Though she began to get adjusted with the world around her Quinn would always come back to the body.

Her body.

She had a tough time thinking about it, though she never let it show. It was easy to change everyone's minds about who she was but her own? That was rough. Every time she passed a mirror she expected her plump self, adorable but not your average junior size. The only thing the body shared with her own self was the green in her eyes, but even those seemed foreign on an entirely new face. Her long hair still had shades of pink in it despite all the dye suggesting that Juno was naturally that type of anime character; her head was rounder, nose longer, but her thin-lipped mouth was wider which made her snore at night. Her body, especially, was slender, and though Quinn would wish for such as she would normally stare down at her own gut in the communal shower every morning she found herself missing the bodily elements that made her… Her.

Steadily, she began to put on weight.

It began as a conscious effort: larger lunches for a body that wasn't ready to contain them, more sugary drinks she would normally spit out. No one found it odd that she would only eat rice for every meal, a cultural bias she was glad for. Higuchi eventually found it endearing and would try to sneak bites of her lunches when they would sit across from each other at her desk, and though she always knew Quinn would fight her off for a bit because of her protection over food it slowly began to get more volatile. She never said anything and considered it stress from work, but one day she yelled.

"I have to eat it all!" Quinn screamed, holding her bowl over her head so the blonde couldn't reach any further. She yelled all the time but normally it was just for her to stop, small teasings like "you have your own lunch", but Higuchi realized this was not just protection of her lunch, this was possession.

Like she could see the others epiphany, Quinn looks away and brings her bowl down in front of her. She continues to eat, acting interested in a piece of paperwork that the other woman brought to talk with her, but she can feel her eyes watching her every move—her every bite.

"What do you mean 'eat it all'?" Higuchi asks, and there is no answer to her question. It's silent save for the quiet chewing of bites too big for her now large mouth. Quinn's swallow echoes and the other woman still watches her with her intense gaze.

"I'm probably not gonna have time for dinner tonight so I need to eat all my lunch. No biggie."
Lie. She had two more beef bowls in her mini-fridge to be warmed up and eaten in the next four hours.

"I can drop something off for you, we're not busy."
"Uh…"

Quinn debates on asking for more food. Bread? Cake? Something filling and most importantly fattening. She thinks of asking for a hamburger even but remembers the chaos of when she mentioned the monster to Akutagawa; for some reason, he was anti-beef patties.

"Quinn?"
Shoot, she was silent too long.

"Yeah if you can that would be great." her mind wasn't entirely there, though, and instead readjusting the schedule at which she would have to eat her other packed meals. Maybe she'll have one in two hours, then whatever snack Higuchi would bring, then an hour after that the third bowl. She'll have to lower her water intake so she doesn't shit it all out when she gets home, it'll tire her out but she can handle it—she can make it up to herself later and drink water like crazy on the weekend to bloat. Or maybe that was a bad idea, and instead she should—.

"Quinn." Higuchi's voice acts as a top of a needle against a full balloon, popping the brunette out of her head. It's soft but carries a certain edge, like the needle. Quinn knows that voice: concern.

"Yes ma'am." her response is done in a joking manner but the conversation doesn't tilt that way.

"Your eating schedule is fucked up."

She didn't think it would immediately tilt that way. Quinn stays silent, head down.

"Why aren't you eating?"
"What are you talking about? You're seeing me eat right now."
"Yeah and that's the only time I've seen you eat all day."
"What are you—? This is the first time we've seen each other today."

"Look I know it's common for girls your age to be concerned about their weight but you don't have anything to worry about."
"I'm not concerned about my weight—,"
"Not eating is not going to help you get skinnier, it's only going to stress you out and leave you feeling worse off than if you were getting your meals in."

Quinn quietly laughs amidst the blonde's entrance into a tirade. The other continues to speak even as she says "That's not it." but clearly does not get the memo.

"You are a beautiful young woman, you do not need to be any thinner and you especially don't need that by putting your health at risk."
"I'm not trying to get thinner."
"I know, you're trying to eat, I see it, but eating once and then not eating—,"

"I'm trying to eat so I can get bigger!"

