Chapter 13
Issei slid into his seat in the psychology class just moments before the bell rang. Sakura was already there, in the desk beside him; he'd timed his entry so that they wouldn't be forced to awkwardly ignore each other, or worse, try to make conversation while waiting for class to start.
The last few weeks had been very rough between the two of them. The easy comfortableness they'd always had with each other had vanished, as if it had never been. For the most part they'd been staying away from each other, and neither had entered the other's bedroom for any reason since the day of the fight at school. Issei could sense Sakura's heartbreak, and it only made his own that much worse. He felt guilty for putting her through the whole ordeal; what had seemed like such a good idea at the time seemed like sheer idiocy with the perfect vision of hindsight.
They still had all their classes together, and they couldn't change their seating arrangements so late in the year, so they'd begun this little dance of avoidance. Issei left for school in the mornings a good half hour before Sakura was even awake, now that he no longer tried to chivvy her out of bed. One or both of them were always careful to arrive for class at the last possible second, and they ate lunch across the room from each other. Thus far neither of them had figured out a good reason to avoid walking home together; that trip was always silent and strained at best.
It was killing him... he missed his easy friendship with Sakura, missed feeling like he could tell her anything, and know she would understand. Having lost her and Jinpachi at nearly the same moment, he felt lost and adrift, without anyone to anchor him. He'd never been alone like this, in all the time he could remember; before he'd met Sakura in this life, he'd always had Jinpachi.
He'd managed to keep himself distracted so far by throwing all his time and energy into studying. As a result, as the year drew to a close, he actually had the grades he'd need to get one of those scholarships, and a good chance of scoring well on the entrance exams, too. It was the one thing he could comfort himself with. Maybe at university, he'd finally be able to escape the past that haunted him, and the complications it continually brought into his current life.
Once they'd all bowed to the teacher and taken their seats again, Issei wrenched his attention back to the class. He actually really enjoyed this class; it was one of his electives, and the teacher, Sakamoto Rei, had done her masters and doctorate degrees in psychology in the United States. She was amazingly forward thinking and progressive, and he loved studying under her.
This being Saturday, it was a short class, and their last class for the day. The students were all restless; with the entrance exams just a week and a half away, nobody was concentrating well on their classes, even though they needed to be paying attention now more than ever.
Perhaps Sakamoto-sensei sensed that, for she chose to perch on the front of her desk, rather than taking a seat behind it. "All right, everyone, settle down," she ordered, and the students slowly stopped fidgeting and turned to her. "I know you're all anxious to be out of here, so I promise to try to make this class as painless as possible. You've all been such good students this year, that we've actually managed to finish the government approved curriculum ahead of time."
Issei blinked at that, and there were murmurs of astonishment from the other students. You often heard of classes falling behind the curriculum, if they were particularly ill behaved or slow. Issei didn't think he'd heard anything about a class finishing early, however. He wasn't sure what that would mean in terms of the remaining class days; would they simply be free days? Or did it mean Sakamoto-sensei would be able to teach anything she liked?
The latter, apparently, as she pulled a sheaf of papers from her back. Seeing the familiar answer forms of a multiple-choice test, the students groaned, but the teacher kept smiling.
"No, this isn't a pop quiz, or anything like that," she assured them. "This is the introduction to our last unit of study. I want you all to fill out these questionnaires, and be as honest as you can. There are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers; there is only the answer that is truest to your sense of self. Your results will not count for or against your grade in any way, and they are only as accurate as the data you put into them."
"So you're psychoanalyzing us, then?" someone asked from the back of the class. "Going to tell us whether we're chronic overachievers, or lazy, or ambitious, or whatever?"
"Something like that," Sakamoto-sensei answered placidly, as half the students tittered. "When you're done, I want you to turn over your paper. When everyone's paper is turned over, I'll be handing out the answer key. I will never see these papers. Neither will anyone else, unless you so choose. At the moment, you may be surprised or even confused by what your answers tell you, but by the end of the unit, everything should make a little better sense to you."
Issei's curiosity was well and truly piqued at this point. He found psychology a fascinating subject, and had toyed with the idea of majoring in it. The only problem was the knowledge that it might be difficult to find a related job after he was done school. The smart thing to do would be to major in business, but he'd never really had the interest in economics necessary for something like that.
She passed out the forms, and he flipped his over, studying the questions. Some of it was the sort of things you would find on standardized IQ tests; spatial relations, math problems, word problems. There were questions about associations; given x and y, which is the relationship between the words most similar to, among the follow list? Or, which of these best describes your first thought upon hearing x word? There were questions about his learning style, whether he learned better reading, hearing an explanation, or doing it himself. Overall, he wasn't entirely certain just what the test was supposed to show.
He gave up on trying to figure out the meaning of the quiz, and simply started filling in his answers. Occasionally he had to argue with himself briefly over a question to determine if the answer he'd just put down was the truth, or only what he wished the truth was, but for the most part he thought he'd managed to be honest.
When he flipped his page over, he leaned back and stretched, glancing around to see who else was finished. Sakura was still working, but he could see that she was at the bottom of her page. Most of the rest of the class was done; either they hadn't really bothered to pay attention to the questions, since it wasn't going to count for their grades, or they hadn't bothered to argue with themselves over any of the answers as Issei had. Most likely it was a combination of both.
