Shotaro exhaled through his nose, rubbing his temples as he looked down at the absolute disaster he had just created.
Valkhara, comatose in the dirt, looked less like a warrior and more like a tragically abandoned sack of meat.
Shotaro turned away, nodding to himself. Yeah, that's enough. He won. He could leave now.
He took exactly three steps before stopping.
And then, against his better judgment, he looked back.
And immediately facepalmed.
Because no matter how much of a sarcastic, mouthy, tired-of-everyone's-shit bastard he was, Shotaro Mugyiwara was not the type to leave someone to die.
And that realization pissed him off.
"Goddammit."
Resigning himself to his eternal curse of being a decent human being, he sighed, turned around, and walked back toward the crater, where Valkhara lay, completely exposed to the elements, unconscious, and looking entirely too pathetic for someone who had just spent the last twenty minutes wrestling like a goddamn war deity.
He crouched down, his eyes sweeping over her injuries—before his gaze, purely on autopilot, drifted downward.
And that's when he saw it.
The wilderness.
The untamed frontier.
A primeval forest untouched by civilization.
Shotaro blinked.
He stared.
He processed.
And then, before his common sense could stop him, his mouth just acted on instinct.
"Damn."
He shook his head.
"You really need to shave; that's an entire Amazon rainforest right there."
Silence.
For a moment, nothing happened.
And then—
Valkhara's eye snapped open.
Her pupils shrank.
Shotaro immediately realized his mistake.
Because he had not just made an offhand joke.
He had committed blasphemy.
Valkhara, a Zorkhani warrior of untamed tradition, slowly turned her head toward him, her expression unreadable.
A horrible, dangerous tension filled the air.
Shotaro's instincts screamed at him to run.
"…What?" Valkhara whispered.
Shotaro slowly blinked. "Uh."
Valkhara sat up. Her body cracked in five different places, but she did not care.
"…Did you just—" She inhaled sharply through her nose, her entire muscular frame trembling. "Did you just—"
Her fingers dug into the dirt, her breathing growing heavier.
"Ye—" she hissed through clenched teeth, her entire soul vibrating with sheer, primal rage.
"Are you telling' me—that I—a Zorkhani warrior—should cut me battle hair?!"
Shotaro immediately realized that he had messed up beyond human comprehension.
Because in Zorkhani culture, no warrior cuts their hair—not above, not below—unless they have been disgraced or defiled.
And losing a fight?
Qualified as both.
Which meant—
Shotaro had just indirectly told her she was a disgraced, defiled loser.
And in that moment, as Valkhara's eye twitched and her entire body tensed like a coiled viper ready to strike, Shotaro realized something very important.
He was about to die.
His survival instincts, honed through years of absurd battles and near-death experiences, kicked in before his brain even had the chance to fully comprehend the catastrophe he had just unleashed.
With the speed of a man who had no intention of dealing with the consequences of his own actions, Shotaro casually picked up the nearly 700 kg barbarian woman, threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and started briskly walking away.
"Okay," he said, his voice just a little too fast, "time to go. We are not unpacking this conversation. Not now. Not ever."
There was a beat of silence.
And then Valkhara, now fully awake and vibrating with the sheer force of an active earthquake, flailed like an enraged demon-possessed boar.
"PUT ME DOWN, YE SHITE-MOUTHED BASTARD, OR I'LL TEAR YE LIMB FROM LIMB!!"
"Yeah, YEAH, I GET IT, THIS WORLD IS YOUR BATTLEFIELD, YOU'RE ITS GREATEST UNBEATABLE WARRIOR—" Shotaro shouted back, adjusting his grip as Valkhara thrashed wildly, nearly sending them both toppling over. He gritted his teeth, doing his best to keep his balance as he stomped forward, determined to not let this conversation drag him into an early grave.
"But didn't you just lose?" He added, his voice dripping with forced casualness.
Valkhara instantly stopped struggling.
A heavy silence fell between them.
For a moment, even the jungle seemed to hold its breath.
Shotaro, realizing he had just escalated the situation from "highly volatile" to "definitely going to get murdered," decided he might as well go all in.
"So cut your damn pubes," he finished, picking up the pace.
And that's when all hell broke loose.
