Warning for transphobic language and insults
4.
Nagisa is seven and she sees a boy in a skirt and hurries to tell her mama. Mama slaps her so hard her cheek swells but she's insistent.
"Those aren't people," she says. "They are quitters. Don't look at them."
She tries. She tries very hard not to look but she wants to look. They look so comfortable on the dances they do, the pretty black shoes that clack on the concrete.
There is someone found dead near their house when one dances back. He doesn't look proud to have a witness. He at most is surprised. She is looking while he is working. And there is not a drop of horror when he does the deed, only curiosity. Only disturbing fascination.
The fear comes later, when she's still alive and the dead body is on the neighbor's side of the balcony.
Nagisa cries until she throws up.