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Gotou Hitori was not born as Gotou Hitori.
That was, to her, an irrefutable fact of the world that followed her ever since she approached her parents on that dark, dreary, frightening night (it was a regular humid, sunny summer day) shortly after her sister, Futari, was born. She was in third grade of Primary, and a particularly bad session of P.E. had left her in tears, crying all her incomprehensible pains and worries away in a janitorial closet, her young, closeted brain that was never shown any possibility of deviation from the norm unable to pin a name to the feeling.
But her parents were always there for her. As the years went on, they had moved to a more hands-off approach in regards to her socialization and personal growth, but at that critical age of nine whole years old they were still very much invested in making sure she at least tried to talk her issues out, and so they sat her down, and she poured all her feelings out. Of inadequacy, of being unable to fit in with the other boys, of being more comfortable around adult women than men, of enjoying baggy clothing and her weird attraction towards “girly” toys and the colors pink and-- and other behaviors and norms and societal affirmations her young adult self would soon enough curl her lip at and deem irresponsibly “normative”.
But to her pre-teen self, hearing her father, who was active in rock & metal countercultures in his own heyday in the 90’s say that he was well familiar with alternative forms of gender expression, and then his story of a friend of a bandmate’s brother, who was told he was a boy for half his life, but took a frustrated plunge, planted their feet and became someone true to herself: A girl… It was salvatory.
Several long nights of ruminations and browsing the internet and a visit to a therapist later, Gotou ████████ was no more, and in their place, Gotou Hitori took over their life and applied to a different school, cut off all contact with her classmates and dyed her hair pink.
Did things change?
Not drastically. At least, not at first. Medication with names too complicated for her young brain, including pills she now knew, and was thankful for, as puberty blockers and estrogen entered her daily routine. Her skin got a bit clearer, and her hair started naturally growing out past her neck - eventually allowing her to have the stomach-churning tomboy allegations from her new classmates dropped. Small miracles like those marginally improved her self-confidence, they let her function, however poorly, she could still wander into bookshops and music stores and, instead of feeling shame, simply feel out of place.
Dysphoric or not, Hitori was still a self-made pain-in-her-own-ass shut-in.
Narrow-minded, harmfully uncomplicated middle-school biology lessons taught her that, as boys entered ages in the double digits, their shoulders got broader, their hips less defined, their hands became more veiny, and their voices deepened, but none of that came to be, for her. At her young age of ten, she didn’t really comprehend why the supposed biological differences between the two sexes were important, but as she grew up, and grew disillusioned with society at large, she realized just how much of a literal life-saver those puberty blockers would turn out to be.
And so Hitori entered, and got through-- or rather, survived Middle School, and failed to connect with anyone. Hard to make meaningful bonds when you’re hiding a secret this big-- or so she excused herself. Blaming her… “condition” for being unable to make any friends, and subsequently unleashing all that bitter vitriol and acid onto her new guitar hobby left her thoroughly exhausted throughout all of her formative years.
And then the unthinkable happened.
The heavens must’ve heard her call, because for the second time in her relatively short life, Hitori was blessed by the guidance of another person. Fulmination rumbled in the middle of a deserted late-afternoon playground, in the form of a girl with lightning for her hair and a thunderbolt of a tongue as the Gotou girl was dragged towards her destiny, her guitar in one hand, and her own heart in the other.
And it was fun! Fulfilling, but also shamefully exposing - every single interaction with her new band left her feeling naked and emotionally vulnerable, but in hindsight, she would not trade a single of those episodes, those experiences, these liberating days of self-growth that helped her on her journey to become a functional human being. That pushed her to where she was today--
With her back pressed up against the wall, someone else’s hand slammed and locked in place next to her face to keep her boxed in, and the assailant’s other hand pinching her chin, pulling her whole face up and leaving her neck exposed. Yamada Ryo’s lithe but tall build left her in a frustratingly good position to kabedon other women, and her cold poker face, coupled with her androgynous looks could send anyone’s heart aflutter.
