Akito woke up to the instinctual feeling that something was off, as well as the dull throbbing in her stomach. She sighed and laid back down, paying it all no mind. She was used to her stomach feeling weird, it was something that almost always came with sickness and was therefore, just a fact of her life. At any given point, her stomach could start feeling weird for a while, and she'd just have to accept it.
She sighed and laid her head back down on the pillow, turning over and pulling her legs up closer to her chest to try and diminish at least some of the pain. It didn't work, leaving her groaning with impatience and sitting up in her futon. She rubbed the back of her neck and glanced around her dark room. The only streams of light came from the moon and a street lamp just outside the main estate. She had no idea what time it was, but she decided it had to be past midnight. Shigure had always called it 'The Witching Hour' when he told her stories of all sorts of monsters and demons that wandered the Earth at that time of night, looking to prey upon the little humans dumb enough to be out and about when they should be in bed. She quickly looked away from the window, not because she was scared she might see something out there, though. She just wasn't interested.
The throbbing seemed to get worse, making her groan in pain and lean over where she sat. She felt like she'd been simultaneously punched and stabbed in the gut, and the pain itself made her nauseated. She got up and stumbled out of her bedroom and down the hall to her bathroom. She turned on the light to the toilet and closed the door behind her, kneeling down to vomit into the bowl.
When she'd finished, she sighed and stood up, catching sight of a small trickle of red rolling down her left leg. If her coughing and vomiting into the toilet hadn't woken the other residents of the main house, then her subsequent shrieking definitely did.
It only took a few moments for maids to rush out and over to her, all the lights in the house being turned on in a frenzy along the way.
"Akito, what's wrong?" One of the older maids asked, gently resting a hand on the young god's back.
Akito frowned and stepped away from the maid before slapping her hard across the cheek. "Don't talk to me like that. I'm not your friend." She spat.
"Forgive her, Lord Akito, she's too tired to be in her right senses." Another maid said quickly to calm Akito's anger.
"Or she's just stupid, whatever excuse works." Akito sneered.
"My lord, what's wrong? Why did you scream?" The second maid asked, having grown used to the twelve-year-old's temper.
"I'm bleeding out with no sign of stopping. Get me Hatori."
"Hatori's very busy as a pre-med student. Surely another doctor would work? We could call an ambulance and have someone arrive right away."
"No, I want Hatori. He's never too busy for me, anyways. His world revolves around me."
The maid sighed, knowing there was no use in trying to persuade the young head at that point. "Very well, we'll call for him. Until then, why don't we stop up the wound, at least temporarily, so you don't bleed all over until he gets here?"
"No."
"May I ask my lord why not?"
"Because I don't know where the wound is." Akito said softly, casting her gaze down to her feet, noticing the trickle still flowing down her leg and the side of her pale ankle.
The maid noticed the trickle as well while another maid went to call Hatori in the other room. "It looks like it's coming from your leg. May I check?"
Akito nodded, letting the maid gently push up the bottom of her sleeping yukata. The maid pushed up and up until the robe had been gathered at her hip and the source of the blood seemed lie within her boxer briefs. The maid quickly dropped the yukata, glancing around to make sure no one else had seen.
"My lord, if you'll come with me. I know what this is and I can help clean you up." The maid said calmly.
Akito nodded and followed after her as she got a clean pair of boxer briefs that had been drying on the line. The maid then led her into another bathroom where she got something wrapped up in thin yellow plastic. The maid unwrapped the yellow thing, revealing what looked like the bottom part of a diaper. She stuck it inside the clean boxer briefs like a weird sticker before looking up at Akito again.
"Here, step out of your old boxers and into these. We can have the old ones cleaned for you." The maid instructed.
Akito blinked and decided to do as she was told rather than snap at the maid for telling her what to do. She pulled the clean boxers on and shifted a bit at the odd feeling of the diaper-like sticker inside of them.
"Hatori's on his way, sir. He'll be here in a few minutes." Another maid said from the doorway while the other cleaned the blood on Akito's leg for her.
Akito just nodded. "Is there ibuprofen in here? My stomach hurts really bad."
The maid nodded and finished cleaning off her leg. She then went to a medicine cabinet and brought out a bottle.
"I can't take that! Are you stupid?" Akito spat when she noticed the label on the bottle.
"It's ibuprofen, sir." The maid tried calmly.
"Ibuprofen for women, maybe. It won't work the same on me."
The maid blinked at that and silently decided not to fight it and got out another bottle of regular ibuprofen for the young god. She shook out two pills and got a small glass of water, handing them over.
Akito swallowed the pills down with the water and gave the cup back to the maid before heading back to her bedroom to wait for Hatori tiredly. As promised, it didn't take him long to arrive.
Hatori listened as one of the maids explained everything to him as he took off his shoes. "He woke up stomach pains and… bleeding? Did you give him any medicine yet?"
"Yes, I gave him regular ibuprofen. I tried to give him Bufferin Luna, but he saw the label and lost it. Evidently it wouldn't work as well on him." The maid replied honestly, shaking her head a bit.
Hatori looked up at the woman at that. "Well, I guess home schooling only does so much. He really needs to get out more often, but the moment he does, his body will probably shut itself down." He sighed. "Is he in his bedroom?"
"Yes, he's waiting for you."
"Alright. Does he know anything about what's happening?"
"No, Ren told his tutors to keep health education don't-ask-don't-tell."
Hatori sighed and shook his head. "Alright. You'd might as well make us some tea, then. I'll probably be here for a while."
"Alright. I'm sorry you had to be called here at two in the morning for this. You probably have classes tomorrow and your studies to worry about." The maid said to him.
