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The night before, she dreamed of Penthesilea.
Towering above her, bathed in the eerie light of Tartarus, a sword in each hand and cold metal obscuring her face, if there was any face beneath the armour. Father yelling, and she knew she ought to be afraid of this thing that had sprung from her.
From her. From her. In her mind she could feel her name, and her power, pulsing and hurting, but no fear, never fear again.
She sank into unconsciousness with nothing but joy and relief in her heart. She knew who she was.
***
“There’s something I want you to see.”
Yukari stopped mid-way through her recitation of the current school gossip, a small frown forming at the interruption which she quickly covered with a sip of her coffee. Mitsuru winced, but it could not be helped. It was far too easy to let Yukari talk, watch the movements of her hands and her lips and say nothing, and today she needed desperately to say something. She inhaled the sweet-scented air of the cafe, exhaled slowly.
“Here.” She reached into her jacket and pulled out a photograph. Yukari took it, her thumb running across the worn and crinkled surface. She glanced up at Mitsuru, and then back at the photo, her brow furrowing.
It was a cold Sunday in December, the only day both of them had been able to make between Yukari’s education and Mitsuru’s “managerial training,” as her Father’s former subordinates referred to it. Every day brought them further away from shadows and battle. Grief still lingered, but it no longer hung between them like a shroud. Slowly but surely the members of SEES were returning to lives that held some semblance of normalcy, or, in Mitsuru’s case, discovering such luxuries for the first time. She seemed to be constantly busy cementing her grip on the Kirijo Group, attending or preparing for or debriefing after some meeting. But she made time for her old friends.
Especially Yukari Takeba.
The two of them came to this cafe often. Yukari always seemed, either by planning or instinct, to direct their outings in smooth curves and lines around the town that ended outside its doors just as one or the other was feeling fatigued. The staff recognised her on sight, and now they recognised Mitsuru, too, just as her own assistants and (grudgingly tolerated) driver recognised Yukari. She had ordered Mitsuru’s favourite tea perfectly without prompting. They had taken seats at their usual booth, Mitsuru in the chair close to the wall and Yukari in the one that offered a view of the people walking outside, as they always did. The two of them were bleeding into each other’s lives, which was horribly upsetting and very improper.
The thought that this one moment could end it all was terrifying.
“Uh… it’s nice? Is this your… cousin, or something?” Yukari offered, once it became clear that Mitsuru was waiting for her to speak.
“No,” Mitsuru said. Her right hand had begun squeezing her left arm without her noticing, a nervous tic. She forced both hands back into a dignified clasp on the table. She wanted to reach out and snatch the photograph back, as if that would undo the damage. The thought sprang up, as it had hundreds of times before, that she should burn it the next chance she had.
“It’s a photograph of myself.”
Yukari tilted her head. Again her eyes darted from Mitsuru to the photograph, back again.
“Huh. I always pictured you being kinda girly as a kid. You were cute!” she quickly added, “just kinda… boyish, with that haircut and those clothes.”
A sick feeling rose in Mitsuru’s stomach. She didn’t need to see the photograph, she could picture it perfectly. The hair barely scratching the top of the ears, the immaculate shirt and trousers (”You look just like your father,” people had cooed) and the smile that she hated the most, even though of course she’d just smiled for the camera, of course it didn’t mean anything.
She glanced around quickly, noted that none of the other patrons of the cafe or its staff were watching. It was busier than she would have liked. With the afternoon crawling into evening couples and older women had begun to file in, chatting happily amongst themselves while the staff hovered nearby, ready.
Nobody was looking at her, though, except Yukari, who had begun to look concerned.
“You’re acting weird, senpai. Is something wrong? It’s not like you to be so nervous.” She looked at the photograph again, and Mitsuru had a horrible premonition: her brown eyes suddenly widening in disgust as she figured it out. That thought was enough to shatter her last lingering hesitations.
