Chapter 24
For some reason Vita felt strange from the moment he woke that morning.
No strength in his body, a sort of sloshing, queasy feeling.
‘…Why am I so weak.’
The first thing he registered on opening his eyes was a damp discomfort down below.
Lying there blankly, Vita understood instinctively.
‘Don't tell me, this is…’
That thing he'd only ever heard about? His body had been somewhat off for the last few days, now that he thought about it.
[Vita, listen carefully. You're a girl now too, so it's something you're going to go through. Mom will tell you in advance, so…]
It was a problem his thoughtful mother had worried about even without being asked.
Vita was left dazed and lost for words.
Well, but.
Thinking about it properly, it wasn't a strange thing at all.
A whole month had passed since he became a woman. A period is something most women go through.
Vita let out a deep sigh and got his stiff body upright first.
A faintly metallic smell rose off the blanket and made his face scrunch up.
“…I'll have to wash that later.”
Folding the blanket for now, Vita moved to the bathroom. His stomach wasn't good, but he could move well enough.
Deeply embarrassing, and full of an unpleasant feeling.
‘Ah… this is gross.’
He remembered the advice he'd been given by his mother.
[Make sure you wash. You have to keep clean.]
So Vita poured lukewarm water over himself in the bathroom.
Slowly raising the temperature, he washed his whole body down in water that was comfortably warm.
“Hooah-”
That felt a little better.
‘I suppose I have to go to the academy…’
It wasn't a holiday, after all. Bad condition or not, he had to go.
Vita finished his shower and dawdled about for a good while before getting his underwear on.
Plain cotton, easy to wear. It had a character print on it, but it was the most comfortable, all right?
Whrrrr-
He dried his hair roughly, shaking it out.
And once he'd barely managed to get his uniform on, all that was left was to walk out of the room.
But Vita set down the bag he'd picked up, for no reason he could name, and came back to the bed.
“Let's rest… just a little.”
Yes, just a moment.
Just resting a moment, then going.
His stomach was subtly bad.
No strength anywhere in his body, a drained sort of feeling.
His condition was definitely poor, so Vita decided to rest just a very little before going. There was still plenty of time.
Though, how to put it.
It wasn't only his body that had brought Vita back.
Right as he was about to head out.
A strange feeling had come over him at the sight of his own reflection in the mirror beside the entrance. He couldn't say exactly why.
‘…So this is me.’
By now not even a question followed it.
Long red-gold hair, small neat features set close together.
Because the pretty female student standing there was himself.
‘It was so awkward at first…’
Now he'd adapted, been forced to adapt.
And that self, living a woman's life without any real sense of wrongness, suddenly felt like somebody else entirely.
‘What am I, right now…?’
The question surfaced without warning.
My name is Vita Shamal, and originally I'm a man.
Now I'm called Bianca, and I live like a woman.
To put it more strictly-
Right now he was, how to say it.
Not a complete woman, and even less a man than that.
It struck him all at once that his original self had disappeared.
“……”
Was that why? A helplessness came over him out of nowhere. And his eyes felt oddly hot besides.
Vita couldn't understand it himself.
“Huh, what…?”
This whole situation suddenly felt bitter, and tear stains began to gather little by little in his eyes.
“Uh, huh?”
And since he genuinely couldn't tell why he was crying, Vita found the whole thing absurd.
What is this.
Because my body's off? Because my mood sank?
Strictly speaking it had only welled up a little, and calling it crying would be embarrassing, but still.
“Ah, seriously…”
At any rate Vita's mood had been swinging wildly since morning.
This isn't like me. The original Vita Shamal doesn't cry easily.
And then a certain guy's face surfaced.
Right, that guy! Carlisle Schultz.
The first thing that came with it was the feeling of wounded pride.
‘All I want is to beat him.’
Just once would do. All I want is to take that infuriating arrogance down a peg.
So why is it that I can't beat him a single time.
Getting greedy about beating him is how his body ended up changed, and he'd even lost the bed match he'd made in this body.
