I flung open the door of my house. "Yumiko-nee-san!"
She looked up from the book she was reading – "The God Delusion" – and smiled at me. "Ah, Syuusuke. Where did you go?"
"Never mind me; what happened to you?! I'm really sorry for leaving without telling you, you must have been worried sick –" I knew I sounded very like the anxious mother hen Oishi, but I didn't really care.
"Me? I searched around for a while, then tried scrying in my compact mirror," she replied serenely. "It showed you coming home, exactly as you just did, so I knew that you'd be back soon enough. Did you know you forgot the clothes? Just as well that I managed to find them – in the sports shop."
Immediately, I deflated. Good Kami-sama, I should have known… when your sister is able to scry the future in three different mediums – namely water, crystal and mirrors – it's a very high probability that she'll never be worried about what happens to you, even when she's not there to supervise.
Yuuta came home to dinner, which was a good thing because I wanted to discuss the option of changing high schools with my whole family. Not that I wouldn't have wanted him there otherwise. In any case, my parents were both away, so the family circle was still incomplete.
Nevertheless, I still broached the subject to them. "Ne, Nee-san, Yuuta; do you think it'd be a good idea for me to continue crossdressing, but transfer schools so that the secret wouldn't leak out?"
"What?! But I thought you said that you'd be a girl for high school!" exclaimed Yuuta. "And you've already told you teammates, haven't you? You can't take it back anymore! They know!"
Yumiko-nee-san, on the other hand, slowly chewed the mouthful of fish she'd just consumed and swallowed it before saying thoughtfully, "That idea does bear some consideration."
"Nee-san! How could you say that?!" demanded Yuuta. "Aniki –"
"By rights I should be Ane," I commented. "But I don't really mind."
Yuuta shrugged my remark off as if it was an irritating fly. "Oh, to heck with that. Nee-san –"
"Hush, Yuuta. Hear Syuusuke out first," admonished Yumiko-nee-san. "What schools are you considering?"
"Well, Hyotei's Atobe and Rikkai's Yukimura both tried to convince me to join their respective teams," I explained. "Personally, I wouldn't mind either of them – they each have their pros and cons."
"Why don't you just stick to Seigaku Koukou and get it over with?" grumbled Yuuta.
"I think I'd do better as a boy, at least in public," I replied. "I can't unlearn being a boy so easily. And you see, these people already know I'm a girl, but they don't mind at all. They want me on their team, Nee-san…" Why did I sound as though I were begging?
"Let me think about it; I'll tell you tomorrow," said Yumiko-nee-san – which, translated, meant that she was going to scry for it.
Yuuta was still adamant. "Just be a girl, why don't you!"
Puzzled by his obstinate views in this particular matter, I asked, "Why do you want me to be a girl so badly? I'd have thought you're more used to having a brother than a sister…"
"I just think that you ought to be who you really are!" he protested, blushing suspiciously.
"Never mind, Yuuta – I'll find out sooner or later," I told him, smiling. Inside, though, I wondered – who was I, really? A female, and proud of it? A girl who wished she had been born a boy? A person who just simply couldn't decide?
I was both all of them and yet none of them at the same time.
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The next day, Yumiko-nee-san left for yoga early in the morning before either Yuuta or I woke up, so we didn't have the chance to interrogate her about her little scrying session the night before. On top of that, Yuuta was on edge all through our late breakfast, and I was curious as to why.
"Ne, Yuuta, why are you so jumpy today? Did you have a bad dream?" I asked, half-jokingly.
He nearly leapt out of his seat. "Aniki, don't scare me like that –"
"Saa… I scared you? Since when were you so easily scared?" I countered.
A flush was creeping up his face. "I wasn't –"
"Then why did you say so?"
"I – I – Stop interrogating me!" he finally exclaimed. "I'm jumpy because I told Mizuki-san that you're a girl, okay?"
This time it was I who nearly fell out of my chair. Spitting out of the mouthful of water I'd just drunk, I choked, "You… you told Mizuki?!!"
His face was now beet red in color. "Yes! Are you satisfied now?!"
"You – okay, wait." I took a deep breath in an attempt to control myself. Opening my eyes, I smiled dangerously. "Yuuta… You're my brother, and I'd hate to have to do anything to you, but drastic times call for drastic measures. In case you've forgotten, that purple freak has an unquenchable thirst for data. Any kind of data, inclusive of personal data."
"Yes…?" Yuuta looked puzzled. "So how does that relate to you being a girl – oh."
'Oh, indeed." Shaking my head sadly at his ignorance, I continued, speaking as though to a young child. "He'd make sure that the whole city knows – no, the whole country would be more like it. And then were would I be?"
He shuffled his feet, apparently having discovered something very interesting in his fingernails. "Eto… in Seigaku Koukou?" he ventured hopefully.
I kicked him. "Baka. I'd be in court, by the eight arms of the goddess of mercy. With innumerable charges, such as indecency."
"Ouch! What goddess has eight arms, anyway?"
"Kwanyin, the Chinese goddess of mercy," I answered. "But that is not the point of contention. Of all people, why Mizuki – "
The doorbell rang, and without waiting for an answer, the purple freak walked in, all decked out in his favorite color – radioactive purple.
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He stared at me. I stared right back at him, meeting him eye for eye. Electricity crackled throughout the room, and Yuuta was backing away, his hair rising slightly from the high voltage.
