15.My first…

Editing/Standardisation: Medicine Melancholy
Original Translation: Medicine Melancholy

Iris/Yanagi
I was totally caught off guard. I had no idea that such a powerful enemy
could be lurking in what I thought was a safe place.
“Hah… Hah… Guh…?!”
In the sound of my rough breathing, my voice, almost like a moan,
leaked from between my clenched teeth.
The rumbling inside my stomach tormented me over and over, and
chills crawled up and down my spine.
Even if I tried to bear the pain, the small organ deep inside my belly had
been filled to its limits, and it was urging me to release its contents
outside.
There was no doubt that the slightest stimulus could cause the (already
fragile) dam to break. If “that thing” in my stomach was released in
such a potentially public place, my dignity would be shattered into a
thousand pieces, and the humiliation that came afterward might
immediately drive me past the point of no return.
I didn’t tell those two anything about this.
This was the only thing I was not willing to ask for cooperation for, and I
had come out here to run away from them, avoiding their eyes.
A solution already existed. If I went through the door that was in front
of me now, I could deal with the thing in my stomach without being
seen. There wasn’t actually any problem with me doing that.
But, passing through that door was also a declaration of defeat, and an
abandonment of my pride.
And so the cycle of seeking help in front of the door then rejecting that
idea went on for a quarter of a minute.
“Ugh… nngh!”
The repeated torture had already shaken my legs so much that I could
hardly stand up.
Even if I tried to close my crotch to at least hold the exit, the legs of this
body were fatally lacking in thickness, always leaving a gap and couldn’t
suppress my raging belly in the slightest.
It became obvious that the pressure that had been torturing my body
for a while now, prying it open from the inside, was getting unbearable,
and the oily sweat pouring from my entire body had made a smear on
the floor. It’s only a matter of time before everything broke down, as I
heard the devil’s whisper in my ears.
Stop resisting. Give in to your comfort.
I knew that. This was a game that I couldn’t win from the beginning
anyway, and no matter how much I refused to accept it, my body was
no way able to keep up with it. In the end, I would have to give in and
let out the thing stored in my body.
Still, I didn’t want to accept that…
I had to enter the female toilet.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah………”
“Calm down, man. You shouldn’t make such a noise in that
appearance.”
I returned to my room, ran straight to my bed, and continued to moan
like a vengeful spirit from Hell with my face buried in the pillow, when
Reiji’s concerned… or disgusted voice called out to me.
“Hmph, Reiji would never understand my predicament anyway…”
“Yeah… Right now, from the bottom of my heart, I’m glad that I’ve
sticked with this male avatar.”
In case you’re wondering, as a result of slamming my pride into the
trash, I made it just in time. The knowledge my sister lectured me
about, which I once derided “Do I need something I’ll never get a
chance to put into practice?!”, had saved me from making a fatal
mistake.
Girl picking flowers was scary. The direction indicator was great. The
exhilarating feeling of draining that which was stored up to the limit
made me cry out a little funny.
In doing so, I saw “that spot” whether I wanted it or not, and even
touched it. That’s not to say I’d never seen it before. It was when my
sister was still a little girl. This “Iris” was also a beautiful girl in her midteen,
despite her youthful look… It was smooth. It hadn’t grown up yet.
I saw it, bare as a sheet. And I was sure it was just my imagination that I
felt a strange sensation when I touched that area when I wiped it off.
When I was changing clothes, perhaps?
I closed my eyes tightly.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?!”
My shame broke through the limit when I remembered it, and I got up
in the so-called girl sitting pose, grabbed the pillow and slammed it on
the bed with force over and over again.
“I said calm down, okay? You’re gonna injure yourself, okay? I mean,
stop raising so much dust!”
Injure… Injure?!
I was reminded of how I was when I suffered that injury.
The possibility of this flashed through my mind, and I snapped out of
the act of slamming the pillow down.
I turned and stared at Reiji. Blood rushed to my head, heating it. Tears
slowly formed at the edges of my eyes. Considering this possibility, I
couldn’t look up, so my face naturally dropped down and I looked at
Reiji with only my eyes. As soon as I did so, Reiji’s eyes wandered
suspiciously, but that was beside the point. I didn’t know what I would
do if I were affirmed, but on the other hand, I couldn’t leave my doubts
once they had arisen any longer. I fearfully voiced the question.
“…………You saw it?”
Three words. The question came out of my mouth after a long struggle,
and a moment later, Reiji’s face was turned away with a force that
made his neck twist. I see. Ye Guilty.
“Uh… you know… it’s irresistible.”
“Uwaaaaaaaah?!”
I repeatedly hit Reiji’s head with the pillow. I could no longer control my
emotions. I was too embarrassed to stop what I was doing.
“It hurts… not, but stop it already!”
“H-H-How else am I supposed to react?! Just blow away that damn
memoryyyyy!”
“Be reasonable, dammit! For the most part, I’ve seen you naked too
many times! Do you know how many times I’ve bathed you?!”
My hands stopped moving.
Come to think of it, he was right. I’d bathed so many times over there,
mainly with his assistance. I wondered what I was troubled by. It must
have been a temporary confusion. It was like a girl to be embarrassed
to be seen naked by a man.
“No, I didn’t mean it, but…”
I could hear some exasperated voices, but they did not reach my ears,
which had been refreshed by the resolution of my problems.
“What are you two flirting about?”
““We aren’t flirting!””
Before we knew it, Saul had returned from shopping, and we both did
our best to deny his accusations.
…We didn’t flirt, right?
Later, Reiji would come to regret his decision to use this method of
deception, but that’s another story.
