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The strands of blue and periwinkle hair fell softly along Touya's waist, splitting around her shoulders and tickling her waist. She stared at the tufts of raw hair, so closely resembling her natural colors, seamlessly blending in and out of each other, her natural hair and the silky extensions she took great care of.

She was a bit unsure on how to style them. Nothing too eye-catching, as her outfit made her feel quite eccentric already, between the flowy skirt and the cream crop top. Touya stared at herself in the mirror and wondered what other people could see in her: could they see just how ill-fitting those clothes were? Would they find her ridiculous or pitiful? Would they think she was way over the top, exaggerating compared to what she could afford to dare when it came to her appearance?

The itch under her skin flared up just for a second at those thoughts, but she immediately tried to quell it. No, she was going to enjoy this night, regardless of what other people might think of her. She wasn't going to change in a more modest outfit. She wasn't going to take her extensions off. She wasn't going to be ashamed of her own true self.

Slowly, she sunk her fingers in her hair and ran them through it, just taking herself in. She liked how the strands came tumbling down to her waist like a shiny cascade, and she loved the way they tickled the tiny strip of naked skin between the top and the skirt. It sat higher than where she usually wore her bottoms, but ever since her hips started getting the slightest bit wider, her friends had been suggesting she wore them higher, up on her waist and wrapping the circumference over her belly button. The skirt did look better at that height, indeed, although she felt as if her legs were a little too exposed.

Eating dinner with such long and untied hair would be uncomfortable, besides annoying, Touya reckoned, but she also didn't want to give up the gentle caress of the strands along her back. Maybe a half-updo will do the trick, but how should she style the upper part? Maybe her beloved space buns? Or maybe a little braided crown, even if it might have made her look a bit too childish for the occasion. What to do, what to do…

"Touya?" Akito's voice called from the corridor.

Touya craned her neck back to look at her best friend, who had just appeared from behind the door frame. His ever growing orange strands of hair tickled his bare clavicles, a fresh coat of nail polish glimmered in pink and blue on each of his fingers, eyes widening as he took his best friend in. He was munching on some tangerine slices, the juice of the fruit glistening over his lips and an entire drape of another half resting in his palm. He tore off a larger slice and bit into it, and after chewing thoroughly and clearing his throat, he said: "I like your make-up. Switched to red eyeliner?"

Touya nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, doing her best not to blush. "Yes. Kohane found this incredible sale on the brand Saki-nee had recommended to me and bought me both a black and red tube. Does it look okay?"

“Okay?” Akito echoed distractedly, a little breathless, swallowing another smaller slice of tangerine. “You look radiant. It makes your irises pop out more and easily blends with the rest of the make-up. It looks like the exact same shade as the lipstick”. Teeth sank into the healthy treat, “that's new too, right?”

Touya nodded, giving him a bashful smile. It was a special occasion, after all, and a silly, hopelessly romantic part of her brain was hoping for the date to go well, even daydreaming of her match stealing a sweet kiss from her as he accompanied her to her doorstep. Just the idea made her giddy, for how low she tried to keep her expectations.

Akito slid the last two slices in his mouth in one go, wiping his thumb over his lips to rid them of leftover juice. “It suits you. Think it’s gonna last the entire night?” he smirked.

“Akito!” Touya laughed, observing the way her best friend’s expression went from teasing to mellow in a matter of a second. It was a thing she adored of Akito: how effortless he made everything feel, how normal he made her feel even underneath all those layer of wrongfully placed skin and bone, how he always knew perfectly just how deep he could dip into the vast pool that was what Touya’s boundaries allowed him to indulge into. He could read her with a glance and always knew what to do exactly to make her feel better, so well acquainted with her soul he was.

“What? Anyone would kill to kiss you”.

Do you? Touya almost wanted to ask, but she inwardly shook her head, swallowing those words. It had been years ago, and it had all been because of a dare. Akito would never kiss her with a trembling mouth and the deepest of loves brimming over his soul, for how much she wished him to. She was allowed so much already, she mustn’t be greedy. “I’ve kissed two people in my life and one of them is you”.

“That’s ‘cause you refuse to up your game,” Akito shrugged, snaking a hand underneath the hem of his shirt and scratching his belly. “If you really wanted to date – or just have something for fun – you’d have a crowd at your feet”.

Touya pressed her lips in a tight line. She highly doubted that, honestly. When she was younger, sixteen or so and still presenting as masculine, girls would often slip love letters in her locker, ask her to meet them on the rooftop after classes were over, tell her through a chain of whispers shared along a friend of a friend that they had a crush on her. But ever since she came out publicly as trans during her last year of high school, the incessant stream of admirers had dried up and she had never received another shy confession after that. Not many people were accepting of her identity, and even less were willing to understand how her world worked to love her.

That’s probably why she was so adamant on dating. She had dived headfirst into the lake of lively romantic search once, naïve enough to believe that someone would ever love her, and came out of that asphyxiating ocean with the ugliest gash over her heart. How could she ever believe another experience could go differently?

She brought a hand up to her chest and clutched her fist over the fabric. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This was pointless. She should just change back in her pajamas and text her date to call the night off, be honest with herself and accept that no one will ever take her seriously, no one will ever love her for herself and stick by her side, she will never-

“Don’t give me that look, Touya,” Akito said with a sigh. He stepped forward, padded steps over Touya’s fluffy white carpet, then on the light blue one, then on the bare brown parquet. He put his hands on Touya’s shoulders and gifted her a smile, a motion that stirred upwards the freckles on his cheeks. “You’re going to go out and have a fun time, okay? And even if this Yuzuki guy isn’t the one for you, it’s still gonna be fine. You have all your life to find someone who appreciates you, if you really want a romantic relationship. You just need to enjoy the moment, alright? I promise everything will be alright as long as you don’t worry about every possible what-if”.

“Go with the flow,” Touya mindlessly repeated, recalling An giving her that exact advice in any given occasion.

Akito let out a small laugh and let his hands fall back along his sides. “While keeping yourself safe, ‘kay?”

Touya nodded, trying to accept those words.

Akito hummed. “Anyways, Ayumi gave me something for you this morning. Told me it’s some sort of lucky charm from her,” he said, reaching in his other pocket. He dug around it for a second and then produced a nice velvet bow, as wide as his palm. It had a white trim at both its ends, lined with the thinnest of silver threads.

She gasped at its sight. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured, caressing the right ribbon with her index. “She’s incredible. I’ll have to thank her next time I see her at work”.

“She told me to call her when you come back home, if you feel like it”.

Touya blinked and found that the words were stuck like a bolus of hot glue to the walls of her throat. She wanted to like Ayumi with her whole soul, be a nice friend to their colleague, but there was a dark part of her that couldn’t help but hate her. She truly couldn’t help it: Ayumi was beautiful beyond word (dared Touya say, maybe even more than Ena-nee or her beloved An), a stunning face paired with the kindest of hearts and the most able of hands, a sweet smile always ready for everyone, gentle words always crowding her mouth, a sharp mind and an attentive empathy sealing the packet. Touya had the chance to witness her wonderful personality on full display for years on end, for she and Akito had dated for almost four years.

Ayumi used to make Akito the happiest man in the world. Every single time Akito returned from a date, he came back with a giant, childlike and exhilarated smile, his face all red and his eyes molten in a warm rush of affection Touya was madly jealous of. She wished she had someone who made her that happy. She wished… She wished…

Akito signaled for her to turn around. “Spin around for me, princess. I’ll fix your hair”.

It made Touya giggle and burn with positive embarrassment, the way he called her princess and always asked her to spin around. She did so, giggling even more when the skirt flared a bit around her middle and brushed along her freshly waxed legs. “Do you have anything in mind?”

“Mmh, not really. You look stunning with whatever hairstyle: it’s a bit scary. But given your clothes… What shoes are you wearing?”

Touya pressed one hand to her lower ribs, the other over it as she stood back in front of her reflection. This time, Akito was behind her, studying her hair with a focused expression. “The Mary Janes… I think. Do they fit in nicely?”

Akito let out a thoughtful sound, sinking one hand in the periwinkle half of hair and brushing the strands with reverence. “Sure they do. The man will drop on the ground the second he lays eyes on you from how pretty you are”. He muttered something under his breath, something Touya didn’t quite manage to catch, not in sound nor in labial movements, then added: “a simple half ponytail might go well with the outfit. You do want some of your hair untied, right?”

Touya nodded.

Akito chuckled. “Of course you do. Stay still, it’ll only take a second”.

Akito’s fingers were gentle over her scalp, the tips of his polished nails scratching just barely the skin underneath to separate portions of hair, incredibly mindful of the attachments of the extensions. He gently brushed out the two colors and kept them as neatly parted as possible as he tied them with a hair-tie.

While he studied the bow’s clip, Touya took her time to just… Look at him. Time had never dared do a disservice to Akito, each single day flowing by doing nothing but make the man more and more handsome. Although he had never grown out of the baby fat that clung to his full cheeks or his lower abdomen, Akito had a soft yet defined jawline, tendons and blood vessels running down from its bend along his long neck, lean enough that each ring of cartilage over his larynx could be counted with a naked eye. His eyes had always been beautiful, kind in the way they curved downwards and always stared right into everything without any shame, but over time they had grown more mature and assured, calmer and more confident as his personality grew alongside his body. His limbs had grown longer and stronger, almost reaching Touya in height.

It made Touya’s mouth dry, how handsome he was. For how much one could think it was solely his exterior, Touya knew that most of his beauty came from within, from his mature personality and the mind he had grown into in the last few years. Touya knew, for she had been standing besides him ever since they were little kids, fourteen years old and so lost in the sea of life as they struggled to find an island, that observing as they learnt how to swim and where they were supposed to go made her head spin. Akito truly was lovely, and the more he grew, the more beauty Touya saw in him. She wondered whether Akito could see it in himself, how stunning he had grown to be, and how much more beautiful he will become.

He secured the bow around the ponytail and patted Touya’s shoulder as a sign he was done. “There. I snuck in a little braid, too. Whaddya think?”

Touya spun around, keeping her eyes trained on her reflection and trying to see the entire hairstyle. The hair that flowed out of the half-ponytail had been braided loosely, the periwinkle and midnight strands forming a long chain of soft hearts mixing in and out of each other. The bow sat perfectly over the hair-tie, hiding it from sight and crowning the beautiful hairstyle. Touya had always loved braids and bows, perhaps in a weird blend of Ena-nee’s and Mizuki’s influence on her. “Oh my God, it’s perfect, Aki. Thank you”.

When Touya spun around once more to look at Akito, skirt caressing her thighs, the boy was already looking at her with an amazed and fond expression. “That’s ‘cause you’re perfect, princess. Tell me when you’re ready, I’m gonna get the bike’s keys”.

Touya nodded lightly. “I’m only missing perfume and earrings”.

“I’ll get going, then”.

“Okay. I’ll be there in a minute”.

Akito sent her one last smile before disappearing behind the door frame.

Touya shook her head. It didn’t matter what she felt for her best friend. He wasn’t ready for another relationship just yet, not after Ayumi had left him barely a few months ago, so she shouldn’t be greedy. She was going to go out with Yuzuki and try her best to forget about Akito. It was only right that she did.

She went to her vanity and took her favorite perfume, a pink and peach bottle of sweet scent she had bought on a mall trip with Kohane and Haruka, and sprayed it lightly over herself. She put it back and distractedly dabbed her wrists against her neck to absorb some of the extra perfume, wondering what Akito thought of Touya going on a date after so long. It had been years since she had last expressed any kind of interest in going out with someone, always declining her friends’ proposals of setting her up with someone or trying to make her download a dating app. The thought always had her frown, for she had always believed in the need of a strong and honest friendship before dating, and most people on dating apps weren’t really of her same mind.

Did Akito find this development unexpected? After all, Touya had spoken with Yuzuki only once, a throw-away conversation between sets where she had asked him if he happened to know where Shizuku was, and now… What? She was interested in romancing him? A random man whose conversation with Touya had been mediated by Shizuku? Of course Akito would think it was out of the blue. But in the end, it hadn’t been Touya’s idea in the first place to have a date to get to know the man, but the other way around. She just hadn’t found a good enough excuse to pull herself out of the endeavor, and all of her friends had encouraged her to at least try.

“It could be fun to at least try going out with someone, for once,” Airi had told her, Mizuki and An nodding from where they sat next to the energetic idol. “Maybe you’re gonna find someone you truly like. It doesn’t even have to be serious, if neither of you want it”.

The point missed being that one, Touya doubted anyone would ever take her seriously, two, she was head over heels in love with Akito. Well, maybe point two hadn’t truly been missed, more like looked over, as her friends were trying to get her mind off of the boy. He had said himself he wasn’t ready for a new relationship when asked about it a couple of weeks before Touya had accepted the date with Yuzuki. Touya hadn’t been able to look at him in the eye for the rest of the evening and went to sleep as soon as their friends had left.

Whether Akito thought it were sudden or not, there was no harm in trying to enjoy the night, Touya mused. They could start slow, her and Yuzuki, have a light relationship, and if they found they truly worked together, then… She would find a way to forget the taste of Akito’s lips on hers, surely.

Hooking the earrings took less than a couple of minutes, the holes perfectly scarred after years and years constantly wearing jewels. She threw a last look at herself in the mirror after taking her purse: she looked as authentic as she could hope to look when her body was yet to change into a woman’s. She sighed, willing away the itch under her skin, fake fake fake, and made her way out into the corridor and then into the genkan.

Akito waited for her there, platform boots all zipped up already, his leather rider’s jacket hugging his body close, keys jiggling in his hands as he played with them while scrolling on his phone. He looked up at her and once again gave her a mixed look, fondness and bitterness in almost equal measure. “Did you take your oestrogen yet?” he asked.

She nodded, bending down to pull her shoes out of the apposite shelf and slide them on. “Yeah. I thought it’d be rude to take it right after dinner, so…”

Akito hummed. “Yeah, I kinda get it. I mean, it’s never bothered me, but someone else…” he trailed off, then shook his head. “Let’s go, princess”.

