I stared out the window of one of the hotel lounges, at the tiny garden they had inside of the city.
I'd had to vacate my room, so my suitcase was next to me. I was clutching my tablet like a stuffed doll and trying not to cry. Meanwhile, Reiko and Kaminari were still at school, and hadn't seen any of my frantic messages yet ... my desperate, bilingual messages, about needing a place to stay now and being a mess and not knowing what to do.
It wasn't even my confusion over my transformation that bothered me the most. That TS visa was my ticket to stay in Japan with them. If it was invalid, I'd have to go back to Canada.
See, immigrating to Japan without a magical TS express pass is borderline impossible. Like, even worse than immigrating to Canada, although at least they don't abduct your kids and lock them in cages and then farm them out to Christian adoption agencies. Like in another North American country I know.
You basically have to marry a Japanese national, then live here for like ten years and hope your application for citizenship is approved. IIRC. Working here isn't enough; they're big on having foreign workers take care of their elderly, but not so big on letting their Filipina nurses grow old here themselves.
So, marriage is your only option. And like ... I'd be okay with that? Kaminari can have her baby, and I can marry Reiko. Except that I can't, because while there are individual cities (like Sapporo) that recognize same-sex partnerships the country itself does not.
But then, what was I planning to do, anyway? I was always going to have to find a random guy to marry, right? Or have a ... a ... a thing that I can't have! Because my intersex body wasn't equipped for it, is what I thought. And if Reiko couldn't change me the rest of the way, then what was I going to do?!
I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands into fists, trying not to cry or panic out here in public. I'd almost succeeded in fighting back the anxiety, when suddenly-
"EEP!"
-someone reached down my skirt from behind, and felt up my butt.
I turned around and saw a girl with twintails walk briskly away, tugging her tight sweater downward as she did so.
Okay, guys were too scary to confront about sexual assault, but I wasn't going to let this one slide. "Hey!" I ran up to her, and she stopped as I did so. "What the hell?!"
"Ahh, ahh, sorry! Mein Japanese ist nicht so gut, I am tourist who speak only German ... "
"Gut!" I told her. "Deutsch ist eine schöne Sprache! Jetzt sagst du mir warum du mich berührt hast!"
Kaminari wasn't the only one who could learn a foreign language from Reiko. Even if I spoke it badly.
Also, this girl was pretty clearly ethnically Japanese, or at least half-Japanese. She had dark brown hair and her eyes were some shade of blue, but her features were still Japanese. So that wasn't a plausible excuse- wait, crap, I was assuming what language she spoke based on how she looked! Oh my goddess, I thought, I'm so racist!
... also she looked kind of familiar. Was she another anime ch-
"Ah, heh heh heh, that's true, isn't it?" She was backing away, speaking in Japanese and not answering my question. Her eyes cast about for an escape route.
"Say 'I'm sorry.'"
"I-I just mistook you for one of the TS daughters, and wanted to see if it actually worked!" Now she was yelling and stamping her foot as she lied.
"Then why didn't you reach around to my front? Because if you had, you might've been very surprised." I folded my arms and glared at her.
She couldn't take it. She ran. And I didn't know if it was my expression that was so scary, or the very idea of a girl with a cock.
I sat down in a seat near my luggage, and clutched my sides and tried not to shake. It didn't work ... it felt like I was burning up inside, and I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. Worse, I'd spoken in Japanese without realizing it again, hadn't I? What language was I even thinking in now?
Everything got all swimmy and blurry when I tried to answer that question. I shook my head to clear it, then put that thought as far out of my mind as possible, and distracted myself by connecting my tablet to the hotel wi-fi. That girl looked so familiar, and I wanted to see if ...
Okay, yeah. That was definitely her. One of the more famous tsundere, from some really complicated historical magical fantasy game. An H-game, no less, with a title that didn't make sense.
How many people had TSed into anime and visual novel characters? I guessed it shouldn't be too surprising, since those were major Japanese cultural exports. But geeze, imagine finding out that the weird looks you're getting are because everyone recognizes you from porn! I was so glad that hadn't happened to me.
Gah, I was going to be sick. I had never been groped before, unconsensually. I had a terrible headache, like all my anxiety and panic had concentrated itself on my scalp. Worse, it hurt where she'd grabbed me. Girl bodies were so much more sensitive than I ... than I ...
