Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 4399 characters |
Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 2806 words |
Editor(s): Silva |
“My god.”
Because of Katalina’s continuous pressure, I logged out of Blue Sky and then felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. But what shocked me more was the patch of blood on my thin tracksuit pants.
“You really are a dummy aren’t you?”
Katalina scoldingly said to me as she opened up her capsule, talking as if what was happening was within her expectations.
“A… am I dying? There’s way too much blood1. I think my stomach’s going to be ripped apart.”
But for me, I had lost all sense of reasoning due to the immense amount of pain I was currently feeling for the first time in my life as well as seeing my pants becoming completely blood red.
“If people died from just that much, half the world would have died already you know? Stop fooling around and get out of the capsule already.”
“Okay…”
Though she was snappy, she stretched out her hand and helped me out of the capsule.
Standing up while holding her hand, I realized that it wasn’t only my pants but the capsule seat had become wet with blood as well.
“What should I do…?”
“What else? You have to clean it up real quick without letting anyone know. I hope to god that you didn’t think for a moment that you could just leave it for those maids to take care of it.”
Honestly, I did think that but I wasn’t willing to say it2.
“Of course not.”
“Yeah, you shouldn’t if you don’t want to see your prestigious house name fall into the ditch and roll around in the mud.”
Would my family name suffer that much just from that single mistake? That was what I wanted to ask, but considering that there were many gossipy upper-class ladies that loved to tear other people apart with harsh criticism and rumors, it didn’t seem like she was lying3.
“Does that mean I have to wash this myself?”
Coming out of my reverie, I asked Katalina as I pointed at the capsule seat.
“Who else would?”
Katalina looked at me with an annoyed glare as if to say ‘are you honestly asking that?’. I wondered why it would be a problem to just put it in a washer, but then taking a second look at it…
“Nnngh.”
Holding onto my hurting abdomen in an awkward position, I took off the seat cover of the capsule seat.
As my body didn’t have a considerable amount of muscle, I didn’t have enough strength to pull it off easily.
“Sigh.”
Seeing me this way, Katalina seemed to pity me and helped me after letting out a sigh.
She really should have helped me sooner.
But since I was definitely the one at fault right now, I was extremely thankful for her help.
Though it was difficult to take off the cover, the material was made out of cotton so it wasn’t that heavy. But seeing as how Katalina was nice enough to take it from my hand and bring it to the bathroom while I was in pain, I felt moved by her kindness.
“Stop standing there awkwardly and go wash up already!”
“Then what about the seat cover?”
“…If you’re not gonna wash it yourself, then I suggest you go shower already.”
Suddenly, Katalina seemed like an angel in front of my eyes.
“Then I’ll leave it to you.”
“Ugh, how did I end up like this?”
Stepping away from Katalina who was hand washing the seat cover, I held my abdomen that was cramping in pain and stepped into the shower booth. Since the clothes I wanted to change into were inside my bedroom and no one outside could notice anything in here, I took some underwear and clothes with me to change into afterwards.
Though my abdomen was in pain, a huge wave of embarrassment washed over me, as if I was a small child that had been caught wetting the bed. I felt like hiding under the bedsheets and wishing the whole world would end.
After finishing off a short shower, I changed into a new set of underwear and a tracksuit. The problem was taking care of the clothing that I was previously wearing.
There were thankfully fewer bloodstains on the seat cover, but it seemed impossible to return the pants and underwear to their original condition. Even if I successfully cleaned it through a washing machine, it would be hard to return it to its original color.
“That means I’ll have to either burn them or abandon them somewhere4.”
But to burn the thing was impossible. I knew that the security room and guard room both had functions to monitor for any occurrence of fire. The clothing pieces would have been burnt to ashes by the time they rang the alarm and charged into our room, but I was certain I would be scolded strongly by the butler afterwards.
Then the only possible thing to do was to abandon it. It was just me throwing away one pair of pants and underwear secretly.
The mansion was expansive, and there were empty places. I would pretend to go on a walk and just hide it away somewhere.
“Perfect.”
Finishing my thoughts off there as I tapped my fist into my palm, I was amazed at my perfect calculation. Now the only thing left to do was to tell Katalina my plan.
“Ugh, my back… my arms…”
It seemed like she had finished cleaning the seat cover while I was showering, seeing she sat in one corner of the bathroom rubbing her arms while the seat cover had been hung up to dry on the other side of the bathroom.