"YE DISGRACEFUL WRETCH—!!" Valkhara exploded, her entire body convulsing with the force of a thousand suns.
Shotaro did not stop.
He did not hesitate.
He just walked faster.
"NOPE, NOPE, NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION," he repeated, ignoring the way Valkhara was now pounding her fists against his back like an enraged toddler with the strength of a charging bull.
"HOW DARE YOU, YOU INSOLENT, PRISSY-ASS PRETTY BOY, I SHALL—!"
"Yeah, yeah, you'll crush my bones, feast on my entrails, blah blah blah; heard it all before," Shotaro muttered, rolling his eyes. "You know, for someone who just got their skull used as a goddamn drum, you sure have a lot of energy left."
"YOU THINK THIS IS OVER?! I WILL DESTROY YOU!!"
By the time Shotaro finally reached his hut in Evening Glory Village, the sun had dipped below the horizon, casting a warm amber glow over the treetops. The village itself was peaceful, the air filled with the scent of fresh earth and burning wood, a stark contrast to the barely-contained hurricane of rage currently slung over his shoulder.
Valkhara had not stopped cursing him out for the entire journey.
In fact, she had evolved.
At first, it was the usual barbarian threats—blood oaths, death vows, long-winded promises of evisceration—but somewhere along the way, she had started getting creative.
"WHEN I AM FREE, I SHALL RIP OUT YOUR TONGUE, FLAY YOU ALIVE, AND USE YOUR BONES TO BUILD A GRAND MONUMENT TO YOUR FAILURE—"
"Mhm, fascinating, riveting even," Shotaro muttered as he casually kicked the door to his hut open. "Anyway, you're not getting free anytime soon, so maybe try some meditation or something. Do barbarian women do yoga?"
Valkhara, despite her injuries, twisted violently in his grip.
"BARBARIAN WOMEN DO NOT—"
She cut herself off, sniffing the air. Her nose wrinkled.
"Do you live here?"
Shotaro dumped her unceremoniously onto a large wooden bench, dusted off his hands, and stretched his back. "Yep. Welcome to my humble little shack, princess."
Valkhara took one long look around his hut.
It was… shockingly normal.
A simple wooden structure, spacious but not extravagant. A hammock swung lazily in the corner, opposite a large wooden table covered in maps, books, and various small trinkets. A fireplace crackled warmly, casting flickering shadows along the walls. To one side, a small kitchen area held basic cooking supplies.
Valkhara squinted at the books.
"Can you read?"
"Did you just assume I was illiterate?" Shotaro asked, peeling off the remains of his destroyed shirt.
"I know you are illiterate," she shot back.
"Okay, first of all, rude. Second of all, I can read just fine, thank you very much." He pulled out a roll of bandages and began inspecting her wounds. "Now hold still while I patch you up, you stubborn Pokémon."
Valkhara bristled instantly.
"What did you just call me?"
"Nothing, nothing, just talking to myself," Shotaro waved her off, pressing a cloth against a particularly nasty gash on her shoulder.
To her credit, Valkhara barely flinched.
Shotaro sighed, tying off the first bandage. "One of these days, I really need to learn a healing mantra."
He paused, considering his options.
"...Maybe I'll get Paliv to use hers. Yeah. I'll just have her heal this wild Ursaring and be done with it."
Valkhara did not understand half of those words, but she understood disrespect.
And she did not like it.
"YE CALLING' ME A WILD BEAST?!" She roared, jerking forward, nearly knocking the bandages out of his hands.
Shotaro immediately pushed her back down by the face.
"Okay, relax, you literal wild woman. I just fought you butt-naked in the jungle. We are past the point of dignity."
Valkhara growled, narrowing her eyes at him.
"...When I am free, I will skin you alive."
"Yeah, yeah, and use my bones to make a monument. I got it," Shotaro said flatly, already moving on to the next wound.
Valkhara glared at him.
Shotaro smirked.
Silence.
Shotaro sighed, rubbing his temples. This was supposed to be simple. Get Paliv, make her heal the angry barbarian woman in his hut, and call it a day. He was not mentally prepared for whatever new nonsense was about to unfold.
But here he was.