It was about ten minutes until the last person flipped their page over. Sakamoto-sensei started moving through the rows again, handing out the answer key and another page of what looked like explanation. "You're free to go for the day," she told them, and immediately had to raise her voice over the sound of a dozen students scrambling for books and bags. "I'd recommend reading the results in private, and then deciding if you want to share with your friends. Just a warning that if I catch or hear about anyone pressuring someone to reveal their results, it'll mean a drop of ten percent in your final grade."
Ignoring the protests of 'you can't do that!' - she could, if she chose, do exactly that, and they all knew it - Sakamoto-sensei returned to her desk and started gathering up her own things. Now doubly curious, Issei slipped his books into his bag, grabbed his answer sheet and quiz, and turned towards Sakura.
She was already packed, waiting for him. She raised an eyebrow at him as they walked out of the classroom. "So, what do you think it was for?" she asked, breaking their several-week tradition of not speaking to each other on the way home.
"I have no idea," Issei admitted honestly. "I'm curious to get a look at this answer sheet."
"Yeah, me too," she agreed, and they fell awkwardly silent once more. Issei cursed his inability to say anything to a girl he'd once been able to say everything to, and wondered at the cruelty of the world that just a few short hours could so completely change two lives forever.
By tacit agreement, they waited until they were out of the school and heading towards home before they both pulled out their answer sheets. It was as good a way as any other to ignore each other without being blatant about it, Issei decided.
Reading over the explanation sheet, Issei's eyes widened. The questionnaire had been based on multiple studies done by the Americans on something called 'gender identity'. The theory was that, on average, males tended to react and think in certain ways that were different from the way females thought and reacted. And, supposedly, such things were not necessarily determined by genetics, or upbringing.
He stopped short, staring at the sheet, feeling his stomach try to crawl up his throat. This has to be some sort of cosmic joke, he thought, disbelieving. Of all the possible topics... this...
"Issei? Are you okay?" He looked to see that Sakura had stopped walking a couple feet ahead of him, and was looking back at him now in concern.
He gave her a twisted smile. "Have you gotten to the part where it explains just what this test is for?"
"No..." She flipped from the answer key to the explanation sheet, and skimmed it quickly. He was a bit gratified to see that she turned almost as pale as he probably was. "Oh, dear Sarjareem. Are you okay?"
"We'll find out in a few minutes," Issei muttered, flipping to the answer key and starting to check his answers. The choices were rated on a scale of one to five, with five being feminine, one being masculine, and three being androgynous. Depending on which answer he chose, he added more points to his total, then checked his total score to see where he placed on the overall scale.
Halfway through the answer key, he knew he didn't even need to finish. He did anyway, out of simple morbid curiosity. Then he stood staring at the sheet for a long moment, going over and over the answers to see if there were any that he'd been uncertain about at the time, that he might be able to change now. The only things he'd hesitated over were the questions where he'd forced himself to be more truthful; unless he decided to deliberately lie to himself, he couldn't change his score.
"Issei?" Sakura asked after he'd just stood there with his eyes closed for a long moment. "How bad is it?"
He opened his eyes and just looked at her. After a moment she sighed, and looked sympathetic. "That bad, huh?"
He looked back at his results. On the final scale, he rated ninety-one percent feminine. Ninety-one percent! "I'm kidding myself, aren't I?" he asked, softly.
"Kidding yourself? About what?" She moved closer, her eyes concerned, but made no move to take the paper or look at it. He was grateful for that much, at least.
"Thinking that I can somehow separate myself from Enju's influence," he clarified, fisting his hand around the papers. "That if I just try hard enough, long enough, I can shove her away in a box somewhere and be nothing more than an ordinary teenaged male."
Sakura's eyes were wide and soft as she looked at him. In the face of his obvious pain, she'd momentarily set aside her own issues with him. She reached out to touch his arm. "I'm sure a lot of people in the class weren't nearly where they expected to be on the scale, Issei. Hell, I scored on the feminine side of androgynous, and nobody's ever looked twice at me."
"Ninety. One." He bit the words off as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. Her shocked look was no more than he'd expected. "I doubt many of the girls in the class scored that high."
He started walking again, at a quick, choppy pace. He shoved the papers, explanation sheet and all, into the first garbage can he came to, but it wasn't nearly so easy to leave behind the confusion and turmoil they'd awakened inside him. Belatedly she ran to catch up, and fell in at his side.
"Issei?" she finally ventured to ask. He slanted a glance at her, and she looked back at him levelly. "Why don't you talk to Sakamoto-sensei? She's a professional psychologist, she'd probably have some advice about what you could do to help yourself."
Issei's glance became scornful. "Sakura, anyone from our class who goes to talk to her, for any reason, in the next week or so is going to be assumed to have gotten an unusual score on this damn test," he pointed out. "The whole class will be watching tomorrow to see who seems upset or uncomfortable, I guarantee it."
"Damn, you're right," Sakura admitted in defeat. "I didn't think of that. Well, you've lived with it this long, I guess you could wait a couple weeks and talk to her just before we leave school, maybe?"
"Just forget about it, Sakura," Issei replied, his tone a bit sharper than he'd intended. This was still a very touchy subject for him, and he was having enough trouble probing at the open wound the test results had created, without her rubbing salt over it. "What would I tell her, anyway? 'By the way, I'm a reincarnated female alien, who screwed up and asked her goddess to reincarnate her as a male'? No, thank you."
