Haruhi had always known she was different. Perhaps it was having strange parents, like a mother, who was nearly always ill, but still tinkered with herbs and concoctions within the small room that might have once been an office, or the father, who was a girl, a boy, a lady, a man and all things in between. But Haruhi Fujioka had never been normal - no, not in the slightest. Still, she had worn the uniform dresses that felt wrong on her body, and itched and scratched, and though her father and her mother loved them, and loved seeing her inside them, she hated them. Hated wearing them. Hated being pretty. Her parents loved her, and would accept her (She was ever so sure), but then something horribly tragic had happened.
Her mother had died.
She was young when it happened, with wide brown honey eyes, and long tumbles of hair, and she looked like her mother, achingly so. Her father had drowned himself in sorrow then, drinking for days straight, and falling asleep in all sorts of strange places (behind the couch, under the sink, in his wardrobe, the bathtub once) and she wanted to tell him. Oh how she wanted to tell him, all sorts of things she wanted, needed, to say, but she couldn't. Not now, when she was the only thing left living of her barely buried mother, who was still warm in the ground. It had happened so fast, one day she had been as good as she ever got, coughing every so often, and pale as a ghost, but smiling and not shaking, and they had been happy. It was only weeks, of sniffling and choking on air, when she had swallowed nothing. It was only weeks before she had gotten too thin to bare seeing, and then she was gone.
Haruhi had cried, for days at first, then mere hours, and had thrown herself into school, and feeding her crazy drunk of a father, and keeping their bills payed and their house clean. She had worked hard, and dreamt harder, and if her wardrobe had more trousers than skirts, her father didn't notice. No, he merely cried and groaned for his lost wife, and broke each day alone, and Haruhi wished she could cry too - because that was what poor little girls that had lost their mother did, right? Cried and begged for help. They didn't get through it alone, in a body that was far to wrong for them, and a mind that was as snapped as her fathers (For she had to be, to be a man, right?).
He liked to kiss her hair, run his hands through the smooth straight locks, and complained when Haruhi hid behind her glasses, they were too cheap, too manly, she should get contacts. She hadn't the heart to tell him she didn't, they didn't have the money for her to buy contact lenses, for he spent it all on drink, and was equally relieved and worried, when he finally got a proper job at a bar downtown. They rarely saw each other after that, for she got up early (5am each day) to clean three different people's houses, and then went to school, achingly exhausted already, and worked late into the evening at a small café as well, and he worked late hours into morning. They were lucky if they ate dinner together now, but Haruhi didn't miss it.
One day, she walked to her mother's old room, not bedroom, but the old lab she had once used, when she had made her strange creams and drinks, that sometimes tasted sweet and sometimes tasted sour, or bitter, and looked around. Not a thing had changed, it was clean and dusty as ever, but jars of cream still lay on the desks and sides, with notes scribbled by them. 'This cream causes increased growth in body hair'. 'This drink causes nightmares in those who drink it'. What strange things her mother had created, but one in particular caught her eyes.
'This drink inhibits female hormones, and causes increased production of male ones.' Now, she (Haruhi) was not stupid, this could be her chance. No. His chance. In just a few weeks, he would finish middle school, and hopefully go to a high school where no-one knew her. Where they would only know him.
Haruhi Fujioka had always known he was different.