Rebirth / 新生

Ever since that night, a lot of things changed. Time passed by really quickly. Eighty-one days. That’s how long the entire procedure took. Yet, it all felt so… fleeting. 

However, the passage of time is relative, entirely subject to perspective. What to me seemed like a month, to my friends and family were eighty-one full days of wait. Waiting for me to return to their lives. To be fair, I’d be lying—and being a bit too egocentric—if I was to tell you it was boring without me. They had their own share of fun. More specifically, my friends during our school’s Cultural Festival, held in early November.

“Yoko-chan, where’d you want to go afterward?”

“Didn’t you have a planned itinerary?”

“Right…,” she acknowledged, embarrassed, “about that…”

“You forgot, didn’t you.”

“Y-Yes… hence, you should give me ideas!”

“Don’t push the work to me. Maybe they can help,” she noticed Natsuko and Naoto approaching them. The latter two spotted them near the Takoyaki stalls, taking a seat next to them.

“What were you two discussing?”, Natsuko wondered.

“We… don’t know what we should do after lunch,” Yokoyama replied.

“I heard class 3-2 is doing a stage play,” Naoto noted, “it starts at 2 PM so you can still make it on time.”

“Nishimura’s class?”

“Yeah. If I recall correctly, she’s even playing the lead character,” he added.

“Ooohhh, a play with a tsundere main character! I’ll absolutely be there!”, Kimura cheerfully remarked.

Her best friend sighed.

“What did you two do this morning?”

A question targeted at my girlfriend and the one who accompanied her throughout the first hours of the festival.

“Well…,” she took a proper look at Ueno’s outfit, “I kind of pitied Ueno… so I joined him in his morning shift.”

“Kind of? This was humiliating, you know! I don’t who was the genius who came up with this in class, but good job to him. He shot himself and all of us in the foot.”

“Ummm… it was our class rep,” Natsuko clarified.

“But you look so cute, Ueno!”, Kimura commented, clearly making fun of his look.

“I know, right?”, Yokoyama added.

“This is very embarrassing!”, he retorted, annoyed at their remarks, “That Ishida… she’s really lucky. If she wasn’t stuck in the hospital, she’d have suffered the same fate we did.”

“Ummm… Ueno, sorry to break it to you, but I don’t think she’d mind it at all. I bet she’d even love it,” she corrected him, “What I wouldn’t give to see her in a maid outfit and cat ears!”

“I suppose that’s how it feels when you’re in love,” the shoujo manga expert acknowledged.

“I mean… isn’t it natural for me to want to see my girlfriend in all sorts of cute clothes?”

“Exactly! I want that too and I’m not even her girlfriend!”, the athlete observed.

“…Guess you’re right,” Yokoyama recognized, “I wonder how she’s doing right now.”

“She’s probably asleep or too tired to do much at all,” he assumed, “Have you heard any news from her, Natsuko?”

“Not really. What I do know is that everything’s been going smoothly so far. Back when she began the process, the doctor told us we should be able to visit her starting from the second half of November.”

“Ah, I see. Then it won’t be long until I can see her again. I wonder what kind of breasts she’ll end up with,” Kimura noted in an ordinary tone, as if that topic was normal.

“HUH? W-What kind of question is that?”

“Isn’t it important? Especially for you, since you’ll be the one doing all sorts of perverted things with her. Am I wrong?”

“N-No,” she confirmed, blushing.

Yokoyama, understanding the struggles of love, steered the conversation away from it, even if slightly.

“What do you all think of Ishida… as a girl? Did you suspect anything beforehand? Frankly, I never expected it. It pains me now to know she was pretending to be happy all this time. On the other hand, I’m glad she can finally be herself. I can’t imagine how it must’ve been. In the end, she was the saddest one. Nevertheless, I can’t wait for her to come back with a genuine smile on her face.”

“I suspected it ever since the first day we met. She wasn’t as good at hiding it in junior high. She even embarrassed herself in front of the whole class. I put it upon myself to help her out. I've known for a long time how much pain she felt, how much of it she never showed to anyone. I wanted to help her there too, but I was afraid I’d only make things worse. One day, I spotted her all alone in the classroom crying and rushed to her, but she brushed it off as nothing worth fussing over. That’s when I realized I had to do something, otherwise I couldn’t call myself her best friend. So I decided to help her in smaller ways.”

“I've known since April. She told me about it herself. Concerning the other question, I think it’s obvious. I really love Yuki. Woman or man. Perhaps even more as a woman. And I’m curious to see how she looks. Nevertheless, I'll still love her.”