It made her heart clench, both the saddened tone of his voice and the honeyed sobriquet. She pushed her heel against her index and middle finger, the rest of her foot easily sliding into her shoe, then repeated the action with the other shoe. Akito observed her in silence, humming in approval once she clacked them together to shift them in a more comfortable position. “Pretty,” he commented before opening the door. He reached for Touya’s hand but stilled halfway through, as if thinking better of it, and let it fell back along his side. He slipped out in the cold evening as Touya rushed to put her coat on and follow the boy out.

The sunset was burning the sky anew, eating away at each corner of light blue and letting the starry background shine through, the new moon shyly peaking among the sea of watered down black. Touya stared at it for a little while as Akito started the motorcycle: it was beautiful, that little speck of milky rock, shining down on Earth as if it were meant for Touya and Touya alone. The moon, one of the greatest symbols of femininity, one of the few Touya could see herself as. A little moon, quietly reflecting back someone else’s light, fondly looking over whoever she loved and had loved without distinction, no matter what they were to her now, what they had done to her, what she was expected to think of them. In a way it reminded her of how her ex-girlfriend, a bright and vigorous girl named Yoko, would always compare Touya to the moon, and herself to the Sun.

The thought had her wilt a bit in her place.

“Here,” Akito said, handing her a helmet when she drew closer to the motorcycle.

Touya accepted it with a smile and put it on as carefully as she could, mindful of Akito’s hard work in styling her hair. Akito secured his gloves as she did so, and quickly put on his helmet himself. When he was ready, he sat still, waiting for Touya to climb up. She threw one leg over the backseat, fixing her skirt with a quiet blush at the feeling of the evening air on her bare legs. Once she was properly sat and her clothes were sitting securely around her, she leaned forward and pressed her chest against Akito’s back, each millimeter of their upper bodies pressing together tightly, and she wrapped her arms around his middle, pressing her palms against his stomach before finding the safest arrangement.

Akito shivered against her. “Ready, Touya?” he asked when she eventually stilled.

Touya pressed her face against his shoulder and hummed, nuzzling against the familiar scent of tangerine and cologne that screamt his name. “Steady,” she said.

Akito chuckled at that. It was their way to let the other know they were alright, a little inside joke shared with An and Kohane, and Akito took it in stride, rubbing a gloved hand over Touya’s hands before revving up the engine, pushing his foot off the ground and taking off in the approaching night.

The city lights rushed in a blur along Touya’s field of view, serving as a ginger distraction from the way her heart pounded and her mind spun with the adrenaline and fear of riding on such an unstable vehicle. She trusted Akito with her whole soul, yes, she had ridden that same motorcycle while hugging her best friend close countless times in the last few years, yes, but that didn’t stop her from running through every worst case scenario in her mind: a car popping up in front of them, Akito inexplicably losing control of the bike, Touya losing her grip on her partner and slipping away from him, crashing down on the asphalt…

The mere idea had her shivering and shifting closer to Akito, her hold tight enough to break her bones.

The ride didn’t last long, fortunately, barely twenty minutes of her heart pounding from the mindless fear before Akito came to a full stop by the roadside. Touya gulped as she began to climb down the motorcycle, her legs a little unstable as she stood on the pavement.

“Are you alright?” came Akito’s chuckle as they both took the helmets off, although there was a point of genuine concern in his voice.

“Jolly,” Touya mumbled, shaking her legs in the hope of steadying them. “I’ll be fine in a minute”.

“Sure, sure”. Akito threw one leg over the seat and slid down the motorcycle, coming to rest against it. “I guess you have some time for yourself. I don’t see any guy dying to see you around here”.

Touya blinked at him and looked around: indeed, there were only a couple of girls laughing together sat at a bench in front of the restaurant Touya was supposed to enter, an elderly couple walking together with their arms tied together by their elbows, a ginger cat poking at a black cat curled up by a lamppost’s foot, two kids playing some kind of game where they pointed at something while two men and a woman spoke together and threw a cautious glance at them every once in a while. Not even the slightest shadow of Yuzuki.

“He’s… Not here yet,” Touya confirmed. Seeing Akito’s unimpressed expression, she hurried to say: “I’m sure he just ran into some problem! He’ll be here soon, I’m sure of it”.

Akito hummed, devoid of any trust. For good measure, Touya took her phone out of her purse and checked her texting app. She had a few texts on the Vivid BAD SQUAD chat and three from the group chat she had with Saki-nee and Tsukasa-nii, all wishing her a nice date, and a single “my dear, I’m sure Yuzuki-san will fall in love with you at first sight! Just be yourself and he’ll be a lost man <3” from Ayumi.

Oh, Ayumi was too sweet to hate, and that made Touya feel like a horrible person. How could she blame her? She had truly done nothing wrong in the end, and Akito had forgiven her in the space of a heartbeat – probably the exact second he had registered her words in his mind. Touya didn’t have any right to hate her.

Even so, Touya remembered like it were yesterday the moment Akito had stumbled into their genkan, tears streaming down his face and sobs ripping through his lungs and diaphragm. His lower lip had been bloodied from where he had busied himself with biting it and his olive eyes looked like glossy bottle bottoms. Touya had dropped the music sheets she had been working on and rushed to hold him: he had hidden his face in her neck and held her as if his life depended on it.

“Ayumi left me,” he had bumbled, confused and disoriented in his sorrow. “I got down on one knee and she said she wanted to end our relationship”.

It had taken many comforting caresses and soft, soothing whispers before Akito could even calm down. Touya had taken him to his room, made him lay down and put his head in her lap, gently covered his body with a blanket, and had done her best to give him all the support he needed. She knew he had been planning on proposing to Ayumi, and for how much it tore Touya’s heart apart, she had been nothing but supportive of her best friend’s endeavor: she had accompanied him to a jewelry shop to buy the ring, had given him one too many pep talks to help him build up the confidence, even offered to take on the eventual role of wedding planner.

It had all came crashing down, Akito’s head in her lap, the Sun halting in its endless pyre. “She said that she always thought she loved me as a boyfriend,” he had murmured as Touya ran her fingers through his hair, “but she realized some time ago she’s aromantic. There’s- there’s a spectrum, y’know, and she’s always known she was on it, she just didn’t know where, exactly. And- she said she realized she doesn’t want a romantic relationship at all. She doesn’t feel comfortable with it, feels like an impostor deceiving me- I told her this was about her and what she was comfortable with, and that I’d accept whatever she wanted to do, even if she wanted to break up, ‘cause I can’t force her to love me if all she feels is platonic, and- and she said she wanted to be honest and that she just couldn’t be with me anymore and wanted me to be with someone who could love me like I deserve- like I want to be loved”.

Touya had never blamed Ayumi in the slightest. How could she, with all she was and will ever be? She understood perfectly what it felt like, being unable to figure one’s self out, and the incredible dread of realizing that your identity might come at the cost of someone’s sorrow or disapproval. Ayumi had done the right thing, and Touya would never blame her for it, especially when it was something so harmless and normal. She just wished it hadn’t come at the expanse of all the dreams and future plans Akito had began to build brick by brick in his mind.

“Did he text you?” Akito asked, bringing her back from her daze.

Touya made a surprised sound looking at Akito, then down at her phone, then back up at Akito. “Uhm, no, actually. I- I’ll text him”.

Akito hummed, a little unimpressed. He crossed his arms.

Touya searched for Yuzuki’s contact and punched a quick text in the bar: “good evening! I’m in front of the restaurant, what about you?”

She looked back up at Akito, his green eyes already fixed on her face. “What is it?”

Akito shook his head. “Nothing. Just thinking about how much you’ve changed”.

A car darted on the road behind Akito, its lights setting his silhouette aflame, fiery strands turning into hot white, the bends of his skin tinting in an oyster yellow and his jacket gleaming along each fold, but it was all over in a blink of an eye. “What do you mean by that?” Touya asked, suddenly choked of her voice.

Akito tilted his head to the side, as if ordering the words in his mind. “The short answer is that you’ve gained the courage to expose yourself and try going out with someone,” he said, looking right into Touya’s eyes. “The more complicated answer is that… You’re growing so much, Touya. Each passing day, you get to know yourself better. I still remember the day you came to me, all shaking and tearing up, confiding me how wrong you felt in your own skin, and now look, look. Before me is the prettiest girl in the world, with flawless make-up, confident in her body and in her femininity, going on a date even after all your ex made you go through”.

Did she look so confident on the outside? Did Akito, her closest confidant and most intimate friend, think she was sure about what she was doing? The irony! Touya was quivering on the inside, overthinking and second-guessing every choice that had lead her here: her clothes, her make-up, her purse, her half-hearted attempt at dating again, the mere assumption that someone could ever like her for her true self.

“Listen, I can’t really put it into words,” Akito went on, his cheeks growing darker and darker with each word, “but every time I look at you, I can’t help but feel incredibly proud. You were able to find exactly what was bothering you, accepted that you weren’t happy with yourself, and worked on yourself until you felt comfortable enough in your skin and mind. You’re so deeply acquainted with yourself in a way most people can never even think of being. And… After what your ex did to you, you were so scared. You stepped back into your shell and refused to come out of it for the longest time. But now- now you’ve grown so much that you feel ready to try opening up to someone else again. You are willing to love again”.

Touya stared at Akito, barely keeping the tears from beading her eyelids.

“I had hoped for years that you would finally find that kind of courage again. Whoever you decide to love…” he began, stopping just to take a deep breath and shake his head. He stared right into Touya’s eyes, “… they will be the luckiest person on Earth”.

Touya’s phone pinged with a notification.

Akito cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed as they were suddenly pulled out of their little moment, and Touya decided to spare him (and herself, too, in a certain measure) the embarrassment by checking the text.

Yuzuki had answered her text. “Stuck in traffic. Be there in a few mins tho”.

Touya tucked a strand of midnight hair behind her ear and shifted the weight from one leg to another. “Yuzuki is almost here,” she said, and at Akito’s unimpressed glance, she added: “traffic”.

Akito made a small sound, as if mocking that justification, and pushed himself off the motorcycle’s side. He stepped closer to Touya and reached up to fix her bangs. “I’ll go back home, then,” he said.

Touya nodded lightly, a bit scared at the idea of being left alone without her best friend by her side. “I don’t know if Yuzuki will accompany me back home,” she said. “Either way, if it gets too late, I’ll walk home. Don’t wait for me and get some rest, okay?”

“Bullshit,” Akito said. “I’m not letting you walk home alone in the middle of the night. Just text me and I’ll come pick you up, even if you end up on the other side of Tokyo”.

Touya twisted her ring around her index, a nice rivulet of silver crowned by a blossom of sodalite Akito had gifted her a few years back. It never failed to make her heart pound, the way Akito always went the extra mile to take care of her and ensure her safety and happiness, even at his own expanses. Waiting for her awake in the night to just go and pick her up was one of the most mundane things Akito had offered to do for her. “… Thanks, Aki”.

Akito finally smiled, that fond smile he reserved especially for her that always made Touya feel like the luckiest girl on Earth, and put his hand on her shoulder. He turned serious once more, his smile melting into a grave expression. “Tou, remember that I’m always a text away, alright?” he said. “If the date happens to go South, if he makes you feel uncomfortable, if you need advice for anything going on, or if you want to just gush to me about how well it’s going while hiding in the bathroom to cool down – I’m just a text away. I’m here for you no matter what. Don’t worry about reaching out”.

Touya breathed in. “I will,” she smiled. Oh, how grateful she was to have Akito by her side, regardless of the label on their relationship. She wouldn’t trade what they had for anything else anyone could hope to offer her.

Akito nodded and patted her shoulder before stepping back and grabbing his helmet. “I’ll be home watching TV until you’re done here. Just have fun tonight, ‘kay? Try to enjoy yourself,” he said, pulling the helmet over his head and then securing the lacing under his chin.

Touya nodded, observing her best friend throw his leg over the motorcycle’s seat and rev up the engine. Suddenly, she felt a hot rush of affection, of pure gratitude take hold of her, and before she knew it, she called: “Aki!”

Akito turned his torso around from where he sat on the motorcycle, just to feel Touya’s arm wrap around his neck in a close embrace.

“Thank you,” was all she said.

Akito’s arms rose to hold her, his forearms resting against the little of her back and his palms pressing her hips closer to his chest. Touya wanted to stay like that forever, in Akito’s safe arms and in his supportive and warm presence, in a place where his soft smiles and proud eyes were never too far away from her.

Alas, she had to move away eventually, and after squeezing the bend of her waist, Akito gave her a final nod and sped off on the road, a little bit slower than his usual speed. Touya was left alone on the sidewalk, lulled by the drowned out sounds of the city all around her. She stepped back from the side of the road and went to lean against the wall of the restaurant, illuminated by the lamppost lining the edge between sidewalk and road and the bright store signs all jumbled up and mashed together along the gray walls and the filthy white plaster and the metal beams that made up the worn down railings of stairs, the scaffolding of high-rise balconies, the supports of sloping roofs in front of quaint automatic doors made of plastic and glass that let the neon lights behind them shine through on the asphalt.

Touya took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, occupy her mind with pleasant thoughts as she waited. Now that she was left alone, she was starting to feel a little nauseous. Her hands were starting to shake and her stomach was beginning to ache with her gastric juices boiling and burning along its walls, a direct response of her mind unconsciously trying to cope with emotional distress in the way it would if it were a potential physical threat.

When had it been the last time she had gone on a date? Ah, she had to dig a bit around to look for that moment, so far behind in her life that she had lost it in the sea of her memories.

She would sometimes throw her mind back and through that sea of memories, much like a fishing rod: she’d toss the hook as far as she could, let it dip and bob up and down placidly in her memories until the bait caught something, and then, slowly and carefully, she’d re-wrap the string as she observed the rod blank bend in an arch, writhing as it dragged a temporarily forgotten experience to the shore, to the forefront of her mind.

Sometimes, in moments like these, she would force the bait in a peculiar direction, willing a current among the waves rolling in her mind to let the hook float to a specific time frame. So she did now: she willed the water to flow back, back, to her days in University, to the period of time she had just moved into her first apartment with Akito and was learning how to dance around the boy every single moment of her life, learning the ins and outs of his soul to live placidly by his side. That had been the time period where she had first and last tried her hand at love, the two fatal years she had spent dating Yoko, her little lovely star that ended up scalding Touya’s skin and bones beyond repair.