Unfortunately for herself, Bocchi’s heart was in a near-constant state of doing its best to hammer its way out of her chest, so to be publicly (it was, after all, still the peak hours in a commercial, higher class district of Shimo-Kitazawa) accosted like this, and flirted with left the pink Tsuchinoko lightheaded-- no, that was inaccurate. Lightheaded, too, was Bocchi’s natural state of being. Whatever name she would later pin to this feeling, she wanted more.
“Close your eyes, Bocchi.” Came the smooth voice of her suave, ever-confident bandmate, carrying a tone of authority that, while not truly turning the spoken sentence into a command, still left Hitori grasping for straws to find a single good reason to reject her words, to deny her smug nature yet another win--
But Bocchi was a natural-born loser when it came to social interactions, and she was putty in Ryo’s hands, and withered as well as blossomed at the same time under the bassist’s calculating, indecipherable gaze, and she really wanted to have her first kiss, so her pupils flickered down to her upperclassman’s feet, two unwavering pillars that supported a larger-than-life persona who got what she wanted, when she wanted, and could not be denied in her pursuit of entertainment and self-discovery, and eventually the eyelids followed them, leaving the shorter of the two in the dark, making her other senses noticably more receptive.
The brush of Ryo’s calloused fingertips against the lower half of her face sent shivers down her spine, the rustling of the wind partially blocked by the other woman’s body left her feeling slightly chilly, especially with her neck exposed like it was, but, despite the weather, her cheeks were still aflush in that weird way that left her unable to discern whether she was coming down with an early autumn fever, or if she was this flustered by Ryo’s actions.
And, finally, the feeling of Ryo’s soft lips against her own… Bocchi leaned in with all the little strength still left in her body into the most intimate touch she had ever experienced, an action she might not repeat anytime soon, maybe not ever, but that wasn’t a worry for the present day, present time. Right then she was laser-focused on the lightly sticky (from the meal she ate that Bocchi paid for, or because of her light lipstick… who knew?), warm, surprisingly malleable pair of lips pressing, uniting with hers, and the additional, wet appendage trying to slither its way past her teeth, into her good graces-- and, subconsciously, automatically, she chose to let it through.
The following seconds felt more akin to minutes to Hitori’s affection-deprived, and soon to be oxygen-deprive brain, and if not for the aforementioned burning in her lungs, she wouldn’t have made any effort to separate the ongoing exchange of fluids (gods above, french kissing for her first time?), but unfortunately for the unlikely duo, all good things must come to an end.
However, Yamada Ryo disagreed with that sentiment, and as her pink partner parted ways for an intake of air, she leaned further forward, surrounding the shorter girl with two arms instead of one, fully boxing her in against the backalley wall, and went back in for the metaphorical kill. But any more affection and attention than that, and she feared that the literal “kill” wouldn’t be exactly outside the realm of reality, so after another minute or two of sucking face, the two split ways for good, a string of saliva connecting the girls, but breaking apart as Bocchi’s knees gave out from the shock, and her back slid down the wall, into a sitting position, a dazed, flushed look on her face.
Ryo left her with some parting words, kissed the top of her head, and left, but Hitori couldn’t hear a word due to the unceasing concerto for now an audience of none of her own heart, as well as the hum of blood moving through her body akin to the sound of the ocean’s waves hitting the shores at the beach due to pulsatile tinnitus.
Bocchi eventually gathered her scrambled brain into a coherent enough singular blob that let her get up and take the train home, but she wouldn’t truly get her bearing and her thoughts into order until much later, especially when coupled with the unusual goodnight text from the blue-haired bassist she’d later receive.
Nijika calling off practice earlier than usual left Bocchi unusually absentminded on her way home, what with the suspicious behavior from both her and Ryo leaving the youngest half of the band concerned. Having said said her personal goodbye to Ryo, that being a poorly-kept secret farewell kiss on the cheek, and waving goodbye to Kita and Nijika both, she didn’t expect to be holding anymore conversations with her bandmates, maybe a goodnight text from Ryo, or some mildly amusing meme from the blonde drummer, but the familiar, hurried thumping of the band’s shortest’s feet shocked Bocchi out of her reverie.
