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Chihiro stands in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. Hina had helped her pick out the dress the last time they’d gone shopping together, but now it looks all wrong. It hangs off of her shoulders – which now appear far too scrawny – in a weird way. And have her knees always looked like that?
She isn’t normally so self-conscious. Really, most of the time Chihiro doesn’t think about her looks at all. She’ll throw something on in the morning and run a brush through her hair before hurrying to class. She doesn’t dress like Sayaka, or Sonia.
But today is different.
She can’t just wear anything. She has to wear something that proves to the world that she is a girl and that she’s proud. This dress is the best thing her closet has to offer but suddenly, standing in front of her mirror, she feels like an imposter.
“Chihiro?”
She jumps at the sound of Sakura’s voice at her bedroom door. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Sakura says, entering the room. “Your father let me in. I hope that’s okay.”
“S-sorry,” she apologizes quickly, crossing the room to meet Sakura. She burrows her face against Sakura’s shirt – a flowy pink blouse, uncharacteristic for her. “I’m just…”
“Nervous?” Sakura offers. Chihiro nods silently, balling her hand into Sakura’s abdomen. “Chihiro.” Her hand comes to rest against her girlfriend’s hair. “I hope you know that this isn’t something you have to do if you aren't ready.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” she whispers into Sakura’s shirt. “I’m not brave, I’m just… This is something I have to do.” Because she’s afraid that if she doesn’t today, then she never will.
Sakura places a gentle kiss to the top of Chihiro’s head, then holds her out at arm’s length. “You didn’t even give me a chance to tell you how beautiful you look today.”
Her cheeks burn, and she looks towards the floor. “You don’t think it looks weird?”
“Weird? It looks perfect.” Another soft kiss to Chihiro’s head. “Hina made a good pick.”
Her cheeks burn even hotter. “How did you know?”
Sakura smiles. “Because she picked my outfit, too.”
That seems to lift a weight off of Chihiro’s shoulders. Not entirely, but enough. She smiles back, and in that moment she feels safe. She’s always felt safe with Sakura.
Her girlfriend shifts, swinging her backpack over to her right shoulder. “I borrowed Hifumi’s face paint, like you asked.” She pulls it from her bag, holding it out to Chihiro. She stares back at it, her eyes flicking towards the blue, the pink, the white.
Sakura was the first person that she’d come out to, before she even really knew what that meant. She’d approached the Ultimate Martial Artist after class one day, books clutched tightly to her chest and her eyes afraid to look anywhere other than her pair of brown loafers.
“I… want you to train me,” she’d said, voice barely above a whisper. “I want to be strong.”
Sakura released a small sigh. “Chihiro,” she’d said, voice as even and calm as it always seemed to be, “you are already one of the strongest people that I know.”
Her heart had seemed to leap at those words, but she’d pushed the feeling aside. “I want to be strong like you,” she insisted. “I want to be able to… stand up for myself. And prove that I’m…” The rest of the sentence hung on her tongue. Prove that I’m a man. Why did it suddenly feel so heavy? Was it the fact that she would be admitting to her classmate the secret that she’d kept for so many months already?
“If this is something you truly want,” Sakura said, moving quickly to fill the silence, “then I will agree to work with you.”
“Really?” Chihiro asked, eyes opening wide and neck craning to finally bring her gaze towards Sakura.
Her expression was soft, a smile present on a face that was otherwise so severe. “It seems to mean a lot to you, Chihiro,” she said, placing a large hand on Chihiro’s small shoulder. “I would be honoured to help you accomplish something you so strongly desire.”
And that was how it had begun. Sometimes Hina would join them in their training sessions, and while Chihiro had always liked the Ultimate Swimmer she always felt the most comfortable with Sakura.
“Sit still.”
Sakura speaks evenly, a hand on Chihiro’s thigh as she approaches her girlfriend’s cheek with the light blue facepaint. Chihiro obliges, going so far as to even hold her breath to ensure that Sakura’s stroke is clean.
Her hand is a calming presence, and Chihiro allows herself to close her eyes. She breathes carefully through her nose as Sakura moves to grab more facepaint.