She willed the water to flow into that giant bay, leading it around the rocks and the crags, avoiding the shallows and the trenches of her foul memories. She pushed the water past the memories of screaming, braved the storm of all the sickly insults dripping in honeyed words, past the wreckage left behind by all the hours and days of radio silence and angry looks paired with sealed lips.

She made landfall on a gentle memory, the sweet spring afternoon where Touya had had her last happy date. She had had a few rough weeks in a row, for her exams in composition, history of modern music and theory and analysis of cinema had somehow all ended up being in the same week, she and the rest of Vivid BAD SQUAD had landed an interview with the manager of a major music label and her second brother had asked her to be his maid of honor to his wedding. Touya could remember it so clearly: she had ran out of the room where she had taken her history of modern music’s exam – the last one of the three – and back to her apartment where Akito was waiting for her with her suitcases and lunch ready, An and Kohane waiting for her at the entrance, Touya throwing herself in the passenger seat, her three best friends telling her the good news about how the manager was more than willing to sign a contract with them, her teammates hugging her close as she rushed to take her flight to Vancouver, her brother’s wife’s birth city.

The following day she had attended the wedding, trying her best to be sociable and make sure everything went smoothly, shielding her brother and sister-in-law from any problem that arose among the guests. She had even ended up dancing with her sister-in-law and talking with her about anything and everything while she fixed her make-up in the bathroom. “Touya-chan is so pretty,” she had teased, observing as Touya leaned closer to the mirror to fill in a portion of her eyeliner that had somehow melted away. “Anyone would be lucky to date you!”

“Ah, thank you, Lucy,” she had said, a little sheepish at the compliment, “but I already have a girlfriend”.

“Oh, do you?” Lucy had asked, giving her a knowing smirk. “Then she is the luckiest girl alive”.

And that much Touya had told to Yoko the following evening, as soon as she had landed in Tokyo and Yoko had asked her to go on a date together.

“Mmh,” Yoko had hummed with a cheeky smile, pulling Touya in by her hips, caressing her waist with slow hands in the way she knew Touya was weak to. She had pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Touya’s lips, pressing hard into her like she always did, and said: “goes both ways. You’re the luckiest, I’m the second luckiest”.

The handle of the car’s door had been digging into the little of Touya’s back, the thin sheet of condensation had kept dampening her hoodie, but Touya couldn’t have cared less. Yoko had been warm in her arms, her lips starved over hers, and her black eyes pulled her in with the strength of a black hole, catching her along its event horizon and never letting her move away – and oh, how she would have tried to escape that irresistible pull in the following months, running desperately from the center of gravity that was Yoko!

Yoko had kept kissing her for what felt like an eternity, until all Touya could taste was her girlfriend’s teeth and honey-flavored lipstick. It was a taste she had grown accustomed to, the sickly sweet taste of honey and venom, one she had to wash out of her mouth for years to come. At some point, Yoko had sighed and opened the passenger seat’s door for Touya, circled the car and sat at the driver’s seat, taking off into the mild evening.

And then… And then… The memory became a bit murkier there. Touya shifted her weight and her shoulder scraped a bit against the light plaster of the wall behind her, as if begging her to resurface from her dive in her memories before she burnt herself on the dim embers, but she was too obtuse to listen. She tried to remember where they had gone that night – Yoko had picked, hadn’t she? She was always the one who chose what to do of their dates and Touya would simply swipe her card no matter what Yoko wanted to do, because she had been too infatuated to care about prices at the time. Ah, yes: they had gone to the cinema that evening, and Touya, wrecked by her post-exam tiredness and the jet-lag, had accidentally fallen asleep on Yoko’s shoulder halfway through. She could vaguely remember the movie being about two best friends with a pretty clear attraction for each other, kept from having a relationship because they were both girls in a homophobic small city, and one of the two began to kill all of the people who asked her best friend out.

“I kinda get her,” Yoko had said, Touya struggling to keep her eyes open already by that point.

“Do you?” she had yawned.

Yoko had nodded, grinning with all of her teeth bared without looking away from the big screen. “I’d kill anyone who even lays eyes on you. You’re mine and no one can ever have you”.

It had sent shivers down Touya’s spine, managed to keep her awake for a little longer, her heart pounding in a sour emotion she couldn’t quite place. They had sat in Yoko’s car for a little while before she accompanied Touya back home. “Touyakkun,” she had called, stabbing her chopsticks through her cup of instant ramen they had bought from a Seven-Eleven, “what do you think you’d be doing now if you had never met me?”

“Sleeping my jet-lag away,” Touya had said without missing a beat, immediately spooning a mouthful of noodles past her lips.

Yoko had let out a displeased sound. “In your life in general”.

Touya had taken a second to think about it. She had met Yoko only two scarce years prior, at the beginning of her first year in University and a few months after she had began to take oestrogen. Yoko had been in finances in another University, but seemed pretty keen on sifting through the places the humanities and art students frequented to make friends: that was how she had ended up meeting Touya and Kohane, casually breaking the ice and making a lasting impression only on Touya. She used to drop by Touya’s apartment often, saying how being around her always helped her focus better on her studies, always waited for Touya after her classes were over, and once they had began dating, she had began to monopolize her free time. Whatever time wasn’t spent in class, practicing or performing was spent with Yoko, pressing their mouths together and eating trash food away and watching all the weird movies Yoko loved and arguing over nothing and crying over everything.

Back-stepping. Touya used to be the only one crying over the relationship. She had always known that Yoko’s crocodile tears were fake ninety-nine percent of the time.

Touya’s most honest response to her question would have been: “I would be sleeping my jet-lag away, with a better blood pressure and a higher bank count and less paracetamol in my system”. But she couldn’t say that, because not only would it have sounded extremely bitter and shallow, but it would have struck Yoko’s very delicate nerve and would have grafted a fresh fight that Touya did not have the energy for. And so she had said: “I’m not sure. My life would be duller and flatter, I reckon. I would spend my Friday nights alone, my coffee breaks alone, and all my study sessions alone, too”.

“Bullshit,” Yoko had shaken her head as Touya took a sip of the ramen broth. It had stung her tongue, way too hot to be drank just yet, but Touya had always been careless about things that could potentially burn her. “You’d spend your Friday nights with that stupid Shinonome, your coffee breaks with Shiraishi-chan and your study sessions with Azusawa-chan. I bet you’d replace me in a heartbeat”.

“I wouldn’t,” Touya had said, furrowing her brows while Yoko had began dubbing away marbles of tears from the corners of her eyes. She had immediately put down her ramen in the cup holder at the sight and turned to her girlfriend, laying a hand on her thigh. “Yoko, I love you, nothing and no one could hope to replace you, okay? Trust me when I say that I wouldn’t trade you for anything else in the world. I wouldn’t want to spend my days without you”.

“Good, good. No one else would take you, anyway,” Yoko had hummed after a small sniff, which got Touya to force herself to swallow saliva that tasted of chicken-flavored broth and made her pull her hand back. It was something she would say very often, that no one would ever love Touya, that only Yoko would take her, that seriously, how could anyone ever love her? Yoko was her best and only option.

Touya tried to dispel the memory as quickly as she could. She had forgotten how sour that memory was in all truth, how sour everything about Yoko was in her mind. She shook her head, trying not to think of the taste of honey and foul love, of what had been the menu of one of the worst times of her life.

“Touya-san?”

The voice immediately dragged her out of the water, leaving her stranded on the shore of the present, dripping with the cold water of the interrupted memory. Touya looked up and found Yuzuki standing before her, his slanted eyes somewhat confused at her sight. “Ah, Yuzuki-kun!” she exclaimed, pushing herself off of the wall. “I’m sorry, I zoned out for a second”.

Yuzuki gifted her a small and yet strained smile. His canines poked out of his thin lips and dug at the lower one, dyeing small dots of paler skin. “’s fine,” he said. “Have you been waiting for long, Touya-san? You could have waited inside, it would’ve been warmer”.

Touya shook her head. “I’m fine, I didn’t wait long”. Not like she had been keeping track of time, anyway… “Ah, it would have been harder to find me if I waited inside, wouldn’t it?”

Yuzuki tilted his head, touché. “Shall we go in?”

Touya blinked, a little uncomfortable. “Uh… Yes, let’s”.

It was somewhat weird, Touya thought. She knew nothing of Yuzuki, and Yuzuki knew nothing of her (or at least: nothing that had came out of Touya’s mouth. She wasn’t sure how much Shizuku had spilled about her). She had never gone on a date with someone she didn’t know at all; it had always been on an at-the-very-least wobbly foundation of a friendship, always secured in a fake sense of safety given by Touya’s bleak knowledge of the other person’s very general interests, styles of speech and interaction and their strong topics of conversation. But Yuzuki? Nothing. He had always been extremely dry and synthetic in his texts, and even then, they had only spoken to settle on a place and date for this evening. For all she knew, Yuzuki could have been a bored touristic guide who owned a very vast collection of eastern art books or an overly zealous cook in a five-star restaurant with a weird obsession for vintage cars. Who knows which way the world spins sometimes.

She followed Yuzuki through the double doors and stood back as he spoke in a flat tone to the front waitress. The woman that stood behind the counter seemed pretty bubbly and social, which made Touya feel a little bit bad for her, given the poor response she was getting from the man. Touya observed the way she smiled without any shame, the way she tilted her hips without the movement looking awkward, the way her black eyes shone with genuine enjoyment for her craft. Black eyes that for a moment reminded Touya of Yoko, of her kitsune smile, of her sharp tongue, of the way she always held herself in a very feminine way, always noticing how much she differed from Touya and her clumsy attempts at appearing and behaving like a girl. “You look ridiculous when you try too hard, y’know?” she’d once said. Touya had never been able to get those words out of her head, not quite, always replaying them involuntarily anytime she tried on a girly outfit or exaggerated her make-up to look more feminine.

The itch under her skin flared up once more. She felt a little ridiculous in her pretty skirt now, standing right in front of such an effortlessly pretty woman in simple work attire and silky black hair pushed back in a slick ponytail. Her perfume felt overpowering and her lipstick unnecessary, perhaps even ridiculous. She should’ve known: there was no point in trying so hard. Pretending to be effortlessly feminine was stupid and childish. She should’ve kept saying she was non-binary instead of a woman, should’ve kept using neutral pronouns and wearing masculine clothing, should have never dared take oestrogen that should’ve belonged to someone who really deserved-

“Touya-san?” Yuzuki called, the woman now standing by their sides and waiting to lead them to their table. She threw Touya a concerned glance. “Is everything alright?”

“Ah, y-yes, of course,” she said, breaking out of her thoughts and trying to smile. “It just has been a while since I last went on a date. I am a bit nervous, that’s all”.

The waitress gave her an understanding and sympathetic smile, then turned to Yuzuki, piercing him with an expectant glance. Yuzuki simply shrugged at Touya’s explanation: “doesn’t surprise me”.

Touya blinked. What did he even mean by that?

“Shall we go?” the waitress said, her costumer service smile forced as she spoke. Her eyes thinned so much that they looked like pools of ink. “Does the lady have a preference for where she wants to sit?”

Touya perked up at being asked something so trivial. Did that mean that Yuzuki hadn’t reserved a specific table? “I saw that you have a few booths that look out to the sea. I didn’t read anything about a reservation, so would it be alright to sit there?”

The waitress tilted her head and gave her a genuine smile. “Of course! Although they come at a higher price. We should have two or three tables available in that room, I’ll check immediately”.

Yuzuki gave her an annoyed glance, but carefully cleansed his face of any emotion when turning towards Touya as the waitress went in another room with a quick pace. “You’re alright with that?”

“I don’t mind spending a little more to enjoy my evening better,” she said, running a hand over the rim of her coat. “But we can sit somewhere else if you do mind”.

Yuzuki stared at her for a couple of heartbeats, brown eyes searching her face for something she couldn’t guess. “Fine, if it makes you happy, then let’s sit there,” he sighed, digging his hands in the pockets of his elegant pants.

Touya smiled and nodded. “Thank you”.

The waitress came back after a couple minutes. “We do have a free table,” she said, which gained a nod from Yuzuki. She beckoned the two towards a door in the back of the room and lead them through the new space, a wide room with an entire wall made out of glass, looking out on a secondary road and, behind it, countless dunes decked in wooden platforms that lead to a quiet swatch of the sea. The waves rolled gently over the sliver of the beach Touya could see, but it was mostly hidden behind vegetation and picturesque buildings backed against the road and the shore.

They were led to a table towards the right side of the room, its wooden edge a couple of centimeters away from the glass wall, giving them a perfect view of the sea. Touya gasped as another waitress appeared behind her. The first waitress wished them a nice evening and Yuzuki sat down, nodding her off. Touya shook herself out of her reverie and sat down as well, hanging her coat and purse on the white chair. The second waitress handed them both a laminated copy of the menu. “Call me when you’re ready to order!” she exclaimed, and then walked off to another table where a couple was waiting for her.

Yuzuki stretched his legs underneath the table and nudged her foot with his. “Do you like the sea?” he asked once she looked up at him.

The question got Touya to relax a bit, letting a small smile slip through. “Perhaps like is a light word,” she said. “I have always found the sea to be incredibly soothing. Sometimes the mere sound of the waves rolling on the beach manages to calm me and wash away every single one of my worries. The feeling of the sand beneath my feet, the salt air on my skin, the shimmer of the seashells and the rocks polished and brought ashore by the current… Sometimes I feel like I belong with the sea. I could lay down on the shore and forever live there, without ever growing sick of the sounds all around me”.

Yuzuki gave a slight chuckle at that, nervous and strained as his teeth poked into his lower lip and crow feet formed all around his cold eyes. “You must have spent a long time at the beach as a kid,” he said. “Did your mother take walks along the shore while pregnant with you? They say people belong in the places their mothers walked while carrying them in her womb”.

Touya hummed lightly, sitting more comfortably in her chair. “No, not at all,” she said truthfully. “My mother hardly ever left the house while she was pregnant with me, and we used to live in the middle of the city. And no, I never went to the beach as a kid: in fact, I was sixteen when I swam for the first time!”