“To me, it doesn’t matter if she’s transgender or not. As long as it means I can doll her up, I’m all for it,” Kimura stated.

Aware of their stares, she retorted, “Don’t look at me like that, I know you’re thinking the same as well! Except Naoto, I suppose.”

“Thank you for remembering me,” he said, unamused.

In the meanwhile, Natsuko remembered something.

“What’s up with your costumes? How'd you get your hands on them?”, she questioned Kimura and Yokoyama, who were dressed up as an astronaut and an idol respectively.

“It wasn't all that hard. We just kindly asked the theatrics club to borrow them for the day. If you ask them, I'm sure they wouldn't mind,” Kimura explained.

They both stood up and momentarily got into their roles.

“One small step for Man, one big step for Mankind,” she uttered in a robotic tone, putting her helmet on.

“And I’m the idol Hatsui Hoshino, preparing for my highly awaited debut!”, she declared, sticking her tongue out through the side of her lips and raising her forearms at forehead level, with the index and middle fingers of each hand forming a V and pointing to each other.

“You both look so ridiculous,” she laughed.

They broke their act and sat down again.

“So, what do you think?”, the athlete wanted an opinion.

“You both nailed it. I wish she was here to see how silly you look.”

“We can take pictures later,” he intervened, “Now let’s eat.”

“Yeah,” Kimura chose to not react explosively, instead contenting herself with the Takoyaki standing beside her.

Eventually, the day I was discharged from the hospital (again) arrived. A cold December night. Natsuko and my parents came to the hospital and were quickly put up to speed. Thankfully, everything had gone without any issues. As I was extremely exhausted from all the time I spent in the hospital, they assisted me in virtually everything.

To give proper context, during the time I was awake, I wasn’t particularly in shape to do much more than lie on a bed and get up occasionally. Which, in turn, meant I had no clue what had happened to my body. Sure, I felt a lot had changed, but I was never in a condition that allowed me to check it out for myself.

Natsuko assisted me with dressing up and I was brought home, where she helped me walk to my bedroom and covered me with my sheets. I had my eyes closed through most of it. The last thing I remember before falling asleep is hearing Natsuko’s tender “Goodnight” right after she helped me lie on my bed and covered me with my sheets.

A full night passed. The morning sun lit up a good portion of my room—and me—through a sizeable window.

I was sleeping in a fetal position, mouth slightly open, no longer covered by my bedsheets. My head was lined up with my back. My forearms and upper arms were on top of each other, almost forming a right angle between them, with the former parallel to that same alignment. My back was facing the window. One of the short sleeves of the nightdress I was wearing was loose.

Suddenly, I began hearing periodic vibrations accompanied by what appeared to be a ringtone, according to my barely awake brain. They grew faintly louder as I fully recovered my senses.

I grumbled once and moved my head closer to my arms, nearly bringing both into contact. I grumbled again, gently switching sleeping position, now lying on my back.

Like in a dream, my doctor’s words before Natsuko and my parents arrived at the hospital yesterday vaguely flashed through my mind.

“Congratulations on making it through all of this. It’s all thanks to your hard work. You’re about to be discharged and your family will be here soon, hence I’ll be brief. You’re likely feeling extremely tired right now. That's completely normal, considering the procedures you underwent. When you wake up after a good night of sleep, everything should be fine.”

I abruptly woke and sat up briskly (as if I just had a nightmare), leaning forward a bit and partially bending my left leg involuntarily, exhaling heavily and inhaling successively, sketching a surprised expression, eyes wide open. The phone wasn’t ringing anymore.

I breathed in.

I breathed out.

I turned left.

The chamber was exceptionally quiet, making me think it was isolated from the outside. Before turning, I saw a singular mirror in front of me. It wasn’t there previously, just like other things I’d come to notice in the coming seconds. I didn’t give it much attention initially, unsure if I was awake. As I shifted my perspective, I caught sight of a few changes. A doorless wardrobe with three dresses, two wool sweaters, and a sky blue sweater V-neck vest. A pink push-up bra and a red ribbon atop a half-meter tall piece of furniture. And, finally, standing in the only wall hanger in the bedroom was my school uniform.

I gazed at it, now less surprised, but make no mistakes—that wasn’t your usual student’s gaze at yet another day with their school uniform. I was overjoyed, despite my face not showing any sign of it. That white shirt. That red skirt. Those black stockings. I blinked slowly, still not sure if I was dreaming or not.

