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Bleeding is a rite of passage for most women. For many years, it stood as proof that Kako could never be a true woman—only a little girl.
To be reborn as a woman was all she had craved.
Ima had promised her it would happen someday, as she wept with confusion. He knew all about that world - the world of the mature, where they would bloom and grow, and their changes would stretch out from their bone marrow. The key to it had been bestowed upon him by demons below. An exchange of one’s body for one’s mental clarity, he reasoned, and it was an exchange Kako could never know.
Sometimes, he would joke that she didn’t get that step of maturity because she didn’t eat all her meals. The scraps he earned from women snatching him up could hardly be called sufficient, but she just nodded and agreed. It was worse to agree than to bicker, and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to indulge anything but the worst. Her brother suffered enough for her. As the little girl of the two of them, she could suffer for a little longer, growing pains and all.
That was something he had warned her about, too. Saying that you don’t want that change, it just hurts or it doesn’t make you a woman, just being yourself makes you enough of a girl. His advice teetered towards discrediting, but every so often, a glimmer of care would show itself in the night sky of despair.
That night sky had descended upon them with vengeance. As did the solution - her Hematomorphic Infusion Blade, gifted by the small pale hands of an old man with the body of a plush toy. Fear drenched her hands and lathered them in sweat. All she could do was stare up at her imprisoned brother; an unfathomable beast with pools of drool from its unhinged jaw gripped his small, fragile body in its claws.
He wriggled a guttural scream from his bleeding stomach: “Just run, Kako! Please! I can handle it, but you-” the claws pierced him further. Droplets of blood stank out the bloodied streets—how peculiar that the taste of iron had tickled the back of her throat that whole day, but now, it burned her innards instead.
Her own bruises throbbed and begged for forgiveness. Yet, when the thick blade of destiny locked with her flesh, the tingles of pain quelled in favour of absolute euphoria. Layers of blood enveloped her in a cocoon dyed in crimson.
Was this the metamorphosis she had begged for during all those tired nights?
The cocoon slowly pulled away, and she looked down at her covered skin. Along her arms, a thick militant uniform had threaded around her. Drumming noises flooded her head. Dun, dun, dun… the throbbing of new blood, a new body, but also the anthem of retribution. She convinced herself of this fact as she accustomed herself to the sleek black look of her uniform; it mirrored her and Ima’s borrowed uniforms that they used to get pity meals (people like students more than orphans, apparently). Around her left arm sat an armband, and she was sure she now wielded boots rather than long socks.
Time was not on her side for small details like that.
Instead, she gripped the weapon in her hands - how long had it been there? The firm girth of the gun’s grip calmed her racing heartbeat, as if she had always been destined to hold it. She had always been destined for violence, to bleed out of a body not engineered for it. It oozed from her as the ache in her stomach would not ease. Louder, louder it growled, and its hunger for violence did not stop it from spitting up the water filling her body.
She swallowed that wetness down and lowered herself to the ground. Ima cried, “Kako…? Kako, what are you-” she lowered the gun’s scope, her eyes firmly locked onto a halo of flesh. It contorted and gargled, almost as if it could speak, and the thick veins flowing around it rolled around themselves. This angelic weapon of justice had given birth to its true form through brute force.
She, too, would be the woman she was meant to be. “Die, wicked invader.” The shot connected. A bloodied, melting mass of fur dissolved behind Ima, and his weak body collapsed to the floor. It landed with a loud noise. The wings on her sniper gun, clearly, had not been a gift she would share. Her trembling legs bolted her over to Ima, and she stroked the sweat off of his brow with her gloved hands. Wetness filled her mouth once more. No words could emerge.
He had plenty to say, though. “Oh, my sweet little sister…” he raised a palm coated in red and caressed her cheek. Iron plastered the innards of her nostrils, and she winced, which only made him stroke her face with more intensity. A smile met his eyes, and the wet, heavy breaths rattling through his quivering lungs sounded like the death rattle. Kako knew what that meant. “I’m… I’m so proud of you, you know… you’ve become the woman you always wanted to… to be…”
“You can’t go,” stray tears choked her throat. She had summoned that sniper weapon and left it for dead in the street to keep him alive. As a sniper, it was ideal if she stayed still - idle, obedient, her femininity tied to her damsel status. All her life, she had been a sister, and it was her strongest feminine vice. “If you die, what was it all for…?”
“I…” he coughed up clumps of red goo; it looked a little like jelly. “You remember our promise, right?”
Her eyes flicked over to her gun. How intense would the burning be if it pierced her skull? Could a sniper even do such a thing? She would find a way—she had no choice. “Yes, I do…”
“Good girl,” his thumb traced her damp cheeks and ridded her of all agonies. Stinging remained as the death rattle consumed him, and a small, sudden gasp was the last she heard that day.
She wished she could have told Ima she kept the promise.
Instead, she found herself whisked to a world of blurred blood. The heavens opened to embrace the newly born woman, and with it, a heart that still beat firm. Her eyes next opened in a classroom, and her brother sat next to her, reaching for her hand.
She refused to take it. Not until she proved to this Ima, who evidently did not remember his sacrifice, that she could be a woman in this world as well. With or without the blood that ‘proved’ it… because, well, maybe he was right on that front.
He would never be right about her being ideal if she stayed on the backline, however.