“Shielded kid, much,” Yuzuki commented. He sighed and looked down at his menu.

Touya blinked, surprised by the abrupt end of the conversation. Why even bring up the topic if Yuzuki was just gonna shoot her down? By criticizing her, no less. She shook her head, brought her knees together close to her body and began to read through the menu. She skipped over anything that even mentioned squid and calamari, landing on the fish fillets. Ah, she had been talking with Akito about trying steamed salmon fillet made with a fancy technique she’d seen on the internet lately…

Yuzuki called the waitress as Touya was still going through the menu. The girl was quick to arrive, tablet and pen already in hand. “So, what would you like?” she asked with a bright smile. Touya couldn’t help but be a bit envious of the way her plump lips pulled back her full cheeks, making the light dusting of blush shine over her dark skin.

Yuzuki was quick to order, and Touya, who hadn’t yet settled on her order, scrambled to ask for the first thing that came to her mind. The waitress nodded and paced towards the kitchen: Touya observed the way her black and purple braids swung back and forth along her back. If she were to guess, she would have said they were a weave of raw hair, much like her own extensions.

Touya tried to think of something to break the awkward silence that had once again fell between the two strangers. “Do you work in the music industry, Yuzuki-kun?” she asked. “From what I know, the vast majority of Shizuku’s friends come from her work”.

Yuzuki nodded lightly. “Yes and no. I’m a light tech,” he said. “They often call me to work with the lights during small concerts. I often ran into Shizuku-senpai and her group in the last few months, but I only managed to get Shizuku-senpai’s number”. He sighed after that.

Touya was about to add on, but the waitress came back and put a glass pitcher filled with water in the center of the table. She left as quickly as she came, leaving Touya a bit transfixed on the way the water’s surface wobbled a bit with the leftover movement, shimmering and shining along the glass curve of the pitcher.

Once they were left alone, Yuzuki spoke up again: “Shizuku-senpai told me you are a street singer”.

Touya sat up at that, a new smile easily pulling at her lips. “Yes, I’ve been singing with my best friend ever since middle school, and I’ve started the group I’m in right now during my first year of high school. We’re called Vivid BAD SQUAD. This group- it’s the one thing I’m the proudest of, in my entire life”.

“Vivid BAD SQUAD…” Yuzuki echoed, as if thinking about it. “I’ve heard about you. Are you under Hoshi Records?”

Touya nodded. “We had started out under another company, but we didn’t enjoy the work place and moved under Hoshi Records while me and another girl in the group – Kohane – were still in University”.

Yuzuki kept quiet for a while, but eventually said: “I’m surprised Hoshi Records would take a trans girl in”.

“Ah…” Touya let out, surprised, feeling her ears grow hot from the embarrassment. “Uhm… Our manager is very open about this kind of things,” she tried to salvage the conversation. “She doesn’t care about her employees’ sexuality or gender as long as we work hard and fairly. She has even helped me out in creating a public image I feel comfortable with”.

Yuzuki hummed, letting his eyes wander around her face. “You’re lucky she thinks that way. Two girls, a man and a trannie isn’t a nice combo in the world of music. Especially a trans girl”.

Touya froze as soon as she heard the slur, let alone the general implication of the phrase. For how impartial to the statement Yuzuki could have been (and Touya doubted there was any impartiality, in all honesty), he was still saying that girls had less value in the world of music, and that Touya couldn’t be labeled as a girl. Her hands shook under the table, something in her chest flashed in a hot pain that ran along her ribs, making them ache. Maybe… Maybe the term had been a mistake, maybe he had only meant well. Maybe, if she were to explain… “I mean this in the most polite way,” she began, her voice as steady as she could blurt it out, “but you shouldn’t use that term, it’s a slur”.

Yuzuki raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to say something, but the waitress with that beautiful dark skin came with their dinner. “Here you go,” she smiled, setting Touya’s plate down first. “Steamed salmon with side roe for the pretty lady and sauté mussels and mushrooms for the gentleman”.

Touya looked up at her, surprised at being called pretty by a woman much more beautiful than her. As the waitress put Yuzuki’s plate in front of him, she gifted Touya a small wink and a warm smile, then put her miso soup and bell pepper salad before her. “Thank you so much,” Touya managed to smile at her.

The waitress’s smile only widened at her words. Was she not used to being thanked? The idea surprised Touya a bit. Ever since her early childhood, her parents and brothers had always told her to thank anyone who served her and to pass empty plates to the waiters when they went out to dinner. “It’s nothing, miss! I’ll be back with the Umeshu in a second. Please, enjoy your dinner in the meantime,” she said, and like a whirlwind, she was already gone.

Yuzuki began to eat right away, bending his head down to dig into his plate.

Touya held back a sigh and began to cut her salmon into bite-sized pieces. How did the saying go? Disappointed, but not surprised. What was even going through Yuzuki’s head? He had been the one to ask Touya out on a date, and now… What? Why was he so disinterested and reluctant to be here with her? Why give her a back-handed insult? Why undermine her identity as a woman?

A knot tied itself in her throat as she shoved some bell pepper and chili in her mouth, looking for some comfort in one of her favorite dishes. This is why she didn’t want to go on dates anymore. This is why she didn’t try her hand at romance with anyone she didn’t know at all. She gulped down a bite of rice and salmon with great difficulty. This is why Yoko was right: no one will ever take her seriously. No one will ever love her regardless of her gender, no one will ever look at her and find something worthy enough of being loved.

The waitress came back with the bottle of wine, setting it down on the table and quickly opening it for them. Touya thanked her again even if she wasn’t going to drink any wine, but her voice sounded choked. The waitress gave her a slightly concerned look with her big brown eyes before leaving. Touya could see her throwing a glance at their table every once in a while.

She forced herself to swallow more and more salmon, the roe and rice tasting like glue in her dry mouth. Shizuku would have never in a million years set her up with a transphobic person, so why was Yuzuki talking that way? Touya had specifically told Shizuku to make clear she was trans to avoid any trouble in case he wasn’t comfortable with going out with her. There was no way he had deceived Shizuku into believing he was okay with Touya’s identity just to spend an evening disrespecting her and treating her with sufficiency, right? It seemed too unnecessarily evil to Touya, honestly. So… Why?

The food was hardly going down Touya’s oesophagus, squeezing past the burning, stuffy feeling forming in her trachea and solidifying in a heavy rock that sat over the mouth of her stomach, weighting there, making her feel dreadfully sick. She took a sip of miso soup, hoping to wash everything down, forcing it through her digestive apparatus, but she only ended up scalding her tongue and throat. She tried not to show any emotion, not to let out any sounds: she was used to burning herself.

Yuzuki was almost at the bottom of his glass of Umeshu when he searched for Touya’s feet again under the table, but she had already crossed her ankles and pushed them underneath her chair by then. He looked up and gave her a curious look. “Shizuku-senpai had said you were a bit hesitant with dating,” he said, biting into a particularly fat mushroom, oil and sauce dripping from its rounded ends, “but I hadn’t thought you’d be this shy. How come?”

Touya merely blinked, trying her hardest to erase all emotion from her face. Oh, the audacity of such a question! Even rocks could have had more tact. “… Most people don’t take well to the fact that I am trans,” she eventually admitted, after taking another long sip of her miso soup. “They don’t know how to act, and can hardly respect my boundaries. Most of them don’t want to understand”.

“Don’t want to,” Yuzuki echoed, an emotion that Touya couldn’t read at all mounting all across his face. He busied himself with his rice.

Touya nodded, trying to find the adequate words. She took the last bite of her salmon to stall. “Yes. I understand that it may sound so complicated to some people, as it is a world different from their own, but all they have to do, really, is ask, while being respectful of my boundaries and experiences. My friends had absolutely no trouble understanding how my world works and finding a way to make sure I never felt out of place in their company,” she said.

Yuzuki frowned, biting into a spoonful of soup. “Does it count so much towards you not even trying to date?” he asked. “I mean, not all people are like that. Maybe you just haven’t tried hard enough”.

Hard enough? She hadn’t tried hard enough?

Something crashed over Touya, a concoction of blinding anger and paralyzing fear that threatened to snap her spine in half with the strength it carried. The itch underneath her skin flared up, almost eating her alive. It was her fault? Hers, and not of everyone else’s bigotry? It was her fault for just trying to look and sound the way she truly felt inside? She had to be the one to educate other people to treat her with the decency a human being deserved?

Did she have to fucking beg to be loved?

She drew a deep breath, anger burning her alive. “I tried to get my ex-girlfriend to treat me decently for two entire years,” she said in the spur of the moment, and as soon as the words left her mouth she wanted to bite her tongue back. “That didn’t stop her from being transphobic and cheating on me. So, yes, it counts that much. I’ve tried plenty enough, and I’m tired of begging for the bare minimum”.

Yuzuki shrugged, his face growing evidently annoyed. “Doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “I mean, I’m getting sick of you and I’ve spent… What? Twenty minutes with you? I can’t really blame your ex”.

Touya’s entire world stilled on its axis, standing on a fragile balance before it inevitably tipped. Her heart slowed down as she managed to get out of her chest, among the boiling rage: “pardon me?”

“You’re a hard one to swallow,” Yuzuki said, making a sour face openly. “We’ve just met and you’re already so political”.

Political, he said, Touya almost scoffed to herself. “Wanting to be treated normally isn’t being political,” she pulled out of her locked teeth.

Yuzuki shook his head. “Maybe you should lower your expectations, Touya-san,” he spat. “Don’t you see it? Maybe there’s a reason no one wants to take you. Your ex did the only right thing”.

Touya’s head spun: a complete stranger was saying that Yoko had done the only right thing to do. What did he even know about Touya and Yoko, of that shy moon and the star who ended up burning her mind and heart? What did he know of all the casual insults Yoko had thrown at Touya in public, of all the times she got mad at Touya for leaving her apartment to go out with her friends, of every time Yoko had laughed in Touya’s face because of her body? What did he know of the two years of constant degradation and insecurity Touya had to go through? What did he know what never being taken seriously meant?

“Yuzuki-san, why did you ask me out?” she asked, breathing out and standing straighter in her seat.

“I thought you were hot, that’s all”.

“You evidently changed your mind once Shizuku told you I am trans,” she reasoned, given how he hadn’t even looked at any part of her that wasn’t her eyes, hadn’t complimented her outfit or make-up, hadn’t even spared the tiniest blush. Touya shifted in her chair, begging to whatever deity up above to stop the tears from beading her eyes. “Why waste our time like this?”

“Because Shizuku-senpai conveniently forgot to tell me you’re not a girl until a few hours ago,” Yuzuki said, beginning to raise his voice. “I wouldn’t even have asked you, if I’d known, but I was already out when she told me and I said, you know what? I’m just gonna pray this evening goes by as fast as it can and I won’t speak to Touya-san ever again”.

Oh, it was impossible to stop the tears after that. You’re not a girl. How many times had she heard that same line over the last few years? It never ceased to cut deeply into her chest, sinking in her mind with the weight of an entire meteorite and making her nauseous. She truly couldn’t understand it, just why people cared that much about what she did to her body, what she wore to feel pretty, how she styled her hair to go out. She couldn’t understand why they felt so pressed to express their opinions about her body, something that didn’t belong to them in the slightest, something they had no right to criticize, why they felt like they had the right to spew out the most hurtful and insensible words that did nothing but hurt Touya and all of the people who felt like her.

She sat there, speechless, staring at Yuzuki, who stared right back at her with what she could now place as pure disgust, hardly even concealed.

“Don’t you feel pathetic sometimes?” he asked. “Don’t you feel like a grotesque caricature of something unnatural? You should just act like a man and try to go out with a real woman: it’s gonna do wonders for your messed up sense of security and your sour personality”.

Touya didn’t even know how to feel at that point. She couldn’t believe she had been on the receiving end of such horrible thoughts, of such tactless suggestions, and she couldn’t believe that anyone in their right mind could ever string such words together and even find the courage to speak them out loud. She stayed quiet, almost thrown back along the years to when Yoko would scream at her and she would just stand there in silence, taking it all in, because not talking back was the quickest way it would all be over. Be quiet, do not make a sound, and the wolf will leave from the boredom, starved of the words you could have thrown at it to feed on and keep going in its hunt.

Yuzuki shook his head and sprung up, leaving his dinner unfinished. “I can’t stand this,” he said. “Fix yourself, Touya-san, and stop wasting people’s time with your delusions”.

Touya didn’t even follow him with her eyes as he left the table and paced out of the room. She looked down at her empty bowls, not even bothering to dry the tears that had, by now, began tumbling down her cheeks. She kept her breath in check, her body as still as physically possible, her face lowered in pure shame.

“No one will ever take you seriously, Touyakkun,” she could almost hear Yoko say from the depths of her memory. “I mean, look at yourself. You’re messed up sooo bad. Be happy that I took you, ‘cause no one else ever will”.

Touya absolutely hated the fact that Yoko had been so incredibly right. More than anything, she hated the fact that, in a way, she didn’t even care: the only reason why she hoped someone would accept her and love her wholly was to distract herself from the fact that Akito, the person who loved her the most in this world, didn’t love her romantically.

And just then, it hit her- Akito. She had to call him and tell him to come pick her up. She would have to look at him in the face and explain just why her eyes were swollen and why her limbs were growing sore from being tense.

People were starting to look at her. Fancy couples that had been too busy with each other to look at anything else, friends enjoying the sight of the sea shimmering in the moonlight, even a family celebrating one of their young daughter’s birthday. She could feel the gazes slide up and down her body – were they judging her, too? She knew her top fit awkwardly around her chest, hanging a little too loose to be intentional, she knew she was pitiful, sitting all alone at a table with an unfinished dinner and tears running down her cheeks, she knew she had dared too much tonight. She couldn’t stand the attention, all the apprehension, all the disgust. She knew she had messed up. She knew she should have never dared wish for the Sun again.

She stood up, hastily threw her purse over her shoulder and rushed to the bathroom, drawing the door closed as quickly and yet silently as she could. She choked down the sobs that were begging to be let out, clawing their way up her throat, her entire body burning so brightly that she might as well soon turn into dust. She crawled her way into a cubicle, quietly fastening the door with the rusty lock made out of cheap brass and all but fell on the toilet seat, sinking her face in her hands and finally letting herself weep properly.