“Yukari, it’s a photograph of me before I knew- no, before I had the courage to say it, it is me but not as… Ah, I,” she said, stumbling over her words as hours of speech preparation evaporated under that confused gaze. “I was, was more than just boyish, you understand.” She forced her mouth to form the words, “I was… To anyone who knew me, I was a boy.”
“Wait,” Yukari said, laughing, “you mean some kind of weird anime thing where you had to dress like a boy to inherit your Dad’s business or something?”
“What?” Even with her extremely limited knowledge of anime, Mitsuru was very certain that Yukari had not at all understood. She realised that she had hoped, somehow, to tell Yukari her secret without ever actually being explicit. A nudge and a wink and then onwards as if nothing had changed. She steeled herself to destroy that hope. “No, it wasn’t that. Yukari,” she leaned over the table and stared firmly into her eyes, ignoring the blush that formed under them that she was sure was mirrored on her own face. She lowered her voice to a whisper.
“I was raised as a boy, because everyone, including my Father, believed that I was one.” Yukari inhaled as if to speak, but Mitsuru pressed on. “They believed so because I was born… born with the ‘parts’ associated with one, do you understand? But my mind, my self, is that of a woman.” She spoke the last part with all the assurance she could inject into her voice.
There, the moment when the look on Yukari’s face changed, her mouth forming a little “oh” just as Mitsuru collapsed back into her seat, feeling weaker than she ever had in Tartarus.
She reached for her cup and took a sip of her lukewarm drink, lowered it too quickly to the table, to hide her trembling. She wrapped her hands around it and watched the contents slowly spiral, the soft lines of milky white gently giving way to the warm brown of the tea. In the back of her mind a half-dozen tutors squawked that it was improper for a lady of her standing to avoid eye-contact so blatantly, even under the most shameful of circumstances. But then, she thought, they had always whispered behind her back that Mitsuru Kirijo wasn’t a real lady at all, and besides, there was no force on the earth that could have convinced her to look up at Yukari’s face at that moment.
Nothing. A dead silence that offered no clues to interpret. She could see at the edge of her vision that Yukari hadn’t moved. What thoughts were running through her mind now? Judgement? Betrayal? Disgust?
“I didn’t know,” Yukari whispered eventually.
“I went to great pains to ensure that nobody would.”
“You didn’t trust us?” Her voice wasn’t hurt, it was a controlled monotone that frightened Mitsuru far more.
She stared into her tea. “There are some things that I never believed I could trust anyone with.”
“But we-” Yukari stopped so abruptly that Mitsuru wondered if the strain had shown on her face, then softly added, “I guess it was naive to think that I knew all your secrets after just a few years.”
Mitsuru winced. “Well, I am telling this one now. And though I would appreciate it if you kept it a secret, even from the others, I understand that-”
“Wait, I’m the only one you’ve told? Not even Akihiko-senpai knows?”
She paused. “Correct.” A little lie, skirting around a painful truth.
“But he’s known you so long…”
“Akihiko has many virtues, but observation and deduction are not among them. I’m sure if they were he could have pieced it together, despite my efforts. And given our… closeness, I thought that perhaps it was better to let you know now. I’m giving you a chance to… make any decisions regarding our relationship that you deem necessary.”
“Huh? Senpai, what are you saying?”
She steeled herself, and pushed away the remaining cold tea. “I understand if you no longer want to associate with me. On either a professional or personal level.” She glanced up, then, looking for the flash of relief. She had practised how she would react to that, as well as several… less pleasant outcomes.
Instead she found Yukari staring straight at her with nothing more malicious than a slight frown, as if Mitsuru had asked her a difficult mathematical question. “Huh? ‘Associate’ with you? We’re not really business partners or anything, I mean I guess back in SEES we were kinda, but… We’re friends, right? Although, I mean, I never…” Her eyes flicked to Mitsuru’s face before beginning a sweep of her body, and Mitsuru blushed as understanding dawned.
“I’ve had treatment from a young age. You won’t find anything that would confirm it.”
Yukari jumped and looked away. “Ah! Sorry, senpai, I didn’t mean… oh geez…” She took a sip that was almost a swig from her own cup, wincing. “Ugh, you must think I’m so immature, that’s something I’d expect Junpei to do.”