Standing in front of Paliv's room, staring at a very aggressively lump-shaped blanket that was breathing heavily as if it had just committed a crime.
"Paliv," Shotaro said, exasperated. "Don't sleep until two in the afternoon. Again."
From under the blanket, a muffled, groggy voice shot back:
"Fuck off, Shotaro."
Shotaro narrowed his eyes.
Suspicious.
"... What are you hiding?"
The lump under the blanket tensed.
"I said GO AWAY!" she snapped, her voice suddenly filled with desperation.
… And that was all the confirmation Shotaro needed.
Without hesitation, he lunged.
And that was when all hell broke loose.
Shotaro, still locked in a life-or-death struggle over a goddamn blanket, was about five seconds away from just setting the whole thing on fire when—
He saw it.
A stain.
A bloodstain.
Right there, smeared across Paliv's bedsheets.
Instantly, his annoyance took a backseat to full-blown alarm. His mind, ever the master of jumping to worst-case scenarios, immediately assumed the absolute worst.
Did she get stabbed?! Did she get cursed?! Did she piss off some dark elven assassin in her sleep?!
"Paliv…" His voice was calmer now, more serious. He pointed at the stain. "What the hell is this?"
Paliv followed his gaze, saw the blood, and just sighed. "I dunno," she muttered. "At like 8 AM, my crotch just started bleeding for no reason, and now I feel like shit."
Shotaro stared at her.
She stared back.
There was silence.
Absolute silence.
A silence so thick, so profound, it could have shattered mountains.
And then—
Shotaro's brain imploded.
He choked. He coughed. His entire soul crashed like a dying computer.
Paliv, entirely unaware of the gravity of her own statement, just huffed. "Dunno why you're acting weird," she muttered, rubbing her temples. "It's so annoying—this weird cramping thing started, and it's really pissing me off. The hell is this shit?!"
Shotaro did not know how to respond to this.
Because how the fuck do you explain menstruation to an imperial elf girl who has somehow made it this far in life without knowing about it?!
His hands twitched. His mouth opened and closed, words forming and then dying before they could escape. His entire being wanted to just walk into the ocean and never return.
This was it. This was how he died. Not in battle. Not against some world-ending threat. But right here, in this exact moment, in the stupidest way possible.
He took a slow breath.
Shotaro stopped dead in his tracks.
Wait.
Hold the hell up.
Who exactly was he planning to go to for this conversation?
Urvashi? No, that was an immediate hell no. She'd laugh at him, call him a dumbass, and then probably charge him for wasting her time.
Kumslet? Absolutely not. If he even suggested talking about this with her, she'd probably exile him out of sheer secondhand embarrassment.
Wim Py? Bro.
Shotaro slowly exhaled, his face deadpan. I" have fought gods and demons. I was raised in a fucking red-light district. I should not be struggling this hard with this".
And yet, here he was.
Because, as unfiltered and brutally honest as he usually was, this wasn't some random person—it was Paliv. His little sister. His foster little sister, sure, but that didn't matter. She was his bratty, racist, stubborn, sometimes lovable little sister, and this was way too awkward.
Just walking up to her and bluntly saying, "Hey, congrats, you're menstruating," felt like a goddamn war crime.
But at the same time… he really didn't want to find someone else to explain it.
Because then he'd have to explain to them why he couldn't just do it himself.
And he was not about to suffer through that.
Shotaro sighed, rubbing his temples. His brain felt like it was doing Olympic gymnastics just to process how to go about this.
Alright. Deep breath. He had two choices here.
One: Walk back in there, somehow find the words to explain this as painlessly as possible, and then immediately forget this moment ever happened.
Or two: Go find someone else, endure twice the suffering, and then still have to deal with Paliv afterward.
Shotaro groaned.
He turned back around, dragging his feet, fully prepared to just tank the embarrassment like a man.
Paliv squinted at him. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
Shotaro inhaled deeply through his nose, counting to three in his head, before exhaling. He had fought titanic beasts, survived the wrath of gods, and wrestled a seven-foot-tall barbarian woman naked. And yet, somehow, this was the hardest battle of his life.
Alright. He just had to take this one step at a time.
"Listen," he started, rubbing his temples, "humans… elves… dwarves… all of us change as we grow."