Touya wished she could just see past those words and go her own way. What did a random man’s opinion even matter to her? He didn’t know the first thing about Touya, of the person she was behind her broad shoulders and flat chest and rearranged features stirred by the oestrogen she religiously took every night. She was a person behind the simple fact that she was trans, a normal person with a wide wealth of feelings and experiences, with likes and dislikes, with people who truly cared about her; and so, why did those words stick to her skin like tar, drowning out all of her light and rendering her unable to move?

“It’s- it’s okay,” she told to herself out loud, each word broken and torn apart by her heavy sobs, “he doesn’t- doesn’t mean anything to you. His words- they’re nothing but wasted breath”.

Why waste that breath to spit out hateful words? Touya truly couldn’t wrap her head around that simple fact. She kept hiccuping into her hands, make-up running all over her cheeks and her scarred fingers, and her shoulders kept trembling, wrecked by the terrible sobs, her whole body shaking as she struggled to breathe from the strength of her weeping.

“Yoko isn’t right,” she murmured, beginning to rock in place. “Yoko didn’t want to understand anything about you- how- how could she ever know anything right about something she’s totally ignorant about?”

Her feet and ankles turned numb as she kept pushing against them to rock, her elbows digging in her bare thighs, blood rushing painfully underneath her skin. Her lungs squeezed and begged for air, her diaphragm could hardly keep up with her sorrow, her eyes stung from the overflowing amount of tears. She hated when people who mattered absolutely nothing managed to crawl under her skin, whipping up the itch that flared regularly every time she felt ridiculous or out of place. Wasn’t her dysphoria plenty enough already? Why did people feel the need to make her feel miserable?

“There… There must be- someone out there,” she almost pleaded with herself. “There must be someone out- out there who wants to love me for who I am… Right?”

She felt so uncomfortable in her clothes right now. With her make-up and soft locks of extensions, in her own skin, in her own body. A grotesque caricature of something unnatural, Yuzuki had called her. Touya felt pathetic right now, indeed, her whole worth being dictated by how she looked. She began to claw at her face, unable to scratch that cursed itch, unable to feel adequate in her body, unable, unable, unable. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, her cheeks, her chin, her Cupid’s bow, until nothing was left of her lipstick. No point to it, now: she should’ve known that her romantic side was nothing but delusional, believing even remotely that anyone would wait for the perfect moment to steal a sweet, magical kiss from her. It was pointless. No one will ever taste her mouth and find it tasted exactly like their favorite thing.

A memory resurfaced slowly in her mind in thinking of her lips with such disgust. Out of the countless honeyed kisses she had tasted ever since immersing herself in the pool of romantic rendezvous, there had been one that tasted of tangerine and sugary sweetness, of vanilla lip balm and a distant time of her life; an easier one, perhaps, but coursed by adrenaline and the awe of discovering the beauty of life for the first time. She had tasted Akito’s lips only once, but the memory was seared in her mind, its presence lingering over the coast and being brought ashore periodically by the waves.

Touya often found herself catching that particular memory of Akito, a loud night spent with friends and a predictable dare, caring looks and bated breaths. A master angler she was when it came to the memory of Akito’s lips on hers, of the gentle way he had held her, of the light tickle of his hair flying all over her forehead, of his sweet taste in her mouth and the slow drag of his tongue along her teeth. She could vividly remember Haruka handing her the bottle out of pity after countless rounds and never receiving a kiss from someone and setting it in the middle of their circle before giving it a firm spin.

The neck of the bottle had flashed around the friends from the person sitting opposite Touya, tracing all of them: Mizuki, Kanade, Honami, Ichika, Nene, Rui, An, Kohane, Shiho, Akito, back to Touya, and around the rest of her friends, then again, round and round, until it had slowly came to a full stop, rocking slightly in place from where it was pointing at Akito.

Akito had given her a curious and surprised look, studying her face as she shifted in place to face him. They had played enough rounds by then that the movement was almost automatic: shift, hold the other person, give them a light chuckle, kiss them for a few seconds. Rinse and repeat. “Are you okay with this?” Akito had asked her, eyes swollen with genuine worry for her sake as he put his hands over her hips.

Her breath had itched there – Touya could still recall the exact feeling of her heart squeezing in her chest at the sweet thought and being touched so – and she had nodded slowly. The small buns Saki had tied her hair into had bobbed up and down with the motion. “Yeah. There’s no one I’d trust more than you”.

“But it’s your first kiss,” Akito had argued, tracing small circles with his thumbs over her hipbones. A few murmurs had risen from their friends at that new information, a half-hearted sigh from Kohane.

“All the better, then,” she had commented. “I would give my first kiss to my best friend, the one I can trust with anything and everything”.

A beat of silence where Akito had stared in her eyes, looking for even the slightest shadow of a doubt. In the end, he had breathed out: “okay. Tilt your head to the side, then, pretty”.

The memory faded right then and there, and Touya began to question if that night had truly happened after all. It seemed too improbable, bordering on a fever dream, because how could Akito ever taste her lips and enjoy it? There was a reason she had tried that tangerine flavor just once, never getting a second bite, and instead transitioned to a banquet of honey and venom.

She stared at the red smear of lipstick across her hand. How stupid she had been. No one will ever love her, not in the way she wanted to. Not even Akito, the most supportive person in Touya’s modest orbit, would ever look at her and wish to compare her to every single star and still deem her the most beautiful form of radiance in the Universe.

Akito, she quietly reminded herself. She had to call Akito so that she could go home and cry herself to sleep as quickly as she could.

She blindly reached for her purse and dove her hand in, looking for her phone. She took it out, and through blurry eyes, she stared down at her lock-screen, her, Akito, An and Kohane cooped up in a photo booth and making a wobbly star with their fingers in the center. She bit her lip at the sight: she had yet to start oestrogen at the time, and soft blossoms of beard could be seen along her too prominent Adam’s apple, her hair barely brushing her shoulders and her eyes thinner than they had grown to become. Maybe they should retake the photo, she somberly thought.

She unlocked the device and scrolled past all the excited and supporting texts she had received from her friends, looking for Akito’s chat log. She opened it and began to type a text, but her fingers shook way too much to hit the right characters, so after a few seconds of hesitance, she settled on calling him.

The sound of the phone ringing was grounding and unnerving at the same time. She waited quietly, tears still beading and pouring from her eyes, whole body still shaking as she tried to regain control over herself. It only took three rings for Akito to pick up. “Hey, princess,” he said, a strange mix of emotions tinting his voice.

Touya let out a trembling breath and surrendered to the shame that came with admitting just how terribly everything had gone. “A-Aki, can you come pick me up?” she asked, trying to steady her voice; she failed grandiosely.

There was a beat of silence where Touya could almost hear Akito’s thoughts shifting and settling. “What’s happened?” he asked, the creak Touya knew the sofa made anytime someone sat down or stood up resonating along the phone line. “Have you- are you crying?”

Touya only managed a hum in assent.

“Are you still at the restaurant?” Feet on the parquet, keys jingling. “Is he with you? Can you get out safely?”

“Yeah, I’m in the bathroom,” she said, her throat begging her to stay quiet from how swollen it felt. “He’s left. Stood up and walked away. I couldn’t even move”.

She could hear leather squeaking, as well as a zipper being pulled up in a flash. “He- he stood you up? Like that?”

She hummed, a bolt of pain flashing across her ribs. “Was being transphobic and then said he couldn’t stand me anymore”.

There was a second of pure silence, and then Akito growled: “I’m gonna kill him”.

“It’s not worth it,” she said, albeit a little pathetically, if her quivering voice was anything to go by. “It’s just-” she choked on a sob, and after that, she was unable to say anything else.

She heard the door to their apartment open and close on the other line. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, hold on”.

“Don’t you dare go over the speed limit,” she chastised, wiping a thumb underneath her eye and swallowing the thick, sour taste in her mouth.

“… Fifteen minutes,” Akito compromised. “Just try to calm down and drink some water for me, alright? I’ll be there soon, Tou”.

Touya hummed and nodded, even if he couldn’t see her. A sound notified her that Akito had hung up.

She put her phone back in her bag, making sure it had the notifications on in case Akito called her again, and then slumped over her knees, twisting the ring around her finger in the blind search for a forlorn comfort. Her hair tickled her ankles like that, and resting her head against her knees, she noticed how surprisingly clear the floor was, each tile glimmering along its edge with drying water. She couldn’t hear anything around her; she hoped no one was in the bathroom keeping her company, so that no one could witness her pathetic breakdown.

She hadn’t cried that hard ever since the day she had found out Yoko was cheating on her, she reckoned. Touya had found out by pure luck, for she had never suspected it, as deep as she was in the spider web Yoko had woven around her. At the time, she had been enjoying her evening, her legs tangled with Akito’s on the love-seat Haruka and Tsukasa had helped them set up alongside the rest of the living room when they had just moved in, a bowl of fruit salad nestled between their shins and knees. An and Kohane had left half an hour prior, insisting they had to get up early and couldn’t stay the night. Touya and Akito had been watching a rom-com on TV, not tired enough to go to sleep just yet.

While one of the main characters admitted to having organized the disastrous party for their love interest, Touya’s phone had lit up with a notification. Akito had nudged her ankle with his foot. “DM,” he had said, biting into an orange piece and dragging the fork’s tines between his teeth.

Touya had hummed around her bite of blueberries and stretched to reach her phone on the coffee table, scanning her fingerprint over the sensor to unlock it as she settled back into her cocoon of blankets and limbs. “Maybe it’s a fan,” she had commented, tapping over the notification, noticing another DM popping up. The profile picture had belonged to a stunning girl, with a sharp brown gaze and a rainfall of pitch black hair braided with golden charms, which reminded Touya of An and her star clips.

“What’re they sayin’?”

Touya’s heart had slowed to a stop as another DM appeared underneath the previous two, everything stilling around her. “Good evening, I’m really sorry to bother and tell you this,” she had read out loud the first text with a shaky voice. “Do you happen to be dating a blonde girl named Yoko Nakamura?”

Akito had sat up by that point, retrieved the remote from his lap and paused the show. He had looked at Touya, waiting for her to continue, glancing with clear worry at the pooling tears forming in her eyes.

Touya had swallowed and went on with that third text. “I hooked up with her last night and asked for her number, but she gave me the wrong one. When I looked up her profile on socials I noticed she had a picture with you wishing you a happy anniversary. I thought that if you were exes she would have removed the post. I couldn’t bear the thought of you not knowing your girlfriend is cheating on you”.

She had began to tremble, shaking violently as she tried to keep her sobs in. She had looked up at Akito, who had been wearing an angry and disappointed expression. “There must be a mistake,” she had stuttered. “It has to be. Yoko wouldn’t…”

Akito had shifted closer to her, putting a hand over her shoulder. “Ask for clarifications, then. If… If it’s a mistake, you can clear it up with this person immediately”.

And so Touya did: the girl had descended into more details, how she had gone out partying with her friends, how she had met this girl with black eyes and dyed blonde hair, how they had talked about their lives and danced together, how the black-eyed girl had pulled her in and kissed her with honeyed lips as if her life depended on it, how she hadn’t let go the entire night. She had explained how she had punched the black-eyed girl’s number in her phone without checking it, how she had texted and found out she had the wrong number, of her search on social networks, how she had stumbled into a photo of the girl that tasted of honey with a gentle girl with periwinkle and midnight blue hair from a month prior celebrating their two years anniversary.

Akito had to hold her through the night, drying her tears and cradling her close to his heart. He had to boil some chamomile tea and dig out the last tablet of paracetamol for the migraine that had been brewing in Touya’s head. He had promised that they would solve everything, and although it had taken a month before the nightmare ended, he had been right. No, he had made sure to help her solve everything, from retrieving all of Touya’s things scattered through Yoko’s house, to getting rid of anything honey-flavored in their house, through helping Touya anytime she broke down, again and again and again.

It had taken so long for Touya to cure her heart, but as she whimpered in the aftermath of her weeping on that toilet seat, she realized she had never truly healed. The wound was still there, bright and raw, bleeding as soon as someone grazed it. Touya didn’t miss Yoko, not at all. She had long since noticed how harmful she had been to her, she was glad that she didn’t have to deal with her tantrums and insults and poisonous laughs anymore, but her honeyed venom lingered in Touya’s mouth and mind. Her words still rang in Touya’s mind, still choked her given the proper ambient to occupy. Her silences still dripped along Touya’s skin, even if they had been long since replaced with Touya’s friends’ support and clear communication.

Touya wondered if she could even heal from the supernova that had been Yoko. Her lovely star, trying in any way to become the Sun to Touya’s moon, that ended up exploding after running out of hydrogen and blind love from Touya, scalding her and leaving her with the worst burn she had ever faced.

There was a knock on the door, not loud by any mean, but Touya had been so deep in her own mind that she jumped in her seat, standing back upright. “I don’t mean to intrude,” the voice of the waitress came from the other side of the stall, “but is the pretty girl with blue hair here?”

Touya gulped, wiping for the hundredth time that night her cheeks. “Y-yes,” she mumbled. “If- ah, if it’s about the food, o-or the occupied table, I’m terribly sorry, I’ll come out and pay for everything right away”.

“Oh, no, it’s not about that,” the waitress said in a tightly concerned voice. “I saw you looked very upset earlier, and when I saw you weren’t at your table, I got worried”. There was a beat of silence, and then she added: “he has left you, hasn’t he?”

Touya pressed her hands to her eyes, her lips quivering at hearing those words, shame filling her up. She took a deep, trembling breath and fanned her face for a second, then she cleared her voice. “Yes,” she murmured.

“Figured,” the waitress mumbled. “He looked pissed the entire night. People will be out there with the most beautiful women in the world and still act all prissy and superior. Ticks me off, to be honest”.

Touya sat there for a moment, a burning yet soothing sensation running all over her eyelids as she closed her eyes and let the tears squeeze out. She stood up, and after wiping her face for the umpteenth time with the back of her hand, she unlocked the door and walked out.