“…Nothing's going right.”
It was definitely a wound to his pride.
And in the middle of all that Vita found himself remembering, of all things.
Being held in that man's arms. That warmth.
His face, already flushed from his poor condition, went a deeper red still.
“I should just die!”
Yes, really. That's clearly the answer.
Self-loathing welled up so thickly that Vita went briefly dizzy with it.
“…Ah, my head.”
And lying there with his eyes shut against the dizziness, Vita fell asleep.
“Mmm… nya…”
With a peaceful, happy look on his face.
***
Vita had always been the sort to dream vividly.
His nature was guileless, and his imagination correspondingly rich.
As a child Vita had often dreamed of becoming a hero himself and beating down the villains.
Sadly this was not that kind of dream.
It was even, how to put it, a dream from an observer's point of view.
‘This is a dream, right…?’
Vita was thoroughly bewildered.
And no wonder, because the woman in front of his eyes was none other than himself! If there was one peculiarity, it was that she looked older than he was now.
Until a moment ago that woman, the Vita Shamal inside the dream, had been busily preparing dinner.
Wearing a pink apron, humming a little under her breath.
Laying the table carefully with a full dinner and then smiling a pretty smile.
“I hope he gets here soon…”
It was enough to leave even the watching Vita lost for words.
‘What is that…’
Does my smile look that pretty to other people?
The Vita Shamal in the dream, no, Bianca Shamal, felt impossibly lovely. At a glance she seemed an entirely separate person from him.
Ding-dong-
Just then.
Someone had come, it seemed.
Her expression brightened in an instant and the woman went pattering off. Bianca Shamal, that is.
‘Who on earth is it…?’
Vita wondered. To wear a face that happy.
“I'm home, Bianca.”
And once the door opened, Vita lost his words.
‘No, that's…’
Why Carlisle Schultz?!
But the self inside the dream was simply happy about it. With a smile, she ran and threw herself into his arms.
“Welcome home, honey—!”
H-honey?!
For a second Vita doubted his own two ears.
“Work ran a little late. Sorry, Bianca.”
Carlisle Schultz looked to have matured as well. A mid-twenties sort of feel.
But more than that, it was the very next exchange that took Vita's voice away.
“So what do you want first? Dinner? Or me…?”
No, hold on a moment there.
“I'll have to start with my pretty wife.”
“Ah, no… the food's going to go cold.”
They were doing a full roleplay.
‘She asked the question herself…?’
Vita found it absurd, his head gone blank.
And what was genuinely more serious was that those two lunatics had started!
“Nnh… ah!”
Um, excuse me?
The dinner really is going cold.
But the two of them were utterly absorbed in each other.
‘Wh-what are you doing!’
Watching it, Vita's face soon went red.
What on earth are they doing. Why go to all that trouble laying out dinner just to let it go cold. Aren't they complete perverts?
But looking at that other self, thoroughly dishevelled, and at the two of them lost in one another.
‘Nngh…’
Vita somehow felt an ache start low in his belly. His hand drifted downward without his meaning it to.
But right at that moment.
“C-Carlisle—!”
“Kh, Bianca…”
“It's fine, inside. Put all of it inside me!”
No, hold on a second?!
Vita's eyes went wide.
This isn't right, surely. What exactly do you think you're-
“I'll get you pregnant today.”
And that self of his, agreeing to nonsense like that.
“Yes, good…! I want to have Carlisle's child.”
“Our child. Both of ours.”
“Right, that too.”
Th-that crazy woman.
The color drained out of Vita's face.
As the pace climbed higher, his own heart grew more frantic along with it.
No, this is too much!
This really, really isn't it.
‘Even if it's only a dream, me having Carlisle's child…?’
And then he watched the two of them reach the peak, holding each other tight.
“N-no—!”
Vita very nearly shrieked, and woke from the dream.
Crash- bang-
“What's wrong, Bianca!”
The sight of his own room, and Carlisle's frantic face in front of his eyes, came only after that.