"No shit," Paliv deadpanned.
Shotaro fought the urge to strangle her. "Yes. But I mean in a biological way. It's called puberty."
"Pew—what?"
"Puberty."
"Pubegerty?"
"Oh my God, Paliv."
She snorted, clearly enjoying this more than she should. "What? It's a dumb word."
"You're a dumb word," Shotaro muttered under his breath. Then, before she could derail the conversation further, he pressed on.
"Puberty," he continued, voice strained with the patience of a saint, "is when your body starts changing because you're growing up."
Paliv crossed her arms. "What kind of changes?"
Shotaro stared at her, drumming his fingers against his knee. He could already feel his dignity trying to crawl out of his body.
"Well…" he hesitated. "Your body… develops."
Paliv's expression twisted in disgust. "Ew. What does that mean?"
"It means," Shotaro said, suddenly regretting every decision that had led him here, "you're going to get taller, your chest might—" He made vague, circular hand motions in the air. "You know. Develop."
Paliv's eye twitched. "...Why are you saying that like it's a curse?"
Shotaro ignored her. "And… sometimes… your body is gonna do things like…" He coughed into his fist. "Bleed."
Paliv stiffened. "From where?"
Shotaro clenched his jaw.
Paliv narrowed her eyes. "Shotaro. From where."
"…The south."
Paliv blinked. "The—" She paused. Her face went blank. "Wait."
Shotaro braced himself.
"You're saying," she said slowly, voice laced with horror, "that my crotch is gonna bleed now?"
"Once a month, yeah."
"WHAT THE FUCK."
Shotaro winced as Paliv immediately started thrashing under the blanket like a possessed goblin.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONCE A MONTH?! FOR HOW LONG?!" she screeched.
"Uh… years?"
Paliv let out a sound that was somewhere between a shriek and a dying cat.
"NO. NO, FUCK THAT. THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT." She grabbed the front of his shirt. "FIX IT."
"What the hell do you mean, fix it?!" Shotaro barked. "I don't control this shit! It's just how it works!"
"NO, FUCK THAT! THIS IS A CURSE! SOMEONE CURSED ME!"
Shotaro groaned, prying her off. "It's not a curse, Paliv, it's biology!"
"BIOLOGY CAN GO SUCK A DICK."
Shotaro pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I get it. It sucks. But it's normal. Every girl goes through it."
Paliv scowled. "Does it happen to you?"
Shotaro deadpanned. "No, because I'm a guy."
Paliv threw her hands in the air. "THEN IT'S NOT NORMAL! IT'S SEXIST."
Shotaro groaned and flopped backward, staring at the ceiling like it could somehow save him from this conversation.
This was worse than fighting Valkhara.
This was worse than literally any battle he had ever been in.
Paliv crossed her arms, glaring at him like he was personally responsible for this atrocity. "Well? Fix it!"
Shotaro sighed. "I can't fix it, Paliv, it's just how it works."
"Well, it's a shitty system," she snapped. "This is why elves live so long. We need extra time to recover from this bullshit."
Shotaro exhaled sharply through his nose, rubbing his temples. "Look, you can talk to an adult about this, okay? Or me. I've gone through… changes too."
Paliv gave him a flat look. "Oh, yeah? Does your dick bleed uncontrollably?"
Shotaro's eye twitched. "No, but—"
"Then we are not the same."
Shotaro inhaled deeply, counted to ten, and exhaled. This is fine. This is normal. I can handle this.
"Okay, okay, look," he said, waving a hand, "I get it. It's messy. That's why you use a pad or a tampon."
Paliv squinted. "The fuck is that?"
Shotaro opened his mouth—then closed it. Right. Medieval-ass world. He was about to recommend modern hygiene products to a girl whose bathroom situation involved wooden buckets and questionable-smelling soaps.
He rubbed his face. "Yeah, I forgot. This place doesn't have those. Fantastic."
Paliv scowled. "Then what the hell am I supposed to do?! Just let it leak everywhere like a slaughtered pig?!"