“Great work, Lina.”
“Of course I did. Be thankful I did all that for you.”
“Yeah. You cleaned it up real nicely. It seems cleaner than having washed through a washing machine!”
Though my compliment was exaggerated, I was still very thankful for her sacrifice.
“Hehe, right?”
Katalina’s expression that was seemingly filled with annoyance melted away like snow at summertime, and a bright smile came over her face again. I realized deeply once again just how effective a good compliment was.
“But I think I’ll have to hide these somewhere. I’m hoping you’d help me out with it, Katalina.”
“Hiding away what? Ah, clothes?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess it’s kind of impossible to just wash it off, huh.”
Though she looked as if she was annoyed again, she still nodded helplessly.
“I knew I could trust you, Katalina.”
“…”
It seemed like she liked hearing that, because though she still had an annoyed expression on her face, her cheeks glowed slightly. She really was cute, wasn’t she…
Shoving it inside the most non-transparent plastic bag we could find, I asked Sara to bring us two trowels.
“Oh my goodness, my lady. Why the sudden need for a trowel?”
“Ahh… well I was thinking of planting some flowers.”
Using that as an excuse, we borrowed some trowels from Sara. And just as we were about to leave the mansion through the doors, we noticed that guards were automatically following us.
“We’ll be planting flowers within the mansion grounds so please don’t follow us.”
“I’m afraid we cannot comply with that. However, we will create some distance to give you privacy.”
It was obvious from my experience living here, that if I were to start complaining, the butler would end up coming.
Though they would make the excuse that they were simply reporting to the higher-ups, it was already an open secret to everyone in the mansion that I was most troubled by the butler.
“Sigh, all right. But you must never come close to us.”
“Yes, Duchess.”
After agreeing for them to stay just a bit far away from us, we moved to one of the garden areas in the corner of the mansion grounds. When I glared at the guards who were still trying to follow us, they finally stopped and pretended to look elsewhere.
Then I gave a knowing glance to Katalina thinking there would be other people nearby who could notice us. She also stood up and kept an eye around to see if there was anyone.
She shook her head after a moment.
Since I understood what she meant by her head movements, I carefully started to shovel the smooth ground below the large tree.
I wondered why on earth I was doing this, but since Katalina was also digging by my side, it probably wasn’t something that was way too unbelievable.
The ground appeared to be very soft since it didn’t take long for us to dig a suitably deep hole. We looked down at it with a satisfied expression, and placed the plastic bag we brought with us into it. Then we started to cover it once again with earth.
“With this, we won’t have any more problems.”
“Yeah, so be careful from now on.”
Patting down the earth with her trowel, Katalina warned me sternly.
“All right. I’ll be careful.”
Though it was annoying that there was now one more thing I needed to keep in mind, I felt that I shouldn’t complain because of how much I had gained in return for being in this body.
“You put on the tampon, right?”
Though I didn’t know what that was, I could figure out from the context that it was a menstrual product. But how in the world would I have known where one is?
“No.”
“Do you wanna die?”
“I don’t know where one is.”
“Are the employees of your mansion just for show or something?”
Katalina was right. But I wasn’t someone with low enough morales to simply go up to a woman and ask her to bring me some tampons.
But I couldn’t say that to her.
“I forgot.”
“…”
I knew that I was making a poor excuse. Who in the world would make this kind of excuse? This was why it was difficult when you had a secret you wanted to guard.
“… You did lose your memories after all. No use in criticizing you. Here you are.”
I thought she would get angry at me, but then she looked like she understood my plight and pulled something out of her pocket.
Was this what they called a tampon? Though I did see one from afar in the past, this was the first time I was actually physically holding one so I curiously looked all over it.
‘Diaper’.
That was my first impression. That’s right… I thought that after growing up I had graduated from it, but… I didn’t know I’d be wearing one again.
“I’ll keep an eye out so put it on quickly.”
“Right here?”
Even if I was still a man, to change my clothes outside in broad daylight was something that was difficult for me to do, but Katalina looked at me dead in the eye as if saying ‘don’t ruin another set of clothing,’ to which I surrendered and changed my clothes right away.
“The thing is, you keep saying that you’re keeping an eye out, so why do you keep glancing at me?”
“I… I haven’t done such a thing!”
It seemed like she was trying to sneak a look at me5.
With the approval of the guild event managers as well as massive support from all the members, the event which had been christened [The 1st Camelot Swimsuit Contest] had begun with the opening of the event coming up soon.
