Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

‘Yo-hwa, y-you didn’t see that, right?’

I quickly covered Yo-hwa’s eyes and asked through the private chat room.

I could feel her long eyelashes trembling slightly beneath my palm.

Yo-hwa was still innocent and guileless in a way that showed how young she still was.

Not long had passed since our interspecies wedding night, and I could not show a sight like this to such a sweet, naive child who knew nothing of the ways of the world.

Perhaps Yo-hwa had caught the meaning of my question, because she answered in an innocent voice.

‘Kishishi. Yes, Oppa, Yo-hwa did not see the two eggs hanging between the legs.’

At this rate, it seemed like she had seen it after all.

Anger surged up inside me.

‘So you did see it! What the hell did these bastards show a sweet, innocent child who just had her interspecies wedding night!?’

Just what kind of ugly sight had they shown my new wife?

I ground my teeth and glared at Bulsiho.

I was about to shoot out a remark, but the moment that image of those eggs entered my eyes again, my anger eased slightly.

That wasn’t a full set.

It was awkward to count it as one.

Which made sense, because for a man, a proper set was one stick and two eggs.

But that thing only had two eggs dangling there.

That most important core part, the stick, had completely disappeared without a trace.

Honestly speaking, wasn’t the stick more important than the eggs?

The eggs were just storage, but without the stick, didn’t that storage become meaningless too?

I forcibly calmed the emotion mixed with shock and excitement and asked,

“I-is that the reason?”

Bulsiho slowly nodded.

And then, with a slightly teasing smile, asked back,

“Yes. Shall I show you more?”

“No.”

I shook my head firmly.

What was there to like so much that she kept trying to show me more?

I had already seen enough.

No, I had seen as much as needed to be seen.

Soon the skirt slid down again, and the unpleasant thing disappeared from view.

Watching that, I thought to myself,

The rumor that only women lived here in the Ten-Thousand Demon Forest was definitely all lies. Or else Bulsiho alone had brought in a man and was spending nights of madness.

To begin with, they had said it was a place with only women and then tried to bring me here, and that flower-crab spirit-creature was definitely male.

The outward appearance was beautiful and seductive like a woman’s, but the essence was male.

So Bulsiho had been forcing the younger sisters under the sect to keep lonely vigils in empty rooms, while secretly indulging in male pleasure alone.

And the reason it had ended up like that was obviously because of some extreme and dangerous kind of play. Otherwise there was no way such an important part would have gotten cut off.

I didn’t even need to see it. It was practically a video in my head.

Bulsiho definitely had S tendencies.

‘Sadist, was it?’

Something I had heard in the life before my previous life came back to me.

They said that when working in obstetrics and gynecology or urology, every now and then there were men and women with no sense who came in like that.

Stuffing things where they should not be put.

Sticking things where they should not be stuck.

And then in the end, it was common for them to wind up in the emergency room.

That sort of thing happened all the time in the human world, so why would spirit-creatures be any different?

Judging by how they hadn’t shown the cut-off stick, it was probably completely gone.

I cleared my throat and said,

“Ahem. Well, this is not difficult.”

“R-really?”

An ordinary physician might not have been able to regenerate it.

But I was different.

If I drew out Moji and Soji’s abilities, cleaned up the severed section a little more neatly, and then promoted regeneration, that would be enough.

It was the same ability I had used to reattach the children’s severed arms and legs, so this much would be easy.

Something like one club, I could definitely bring back to life.

With an expression that said You should have shown some restraint, I answered,

“Yes, well, you want me to make the missing club again, don’t you?”

At that, Bulsiho tilted her head.

It was an expression like she truly did not understand.

“A club? Make it again?”

I quickly covered Yo-hwa’s ears and lowered my voice.

“I mean the male part. It looks like it was cut off... I don’t know what exactly you did, but even if I make it again, if you don’t show some restraint, the same thing could...”

It was right when I was scolding Bulsiho.

Yubing suddenly shrieked.

