Disclaimer: no own, TERFs can go fly into the sun.

Chapter Two

Acquaintance

Kumiko rose at four a.m. on purpose, alarm set and everything. She had a two hour commute to get to Waseda, and she was struck by a realization:

She was in over her head. She hadn't really realized what she'd be in for when she volunteered for the Welcoming Committee. Tanaka was a sly bastard, luring her with the promise of interesting fights and golden memories only to slap her with full host student duties.

There was no way she was going to be able to keep up pretending at manhood with someone who attended all of her classes. Not that it was a secret, but pretending was always a fun game while it lasted. Moreover, she would inevitably be entirely herself around someone who went to all of her classes.

As she ate breakfast slumped against Tetsu's shoulder, she shuddered at the thought of bringing a foreign student to her home. At least that wasn't required.

Dursley seemed like an all right fellow, but she could see him falling into line with Tetsu and Minoru too easily. One day he might shape into a man's man, but she could see in his eyes the lingering traces of poor self control and forced down cruelty. Tetsu and Minoru exactly, damn all three of them.

She loved her cute younger brothers, she thought as she boarded her first bus. They were adorable. But her grandfather had given her a stern talk the night before and his words were ringing in her ears. "A foreign national can't afford to get into it with the fuzz, Kumiko. Be careful with him. Be careful with all young katagi."

And she knew Grandpa was right. If she was supposed to be the one to introduce this boy to Japanese culture, she wasn't sure how she was going to do it.

All the important things - going to underground gambling houses and getting your knuckles bruised in a back alley with your blood brothers at your side, negotiating treaties with neighboring families and eating hotpot with every man's man in the greater Tokyo area, well. All those things were illegal. The life that Kumiko knew was completely, entirely, illegal.

Shit.

When she knocked on Dursley Dudley's door in Hoshien with her hair done up in her usual twintails instead of a wig, Kumiko was worried.

He opened his door bleary eyed and in his underwear, saw her, immediately slammed the door in her face. When he opened it again, outer clothes had been hastily thrown on.

She waved him off, "It's okay, it's okay! It's just me. Yamaguchi."

He paused, his beady blue (blue! How novel-looking foreigners were!) eyes trying to catch a train of thought. "Yamaguchi," he said, and followed it up with something incomprehensible in English.

"Yup! Yamaguchi Kumiko," she said, pointing at her chest.

"Yamaguchi Kumiko?" Dursley said. Well, he tried. Close enough. She probably wasn't saying his name right either.

"You're coming to class with me today! You ready?"

He gestured at his head and shoulders, miming. Miming what, exactly? Oh! "Twintails?" That was one of those English flavoured words anyway, right? Just to be safe, she picked up the end of one, and Dursley nodded.

"I was wearing a wig yesterday. Wasn't sure how your team would react to me fighting for Waseda. But I can't wear the wig to class, Dursley-kun! My teachers and classmates already all know me."

Dursley gave her a blank look and she sighed. "Let's go, okay?" She stepped into his room, hastily shoved the notebook on the desk into a small backpack, thrust it into Dursley's arms, and dragged him out of his room, out of the Hoshien International Guest House.

He gibbered in English, his tone more than his indecipherable words betraying his confusion. Kumiko did what she did best - ignored him.

Dudley wasn't sure how the hell a female flyweight was successfully dragging him down the unfamiliar Tokyo streets. But she was. And she was somehow doing it easily.

Logically, Dudley had known that he would have to follow a student through their classes during this exchange, but somehow the idea that it was starting so soon was startling. The flight had scrambled him enough that he wasn't even entirely sure what day it was. He'd also assumed that he'd be tailing a man, not a woman.

Wasn't the exchange with the men's boxing team anyway? What the hell was this Yamaguchi woman doing with the men's team? He would have asked, but Dudley couldn't bridge their language gap if he tried.

So instead, he gave up tugging back against her hand. She flew forward from the sudden absence of resistance, and for a moment Dudley was sure she was going to fall flat on her face. The part of him that still reflexively thought of taunts flexed in pre-emptive glee. Alas, she used the extra momentum to break into a run.

Dudley matched her speed with some difficulty, and she turned her head to grin at him, one twintail falling over her shoulder. Not sure what else to do, he smiled back at her and kept running.

That first morning, on his first commute from Hoshien to campus proper, Dudley ran the whole way. Yamaguchi was smaller, lighter, faster, and had better endurance, but she matched her pace to his when he slowed, flashed him a bright thumbs up when he tired.

When they barreled into Yamaguchi's first class of the day and slid into seats in the front row, Dudley somehow knew this exchange would turn out alright.

Then the teacher began to talk and Dudley was lost all over again.

It didn't hit him until a few days later that the entire Waseda team knew Yamaguchi was a woman, and the entire Waseda team had long since gotten over it. Dudley's UEL boys were blissfully in the dark. He'd not quite mustered up the stones to tell 'em.

If it had been just a few years before, he would have told the entire team immediately, would have pointed and laughed and come up with a handful of delightfully stupid insults. There was a part of him that was tempted to do it now, but he was also realizing that Yamaguchi could kick just about anyone's arse.

If most of the Waseda team struggled with their UEL matchups, Yamaguchi was steadily making her way through fights with every single UEL boxer. Gill, paired within her weight class to begin with, was the first to be destroyed. After his bout with her, he stumbled out of the ring into Dudley's side.

"He's a demon, Dud," he said, brown eyes wide. "I don't think he's even human!" Gill wasn't a bad fighter and Yamaguchi had decimated him like he was nothing.