Mitsuru cringed internally at that thought. “Well, as I say, I told my father at a very young age, and he helped me acquire the medication I needed to achieve,” she waved a hand at herself, “this.”
“Well, it worked!” Yukari said, a little too brightly. “You know I’ve always said you had an excellent body, senpai!”
She felt her blush migrating to cover her entire face, but Yukari at least seemed worse for wear, her mouth hanging open as if it could still catch the words that had just sprung from it. “That’s very… flattering,” Mitsuru finally said. “Thank you,” she added, when Yukari didn’t respond. That only seemed to make things worse, Yukari’s blush deepening as she nodded frantically, looking away.
“Well I guess at least I’m not that dense for not figuring it out, huh, senpai? You’re basically body and soul- uh, when did you first know?” she said, a little too fast and a little too bright, her face still a distracting shade of pink.
A woman in a floral-print dress glanced over from two tables away, and Mitsuru lowered her voice, hoping Yukari would catch on. “I suppose… for my first few years I was a very normal boy, by all accounts. The first time I told people I was a girl they thought I was playing a game. I never thought that anyone would object. Then one day, I…” she closed her eyes and cringed as she tugged at the edges of the memory, “I must have found a dress somewhere in one of the old storage rooms. I liked the colour, so I wore it while I read, even though it smelled of dust. One of the maids saw me and had me take it off and bathe immediately. I assumed because it was dirty or old but she was just… so angry and I didn’t understand why. I was crying so much when I went to Father that he thought I’d fallen or cut myself.”
She smiled to herself, remembering her Father’s face. Feared in boardrooms across Japan, he had never looked anything but kind and gentle to her. She still saw him so clearly, even now. Yukari was leaning on the table, and nodded slightly when Mitsuru caught her eye, urging her on.
“I don’t know if he thought I was just being foolish, but he bought me a new dress. I was so happy,” she smiled deeper despite herself, “perhaps in retrospect I was simply happy that I had gotten my way. After that he would always indulge me without complaint. Staff who disapproved openly were removed. It seemed so normal that I don’t even remember the first time he called me his daughter.”
“Heh,” Yukari chuckled softly. She met Mitsuru’s quizzical gaze and said, “I guess you were Daddy’s Little Princess too, huh? We had that in common.”
And suddenly, she knew she would be safe.
“Perhaps he felt that being a Kirijo tasked with destroying the shadows was a burden worthy of a little indulgence.” She looked at Yukari, still scanning her face for some hidden scoff or disgust. “When you first became part of SEES, he said that he was happy that I would finally have a female friend.”
Yukari seemed to think for a moment, then murmured, “I think my dad would have said the same about you. He’d probably think you were a good influence. All glamorous and studious.” For a second a flash of hurt passed over her face, and Mitsuru almost interrupted to tell her that she understood it, she knew that grief that would suddenly strike out of nowhere, but then Yukari was smiling again. “Don’t tell the others, but I was kind of a tomboy as a kid. If my parents back then could see me in pink skirts and frills right now they’d probably have a heart attack.”
“I find that hard to imagine. I… have always been a little jealous of your sense of fashion, truth be told.”
“Really? Oh it’s not anything fancy, I just follow the magazines, really. That’s probably why the guys don’t even notice me next to you or Aigis.”
“Well, I can’t claim to be an expert but if that is the case then men’s taste is far worse than I had imagined.” Mitsuru took a sip of her tea and her fingers did not shake, though she frowned as the lukewarm drink passed her lips. “Hmph.”
Yukari sipped her coffee and seemed to come to a similar conclusion. “Ugh, maybe we should order some new ones. I can’t believe I got so distracted talking that I let good tea and coffee go to waste.” The sentiment was startlingly close to Mitsuru’s own, and the thought that she might be rubbing off on her friend was a… warm one. But the next words were entirely Yukari Takeba. “Senpai, if I buy a slice of cake will you split it with me? I’ll feel guilty for weeks otherwise.”
