly through the gap in the door. The priest was evidently holding the door stubbornly on his own, because within moments stones started smashing through the window and raining in.
"Ah."
By the time I came back to myself, I was somehow crouched on the floor with the baby in my arms.
Taking rock after rock on my back and the back of my head······
Up close, the baby's face was even uglier than it had looked before.
It wriggled its eyes — exhausted from crying, or closed, or open, who could tell — and no, I couldn't say it was entirely without a certain charm.
If only it didn't have those black horns, that is.
It's all your fault.
That I ended up in this body, that the moment I arrived I was pinned beneath a dragon and put through every humiliation there was, that I've been trapped in this village — all of it, all your fault.
And just as that thought had my still-spasming right hand closing around the baby's throat —
"Huh······?"
It had gone quiet. Puzzled, I lifted myself up.
The shrieking voices calling me a shameless whore, the priest's groans as he took his beating, the ceaseless hail of stones — all of it had stopped.
By then, even the pain in my lower belly that had been doubling me over on its own had finally subsided, and I managed to stand on legs wobbling with exhaustion.
One hand pressed against a pelvis that whimpered with every step, I staggered toward the window.
Glass shards crunched and popped underfoot, but by now even that didn't hurt.
"What is that······"
Far in the distance, a colossal pillar of fire had punched up into the night sky, turning it bright as day.
The village had been swallowed whole by the flame demon, vomiting plumes of pitch-black smoke into the air.
And moving among the burning buildings was a massive shadow I'd seen somewhere before.
"Found you."
You son of a bitch.
As if possessed, my body began to move on its own.
I went down hard once, lunging out too fast, but I only yanked the glass shards out of my arm in the roughest way and scooped up the baby.
Then I ran across the empty plain, straight toward the village.
Toward that village where pillars of flame cracked and roared to the beat of that idiotic KUOOOOR bellowing — I ran, skirt soaked through with blood.
The thick, acrid smoke began squeezing at my lungs, but there was no room in me to care.
"Haa······ Haaa······"
And then, at last, I stood before it.
Occupied with stomping houses flat and blasting them with fire, the thing let out a strange noise and turned its head toward me.
Yeah. I'm right here, you piece of shit.
Facing the face I hadn't been able to see back then, pinned under its claws, all the misery I'd bottled up came surging up at once.
Whatever. To hell with it.
Thrusting the baby I carried forward to show it, I let my fury erupt.
"HEY!!! You shit-for-brains lizard bastard!"
"Kuoor?"
"You see this? Huh? You see this thing?! It's YOURS! I popped this thing out because of YOU!"
"Krrrrraaaaah······"
"Don't you back away from me! You take responsibility! It's your spawn, so YOU take responsibility!"
"KRREEEEEHHH······!"
Apparently recognizing its father, the baby started wailing all over again at full volume, driving a spike straight through my eardrums.
And when I shoved the baby at it, the lizard — unable to hide its flustered panic — scrambled backward, tripped over a wall, and went down flat on its ass.
When I stalked closer still, trying to press the thing into its arms, it yanked out the wings it had kept tucked away, beat them furiously, and simply flew off into the sky.
"You goddamn coward······"
It ran.
It raped me, made me carry and bear its child — and now that the child was here, it turned out it couldn't be bothered to keep it.
I no longer had the strength to rage, nor the hollowness left in me to laugh.
Hugging the swaddled bundle to my chest, I trudged out of the village on wobbly legs — and at the village entrance stood a crowd of people, their faces smeared with soot.
Scattered among them, just as many corpses lay sprawled on the ground, burnt down to black lumps of charcoal.
The people lined up on either side were staring at me in silence — or perhaps, at this hateful lizard spawn in my arms.
"The vicious Black Dragon has fled?"
"It was the Saintess! She called upon the power of God! It must be!"
"Then can't you put out the fires too?!"
"Right! She's right!"
Those stares terrified me.
Those eyes, starving for salvation — from people I could scarcely believe were the same ones who'd been hurling unspeakable curses and throwing rocks at me not ten minutes ago.
That was far, far more repulsive than the monster in my arms.
"S-Saintess! Please, put out the fire at our house! A whole year's worth of stored food is about to burn to nothing!"
"Ours too! Please, our house too!"
"What are you people doing, just asking with words?! Saintess! I'll pay you whatever you want — anything! So please, put out the fire!"
It made me sick to my stomach, plain and simple.
I could no longer see these things as people, and I had no interest in exchanging a word with any of them.
I drew the swaddling cloth back just a little, revealing the monster with the hateful horns set into its temples.
At once, the faces of those who had been smiling their hypocritical smiles and rubbing their palms together as if I were salvation itself went stiff in a heartbeat.
"S-Saintess······"
"······"
Among them was the priest too, his face swollen and a battered mess. He reached a hand out toward me — then stole a glance inside the swaddling cloth, pulled his hand back, and retreated a step.
Even after I passed him by, no hand reached out to stop me.
A snort escaped me all on its own.
So there wasn't a single soul here worth trusting. Not one.
I walked straight past them all, out onto the empty main road.
Walking toward the direction where dawn was slowly beginning to break.
Nothing mattered anymore.
I decided I wouldn't care if I collapsed from exhaustion mid-stride, or got ambushed by some beast and died on the spot.
All I wanted was to put this repulsive village behind me, one hour sooner if I could.
"Eee."
Then a squirming sensation in my arms began to grate on me, and I yanked the swaddling cloth sharply up.
In a situation where I couldn't even be sure of reaching the next village alive on my own, did I have any reason to carry this dead weight along?
Wouldn't it be better — for me, and for this tiny life — if it just died here?
The hand gripping the cloth tightened, and my arm began to tremble.
In the very instant I was about to hurl it to the ground — that tiny little hand reached up and gently closed around my thumb.
As if begging me, please, don't throw me away.
"Ha······!"
What was I just about to do?
An innocent, blameless life, with my own hands······
I burst into tears, and pulled the bundle back into my arms.
Just because the world was a pile of shit didn't mean I had to become a pile of shit too.
And so, cradling this little bundle of grudges as it gummed and suckled on my thumb, I simply walked on — and on — with nowhere at all to go.