She sighed, and raked her hair out of her eyes. "I doubt you'd need to go into that much detail, Issei..." He just gave her another look, and she dropped the subject. "All right, fine. C'mon, we'd better hurry or we're going to be late for dinner, we've been standing around out here so long!"
Neither of them said any more about the subject that night, though it had at least served the purpose of breaking the ice between them a bit. They actually spent an hour studying out in the living room together after dinner, rather than retreating to their own rooms as they had been doing.
Issei found he was utterly unable to concentrate on anything, however. The spectre of the questionnaire and the implications of its results kept rising up to haunt him. He found himself constantly second-guessing his own thought processes, trying to catch himself 'thinking like a girl', and attempting to 'think like a boy' instead. Needless to say, he was failing miserably.
He spent most of the night staring up at the ceiling, feeling like there was a war being waged in his own mind and not even sure which side he was supposed to be on. Part of him wanted to just take this whole incident as evidence that he was never going to free himself of Enju, so he might as well just give in and revel in it. The rest of him, the part that had been forced to listen to endless lectures by his parents and bullying by other children on the subject of his 'effeminate' behaviour, was appalled by the very thought.
As a result, he was up even earlier than usual the next morning. He went about his morning routine on autopilot, and when he was ready to go to school, he discovered that it was still early enough that not even Sakura's father had risen for work yet. Sighing, he decided to go ahead and go to school anyway. He could brood there just as well as here, and at least there wouldn't be anyone there at this time of morning for his empathy to pick up on.
The sun was just cresting the horizon as he left the house, and the walk to school was peaceful and calm, actually soothing his jumbled spirit somewhat. The birdsong was pleasant, and by the time he walked into the school, he was actually able to draw a breath without feeling like the weight of the world was pressing down on him.
He changed his shoes quickly and headed up towards his classroom, feeling oddly out of place in the echoingly empty hallways. His every footstep seemed to bounce off the walls and return to him, until he could hear himself coming from every direction. To someone else it might have sounded like there were many other people following them, but for him, his inability to sense anyone's presence with his empathy meant he knew he was alone.
Except... there was at least one other person, somewhere on this floor near here. Curious, Issei detoured down into the science wing, following the sense of 'presence' that told him he wasn't alone after all. It was only one single person, and they weren't feeling anything particularly strongly. As he neared them, he could feel a sort of muffled enjoyment; of the first coffee of the day, or something similar, he guessed.
He stopped outside the door where the feeling was strongest, and looked up to see that he'd arrived outside Sakamoto-sensei's office. The door was cracked partially open, and through it he could see her look up and smile at him.
"Don't be shy, come in," she invited, leaning back in her chair. "Didn't expect to see someone else who was as much of an early riser as I am."
For a moment Issei was tempted to turn tail and run. Hadn't he just reminded Sakura of what people would think of anyone visiting Sakamoto-sensei's office today? The fact that what they would assume of him was actually true only made it all the more imperative for him to avoid the rumours.
Still, Sakamoto-sensei was right in saying that there wasn't likely to be anyone else at the school for a good long while yet. He was probably safe to at least come in and wish her good morning. He pushed the door open a little further, stepped inside and bowed slightly. "Good morning, Sensei," he said, a little stiffly.
"Issei-kun! Good morning," she replied, her smile widening. "Come in, have a seat. Would you like some coffee or tea?"
He'd intended to refuse, make up some fictitious project that he'd come early to work on, and excuse himself politely. Instead he found himself walking forwards, and accepting a cup of tea from the teacher's hands. "Thank you," he murmured, sitting in one of the chairs and just staring at the tea.
"You seem troubled, Issei-kun," she commented when he hadn't said anything or looked up after a few minutes. "Is it something I could help with, maybe?"
He finally raised his head and gave her a wry smile. "Is it that obvious?" he asked. She just tilted her head at him, and he sighed, slumping back into the chair. "It's... the questionnaire you gave us yesterday," he admitted reluctantly.
"Ah." Just that one single word, and it held no overtones of judgement or bias, but it still told Issei that she'd known all along exactly what had brought him to school so early in the morning. "Did your score surprise you, then? I won't ask if you understood the implications behind the test, you're one of my best students, and I'm quite certain you grasped the concept immediately."
He gave a slightly bitter laugh. "Surprise me? No, not really. It was a bit of a shock, but not really a surprise, if that makes any sense." He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. "I scored a ninety-one."
She took a sip of her coffee, waiting for him to open his eyes again before she spoke. Her voice was neutral, neither positive nor negative, just a soothing level tone. "And how did that make you feel, other than shocked but not surprised?"
"Frustrated," he replied immediately, gritting his teeth against the emotions that threatened to well up inside him again. The last thing he needed was to lose control and let his emotions spill over onto her. "I've spent so long trying to... to separate myself from this..." he remembered at the last moment not to mention Enju or his past life. "This emotional morass I always seem to find myself in. I thought I was doing better, but that test just tells me I was only fooling myself."
"What sort of things are you trying to separate yourself from?" she asked, her expression calm and eyes sympathetic. If she felt anything emotional at all in response to his outburst, she was very good at hiding it, even from an empath.