At last, addressing something that had been bothering me since I supposedly woke up, I went back to a standard sitting position and stared down at my chest.

“Hm?”, I uttered, as I turned my head to face it in disbelief.

I remained that way and observed as two sizeable bumps on my chest moved ever so slightly as I breathed in and out. I blinked again.

I gradually brought my hands up from the mattress until they met those bumps. I cupped my hands over them and gently squeezed them.

“Hmm?”, I uttered afterward, quizzical and somewhat worried.

Just to be sure they were real, I pushed them up and then pressed them against each other.

“Hmmm…,” I uttered once more, uncertain and confused.

“Hmmm…,” I uttered one final time, while I squeezed them again a few more times, now expressing a certain enjoyment mixed with some indecision as I did so.

“Woah, these feel incredibly realistic.”

I stopped doing it and paid attention to what I'd just said.

“And… this voice is… me?”

I quickly reverted to a state of denial, shaking my head, “No, no, no. I’m definitely dreaming. Definitely…”

In the midst of it, I glimpsed an image on the piece of glass glued to the wall. I used my right hand to help me get up, still sleepy, grumbling as I slowly got on my feet and walked as normally as I could to the mirror in front of me.

I undressed the sleeves of my nightdress and let it fall to the ground, leaving me only with the pink panties I was wearing. I stood there for some seconds, frozen, staring at the image of my naked body—specifically, my breasts.

It was then that I realized it wasn’t a dream. It was real. The reality I despised so much had changed. For the better. Overtaken by a flurry of emotions, I couldn’t believe it had worked. All those countless days at the hospital. All of my deepest hopes and desires. All of my efforts.

“Eh?”

“Ehhh??”, I uttered incredulously, raising my voice.

“Eeeeeeeeehhhhh???”, I uttered with greater incredulity, slamming the glass.

I hurried to the door and rushed out of my bedroom, shouting like a mad woman.

“I have boobs! I have boobs!!!”

I kept at it while climbing down the stairs, almost stumbling along the way.

When I arrived at the kitchen, Natsuko and my mother were preparing breakfast and my father was sitting on the couch. Hearing the noise, they turned around, instantly spotting me on the opposing side of the table huffing and puffing.

“Good morning, dear,” my mother said ordinarily, going back to what she was doing right after.

“Morning, Yuki,” Natsuko greeted me. Aware the older woman wasn’t going to comment on it, she added, “Oh, by the way, I can see your breasts, you should probably put something on.”

Upon hearing that, I blushed instinctively and desperately attempted to hide them with my arms, consecutively running away upstairs.

“Not that I haven’t seen them before, but it’s inappro—”

She halted speaking when she noticed I had run off.

After blowing off steam, I dressed up in my uniform and headed downstairs, finding my dad at the table.

“Oh, you’ve returned,” my father remarked, “You’ve overslept again, haven’t you.”

“Don’t look at me with that face. I was tired,” I replied, thoroughly unfazed and too tired to care, taking a seat.

“I see you’re still just as deadpan and snarky after waking up.”

“Seriously? Did you really think I was going to change? Did your braincells revert to mush while I was away?”

“There it is again,” he noted, mildly amused.

I pouted.

“But that’s new.”

The pout turned into a displeased face.

“Come on, cut it out. You’re teasing her on purpose, aren’t you?”, my mother intervened, “Come assist me here instead.”

She directed her gaze at me, “You too, Yuki.”

Moments later, not sighting Natsuko, I inquired her.

“Where’s Akira?”

“She told us she had something urgent to do upstairs,” she answered, as she grilled the fish and kept an eye on the rice.

While he sliced the tomatoes, my father remembered something he noted earlier—I was wearing the uniform they had bought for me.

“Yuki, do you intend to keep attending school?”

“Well, it’s not like there’s much left. Plus, I’m sure there are some people that’d like to see me again.”

“I agree,” a friendly voice sided with me, walking down the stairs and to where we were, holding something in her hand—the cherry blossom I picked up on my first day of this high school year.

“I think you forgot this, Yuki,” she said, showing it to me.

“I guess I did,” I smiled back at her.

We continued chatting as we prepared our food and, later, ate it.

Before heading out, she accompanied me to my bedroom’s mirror and delicately placed the flower on my hair.

Having finished breakfast, we grabbed our schoolbags, and just before leaving, we declared in unison, “We're going!”