The two girls then proceeded to talk about the band’s immediate future under the glow of twin drink vending machines, a cold can of coke seeping its temperature through the younger girl’s, in many meanings of the phrase “younger girl”, hand. And then, after a confusing promise to one day share what Nijika’s own dream was, the conversation turned towards matters of the heart, but in a more romantical context. And it was then that Hitori’s heartbeat slowed to a crawl, and a cold, tingling feeling unrelated to the nearly frozen drink in her left palm spread throughout her limbs, starting at the digits.
“Yup! Didn’t Ryo tell you? We’re in an open relationship!”
Relationship drama.
Something thoroughly, inseparably tied to the concept of being a “teenager”, the troubles and woes of the heart, the feeling of betrayal due to the whims of another young adult with an as of yet undeveloped frontal lobe-- But no. Bocchi refused to fall to the bait the universe decided to throw her way. She reached back into the depths of her mind, and, despite her thoroughly panicked state of being, found the relevant information she had kept at the forefront of her brain-- Ryo was dating someone else besides her, and she did tell her that. It’s just that… Bocchi’s heart was beating far too fast for her to actually listen to the words she was hearing, at the time. And Nijika quirked her eyebrow just now at the guitarist’s deer-in-the-headlights look.
“Um… I think I remember something like that.” Came her timid response, trying to look anywhere but at the girl opposite her. She was thankful to Nijika for introducing her to Ryo and accepting her into Kessoku Band, and she knew the girl enough that she wouldn’t go behind Ryo’s back and ask Bocchi to step away from the bassist, but the worry still remained. And Hitori felt terrible for it. “W-Why do you ask?”
Apparently, the taller of the two also happened to be an anthropomorphized book, because there was no better explanation for the way, and the ease with which the younger Ijichi read her.
“Ahaha, relax, Bocchi-chan! I just wanted to, uh, you know.” Hitori did not, in fact, know, but the blonde suddenly getting flustered and starting to beat around the bush, and play with her hair, and shuffle her feet led to the pink gal’s brain running down memory lane. Because the last time the other girl was acting this shy, she pulled her into a band.
“...Bridge the gap?” She guessed, and almost immediately regretted her words, if not for the look of clear shock on Nijika’s face, and a further crimsoning of the small drummer’s visage that emboldened Bocchi to clear the gap between the two, and, knowing that she struck the jackpot, but wasn’t brave enough to go for a kiss of her own, she put her arms on the blonde’s shoulders and planted a soft smooch on her forehead.
A moment of silence passed, wherein the social disorder within the taller of the two was trying to unleash its potent rage and send Bocchi into cardiac arrest, but it was not to be, because Nijika teared up, started giggling and responded:
“Bingo, guitarhero.”
And then she pulled down Hitori by her old, dusty jumpsuit and smashed their lips together.
She tasted of rolling thunder and bubblegum and home.
If one were to ask Gotou Hitori where she would be during winter break of her first year in High School, they would get a wide array of responses that would depend entirely upon how long ago the theoretical conversation would have taken place. In late Grade School, she would shrug her arms and go back to watching the TV. Directionless until the very last moment before her Middle School exams, young Hitori was just grateful to be a girl, the yearning to be something more not yet fully realized within her undeveloped brain.
The Hitori that was a Middle Schooler would lament her inability to break the social walls she put up herself between her, and her contemporaries. Having already started on the path to become a legendary guitarist, she might’ve probably guess that she would be in a long-running band with her classmates by then, and would have followed her aforementioned classmates to a High School of their choice, imitating the story of that one band in the mobile game she liked to play in her free time--
And let us not mention the dark, dreary place that Hitori’s mind was in during her first month of High School.
But during none of those periods in her life would she have even dared a guess that she would be spending the winter break in the mountains, in a bandmate’s vacation home near a skiing resort, where she would comfortably sleep the nights away, curled up under one blanket, sandwiched between her two girlfriend-slash-bandmates.
And as the roar of the fireplace opposite their bed lulled her to sleep, she clenched her hands, which were oh-so lovingly intertwined with Nijika’s and Ryo’s, and the clammy, sweaty feeling reassured her that yes, this was real, and yes, she was loved despite, or rather because of who she was.
She was Gotou Hitori. She was Bocchi. She was a girl, and she was madly in love with two other girls.