An Arcanist in Karakura Town 49 (Patreon)

An Arcanist in Karakura Town

Chapter 49

-VB-

Orihime Inoue

She slowly ran her hands down her round, pregnant belly. It wouldn’t be long until she gave birth, and what a thought.

She hadn’t even graduated high school, and she was going to be a mom.

Tatsuki was, too, but her baby would come later.

Her baby was coming out in the next month or so.

“And it’s not going to cause problems?” Inoue asked Alan.

“No,” he replied with a hum while hugging her from behind.

He was in the process of explaining things to her about how her delivery was going to go.

“Don’t pain medications do … uh … things?”

“Make sure you don’t feel too much pain when you’re in labor?” he asked.

“Yes, but also other things…”

He looked at her for a while before nodding. “You mean addiction, right?”

She nodded hesitantly. Japan wasn’t like Mexico, China, or United States. More like South Korea, the number of addicted individuals were very low, though it had been on the rise for both countries. It was taboo to do any kind of drugs unless it was strictly for medical reasons. Teen pregnancy was also a taboo, but she’s already here, wasn’t she?

She looked over her shoulder at Alan. He had his eyes closed and half of his face buried in her shoulder.

“And how do you know that?”

“... Would you like to tell you a story?”

“What kind of story? Is it related?”

“Yup. You know about the Vietnam War, right?”

She frowned. She did learn about in history class.

“Yeah?”

“A lot of foreigners went to Vietnam during the war. What they don’t like to tell you, even more so than the images of brutality they showed, is how many soldiers ended up using drugs to cope with the stress of death and despair.”

She froze.

His hands snaked around.

“Always so close to death. Always so miserable. What’s a little dose of heroin? How about of sniff of cocaine? Marijuana doesn’t hurt. Of course, they also had alcohol but that’s a little too inconspicuous, you know?”

Then he paused.

“But when most of those soldiers returned home, they never felt the reason to return to those drugs. Many but not all. In fact, 95% of them didn’t go back to drugs. Can you guess why?”

Despite the cold and dark nature of his story, she suddenly felt a little better about her delivery, too. If 95% of the people who willingly did drugs in Vietnam War didn’t go back to it… “No…?”

“Because stress was the bigger issue. Stress causes our bodies to go out of balance and our bodies do all sorts of things to return it, but when you have a constant stream of stress like that, can you be at balance?”

“No.”

“Exactly. What the drugs did was create an artificial balance. They reduced stress and stabilized the soldiers. It made them feel normal.” His hands and arms wrapped around her belly. “So that once they were back to normal when they came home, they didn’t need it anymore.”

“B-But what about addiction?”

“When you do drugs when you are already in balance, your body sees that it doesn’t have to maintain the balance it used to maintain, and so stops working normally.”

She had a eureka moment. “So when you take away the drug…”

“You are left in imbalance. Unlike with the soldiers, this changes comes from inside the body and not the outside. Your body may have an easy time to get out of balance but it takes a long time to get back into one. Especially when the brain is involved. But think about it like this. Won’t you be in a lot of pain when you are in labor?”

She gulped. “Y-Yes.”

“Your body produces adrenaline to counter that, but it’s not enough.”

“Yes?” She knew nothing about how the body worked. Her score in biology was… eh… she didn’t want to think about it.

“So if you get morphine, then you will feel less pain.”

Less pain. She’d probably like that-.

Wait, less pain?

“Less pain?” she asked.

“Yes, not no pain. Less pain.”

“Oh. So I’m still going to feel pain?”

“Far less than what you would have originally felt.”

“And I won’t have addiction?”

“No,” he smiled as he finally opened his eyes and looked up at her. Their eyes met, and she saw how confident he was. How sure of the words he said. “What if I told you that it’s actually a normal process in USA?”

“... It is?” If USA was doing it, then why wasn’t Japan?

“From what I learned by doing a few visits to the doctors, the ones outside of our visits, it’s because Japanese think it causes more complications.”

“Does it?”

“Majority of mothers use it and use it again with their next ones. No, it does not cause complications. What complications were about to happen were already going to happen already.”

“O-Oh.”

Now, she wasn’t feeling so good.

“Which is why I went and made this.”

He pulled out a … was that a raygun?

“You know how we’re not normal?”

She pouted. “Of course, I am!”

“Red bean paste on toast.”

“Ugh. It’s good, though…”

“So you say. Anyway, so I thought outside the box and I was like… can’t I just make a portal?”

“Wait-.”

“Or a space widener?”

“What’s that?”

“You know how black holes condense space?”

“Yes, that’s why they’re cool!”

“This gun does the opposite. It widenes space without actually widening it.”

“... Wait, doesn’t that mean that -.”

“When your water breaks, I can literally just reach in and bring the baby out. You won’t even feel any pain.”

So he was thinking about it! And doing something about it!

“... I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

But then she got a little worried.

“You’ve tested it, right?”

“Of course!”

“More than once?”

“Yes!”

“Thrice?”

“...”

“Honey, go test it again.”

“Yes, love.”

-VB-

A/N: a fantastical solution from a man with fantastical means.