Sometimes I wonder why I was born this way. Was it some twisted fate that I ended up like this? I never fit in with anybody at school. I am tall, yet slender, with a feminine face and body. I have the mannerisms of a shy and feminine girl.

"But he's a guy."

I've never been accepted by anyone. The boys picked on me for being weak and feeble, and never stopped teasing me. The girls hated me for being prettier than most of them, and the ones who were prettier than me still laughed at me for not being the "Ideal Image" of a boyfriend. Everyone else who didn't act like that didn't care about me at all.

I thought I would spend my days in loneliness.

But when I met her, that changed for me.

AD 2008.10.15 13:30:00:50

"Oh, geez; I'll never understand these problems,"

I looked from my desk to my classmate who sits next to me. She introduced herself as Mayuri Shiina. Most of the class liked her, but she wasn't exactly the most popular girl in school. She was known to not have good grades, though.

Maybe I was trying luck, but I decided to talk to her.

"Um, a-are you having trouble with that?" I stuttered.

"Yeah, I just don't get math. It's so difficult for me," she mused.

"I-I could help you, i-if you would like," I suggested.

"Really? Thanks!"

She was trying to do some of the word problems on our handouts. I'm not the best at those kinds of problems, but I was still able to help her. I continued showing her how to answer the problems for the rest of class until the bell rang. Next period started, and Mayuri and I focused until the bell rang for the end of the school day. I was almost out of the door, when a person whose voice I would forever remember spoke.

"Hey, could you come over here for a minute?" Mayuri called.

"Um, s-sure," I replied and walked over to her.

"I forgot to ask you, what is your name?" she asked.

"U-Urushibara Ruka," I said.

"Okay, my name is Mayuri, but you can call me Mayushii,"

"O-okay." I stuttered.

"Well, see you tomorrow, Ruka!"

Surely this isn't real, right? Me, having a friend? Maybe it was just because she didn't notice my appearance. That's what I thought at the time.

The next day began, and I walked from the shrine to school. When I got there, I saw that Mayuri had been waiting for me in the hallway. I tried to see if there was another way around, but there were no fast ways around the hallway. Nervously, I walked up to her.

"Hi Ruka! Tutturu~,"

I couldn't live like this. Eventually she's going to find out about me, and try to avoid me.

"Mayuri, I-I'm sorry, but I don't think we can be friends," I said.

"Huh? Why not?" She asked.

"Y-you see, no one likes a feminine boy l-like me," I said.

"I think Ruka should be more self-confident!" She exclaimed.

"H-huh?" I said, confused.

The bell rang, and Mayuri left for class. Before she entered, she smiled and said this:

"Ruka is Ruka! If you weren't Ruka, you wouldn't be special,"

We would talk to each other on regular basis, and eventually, we became friends. I never thought that day that anybody besides my family would like me for what I really was. For once, I was really happy to go to school. Over our Junior High years, we drew closer, and we would even go to each other's houses. Eventually, I met Okabe Rintarou, who refers to himself as Hououin Kyouma, who also accepted me for who I was.

While I do wish a lot that I was a girl, sometimes I wonder if I was born a guy for a reason.