I was about to think "than I'm used to," but that was the weirdest part. It was only if I stopped to think about it, like I did when trying on clothes the first time, that this body felt new and unusual. That my reflection felt like something I wasn't allowed to have. If I just acted normally, just didn't think about it, it was like I'd always been her. The girl in the mirror, I mean.
I tried to remember more details about her. What her life had been like, or what mine would have been like if I'd been brought up in Japan.
It felt like trying to catch a live fish with greased hands. And no, that's not a lewd metaphor. See, if I tried to think about what it'd take to get to the Inoues' (Kaminari and Reiko's adopted parents) house, I knew exactly how to do it ... find an IC card design I liked, put down the deposit and load money on it, press the card to the turnstyle, and pray that the train isn't crowded. But if I tried to recall why I knew all this, I just got confused and felt shaky.
I'm an abuse survivor, okay? I know a few things about repressed memories. Not Hollywood-style memories recovered by hypnosis, but the tricks your brain plays on you, to keep you from realizing that your church and caregivers are dangerous. Like how it'll let you remember something but not put it in context, or just not form a long-term memory at all. There are gaps in what I remember of my childhood, and things I don't want to know.
But this? This didn't feel like that. I didn't know what it was.
I just knew that it went away when I stopped questioning who I was, or trying to remember specifics about the past. When I just let myself be my inner schoolgirl, named-
My phone buzzed. Kaminari and Reiko had IMed me at the same time.
It occurred to me that I hadn't been very coherent when I had messaged them earlier, and had in fact been crying and scared at the time.
I took a deep breath before turning on my phone, and working out what to do and where to meet up.
Where to meet up, it turned out, was the easy part. Reiko went to practice with her band after school, so Kami and I hung out at the "live house" that let girl bands use their stage. They had a café, so she bought me coffee and macarons and tried to distract me, by telling me about this hot guitarist that every girl she knew had a lesbian crush on.
The conversation was awkward at first, but not because she was talking about a crush other than me or Reiko. It was because she was trying to speak in a language that she didn't know as well as Japanese. Why had I retained my English fluency, I wondered, when she and most other TS daughters hadn't?
She did seem to be relearning it super fast. Just not fast enough to gush about lesbian crushes, I guessed.
I put these thoughts out of my head, and just let myself speak to her normally, without thinking about what language it was in. She seemed surprised at first, but after that things went much more naturally. Neither of us wanted to break whatever spell this was.
While she went to the restroom, though, I sat there thinking about all this. And about that weird SCP dream I had, where I'd explained that there is no mental change. Whatever your girl personality is, I'd realized in that dream, it's something that'd been there under the surface all along, waiting to come out.
That explained Kaminari and Reiko, I guessed? And all those TG stories I'd read that confused me.
Like, in Japanese TSF manga it's often humiliating and something they're forced into, and their personality changes to accept it. Or else they're so horny that nothing else matters, because as everyone knows the female body is inherently sexual in a way that other bodies aren't.
(That was sarcasm. But I can't complain too much, because a lot of those manga are hot.)
English-language TG has that too, but there's also this subgenre that's like ... "Yay, I'm a girl! I get to be a girl!" And maybe it's embarrassing at first, but girl things are things that you get to do, like shopping for clothes or even going on dates as a girl.
That never made sense to me. I always wanted to know, why aren't they fucking terrified? Why don't they panic as soon as it starts, and then lock themselves in the bathroom and have to be dragged out kicking and screaming?
Why don't they react the way I did?
As I thought about it, though, I suddenly wondered the opposite. Because like, I'd always wanted this? Accepting myself as a Japanese girl, and being accepted as one by my girlfriends, was the most profound experience of my life. And everything that affirms my identity, the one that I'd wanted to have to begin with, just makes me feel warm and fuzzy on such a deep level.
I get to have this reflection. I get to go shopping for clothes for it. I get to live in Japan with my girlfriends ... I hope.
So why hadn't I accepted it when it happened? Why had I reacted like it was a monster out of a horror movie, instead of enjoying it?
I felt like if I could understand that, I'd understand why I was fluent in both languages. But only when I accept it, and don't think too hard about which one I'm using.
Or maybe it had nothing to do with it. Either way.
