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Pinoko will never be a woman, in body.
Time is merciless and turns even the healthiest of bodies and the most beautiful skin into a shadow of their former self. But not for her. Her skin, eyes, height... nothing changes. Nothing can change when the body in question isn’t truly human.
And Pinoko envies. From the most damaged patients who only survive thanks to Dr. Black Jack and her post-surgery care, to the ones who search for him for purely aesthetic reasons.
“Doctor, please, you must fix this face of mine! Look at it!” says a woman whose face is perfectly symmetrical, with beautiful, normal skin (not artificial) and an even more beautiful body.
It’s baffling how she can say that to both the doctor, who has a scar cutting his face apart (like the bombs did) and different skin on one side, and Pinoko herself, who clearly does not look like a child should.
Black Jack takes it as he usually does: with thinly veiled sarcasm and barbs, coldly asking for almost impossible amounts of money. She accepts after whining, crying and creating tall tales of her oh so difficult life as a billionaire’s wife. Neither of them budges nor replies. The woman threatens them with her husband’s reputation (not her own) and leaves angrily.
Pinoko quite likes that. The true patients, those who need their help to survive and go on with their lives, aren’t about money. But patients like this woman? It’s a waste of the good doctor’s skill in useless flesh, and they both agree. It’s always a delight to see those patients go instead of wasting their time and perfectly good beds and bandages.
The doctor can ignore the patients after the surgery is done and only do the very basics of socialization when checking the post-op. But Pinoko is the one who has to care for them, mind their pains and requests, and try to force some gratitude out of those who can only complain after being given new life.
Life and beauty can be paid for. In fact, it’s much easier to live if you have either money or health.
Pinoko and Black Jack have neither. Nor can their bodies be “fixed” so easily as this woman’s.
Regardless of how much time passes and how much she ages, her appearance won’t change. Pinoko is forever stuck in this (fake, so fake) body of a little girl.
“Thank you, little girl! As expected of the doctor’s child! You’re like a pro!” the latest patient, a man who would’ve lost both legs and a hand if not for the surgery, comments, smiling wildly. Nevermind the price of the surgery, he knows it was worth it.
In her earlier years, when she’d just gotten this body from the doctor (still so young, just eighteen), she’d have thrown a proper fit. Screaming at the poor patient, telling him to mind his own business and “how could he not recognize a beauty like her? And clearly she’s the doctor’s wife, how dare you?”
But nowadays, Pinoko is long past caring. How could someone believe this toddler looking girl, who still lisps every other word, with chubby and small fingers and feet that seem straight out of a cartoon, think this is a 22 year old woman? Even she would’ve laughed, should she see someone like herself.
If even Black Jack, who gave a body to an assortment of discarded organs (by her own sister, nonetheless), still forgot her true age, how could this patient, who’d be out of the cabin in less than a week, realize that?
In her dreams, she’s almost always in her true body. Long gone are the dreams where she’d skip around, jumping happily and playing with animals. Her initial experiences in her child-like body gave her child-like dreams. She can’t quite remember her dreams from before she’d been given this body. Maybe she shared her sister’s dreams.
To be fair, she barely remembers much from the time she was just a ‘tumor’, as her sister described her. Apparently, she’d even had ESP powers and talked telepathically. Pinoko wishes she still had them — it’d make caring for the big lugs of patients much easier, plus she wishes she could see the ever skeptical Black Jack’s face when he realized paranormal powers existed.
But between having those powers and being literal lumps of organs, and having this body and living with the love of her life, the choice was pretty obvious.
In the bad days, Pinoko angrily daydreams of a different choice: instead of powers, why couldn’t she have a real, breathing body of a woman her age? So many awful women exist and treat their bodies as trash cans — she’s treated over hundreds of them by now, only to see half return with even more destroyed bodies, ruining all the work both of them put in — so why couldn’t she have a real body?
Her dreams have changed as the years passed. Now, Pinoko pictures different things: slow dancing, going on a cruise and being able to see the horizon, being taller than the bars… and sometimes just going through the daily motions, but in the right body. Reaching the taller shelves at the supermarket, being able to buy the freshest fish of the day without having to ‘wait for her parents to buy it’, and especially, being able to drive.
Driving is the biggest necessity, especially after the really dangerous cases or when the doctor is injured. They can’t trust anyone to help them out and even taxi drivers can be working with the latest yakuza boss who just needs Doctor Black Jack’s expertise. And yet, the doctor always has to drive himself. Even with an accessible car seat (they checked), her limbs don’t have the mobility for driving. Her eyes don’t always work as well, being glass and all.