“So… What do we do now?”
Saul sorted out the items he had bought and put them in their
respective magic bags… I nearly blacked out when I saw him handing
me a paper bag neatly filled with a large number of small, colorful
pieces of fabric…
Let’s just cut to the serious matter.
“In my opinion, I think we should use this place as a base and get used
to this world a little more.”
This was the one thing we could not compromise for our future safety. I
knew from experience that it was scary to travel before having
completed a thorough investigation of what I could and couldn’t do,
because I never know what might happen. In this world, it never hurt to
be cautious.
“I’m with you. Physical strength aside… we’re probably weaker than
people of this world.”
I could sort of understand what Reiji said. For example, when I blinded
that bandit, he immediately recovered and attacked me. On the other
hand, I was cowering and unable to resist anything after being punched
a little.
It’s the tolerance to pain that counts.
For those of us who once lived in a peaceful world, we were helplessly
inferior to the people of this world. Even if we were superior in ability,
we couldn’t stand up if our hearts were broken by pain. In the game,
we could do anything we wanted as long as our HP did not drop to zero,
but here we couldn’t do such a reckless thing. We had to rethink the
concept of “combat” in this world, which was different from that of the
game, from the very beginning. Otherwise, we might inadvertently step
over the line of death if we kept our habits from the game.
“…I thought you’d say that, so I talked to the mayor and asked him to
put together a list of the various problems this town was having,
starting with the simplest ones, so that we could get them as requests.
They’re also enthusiastic to take care of the rough stuff we can’t do
ourselves, and we can save some travel money. Of course, I’ve already
checked to make sure the terms are acceptable.”
With that, Saul pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. Reiji took it,
and I looked at it from the side.
“Since when did you… Nevermind, I think it’s going to be helpful. For
the time being, we need to take care of the children who had been
captured.”
Reiji, who had been flipping through the list of requests, stared at a
point and muttered. Some of the children who had been captured were
badly injured. I knew how they felt now, and I wanted to heal them as
soon as possible.
“I’m probably feeling better now… I’m a little scared to go outside, but
I’ll do my best.”
“Alright, we’ll start visiting them tomorrow and see if you can get them
some treatment.”
“Mmm, leave it to me.”
“Now that we’ve got our plan out of the way, I have to tell you both
something.”
“Hmm?”
“Eh?”
After a round of discussion about our future plans, Reiji suddenly cut in
with a more serious face than ever before.
“It’s about your tone. If it’s really just us, it’ll be fine, but I want you
both to be as thorough as possible in your language to match your
current appearance. People from this world aside, if there’re other
players out there beside us and they know what’s going on, it could
become tricky.”
In other words… our original gender, namely me being a man and Saul
being a woman, should not be discovered. It was true that I was wellknown
as a “Princess”, but if people found out that I was actually a man
inside…
“You mean they’d accuse us of cheating them?”
Saul replies in a “What the heck is that?” kind of way, but Reiji shook
his head in denial with a bitter expression on his face.
“That’s one thing, but then I’d have to say you’re still underestimating
what a man’s desires are. I don’t want anyone to find out that ‘Iris’ is a
man inside. While some guys may hit on girls from time to time, they
rarely step over a certain line if ‘the girl is a real girl’. Try ‘the girl is
actually a man’. That line goes way down. It’s an unwritten rule. Even
more so if ‘Iris’ is now fully a girl and no longer protected by the
system.”
During the time of the game, anyone attempting to make sexual
contact with the opposite sex was penalized quite severely, and that
rule was strictly enforced. So despite the game being R-15 to begin
with, one couldn’t run around in underwear in a public place.
“For example, if someone tells a girl to ‘show her breasts’, they’re
definitely a pervert… Well, I can’t say for sure they exist, but those
idiots are few and far between. But try saying ‘I’m actually a man’ with
this guy’s look. There will surely be idiots who will say ‘Former male’s
fine, because you know how I feel’. Even if you refuse, selfish
complaints will build up. If you ever let them have their way, things will
only get worse from there.”
“You’re right… Besides, who knows what kind of idiots will come up
with the ‘pay me with your body to apologize for cheating you’
excuse?”
“Anyway, never get found out. At all costs.”
The conversation that proceeded so quickly between the two of them
was making me pale. When I was still a man, my sexual function was
questionable at best, and I had rather low libido, so I wasn’t the person
to ask, but is that what “men” are really like?
“Long story short, ‘Iris’, always use a female tone when going outside.
You should be conscious of that from now on before you get into
trouble. If only you could fix your tone of voice, not many people would
be able to identify you as a man by your gestures. You two, Saul, from
now on you must act like a man. Even if you are found out to be a
woman, even an idiot can easily figure out where you got the man’s
account from.”
“…Understood. Then this is how I’m going to go from here.”
Saul immediately switched to a man’s tone. Too quick.
“How about you, ‘Iris’?”
“Ah, okay, I’ll do it… uh…”
I got it totally wrong. He said I had to live as “Iris” from now on. In the
back of my brain, I turned on the “cross”-play mode I used during the
game. I sit on the bed with my legs dangling at the sides, straightened
my back, put my hands on my lap, tilted my head, and smile gently…
“…I understand. Then I, too, will do this, if that’s all right, Reiji-san, Saulniisama?”
Why did both of them look away from me?
“…Dammit, Saul, what the hell were you thinking when you designed
such a weapon of mass destruction?”
“…I’m really sorry, I never expected her to become this devastating
when she became real like this.”
As the two of them were talking secretly to each other, I had a question
mark over my head.