“Goodness.”
I couldn’t help but feel that the timing of all this was peculiar. The contest which had been made internally in the guild in order to suppress the guild member’s complaints and boost their morale had actually started to excite the entire population of the England server of Blue Sky as well.
We had already leaked information about the new raid dungeon to the neutral guilds and predicted that the enemy guilds including the Chaos guild would be confronting neutral guilds like Storm and Zenon, and it happened just as we thought it would.
But most smaller sized neutral guilds weren’t large enough to be involved in the conflict and perhaps because of that, numerous users from smaller sized guilds as well as those that hadn’t joined guilds yet all sent inquiries about joining the Camelot alliance guild.
One of the reasons why it had led to that was because of a single post on the forums on the internet, which revealed the 100 different prizes that could be won in the contest that I posted on a whim, and it had gained major attraction.
Due to the insanely good prizes, the post was a sensation, so much so that even I myself in my previous life would have my jaw dropped onto the ground.
It made all the users that were confident in their good looks and body shape excited to participate in the event. The funny thing was that it wasn’t just the users within the Camelot guild alliance, but it made both other members of neutral guilds and users that hadn’t even joined any guild excited as well.
Of course, the rules of participation meant that only the users within the Camelot guild alliance could participate, which made users who weren’t in our guild desperate to join us, and put in requests to join our guild even though they knew perfectly well that there was currently a war going on.
Users who were at low levels but were confident of their good looks begged to join saying that it was fine even if they joined as temporary members, and since it would only lead to me getting to see more eye candy in the competition, there was no real reason for me to reject them.
However, the managers of the event deemed that they were likely going to just join to win the event, take the prizes and run away. So the managers suggested that after joining the guild, they couldn’t join any other guild for at least one year afterwards6. I judged that their assumption was right and accepted their suggestion.
Though there were few that stopped trying to join after seeing that condition, there were still more people that wanted to join than the ones that gave up.
Honestly, even though my standards had risen up to items of legendary tier due to the things happening recently, the ancient tier items still had extremely high value. After all, ancient tier equipment was something that only the top 1% of the users could acquire and it was therefore something most users could only dream of.
Either way, since each item was worth a hundred thousand gold minimum, seeing them all going crazy over it was understandable.
The biggest catch for us was people that joined the alliance following the attractive users of those neutral guilds.
Users that weren’t in guilds or smaller-sized guilds that were built like a fanclub for a particular attractive user with them as the leader were absorbed into the alliance.
There were also quite a number of powerful users that were at the same level as high ranked users, meaning that our forces were built up to have a stable base not lacking in both quantitative and quality department.
On the other hand, those two guilds were already fighting against each other so it was hard for them to discontinue the war even though they could clearly see what was happening on our end.
It may have been different if they didn’t fight each other in the first place, and I knew very well that once swords clashed, it was very difficult to ever find respect and peace for the other party afterwards.
At this rate, they would try their best to claim the raid dungeon first before the event ended. Once the event ended they clearly knew that we would participate in the fight as well, so I decided that I’d join if they still hadn’t ended their war after the conclusion of the event.
Even if the two guilds were to possibly create an alliance, I thought that we may have a chance at rolling over them if they had lost quite a bit of their strength due to the war.
Meaning that their conflict would be much fiercer as the event proceeded.
“Did you really predict all this?”
“No way.”
Katalina was surprised at all the pieces falling into place these days and questioned me. But I simply shook my head in response.
Honestly, I just wanted to suppress the guild member’s complaints, I didn’t think it would lead us down such a positive path.
But there was one variable that could change things, and that was the Empire guild.
“Excuse me, but Miss Jasmine is looking for you two.”
Katalina and I frowned when we heard what Esther said.
Footnotes:
- Robinxen: Reminds me of that novel where she thought she was shot.
- Robinxen: Honestly don’t see the issue here, she’s just come out of a coma basically, it wouldn’t be weird for her to have issues with her body.
- Robinxen: You have amnesia anyway…
- Robinxen: This is a bit rash, just wrap them in something else and sneak them into the waste. You live in a mansion it must go through junk like nobodies business. Nobody will bother to check.
- Robinxen: Periods aren’t pretty why would you even want to see?
- Robinxen: Jesus can you imagine if this happened in an actual MMO? This is ridiculous. A WHOLE YEAR?!