Pinoko hates it. Her sole wish in life is to stay with her dear Kuroo — he finally allowed her to call him by his real name, as long as they’re far from others — and care for him. But she’s never good enough. Not capable enough and never for lack of trying.
He is more than aware of her frustrations. In his latest trips, he always tries to look for the latest in artificial bodies, trying to find solutions for their impossible problem, but he always returns empty-handed.
Pinoko fears for the future: when he’s an old man in need of help and her small body can’t help with even the basics.
Kuroo fears for the future as well: when he’s gone, killed by one of the many crooks he’s forced to deal with, and Pinoko is left behind to fend for herself in an empty cabin. He doesn’t dare to think about the possibility of being involved and dying.
They would never say this, but they both wish for the same: when one of them goes, for the other to go as well. No one gets left behind.
She knows he dreams of her as well. The real her, in her real body. One that could only ever exist in dreams.
But he never comments on it. Much less acts on it.
It’s obvious when those dreams happen. It’s the first thing she notices in the kitchen in the morning, while either of them is setting up breakfast (whoever is less tired from the previous day’s surgery).
It was in the way he looked at her. Not like a child or a nuisance, tired of her complaining and demands. Not like a doctor looking at a patient either, all too clinical and checking for any symptoms, anything wrong, he has to fix right away with a scalpel.
Like a man gazing at a woman he loved.
It was her favorite expression on him. Gave her shivers every time.
With time, that expression became more frequent. Perhaps to reflect how her mind also outgrew even the smallest parallels with her current body. To reflect who she really was, below the artificial skin, muscles, and bones.
At least her soul wasn’t artificial.
The gaze burns into her back. She can feel him wondering “what if”.
She wonders about that all the time.
How much easier, better life would be if she’d been allowed to have her own body. Being born as a real twin and not called a tumor.
She knows she also wonders about his own life: what if that mine didn’t exist? What if his mother hadn’t died? What if there had been no war?
Try as they might, daydreaming solves nothing. And so they get back to work, discussing the patient of the day and how to handle meds, bandages and post-op care.
Those moments were flitting, always. The more they talked and the more he looked more at her, he was brought to reality. So was she, as she tried finagling with dishes, hashi and sitting on a much too high chair — one for a toddler, not a woman in her late twenties.
Reality was a cruel mistress.
When a beautiful woman shows up, she always worries. What if this one finally steals him away? Shows him all that is possible with a true woman, the dreams of marriage, family, of having someone at night as well as during the day. What then? Would they send her away?
But no one came close to his fellow doctor friend. Pinoko is still awed by her. As much as she fears her (for stealing the good in her life), she also admires her.
A woman who chose survival and a new body to do so. A woman who can no longer be a woman. Just like her.
She tries to make him touch her.
But he never allows it.
Even though her mind is an adult’s, her body never will be.
What can be possible in dreams could never be in reality, when they’re very much awake.
Why does it have to be a child’s body, she constantly asks herself. Every time she sees her reflection, or when utensils fall from her too small hand, or when she needs a stepstool to even reach the sink (which is always).
Pinoko isn’t stupid. She does understand why. With all these years so close to medicine, she understands some symptoms and conditions just by looking, the ever faithful nurse and assistant. She can name the surgical instruments and correct the quantity of medicine per body weight as easily as the ingredients and measures for tonight’s dinner.
This was the size of a body that could handle her underdeveloped organs. No other size would work.
A bigger body could not function, the limbs were useless and any metabolism was almost non-existent. They tried it.
A purely artificial body, nothing that could ever be truly human.
But something that fits for someone who should have long been dead.
Pinoko tries to be grateful. She really does. But sometimes it’s just impossible. It feels less like a gift and more like a punishment. Being stuck in the body of an eternal child. Not even a proportional child’s body at that.
A walking cartoon. That was all she was.
Even the patients who knew nothing about medicine commented on how she looked like she came straight from the TV. Some wondered if she was a robot, or a new invention by the mad doctor. Especially as she now spoke and acted her age, it felt off.
Some patients, particularly the elderly, didn’t want to be treated by her. Pinoko just ignored it and made it very clear it was her or the air taking care of them. The children were always fascinated by her while she, in turn, didn’t know how to deal with them. She tried to be motherly, but was always treated as a fellow child. It broke her heart.