"From the fact that I have a female soul trapped in a male body," he whispered, fighting to keep his own anguish out of his voice. Damn it, he was not going to break down in public, in front of a teacher, no less! "I thought if I could just... try hard enough, force myself to do the things I was expected to, to want the things I was 'supposed' to want, then I could distance myself from her enough to at least be able to live out the rest of this life in something other than utter misery!"
She let him fight for control without saying anything. When he finally was able to breathe without it turning into a shuddering almost-sob, she spoke again. "I take it things didn't work out as you'd planned?"
"Well, I'd say this test of yours is proof enough of that," Issei replied, his tone bitter again. "Years of effort, and if I've managed to change anything, it's to drop myself from a hundred percent to ninety-one percent."
"How does that make you feel?" she asked, her eyes intent on his face. "You said you were frustrated. Have you ever had thoughts of ending your life to escape it?"
"Of committing suicide, you mean?" He shook his head. "I considered it semi-seriously once, just after my father had disowned me for being gay, and my best friend had abandoned me. I was hysterical, in a lot of pain from the beating my father gave me, and not really thinking rationally. I don't think I'd ever really go through with something like that." He closed his eyes again. "I... believe in reincarnation. And someone who commits suicide is taken out of the cycle, never to live again. My life would have to be a lot worse than it is now before I'd consider that to be a preferable alternative."
"I'm very glad to hear you say that," she said, nodding. She relaxed a bit, though he hadn't actually realized she was tense until she did relax. "Issei-kun, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions that will seem somewhat odd, and probably very pointless. I'd like you to answer them to the best of your ability anyway, all right?"
At his hesitant nod, she continued, "If you could go back in time and choose which sex you would be born, which would you choose? Male, or female?"
"Female," came his instant reply. He didn't even have to think about it. He'd long since acknowledged that it had been a horrible mistake to ask Sarjareem to incarnate him as a male this time around, and he was bound and determined never to make that particular mistake again. If he could go back and do it again? He'd choose to be female in a heartbeat. If he'd been a woman, then maybe, once Jinpachi finally got over Alice, he'd have had a chance with his best friend. They'd all died so young the last time around that Gyokuran had never had an opportunity to really see past Mokuren, and that had been Enju's downfall.
"Fair enough. You seem very certain of that," she observed. He just looked back at her, feeling as if he should be ashamed of his answer, but unable to dredge up the appropriate emotion. It was the truth, and there was nothing he could do about it. "Next question; if you could go back and change yourself so that you'd be happy as a male, would you do that?"
"If I could..." Issei trailed off, startled. His first thought was to say 'yes, of course', but something deep in his gut kept him from answering so quickly.
Wasn't that exactly what he'd prayed to Sarjareem for, though, every night when he lay in bed? For her to fix things, to make him happy, to make him able to bear this life that he'd chosen for himself? If he could change himself to make himself happy as a male, wouldn't he jump at the chance?
He thought of his score on the test yesterday, and suddenly understood what his answer had to be. "No," he said slowly. "I should say yes, but when you put it that way, I have to say no. To make myself happy as a male... I'd have to change so much of myself, that my soul would hardly be recognizable any more. I wouldn't be me, I'd be someone else. That's not what I want. I just want to be happy, as I am."
"Issei-kun, what you're experiencing is something called 'gender dysphoria'," she told him frankly. "That's basically a fancy way of saying that you are unhappy with the gender you were born with, which I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you. But I'm going to tell you right now; whatever anyone else may tell you, it is not an insanity. There is nothing wrong with your mind, and from what you're telling me and your score on the test, I can tell you that it's unlikely that any amount of therapy will ever orient you to your genetic gender."
"So you're saying I'm trapped this way," he concluded, his voice pained. Not that it was anything he hadn't already known, but it still hurt to hear it confirmed by a professional. He was doomed to live out the rest of this life in the same misery he was floundering in now.
Her answer, therefore, surprised him considerably. "Only if you choose to be," she said. "I'm not saying it would be easy for you to overcome this and express yourself as you wish you could. On the contrary; you've got a very difficult road to walk, regardless of what you chose to do with yourself."
She leaned forward and wrote quickly on a piece of notepaper, then tore it off, folded it in half, and handed it to him. "I've written down some American websites there that I think you'll find useful to you. Also, the name of an American friend of mine who is here in Japan. She's a singer, and she gives voice lessons; she's trained more than one male to be able to pass his voice perfectly as a female. She's done quite a lot of work training voice actors on television, in fact."
He stared at the paper, then at her, a little bewildered. She smiled at him. "I'm not your therapist, Issei-kun, only your teacher. I admit you're one of the ones I expected to have turn up in my office at some point during this unit; I'm glad I was able to talk to you so early, and for such a long time. But if you don't leave soon, someone is going to see you coming out of my office, and we both know what that means."
Glancing at the clock, he realized she was right - it was late enough that there would be other students around, and in fact he could sense several of them not far from her office. He stood hastily, tucking the paper into his bag and setting the teacup down on her desk. "Thank you," he said, almost shyly. "You've... given me some things to think about, if nothing else."
She laughed. "Good. That's what I'm here for. Making my students think is how I know I'm doing my job as a teacher properly. Now, quickly, get out of here, before you're seen."
She shooed him out the door, and he slipped out when he was certain nobody was close enough to see where he'd come from. He made his way to his homeroom with plenty of time to spare, thoughts and emotions boiling over in his mind. Something to think about, indeed.