Higuchi finally shuts up at the rise of the voice in the younger's retort. It's silent again, no chewing interfering the sound. Thinking about the very act makes Quinn want to take another bite just to make the seconds count, but instead, she puts the bowl aside. She can't feign hunger anymore.

"I'm not used to being skinny." the words come out in pauses, Quinn trying to think her way through her own affliction and how to explain it without taking her friend down a rabbit hole she has no clearance to fall into. "I never knew what it was like to fit into a size smaller than a ten, and I thought… I thought that was something I wanted, something I needed to experience, because that's what the perfect body is, the perfect person…"

"You know overeating is just as bad as not eating at all."

She stares into her bowl. There are about three more bites left. She considers taking them right now in one go and finishing the meal, calling it a day, excusing the blonde from her office so she can forget the slightest ideas of food and continue her work until the next two hours past.

"You could work out instead, build muscle, get… 'Bigger' that way."
It's not a bad idea, but she didn't miss the muscle. She missed the ways her thighs would jiggle next to each other on the stairs and spread when she sat to fill in the entire seat and connect at her waist that was the smallest part of her yet two of what she was now. She missed her arms that moved in the wind, that took up more space than a size large t-shirt sleeve would allow but were beautiful nonetheless. She missed her tits! God, how she missed the bosom that followed her from fourth grade on—but most of all she missed the warmth that would spread throughout her body within seconds of entering a cold room because all the disgusting fat was there to insulate her. Her body was like an attic in that way, built for shit and of shit, but she missed it nevertheless.

Why?

"I've been here over a week and have eaten as much garbage as I can get my hands on. I've only put on three pounds." she couldn't believe the words that spilled from her mouth, normally she would want to punch someone who said that to her—oh boo hoo, I have a wicked metabolism. But now, boo hoo, she has a wicked metabolism.

"I'm really tired of not seeing me in the mirror."
"No one sees themselves in the mirror." Higuchi, Quinn realizes, is no longer looking at her with concern but out the window, and she wonders if she's looking for her reflection in the oncoming evening of the falling sun. She looks away, careful not to find her own, but she thinks about what the woman says. Even when she sees herself with all her weight, her hips and dips, and rounded edges, there is still the feeling that the shapes she sees in the mirror aren't her. It's her body, it's what she's turned it into being alive all these years, but when she daydreams about buying mozzarella sticks she doesn't picture the same shape of hair that's on her head, or the same wide nose and thick lips. She's not exactly sure what she sees, really, and thinks about the Bojack Horseman episode in which the mother's dementia turned their maid into a woman with an eternal moving squiggle on her face.

She looks out the window again, and beyond the buildings there is Juno's face, blank, staring back at her, yet when she pictures herself in Juno's body there is still a black cloud covering her face—squiggling lines.

Quinn realizes she will never look the way she does in her head, whatever that is. She turns away from the window again, tired of staring at a reflection she can't identify with.

"Do you want my last bites?" she pushes the bowl to Higuchi across from her who now stares at the insides the way she had done before. But she quickly pushes her chopsticks in and takes the final bites, and sweetly smiles like they didn't have any conversation at all.

AN AHEAD . . .

self love takes time, but it also takes recognizing that your "body goals" will never equate to happiness goals. it's taken me a long time to realize this and be comfortable with my pos afflicted self, but sometimes i still look back and miss the times i was ten pounds lighter. yet whenever i think of actually working and losing all this weight it's never me i imagine, because the person who does all that isn't me, right?

i don't mean to take you all down my own rabbit hole but i wanted to give a picture of a real identity crisis rooted in the body rather than personality or belonging. most of all i want to remind each and every one of my readers that you are beautiful no matter what you say, what others say, or what the world says against it. i mean, you're reading this, you gotta have good genes all around to make that judgment (insert sunglasses emoji here).

stay evenly temperatured (because HELLO SPRING !), stay safe, stay sassy—jackie