Chapter 321
"I wore it, but that irritating adhesive thing couldn't contain my condition."
After struggling against the congestion in her language center, Aldraya finally managed to form a sentence.
Her voice sounded flat yet faintly trembling, like a violin string drawn too tight.
She explained that the strange adhesive object made by humans—what she meant as a worldly sanitary pad—had indeed been worn by her.
However, her words were tinged with a rare note of dislike, a confession that the object felt irritating to her, a violation of what she referred to as her "purity."
For Aldraya, whose existence was upheld by divine purity and order, the attachment of an industrially made foreign object to such a private area of her body inevitably became an intrusion, a marker of worldly limitation and necessity that she might instinctively deny.
Yet her explanation continued toward the true core of the failure.
The pad, designed to absorb ordinary menstrual blood, proved utterly ineffective against the reality of the fluid leaving her body.
Aldraya realized, or at least observed, that the liquid was not "dirty blood" in the human sense.
Her words, though stiff, conveyed a deeper truth.
The abundant, thick, and continuous fluid was something else entirely.
In her next painstakingly assembled sentence, she offered an explanation that was both shocking and strangely touching.
The liquid, according to her, was "her feelings that had been leaking for far too long."
'I can't take her home right now; that would only traumatize her and make her angry forever.
But what can I do here, in the middle of a carnival?'
Hearing such a blunt yet fantastical explanation, Theo's hand reflexively rose and struck his own forehead with enough force to express deep frustration and confusion.
The sound echoed faintly in the narrow alley, a period marking all the strangeness that had piled up over the past half day.
Inside his head, waves of questions collided.
What was he supposed to do?
How was one supposed to handle a former angel whose bodily fluids were a physical manifestation of "leaking" feelings, something even ordinary pads could not contain?
Every option that crossed his mind felt inadequate, like trying to plug a spring with a single tissue.
His thoughts quickly scanned through possible choices.
Taking her to a clinic or hospital was clearly not an option.
There was no doctor on Earth who would understand or be able to diagnose a condition like this without causing even more trouble.
Trying to clean her up in a public place like a market restroom was a huge risk, filled with the potential to attract attention and unanswerable questions.
One thing that surfaced clearly in his mind, only to be firmly rejected, was taking Aldraya home immediately—escorting her back to the dormitory and leaving her alone to deal with this mess.
Theo knew the consequences of such an action would be far worse than the puddle of fluid on the ground.
Aldraya, in her unique and sensitive way, would take it as rejection, as abandonment at the moment she was most vulnerable and did not understand herself.
It would plunge her into a deep abyss of melancholy, a sorrow that might never manifest in tears, but in frozen silence and eyes that stared blankly forever.
Their relationship, painstakingly built from supervision into partnership and then into something subtler and deeper, would shatter completely.
Aldraya would withdraw, perhaps not merely reluctant to greet him, but truly disappearing into her shell, becoming a porcelain statue forever untouchable.
So that option had to be discarded.
Theo needed to find another path, a solution that could handle this embarrassing physical emergency while preserving the fragile trust and emotional connection he shared with Aldraya.
'Right. She isn't human. She's a former Supreme Angel. A worldly approach may be inadequate.'
"Aldraya, allow me to ask—back in the Heavenly Realm, what color felt most like yourself?"
In the midst of his deadlock over practical solutions, a flash of memory illuminated Theo's darkened mind.
Aldraya's true identity, which often felt abstract amid their everyday life at the dormitory, suddenly became highly relevant.
This was not merely about a girl with a strange bodily problem; this was about a former Supreme Angel, one of the Thirteen entities that had once ruled a far higher realm.
Worldly logic, including pads and public restrooms, might not be the right tools to handle a phenomenon rooted in heavenly essence.
This thought opened a different line of reasoning.
With a shift in his tone—from panic to something calmer and more curious—Theo asked a question that seemed unrelated.
He asked Aldraya, in a gentle yet clear voice within the silence of the alley, about the color she favored at the time of her birth in the Heavenly Realm.
The question was a dive into the core of Aldraya's primordial identity.
Not a favorite color in the ordinary sense, but a color tied to the moment of her creation or emergence in her original realm, a color that might represent her pure essence before all this worldly complexity and human emotion arose.
"White. Like my hair, like the pure light I first saw.
No matter that I once betrayed, no matter how many times I was reborn, even when this form is broken, that color never changed: white."
Aldraya fell silent for a moment, her glassy, still-empty eyes seeming to look inward, tracing a corridor of time that was unimaginably long and turbulent.
Theo's sudden and seemingly irrelevant question managed to pierce through the fog of physical confusion overwhelming her.
A flash of deep self-recognition appeared behind her gaze.
When she finally opened her mouth, her voice sounded clearer and more focused, though still flat.
She responded with a statement that was simple yet laden with unimaginable historical weight.
The color she favored, Aldraya said, was white.
Exactly the same as the color of her hair now, strand by strand like unstained snow silk.
And most importantly, Aldraya added with surprising firmness, that color had never changed.
Her choice endured across all transformations and unspeakable suffering.
White remained her color even after she committed a great betrayal against the heavenly hierarchy, an act that surely tore at her soul.
It stayed the same through the countless cycles of reincarnation she was forced to undergo, a process so long and complex that it surpassed even the most abstract mathematical concepts such as Berkeley cardinal, an experience that should have eroded all memory and preference.
Even when she was cast aside by Quil-Hasa, the Ruler, and branded as the Deformed One, a label designed to crush her pride and essence, the color white endured.
This was a monumental declaration of steadfastness.
Aldraya meant that not a single tragic event—betrayal, reincarnation's torment, or humiliation—had been able to erode her love for the color white.
That color had become an inseparable part of her deepest identity, a constant amid an ocean of change and suffering.
"I have a solution to handle your problem, Aldraya. But before RWIA brings it into being, I need to ask your permission."
Fhhhh!
"I need your consent to absorb and understand all of your memories—from the moment you were born of Quil-Hasa, every second that passed, every emotion and inner conflict, up to this moment, as you stand beside me."
A quiet satisfaction, almost like enlightenment, crossed Theo's face after hearing Aldraya's answer.
To be continued…