“Shit dude, twins!”

“They’re hot.”

Going downtown was a mistake.

Not that I was mistake averse, not recently. But the confrontation facing me was one I’d hoped to avoid. The fact that people found me attractive. Before it wasn’t a problem. When you’re a boy you don’t usually worry about that kind of thing. Meeting a minimum standard, one that would lead to you being left alone was the common agreement amongst young men.

On the other hand, Reina, and by extension me, were naturally beautiful. Reina was picturesque, like a literal painting come to life. She had fair skin, long flowing hair, and a beauty mark that made her look like a Hollywood model. By extension, I was also most of those things. Although I’d already deviated from her in some senses.

 I was naturally more tomboyish than her, with my hair held up in a bun and my “put on whatever” fashion sense. My skin has taken on a slightly darker tan since I’d been spending quite a lot of time outside in the past few days. I didn’t speak with the same ladylike address that Reina did either. She was being truthful when she said that the god had preserved most parts of me.

Foreign memories were implanted into my mind, but I knew what they were. It was like being told your own past - a backstory even. I had been given a backstory. One that could feasibly explain why Reina and I were so divergent despite being born on the same day and raised under the same roof. It still stretched my own suspension of disbelief, but I did have a conversation with a god an hour ago, so who was I to judge.

That explanation being Reina’s father was very laissez-faire about the way he raised us. He was a man who didn’t believe in restricting his children’s interests. He was an artist himself and had to fight his own family to pursue it as a career; he understood better than anybody else how much a passion could mean to someone.

So when Reina became a lady like her mother, he didn’t object. And when I became a tomboy trouble-maker who really, really wanted to play the guitar, he was the one who bought me it for my birthday one year. In my past life I did so because I played a lot of rhythm games at my local arcade. I never said it was anything profound. That was true of Miyako too.

There’s usually that moment in every child’s life where their dreams and reality impact each other in a high-speed collision. My hobby was no different. I found it incredibly hard at first, and looking into the intricacies of reading music, composing… it nearly made me quit on the spot. It was two years until I started taking it seriously and pulled it from under my bed to try again, properly this time.

When I went up to my new school, I immediately joined the music club. As the only other female member everybody wanted a piece of me. It’d make their bands one-hundred times more marketable to have a cutie like me with them, and maybe they’d have a chance at going out with me.

Swerving on the subject of whether I like boys at all. I eventually stuck with Johnny and the other guys. They felt legit, like they wanted me to be there, and not just as something nice to look at whenever we were up on stage. We always had a good time.

Reina was much more of an artist like father is. He’d inducted her into the hobby at a very young age and she’d continued to indulge in it since. She never had an interest in making it into her career though, and she spent much more time getting involved with extracurricular activities that could help her into a top university.

The point being – that our existence as twins proves that genes aren’t the things that define us. What they did define was how attractive playboys in the street thought we were. Two such men were accosting us outside of a local café. One man had been dunked into a vat of acid, or spray tan depending on your perspective. The other was adorned with a variety of chains and pieces of jewellery. Both of them were as appealing as constipation.

“Hey girls, come hang out with us!”

“No thanks,” I scoffed. “Do you even know how old we are?”

Astonishingly he scratched his chin and hummed out an answer, “Twenty?”

“Seventeen,” Reina corrects him. “I do believe that would be considered illegal.”

“Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em,” the other man offered.

“Get out of my face before I find an officer.”

He held his hands up in defeat, “Woah! I like this one, she’s got an attitude.”

“Real tomboy. How about you come with us and we’ll teach you how to be a proper lady, like your sister here.” His decrepit hand reached out for her shoulder but before he could reach her, I intercepted his fingers and twisted them. Years of guitar training had given me an intense grip. He staggered out into the middle of the street as a crowd gathered around us.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!”

“Screw off, or I snap them off, bastard!” I increased the pressure and bent them back further.

“Okay, okay!”

I released him and he stumbled back like he’d been stabbed. He clutched his bruised fingers with a scowl, “Crazy bitch!” His friend followed him down the street as they retreated. A few people in the crowd laughed and went back to their business. What a dump. They didn’t even call the police. Reina didn’t even seem flustered.

“Are you okay Miya?”

“What? I should be asking you that.”

“Hm, but I wasn’t the one who fought them off.”

This girl. She’s hopeless.

“How is it that the very first time we catch the bus down here – we get assaulted by some playboys…”

“Oh, this has happened before. You have to be careful these days,” Reina nodded. “You didn’t break the man’s fingers last time.”

“I didn’t break them, I just… put some pressure on them, in the wrong direction.”

Reina did not seem amused by my answer.

“What did you want to bring me down here for?”

“I thought we could go shopping for something nice.”

“Right after we met god.”

“Yes.”

“…Okay.”