"No! God, no, Paliv!" Shotaro groaned, running a hand through his hair. He was so not built for this. "Alright, listen." He sat up, looking her in the eye. "We gotta improvise. Find some clean cloth, fold it up, and—"
"Oh, great," Paliv cut in, throwing her hands up. "I'm gonna waddle around like a diaper-wearing toddler, just marvelous!"
"It's that or bleed all over the furniture," Shotaro said flatly.
Paliv grumbled, clearly hating everything about this, but didn't argue.
"Also, you should probably change it out regularly."
Paliv gave him a blank stare. "...How regularly?"
Shotaro hesitated. "Uh… depends on how much you're bleeding?"
Paliv looked down at herself, then back at him. "...So what you're saying is, I have to check."
Shotaro was already nodding before he fully processed what she said. "Yeah, I mean—wait."
Paliv smirked.
Shotaro's face went blank. "No. Do not pull your pants down right now."
Paliv raised an eyebrow. "Why? Afraid?"
Shotaro stood up so fast he nearly flipped the chair. "NOPE. NOPE. THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER."
He turned on his heel and marched straight out of the room, ignoring the sound of Paliv's cackling behind him. He needed distance. He needed air. He needed—
SPLASH.
The water was cold. Good. It needed to be. Because right now, his brain was overheating.
Shotaro floated in the river, staring up at the sky, letting the current carry him while he reevaluated every decision that led to this moment.
He had fought demons. He had gone head-to-head with beings that could wipe out entire cities with a flick of their wrist. He had stood against warriors that could shake the land with their mere presence.
And yet, this was what broke him.
"Okay," he muttered to himself, closing his eyes. "Mugyiwara Shotaro, you were top of your high school. You passed every science class. You survived a goddamn red-light district. There is no reason you can't figure out how to make a goddamn pad in a medieval-ass world."
He slapped his cheeks, psyching himself up. "Alright, think. What do pads have? Soft stuff. Absorbent stuff. More soft stuff." He frowned. "And a sticky part."
His eye twitched. Yeah, that part's not happening.
Shotaro exhaled sharply. "Okay. Cloth. Cotton? No, wait, they don't have that. Wool? Fuck, that's itchy. Linen? Maybe. But I'd have to layer it…"
A fish swam by. It had nothing to contribute. Useless.
Shotaro sighed, kicking his legs to stay afloat. "Maybe moss? No, that's a terrible idea. She'd get a rash and then I'd have another crisis to deal with."
His eye twitched again as a thought hit him. Wait. Do elves even have medicine for cramps?
He groaned, rubbing his temples. "Goddammit, Paliv's gonna be a nightmare for a whole week."
Another fish swam by. He glared at it. "You ever had to explain periods to an elf girl, huh? No? That's what I thought. Keep swimming."
The fish kept swimming.
Shotaro sighed. "Okay. Cloth first. Then I'll worry about how to strap it in place. Maybe a belt… or some kind of wrap? I'll figure it out."
He let himself float for another moment, staring blankly at the sky.
Then, with the deepest sigh of his life, he dragged himself out of the river, dripping wet, and marched back to the village.
Shotaro, still dripping wet from the river, stopped dead in his tracks. His brain had already been through enough trauma for one day. He wasn't ready for this.
But there Fa Git was.
Crouched near the riverbank.
Jerking off.
The world went silent.
The fish in the river stopped swimming. The wind in the trees ceased to blow. Somewhere, a bird, which had just barely recovered from its previous embarrassment, simply gave up and fell out of the sky.
Shotaro's eye twitched. "What. The. Fuck."
Fa Git froze mid-stroke. His wide amethyst eyes met Shotaro's crimson ones. Neither of them moved. The tension was thicker than a sumo wrestler's thigh.
Then— SPLAT.
A handful of river water smacked Fa Git right in the face as Shotaro instinctively threw it at him in sheer, unfiltered disgust.
"FUCK." Shotaro immediately turned away, his soul leaving his body. "What the fuck are you doing near a river like this?! Are you Egyptian?!"
Fa Git spluttered, wiping the water off his face. "I— I don't know, I just— Nowadays, I get this feeling when I think about her, and I don't know why—"
Shotaro was ready to fucking die.
"HOW ARE YOU AND PALIV BOTH HITTING PUBERTY AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME?!"