"It's fine. If I don't tell Akito all of this, who will? Besides, I can just down a cup or two of coffee if I need it." Hatori said with a shrug before walking down the hall to Akito's bedroom. He knocked on the wood of the sliding door before pushing it open. His fatigue suddenly stopped mattering when the girl waiting in the room looked over and smiled at him.
"Hatori." Akito hummed happily, hugging her older cousin as he came in and sat with her.
"Hey, Akito. Not sleeping too well, huh?" Hatori replied, letting her climb onto his lap as she always had when she was a little girl.
"No, not at all. Did the maid tell you everything?"
"Yeah, she did. "
"Good, then you can help me get it bandaged. All she did was give me a diaper sticker."
"Actually, she did everything that you really can do for this. What she gave you was called a pad, because this is a kind of bleeding you can't just stop with pressure and a band-aid."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what you're experiencing is called a 'menstrual cycle' or, more commonly, a 'period.' It's completely normal and happens to every woman in the world."
"Why's it happening to me, then?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you just said that it happens to every woman in the world. So, why is it happening to me?"
Hatori blinked in shock at that. "Akito, do you think you're a boy or a girl?"
Akito paused at the question and thought it over for a bit. "Well, I'm pretty sure Papa always used to call me his 'little girl' or 'daughter' or something like that. But, I can't remember it exactly. Everyone else calls me a boy, though. All the maids, all of you, literally everyone. The entire world can't be lying to me. So, maybe I'm just remembering wrong. If everyone says I'm a boy, then I must be a boy."
Hatori sighed and gently started to rub her back. He made a mental note to never raise his own children as Akito had been, if he ever had children. "When you were born, Akito, you were born a girl. As per your mother's wish, however, you were brought up as a boy. I don't know why she'd choose to do such a thing, but she did. The only people who know otherwise are myself, Kureno, Shigure, Ayame, Ren, the maid who helped you just a few minutes ago, and the midwives who were at your birth. In short, you're a little girl whom everyone believes is a little boy. Now, you're twelve years old and you've started transitioning into an adult woman. You've started puberty, do you know what that is?"
"Kind of. It's when you get pimply and gross for a while, right?"
"Yes. If you keep eating well and wash your face every night, though, you can avoid the pimples. As a girl, you'll grow a bit taller, your voice might get higher, you'll develop breasts and wider hips, and you'll get hair starting to grow under your arms, on your legs, and on your pubic region. Plus, you've gotten your first menstrual cycle."
"Okay. So, what's the menstrual cycle do, then? Am I just bleeding for fun?"
"No, your uterus is shedding its lining and it's passing through your vagina and out of your body. This means that, technically, your body is capable of carrying and delivering a baby now. Every month, your uterus lines itself and waits a while. If, at the end of the cycle, the egg cell prepared isn't fertilized and embedded in the lining of the uterus, it sheds the lining to prepare a new one. Basically, your body finds out that you're not pregnant, and cleans out everything to get it all ready and fresh again, just in case you get pregnant the next month around."
"So, I could have babies now?" Akito asked softly, her nose wrinkled at the thought.
"It's possible, yes, but not at all a good idea. Your body might have a menstrual cycle now, but you're not nearly mentally or physically ready to have heirs yet. Don't worry, I think you've got a good eight to ten years before people start pushing you to reproduce. If this were medieval times, you might be pushed into a marriage and having kids now, but that's how people die in childbirth, and times have changed quite a bit. Most Japanese women don't have kids until they're in their thirties these days." Hatori replied to her with a small smile, glad she was taking all the new information well. He figured if her tutors could just teach her more than the things she had to know to run a company, she could be an extremely intelligent young girl.
Akito relaxed and nodded. "How do people get pregnant, then? You said the egg has to embed in the uterus, right? How does it know to do that?"
"Well, women have egg cells that contain half the DNA and chromosomes needed to make another human. These samples of DNA all come from you. That's how children get to look so much like their parents. Men, then, have sperm cells that contain the other half of DNA and chromosomes needed. The sperm fertilizes the egg and then pushes it up into the uterus. Once the fertilized egg is embedded in the uterus, that's conception, and the woman is pregnant. This generally happens as a result of sexual intercourse." Hatori replied to her easily.
"What's sexual intercourse?" She asked curiously.
"You can ask your health tutor about that."
"Alright. How do the babies get each trait from their parents? I mean, if a baby gets half it's DNA from its mother and half from its father, why do people always say I look exactly like Ren? Why don't I look half like Ren and half like Papa?"
"That's a great question, and more of one for a geneticist. Some genes that are passed down are dominant and some are recessive. For example, you got straight black hair like your mother, while your father had dark brown, almost curly hair. Your mother's gene for straight black hair must have been dominant while your father's hair was recessive. So, your mother's gene won out and was passed along to you."
Akito listened and took it all in, looking up when the maid walked in with fresh tea for the two of them. She watched as Hatori took a book out of his bag while they were served the tea, looking over the pages as he showed her the pages and pictures and examples of Punnett squares to show her generally how genetics could be calculated. The girl listened and sipped her tea, growing more and more sleepy all the while.
"Hatori?"
"Yes, Akito?"
"How long do periods usually last?"
"On average, they last between three to seven days and happen once a month."
"I might bleed for seven days straight?"
"There's a possibility, yes."
Akito paused at the thought and sighed. "I'm going to bed."
Hatori grinned and laughed, letting her crawl off his lap and curl up in her futon once again.
"Good night, Akito." He said, tucking her in once again and kissing her forehead.
"Good night, Hatori." She yawned, falling asleep before he could pack his things and leave the room.