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Growing up poor, scrappy, and hungry in Tokyo wasn’t an unfamiliar narrative for ghoul women. Homelessness? Fun fact of life when you’re too young to work (like Touka’s age affected anything - who could use somebody like her? Being used was for little girls who didn’t lose shit when the economy crashed) and your parents are dead. Getting kicked around? Pretty normal for ghouls without established territory. Even more normal when somebody in your heritage was clearly Korean and girls were just…more to you.
Better.
The values of Japanese society had shit all on her, the only lucky break a ghoul could get, but the time she spent pretending to be human rubbed her marginalization right in her fucking face. Pretend to eat the sandwich little girl, yeah you don’t wanna die. Pretend you’re not gonna break that wandering hand later, you don’t want to be arrested. Don’t buy the records you want, or the instruments, don’t flirt with the cashier (long blue-black hair that begged to be braided), don’t try to speak up, don’t try to be anything-
It came as no surprise that she fell in love withe Riot Grrrls. Well, it was a bit of a surprise.
When Touka was a kid (more of a kid? 16 wasn’t really childish anymore…), she hated feminists with a passion. All that screaming for equality, but the only people who got it were Yamamoto Nadeshiko’s. You’ve gotta be an adult, you gotta be educated, your body has to work the way they expected it to, blah blah blah. She hadn’t been interested.
God, she’d thought people were so petty. She’d thought human concerns were petty.
But when that first song had hit the scene, when the first singer her age had forced an audience to listen to her scream about her rape, about how she didn’t want to be touched, how much her consent mattered…
It had been a revelation.
Isolation had previously been Touka’s best friend, but God almighty the scene dragged her in. There were meetings, magazines, women with cigarettes between their teeth cackling with their legs spread wide on motorcycles, and man she really wanted to go to school just to join in on the sukeban gangs because the woman who owned her block was breathtaking (her baseball bat was covered in rabbit stickers and blood). Once she was in, she was in.
She wasn’t sure when the first grrrl built her that first instrument. She definitely couldn’t remember learning how to play guitar and drums (and harmonica, though she was terrible) between territory wars and the race riots and everything that made her feel like person again. But she learned, she learned so much (about what identity was, how to keep it, how to close the fists of others around their own and tell them to fight for it), and heart full to bursting…
She decided to teach.
The world was going to listen.
Rabbit Heart’s first show was an absolute flop. Passionate though she may be, lyrics weren’t Touka’s schtick. Basic reading and writing weren’t really her schtick either, though the punk scene usually let that slide. She’d been so embarrassed, so ready to quit, that when she’d gotten a paper rose left in her jacket (emblazoned with her name because man, she had been a child, hadn’t she?) with,
“Your anger is going to take you places. Don’t give it up.”
Printed in blocky letters within it, well…
She’d never forgotten it (even now it was tucked into her waistband).
Eventually, Touka met a ghoul half as angry as her and ten times as educated. Somewhere along the line, one of them bitched a little too loudly about “fucking oppression” and it turned into a debate. She was pretty sure she’d originally stepped into Nishiki’s territory to kill a person, but hey, she was willing to take what she got.
Nishiki could write and that’s what she needed. His girlfriend was also crazy accepting of new ideas and ready to fight tooth and nail for them. Together, they meshed pretty well.
If her shows were somewhere not too grungy, she’d get a note. Most of them were lyrics from whatever song her note-leaver liked best that night. Some of them were questions. Most of those she had no answers for - they wondered about women’s place in society, questioned the worth of women who couldn’t have kids, of people who couldn’t marry to help their families out, who didn’t have marketable skills…
Kimi read them all, worrying her bottom lip over every implication of internalized oppression, self-loathing, and the naivety of the letters. Some of them made her angry, some of them made Touka angry, but she was always happy to see one.
Her letter leaver was learning. Touka was learning.
Some of the grrrls ruffled her hair and told her that was good.
“I got kicked out of school and I’m so scared and I come to all of your shows, I - oh no, I’m so sorry, you don’t even know me and I’m just info-dumping all over you and for some reason I thought you’d understand-”
The letter-leaver was the cutest goddamn thing Touka had ever seen. Golden blonde, soft all over, and they liked her. They’d liked her since her rocky start.
It was kindof a given that Touka dumped the girl (Yoriko…what a perfect name…dreamy...) right in Nishiki and Kimi’s laps.
Yoriko’s introduction to their little group changed a lot and also…nothing at all. The band got a new vocalist, Touka got a new girlfriend, and their songs got some new topics (if anyone, ANYONE, thought Touka wasn’t going to snuggle her girlfriend is public they had a few broken fingers coming, Doves or no Doves). They didn’t get anymore popular really and Yoriko still asked the absolute worst shit that set Kimi off on yelling sprees and made Nishiki mutter about essays.
But hey, she wanted Touka to be happy (and Touka wanted to give Yoriko every damn thing she could).
(And anyway, Touka figured it was fine. Yoriko could learn. Touka certainly still was…and she wanted to be there with Yoriko for the entire thing)