NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 15
The hand gripping the hem of the skirt trembled uncontrollably.
The blood flowing down my legs instantly felt cold.
With the sound of drops of blood falling and forming a pool, I completely froze.
Suddenly, my head spun, and I felt dizzy.
I needed to do something, but feeling all eyes around me focused on me made my vision dim.
All the strength drained from my body, replaced instead by a profound helplessness.
“Ah… ah…”
Even in this situation, my lower abdomen kept churning, and I felt a large amount of blood flow out of me again, accompanied by a peculiar and unpleasant throbbing sensation.
This is no good. I’m done for.
Maybe I completely fell into a panic the moment I saw the blood.
“Julia!”
In my narrowed and darkened field of vision, only Irina, rushing towards me with a worried expression, came into view.
Oh, where is Tia?
The innkeeper is holding her well.
Lucky.
“I’m… I’m so dizzy…”
“Lean on me. I’ll support you.”
“Umm…”
I tossed aside my heels.
It seemed like I stepped into the blood puddle, as my soles felt damp.
Breathing heavily, I took slow steps forward with Irina’s support.
I didn’t even have the luxury to check what was ahead.
I just relied entirely on Irina.
“Ha. Hah. Hah…”
“Are you feeling any better?”
“Ah, yeah…”
When I arrived in the waiting room, it became much easier to breathe.
My vision returned to normal.
With fewer gazes on me, I felt a lot better.
Yet, the tingling in my pelvis and dizziness remained.
“Did you not prepare for today? Why are you so flustered?”
“Preparation?”
“Sanitary pads. You probably didn’t expect it to be today.”
“Sanitary…”
A shock hit me, as if I had been struck on the head.
I looked down again at my skirt and legs that were stained red.
Menstruation. The physiological process that occurs in women to maintain a healthy and clean uterus every month.
Why didn’t I anticipate this sooner?
If you asked me how I could not think of something so obvious, I would be at a loss for words.
I simply couldn’t think at all.
Could it be because I experienced childbirth before menstruation?
I had been living as if I completely forgot about menstruation.
What a foolish child.
“Don’t tell me. This isn’t your first time, right?”
“……”
I couldn’t bring myself to reply.
I didn’t know how to answer…
Irina’s eyes widened.
“Ah. No way. How old are you?!”
“I don’t even know.”
“You look young, but… Seriously. What on earth was the Master thinking bringing someone like you here?”
“……”
Irina quickly brought a towel soaked in water, kneeling down to wipe my legs.
As the towel swiftly brushed across my soles, goosebumps spread all over my body.
The clotted blood rubbed off and soaked into the towel.
Even at this distance, the smell of blood was quite strong, yet Irina diligently wiped all the way inside without any complaints.
As Irina quietly finished wiping the insides of my thighs, her gaze turned to my face.
“Take off your panties.”
“Umm…”
“Do you have new ones? No? Then for now, use mine.”
“Umm…”
“You don’t know how to use a sanitary pad, do you?”
“I don’t.”
“Ugh.”
As I shook my head in response, Irina let out a heavy sigh filled with frustration.
I decided to be honest in front of Irina.
There’s no one else to rely on, after all.
“Here. This is a sanitary pad.”
“Reusable?”
“No, it’s disposable.”
“……?”
I felt my mind go blank.
The sanitary pad Irina showed me looked no different from a modern one.
There are disposable sanitary pads, but no diapers?
Aren’t both made from similar materials?
If they have the technology to make disposable sanitary pads, surely they could make diapers…
It was a moment of realization about just how absurd this world was.
“Do you not like sanitary pads? Would you rather use a tampon? Or a menstrual cup? Both are a bit more complicated than sanitary pads…”
“Do we have any of those right now?”
“No. I need to go buy some.”
“Then I’ll use the one we have now. A sanitary pad, yes.”
“Don’t sniffle. What’s got you so upset?”
“I’m not upset…”
“Aw, did you get scared? Were you surprised to see blood?”
“……”
I guess she noticed that I had regained some composure, as she immediately began teasing me.
What a troublesome girl.
Yet, thanks to that, my tears had dried up.
“Watch closely. Stick this adhesive side to your panties. This one is large, right? You’ll need a large one since your flow is heavy. So, stick the wider side towards your backside… Then fold the wings out to the sides. There, it’s all done, Yuli!”
“Seriously, stop teasing me…”
“Alright, I’m sorry. But we really need to have a serious talk with the Master sometime. No matter how I think about it, is it really right for someone just starting their first period to be working here…?”
“……”
I kept my mouth tightly shut.
I might not actually be that young, but for now, I decided to let her misunderstand.
After all, this would probably be more advantageous for me, given my lack of knowledge about the female body.
It wasn’t my concern if the innkeeper found himself in a bind for hiring a girl who hadn’t even started her first period.
“What about Tia? I want to see Tia.”
“Don’t worry. I left her with the Master.”
“Does that guy know how to take care of a kid?”
“The Master has two sons and three daughters.”
