Mismatch / ミスマッチ

I want to be a girl.

In theory, it's a simple sentence. Nothing harmful about it, right? I can't really say you're mistaken, although, society disagrees.

A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. That's all there is to it. That's what they taught me in school. That was all I knew.

Until a certain fateful day prompted my young self to question it. “What are… these feelings of mine?”, I wondered. My mind was a mess, having lost all the foundation of my beliefs. It didn't help that I was extremely shy back then. An introverted kid with their world flipped upside down. The perfect storm.

As time passed by, I discovered society wasn't very welcoming of the likes of me, further encouraging me to hide this part of me. However, even though I didn't allow anyone to peek into it, that didn't mean I was fully able to cover it up. In the street, in class, everywhere. Every time I looked at other women, I was painfully reminded I wasn't like them. Broken inside, my heart brimmed with rage and jealousy, struggling to hold it all back.

Their clothes.

Their body.

Their life.

I wanted it all. I… want a life like that too.

But—

I couldn't.

I shouldn't.

I mustn't.

Like any child, I avoided standing out from the crowd. I gave it my best to be “normal”. Because that's what every father and mother wanted. A normal child.

As it is with two friends when either part realizes that their feelings go beyond those of a friendship, I was scared that the relationship I had with my parents would be tarnished. I was afraid to be rejected. Hence, I chose to content myself with what I had rather than what I could have.

Not much has changed since then. Puberty has come and will soon pass. Maybe this will as well.

The calendar on the wall, parallel to the bed, had today's date highlighted. It was the infamous start of the first term in Fukuoka High School, April eighth. I was still asleep as the morning sun started lighting up my room through the window. I opened my eyes in disbelief, instinctively dodging the intense sunlight colliding with my face. Danger avoided—or so I thought. The possibility of fate having a particular fondness for proverbs had escaped my ten-percent-awake brain. As misfortunes never come singly, I found myself staring at the black digital watch atop my desk with my half-open pair of eyes. Shaping three distinct numbers, those red lines didn't lie—it was 7:04 AM. I switched to a proper sitting position and yawned.

“Ehhh? I was doing just fine in bed…”

Standing in the only wall hanger in the bedroom was my school uniform. I gazed at it but make no mistakes—that wasn't your usual student's gaze at yet another year with their beloved uniform. Even though I was used to it, I hated to wear it. Human is in pain, mismatch. This was no experiment report, but if it was, that'd be the communicated result. Simply staring at that male uniform was all it took to bring me down. Briefly imagining a female uniform on the wall, I wondered. What could've been. What never was. What I hoped for.

Suddenly, my mother knocked on the door.

“Yuki! Get up and eat something! You still have to catch the bus! Hurry! I don't want you to be late on the first day of the school year!”

“I know…”

I acknowledged, still sleepy, that today was, indeed, the first day of my last high school year. Accepting reality for what it was, I had no choice but to press the accelerator on my life vehicle to avoid arriving late on my first day. Just imagining the scolding I’d get from the teacher was enough to persuade me into action. Furthermore, it’d negatively affect the image my underclassmen have not only of myself but of the third-years as well.

“Good morning, dad,” I said, still fairly sleepy, spotting him sitting by the table.

“Oh! Morning, son. I made you breakfast, as I was already counting on you to oversleep.”

“I don't do it that often during school terms, but thanks for worrying,” I replied, unfazed.

I took a seat.

“Shouldn’t you be on your way to work right now?”

“Looks like someone’s out of the loop. Last week, my schedule changed. I gained thirty extra minutes in each morning with the downside of leaving work an hour later than usual.”

Ah, I had forgotten. Nothing I can do about it, you can’t expect me to remember everything. It’ll already be a pain to remember what I was taught last year.

My mother sat next to my father, in front of me.

“Thank you for the meal!”, we declared in unison as we all started consuming the food standing on the table.