Issei slid into his seat in the psychology class just moments before the bell rang. Sakura was already there, in the desk beside him; he'd timed his entry so that they wouldn't be forced to awkwardly ignore each other, or worse, try to make conversation while waiting for class to start.
The last few weeks had been very rough between the two of them. The easy comfortableness they'd always had with each other had vanished, as if it had never been. For the most part they'd been staying away from each other, and neither had entered the other's bedroom for any reason since the day of the fight at school. Issei could sense Sakura's heartbreak, and it only made his own that much worse. He felt guilty for putting her through the whole ordeal; what had seemed like such a good idea at the time seemed like sheer idiocy with the perfect vision of hindsight.
They still had all their classes together, and they couldn't change their seating arrangements so late in the year, so they'd begun this little dance of avoidance. Issei left for school in the mornings a good half hour before Sakura was even awake, now that he no longer tried to chivvy her out of bed. One or both of them were always careful to arrive for class at the last possible second, and they ate lunch across the room from each other. Thus far neither of them had figured out a good reason to avoid walking home together; that trip was always silent and strained at best.
It was killing him... he missed his easy friendship with Sakura, missed feeling like he could tell her anything, and know she would understand. Having lost her and Jinpachi at nearly the same moment, he felt lost and adrift, without anyone to anchor him. He'd never been alone like this, in all the time he could remember; before he'd met Sakura in this life, he'd always had Jinpachi.
He'd managed to keep himself distracted so far by throwing all his time and energy into studying. As a result, as the year drew to a close, he actually had the grades he'd need to get one of those scholarships, and a good chance of scoring well on the entrance exams, too. It was the one thing he could comfort himself with. Maybe at university, he'd finally be able to escape the past that haunted him, and the complications it continually brought into his current life.
Once they'd all bowed to the teacher and taken their seats again, Issei wrenched his attention back to the class. He actually really enjoyed this class; it was one of his electives, and the teacher, Sakamoto Rei, had done her masters and doctorate degrees in psychology in the United States. She was amazingly forward thinking and progressive, and he loved studying under her.
This being Saturday, it was a short class, and their last class for the day. The students were all restless; with the entrance exams just a week and a half away, nobody was concentrating well on their classes, even though they needed to be paying attention now more than ever.
Perhaps Sakamoto-sensei sensed that, for she chose to perch on the front of her desk, rather than taking a seat behind it. "All right, everyone, settle down," she ordered, and the students slowly stopped fidgeting and turned to her. "I know you're all anxious to be out of here, so I promise to try to make this class as painless as possible. You've all been such good students this year, that we've actually managed to finish the government approved curriculum ahead of time."
Issei blinked at that, and there were murmurs of astonishment from the other students. You often heard of classes falling behind the curriculum, if they were particularly ill behaved or slow. Issei didn't think he'd heard anything about a class finishing early, however. He wasn't sure what that would mean in terms of the remaining class days; would they simply be free days? Or did it mean Sakamoto-sensei would be able to teach anything she liked?
The latter, apparently, as she pulled a sheaf of papers from her back. Seeing the familiar answer forms of a multiple-choice test, the students groaned, but the teacher kept smiling.
"No, this isn't a pop quiz, or anything like that," she assured them. "This is the introduction to our last unit of study. I want you all to fill out these questionnaires, and be as honest as you can. There are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers; there is only the answer that is truest to your sense of self. Your results will not count for or against your grade in any way, and they are only as accurate as the data you put into them."
"So you're psychoanalyzing us, then?" someone asked from the back of the class. "Going to tell us whether we're chronic overachievers, or lazy, or ambitious, or whatever?"
"Something like that," Sakamoto-sensei answered placidly, as half the students tittered. "When you're done, I want you to turn over your paper. When everyone's paper is turned over, I'll be handing out the answer key. I will never see these papers. Neither will anyone else, unless you so choose. At the moment, you may be surprised or even confused by what your answers tell you, but by the end of the unit, everything should make a little better sense to you."
Issei's curiosity was well and truly piqued at this point. He found psychology a fascinating subject, and had toyed with the idea of majoring in it. The only problem was the knowledge that it might be difficult to find a related job after he was done school. The smart thing to do would be to major in business, but he'd never really had the interest in economics necessary for something like that.
She passed out the forms, and he flipped his over, studying the questions. Some of it was the sort of things you would find on standardized IQ tests; spatial relations, math problems, word problems. There were questions about associations; given x and y, which is the relationship between the words most similar to, among the follow list? Or, which of these best describes your first thought upon hearing x word? There were questions about his learning style, whether he learned better reading, hearing an explanation, or doing it himself. Overall, he wasn't entirely certain just what the test was supposed to show.
He gave up on trying to figure out the meaning of the quiz, and simply started filling in his answers. Occasionally he had to argue with himself briefly over a question to determine if the answer he'd just put down was the truth, or only what he wished the truth was, but for the most part he thought he'd managed to be honest.
When he flipped his page over, he leaned back and stretched, glancing around to see who else was finished. Sakura was still working, but he could see that she was at the bottom of her page. Most of the rest of the class was done; either they hadn't really bothered to pay attention to the questions, since it wasn't going to count for their grades, or they hadn't bothered to argue with themselves over any of the answers as Issei had. Most likely it was a combination of both.
