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The older he gets, the more he sees, the more secret his real journey gets. It’s what he was shooting for, after all, so it doesn’t bother him in the slightest… it just feels weird every time he thinks of how many things he used to have do achieve any progress on a daily basis and how little it he still has to do these days to achieve the same results.
It’s looking at pictures of his junior high self that always produces that effect. His high school self may tug a heartstring or two, but for the most part, the boy on these pictures is so much closer to who he is now, about to start his first day of work at a college café that it’s far easier to project himself onto the face of this boy.
His junior high self, on the other hand…
He hasn’t had the heart to delete some of these pictures from his phone just because Mitsuru is on them and they rarely see each other anymore: she’s busy with being a professional player, after all, and while he makes sure to watch every match she plays for, Hikaru obviously doesn’t have the funds. Even if he accepted his sister’s (fairly aggressive at times) attempts at paying for traveling expenses (and he did give in, once, because it was a gift for his high school graduation and he couldn’t always turn her down), he still wouldn’t have enough time to since he’s now a student with a side-job.
When he last saw her in person, though, the first thing she told him was that he looked much more masculine than before yet seemed to be comfortable with the longer hair which, in turn, pleased her to see. He had to tell her he just hadn’t gotten the time to go to the hairdresser about it yet, but that was when he realized he indeed felt comfortable with it… especially since nobody had been calling him “mistress”. For the first time in years, he finally felt comfortable adopting back a haircut he had sacrificed for the sake of finally being considered correctly.
He was in middle school when he realized that, if he kept his hair at the length he liked (right above his shoulders and flowing in the wind), his classmates and other kids on the playground would call him a girl. When he was in elementary school, it worked just well to fool people (“I’m a boy, but my mom wanted me to be a girl, so she gave me a girl name!” is what he’d always tell them, despite the fact he had no idea if his mother even remembered who Mitsuru or he were), but in junior high, even his own body betrayed him.
He did realize that, in some way, he was a girl, even before he decided to adopt Hikaru (he thought it sounded cooler) as his name. He wanted to be a boy so he could play soccer with the boys in the class (they didn’t accept girls on their teams, so if he wasn’t one, then they couldn’t turn him down!). The thing was, no matter how many times Mitsuru told him it was okay for a girl to play soccer and that he didn’t need to lie to be accepted, Hikaru still kept doing it because it felt better. He felt so much more confident when he “pretended” to be a boy.
It all changed in middle school, though. He couldn’t fight off the teachers reading official lists, saying his birth name without his consent, and puberty hit him before he could figure out the issue. The girl on the pictures with long blue hair and the lacey sleeves is, very technically, him and is, unlike the appearances, a boy struggling to deal with peer pressure and his own identity. This was his attempt at fitting in and to convince himself that, truly, he wasn’t a boy, he was just lost and tomboyish.
It didn’t work. At all.
By the time high school was about to come around, Mitsuru was the one who realized what was going on. She told him about a thing he had had no idea about before, but which just felt right – he hadn’t felt in control of his life ever since he had had to comply and wear a female uniform. It took him some time to truly get over it because the word has a much heavier meaning that it seems to have, but once he had… So much more opened up to him.
Mitsuru helped him tremendously with it since they were siblings living in an orphanage without a parent to watch over them. She defended him on multiple occasions so he could wear the male uniform, be called by the right name and be taken seriously in general. She was also the one who suggested to cut his hair short so there would be less confusion, which he accepted (not without some regret, but he understood it was needed). She took a pair of scissors and a razor, and there he was, truly looking like a boy.
Throughout high school and especially after his sister joined the professional soccer scene as an ace striker on an all-female team, he managed to complete several medical interventions. What was at first just hiding his chest as safely as possible (or else Mitsuru would’ve bitten his head off, that’s for sure) became adapting his body to what he felt more comfortable with. Physically, he changed, sure, but inside, he was still the same person and his friends understood that.
He’s now come far enough that, legally, he doesn’t have to ever worry about what junior high put him through. He got hired as Hikaru and will study as Hikaru, not as some girl he only shares a body with, apparently. This means he can, on the other hand, sweep the story under the rug until he feels more comfortable being open about it.
He stops staring at the picture of his younger self timidly trying to focus on a camera lens and finishes to tie his brand new apron.