While I was indeed eating as agreed upon earlier, I also put some of my attention on what was being communicated on the kitchen's flat digital screen. It was a known habit of mine to multitask by watching the news while munching on my food. However, something piqued my interest, causing me to break the silence.

“Oh? What?”

As the news segment concerning weather neared its end, the TV host pointed out the rather unusual traffic in Fukuoka. That was to be expected given the day and time of day it was, but still annoying, nevertheless. “Hakata and Chuo wards are experiencing a higher load of traffic than normal, please be careful everyone. And that ends this morning’s report.”

“Ehhh??? Seriously? Now there’s no avoiding the delay in my arrival. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I was annoyed at my occasionally bad luck, but, on the other hand, I now had an excuse in case I failed my matinal quest. So did my fellow classmates using the same public transportation as me.

“Yuki, if you’re quick enough, you can still catch the 7:55 bus. Is your lunch ready too?”, she inquired.

“I know. And yes, it is.”

However, the TV news pseudo-arc wasn’t over yet. A new challenger appeared—another news segment. My breakfast that day purely and simply wasn’t meant to be eaten in peace. And so, the host returned after a surprisingly small break for ads. Breaking news. Even more breaking than the high density of vehicles on roads. “A follow-up to last week's bizarre story: the technology giant Eppel has issued an official statement following the claims from a Hokkaido citizen. For those who didn't watch our investigation report on Thursday, the story goes as follows—Last Monday in the city of Sapporo, a man spotted an ePhone model laying on the ground inside his workplace. But it wasn’t just any phone. He picked it up and brought it home, where he noticed the phone itself bore a resemblance to both the ePhone 8 and the more recent model X. The individual nicknamed it ePhone 9, in honor of the smartphone that never came to be. This mysterious news spread like wildfire online, and, as we just witnessed, prompted a response from Eppel, denying the existence of such a model, affirming the description provided matches the specs of their model X.”

“More material for news outlets to investigate and preach onto our faces for a week.”

“Yuki! This is not the time to comment on the news, eat instead,” my mother reiterated.

I quickly finished eating, grabbed my lunchbox and schoolbag, and headed out.

“I'm going!”

I left right as I said that in a friendly tone, but, truth be told, I was mildly angry. Who on Earth was capable of doing such cruel things? Ending my beloved holidays just like that. Unforgivable.

The bus was now in my sight. Crowded with students alike, there was barely any space left, leaving me no choice but standing up with my hand clutched onto a bus hanger. I recalled the bizarre piece of news from minutes ago, “Sheesh, ePhone 9… the world gets crazier and crazier each week”.

Now among the student body outside the school building, I contemplated the many cherry blossom trees forming a corridor of some sort at the entrance. As the pink flowers gracefully fell from their twigs, some tried to catch them. I was one of those people.

Thankfully, I didn’t need to move around like an idiot or devise any intricate strategies to get a hold of one, as a sole blossom landed on the palm of my right hand, to compensate for the bad traffic luck earlier—at least that was how I saw it.

Naturally, I was far from the only successful individual. Specifically, a group of girls came out victorious as well. I was able to overhear their conversation from my location.

“Oh, you got one too! Come on, Yume, try it out, try it out!”

“Yeah, do what we did! Put it like this, on your hair!”

“Like… this?”, she questioned, unsure if she had done it correctly.

“Yeah, yeah!”

They were all matching now.

Witnessing the three of them delighted, I took my own flower and tried to mimic the girl’s movements. Lifting it at forehead level, I delicately placed it on a spot near my forehead normally reserved for hair clips or ornaments.

I couldn’t quite describe what I was feeling properly. The most fitting term available to me at the time was “empowering”. But, perhaps that single word sufficed. Maybe it was powerful enough by itself.

A few students noticed my actions and, albeit choosing not to show it vocally, their fixated glares bore a slight disdain or scorn towards them.

“What am I even doing?”

Painfully aware of it and embarrassed, I removed the ornament and put it inside a pocket on my pants.