Light, accompanied by gentle music, woke the still-sleeping group one by one.
So heavy... What's pressing down on me?
Kyaru, her consciousness not yet fully pulled free of her dreams, opened her eyes. The wooden ceiling looked no different from what she'd seen before falling asleep, and her hands and feet could move normally—the only odd thing was the heavy, weighty sensation coming from her belly.
She lifted her head and looked toward her own abdomen. The high-mounded blanket blocked her view, as though something were hidden underneath it.
This big-bellied shape... It's just like a pregnant cat...
Wait—?!
"I'm pregnant?!"
Kyaru's shrill, miserable scream startled everyone else awake, and they immediately sat up out of their bedding—whereupon they all saw that round, bulging belly of hers, mounded up even more dramatically than a full ten months of pregnancy.
"Wh-wh-wh... what's going on? Why... why did Kyaru suddenly get pregnant?" Pecorine knelt down at her side, utterly at a loss, her hands wanting to touch but not daring to.
Kokkoro, her little hands trembling, tried to dig through her books for material about beastfolk suddenly becoming pregnant: "This is the Beastfolk Compendium, this is Tales of Beastfolk Customs..."
Compared to the two of them in their panic, Megumin was exceptionally calm. With a clear objective, she strode straight up to Jhin, who was blankly staring at the blanket, grabbed him by the collar, and demanded: "Did you, or did you not, sneak up last night after we'd all fallen asleep and secretly go kiss Kyaru?"
"Huh? What weird thing are you saying? What does that have to do with the state she's in now?"
"How could it have nothing to do with it!" Her volume suddenly shot up: "Kissing makes you pregnant—that's common knowledge! Do you really not want to own up to what you did? I really misjudged you!"
The room sank into dead silence. The originally flustered Pecorine and Kokkoro turned their heads, staring at Megumin with utterly incredulous looks, and the gaze Kyaru shot at her was likewise like looking at an idiot.
Jhin, for his part, drew in a sharp, cold breath.
To think I once had feelings for a numbskull who can't even get this basic bit of biology straight...
"What's with those expressions of yours? Did I just say something wrong?"
"No, you didn't say anything wrong—it's my fault." Jhin laid both hands on Megumin's shoulders, his face full of remorse: "We'll discuss the common knowledge of pregnancy later. Right now, the most important thing is to give my daughter a name."
"Naming things is what I'm best at!"
"Excellent! Squad-member Megumin, the extremely important task of naming her is entrusted to you."
"Leave it to me!"
Megumin took the paper and pen handed to her and, just like that, was hoodwinked off to the side to scribble away furiously, every so often muttering names brimming with her own unique aesthetic sense, like "Jang-Jang," "Floaty-Floaty," and "Pretty-Pretty."
"Master... Megumin's common sense... isn't there a need to correct it a bit?"
"It wouldn't really be appropriate for me, a guy, to go explain that sort of thing to her, would it? How about... you all go?"
Seeing them shake their heads over and over with reddened faces, Jhin sighed helplessly: "Fine, let's set this problem aside for now—I'll think of a way later. Right now let's just focus on the abnormality with Kyaru."
"But beastfolk getting pregnant overnight is utterly unheard of."
"I have heard of hot springs that change your sex, though even that was a story someone made up. Could there really be a hot spring on the continent of Astraea that gets you pregnant from a single soak?"
"Even if that were so, then why is Kyaru the only one who got pregnant? Kokkoro and I soaked in the spring together with her yesterday too."
"If I woke up in the morning to find all three of you with big bellies, I'd be scared to death on the spot, okay?"
Listening to them go on, one "pregnant" after another, as though it were already an established fact, Kyaru couldn't stand her own inexplicable predicament of becoming a mom out of nowhere. She yanked the blanket open hard, wanting to see just what on earth the thing on her belly was.
With her motion, a plump, round, snow-white egg the size of an ostrich egg appeared before everyone's eyes.
"Ah... so it was a hot-spring egg."
"I told you it was impossible for beastfolk to get pregnant overnight." Kokkoro wiped the cold sweat from her forehead; just a little bit more and she'd have begun to doubt whether the books she'd read over these hundred-some years had all been for nothing.
"Who on earth was it that said I was pregnant? That's going too far!"
Kyaru grumbled indignantly, then realized that it seemed to have been she herself who'd cried out the word "pregnant" while not fully conscious, which had led to this awkward situation now—and her bristling, furious tail instantly wilted.
Turns out the clown was me all along!
"Ahem, ahem. Well, now that we've figured out it's a hot-spring egg, I'll go contact the inn staff. Oh right—how do you all want the hot-spring egg done, boiled or fried?"
"Let's go with fried hot-spring egg. Everyone's had boiled eggs before, but it seems like we've never tried fried." "All right."
Over on the other side, Megumin had finally settled on a name for Jhin's daughter, and came over brimming with enthusiasm, waving the slip of paper in her hand: "Jhin! Huh, where'd he go?"
"He went to get the inn staff to come take the hot-spring egg."
"What? Hot-spring egg?"
After Pecorine cleared up the misunderstanding for the baffled Megumin, Megumin set down the slip of paper in disappointment: "What the heck—I finally came up with a super amazing name, and now it turns out I can't even use it."
"Ahaha... a good name can still be used later. It's fine."
Everyone else in the Gourmet Edifice knew very well that Megumin's—no, one should say the Crimson Demon Clan's—distinctively personal, far-ahead-of-the-era aesthetic, opinionated way of naming things was absolutely incapable of producing any good name. The "coolness" that came out of their mouths differed greatly from the perception of ordinary people.
There was a saying that circulated on the continent of Astraea: if you ever run into something with a bizarre, peculiar name, it's about eighty percent likely to be the work of the Crimson Demon Clan.
Jhin returned to the room together with a maidservant, who took the people with her to carry off the hot-spring egg, and said the finished fried hot-spring egg would be sent over in half an hour.
Seeing the man of the hour return, Megumin sprang up in front of him, rose onto her tiptoes, and waved the slip of paper in her hand: "Jhin, I've already come up with your daughter's name. Do you want to know it?"
"Mm... it certainly is enticing. So then... what's the price, Megumin?"
Stuffing the slip of paper into his arms, she gave a mysterious smile: "You're not allowed to tell anyone else."
"That simple, huh... Let me see if it'll turn out to be a name like 'Mutt-Egg' or 'Second Pillar.'"
"Pfft! What kind of weird name is that? She's your daughter, after all—I wouldn't give her that kind of name."
Jhin opened the slip of paper, his eyes narrowing slightly, then, feigning an air of indifference, slipped it backhanded into his storage space: "I can tell you really did put thought into it. Once we've finished eating the hot-spring egg, let's head to the Maple Sugar Valley."
Although the other girls were very curious about exactly what name was written on that slip of paper, both of the parties involved chose to keep their mouths shut, so they had no choice but to pretend they'd never heard of the matter.
Megumin sidled up to Kyaru with a grin and asked her how it had felt to almost become a mom, provoking her into such mortified fury that she chased Megumin around the whole room trying to hit her.
____
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🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
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