From Gill onward, Yamaguchi challenged her way up the weight classes, taking on heavier UEL opponents every day. When they inevitably lost, she'd pound them affectionately on the shoulder, pull them up to standing, and begin adjusting their stances.

For the ones with better Japanese, she gave verbal pointers. For those as unfortunate as Dudley, she merely nudged their feet and hands where she wanted them. The Waseda coach looked on with a soft indulgence. Dudley's UEL coach seemed torn between offense and awe.

"Can't believe he's your host student," Gill had said. "Must've been dumbfounded!"

Gill had said it first, but dumbfounded was the word, even if Dudley wouldn't have thought of it himself. Dudley spent days rolling it around his tongue.

Dumbfounded. Dumbfounding. This whole experience was dumbfounding.

"He more or less yanked me outta bed," Dudley said one day, glad to be able to vent his frustration to someone. "On the first day, you know? Knocked on my door and I opened it in my pants and." Dudley stopped. He wasn't great with words, in the first place.

How could he explain the confused humiliation of that first morning with Yamaguchi? Especially without giving her away? Dudley gave up, shook his head. "Tugged me along until I stopped resisting. Then he made me run all the way to his first class. Strong little thing."

Gill whistled, said, "That's. That's something." They both looked back up to the ring. Looked to Yamaguchi's current project, who was gingerly adjusting his gloves to stall for time. Gill shuddered, then said, "Think he'll take us to a drinking spot?"

"I dunno. He seems like a real straight," Dudley said. "I'd ask, but my Japanese isn't exactly up to snuff."

True, over the last week he'd figured out how to order food and ask for the bathroom and say hello without stumbling. But that was really the extent of it.

"I'll ask," said Gill. "No problem."

After Yamaguchi tumbled out of the ring with her usual inhuman agility, Gill approached her while Dudley looked on from afar.

She was immediately flustered by whatever Gill said, waving her hands in what was unmistakably a no. Gill came back defeated. "Said he lives too far away."

Dudley looked over Gill's shoulder and Yamaguchi was fixing him with a sharp glare. Why was she upset with him? Dudley hoped she didn't think he was behind this. He looked at Gill. Looked at Yamaguchi. When she met his gaze with an unmistakable ferocity, he ducked his head away.

Later, after practice, when Yamaguchi dragged him to a ramen stand with her wig stowed in her practice bag, he mustered all his language skill to properly apologize. "Gomen nasai, Yamaguchi-san."

She blinked. "Gomen nasai? Doushita?"

Dudley struggled with that one. He spent most of the time in Yamaguchi's lectures working on Japanese-language worksheets. He'd been at it with a fanaticism not seen since his Harry Hunting days, but it had only been a week. Doushita. He racked his brain, found it. 'Why.'

"Gill?" He said.

She tilted her head. Then nodded. "Ah, Anderson-kun." And then she went into words Dudley had no hope of following. But she seemed more apologetic than angry. Finally, she broke off. "My family," she said in English. "Is. Weird?"

"Family," Dudley said.

"Kazoku wa," Yamaguchi said. "Totemo hen des yo!"

"Totemo hen?"

Yamaguchi paused a moment, said, "Very weird."

Suddenly, Dudley was indignant on her behalf. "So your family is why you said no to Gill? They don't let you go out drinking or something? Aren't you an adult?"

She stared at him blankly. Shit. Right. Too much English, too fast. He pulled his phrasebook out of his pocket, looked down the list of English 'A' words. Adult. Otona.

For a moment he reconsidered, then decided to plunge ahead anyway. "Yamaguchi-san wa otona des ne?"

She burst out laughing. She patted his shoulder and muttered something fond in Japanese before finding her English again. "My family," she tried, then took Dudley's phrasebook. She flipped through it, nodded. "My family is weird." She peered down the page. "And they own - own? - own. The bar."

What? That was unexpected. "Well aren't there other bars?"

She looked at him quizzically and Dudley swore. Yamaguchi flipped through the phrasebook again, shrugged. "I drink at the family bar."

And for whatever reason, she wasn't going to invite any UEL boxers to the family bar.

"Where do you even live? You drink at the family bar and live at home. So it can't be far." He said it slowly enough that he'd bet she caught some of the words, but Yamaguchi pointedly closed the phrasebook and slid it back across the table. Dudley sighed, took it, and put it back in his pocket.

They slurped at their ramen in a silence that was less companionable than it had been.

"Oishii," he muttered, just to fill that silence.

"Neee?" Yamaguchi said, shoving her spoon and chopsticks eagerly into the noodles. She bumped her shoulder lightly against his. The tension was broken.

Later that night, it occurred to Dudley that if Yamaguchi was willing to stay out eating ramen, then she probably wouldn't have a problem staying out drinking. He wondered what her real reason was - it couldn't be maidenly honor around men who thought she was a man.

He thought about Harry, and wondered about the sort of pubs he frequented. Dudley had been to a few magic pubs after the war with people who'd been in hiding with him.

Maybe Yamaguchi's family pub was just too different from the pubs around Waseda. When he thought about her agility and power in the ring, Dudley wondered if maybe she was a witch. That would explain a good bit of her weirdness.

Yeah, right. He laughed to himself. If Yamaguchi's a witch, then I'm a wizard. He turned out the lamp, and rolled over in his bed. Sleep would come soon, he was sure.

Word Count: 2,122

Date posted: 06-09-2022

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