Schoolmates: Kamatari and Soujiro

One day while they were sitting by the chain-link fence that surrounds the school track, smoking cigarettes and eating lunches pilfered from the local convenience store, Kamatari turned to Soujiro and asked, "Do you remember how we met? I've been thinking about how I came to know all the people in my life, and you're one of the ones I can't quite place."

Soujiro could remember how he and Kamatari met. Maybe it was because Kamatari was such a social butterfly that he forgot. Or maybe because Soujiro himself usually only spoke when necessary, so others' words stuck in his mind more. He wasn't sure.

They were in their first year of middle school then. Kamatari came up to Soujiro during lunch and introduced himself. Later, she would tell her friend jokingly, this was because Soujiro's lunch looked good. "My name is Honjou. Honjou Kamatari." She'd stuck out her hand after the introduction.
Soujiro had eyed her hesitantly at first, but eventually took the offered hand and shook it. "I'm Seta. Why are you wearing a girls' uniform?"
Oh, yes. There was also that. Kamatari had been dressed in a girls' sailor blouse, paired with knee-length shorts in place of a skirt.
"Because there's nothing that says I can't," she replied.
Soujiro had merely shrugged and said, "Okay."

"Oh, I remember now. I was hoping you'd share your lunch with me." Kamatari tilted her head back and tapped her cheek, idly blowing smoke rings.
"Hmm. Did I that day?"
"No, you were a stingy bastard." She laughed and ruffled the smaller boy's hair.
There was an easygoing air about Soujiro that Kamatari had always liked. That, aside from Soujiro's meal that afternoon, was what had drawn her in.
"Why are you wearing a girl's uniform?" "Because there's nothing that says I can't." That had been all it took to convince him.

It wasn't easy for Kamatari to find people who would accept her. Her own parents had disowned her at the start of high school when she'd told them she was a girl inside. The school made her dress like a boy. Kamatari hated it, she hated pretending to be something she wasn't.
That was why she liked Soujiro. Soujiro never judged. Kamatari wasn't sure if it was because he was really that easygoing, or simply because he didn't know how, but it didn't matter. With Soujiro, she'd found the closest thing to acceptance she'd ever come across in her life.

"Doesn't it ever bother you that I'm a girl with a boy's body?" Kamatari asked her friend once, near the end of their final year of middle school. She'd felt by then that he could trust Soujiro.
"Well..." unperturbed, Soujiro tilted his head to one side as though the question were equal in gravity to, "What would you like for dinner tonight?"
"When I think of Kamatari, it's not as though I think of whether you're a boy or a girl. Kamatari is just Kamatari, right?"

In him, Kamatari had found someone who liked her for her.

Still... when she watched her friend smile placidly at everything that passed by him, Kamatari couldn't help but wonder if, someday, Soujiro would come to see her as more than "just Kamatari."