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For tonight, instead of only two people on the dining table, there were two additional guests were seated in front of the delicious dishes that Hyde prepared with the help of his little assistant, Hikaru.
Hikaru stared at the dishes on the table. Those dishes were indeed had weird colours and presentations. Frustratingly enough, even though it was weird for the eyes of an earthling like Hikaru, it smelled delicious and made his mouth watered. Hikaru took a glance at Reese who were biting and munching an Oogbol, that is if you had forgotten what it was, it was the eyeball fruit. With Reese being the one eating it, it looked like he was munching on the real eyeballs instead of a fruit. Hikaru grimaced at the side and quickly took a bite at the roasted Kookoo meat, which was basically a bird similar to quails in Earth. Noon was enjoying his white lobster meat, with brown sauce that Hikaru didn't know how to describe because he never really tasted it. Hyde was also eating the same thing as Noon, but with the addition of vegetables salad. Surprisingly, the colour was exactly the same as the vegetables salad back on Earth.
After dinner, Noon checked Hikaru's condition for a while and while doing that, he took the chance to advise Hikaru to eat balanced meals in order to regain his strength. It would helped his body to produce more mana for him.
Noon told Hikaru about the flower mark that was supposed to appear on his neck on the near future. Hikaru gulped the lump he felt in his throat. He wished that the flower would never appeared. Flower mark means that his body will change similar to a woman's. It was weird and he didn't like it.
“When it first appeared, you will feel a little sick, nauseous and you will have stomach cramps a few times. It will happen once a month, but don't worry. When you get used to it, it'll become less and less uncomfortable,” explained Noon with a calm and reassuring face.
‘Basically, just like the periods that the girls back home had,’ thought Hikaru.
Noon continued, “During that time, your body will produce a sweet scent that only your Jiwa could smell. In Avalleon, that was when people usually could detect their Jiwa, by their scents. Only if they were near, though. The one that could smell their Jiwa at that time was Uruz. Fehu detect their Jiwa by their sense of security being with their fated mate.”
“Can't they smell each other without a Fehu being on period?”
Ah! Hikaru accidentally called it period.
Noon nodded. “They can, actually. Only if they had already trusted or interested in their Jiwa. But, the scent was too faint. Unless they had already loved their Jiwa. A person in love will unconsciously emitted a stronger scent to attract his Jiwa.”
That reminded Hikaru that he would always smelled nice smell came from Hyde. Sort of similar to honeydew melon scent. That realization hit Hikaru on his heart. It felt weird when you realised that someone was interested in you.
<Or maybe, that just means that he trusted me?>
Hyde really needed to learn how to be more distrustful of people. They just met a week ago!
“What about my mana absorption? Why does it only happened to Hyde? Can't I absorb other people's mana?” Hikaru asked with a concerned face. He felt bad because he always depended on and be a burden to Hyde. Hyde seemed unhappy with Hikaru's question. Noon noticed that, but not Hikaru.
“Only Jiwas had compatible mana. For example, if you and some random people on the street were to exchange mana, both of your body will reject each other's mana and that will cause you pain and made your body sick. That was why I asked you before if you felt pain or uncomfortable when Hyde's mana was continuously entering your body. However, because the both of you had compatible mana, it wasn't hurting your body,” explained Noon with the simplest and clearest answer he could come out with, hoping that Hikaru could understand.
Noon told Hikaru that was only a very few people who could see mana like him. That was why he could detect that Hikaru and Hyde was a pair of soulmates before Hikaru emitted any noticeable scent. A Fehu without flower mark usually didn't have any scent.
There were also some people that could slightly feel mana like Hyde, while most people couldn't feel anything like Reese. Reese who was silently listening to their conversations pouted when Noon glanced at him.
Hikaru remembered that Hyde could tell that he was lacking in mana before he had Noon check on Hikaru. So, it wasn't just based on his physical symptoms.
After a few moments pondering about his next question, Hikaru reluctantly directed his gaze at Noon. Noon raised his eyebrows, asking Hikaru what's wrong. Hikaru gritted his teeth, strengthen his resolve and suck in his embarrassment. He needed to know this if he were to live here.
“W- what about Fehu's pregnancy? In Earth, we don't have the same gender as here. As a male, I wasn't the one that was supposed to give birth,” Hikaru slowly mumbled. His voice was slow enough for Noon and the others to barely hear him.