Reina smiled and dragged me down the street by my arm. Straight into the first clothing shop she could see. She zoomed down the aisles and picked out a series of outfits that were adverse to my own taste in sporty jackets and pants that covered the entirety of my legs. I picked through some of the racks of my own before Reina returned with a pile that nearly reached the ceiling.

While god has instilled my heart with a comfort for being a woman. He had not instilled me with a comfort for women’s clothing. That was clear from my wardrobe at home, and they way that I felt as Reina shoved a summer dress into my arms and threw me into the nearest changing room. “Do I have to?”

“Yes. When summer arrives you will thank me!”

“Do I really have to?”

“Yes! Hurry up Miya, other customers will want to use that room.”

What did I have to lose? Except my masculinity. I took off my usual clothes and stacked them into a pile. The sundress was a modern style, it left my arms and shoulders exposed. I slipped it on and mustered up some courage to step out and show Reina. I peeled back the curtain and stood in front of her for a second. I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.

Reina clapped her hands together, “Oh! That looks lovely.”

“I feel like a girl.”

“Hm. You are a girl Miya-chan.”

“In spirit, I am a man.”

Reina sighed, “Don’t say things like that Miyako, you make a nice girl. You don’t have to feel guilty about it.”

“Can we drop this? Please,” my words were sharp. Sharper than I’d intended them to be. I entered the changing room again. The pile loomed large. The fashion show would continue for a while yet. Shirts, skirts, shorts, and hats – everything that a girl could conceivably wear in the summer months around our town. Reina remained evenly pleased with every one of them.

“Are you going to put down my hair as well Reina?”

“Hm?”

“Why not let me pick something out? I feel like you’re just assessing things that you’d like.”

“Okay then, go find yourself something.”

It was only when I started running through the aisles. I wandered back over to some of the things that I was looking at earlier. A pair of denim shorts and a loose-fitting t-shirt that was tied in one corner. It was a summer outfit you would wear when going to the beach. But I found myself hesitating as I held them in my hands.

I was just a boy. A boy who did not know the first thing about being a girl. The safe refuge of the more masculine clothing was nearby. I could have dropped them and fled to a safe place. But another part of me wanted to try this – in the way that Reina had pushed me into wearing something else. I wanted to be able to do that for myself.

I stashed them under my arm and power walked into the changing room. The large straw hat that Reina had picked up, the shirt, and the shorts. She even included some stylish tinted sunglasses. I looked like I was ready for a day at the seaside. I gripped the curtain, it was no different from the other times I showed off for Reina, but I still found myself waiting for her consent.

“Are you okay Miyako?”

I exhaled a breath and pulled it open. I still walked like I used to, but with wider hips it made me look like I had shit myself. The grace of my sister was a long way away. Reina appraised my choice with a smile. “You look very nice. Is this your way of saying you want to go to the beach?”

“Shut up.” Reina did not laugh but I could always tell when she found something amusing. If Reina laughed out loud, I believed that the end times would come soon afterwards. I adjusted the hat. “It’s okay.”

“Would you like to ask the assistant to buy it?” As simple as the question was, for me it was like asking me which of my theoretical children I loved the most, or which limb I could live without. Reina didn’t wait, before I could object, she was on the other side of me, asking the shop attendant to bag some of the things that she liked.

I retreated into the changing room and swapped back into my street clothes. By the time I emerged Reina was waiting to take them off me. I handed them over and she marched to the checkout, where she paid for a rather sizable collection of items.

“Now, we are ready for summer.”

“That’s a few months away Reina.”

“This is the first thing you should learn about shopping – you should get it done early.”

Reina was a bit of a shopping addict, especially when it came to clothes. She was the kind of person who would rather have something and not need it than not have it at all. We did not do this often. I had rather let our mother handle it, although that often meant that Reina was picking things out too. It caused no small number of arguments when I wouldn’t wear the things she found.

“Don’t you think it’s weird Reina?”

“What is?”

“That we have this relationship that never happened.”

“But it did, we remember it.”

“Yeah, but we know that it’s not real. If we didn’t know that it wasn’t real, it wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“But that would defeat the point of helping you. My wish was to help Hideki, not to remove him from the universe. Our awareness of the situation is intentional.”

“I guess. You know, he said something interesting, that if you’d asked your parents if they’d accept me – that they would.”

“Our father is as generous as he is eccentric. And mother will follow his word. I believe him.”

“Would they really?”

Reina stopped, I nearly collided with her back. She turned to face me and poked my chest with a finger, “Are you fishing for a certain answer? That they wouldn’t welcome you?” My posture slackened as she went on the offensive. “If I asked them and told them your story, I think that they would have no problem with you or our arrangement.”

“It’s easy enough to say that – but I can’t stop being anxious about it.”

Reina backed off. The conversation ended there.

We marched on in silence.