episode_0033

As usual, I woke up to an unpleasant morning, but today I felt something a little more uncomfortable.

The unpleasant sensation of taking a bite of a beautifully decorated cake and immediately finding an eggshell, or a mud puddle on a walkway that appears out of nowhere and your shoes get stuck in it, or thinking about opening an umbrella only to find bird droppings falling from somewhere and hitting your shoulder.

I was staring blankly at the ceiling, not knowing what was causing this uneasiness. Then, I slowly got up from where I was lying and felt a nagging pain in my stomach.

Aha. This is it.

.

.

.

“Princess, did I do something wrong? ”

“No, no problem, continue as is.”

“Yes..”

Even Mathias, who used to tremble whenever he saw Ayla and me, has now become completely accustomed to us and can talk to us without much hesitation.

By the way, I wondered if I was showing enough of my discomfort that Mathias could tell, even though my expression hadn’t changed.

Menstruation. This is something that most women experience, and I have been experiencing it for several years now. I don’t know if it’s early or not, but it was like that anyway. When I look at dramas, comics, and novels from my past life, I vaguely remember that the symptoms related to menstruation were very diverse, so it was really quite difficult.

Feeling heavy and sagging regardless of fatigue, feeling emotionally unstable over trivial things, and feeling irregular stabbing pain in the lower abdomen, etc.

The same thing is actually tolerable.

Since I don’t have to move my body much, I can just rest even if my body feels heavy, and since suppressing my emotions is a basic virtue of royalty, I’ve been trained to do so, so I just have to pay a little more attention to this. And my stomach hurts, too… I’m so used to enduring the pain that I feel like this is all I can handle?

There are other changes here and there, but you can just ignore them all… Sometimes, I have to say that incomprehensible thoughts take over me.

No, I’m on my period right now, so shouldn’t I be doing this? This is a meaningless rationalization.

Even though I’m not feeling well right now and I’m enduring it, there’s absolutely no reason for me to be compensated for something or for the other person to feel guilty, but sometimes I feel like I’m being led by this completely illogical thought process, or I feel like something a little different from my emotional changes keeps provoking me.

Normally, I would continue to educate Matias by stabbing him with a wooden sword, but that’s why I’m sitting still. I feel bad if I get in trouble for no reason.

I’m too kind to care about my subordinates. Isn’t that too much? For someone with such a kind heart to be the master? Mathias is blessed. Come to think of it, he’s not really the master.

But I’m deliberately being careful to keep you quiet, but you don’t notice and talk to me without any tact? It’s ridiculous when I think about it.

Something seemed to need to be adjusted in my head about the training plan for Mathias. Maybe add some heart-pounding bare-handed fighting with Ayla?

As I was quietly glaring at Mathias with my arms crossed, Ayla approached me without a sound and handed me something. What is this?

“Come on, princess. I know you don’t feel well, but chew on this and let it out.”

“Aila.. I appreciate your kindness, but the drugs are a bit..”

I pushed away the unidentified leaf that Ayla had offered me with my hand, and Ayla looked at me as if to say, “What nonsense are you talking about?”

“What, you’ve never seen a raw leaf before? This is what the princess often drinks. Don’t you know it’s called flèche?”

Aila stuffed a blade of grass into my mouth, and I glanced at Yugram, wondering what to do with it. Yugram gave me a look of approval. What? It’s not dangerous.

By the way, this is the tea I liked since I was in the castle. Is this a fairly common tea? Ayla, who saw me chewing it, smiled and said she would bring me some more before disappearing into the forest. Compared to the taste of the tea I was drinking, it was naturally slightly different here and there, but this wasn’t bad, was it?

I felt like my mind was slightly clearer, whether it was because I felt a taste I liked or because of the effects of the plant itself. When I learned about various teas, I heard people say that they clear the mind or something, and I just ignored them because I didn’t know how much effect drinking a cup of tea would have, but this tea seems to be quite effective.

Considering that even in the previous life, it was a common crop, but its price varied greatly depending on where and how it was grown, managed, and distributed, is this flèche also qualitatively different from the one eaten by the royal family? It is basically very common, but it feels like there are some luxury items that even the royal family can enjoy. Considering that Ayla picked it up somewhere, it may be quite common.