"So, what are you going to do about it?" I bit out.
"About what?" That purple freak was definitely depriving a certain village somewhere of its idiot. He actually thought he could pretend not to know?
"You know that I'm a girl, don't you?" I demanded. "Don't you dare deny it; Yuuta told me that you know."
"Oh yes, that little matter of your questionable gender." Twirling his hair in that despicably condescending manner of his, he said, "I have taken the liberty of –"
"Of what?" I asked dangerously. If he'd notified all the news anchors and tennis organizations, I would have no choice but to wring his neck like a chicken for the pot. I'd probably enjoy doing it, too.
"Of keeping that particular data to myself," he finished. "I always take pride in having data that other people do not. Also, there is the more important issue of your tennis –"
"In other words, you just don't want other people to know that you got trashed by a girl," I cut across him, hiding my relief with a sharp tone.
The purple freak shrugged nonchalantly. " Well, that can't hurt. It's a win-win situation after all."
He did have a point there. Not that I was about to admit it.
"In any case, I can see how you managed to conceal your true sex," he continued meditatively. "Most teenage females of our age would have a chest to waist to hip ratio of –"
Not wanting to go into a discussion of my bodily assets – or rather, my lack thereof – for the second time in two days, I grabbed a convenient ball cactus on the nearby windowsill and efficiently stuffed his mouth up, ignoring the eardrum-bursting scream that resulted.
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It had been with some reluctance that I'd let Yuuta leave for the street tennis courts with the purple freak, who had somehow managed to stage a miraculous recovery a few hours after the cactus episode – albeit he wouldn't be able to talk normally for the rest of the holidays without feeling some pain. I got a measure of fierce pleasure out of the fact that he still paid for his knowledge of my secret – paid in blood, no less.
I'd mooched around the house for a while, not quite bored enough to watch the mind-numbingly dull television programs on air at the time, yet not quite able to get up the courage to call Eiji or go for a walk. After all, Yumiko-nee-san might come back at any moment, and until I knew what school I should choose, I didn't think I'd be able to carry a normal conversation with my best friend.
By the time three o'clock rolled around, I was out of the house and in the backyard, just about bored out of my mind. Yumiko-nee-san wasn't answering her cell phone; I couldn't focus on any of my books, games or music – or rather, on anything – until Yumiko-nee-san told me of her scrying results.
Would I go to Hyotei, Rikkai or Seigaku's respective high schools, or to somewhere else entirely? Would I continue as a crossdresser, or would I revert to my original gender? Would the people accept me?
Sakura petals shook themselves loose from the branches above me, drifting down, lifted by the warm spring breeze. The smell of freshness enveloped me – the heady sweetness of the flowers, the clean sharpness of the grass, and the dark, earthy undertones of the honest dirt beneath them all.
Springtime, a time for new beginnings. Perhaps I had indeed chosen an auspicious time to reveal my true sex to my friends… Soft petals caressed my closed eyelids, gentle as a loving hand, and I smiled.
"Syuusuke?" Footsteps sounded; I sat up on the wooden bench where I'd originally been lying.
"Nee-san? Where were you?" I inquired.
"Ah, my friend introduced me to one of her colleagues. He's smart, and not to mention easy on the eyes," she replied, sitting down beside me.
I raised an eyebrow. "Saa… you're interested in someone, ne?"
She coughed somewhat embarrassedly. "Anyway, I'm sure you want to know what I found for you last night, right?"
My eyes flicked open in anticipation. "Of course. I've been waiting the whole day, Nee-san."
"You have? I'm sorry, Syuusuke," she apologized, looking genuinely contrite. "I was rather diverted by Ryuuji – that's his name, Kohaku Ryuuji."
Ryuuji? So they were on first-name terms already… but I could tease Yumiko-nee-san later, after she told me what she'd found. "Oh, I see. So what did you scry for me?" I asked.
Suddenly, she wouldn't meet my eyes, seemingly developing a strange fascination with the petal-strewn grass around us. "Nee-san?" I repeated. "What did you see?"
"I saw…" Her voice was halting, soft and faltering. "I saw you… in the uniform of Shuubijou Gakuen."
"Shuubijou… Gakuen…?" I echoed slowly. "Isn't that… the all-girls boarding school on the outskirts of Tokyo?"
She nodded. "Yes, it was their uniform you were wearing, and their school gates you were entering."
I buried my face in my hands. Now I knew what she has scried… but it was in no way what I'd expected.
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"I'm going to an all-girls high school… and of all the all-girls high schools there are here, it has to be Shuubijou Gakuen," I grumbled to myself in the privacy of my own bedroom.
Shuubijou… its kanji characters were 秀美娘, literally meaning 'beautiful lady'. And I, a crossdresser with almost a decade of experience, was going to attend it.
Kami-sama, I decided, could be a truly sadistic bitch at times.
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A/N: Saa... I decided against sending her to either Rikkaidai or Hyotei in the end… it'd be different from the other crossdresser fics, this way. XD Review, please!
PS. I know I said that this chapter would be called 'Decision', but I changed my mind. It wasn't as if she was the one making the decision here; more like Yumiko scried it.
PPS. If the scrying is too supernatural, sorry… it seemed more interesting to make Yumiko able to actually scry the future. Yeah. :-X