The waitress stood there with her arms crossed behind her back, a slight frown etched over her sunny face. Touya shamefully came to stand before her, and when the woman gave her a tired smile, she bowed down, as deeply as her spent body would allow her, until all she could see were her own shoes. “I’m terribly sorry for causing so much trouble,” she said, as clearly as she could. Her hair tickled her back and shoulders as they fell in waves all around her head, akin to gushes spilling from a waterfall. “I’ll make sure to take my things and leave immediately. I’m so sorry for worrying you, and for making you feel like you had to check up on me”.

“Oh, no, don’t apologize!” the waitress exclaimed immediately. “There’s no need, I swear. You’re clearly having a horrible time, I just wanted to come here to comfort you a bit”.

Touya shook her head, and her hair waved in the still air underneath her gaze: a few strands stung her eyes. “I’ll be fine, you don’t need to worry, thank you. I- I was stupid enough to get myself into this situation. It’s only right that I face the consequences”.

“Hey, you ain’t stupid”. The waitress crouched down and moved away some of Touya’s hair as if she were parting two hems of a curtain. She smiled up at her, but Touya, too ashamed to be looked at with such sympathy, closed her eyes and hoped no more tears would drip out. “Hello there. How’d you even end up with that guy in the first place?”

“Blind date,” Touya murmured. Her knees shook and she felt as if she were going to just crumble to the ground right then and there. “I didn’t think he’d…”

“He’d…?” the waitress encouraged her when she trailed into silence.

Touya gulped. Did she really want to tell the truth to this stranger? Tell her the reason people were always so disgusted by her, why no one ever threw a second glance her way after realizing what was different in her?

She stayed quiet.

“You should drink some water,” the waitress eventually suggested. “I’ll go get you a glass and you can clear you mind a bit, yeah? Don’t worry about anything and take your time”.

Touya nodded, too tired to say anything. The waitress stood back up and walked out of the bathroom, leaving Touya alone again; she stood back upright and sighed, so drained that she hardly wanted to even think. She stumbled backwards, back on the toilette’s seat, and pressed a hand on her inadequate chest, looking for her pulse: it was steady and calm, unlike her mind and soul. There was an underlying certainty in that beat, something promising to her that she would keep going, regardless of everything. No matter what had ever happened to her in her life, she had always walked through it and survived, no matter how horrible the experience, and she stood there, the result of every single breath she had ever taken.

She would live on, even if no one dared to walk through life by her side.

It wasn’t completely true, she reckoned. She had her friends by her side, as well as her acquired siblings and their family. She shouldn’t be greedy, when she had that much already: why long for a specific taste of love, when she had an entire banquet of other wonderful flavors?

But in all truth, that wasn’t quite right, either. Touya had always longed for that sweet taste of tangerine and home, and nothing else. She owned every single fruit and white blossom, how could she dare to ask for the tree as well? Akito always gave her the world at the first syllable of her request, how could she be so selfish to ask for every single instant of Akito’s life, every single one of his thoughts, every single pulse of his burning heart?

Selfish, selfish, selfish! She had told that much to An and Kohane, once, crashed underneath the sheer strength of her feelings, right after Akito had told them of how he intended to marry Ayumi. He had looked so bright, his eyes alive with a light that Touya could only wish were meant to shine on her and her alone, and his voice had been shaky with the raw happiness and emotion of taking such a huge step. To marry a person, to entwine two souls: Touya couldn’t bear the thought of him marrying someone else, of having to live with her heart beating in the silence of her room. If she couldn’t have Akito, then she didn’t want anyone else.

“Why have you never told him?” An had asked her, stirring her hot chocolate in the cup. “’Kito would do anything for you. He would never disregard your feelings, even if his were on the table”.

Kohane had nodded, nudging Touya’s knee underneath the kotatsu. “You can’t live your entire life mourning right by his side,” she had said. “Aki would surely hear you out, and I know Ayumi would also want what is best for you and Aki both”.

“I can’t do that,” Touya had mumbled, and her voice had swelled with indescribable guilt. “I can’t demand that much. Akito and Ayumi shouldn’t live their lives with the sole scope of making me happy. Where do I even fit in the picture? It’s their relationship, not mine”.

“But you should at least tell him,” An had insisted. “You can’t ruin their happiness, sure, but you also shouldn’t ruin your own”.

There had been a beat of silence, where An and Kohane slowly drank their hot chocolate. Touya had stretched her legs underneath their newly bought kotatsu, staring at An’s mint on the balcony, behind the glass of the window and An’s shoulders.

Kohane had eventually hummed a bit while she had kept twisting her promise ring around her finger. “I don’t think Ayumi will say yes,” she had said, which, at the time, had taken Touya by such surprise that she had stopped thinking. “They love each other, yes… But they’re not willing to share the rest of their lives with each other. Aki… He has other things in his mind, other than Ayumi. He’s only asking her because all of our friends and colleagues are starting to think of marriage”.

“You think he subconsciously started thinking of marriage but doesn’t actually want to marry Ayumi?” An had asked.

Oh, how Touya wished it were the case! How she wished she’d wake up one day to find Akito standing in the kitchen, casually drinking his coffee and announcing as if it were a service alert: “I don’t love Ayumi anymore. I’ve never truly loved her, not quite”. Such a cruel wish it was, she had thought at the time and still agreed with, to wish the solitude of the heart on her best friend.

Kohane had nodded. The light had framed her eyes in a pool of pure agate, thoughts tinted her gentle face. “Yeah. They both love each other, yes… But a marriage between them simply wouldn’t work”.

As always, Kohane had been right. Moonlit nights spent holding Akito, soothing his sorrow away, had taught Touya just how deep his heartbreak ran. With the days passing by and Akito and Ayumi slipping back into their easy friendship, Touya had seen just how unaltered Akito had came out of that swift ending: he had been mostly disoriented, as if waking from a dream and trying to understand the world around him. He tucked one side of the bed in instead of two and stared at the intact corner, blinking slowly, and yet there was no pain in his eyes. He prepared dinner for himself and Touya alone instead than for three people, he bought plain products instead of gluten free foods, and found no longing crowding his heart.

“It feels right,” he had told Touya one quiet morning, while she peeled a tangerine for him after they had had breakfast together. He had clutched his cup and furrowed his brow, “being friends with Ayumi is right. She will always be part of me, but we don’t love each other in that way. It’s not her I’m longing for. I don’t think I’ve ever truly loved her”.

Touya had soon found out that she didn’t need to pick up the pieces of a broken heart, all splintered and littering the ground of a soul haunted by regrets. No, Akito had been perfectly fine as soon as he had readjusted to a life alone, as a lone star rather than a binary star system. It still left Touya reeling, the idea that Akito had never had to mourn his sweet and healthy relationship, not when she had to desperately find somewhere to store her grief after leaving Yoko, for how painful and poisonous the experience had been to her.

Where would she be now, hadn’t Yoko bent her orbit so much? Would she be confident in her own skin, would she be able to love without shame? Could she be brave enough to take Akito’s hand in hers and tell him with a smile that she longed for him and him alone? Could she love freely, without the underlying terror of being ridiculed and misunderstood?

The door opened quietly and the waitress looked around for Touya, a glass of water in hand, until her eyes found the girl. She smiled and walked up to her, offering her the water. “Here you go, pretty,” she said.

Touya blinked up at her, still a little unbelieving of how she would call her pretty so easily. A part of her wished she would just call her lady, or something along those lines, to spare her the shame of being called something she wished she could be but wasn’t, yet another part found immense relief in being called pretty. Such a simple word that could make her feel so many contrasting emotions all at once. “Thank you, and excuse me again for the trouble”.

The waitress shook her head as Touya took the water and began taking small sips. “It’s no trouble, really. You have all the right to feel upset after being stood up”.

Touya hummed halfheartedly. “It’s my fault. I didn’t want to go out with him, but my friends are trying to get me back into the dating scene, and so…”

“You had a bad experience before?” the beautiful woman asked.

“Kind of. My ex cheated on me and when I tried to break up with her, she made my life a living nightmare. She wouldn’t give me my stuff nor my money back, and she kept telling me no one else would ever date me, that she only took me out of pity. She kept cheating with other people in the meantime, too”.

Touya didn’t know why she was spilling that pathetic tale to a stranger: perhaps it was because that woman was showing such empathy and compassion for Touya, maybe because the frustration and anger were bubbling inside of her and bursting out. Sometimes she was scared her anger and all of her negative thoughts were going to rip her apart.

“She sounds horrible,” the waitress commented, frowning from where she was looking at Touya. “… Y’know, I used to have a boyfriend, back in the States. He said he wanted to marry me, someday or another”.

Touya looked up at her, studying the way her eyes turned wistful and bitter. Love had been out of Touya’s reach for such a long stretch of her life, and even when she had had someone she used to love, marriage had always been a murky and alien topic to her. Akito had kneeled in front of his girlfriend, Touya had helped him through the whole ordeal, but what did Touya know of whispers about building a future together, of white dresses and of lovely promises? The only person who had promised her they’d stand by her side forever, that they wouldn’t want anyone but her, had been Akito, all those years ago in their adolescent years, a single plead of loyalty he renewed through his actions every day.

The woman blinked, irises and pupils blurring together as her gaze grew distant, lost in her memories. She went on, Touya’s attention wholly on her: “we used to talk about how our wedding would look like. What flowers I would braid in my hair, where he would take me for our honeymoon, who we would invite. I thought he loved me. I thought he only had eyes for me. But…”

In her mind, Touya saw herself in those words. She used to think Yoko loved her. She used to think she didn’t need anyone else as long as Yoko kissed each of her bad thoughts away. She used to love Yoko, too.

“One day, his best friend came to me. She told me he had been cheating on me for months, and that she had found out during a night out where he went on boasting about how easily he had deceived me. When I confronted him about it, he kicked me out of our house, blocked my credit cards and bank account, kept everything I owned that was in our house. My sister helped me move here in Japan to start a new life”.

There was a certain somberness in her voice, as if she hadn’t been the one living through those experiences, as if she hadn’t been the one slandered by her lover. Touya looked at her and thought: oh, how universal pain can be. How universal cruelty can be.

She bent her head down. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” she murmured. “I can’t believe someone like you could be cheated on. You’re beautiful and kind, how can anyone look at you and wish to hurt you?”

The waitress came to stand in front of Touya and crouched down, balancing herself solely on the balls of her feet unlike Asian people do. She wobbled a bit but firmly looked at Touya in the eye. “Isn’t that the same for you?” she said. “You’re a beautiful girl with a pure soul. You’re incredibly kind and polite, very mindful of others and so calm. That man that left you – he had a golden chance to know a wonderful person, and he just blew it like that. You deserve much, much better, girl, much more than you seem to realize”.

Touya almost burst out crying again. All of those compliments, all that affirmation at being called a girl, someone deserving of love, how could she accept it? How could she believe this woman who seemed to be saying nothing more than the naked truth? She didn’t know Touya, how could she even know?

Touya’s phone rung in her bag, buzzing through the fabric against her side. The waitress gave her a nod to let her know she didn’t mind her taking the call, and so Touya rushed to take her phone out of the bag, accepting it immediately upon seeing Akito’s profile picture.

“I’m in the hall,” he said, skipping the hello. “Are you still in the bathroom?”

Touya nodded and, realizing Akito couldn’t see her, answered: “yeah- yes, I’ll be out in a minute. I have to pay, so it might take a bit”.

Akito hummed, something boiling underneath his larynx. “I’m out here, I’ll wait for as much as you need,” he said; and yet, Touya had the impression he wasn’t talking about a physical space. “Have you calmed down a bit? Do you need anything?”

“I’m better now. I’m just… Tired. Wanna go to sleep and hibernate”.

“We can call off work tomorrow,” Akito suggested, his voice now soft and soothing like a healing balm for Touya’s mind. “We don’t have much going on anyway. We can stay home and you can sleep in. I’ll make you some of those cinnamon flavored langue de chat you like so much”.

Touya hummed. “I want to walk by the sea,” she said on a whim, sounding like a whiny little kid.

There was a beat of silence. “We can go to the beach,” Akito agreed, fond and somber. “To that little place you love so much that no one ever visits where the waves wash the seashells ashore”.

She smiled: “yes, I love that place dearly”.

“Sure you do, princess. Come out when you’re ready, I’ll be waiting for you, ‘kay?”

Touya let out a noise of assent. “I’ll be there soon”. Then, after a quiet breath: “thanks, Aki”.

“… Anything for you, Tou”.

Touya hung up.

The waitress was giving her a curious glance, but did not dare to ask. Touya explained anyway: “my best friend came to pick me up. He’s in the hall- I shouldn’t keep him waiting”.

The woman chuckled. “Ah, I’m glad you have someone who takes care of you”.

Someone who took care of her, she echoed in her mind. Akito, who had been taking care of her for years, who had been in her care since their teenage years. Akito, who no matter how horribly Touya’s world would tilt, would always stand by her side, acting as her anchor, her true center of gravity. Her Sun, the blazing star Touya revolved around.

She smiled. “He’s the best in the world”.

She got up slowly because her legs were still shaky and unstable. She took a peek at herself in the phone screen’s reflection, finding that her makeup wasn’t as terribly ruined as she had expected it to be through her bloated eye bags and dried lips. Her cheeks shone with trails of cracked tears and her nose was red, and in a very ironical way, she looked incredibly feminine in her sorrow. Maybe it was true what they said, that sadness manages to bring out the most beautiful and tragic parts of us; Touya had never believed such fantasies, though, and she surely won’t start now just because her lips curled gently like a girl’s or because her face asked for repose.

“I have a little bit of time before I have to get back to work,” the waitress commented. “Do you want me to help you fix your make-up?”

It surprised Touya, just how kind women could be towards other girls. This woman only had a few minutes to take a break from the rush of costumers she had to serve, and she decided to use it to console a complete stranger and offered to redo her make-up; she had opened her heart to Touya and cradled hers in turn, hoping to give her even a crumble of comfort. Touya didn’t know how to handle the gratitude swelling inside her chest. “… I would be endlessly grateful”.

The waitress chuckled. “Come here, I’ll be as fast as lightning”.