"Gah, I'm sorry I took so long!" Kaminari hurried up to me, clomping across the floor in her winter boots, holding her coat in one hand and her pet's sleeve in the other.
"Same." Reiko gave an apologetic bow.
"Reiko says you're not in as much trouble as it seems like? But we'll have to talk once we get back, since this is not something you want to discuss out in public." She winced.
"Okay." I nodded to her, and gathered up my things.
Of course, as excitable as Kaminari was after a cup or two of coffee, she started telling me all about it on the walk to their home from the train station. "See, it's a misconception that the TS visa is only for people who haven't TSed yet. As long as you've been TSed into an ethnically Japanese girl, and you fulfill the visa's requirements, you get to live in Japan!"
"Okay. So why'd Matou-san tell me otherwise?"
"A lot of people resent the TS program, Claire-née." Reiko's breath made white puffs in the air, and her voice was partly muffled by her scarf. "You saw that from your airport visit. It brings out a lot of complicated feelings in people, whether they see it from outside or go through it themselves."
"Complicated feelings ... yeah." For just a second, it felt weird that the cars here drove on the left, and the houses had like zero offset or yard a lot of the time. Just a wall right up next to the sidewalk. It was so different from massive North American lawns.
I tried not to think about where I was, and instead focused on Reiko's voice. "There is another thing they resent, of course," she said.
"Oh?"
"Ah, Reiko has had people from the government try to stop her concerts before." Kaminari winced. "Or give people like you a hard time, because they were TSed by one of her songs and not by a 'proper' licensed transformation specialist."
Reiko just nodded.
"But the good news is, you have rights! You still have your visa, correct?"
"Yeah." I patted my bookbag.
"Okay! So what we'll do is, we'll find someone you can appeal to, and they should let it go through. If not, we'll just find someone else."
"What'll you do after that, sis?" Reiko looked up at me. "Are you planning to marry someone?"
I groaned. "One thing at a time, okay?"
Reiko nodded slowly, still giving me an unreadable look.
As it turned out, the Inoues were really friendly and accepting. I had no idea how they'd react if they knew the three of us were dating each other. But like, Reiko had apparently already told them about me and how I was going to stay here, so when we got there she introduced me as her sister from Canada. My inner schoolgirl responded with a practiced bow and a Japanese "sorry to intrude," after taking off her shoes.
They had dinner waiting for everyone, and apologized profusely for how little there was (there was tons), how different it must be from the Western food I was used to (it was delicious soup but kinda fishy), and how I'd have to room with my "sister" and Kaminari because the spare room was filled with stuff they hadn't sorted.
Turns out, they run an antiques shop? And it has a furnished basement. There's a tiny bedroom that my girlfriends share, and a much larger main room they have to themselves. Kaminari just uses her phone and her Switch nowadays, but Reiko has a desktop PC down there, and a really good sound system. And a kotatsu! Seriously, the place felt so warm and cozy, I didn't even think about how the chairs don't have legs. If anything, I felt like there should be a bowl of mandarin oranges to eat while I kept warm at the kotatsu.
Anyway, Kaminari and Reiko got out a futon to set up in the main room, and then Kaminari offered to sleep in it tonight because I hadn't gotten a turn with Reiko yet. She even volunteered to do Reiko's homework for her, because she is awesome like that.
Of course, that was the night that we found out I was a futanari.
"Sis?"
My brain was still broken.
"Sis, are you okay?"
I mean, it'd just snapped in two. Like how the word "futanari" literally means two ... somethings. Even my inner schoolgirl didn't know its etymology. It's one of those words you just write out in kana.
"I am deeply sorry for touching you there without your permission, Claire-née. It is dark, and I wasn't sure of what I was looking at, and I wanted to make sure."
Reiko had a cock, and I had a vagina.
I flopped my lifted-up hindquarters down on the bed, feeling a sharp pain where I'd been grabbed that afternoon, and just started giggling madly.
Of course. Of course! It made perfect sense, right? My brain was divided in two, so of course my crotch was as well!
... it didn't actually make sense. But I was kind of losing my mind over this. Like seriously, those were some alarming giggles. They were the giggles of madness.
Reiko crawled up beside me and placed her arm around me, giving me what was probably a worried look. "Please talk to me, sis."
"I have a womb," I said, before giggling madly again.
"That does seem likely." She nodded.
"I can have babies."