***
‘……?’
Vita's head felt as though it had stopped working.
“Wh-what. How are you in here…?!”
He tried to get up in a hurry and was stopped by the other party.
“Your body. Are you all right?”
A face worrying about him in complete seriousness. In complete seriousness, Vita wondered for a moment whether this was a dream too.
“Doesn't seem like you have a fever.”
A careful, gentle touch.
“Ngh…”
Vita was thrown by that touch.
“I asked what you're doing here.”
Perhaps because of the extremely odd dream a moment ago, the situation felt embarrassing, ticklish somehow.
But what mattered right now was how on earth Carlisle Schultz had gotten in.
Carlisle, for his part, reacted as though the question were absurd.
“You don't remember any of it?”
Remember? Remember what?
“You opened the door for me.”
Vita's expression went blank.
“I did…? When?”
“You really aren't well. Try checking your phone.”
At Carlisle's words, Vita checked his phone.
There were no missed messages. Wondering whether he'd checked them while barely conscious, he opened the ones marked read.
[My Queen, why aren't you coming in? Is today that day…? Homeroom's worried about you. I told them you'd been showing signs for a few days.]
That was from his deskmate, Shasha.
And Carlisle had certainly sent three of his own.
[Bianca, are you all right? You're not ill, are you?]
[Looks like your deskmate explained it well enough. Should I come over to your room?]
[Never mind, I'm coming.]
Entirely his own way about everything, as usual.
Then again, Carlisle had helped him move in once before, so it was hardly strange that he knew Vita's address.
And then Vita remembered. A faint memory from the edge of sleep.
‘…Ah, that's right.’
He had opened it.
[Open up, Bianca!]
[…Wh-who is it.]
[It's me. Carlisle.]
His head had been almost completely blank.
Someone had kept knocking noisily, so he'd opened it while still half asleep, was the feeling of it.
But since he'd opened it knowing it was Carlisle, that wasn't carelessness, surely.
“Remembered now?”
Vita accepted that soon enough.
“…Uh, yeah.”
And in one corner of his heart, he was faintly puzzled about why he had opened the door so readily for Carlisle Schultz.
The slightly odd feeling he had about himself came from that: enough to open the door even half unconscious.
Did he, then, trust Carlisle Schultz that much?
“Anyway, why not rest a bit more?”
He was lying on the bed.
And Carlisle Schultz was sitting right beside him.
And there was a towel in view.
No wonder his forehead had felt hot and damp.
‘Don't tell me this guy…?’
Was this nursing, of a sort?
Stroking Vita's head and laying him back down on the bed.
Carlisle set a fresh towel over his forehead.
Dropping it on carelessly like that was hardly attentive, but his expression was unexpectedly serious, which made the whole thing funny.
Somehow, though, the laugh wouldn't come out of Vita.
“Sniff- sniff-”
Instead he caught a strange smell.
“What is this smell…?”
“Ah, hold on.”
As though he'd remembered something he'd forgotten, Carlisle vanished for a moment and came back carrying something in his hands.
A whitish porridge.
“You haven't eaten anything today, have you?”
That much was certainly true.
“Eat. Even if it's only this.”
So, then. Did you make this yourself?
At this latest instance of the man being unexpected, Vita's mood turned strange.
Even this morning his feelings had swung hard.
Oddly listless for no reason, and carrying a wronged sort of feeling too.
The truth of it, if he had to confess.
Having actually had his period, the situation of having become a woman felt like something he could never take back, as if the person he used to be had simply disappeared, and it had left him a little depressed.
And on top of that his body was bad, so he'd lain down to rest and fallen asleep.
‘Had a weird dream, too…’
And the one who had come looking for him after all that was none other than Carlisle Schultz.
A thoroughly unamusing expression on him and a clumsy sort of nursing, but at the same time, how to put it. It wasn't a bad feeling.
So when Vita's fingers fidgeted at that odd feeling.
Carlisle slowly moved his hand, as though he had resolved on something.