Fa Git looked lost. "Paliv? What about her?"
Shotaro grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him like a goddamn maraca. "SHE IS BLEEDING FROM HER CROTCH AND YOU'RE JACKING OFF INTO THE WIND. DO YOU SEE HOW THIS IS A BAD DAY FOR ME?!"
Fa Git made a noise that sounded like a mix between a confused whimper and a dying cat. "Wh— bleeding— wh— WHAT?! WHY?!"
"BECAUSE PUBERTY, YOU DUMBASS."
Fa Git's whole body sagged in realization. "Oh. So that's why I—"
Shotaro immediately clamped a hand over Fa Git's mouth.
"I don't want to hear it."
Fa Git mumbled something against his palm.
"I don't want to hear it."
Fa Git mumbled louder.
Shotaro sighed through his nose, slowly removing his hand.
"I think I like Paliv," Fa Git whispered.
Shotaro blinked. Then he sighed again. "Figures."
Fa Git stared. "You knew?"
"Duh," Shotaro said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "The way you act around her? Even when she's calling you a racial slur, you grovel like a damn dog. And let's not forget the time you straight-up drank her spit when we first met."
Fa Git turned a violent shade of purple. "T-That was a misunderstanding—"
"Was it?" Shotaro gave him a deadpan look. "Was it really?"
Fa Git opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Shotaro crossed his arms. "Yeah. That's what I thought."
Fa Git made a weird strangled noise and grabbed his head like he was experiencing a life crisis. "Shit, does she know?!"
Shotaro's eye twitched. "Fa Git. She calls you a slur every time she sees you. No, she does not know."
Fa Git deflated in relief. "Okay. Okay. That's good."
Shotaro stared at him. "Is it?"
Fa Git stared back. "...I don't know anymore."
Shotaro sighed, again, and pushed Fa Git's head down into the river.
He held it there for a good five seconds before pulling him back up.
"Pull yourself together," he said.
"Anyway, since you're here," Shotaro said, wringing water out of his shirt, "you're gonna help me figure out how to make a pad in this world."
Fa Git blinked. "The fuck is a pad?"
"You'll figure it out."
"I don't like that."
"I don't like anything about this situation, but here we are."
The Quest of All Time
"Hmmm…" Shotaro squinted at the cotton, rubbing it between his fingers like some kind of ancient philosopher contemplating the secrets of the universe.
"Hmmmmmm…" He plucked a handful from the plant, nodding to himself. Yeah. This should work. Probably.
Just then, the owner of the cotton field—a grizzled old man with a straw hat and an expression that said he had exactly zero patience for bullshit—came stomping over.
"Hey, what the fuck do you think you're do—"
Shotaro turned his head very, very slowly and just stared.
No words. No threats. No expressions. Just pure, silent pressure.
The old man blinked. His face paled a little. He cleared his throat.
"My fault, sir," he muttered, backing away. "Carry on."
Shotaro went back to picking cotton like nothing happened.
Fa Git, watching from the sidelines, whispered, "How the fuck do you do that?"
Shotaro just kept plucking cotton. "Well you see a big tall dude twise your size you might as well not piss him off."
Shotaro continued gathering cotton like some kind of medieval entrepreneur, stuffing it into a sack while Fa Git watched with a mix of confusion and admiration.
"You know how to turn this into fabric, right?" Shotaro asked, barely looking up.
After an excruciating thirteen hours of trial, error, arguing, nearly setting a house on fire, and Fa Git accidentally gluing his hands together, Shotaro finally had something that resembled a medieval pad.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't comfortable. But goddammit, it would work.
He stormed into Paliv's room, looking like a man who had just invented civilization itself.
"Put this shit in your underwear."
Paliv, sprawled out on her bed with the dead-eyed look of someone who had given up on life, lazily lifted her head. "...What?"
Shotaro tossed the product at her. It landed on her chest.
Paliv picked it up, examined it with the skepticism of a royal food taster, then immediately made a face. "What the fuck is this?"
"What you need," Shotaro said, exhausted. "Thank me later."
She squinted at it. Sniffed it.
Shotaro's eye twitched. "Did you just sniff it—"
"I had to!" Paliv shot back. "This shit looks like something you found on a corpse."
