Chapter 22
1.
The slightly awkward atmosphere settled heavily around us.
I sat leaning against the headboard, covering myself with the blanket, while Dojin sat beside me, also leaning against the headboard with a bathrobe hastily thrown on.
"Are you done crying?"
"Yes... Thank you."
I could tell Dojin was curious. Since I’d started crying on my own earlier, I felt I should tell him first.
"Actually, I can't get pregnant."
"What?"
"Because of a contract..."
"What kind of contract?"
"I... can't tell you the details..."
Let's make a new contract! You wrote that it could be changed with the consent of the 'Party B'!
I even let myself be feminized, just the way you wanted!
For a woman, being unable to get pregnant is a fatal flaw.
We were still so young, barely adults, so maybe it wasn't a major drawback yet.
But once we got a little older, it would definitely become a huge, serious flaw.
Pregnancy is part of the process of reproduction, but... it's the result of the reproductive instinct all living things possess.
Some people say it's fine not to have children, but it's hard to say they feel no emptiness at all.
When I was a man, I thought I didn't need to get pregnant or anything like that.
Even if I met someone I loved and we ended up together, I thought it would be better for the two of us to live happily together without having children.
That was the direction the times were moving in, and the direction society was moving in, too.
But now that I was a woman, it was hard to think that way.
A child was the fruit of love, and this body that couldn't have one felt like a hopelessly defective product.
Especially now, when I was sharing a bed with the man I loved.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."
That's why I felt sorry toward Dojin.
Hiding that from him and loving him felt like I'd committed some terrible wrong.
The tears I'd just managed to hold back welled up again.
"Don't cry."
Dojin wiped away the tears welling in my eyes with his hand.
He rarely showed such tenderness, but right now even that tenderness felt like something I didn't deserve, and it hurt all the more.
I turned my head slightly, trying to avoid his touch.
"Stay still."
But Dojin wouldn't let me. He gently cradled my head with his left hand and wiped away my tears with his right.
I'd just confessed that I was defective, but Dojin's response had somehow grown even gentler than before.
"You don't have to have children. I just... I just didn't want to lose you."
For thousands of years, pregnancy had been one way for men to claim ownership over women.
Dojin confessed that he'd tried to use that method, admitting to his own mistake.
It was perverted, and the worst possible method from a woman's perspective, but...
I was even sadder thinking about how I couldn't get pregnant, no matter how much I wanted to.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
All I could do was keep apologizing in his arms, unable to accept his forgiveness even when he did.
That was the only thing I could do.
2.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Dojin could only watch Lapis, who kept apologizing in his arms.
He wanted to say something, but it was obvious that Lapis wasn't in a state to communicate normally right now.
She was clearly overwhelmed by self-hatred.
"Please don't leave me... I can't live without you... If you leave me behind..."
Dojin was Lapis's emotional anchor. Because she had him, she could live in another world without suffering overwhelming stress or pressure.
Ruby and Peridot were comrades who shared the same burden, not people she could lean on for support.
"Don't leave me..."
As if broken, Lapis kept murmuring the same plea in Dojin's arms: not to leave her.
Dojin started to say something, but ended up simply patting her.
He knew she was in such a fragile state that she couldn't properly take in or accept anything he said.
"Don't leave me..."
Her voice gradually faded.
Unable to withstand the mental strain, Lapis collapsed in Dojin's arms as if she'd fainted. Fainting might have been the right word for it.
He carefully laid her down and pulled the blanket up to her neck.
Still wearing his bathrobe, Dojin dropped into a chair on the outdoor terrace.
"Phew..."
He took a moment to gather his thoughts.
Lapis had gained something by making a contract with something.
He didn't know what she'd gained, but since she'd called it a contract, there must have been an exchange.
Lapis had some sort of restriction imposed by that contract.
One of them was probably that she couldn't get pregnant.
The best outcome would be to break the contract. He could take care of anything Lapis wanted himself.
Whatever she'd gained through the contract, Dojin thought he could provide it in its place.
"Her life...?"
The thought occurred to him out of nowhere.
In this world, countless people fell victim to monsters and villains. On top of that, they didn't even have modern means of identifying people, like resident registration.
If Lapis had made that contract just before a monster or villain killed her...
Breaking the contract might not be the answer. Even Dojin couldn't do anything about her life.
He wanted to hear all the details. He wanted to be there for her.
Dojin didn't smoke, but he suddenly felt like he wanted a cigarette.
"Damn it."
He felt like cursing, but he couldn't even curse properly when he didn't know who the other party to the contract was.
Dojin tossed aside the frustration that had built up inside him and tried to figure out how to treat Lapis.
But there was only one clear answer.
He shouldn't treat her any better, nor any worse.
He just had to show her that something like that didn't matter at all when it came to loving her.