Yubing literally foamed at the mouth like a crab and shouted,

“W-what are you talking about! I-I am a woman!”

I looked down between Yubing’s legs.

Then, while trembling all over, Yubing suddenly ripped off the upper clothes and shouted,

“L-look!”

I flinched, thinking something ugly was about to be shown again, but this time it was the upper body that had been stripped.

The symbol of womanhood swayed on that suddenly bared upper body.

No matter what anyone said, those rather large things, insisting I am a woman, were facing this way.

‘Ping...’

In the moment I was flustered by seeing that, my eyes were covered.

This time it was Yo-hwa who covered both my eyes and asked,

‘Kishishi. Did Oppa see?’

‘Oppa can’t think of anything except Yo-hwa’s chest from last night.’

‘Kishi. O-Oppa, honestly.’

The moment I quickly said the right answer for a situation like this, I could feel Yo-hwa’s pleased heart.

Now I had several wives, so I felt like I had become able to easily navigate even situations like this.

‘They say you get better at anything if you do it enough.’

Thinking that, I also felt it was something strange.

From the face to the upper body, it was perfectly female, so how could those eggs exist?

“Calm down, Yubing.”

“I-I’m sorry, Lady Siho.”

I heard Bulsiho calming Yubing from over there, and the hand that had covered my eyes slid away.

When my vision returned, I saw Yubing putting the clothes back on again.

Bulsiho, shielding Yubing, explained to me,

“It seems there was a slight misunderstanding, but it is the opposite.”

“The opposite? Then are you saying the eggs suddenly grew in?”

“No. According to Yubing, they had been there from the time a human form first became possible. Recently I tried to accept Yubing as my new mate, but Yubing kept refusing to share a bed.

One day I simply couldn’t endure it anymore, so I seduced Yubing and lifted the skirt, only to find this, and so I asked for help.”

‘Oh, good. At least the polar bear survived.’

Thinking that at least the polar bear would survive, I ran through my biological database.

I wasn’t a specialist in venomous creatures alone, but because there were venomous crabs too, I had the data.

I decided to see whether there was any basis that could explain a condition like that.

‘Were there crabs with sex change or intersex conditions among them?’

Ordinary crabs were mostly fixed.

Female or male, determined from birth.

It was common among some fish and shrimp, but rare in crabs.

‘Ah, hermit crabs!’

But as I continued the thought, one thing came to mind.

Hermit crabs, called hermit crabs, do have intersex individuals.

A state that is neither female nor male.

Some hermit crabs have reproductive openings that carry the characteristics of both sexes at once, or oocytes form in the testes and make them look like egg cells.

But even so, this still felt strange.

Yubing was a spirit-creature based on a venomous crab.

Because it was a reef-crab type.

And reef crabs do not have intersex individuals.

Moreover, if it were intersex, it shouldn’t have looked like that. The body should have been the other way around.

Because once the chest swells first, when it becomes male, that does not shrink again.

A chest that has already grown once does not get smaller again.

And if male genitals had formed, they would not disappear again either.

So usually, with intersex individuals, it would be a flat chest and female genitals.

If determined male, immature testes that had still been inside the female genital tract would emerge and that would make it male, and if determined female, then only the chest would swell and that would be the end of it.

I made a bitter expression.

Because it looked like I would have to check directly myself.

“In order to confirm the patient’s condition, I think I’ll have to examine it in a bit more detail...”

At my words, Yubing covered the body and said,

“In-detail?”

Without saying anything, I nodded.

Because this really did have to be examined in every corner.

For other people, maybe not, but for me, there was no meaning to it other than that.

A man who already had five wives saw other women as inanimate objects.

Wasn’t the chest I had just seen simply flesh too?

“N-no!”

And then Yubing shouted right away.

Where had the courage from flashing that chest earlier gone? Now Yubing was looking at me as though I were some kind of weirdo.

‘So it’s fine if you show it of your own will, but not fine if it’s by someone else’s will?’