It had only taken Chihiro three weeks to tell Sakura the truth.
They’d met in the gym as usual, Chihiro having changed out of her uniform in a bathroom stall, like always. Her classmates had chalked it up to her shy nature, and she wasn’t going to correct them.
“Sakura,” she’d said, entering the room to find her friend already lifting a fifty pound weight as if it were nothing. “I have something I want to tell you.”
Sakura looked up, the corner of her eyes crinkling with a smile. “What is it, Chihiro?”
“I… haven’t been completely honest with you,” she admitted, voice soft as her eyes focused on a poster just over Sakura’s shoulder. “I’m a boy.”
Sakura stared at her for a long moment before setting down the weight at her feet. “What do you mean?” she finally asked.
“I mean that I’m not a girl. I’m a boy. But the kids in elementary school always made fun of me for being weak, and I always thought it was easier this way. To pretend to be a girl rather than to be seen as someone so weak.”
“Is that what all of this is about, then?” Sakura asked, gesturing to the room around them. “You want to prove that you can be strong?”
Chihiro nodded silently, tears welling in her eyes.
Sakura rose from the bench, crossing the room towards Chihiro. “I’ve already told you that I think you’re very strong,” she said, both hands resting on Chihiro’s shoulders. “This doesn’t change anything. In fact, this revelation might make you even stronger.”
Chihiro wiped at her eyes. “What do you mean?” she whispered.
“To carry the burden of this secret for so long. It must be a heavy weight to bear. I hope that I’ve at least somewhat lightened your load.”
Chihiro nodded, burying her face against Sakura’s shirt. Her friend said nothing, simply laid a protective hand against the back of Chihiro’s head.
“There.” Sakura pulls back from Chihiro’s face, the paint still cool against her cheek. “It’s done.”
Even though Sakura is no longer applying face paint, Chihiro still feels the need to hold her breath; like daring to breathe might shatter everything.
“I hope you don’t mind if I apply some to match,” Sakura continues.
Chihiro finally glances upwards. “Of course not!” she says, her lips curving upwards into a soft smile. “Go right ahead!”
Sakura smiles back, offers a quick nod, and then moves towards Chihiro’s full-length mirror. Chihiro remains on the edge of the bed, legs kicking idly back and forth as she tries to focus her nervous energy.
After confessing the truth to Sakura, the pair had grown closer. She was the only person at school that Chihiro felt she could fully trust, and it was nice to have such a close friend. Before Hope’s Peak, Chihiro had never really known what a friend was.
Over the course of the school year their sessions had begun to move from twice a week, to every day after school.
Slowly, Chihiro was growing – changing. Her muscles, yes, but her spirit as well. The stronger she got, the more she realized how little she cared about presenting like the perfect man.
Maybe wearing dresses had always been about more than that.
Sakura was spotting Chihiro one day, the latter laid out on a bench with a weight lifted above her head.
“Good work today, Chihiro,” Sakura said, hands splayed out beneath the weight. Sweat rolled down Chihiro’s temple as she released a loud huff of breath. “You’re that much closer to showing everyone what a strong man you are.”
Chihiro tensed beneath the weight, and it slipped from her hands. Sakura caught it in one fell swoop, moving it without hesitation back onto the bar. “What’s wrong?” she asked, staring down at her friend.
Chihiro turned, afraid to look Sakura in the eye.
What was wrong? This had always been everything she’d ever wanted, and now that it felt so close she wished it would all just go away.
“Sakura, I…” She curled her legs towards her stomach. She felt sick.
“What is it?” Sakura repeated, sitting down on the bench beside Chihiro and pressing a hand lightly against her back.
“I’m… not so sure I’m a boy anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Her lower lips wavered. It was something she’d been thinking about a lot, mostly in the dead of night when she was meant to be sleeping, but it wasn’t something she’d ever voiced out loud before. “I don’t think I want to be a boy,” she whispered, voice barely audible. “I think I want to… I think I am … a girl.”