When enjoying it as tea, it felt like a refreshing scent filled my mouth, but when I chewed the leaves, the scent was a little less, but the vague taste that was felt very faintly at the end of the tea was felt more strongly.

When I was taking classes at the royal family, I tried hard to memorize the differences between dozens of teas, as well as the origins and nobles associated with those regions, but I don’t remember much about this Flèche because I like it so much. We can roughly remember that the same leaves have different names depending on the method.

While I was slowly chewing the leaves and making quick notes on the parts of Mathias’s grumpy posture that needed to be corrected, Ayla came back and gathered enough flèche leaves to fill the table.

“Aila.. No matter what, isn’t this too much?”

“I originally planned to just pick a few to give to the princess, but the quality was surprisingly good. The less angular the flèche leaves are, the better the quality is, but these are all almost round.”

With this quality and this quantity, I think I should get about this much. The amount that Ayla mentioned was a pretty reasonable amount for me. Is it really that expensive?

“Hey.. You know it well?”

“Well, I had no choice but to learn it while doing housework. Making flèche leaves into tea leaves is so simple that I think a teacher would know how to do it, right? Or not?”

When Ayla said that and looked at Yugram, Yugram showed a nervous expression but nodded.

“If this is half, you should probably have enough left over to drink until graduation? Flèche has a much stronger flavor if you dry it properly. If you dry the amount the princess just ate raw, you should probably get a few dozen cups. When you drink it as tea, you brew a very small amount.”

Ah, then I understand a little. I thought it was a huge amount even in its current state, but if you only use a little bit in the first place, the price per weight is bound to be a little high. Even though I know this, I won’t be ripping it off and selling it.

“That’s amazing.. Ah, I should give some to Mathias too..”

Ayla glanced at Mathias, who was training, then suddenly came closer and whispered in his ear.

“Flesh has the effect of stabilizing magical power. So it is necessary for women.”

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that it was a metaphor for menstruation.

Whether commoner or noble, if you are a human in this world, you will have some magical power. Basically, the amount of magical power and how to use it are very different. Also, when emotions become intense, the magical power will lose control and run wild, causing phenomena that match the possessor’s attributes.

For example, if a magician who specializes in fire magic goes completely crazy, sparks will fly out of his body. Anyway, it was a little different from the noble expression, so it was a little difficult to understand.

“Hmm.. Did it show too much? I thought I hid it well.”

“Well.. People who don’t know the princess will probably feel no different from usual. The princess is usually quiet and expressionless. But Nana and that guy are a little used to that princess, so they can kind of guess what’s different even with that expressionless face.”

As she said that, Ayla patted my head. Indeed. Isn’t there a description where you look at a blank character and think, ‘What on earth is he thinking?’ and then as the story progresses and you become closer to him, you feel a sense of connection by guessing exactly what the character wants without them even saying anything?

If you think of that expressionless character as me, it’s not an incomprehensible story. My expressionless face is 80% unavoidable because of the mask and the curse, and 20% voluntary, but I felt the need to train a little more.

The one worth targeting is, of course, Yugram. Even from my perspective of observing Yugram for several years, the probability of guessing Yugram’s intentions was only about 50%, so he could be called a true expressionless master.

“By the way, that guy Mathias… isn’t he a little strange?”

“Um..”

That’s right.

It’s only been a week since I realized that Mathias wasn’t eating properly and started mindlessly feeding him meat.

It’s only been a week.

In just one week, Mathias managed to build up the physical strength of an average lower-ranking student. He was still weaker than me when I was five, but it was still clearly an abnormal growth rate.

It’s too fast to just think, ‘Of course it’s natural since I haven’t eaten properly until now.’ After just feeding him some food, he became two or three times stronger.

So, unlike the original plan, I was already undergoing swordsmanship training in parallel. Of course, it would be easier for me if the progress was fast, but… no matter what, I couldn’t help but have some questions.

‘Tell Yugram to do some human experiments…’

As I was staring at Mathias with the same thought in my mind, Mathias kept glancing in my direction as if he sensed something. I have a good feeling.