It was about ten minutes until the last person flipped their page over. Sakamoto-sensei started moving through the rows again, handing out the answer key and another page of what looked like explanation. "You're free to go for the day," she told them, and immediately had to raise her voice over the sound of a dozen students scrambling for books and bags. "I'd recommend reading the results in private, and then deciding if you want to share with your friends. Just a warning that if I catch or hear about anyone pressuring someone to reveal their results, it'll mean a drop of ten percent in your final grade."
Ignoring the protests of 'you can't do that!' - she could, if she chose, do exactly that, and they all knew it - Sakamoto-sensei returned to her desk and started gathering up her own things. Now doubly curious, Issei slipped his books into his bag, grabbed his answer sheet and quiz, and turned towards Sakura.
She was already packed, waiting for him. She raised an eyebrow at him as they walked out of the classroom. "So, what do you think it was for?" she asked, breaking their several-week tradition of not speaking to each other on the way home.
"I have no idea," Issei admitted honestly. "I'm curious to get a look at this answer sheet."
"Yeah, me too," she agreed, and they fell awkwardly silent once more. Issei cursed his inability to say anything to a girl he'd once been able to say everything to, and wondered at the cruelty of the world that just a few short hours could so completely change two lives forever.
By tacit agreement, they waited until they were out of the school and heading towards home before they both pulled out their answer sheets. It was as good a way as any other to ignore each other without being blatant about it, Issei decided.
Reading over the explanation sheet, Issei's eyes widened. The questionnaire had been based on multiple studies done by the Americans on something called 'gender identity'. The theory was that, on average, males tended to react and think in certain ways that were different from the way females thought and reacted. And, supposedly, such things were not necessarily determined by genetics, or upbringing.
He stopped short, staring at the sheet, feeling his stomach try to crawl up his throat. This has to be some sort of cosmic joke, he thought, disbelieving. Of all the possible topics... this...
"Issei? Are you okay?" He looked to see that Sakura had stopped walking a couple feet ahead of him, and was looking back at him now in concern.
He gave her a twisted smile. "Have you gotten to the part where it explains just what this test is for?"
"No..." She flipped from the answer key to the explanation sheet, and skimmed it quickly. He was a bit gratified to see that she turned almost as pale as he probably was. "Oh, dear Sarjareem. Are you okay?"
"We'll find out in a few minutes," Issei muttered, flipping to the answer key and starting to check his answers. The choices were rated on a scale of one to five, with five being feminine, one being masculine, and three being androgynous. Depending on which answer he chose, he added more points to his total, then checked his total score to see where he placed on the overall scale.
Halfway through the answer key, he knew he didn't even need to finish. He did anyway, out of simple morbid curiosity. Then he stood staring at the sheet for a long moment, going over and over the answers to see if there were any that he'd been uncertain about at the time, that he might be able to change now. The only things he'd hesitated over were the questions where he'd forced himself to be more truthful; unless he decided to deliberately lie to himself, he couldn't change his score.
"Issei?" Sakura asked after he'd just stood there with his eyes closed for a long moment. "How bad is it?"
He opened his eyes and just looked at her. After a moment she sighed, and looked sympathetic. "That bad, huh?"
He looked back at his results. On the final scale, he rated ninety-one percent feminine. Ninety-one percent! "I'm kidding myself, aren't I?" he asked, softly.
"Kidding yourself? About what?" She moved closer, her eyes concerned, but made no move to take the paper or look at it. He was grateful for that much, at least.
"Thinking that I can somehow separate myself from Enju's influence," he clarified, fisting his hand around the papers. "That if I just try hard enough, long enough, I can shove her away in a box somewhere and be nothing more than an ordinary teenaged male."
Sakura's eyes were wide and soft as she looked at him. In the face of his obvious pain, she'd momentarily set aside her own issues with him. She reached out to touch his arm. "I'm sure a lot of people in the class weren't nearly where they expected to be on the scale, Issei. Hell, I scored on the feminine side of androgynous, and nobody's ever looked twice at me."
"Ninety. One." He bit the words off as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. Her shocked look was no more than he'd expected. "I doubt many of the girls in the class scored that high."
He started walking again, at a quick, choppy pace. He shoved the papers, explanation sheet and all, into the first garbage can he came to, but it wasn't nearly so easy to leave behind the confusion and turmoil they'd awakened inside him. Belatedly she ran to catch up, and fell in at his side.
"Issei?" she finally ventured to ask. He slanted a glance at her, and she looked back at him levelly. "Why don't you talk to Sakamoto-sensei? She's a professional psychologist, she'd probably have some advice about what you could do to help yourself."
Issei's glance became scornful. "Sakura, anyone from our class who goes to talk to her, for any reason, in the next week or so is going to be assumed to have gotten an unusual score on this damn test," he pointed out. "The whole class will be watching tomorrow to see who seems upset or uncomfortable, I guarantee it."
"Damn, you're right," Sakura admitted in defeat. "I didn't think of that. Well, you've lived with it this long, I guess you could wait a couple weeks and talk to her just before we leave school, maybe?"
"Just forget about it, Sakura," Issei replied, his tone a bit sharper than he'd intended. This was still a very touchy subject for him, and he was having enough trouble probing at the open wound the test results had created, without her rubbing salt over it. "What would I tell her, anyway? 'By the way, I'm a reincarnated female alien, who screwed up and asked her goddess to reincarnate her as a male'? No, thank you."