It was hard. He remembered her sobbing as she apologized.
Seeing her like that and not being able to comfort her more was close to torture. Knowing the woman he loved was suffering and still not being able to do more for her...
But he thought that was probably what she needed.
Lapis lacked self-esteem. She rarely talked about her own accomplishments and was always singing Dojin's praises.
People with low self-esteem tended to become more dependent on others, and in Lapis's case, that person was Dojin.
Sometimes, when Lapis was away, the women who approached Dojin were all beautiful, too.
But objectively speaking, more people would probably say Lapis was prettier. After all, beauty was a matter of taste.
But Lapis couldn't connect her looks to her self-esteem. She had to be thinking, 'I guess I'm pretty enough to stand beside Dojin.'
Even though, on her own, she was beautiful enough to be called a goddess on the street.
When someone with low self-esteem puts themselves down like that, telling them to be confident doesn't really reach them.
Simply acting the same as usual was the most important thing.
Acting as if it all meant very little.
"This is hard..."
Dojin sighed.
The fact that there was nothing he could do for Lapis suddenly hit him hard.
Ever since awakening his ability, he hadn't found anything difficult.
The human heart was so complicated, and understanding the person he loved was so difficult.
"I shouldn't have brought up pregnancy."
He felt like berating himself, even hurting himself, but held back.
If Lapis saw any sign of it, she'd only fall apart more.
3.
"This is how."
At Dojin's gesture, the sea before us split 'in half'.
So this was the parting of the Red Sea.
"That's incredible magic. As expected..."
"No, watch how I do it."
With a rushing sound, the seawater surged back into the split, filling it until the ground was hidden again.
"I'll do it slowly this time. Watch closely."
I nodded and activated my mana sight.
I could see the mana enveloping Dojin's body, as well as the mana extending from his hand.
"Pseudo-Heaven Split."
In that instant, a gigantic blade struck the sea. No—it cleaved through it. The blade was so enormous it stretched from the ground beneath us all the way up through the clouds.
I could see mana that looked like an enormous giant bringing down an enormous sword.
I could even see the structure of the mana. The front was honed sharp to cut through something, while the back pushed it forward so it could 'cut' through it.
It was as if it didn't need to be sturdy just because it was made of mana. It was like strapping a jet engine to a sword.
SHWAAASH!
The seawater surged more than ten meters into the air, exposing the ocean floor.
"Can you do it?"
"It's a composite structure. I think I can copy it."
I committed the mana structure Dojin had shown me to memory. It felt like a strike from a god.
The 'image' was the most important thing when using an ability.
In that case, I needed to give this technique a different name.
Because what I'd seen wasn't really 'Heaven-Splitting'.
"Sea-Splitting!"
What I'd seen was a strike that split the sea.
Water gathered to form a blade. The blades I'd made before only had an 'edge', so they were slow.
Using a composite structure, I added a section to the blade that would give it acceleration.
Then I added another 'support beam' so it could travel in a fixed direction.
Before long, the water formed into a huge blade and split the sea apart.
The seawater surged five meters into the air, exposing the ocean floor.
"Ah..."
So this was how you used an ability.
I'd thought that reaching A-rank meant I'd learned how to use my ability properly, but there was an even better way to use it.
"Well done."
Dojin said, clapping.
"I know it's still rough. It was even slower than when you deliberately slowed it down."
"It's your first time. That's understandable. 'Composite structures' are especially complicated."
Only people with mana sight could properly understand something like that.
That mana could take on a complex structure and activate in a much more powerful form.
It was hard to realize without seeing it directly.
I was quite happy that Dojin and I both had mana sight.
Having something in common with him made me happy.
Of course, there were differences in skill and performance, but either way, we were both seeing mana with mana sight, weren't we?
"Thank you for teaching me."
"Should I say I taught you something I learned on my own? I only showed you once."
"No. If you hadn't shown it to me slowly, I wouldn't have figured it out."
If Dojin hadn't said he'd try doing it slowly and shown me the process of building the structure piece by piece, I wouldn't have understood even if I saw it.
Even that process had taken only a little over a second.
"So don't go around getting beaten up."
"...I won't lose to that bitch anymore."
"That's only the second time I've heard you talk about someone like that, Lapis."
Come to think of it, Dojin had rescued me when that flashy playboy hit on me and led me into an alley.
He'd been cool even then. He's my boyfriend, but I have to admit it.
"She and I are just incompatible by nature."
"Incompatible?"
"It's like dealing with an idiot who acts like she knows everything and like I should just follow her."
And above all,
"She looks down on me."
"She shouldn't be looking down on you."
I'm Dojin's girlfriend, so I can't let anyone look down on me.
Because that would be an insult to Dojin standing beside me.