When she calls her body broken, he has no answer, except commenting that so is his.
Pinoko is grateful for him, from the bottom of her heart. She really is. If not for him, she’d have been long dead — and probably so would her sister, not that one ever appreciated it.
But it’s laughable for him to compare his body, which does have its own difficulty but is purely and completely human, to the aberration she lives in. Sees herself as.
Those are their worst fights.
There’s no changing either body, but the gall to compare them angers her to no end. While she’s usually the one to apologize (being far more mature than him in some aspects), these long days of silence only end when he brings an olive branch.
She is grateful to Kuroo and will always be. But some things not even the doctor who gave her a chance at life can possibly understand.
“Why did you give me this body?”
It’s not the first time she asked, and it certainly won’t be the last. Most times, the tone was curious, grateful. The other times, the ones she always regrets, they’re like this.
When she asks amid tears, feeling the brunt of pain, and none of the joy of having a mouth to even express these feelings.
His replies were always logical, medical. A man of reason, even if emotions dominated him constantly and he tried to pretend otherwise. This time, though, it was different. Black Jack chose emotions.
“Because you reminded me of me.”
This was the very first time he said anything along these lines.
At that moment, he wasn’t doctor Black Jack.
It was Kuroo staring at her. Ever so vulnerable, just like he’d been as a child. Before the world showed him exactly how cruel it could be. But Kuroo had always remained inside the doctor.
She wished she’d also had a previous identity. Something that represented who she truly was. The adult, not the little toddler everyone saw. She wondered what name she’d been given by her family. Maybe something so traditional and elitist she’d end up hating. But it still would have been something — an identity was better than none.
But she’d always just been Pinoko. No other name or other previous life. No family either. She’d always envied him for having a past, as hurtful and traumatic as his had been.
Still, Pinoko was the name chosen by him.
So it was as special a treasure as this body.
“I saw myself in you. So determined to live. Nothing could convince you to give up and die. Even if no one was waiting for you on this side.”
He had many people waiting for him across the Sanzu River. His mother on the other side, who died protecting him. A doctor who saved him, told him to suffer and adapt or give up. Who Kuroo emulates to this day, as doctor Black Jack. So many friends who have now passed. So many favorite (and hateful) patients as well. And yet, Kuroo still chose this world. He chose back then as a child and now as a middle-aged man.
She didn’t have anyone waiting for her, be it on the side of the living or the dead.
Pinoko, a “cancer”, an “aberration” to her sister and the rest of her family. Never to become anyone, never to be considered even a human being. Just a lump in her twin sister’s body, though she didn’t remember almost anything from that time (apparently she’d even had paranormal powers — that, she’d quite like now). And she still chose to remain in this world.
Both chose to live, even with all odds stacked against them. In a world that couldn’t care less if they survived or not.
But the possibility of having a life, making choices, being with others — even if not our own family — made them want it, no matter what. To fight tooth and nail for it.
Their vulnerable moment was cut short by him. His eyes searched elsewhere, conflicted, ashamed of showing his true self. A self still too scarred, too hateful and much too easy to hurt.
Pinoko walked to him and raised her hand, asking for his. Her hands could barely hold his fingers. But it was still warm and filled something they both needed.
They smiled at each other, softly, shyly.
No fear in her eyes. Absolute fear in his.
And then there was a knock on the door. Another patient, another life and death situation, another surgery only Dr. Black Jack could solve.
She let go of his hands. Pinoko understood it was now time for Kuroo to be the doctor. While she wished they could’ve stayed like that (forever), she couldn’t be one to complain. It was because of his profession that she was even here, alive today.
The only thing she hoped was that today’s customer didn’t turn out to be a horrible person. Fate brought truly awful people to the doctor’s doorstep, just as it also brought the really good ones, who gave them faith in humanity.
In vain, Pinoko wished for a day when only good patients would visit them.
Just like she wished one day she’d be her true self, in her actual body, greeting them as his partner — his wife.
Some wishes only ever remain wishes.
“I dreamed of you.”
Kuroo said once, unprompted, just as they got back home, as he hung his coat. He’d been on a long flight and fell asleep the whole ride back. He mentioned seeing many people, all their closest acquaintances, even the death doctor. Both the dead and the living acquaintances he made in life.
She understood what he meant: ‘I dreamed of the real you. The person you would have been — had heaven been merciful.’