"That is something you ought to be careful about, sis-"
I turned to face her, and grabbed both her shoulders. "You can give me a baby, and then I don't have to marry anyone!"
Why wasn't she as excited as I was?!
... is what I was wondering, at the time. Partly because I didn't know what she was thinking, and partly because my slit was doing the thinking for me.
Kaminari wasn't the only one with this kink.
"I really feel you should think about this," Reiko said. But I was already breathing deeply, and not because I was having a panic attack. Because the idea of doing it, of doing this, of having her inside me that way that I'd never been able to before, was making me go mad with lust.
That, and the day had been so exhausting, and I was tired of questioning everything. For once, I just wanted to do what felt right, and enjoy it instead of fighting it.
So I did. And after realizing that she couldn't talk me out of this, Reiko did too.
"Ugh ... "
I woke up alone, in a disheveled bed. I guessed Reiko and Kaminari had gone to school, and let me sleep in.
My crotch hurt so bad. Not just because it was my first time, but also because it turns out, there are parts of the typically-male anatomy that are really sensitive to being stretched like that.
I staggered my way to the downstairs restroom, a tiny closet just down the hall, barely remembering to put my slippers on before entering. A minute later, I clutched my naked sides and shook.
I'd let Reiko come inside of me unprotected.
I'd let Reiko come inside of me unprotected.
What the hell was I thinking?!
I mean, obviously I wasn't. That was the problem. My brain broke in half, and let me have the hottest sex of my life because of the potential consequences. Just like in my favourite TSF manga. But now it was the next morning, and suddenly I was like, what have I done?!
I didn't want to go to high school while I was pregnant! And having Reiko stretch me had been painful enough, I didn't want to have to push a whole baby through it!
"Oh goddess," I whispered, and shook. "Oh goddess. Oh goddess."
At least I could get an abortion, right? Maybe? That'd sure convince the visa officials that I was serious about moving to Japan ...
"Fuck." I pressed my hands to my face, and started crying.
I took a bath, for all the good it would do me, and got dressed in our bedroom, resigned to my fate.
That's when I noticed the note Reiko left me on the nightstand, next to a bottle of pills.
Claire-née,
If you're still sure that you want this, then please, disregard this rude message. Otherwise, take one of these pills as soon as you see this.
Oh, thank goddess. And Reiko. I got out my water bottle from my bag and filled it from the bathroom sink, not even bothering to put my slippers on, before downing it along with the emergency contraceptive.
Only once I had done so did I read the rest of the note.
I love you, big sis, and I would be happy to give you a child if you so chose. But you were not acting like yourself last night, and I was worried. So I wanted to make sure that you had the choice, when you were able to think clearly.
Was it even legal for someone her age to get these? Oh wait, I remembered she'd looked to be in her thirties just a few months ago. Back when she was ...
Holy shit Rei Ayanami kept the morning after pill around
I took a few deep breaths to steady myself. Adolescent hormones were a hell of a drug, weren't they? I knew I shouldn't be deadnaming Reiko, but the part of me that she'd bedded explicitly in-character as Rei still remembered it pretty vividly. This was fanfic fodder, okay?!
Deep breaths, deep breaths ...
I looked back down at the note.
I know the idea of marrying someone that you don't know is also scary. But it is not your only option, sis. You don't have to marry a stranger, and you don't have to become pregnant. There is another way.
I can talk to you about it after school. I don't have practice today. Mom and dad work from home, so they'll make you breakfast, okay? Please get something to eat and take care of yourself. Mistress and I will see you soon.
I love you.
Oh goddess.
Reiko had said that she was experimenting with songs to turn people into guys. Was that ... would she really consider doing that for me? Seriously?
I ...
No.
No, there was no way!
I squeezed my hands into fists, including the one that was holding the paper, and shook. Imagining having that feeling of acceptance, of rightness when I looked in the mirror, and then giving it up for someone I loved.
I knew that I'd do that for her, because I'd basically already done it for Kaminari. Remember? That whole time that I stayed as a guy, and didn't think about gender identity or wanting to be a Japanese girl or anything, because I felt like she deserved that and I didn't.
So like, I knew what Reiko was feeling right now. I just ...
I knew that I couldn't let her.
Even if it meant having to go back to Canada.
Also holy shit my crotch hurt.