Shotaro took a deep, shuddering breath. He had fought monsters, demons, and gods, but nothing—nothing—was as mentally exhausting as this conversation.
"Listen," he said, "I made that with limited materials and no fucking experience. It's medically sound."
Paliv narrowed her eyes. "It's also ugly as fuck."
"Well, duh," he said, deadpan. "You're not supposed to wear it on your head."
Paliv clicked her tongue. "I know that, dumbass, but I'm just saying—"
"Just saying?" Shotaro repeated. "Do you have any idea how long it took to make that thing? I spent thirteen hours creating the first-ever period pad in Drakastradorn, and this is the gratitude I get?"
Paliv waved the pad in his face. "It looks like a failed experiment!"
"IT IS A FAILED EXPERIMENT!" Shotaro yelled. "BUT IT WORKS!"
Paliv squinted at the rough, hand-stitched, wax-sealed creation in her hands. "...It kinda looks like a really bad sandwich."
Shotaro felt something inside him break.
Fa Git, standing in the corner, nodded. "Yeah, I was thinking that too. Like, one of those sandwiches you find at the bottom of a bag after a week."
Shotaro turned slowly, his eye twitching. "Fa Git, I swear to god—"
"I'm just saying, visually, it's kinda unappetizing."
"IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE APPETIZING!"
"Damn," came a new voice from behind them. "This invention of yours is pretty cool."
Shotaro froze.
Paliv froze.
Fa Git turned around. "Oh, Mom! You're here too?"
Kum Slet, arms crossed, nodded approvingly. "If this thing works, it could help billions of women across the continent. If mass-produced, it'd revolutionize hygiene and health for countless people. Really impressive work."
Shotaro stood there. Processing.
Billions?
Mass production?
Continental-scale impact?
He just wanted to stop his dumbass little sister from bleeding all over the place. How the fuck did this suddenly turn into an industrial revolution?
Paliv nudged him. "Oi. Say something."
Shotaro slowly turned to Kum Slet, still stuck in a mental loading screen.
"...Say that again?"
Kum Slet smiled. "If you produce these on a large scale, you could change the world."
Shotaro stared at her. Then at Fa Git. Then at the godforsaken pad in Paliv's hands.
Then back at Kum Slet.
What the fuck just happened?
Shotaro stood there, rubbing his temples as he tried to process the whiplash of going from making a single pad to potentially revolutionizing an entire continent's hygiene industry.
He took a deep breath.
"Fa Git," he said slowly, "I might have an idea."
Fa Git blinked. "What?"
"But before anything else…" Shotaro turned to Paliv, eyes sharp. "I need your mantra."
Paliv raised an eyebrow. "For what?"
Shotaro pointed past her.
Tied to the bed, still very much there, was Valkhara.
Still injured.
Still gagged.
Still looking like she was questioning every single life decision that brought her here.
Her glare could have incinerated steel. "YOU FUCK," she finally managed through gritted teeth. "WHERE DID YOU FUCK OFF TO FOR FIFTEEN HOURS?!"
Shotaro didn't even flinch. "I was busy revolutionizing women's hygiene in this world."
Valkhara blinked. "You were what?"
"I forgot about you," Shotaro continued, like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to say to a bound and gagged prisoner.
"FUCK YOU!" she screamed, thrashing against the restraints.
"Love you too," he shot back, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Paliv, standing next to him, looked back and forth between the two of them, utterly bewildered. Then, after a moment, she slowly turned to Shotaro.
"Okay," she said, voice flat. "But who the fuck is that...thing?"
"I'm still figuring it out," Shotaro admitted without missing a beat.
Paliv stared at him. Valkhara stared at him. Fa Git, who had just walked in, also stared at him.
"...You tied her to my fucking bed and you don't even know what she is?" Paliv said, her voice dangerously close to breaking into a scream.
Shotaro exhaled. "Look, can you just heal her with your mantra?"
Paliv crossed her arms. "No, I think I want to know a bit more about why there is a whole-ass prisoner in my fucking room before I start fixing her up like a charity case."
Valkhara let out a muffled groan. She, too, seemed to be questioning why she was here, how she was here, and at what point in her life she had made a critical mistake.