The moment she’d first started wearing dresses and skirts she’d felt a sense of relief. As a child, she’d assumed that was merely a result of knowing she’d no longer be bullied for being “weak”. But the longer things went on, the more Chihiro realized she was at her happiest when presenting as a girl. While admitting her secret to Sakura had been somewhat of a relief – she was longer plagued by fear of what would happen if someone found out – it had put a different sort of pressure on her shoulders. A knot in her stomach every time Sakura used male pronouns or spoke about how good of a “man” she’d one day be.
“You’re a girl?” Sakura repeated.
“I… Yes.” Chihiro balled her hand into a fist.
Sakura rubbed a gentle circle across Chihiro’s back. “If you say you’re a girl, then you’re a girl,” she said. “You have nothing to prove to me, or to others.”
Chihiro nodded, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?” Sakura asked.
“For lying to you. Or for telling you one thing and then… and then changing my mind.”
“You never lied to me,” Sakura reassured her. “And there’s nothing wrong with discovering yourself. We are all still growing.” She paused for a moment, hand gentle against Chihiro’s back. “Recently, I thought I might have to change my mind about something as well, but that no longer seems to be the case.”
Chihiro sniffled softly. “What were you changing your mind about?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Sakura replied. “But I will say… perhaps it brings me some relief to hear that you’re a girl.”
Chihiro felt a blush creep into her cheeks, trying to bury her face even further in her arms. Sakura either hadn’t noticed her embarrassment or didn’t care – she bent forward and laid a soft kiss upon Chihiro’s temple.
“How does it look?”
Chihiro looks up from the hands folded gently in her lap. Sakura has turned to face her, orange, white, and pink stripes lining her cheeks in a mirror image to the blue, white, and pink on Chihiro’s cheeks.
“You look happy,” Chihiro replies, rising from her bed and moving to meet her girlfriend in front of the mirror.
“I am happy,” Sakura assures her. “And you look beautiful.” Her hand comes to rest on Chihiro’s shoulder. “And brave. Strong.”
Chihiro flushes under Sakura’s comment, but keeps her head held high.
“I think… I think I’m ready.”
The street is crowded. As they walk together, hand-in-hand, Chihiro wishes for a moment that she could be anywhere else. She’s never liked crowds, has never been good in social situations. That was how she’d gotten into programming in the first place.
But Sakura’s hand is warm in hers, a comforting weight as she guides Chihiro through the bustling crowd of people just like them.
People just like her.
She’s not watching where she’s going as she collides into a nearby blonde. If it weren’t for Sakura’s hand, Chihiro surely would have hit the pavement.
“Are you okay?” The girl turns to look at her, purple eyes shining with concern. She’s wearing a lesbian flag like a cape, her outfit a coordinated pink and orange.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Chihiro says, looking towards Sakura. “I’m s–sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was walking. There’s just so much happening…”
“Is this your first Pride?” the girl cuts in, looking from Chihiro to Sakura with a bright smile.
“Yes,” Sakura replies with a simple nod.
“That’s so exciting!” She pulls Chihiro towards her chest in a hug. For a moment she wants to panic, to push away from this girl she’s only just met, but after a moment she relaxes into the embrace. Something about the blonde feels safe; familiar.
They pull back after a long hug, the girl’s face still aglow with excitement. “What’s your name?” she asks.
“I’m Chihiro,” she answers, suddenly more certain of herself.
“Sakura.”
“Chihiro, Sakura,” she repeats their names in turn. “I’m Kaede! I’ve been coming here for a few years now, so I can show you the ropes!”
“What do you say, Chihiro?” Sakura asks, looking down at her girlfriend.
Chihiro nods. “We’d like that.”
“Awesome!” Kaede chirps, pulling Chihiro in for another hug. “Did I mention, I love your dress!”
“Oh.” Chihiro’s cheeks flush. “Th–thank you.”
“You look so pretty,” Kaede assures her, looping one arm around Chihiro’s shoulder. The other moves to wrap around Sakura’s waist. “This is my sister, Chihiro!” she shouts, earning a few cheers from those passing by.
Chihiro’s heart soars.
Sister.
After so many years spent running, and then hiding, she’s finally found a place where she belongs.
She looks towards Sakura, to find that her girlfriend is already looking back at her. Her lips are curved upwards into a smile. Love is reflected back in her pale blue eyes.