She sighed, and raked her hair out of her eyes. "I doubt you'd need to go into that much detail, Issei..." He just gave her another look, and she dropped the subject. "All right, fine. C'mon, we'd better hurry or we're going to be late for dinner, we've been standing around out here so long!"
Neither of them said any more about the subject that night, though it had at least served the purpose of breaking the ice between them a bit. They actually spent an hour studying out in the living room together after dinner, rather than retreating to their own rooms as they had been doing.
Issei found he was utterly unable to concentrate on anything, however. The spectre of the questionnaire and the implications of its results kept rising up to haunt him. He found himself constantly second-guessing his own thought processes, trying to catch himself 'thinking like a girl', and attempting to 'think like a boy' instead. Needless to say, he was failing miserably.
He spent most of the night staring up at the ceiling, feeling like there was a war being waged in his own mind and not even sure which side he was supposed to be on. Part of him wanted to just take this whole incident as evidence that he was never going to free himself of Enju, so he might as well just give in and revel in it. The rest of him, the part that had been forced to listen to endless lectures by his parents and bullying by other children on the subject of his 'effeminate' behaviour, was appalled by the very thought.
As a result, he was up even earlier than usual the next morning. He went about his morning routine on autopilot, and when he was ready to go to school, he discovered that it was still early enough that not even Sakura's father had risen for work yet. Sighing, he decided to go ahead and go to school anyway. He could brood there just as well as here, and at least there wouldn't be anyone there at this time of morning for his empathy to pick up on.
The sun was just cresting the horizon as he left the house, and the walk to school was peaceful and calm, actually soothing his jumbled spirit somewhat. The birdsong was pleasant, and by the time he walked into the school, he was actually able to draw a breath without feeling like the weight of the world was pressing down on him.
He changed his shoes quickly and headed up towards his classroom, feeling oddly out of place in the echoingly empty hallways. His every footstep seemed to bounce off the walls and return to him, until he could hear himself coming from every direction. To someone else it might have sounded like there were many other people following them, but for him, his inability to sense anyone's presence with his empathy meant he knew he was alone.
Except... there was at least one other person, somewhere on this floor near here. Curious, Issei detoured down into the science wing, following the sense of 'presence' that told him he wasn't alone after all. It was only one single person, and they weren't feeling anything particularly strongly. As he neared them, he could feel a sort of muffled enjoyment; of the first coffee of the day, or something similar, he guessed.
He stopped outside the door where the feeling was strongest, and looked up to see that he'd arrived outside Sakamoto-sensei's office. The door was cracked partially open, and through it he could see her look up and smile at him.
"Don't be shy, come in," she invited, leaning back in her chair. "Didn't expect to see someone else who was as much of an early riser as I am."
For a moment Issei was tempted to turn tail and run. Hadn't he just reminded Sakura of what people would think of anyone visiting Sakamoto-sensei's office today? The fact that what they would assume of him was actually true only made it all the more imperative for him to avoid the rumours.
Still, Sakamoto-sensei was right in saying that there wasn't likely to be anyone else at the school for a good long while yet. He was probably safe to at least come in and wish her good morning. He pushed the door open a little further, stepped inside and bowed slightly. "Good morning, Sensei," he said, a little stiffly.
"Issei-kun! Good morning," she replied, her smile widening. "Come in, have a seat. Would you like some coffee or tea?"
He'd intended to refuse, make up some fictitious project that he'd come early to work on, and excuse himself politely. Instead he found himself walking forwards, and accepting a cup of tea from the teacher's hands. "Thank you," he murmured, sitting in one of the chairs and just staring at the tea.
"You seem troubled, Issei-kun," she commented when he hadn't said anything or looked up after a few minutes. "Is it something I could help with, maybe?"
He finally raised his head and gave her a wry smile. "Is it that obvious?" he asked. She just tilted her head at him, and he sighed, slumping back into the chair. "It's... the questionnaire you gave us yesterday," he admitted reluctantly.
"Ah." Just that one single word, and it held no overtones of judgement or bias, but it still told Issei that she'd known all along exactly what had brought him to school so early in the morning. "Did your score surprise you, then? I won't ask if you understood the implications behind the test, you're one of my best students, and I'm quite certain you grasped the concept immediately."
He gave a slightly bitter laugh. "Surprise me? No, not really. It was a bit of a shock, but not really a surprise, if that makes any sense." He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. "I scored a ninety-one."
She took a sip of her coffee, waiting for him to open his eyes again before she spoke. Her voice was neutral, neither positive nor negative, just a soothing level tone. "And how did that make you feel, other than shocked but not surprised?"
"Frustrated," he replied immediately, gritting his teeth against the emotions that threatened to well up inside him again. The last thing he needed was to lose control and let his emotions spill over onto her. "I've spent so long trying to... to separate myself from this..." he remembered at the last moment not to mention Enju or his past life. "This emotional morass I always seem to find myself in. I thought I was doing better, but that test just tells me I was only fooling myself."
"What sort of things are you trying to separate yourself from?" she asked, her expression calm and eyes sympathetic. If she felt anything emotional at all in response to his outburst, she was very good at hiding it, even from an empath.