“Eh? Earth?” asked the clueless Reese. Everyone ignored him.
“Male?” asked Noon curiously.
Hikaru nodded. His nerves slowly disappeared when he told Noon and the others about Earth.
“So, in Earth, there was two type of gender, which is male and female. Male is the individual who produces male gamete, which is sperm-"
“The father role,” added Hyde excitedly because he was so proud that he was told that by Hikaru before Noon and Reese learned about it.
“-that will fertilize the eggs that the female produced,” Hikaru continued.
“And that was the mother role,” added Hyde again. Reese was staring at Hyde the whole time with awe. Hyde continued, “The weirdest thing was Hikaru told me that the ‘females’ had protruding breasts!”
The Three Musketeers were grossed out at the same time.
“H- how did it work?” asked Reese while holding his chest. “D-did it just... grow out like those Pladiss worms?”
“Ugh! No!”
“Reese! I told you to never speak of that again, didn't I?!”
“It was already stuck on my mind, Noon! Even after all those years, I just... I just can't!”
Hikaru didn't even know what they were talking about, but the boys had clearly looked traumatised. Also, boobs weren't that gross! The boys in his middle school had always talked about how they worshipped boobs and would start a club for boobs lovers. Yeah. Curious teenagers in puberty... Weird times, indeed.
“They didn't even have juniors!”
Noon and Reese gasped.
Ah... Hyde was still going?
“But, it wasn't cut of, so don't worry...” Hyde smiled warmly.
Noon and Reese sighed in relief. Hikaru clapped his hands to bring the boys' focus once more on the previous topic. Noon were reminded of Hikaru's question and asked,
“Before that, I'm curious about the protruding chest. What's the function of it? Was it just a specific design?”
Hikaru was sick of them calling it as ‘protruding chest'. It's funny, but the jokes just wasn't that funny anymore. Talking about design, he, too, had a question about the function of the horns on his head. Or the tails.
On second thought, the fluffy tails were fine as they were.
“It contained mammary glands, for breastfeeding babies. We fed breastmilk for our babies,” said Hikaru. Noon nodded his head and mumbled, “Interesting...” a few times.
Back to how pregnancy works for Fehu. In Avalleon, the womb was not yet developed until a Fehu was nearly the age of 14. It took about a year for the womb to fully develop. On their 15th birthday, every Fehu had a flower mark appeared on their neck as the sign that their womb was fully formed and ready for producing eggs. It took 24 hours after the flower mark appeared for the womb to produce their first eggs. The process was uncomfortable for Fehus, and this would happened for once a month after their flower bloomed.
The Fehus only could get pregnant with their Jiwas' child. They needed compatible mana for the fertilization to happen, so that was why Jiwa was important to people in this world. With no Jiwa, there will be no babies.
During the pregnancy, the fetus will be needing their parents’ mana to develop as the fetus couldn't produce enough mana for themselves yet. After they were born, the babies couldn't feed on anything except for their parents’ mana for about 3 months. If they were given mana from other person except for their parents', rejection happened and they will die.
“The Milk Dew that you had to drink every now and then was okay for the babies as the alternative for their parents' mana, but it had less nutrition,” said Noon.
‘So, it's like breastmilk vs formula milk,’ Hikaru thought.
“What about hospitals? Did they had any doctors to tend to those mothers and babies?” Hikaru asked while staring at Noon. He knew that Noon was a doctor, but he doubt that there was any hospital existed here.
“Hospital? Like sick houses?” asked Noon.
Hikaru told him all that he knew about hospitals, like it had different kind of departments, or they had specialist focusing on one department instead of being an all-in-one doctor, and et cetera. Noon’s face brightened up as Hikaru was going on and on about hospitals. He thanked Hikaru for the information and told him that his dream was to build a bigger sick house. However, the longer he thought on how to do that, the more the problem arose. What Hikaru told him about hospitals really inspired him.
“You were really like a light, Hikaru! If you ever wondered why you were sent here, just remembered that on this night, you had light up my way to my dream. Just when I was lost on what to do,” Noon declared with joy clearly showed on his face.
Hikaru was touched by what Noon had said. It was the first time he had felt so useful. It was like he finally lived up to his name, Hikaru (to shine).
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