“……”
In that case, I felt relieved.
I received the panties with the sanitary pad attached and slowly pulled them up.
Maybe it was because they were Irina’s, but they felt a bit snug, though not enough to be uncomfortable.
A slight chill made me shiver all over.
Just as I was about to stand up, I felt a pain in my waist that forced me back down.
“Aah…”
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“I don’t know. Everything below my waist is just a mess. My joints feel tingly, my bones seem to be aching, and my stomach feels like it’s being stabbed…”
“Looks like your cramps are pretty serious. Take it easy today. You could even go home.”
“Is that really okay?”
“Of course. Sometimes, some girls just don’t show up without a word. If it’s too painful in the morning, they just don’t come in. Besides, on days when they’re menstruating, they can’t work after hours.”
“Ah…”
I wondered why I sometimes saw people mysteriously absent from the roster and why it seemed like the work schedule was quite flexible here.
So it was because of menstruation.
A mystery was resolved, and I felt a bit relieved.
“I don’t have the strength to go home… I want to rest upstairs.”
“Do that. Take a nap. Do you think Tia will be alright without me?”
“No. I want to sleep with Tia.”
I grabbed my pelvis and painfully lifted my body.
I had no idea the menstrual cramps would be this severe.
Yet, I had to endure this once a month…
No, because of the Holy Maiden’s recovery abilities, my cycle might be different from ordinary people.
It’s possible my cycle is shorter than a month.
Just thinking about it made a sigh escape from me.
I truly hated this.
“Inkeeper, bring Tia to me.”
“Okay. I will.”
As I exited the waiting room, I grabbed Tia first.
It seemed the innkeeper had legitimately raised five children, as Tia was already peacefully sleeping in his arms.
The cold silence that had settled in the bar dissipated, and everyone was lively, laughing, and chatting while raising their glasses.
I occasionally felt fleeting glances directed at me, but that was about it.
When I glanced out the corridor where I had just been in a panic, the blood puddle and footprints had all been wiped away.
“Sasha cleaned the floor!”
A cute girl, small in stature with a long horn sprouting from her forehead, cleared her throat.
She was one of the half-human unicorns, if I remembered correctly.
I recalled that she had been forcibly removed from the secondary roster after killing a customer while attempting oral services.
“Thank you, everyone…”
I briefly expressed my gratitude and hurriedly fled upstairs.
I couldn’t bear to face anyone else.
‘Please don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up.’
I carefully laid Tia on the bed and then lay down next to her.
My whole body ached as if it had been torn to shreds.
Moreover, I felt a lump in my throat that made me want to cry, so I had to hurry to escape.
“I… really have become a woman…”
Eventually, uncontrollable tears flowed down my cheeks.
I thought I had fully accepted that I had become a woman.
I thought I understood and was reconciled to it.
But that was all an illusion.
The day I truly became a woman was today.
I held Tia tightly and sobbed until I fell asleep.
.
.
.
“It’s strange. If my memory serves me right, the Demon War should have ended over fifty years ago. So why does it look like a village trampled by the Demon King is laid out before my eyes?”
A vast prairie stretched out across a wilderness.
Right in the middle, there was a village site left in ashes, reduced to nothing but blackened ruins.
A priest, dressed in ceremonial robes, clicked her tongue as she gazed at it.
“Apparently, the Black Dragon rampaged through here.”
“A dragon? In a human village? What on earth could have prompted that?”
“Even the surviving residents have no idea.”
A wise and gentle dragon would attack a human village and leave it in such ruins.
Those villagers must have committed a tremendous sin without even realizing it.
Perhaps they provoked the dragon by persecuting its mate.
‘That can’t be right.’
Of course, it was an outrageous thought.
The priest chuckled in disbelief, even as she contemplated it.
“The Holy Maiden survived the fire and left the village. But where she went after that remains unknown.”
“Do the surviving residents know what the Holy Maiden looks like?”
“Prior investigations showed that they couldn’t even accurately recall her hair color. It seems she lived in a distant house away from people’s sights, only showing herself during the dark of the night. The village chief who recognized her face died in the fire, and I wondered about the apprentice priest in the village, but we couldn’t track them down.”
“Ugh.”
The priest groaned, pressing her temple.
A divine revelation had been granted.
It was the first revelation since the God bestowed a hero over fifty years ago.
The contents were as follows.
– The firstborn of the Holy Maiden will eventually become the seed of disaster.
In this world, there was only one person known as the Holy Maiden.
The Church was in a state of emergency, urgently searching for that woman.
However, there was one problem.
The church did not know the Holy Maiden’s face or the name she currently went by.
Since the Holy Maiden severed her ties with the Church, no one who had been involved with the Church had met with her, and most people who knew what she looked like were either dead or on the verge of death.
Unless she herself willingly revealed her name as the Holy Maiden, searching for her was practically impossible.
“Call for the former hero. I have a task for him.”
“Yes, understood.”
Thus, there was no other choice.
To find someone who knew the Holy Maiden’s face.
The only option was to hire a former hero.