True to her words, after Touya had handed her the few make-up items she had brought with her, she only took a handful of heartbeats to fix Touya’s face. She showed Touya the result with her own phone: in the screen, a pretty girl with flawless make-up stood wide eyed and forever amazed by the little lovely things the world granted her every once in while, her mascara and eyeliner perfectly intact, lips dabbed with her new lipstick, cheeks slightly flushed in the aftertaste of disappointment and comfort. Touya smiled at the waitress. “Thank you so much,” she said. “For… For everything”.

The woman smiled and slightly widened her arms at her sides: an offer for a hug.

Touya took a hesitant step forward and let the woman embrace her. She smelled of fresh clothes and a soft perfume Touya had once tested in a shop with Haruka and Ena, lilac and vanilla, in a weird combination that made her melt in the hug.

“It’s nothing, darling,” the waitress smiled, giving Touya one last squeeze before moving away. “Take care of yourself, alright? And do swing by again sometimes, I’ll make sure to free up a booth on the sea just for you”.

Touya gave her a thankful smile, her dolled up lips pulling over her teeth. “Of course I will,” she said. “I’ll make it up for tonight”.

The waitress shook her head. “You’ll make it up to me by being as happy as you can. Next time I see you, I want to see you smile as brightly as you are now”. The woman took her hand in hers and began walking to the door. “Let’s go: your best friend is waiting for you”.

Touya silently followed her out of the room. They walked back to where Touya had been having dinner with Yuzuki to retrieve her coat: the food was gone, the plates and cutlery replaced with clean ones, perhaps for a new couple that had decided at the last minute to have dinner here so late at night. They then walked back to the hall, everyone’s eyes sliding up and down Touya’s body, over her fake hair, over her ill-fitting clothes, over her tired mind. The waitress bid her farewell on the hall’s door, and Touya waved goodbye as she stepped out.

Akito’s eyes shot up and found her as soon as she entered the main hall, even before she could spot his sunshine hair. She managed a couple meters through the room before he came up to her with wide strides, his boots clicking against the marble flooring in his hurry. “Touya,” he exhaled as soon as she was in his orbit, and his eyes were full of worry and his lips pulled in a pained frown.

He opened his arms in a silent offering, one Touya took immediately as she curled herself against his frame. His arms came up to hold her, one hand cupping her nape, the other sliding up over the lower edge of her ribs. Touya loved the immense attention he put even in a simple hug: he knew exactly how to touch her and where, he knew she hated having her shoulders touched, he knew she loved when someone she was close with sank their fingers in her hair, he knew how to take care of her. His back arched and he stood on his tiptoes to fill the height difference between them, worsened by her heels, but he did not make a single noise of complaint. All that mattered to him was Touya, and the fact that it was so evident in how he acted made Touya’s heart pound.

“Hey,” she murmured in the middle of the orange waves, akin to a sea of sun.

“Hey,” Akito smiled back in her shoulder, she could hear it in his voice. His hand caressed her ribs. “How are you?”

“Decent,” she said. “My eyes burn”.

She felt more than heard the hum raising in Akito’s chest, the low rumble traveling across her torso and up her trachea as if she herself had emitted the sound. She pressed herself closer against him, forgetting even for a second that they were in public. If Akito minded, he ignored it for the sake of holding her. “Yeah, the lights in here aren’t helping, either. Let’s go, the street lights should be softer. We can light some candles back home if your eyes hurt too much, those lavender scented ones you like so much”.

Touya nodded in the embrace; she felt Akito’s mouth press a little kiss on her cheek, a soft tickle that would always make her giddy, and then she pulled away. Akito’s hand slotted in hers, never letting her go. “Yes, just give me a second to pay and we can go”.

“Ah, I payed already, don’t worry,” Akito said, a little caught off guard. “That idiot had payed his half, at least”.

“Aki, you didn’t have to,” Touya pouted lightly, spinning the ring around her finger out of a nervous habit.

“But I wanted to, so it’s fine”.

Touya let out a resigned huff, although she wasn’t angry nor disappointed in the slightest. She let Akito lead her through the entrance as she waved goodbye to the woman at the reception who had first welcomed her. The sweet night air engulfed her, the gentle coolness biting at the raw skin of her face and legs, but she tasted it on her tongue as if it were the most delectable of dishes. She shivered and sighed, her breath coming out warm enough for her to feel it on the tip of her nose. “Where did you park?” she asked.

Akito made a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat, leading her towards another road off to their right. Touya easily followed, regardless of where he would lead her. “Let’s walk a bit”.

“… Okay”.

The night was as quiet as it could get in the seaside fringes of Tokyo, with the low buzzes of the buildings’ vents and the annoyed hum of the traffic, the gentle frizz of the electricity lines and the never ending thrum of people moving all around the roads and spaces within their reach. Akito’s hand was rough around hers yet stable like a life line, pulling her along but keeping his strides short enough for them to fall in step and walk side by side. How many times had they ran down the night together, two clueless teenagers drunk on their freedom and the exhilarating feeling of having someone who understood them completely?

Akito began to sing a song under his breath, soon joined by Touya as they turned around a corner once more. The waves drawing closer acted as their soundtrack and the stars in the sky as their background, just the two of them, the main characters in their motion picture. He gifted her a giant smile when they began to harmonize together, but soon trailed into silence as Touya realized what was his intention all along.

They stood before a low railing that marked the edge of the road before the ground dropped towards the sandy shore of the sea, wooden paths nailed along metal ramps tracing the way towards the water. Touya stared as the sand shone in tiny shimmers under the moonlight, black, inky waves crashing and bubbling as pearly foam seeped in the glitters rhythmically, tiny seashells rolling over the shore as they were dragged out of the sea. The stars burnt brighter there, the salt coursed the air in a thick yet pleasant feeling over her skin, and Touya already felt better.

“You brought me to the sea,” she smiled, turning to her partner.

Akito grinned. “It was literally twenty meters away and you said you wanted to go to the beach. Ain’t no way I was gonna pass it”.

Touya let out an incredulous exhale, dripped into a blossoming smile. “God, you’re the best”.

“So you always tell me, princess. Take off your shoes, I’m gonna put them in the bike’s trunk”.

She did as she was told, Akito holding her arm to balance her as she bent down slightly to undo the laces of her heels and slipping them off slowly as to not ruin the varnish. He picked her up and made her sit down on top of the railing, on a small stone bench wide enough for her to sit comfortably while he walked to the bike, which Touya only now noticed. He put the shoes in the trunk as promised and walked back, picking Touya back up bridal style. She wrapped her arms around his neck and smiled: she had always hated getting sand in her shoes.

“I could walk down to the beach myself, you know?” she said when Akito took off over the wooden path.

“I’m not letting you walk barefoot on wood. You might get a splinter in your feet and hurt yourself, or get an infection. I can carry you just fine,” he huffed.

“I know you can,” Touya smiled, not missing the light blush dusting Akito’s cheeks. He was such a sweet boy underneath, still hiding behind his rough exterior sometimes when he got embarrassed by his own gentleness. Touya had always been acutely aware of this side of his, and although she was glad he had grown more sure and confident in his kindness, it was still amusing seeing him get so flustered from time to time.

Akito brushed his thumb over the small patch of skin where the ligaments in her knee bound thigh and calf together, slowly and lightly, a little absently-minded.

He was quick to walk down the path and Touya swung her legs slowly in his embrace, nestling close to Akito’s chest to hear the strong beat of his heart. It was something that she did often, cuddling up against Akito and tangling their limbs together, his arms naturally wrapping around her and holding her so close that all they could feel was each other’s hearts. Sometimes Akito would just look at her and make grabby hand gestures, and all she had to do was rest her head against Akito’s temple, her chest against his, to make him happy. She always kept track of that rate, consciously or not, and she had tried to count both hers and Akito’s: his stayed consistently around seventy-seven beats per minute, while hers tended to slow whenever she was in his arms, her heart doing its best to match Akito’s.

Soon, Akito’s boots sank in the sandy beach. Touya peaked over her own shoulder to look at the glittering soil, dotted in small pebbles and worn down pieces of wood and seashells. She tapped over Akito’s nape where her hands were resting and he gently let her down, keeping his arms close just in case she lost her balance. She sank her feet in the sand and smiled, relishing in the velvety feeling underneath her soles. It had been long, too long since she had last visited the sea; a year and a half, she reckoned, which wasn’t really excusable with how close to the coast she and Akito lived.

Akito observed her with barely concealed fondness as she pressed her feet in the sand, heel to toe and back, giggles escaping her cracked lips. And why should he hide that fondness? He had gazed at her for years on end with such deep care and trust that it would be alien for Touya to look at him and find disgust, or heavens forbid, indifference. She looked back at him, observing the way his
freckles kissed his cheeks a thousand times over, and the way his lips stretched over his teeth to let his canines poke through, and the way his hands hung awkwardly along his body now that they were empty, and the way his olive eyes glimmered with familiarity as they drank in as much as they could of Touya. And it had always been that specific look, that expression Akito only had around the people he loved the most, it had always been that look that had deluded Touya into loving him in the only way she wasn’t allowed to.

Akito was everything to her: her best friend, her teammate, her inspiration, her partner, her closest confidant. And yet she longed for more, more, always starved for his affection, always begging the Sun for one more second of twilight before it disappeared behind the horizon and let the moon to shine alone in the sky, no longer bound to her companion.

She could see the words hanging over the tip of his tongue. She cocked her head, patiently waiting for him to speak. He did not immediately, rather taking his time to look at every single detail of her face, and eventually breathed out: “you’re lovely when you smile. It’s like the moonlight is kissing you breathless. You’re more beautiful than the entire night sky, and only the moon could ever hope to compliment you”.

Touya was knocked breathless by the compliment indeed, her lips hatching over a surprised hum. “I’m not that pretty. I can’t even begin to hope to compare to the moon, let alone the night sky”.

“That’s not true,” Akito countered, a disapproving pout tinting his face. “You’re the loveliest person I have ever laid eyes on. You’re incredibly pretty, unfairly so, the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen”.

Touya looked away, unable to hold Akito’s gaze as he spoke those words. Her chest felt tight, and for how much she would usually feel like an impostor when handed compliments about her appearance or femininity, she could not escape the fact that Akito knew her soul better than anyone else and would never lie to her. She gulped down a retort and looked up at the stars.

Akito stepped closer to her, not daring to touch her as he noticed Touya’s eyes swelling with new tears, and instead followed her gaze skyward. “… Do you remember that day we helped Honami and Saki draw a constellation map?” he asked out of the blue.

She smiled lightly. “Of course. I was so surprised when you decided to help us. You drew all of those constellations so precisely, and all in proportion”.

“I mean, my sister and my father are artists, so. I’ve got the Shinonomes’ good hands”.

“Modest,” she chuckled. It would be absurd to deny that Akito was an artist himself: between all the graffiti he had painted across Vivid Street, all the flyers he had designed all by himself for their events, all the cover arts he had created with Kohane’s photos, and all the doodles he kept drawing on any surface available, saying that Akito wasn’t an artist was akin to denying a fundamental part of him. He had designed that small tattoo slotted over his ankle and he had covered his teammates’ arms in sharpie ink across the years in any empty moments between lessons and practices. He had once painted one of Ayumi’s favorite paintings over one the walls of her room. He had never known how to live with empty, still hands.

“Those constellations,” he carried on, “they charmed you beyond belief. I remember you tracing your fingers over Virgo again and again, even when you realized the paint hadn’t dried yet and had stained your hands and nails”.

Touya looked away. Virgo, the constellation of women, representation of femininity and the strength a woman can hold in her thousands of forms. There was a reason Virgo had been associated with hundreds of different goddesses and women, tantamount there was a reason Touya was so enamored with the handful of stars that made her up.

“It was one of the sweetest things I could’ve seen. A star admiring other stars, finding beauty and awe in nothing but a few lights in the sky”. He shook his head, endeared and yet unable to understand. “How can you think that stars are lovelier than you are? You, the kindest and most exquisite person I know? How can you have a soul brimming with love and think you don’t elicit in people the same awe and wonder the night sky does? You could cradle each and every star in the sky and it would pale compared to your beautiful soul”.

The waves crashed over the shore in a low murmur, rhythmical enough to lull Touya in a daze. With the stars over her head and the sand and ocean all around her, her favorite person by her side, she felt at peace, tranquil enough that all of the sorrows of her evening slipped away and washed into the salt water to never grasp her again. She looked at the waves, then drew her eyes up to the stars and the moon: they shone together gently and reflected over the sea foam, content in their role in the universe, the stars to light the way in the deep obscurity that was the open space, the moon to loyally orbit the Earth, settling for gazing at the Sun only for a few precious hours. She had always been quite fond of the moon.

Did Akito truly think there was just as much beauty in her as in the entire universe?

“Touya?”

She turned back to her partner, looking at the way he stared down at his hands as he played around with his fingers. Touya stepped closer to him and offered her own hands, palms raised up to the night sky: Akito blinked and barely grazed them, his fingertips a breath away from her knuckles while the pads of his thumbs caressed the side of her indexes. One of the two traced over the ring he had gifted her, his lips tightening in a profound emotion he could not hold back any longer: Touya was acquainted enough with his soul to know that much.

“Can I have the honor of this dance, princess?” he asked instead, postponing the truth, laced his fingers with hers.

Touya squeezed his hands in hers, bowing lightly: “why, of course, my knight”.

He pulled her closer, slipping one hand over the bend of her hip and making her shiver with how right and intimate it all felt, such a sweet feeling, being held by your dearly beloved. She pressed her hand over his heart and then slid it upwards to cup the slope between shoulder and neck, and he shivered, too, in a satisfying comeuppance. Their feet moved naturally and they began to sway slowly together, Touya’s skirt caressed her legs lightly and Akito stared at her as if she had hung every single star in the sky and Touya felt at peace in his arms, safe from the world outside of his embrace.

“Do you remember the first time we slow danced together?” Akito asked this time.