I was thinking that was a very strange concept of chastity, when a voice came.

“If you examine it, can you cure it?”

Bulsiho was asking.

Asking whether it could be treated.

There was only one direction for treatment.

To confirm Yubing’s true sex, and if Yubing really was female, remove the eggs. That alone would be the end of it.

If Yubing really was female, then those would not be eggs but something like tumors, and if that were the case, removing them would make it simple.

Nodding, I answered,

“I would need to examine it in more detail, but if Yubing really is a woman, then it can be treated.”

“I-I told you I am!”

“Yes, well, then I suppose it can be treated.”

When I answered that way to the shouting Yubing, Bulsiho thought for a moment, then said carefully,

“Would it be all right if I do the checking myself? If I become your hands and feet and examine it and tell you?”

I wondered what she meant, and then it clicked. In period dramas, when treating the empress or consorts, didn’t female physicians take the pulse and do that sort of thing?

That was what she was offering to do.

I nodded.

“Well, that would be fine too.”

***

We moved to Bulsiho’s residence and sat in a circle around a wide bed where faint moonlight was seeping in.

At one end of the bed sat Bulsiho, with Yubing quietly seated beside her with the feet together, and on the opposite side sat Yo-hwa and me facing them.

Yo-hwa was still looking around with curious eyes while lightly holding onto my sleeve.

Soon a bamboo screen was lowered between us.

A curtain that blocked our view of one another.

And then, slowly, the sound of clothes being taken off was heard.

The sound of a thin silk skirt and undergarments sliding down to the floor filled the room.

Soon a calm but slightly trembling voice flowed out from the other side.

“We are ready.”

Bulsiho’s voice was low and careful, as though suppressing the usual seductive tone.

I took one breath and slowly asked,

“First, would you check whether there are both a man’s thing and a woman’s thing between the legs?”

“All right.”

“It’s too embarrassing, Lady Siho.”

“Endure it. You are the patient. This is not something to be ashamed of.”

I could see shadows moving beyond the screen, and then after a moment came a voice.

“The woman’s parts are all there, but for the man’s part, ah, only the two eggs are there.”

Intersex, but with the feeling of being an incomplete intersex condition.

It meant the female reproductive organs were perfectly developed, but of the male side, only the testes remained.

I asked Bulsiho,

“For now, would you send energy into that male part? And please observe where the energy moves.”

“All right. Hoo, this feels rather strange.”

Bulsiho’s breathing grew slightly rougher.

It felt as though a faint heat was rising from the other side.

It was the body of a beloved lover, but perhaps because it was still embarrassing, I felt something like heat from the other side, and then Bulsiho’s voice was heard.

“Mm. The energy spreads straight throughout the whole body. It feels as though a path has been laid from there through the entire body.”

“Spreads straight throughout the whole body.”

It was the moment I casually echoed her words.

A thought suddenly occurred to me that something was strange.

“Wait.”

Because ordinarily, a man’s yang energy is generated in the eggs.

That then gathers in the lower abdomen, in the dantian, and spreads throughout the whole body.

So spreading through the whole body was nothing special, but hadn’t she just spoken as though it did not pass through the dantian?

“Does the energy pass through the dantian?”

“No.”

In that moment, something flashed through my mind.

“Bulsiho, could you send a weak lightning energy into that spot? Just enough not to injure it.”

“Lightning energy? Understood.”

It was right then.

“Kyaaaak! Kkeuaaaak!”

A scream burst out.

Yubing was letting out a scream of agony.

“E-Elder, what in the world is this!? Yubing! Yubing!”

I rushed inside at once, grabbed the bastard’s eggs, and released powerful lightning energy.

Kwachijik.

“Guhk!”

The eggs burned away, and Yubing rolled the eyes back in pain.

Seeing that, I grinned and said,

“You bastard, so you were male after all.”

This was a classic symptom shown by crabs infected with parasites of the Sacculina genus.

The kind whose dicks had fallen off.