"It's almost time to fly!" Hiiro whispered, standing beside Aoi in the DJ booth of ALTER EGO. They embodied the dichotomy of femininity and masculinity. Hiiro wore a long, black, gothic dress with black lace and silver and white accents. By contrast, Aoi wore a white suit and dress pants with black pinstripes and accents. They were also both decorated in silver and gold paint and jewelry, adding shine to the black and white. While Aoi's hands rested on her black turntables, Hiiro's rested on her silver-white laptop. On stage in front of them were their bandmates.
Like Hiiro, Tsubaki wore a dress. Like Aoi, it was white with black accents. It was an unusual choice for Tsubaki, as she typically wore black as well, but after Aoi offhandedly mentioned liking it, especially because it matched her white suit, Tsubaki had scarcely taken the dress off since. That left Nagisa to choose a black suit and Hiiro was far more delighted than she let on.
Ohhhh! Nagisa looks so precious and handsome! I wish I had a camera! Those were Hiiro's thoughts in the dressing room, but onstage, she was RONDO's Hiiro, and that woman was the epitome of feminine grace, mystery, passion, and allure.
RONDO was a rock and DJ band, yes, but to them, fashion, visuals, and aesthetics were just as important as sound. That was why, of every DJ unit in their city, their VJ performed onstage beside the DJ. ALTER EGO's culture also helped. It was a gay nightclub known across the world for its music and flair. The current manager, both of ALTER EGO and RONDO, Masaki, was quite an eccentric and flamboyant fashionista themself! They even wore an eyepatch, and no one knew if it was real, or just part of the costume aesthetic.
"Oh… I can see why… Masaki hired us." Nagisa whispered the day she first saw the new boss, looking back and forth between Aoi and Masaki. There was something so impossibly queer about Masaki's style, even down to the fact that Nagisa didn't know what pronouns to use. As Masaki would tell them, however, they did not care. Any pronouns worked.
The reason Nagisa was focused on Aoi in particular that day was because, like Masaki, Aoi's fashion was very gender nonconforming. In fact, almost everyone who met her at first assumed she was a feminine man only to be surprised by the opposite. Then, of course, came all the questions. Was she gay? Was she butch? Was she trans? Was she androgynous? And what pronouns were people even supposed to use anyway?
In the beginning, even Aoi wasn't sure. I… was born female, and even up until high school, I was fairly feminine, but then I began experimenting with other things. Now, I guess I still feel like a woman, but… it doesn't really matter to me—that is, I don't feel STRONGLY about it—but that's always how I've felt… I feel like I feel the same, I just dress differently than I did in high school. Like, I wear binders now, and stuff, and I like it, but I'm not sure… Does that make me trans?
Was Aoi a ciswoman who enjoyed nontraditional style, or was she perhaps nonbinary or genderfluid and just hadn't realized it? These were the questions that plagued Aoi's mind from time to time. As her bandmates would tease behind her back, she was the epitome of an oblivious, useless lesbian. Despite her obvious crush on Tsubaki, the two were still running circles around one another over a year after their first encounter. Perhaps some of that carried over into Aoi's gender as well?
But of course, Aoi was so much more than just her gender. After all, at that very moment, she was DJing for ALTER EGO. She smiled as the golden outline of a person appeared in her peripheral. It was a projection from Hiiro's VJing, and she made it run around the room, the wall as its racetrack. The theme of the night's show was connection, to other people, cultures, and worlds through music, travel, and communication.
That was part of why RONDO had such a dichotomous wardrobe. It symbolized difference and sameness, and used the example of how different genders could be perceived across different fashions, styles, and colors. DJing itself felt perfect for the theme, since the nature of DJing involved mixing and matching different songs together into one seamless track.
The golden figure had silver, winged shoes. It was Mercury, Roman God of Travel, just one of many that Hiiro showed dancing and moving to the beat of her bandmates' music. He was as fast and bright as quicksilver, and the first planet from the sun. The only thing faster was Aoi, fingers a blur as they jumped between discs, knobs, switches, buttons, dials, and sliders.
Like Mercury, Aoi was a wanderer. She was never one to stick around for very long. She considered herself at the mercy of the winds of fate. Maybe it was wind created by the winged shoes. In any case, she quite literally ran into RONDO, meeting Hiiro at ALTER EGO and running into Tsubaki in a chapel before running after her to ask her to be RONDO's vocalist. They'd been together ever since, the one traveling troupe that Aoi had yet to leave. That wasn't the only connection Aoi had to Mercury, however.
His sign was sometimes used to symbolize androgyny. He was considered "between" Venus and Mars on a scale of feminine to masculine. In fact, the outdated term "Hermaphrodite" took half of its name from him. He was the masculine Hermes to the feminine Aphrodite. And just as he had two snakes wrapped around his staff, creating his iconic caduceus, masculinity and femininity intertwined inside of everyone. Sometimes, the overlap was just more complex in certain people. Aoi could see herself as one such individual.
She was Hiiro's little sister, learning makeup and embracing her feminine side with the other woman. He was Nagisa's older brother, doing stupid things with the smaller boy because neither of them ever looked before they leaped. And they were Tsubaki's partner, an equal balance in all things, a supporter and lover, melody and harmony. Aoi was a wanderer not just of worlds or music, but genders. A masculine woman, a feminine man, a masculine man, a feminine woman, Aoi had felt like all of them before.
"Hey, yo, Aoi, I got it! I just thought of what we could call you!" While Nagisa grinned excitedly, Aoi only raised an eyebrow and smirked. "A GJ! Gender Jockey!" It was a title that made Tsubaki cringe and Hiiro chuckle, but Aoi had to admit, the logic was there. Just as a DJ mixed and matched songs, a "GJ" did so with gender. Sometimes Aoi felt like a guy, sometimes a girl, sometimes both, sometimes neither. It was exactly like how Mercury would travel between worlds, blurring the barriers and boundaries wherever his winged shoes flew him.
Higher and higher still Mercury raced, notes twisting around him and his caduceus, racing him skyward. In the booth above the crowd, Aoi smiled and laughed with all the merry mischief of an ancient Roman adventurer. He was the dress of blue roses. She was the black tuxedo. They were the plaid flannel jacket that used to belong to Tsubaki. He was the thundering guitar. She was the voice ringing up to Heaven. They were the discs scratching against the turntables. With Mercury leading the way, all of ALTER EGO took flight on the wings and winds of music.
AN: Aoi, Nagisa, and Masaki are all some degree of genderfluid and/or nonbinary and use any combination of the "big three" pronouns (she/they/he), you can't change my mind, LOL! Tho I'd be interested in seeing headcanons in the comments!
I see Aoi as genderfluid in that she feels different ways on different days while Masaki is genderfluid in that they feel multiple/all at once. Nagisa just always struck me as "boyish" if we call Aoi "mannish".
I also headcanon Masaki as genderfluid because of their appearance and the fact that I think the game has had typos where Masaki was referred to with both male and female pronouns, although the anime canonized Masaki as a woman.