She smiled. “Why not?”
Yukari made to rise, then stopped and lowered back into her seat, her expression serious.
“Do you need money?” Mitsuru asked, “I’d be happy to cover the expense.”
Yukari shook her head, then reached over and took Mitsuru’s hands.
“I- Yukari?”
“Senpai… Mitsuru. I’m really dense sometimes, huh?”
The callouses from her bow were rubbing against Mitsuru’s fingers. She looked at Yukari, but words seemed to have trouble forming in her throat.
Yukari carried on regardless. “Sometimes I forget that even you get scared, you know? I didn’t even realise it until just now. Ugh, even when you said Akihiko-senpai didn’t even know I still didn’t get it.”
“Yukari.”
“It’s okay. I’m not gonna tell anyone or spread rumours or anything that might hurt you. And I’m definitely not gonna stop being your friend.” She smiled and Mitsuru became acutely aware of the pressure of her fingers. “I mean, I don’t think I could do that even if I wanted to. You’re stuck with me.”
The breathlessness had now become a fully-fledged lump in Mitsuru’s throat, so she could only nod emphatically, smiling. Yukari nodded back, then abruptly released her and stood, heading for the counter.
Mitsuru watched her, resisting the urge to run her fingers over the places their hands had touched.
***
“I am Mitsuru Kirijo. I hold my head high when I give that name. Thank you, Minako. You have given me pride.”
Arisato grinned, then suddenly engulfed her in a hug that seemed disproportionate to her size. Even in her own room she instinctually glanced around in case anyone had seen.
“Ah! Yes, well.” Mitsuru returned her embrace, having spotted no sudden Peeping Toms or hidden assassins prithee to this display of affection.
“We’re gonna be bonded forever, okay? No matter what, I’m always gonna be there for you, Mitsuru! And I’ll always know you’re here, giving me strength. Remember that, ‘kay?”
Mitsuru had long ago given up on understanding everything her younger friend said, but she felt reassured all the same. “Quite. Together we will defeat the shadows, I am sure of it.”
“Yep!” Minako released her, still clutching the keys to her motorcycle as if they were a precious jewel. “Now.” She walked back to Mitsuru’s couch and picked up the DVD she had brought with her. She could just make out the ghoulish face adorning the cover.
“Wait, just one more thing-”
“No more putting it off, Mitsuru! If you get scared, I’ll protect you.”
“No, it’s not that. Arisa- Minako, there was something I wanted to tell you. A… secret, I suppose.”
“A secret?” Minako frowned. “Is it about Tartarus, or the shadows or something?”
Mitsuru reached into her shirt pocket. “It does not relate to our mission, you see-” Her fingers fumbled the photograph and it tumbled to the floor.
Before she could move, Arisato was crouching down at her feet. “Whoops, you dropped this! Here.” She stood and held the picture out, but before Mitsuru could take it back Minako’s red eyes had fixated on it. “Huh?”
Mitsuru almost snatched it back and turned away, stuffing it out of sight. “It’s nothing really, forget I said anything, I was-”
“I guess Mitsuru was cute even as a child.”
She turned, and was met with Minako’s open, smiling face.
“I… did you…?”
Minako tilted her head, then stepped forward and hugged her again, but so gently that it was as if only the warmth of her body were touching her.
“You said it the other day, right? Mitsuru Kirijo is a woman who can accomplish anything.” She pulled away and looked firmly into Mitsuru’s eyes.
She could not look away. Not for the first time she felt as if that gaze was stripping away any performance, any false front concealing her true self, but finding nothing wanting. “I do recall saying something to that effect, yes.”
Minako brightened again, the intensity leaving her eyes as if it had never been there. “Yep! Mitsuru is Mitsuru,” she said, with an air of finality.
She nodded, not entirely sure what had happened, but happy. She wondered if she had always known, or if it really was that simple to her. Minako threw herself onto Mitsuru’s couch and patted the spot next to her, and she supposed that it didn’t really matter.
“Well... Back on the subject... Do we have to watch that DVD?”