"From the fact that I have a female soul trapped in a male body," he whispered, fighting to keep his own anguish out of his voice. Damn it, he was not going to break down in public, in front of a teacher, no less! "I thought if I could just... try hard enough, force myself to do the things I was expected to, to want the things I was 'supposed' to want, then I could distance myself from her enough to at least be able to live out the rest of this life in something other than utter misery!"
She let him fight for control without saying anything. When he finally was able to breathe without it turning into a shuddering almost-sob, she spoke again. "I take it things didn't work out as you'd planned?"
"Well, I'd say this test of yours is proof enough of that," Issei replied, his tone bitter again. "Years of effort, and if I've managed to change anything, it's to drop myself from a hundred percent to ninety-one percent."
"How does that make you feel?" she asked, her eyes intent on his face. "You said you were frustrated. Have you ever had thoughts of ending your life to escape it?"
"Of committing suicide, you mean?" He shook his head. "I considered it semi-seriously once, just after my father had disowned me for being gay, and my best friend had abandoned me. I was hysterical, in a lot of pain from the beating my father gave me, and not really thinking rationally. I don't think I'd ever really go through with something like that." He closed his eyes again. "I... believe in reincarnation. And someone who commits suicide is taken out of the cycle, never to live again. My life would have to be a lot worse than it is now before I'd consider that to be a preferable alternative."
"I'm very glad to hear you say that," she said, nodding. She relaxed a bit, though he hadn't actually realized she was tense until she did relax. "Issei-kun, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions that will seem somewhat odd, and probably very pointless. I'd like you to answer them to the best of your ability anyway, all right?"
At his hesitant nod, she continued, "If you could go back in time and choose which sex you would be born, which would you choose? Male, or female?"
"Female," came his instant reply. He didn't even have to think about it. He'd long since acknowledged that it had been a horrible mistake to ask Sarjareem to incarnate him as a male this time around, and he was bound and determined never to make that particular mistake again. If he could go back and do it again? He'd choose to be female in a heartbeat. If he'd been a woman, then maybe, once Jinpachi finally got over Alice, he'd have had a chance with his best friend. They'd all died so young the last time around that Gyokuran had never had an opportunity to really see past Mokuren, and that had been Enju's downfall.
"Fair enough. You seem very certain of that," she observed. He just looked back at her, feeling as if he should be ashamed of his answer, but unable to dredge up the appropriate emotion. It was the truth, and there was nothing he could do about it. "Next question; if you could go back and change yourself so that you'd be happy as a male, would you do that?"
"If I could..." Issei trailed off, startled. His first thought was to say 'yes, of course', but something deep in his gut kept him from answering so quickly.
Wasn't that exactly what he'd prayed to Sarjareem for, though, every night when he lay in bed? For her to fix things, to make him happy, to make him able to bear this life that he'd chosen for himself? If he could change himself to make himself happy as a male, wouldn't he jump at the chance?
He thought of his score on the test yesterday, and suddenly understood what his answer had to be. "No," he said slowly. "I should say yes, but when you put it that way, I have to say no. To make myself happy as a male... I'd have to change so much of myself, that my soul would hardly be recognizable any more. I wouldn't be me, I'd be someone else. That's not what I want. I just want to be happy, as I am."
"Issei-kun, what you're experiencing is something called 'gender dysphoria'," she told him frankly. "That's basically a fancy way of saying that you are unhappy with the gender you were born with, which I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you. But I'm going to tell you right now; whatever anyone else may tell you, it is not an insanity. There is nothing wrong with your mind, and from what you're telling me and your score on the test, I can tell you that it's unlikely that any amount of therapy will ever orient you to your genetic gender."
"So you're saying I'm trapped this way," he concluded, his voice pained. Not that it was anything he hadn't already known, but it still hurt to hear it confirmed by a professional. He was doomed to live out the rest of this life in the same misery he was floundering in now.
Her answer, therefore, surprised him considerably. "Only if you choose to be," she said. "I'm not saying it would be easy for you to overcome this and express yourself as you wish you could. On the contrary; you've got a very difficult road to walk, regardless of what you chose to do with yourself."
She leaned forward and wrote quickly on a piece of notepaper, then tore it off, folded it in half, and handed it to him. "I've written down some American websites there that I think you'll find useful to you. Also, the name of an American friend of mine who is here in Japan. She's a singer, and she gives voice lessons; she's trained more than one male to be able to pass his voice perfectly as a female. She's done quite a lot of work training voice actors on television, in fact."
He stared at the paper, then at her, a little bewildered. She smiled at him. "I'm not your therapist, Issei-kun, only your teacher. I admit you're one of the ones I expected to have turn up in my office at some point during this unit; I'm glad I was able to talk to you so early, and for such a long time. But if you don't leave soon, someone is going to see you coming out of my office, and we both know what that means."
Glancing at the clock, he realized she was right - it was late enough that there would be other students around, and in fact he could sense several of them not far from her office. He stood hastily, tucking the paper into his bag and setting the teacup down on her desk. "Thank you," he said, almost shyly. "You've... given me some things to think about, if nothing else."
She laughed. "Good. That's what I'm here for. Making my students think is how I know I'm doing my job as a teacher properly. Now, quickly, get out of here, before you're seen."
She shooed him out the door, and he slipped out when he was certain nobody was close enough to see where he'd come from. He made his way to his homeroom with plenty of time to spare, thoughts and emotions boiling over in his mind. Something to think about, indeed.