Author's Note: This fic has been a loooooooooong time coming. I've been wanting to write this since I started writing AzuDai fiction. I think I'm at a point in my fancanon where I can now, and have it make sense.
Oh, content warning for needles in this chapter.
The procedure had become rote to Sakaki at this point, something she'd done every Sunday for the last eight years of her life. This time, though, the spectacle surrounding the procedure felt different.
Her mom had forced her to keep her transness under a lock and key. She was to present as aggressively cis as humanly possible. Tucking with the strongest tape possible, wearing a gaff underneath her kitty panties, sports bras to hide the (now very faint) surgical scars. And she was absolutely to keep her medical routine out of the sight of anyone and anything. Now, in college and living alone with her cat, Maya, she could shed those shackles entirely. She could embrace who she was to the fullest extent possible, no longer kept to the boundaries set by her mother.
The first thing she had done after she moved in, was take her gaffs outside and burn them.
This morning, she put on the tape she'd always put on for this occasion–a post-punk mixtape–and sat right in the middle of the living room. She'd always had to listen to this tape on a Walkman, and quietly so as not to alert her mother. Today, she put it on her main player. As the rapid rhythms sped up, the raucous chorus washing over her, she drew a syringe full of the clear liquid that'd kept her sane for so many years. Exchanged the needle–one for drawing, for one for injection. Tied off her leg and, avoiding the vein as much as possible, stuck herself. It still had that bite to it, like a bee sting, that she'd never really gotten used to. She gritted her teeth slightly as she slowly drew up to make sure there wasn't any blood, and then depressed the syringe, filling her thigh with estrogen. She took an alcohol wipe, wrapped it around the part of the needle that met her flesh, and pulled out. Perfect job. She'd only made herself bleed once, when she was 10, and never again.
After taking her injection for the week, it was time for the weekly shave-down. And after that, time to get dressed for the day.
She stood in the mirror and looked at herself. High school had been really rough for her dysphoria. She'd frequently felt like the other students saw through her, hence why they always referred to her as cool and masculine, which had caused more than one existential crisis. But now, fresh out of high school, she somehow felt brand-new. This was a chance for her to own herself for the first time in her life. She didn't feel any pressure here–in fact, she felt no pressure. She'd already gotten her hair done for the first time in her life, cutting it down to about the same length as Yomi's and doing almost a decade's worth of maintenance on it. She had decided to wear glasses again-her vision was never great, and her mom's comments about how masculine they made her look made her stop wearing them entirely-and chose the same style as Yomi's, but with black plastic rims than thin metal ones. She was comfortable with her weight and height for once. On this fine July morning, she decided to wear a cute summer dress. Kitty panties, bra (and an actual one this time!), dress, shoes, glasses. She tucked up her bangs with a kitty beret that Kaorin had given her as a going-away present.
Kaorin...she wondered how she was doing. They'd grown so close over the course of their years together, but since graduation it'd been radio silence. Tomo was the only one who seemed to have an idea, and she kept mum on the topic to a frustrating degree. Something had happened, and Sakaki worried about her, but always contented herself with the answer that, well, when Kaorin felt it was time to reach out, she would.
She gathered her school materials, and left.
Author's Note:Oh, for the uninitiated: gaffs are basically a fancy kind of underwear some trans women use to keep our...ahem...area as 'flat'-looking as possible.