She nods. Long gone were her days of childish tantrums or requests to be his wife. She was older now. What they had now was enough for her. As long as they were together.
So was he. The white of his hair was covering most of his head now. He looked as handsome and enchanting as ever, she assured him. He never believed her. Long gone were also his own temper tantrums and cruel remarks when she tested his patience.
Both were calmer now, and lonelier too. They reflected more often on their past, the paths not taken — more so him than her.
She’d always choose to be by his side.
Maybe in their next lives they’d be able to have the bodies they should own, she half-jokes. She, in an adult’s body (she doesn’t even need to be pretty, she just wants to be her age) and he, unscarred, unbroken, and with no friend’s sacrifice and skin a permanent reminder every time he sees his reflection.
Kuroo always hates those reincarnation comments, believing it’s silly mumbo jumbo. The young him would never even consider it, but life and many impossible to explain cases taught him there were things he’d never understand. The scientist hated it. The old man in him learned to accept it, although very begrudgingly, that some mysteries were to remain mysteries. Still, he’d never admit to it.
“Stop talking about stupid things.” He says brusquely. She understands the real meaning behind his words nowadays: ‘Let’s focus on the now. Why worry about the impossible?’
Which is very true. Regardless of what the future will bring and if there’s anything after death, what matters is what they have now: each other.
Pinoko wants him to know this one thing, though. This one certainty he must understand just as deeply as he knows of her love.
“Okay, zipping my lips!” she adds amusedly, someone needs to have good humor here, “The last thing I’ll say is this: if we’re ever reborn, I’ll find you. Even if we forget. Even if we’re living on the other side of the world. I’ll find you.”
She means it with all her heart.
He grumbles and focuses on driving. Pretending this talk annoys him.
Younger her would’ve believed him and worried she ruined the ride with silly talk. Middle-aged her understands that he is grateful. Though the stubborn old man will never put it in words.
She wishes her arms were longer. A normal size. She wishes she could reach out to him and hold his hand, his arm; give him a peck; heck, even drive and let him rest. Anything to show with actions that she’s right there — and would always be.
She wishes they could kiss and share their bed nightly, giving each other all the love and kindness the world denied them. Physically, sexually, and not just with looks, words and faraway dreams.
The love they’d saved deep in their hearts for only the most important people. Those they allowed in.
She wishes they could be a true couple. A true husband and wife. His nightmares and everything that haunted him would never truly leave. But she knew it’d give him peace, to have someone by his side in all possible ways.
And it was the only thing she wanted.
She once saw in a movie how praying to fairies would work. Then she saw in books how gods answered their most devoted. Pinoko tried it all — every sort of belief system, religion, ritual, anything that could grant her wish.
No one ever listened.
Maybe it was penitence, and somehow they deserved it. She doubted it. Kuroo was someone who sacrificed himself for others, if not for him, how many lives would've been damaged beyond repair or lost — hers included.
Maybe there were no such forces in the world and they were just unlucky to be caught by the worst. Maybe there was some rule in this universe, but one impossible for humans to understand. Perhaps some magical mythological creature like a phoenix oversaw it all, even their own tiny lives. It didn’t really matter.
They were here now as they were. Unhappy with their bodies, unhappy with part of their lives.
Their true selves would never physically inhabit this world. Hers is much more so than his. And yet, they still had each other.
He’d saved her life; she saved this loneliness.
Pinoko still prays and hopes every day. Not for the right body or for a life denied to her, not anymore. She prays for his safety and his happiness. And does what she can to make that come true, with her own tiny and weak hands.
Until her artificial body could no longer maintain her soul, she’d be here. Pinoko swore she’d never leave him alone. Black Jack deserved to have someone by his side, always. Especially at the end. She would be that someone for him. Always, now and forever.
He worried about her maintenance when he could no longer move well or be in this world. She never did. After he was gone, not only her body but her soul wasn’t for this world.
Sometimes we don’t get what we need in life. Much less what we deserve, while others get everything so, so easily. But we get chances at love and being loved.
And Pinoko would always be grateful for whatever force brought him into her life.
The world can be very unjust. They suffered more than many. But at least they had each other. Their end was not a tragic or gruesome one, like many of their patients.
It wasn’t a happy ending, either, like some lucky ones got in this life.
It was just life. With all the awful, soul crushing parts. And all the delightful, joyful ones that made you happy to be alive.