“Of course,” Touya smiled. She had slow danced plenty of times as a kid: with her parents being classical musicians and his brothers aspiring to the same role, she had naturally attended many formal gatherings, a plethora of dances, galas and elegant dinners interleaved by incessant classical music playing in the background. She had danced countless times with her female cousins, looking at the way they delicately spun in their pretty dresses, the way their long hair caressed their backs, the way their older – and stronger – male cousins lifted them up in the air and hugged them close, almost protectively. She had always wondered why slow dances felt so weird, as if she were taking the wrong steps, spinning the wrong way every time.

Slow dancing with Akito had been the first time she ever felt like she was doing it properly. She had never danced with a boy before, and never had she followed the other person, but with Akito, she had to twirl under his strong arms and follow in his precise footsteps, in what, for the first time in her life, felt like a beautiful and proper choreography. They had been barely over seventeen, when their school had organized some watered down version of a prom. They had sneaked Kohane in, and they had danced the entire night with their friends, until at some point, the student taking care of the music put on a slow song. Kohane and An, who had began dating already at the time, had taken the opportunity to dance together, and so Akito and Touya were left together. They had danced together for the remainder of the night, never letting go of each other, and Touya had grown dizzy from how much Akito had made her spin and twirl in the innocent request to hear her giggle with each pirouette.

“You stepped on my feet quite a handful of times”.

“That’s not true, Tou. You were the one stepping on my feet,” Akito grinned.

Touya hummed and when she was supposed to take a step to the side, she stepped over the hard leather of Akito’s shoes, making sure to not hurt him. “My, how clumsy of me”.

“You’re a menace”.

“Yet you stay by my side,” she teased.

“I will always stay by your side. I promised when we were kids, didn’t I?” There was a solemn look in his face, a devout light burning in his sunny eyes that told her he was dead serious, even through the teasing and the jokes.

Touya was taken aback, even if it were something they both told each other regularly, shaping the sentiment with their tongue and actions alike. They always told each other, when they wrote a song for each other, when they went grocery shopping together, when they climbed down the stage and fist bumped, when they held each other through their sorrow. They will always be there for each other, no matter the circumstance, no matter the sky they were under. It was one of the few certainties in Touya’s life, and the one she drew the most comfort from.

“I promised, too,” she murmured, resting her chin over his shoulder and hugging his back with her unoccupied hand.

“Touya, do you want to tell me what happened?” he whispered.

Touya did not still in her light sway, but her heart felt heavier in her past sorrow. “Nothing much,” she murmured. “We spoke for a bit. He wasn’t all that happy to be there, that much I could tell. At first, he just went along with what I said, but soon he began to give me back handed insults. Calling me a shielded kid, letting me intend that he thought of me as less deserving because I’m a trans girl. He even called me a slur, at some point”.

She felt Akito tense up in her arms, but he did not interrupt her. He always knew when she had more to say or if she had ran out of words and it was his turn to carry on the conversation.

“Then he asked me why I was so hesitant about dating. I explained why, and… And…”

She breathed out, the itch under her skin crawling up and down at the mere memory, a knot tying itself back in her throat, but she pushed herself to be honest. “He told me I wasn’t trying hard enough. That I’m a ‘hard one to swallow’, that I’m political, that he wished to never see me again, that I’m delusional, pathetic, that I should fix myself, act as the man I am and date a real woman”. She gulped, willing her tears back and her throat to work with her. “But I am a girl. I don’t understand why other people can’t accept that”.

Akito tightened his arm around her, in an effort to comfort her. “I don’t, either,” he said. “It’s your life, not theirs. You’re not bothering anyone by being yourself”.

Yourself, Touya echoed in her mind. Akito spoke as if he didn’t view it as acting like a boy or a girl, rather as if it were a matter of Touya acting like herself or someone she wasn’t – something she wasn’t. She wasn’t a man, she wasn’t, and Akito knew that. He had been there all of those years ago as she tried to understand her gender, he had been there when she had hesitantly identified as non-binary, when she had first worn a skirt and extensions, when she had realized she is a woman, when she had put off starting testosterone blockers for weeks on end, when she had panicked right after taking her first dose of oestrogen, when she had doubted her own identity after every single fight with Yoko.

He sidestepped a bit, leading her out forward on the shore, where the moonlight drenched her completely and properly. “In all honesty, I’m glad I don’t get them,” he said eventually. “Why would I want to get in the head of an arrogant, hateful bigot? If people can’t treat you with even basic human decency just ‘cause your body doesn’t much your gender then their opinions are worth less than nothing to me. I don’t ever want to understand the mental hops of a horrible person”.

Touya tilted her head a bit, so that her cheek was resting against the curve of Akito’s neck. They fit together perfectly, like two puzzle pieces slotting together, and to Touya, that simple fact made perfect sense. “I wish more people thought the same,” she murmured. “Then, maybe, people like me wouldn’t have to feel sick and hide from the world. Maybe I wouldn’t have to feel ashamed anytime I wear a skirt or put on my extensions. Maybe… I wouldn’t be so afraid of love”.

Akito pulled away and the action made terror pierce through Touya’s mind for a second, the split second it took her to see the movement of his arms and the deeply compassionate look in his green eyes. She understood what he wanted from her as he raised their linked arms: she twirled slowly, once, twice, skirt flaring out a bit around her like the petals of a flower blossoming in the night, a spectacle for Akito’s eyes and Akito’s only. “But you are so full of love,” he murmured, pulling her back against him, their chests flush together. “It’s unfair. Every day I get to see your face and the way it’s painted with the purest of love as you wish me a good morning. I get to hear the love pouring from your lips anytime you talk about your friends when they’re not in the room. I get to feel that love in every single song you write and perform up on the stage with me. I get to see you take care of our potted plants and pet stray cats on the road and play with babies while waiting in line at the supermarket’s checkout and you are always so lovely, so full of love that it can’t physically stay in your soul, it keeps pouring out in the world around you and it’s the most beautiful of things. I’m grateful I get to stand by your side and witness the way you make everything in our lives better by just being there and sharing that love with everything and everyone. To me, you are love itself, Touya, and I love you with my entire heart”.

His bangs brushed against Touya’s forehead, orange mixing in waves of midnight blue and periwinkle. Touya’s breath was held mid-air, her heart throbbing in her chest and resonating in every part of her body, reaching each nook and crevice to warm her from the inside out. She breathed out, and Akito’s eyes turned mellow, although deeply pained. “It’s so unfair,” he echoed. “How could the loveliest person in the world be so afraid of love?”

“Akito,” she quivered, unable to tear her eyes away from his.

“You’ve looked for love in the darkest corners your entire life,” he went on, “and you have found so much the moment you embraced yourself. Ever since you found out what love feels like, you have been giving it back tenfold, whether you realize or not. You have given me all of your love, so much that I sometimes felt I could have drowned in it, in a sea of trust and loyalty I didn’t deserve. I treasure it, every single smile you give me, every single time you do the laundry because I forget to dump my clothes in the laundry basket, every compliment you give me for my cooking, every song you write for me to sing, every word of support you speak for me”.

“It’s because I know loving you won’t ever hurt me,” she said, slipping her hand back over his heart. It was racing, but Touya just couldn’t focus on counting each thundering beat, for she was too caught in the adoring look Akito was giving her, green so close to silver that she could have drowned in it. “I don’t have to be afraid with you, Akito. You understand me better than anyone else, and you’re the only person that could ever love me fully, in a way I won’t ever fear”.

Akito’s forehead pressed against hers, his thumb brushing invisible figures on her hipbone, soothing her beyond word. “I’m glad. I don’t want you to ever be afraid of showing your true self to me,” he smiled. “If you ever feel unlovable, please think of me, and know that I will forever love you, no matter what happens to us, no matter who we become. I don’t care what your body looks like, what clothes you want to wear, if you have to take meds to be who you are: I love you regardless, and forever will”.

Touya closed her eyes and bit back a sob. “I should have noticed earlier,” she murmured. “I have always been so caught up in all the hateful and spiteful words and looks and- and I always let the wrong people’s ideas influence my own, I let- let some idiot who knew nothing about me make me think I was wrong, that I was ugly and unnatural and unlovable, that no one will ever take me seriously and look at me like I was worth the entire night sky to them”.

She cupped Akito’s jaw with one hand when he shook his head, brushing his skin against Touya’s forehead. “You’re worth so much more, Touya. You’re lovely, beautiful and enjoyable and perfect, each single part of you and of your personality and mannerism. You’re lovely, so, so lovely”.

Touya had always known, to an extent, that Akito loved her. She had never known quite exactly where that love began and where it ended, where it overlapped with hers and where it diverged sharply from hers, just how many similar implications tinted those three words whenever spoken to each other. She had always known exactly where those boundaries laid with Yoko: I love you, so long as you go along with what I say, as long as you look like a girl for me, as long as you hide your ugly parts and stay quiet because, do you really think someone could ever love you for yourself, your whole body and soul, so messed up and ugly as it is?

Touya had always let negative opinions sway hers more than the positive ones, always let the shame for her body take a hold of her. That’s why the itch under her skin would never leave, would never let her believe herself that other people wouldn’t care about the way her body looked, underneath cute clothes and soft make-up and feminine behavior. How could she ever believe someone would love her, if even she couldn’t look in a mirror without worrying about the worst of opinions?

But Akito’s hand on her hip told another story, one of pure adoration and unconditioned love, so deeply acquainted with her soul that he would never let her appearance condition their relationship.

It only felt right when Touya tilted her head to the side and Akito sighed against her temple, a small puff of air spreading over her skin as his lips pressed softly against the expanse, reverent and full of sweetness. His hands were warm on her, and their light tracing told her it’s alright, it’s alright, I would do anything to make you comfortable in your skin. Touya pulled him impossibly close and nestled into his lips when they trailed down her cheek, a breathless laugh resonating between the two partners when Akito’s nose poked the plush flesh of her cheekbones. He peppered her cheek in sweet kisses, then the other, her nose; he then slowed down to a devoted press of lips over her forehead, slipping one hand up to cup her jaw and face.

Touya shivered in the overwhelming wave of affection. She moved her head around when Akito trailed down to kiss her eyelids with the most careful of touches, doing his best to shower her in love while not hurting her or ruining the make-up the waitress had fixed for her. “Akito, Akito,” she called slowly as his fingers slipped under her chin to tilt it up and make her look straight into his eyes.

He pressed one last kiss to the corner of her mouth, and pulled a millimeter away, just enough to look at her. Silver met green, and he asked: “can I kiss your lips?”

The memory of tangerine flooded Touya’s mind, of carefree days, of the purest security and freedom in being with someone so deeply entwined with her soul, so understanding of her and everything that made her up. “Yes”.

How she had longed for the taste spreading behind her teeth! Akito’s lips hatched over hers, his entire frame shaking against hers, and both their mouths curved in shy smiles the more they kissed, two half moons slotting perfectly together. Touya pulled back to desperately gulp down some air, and Akito asked, a radiant smile shining on his sunshine face: “can I have one more?”

Touya obliged, pressing her lips against his. Each time she pulled back came a murmur on her mouth: “one more, please?” And Heaven, she would never deny such request.

Touya had lost count of how many times the waves had crashed on the shore when they pulled apart, how many times they had melted together, pushed and pulled against each other much like foam and shore. She was completely out of breath, panting through her love-struck dizziness; Akito wasn’t faring much better, her lipstick plastered all over his mouth.

“I’ve dreamt of doing this for years,” he murmured, caressing her face with shaking hands. “Every day I waited for you to find the courage to love, and prayed you’d choose to love me. I- I love you so much, Touya. In any way you’ll allow me to”.

“… Any?” she echoed when she finally found enough breath to speak. She hardly noticed the tears swelling in her eyes. “You’d let me love you in any way I can?”

He hummed. “I’ve been in love with you for years,” he admitted. “I’d give you all of my love, if you were to want it. I’m more than happy to stand by your side in any way you’ll allow me. As a friend, as a partner, as a lover… This is why I know there will always be someone out there willing to love you, for as long as you live”.

She strangled a sob, forced herself to look at him in the eyes. “It wouldn’t be selfish of me to ask you to love me romantically?”

He shook his head. “Never, never”.

“And…” she began, pressing one hand to his heart, “can I love you in any way I can?”

His heart hammered, his face was a deep crimson by now. “Of course”.

Touya smiled and giggled, her head feeling light by the wave of emotions trashing her around. “Thank you, my love”.

“God,” Akito said, hugging her and hiding his face in the crook of her neck. “Had it been anyone else, I would’ve died of embarrassment by now”.

Touya sank her fingers in his hair and began to thread her nails among the fiery strands, finding immense comfort in the action, comfort she knew she was giving to Akito by doing so as well. He sagged in her hold. “You always manage to surpass yourself. Although – I have one question”.

“Hit me, princess”.

“I mean this in the most honest and curious way, no resentment at all, but… Why were you going to propose to Ayumi, if you loved me?”

“Ah…” Akito pulled back and brought up a hand up to scratch his neck. “Emotions are messy, I guess. I truly thought I loved her. And- I thought she loved me back in that way, as well, and that you were way out of my grasp. That I had no chance with you, for a reason or another”.

“So, hadn’t Ayumi been aromantic, you…”

“I don’t think she would have said yes, either way,” he admitted. “When I proposed, she told me we would have never worked out in that way. That she absolutely loves me, but that she would never fit the role of my wife, and I wouldn’t suit the role of her husband. I belonged by someone else’s side, she said, and all I had to do was wait. She… She had realized that I was in love with you, after all, and I admitted it. For how horrible I felt about our whole relationship, she told me she didn’t blame me. That I always treated her right, and that she understood why I would try being in a serious relationship even when my heart laid somewhere else”.

“Ayumi truly is too kind…” Touya murmured.

Akito smiled, that fond smile he only had when talking about An, Kohane or Ayumi. “Yeah. She’s got a golden heart. I would’ve kicked my ass if I were her”. After a beat, he added: “she did kick my ass when I told her you were going on a date with another guy. She’s been telling me to make a move ever since we broke up”.

Touya laughed, and brought her best friend in for a hug. “Well, she did say to call her once I was home. We can tell her that someone made a move tonight”.

Akito’s heart hammered in a steady rhythm against her chest, strong and burning beats she knew better than her own heartbeat. “Yes. Let’s go home, Touya”.