My name is Annika. If you're expecting some sparkly anime heroine story, I'll have to stop you right there. This one starts off with a freaking cancer, coma, and waking up gender-bent into a girl. Fun, no?
I grew up in Semarapura, a little town off the touristy part of Bali with more temples than teenagers (every household had one temple, but not necessarily teenagers). Life was simple, rice fields, marketplaces, neighborhood life, and me, Andika, a robust-built (almost a chonk) math geek with a chip on his shoulder and helping out in mom's warehouse after school as workout.
It was in my first year or so of middle school that I found out about my condition. The doctor diagnosed me with a rare, messed-up cancer-hormones and genes and mutations. I was twelve. I barely understood anatomy, let alone how close I came to dying.
Then, UCLA funded the research to develop a cure on my condition as part of their cancer experiment. They said the treatment was cutting-edge and potentially life-saving. I had no say here. My parents, not knowing better and being parents and all, consented to me being treated with trembling hands and tears in their eyes.
A couple weeks later, when I woke up, nothing was the same. Nothing at all. I blinked against sterile light. My limbs were weirdly light, soft, as if someone decided to switch out my limbs with a girl's limbs. Then when I tried to speak, my voice became high-pitch. Then I caught a glimpse of my reflection then a girl stared back. Pale, soft, beautiful. Her eyes - mine - went wide in disbelief. I turned to surprisingly good-looking girl.
At that point, I didn't really worry about pronouns or wardrobe switches for now. That was the important thing: I was alive.
The physical recovery came fast. Emotionally, not so much. Instead, something just shifted in my brain. When I was a boy, I used to help out in my mom's warehouse. However, when I woke up, I lost most of my strength. That said, I pretty much said goodbye to warehouse workout. It felt like the universe decided to trade my muscle mass with musical aptitude. Within weeks, I began plucking melodies back with in old keyboard. Then I took keyboard, basic vocal, and violin courses. Additionally, I also started composing my own melodies based on what I had in mind. Two years in, and I had sufficient ability to self-improve with infrequent meetings with the tutors.
Some folks in my school was unhappy that I turned into a girl.
What happened? PE teachers colluding with school bullies. Let's just say, they are complete monsters. I became their target when my performance drops. Bullied, beaten, and worse. I won't spell out the details here. You're free to fill in the blanks. It was ugly.
And my town ain't taking it kindly. Town court bled them and their entire bloodline dry. Massive fines, shush fund, plus interest that would make loan sharks' deal sounded like short-term premium business loans. However, not even multi-billion Rupiah can erase a limp, or how others look at you when they think you're broken.
Spoiler alert: I'm not broken.
I insisted those money to be put in trust fund to fund my educations while the interests should go to charity and infrastructures: feeder roads from villages, parks, and library in the downtown. I demanded a library to be built slam dunk within walking distance of the town center by utilizing then-town parliament building.
By the time I hit the latter half of my last year in middle school, I had became a local legend. A math prodigy with a violin and a past nobody dared mentioning. I was unsociable, yes. But I was untouchable in competitions. Other schools showed a mix of awe and fear. I had competed in OSN (Indonesian national science olympiad) for junior high math and secured silver medal (reserved for rank 6 to 15)
One particular exam that stood out was performing arts exam in which graduating student must perform on stage in groups as project. I was left with the two class outcasts. Saw no hope, I asked the teacher for special permission to go solo. A complaint to two vice-principals (who doubles as math teachers) later, I was allowed to do as I wished. I could to unleash my musical mojo.
On top of keyboard, violin, and some vocal, I also had a computer to allow me to unleash my digital music experiment. On weekends when the access to computer was allowed, I whipped out the music program and started writing the songs, primarily in piano, but also in other instruments as needed.
By early April, I had everything ready to roll out. Four songs, three languages, one mad geek and her keyboard.
That day, I figuratively lit up the stage with raw intuition and shocked the three art teachers who judged the performance. First song was a Balinese folk song in keyboard and vocal. I played it safe there. Then the second song was "Kembang Perawan", originally sung by Gita Gutawa in vocal plus a little of dance to the best my legs could bring up. For the second stanza, I switched to violin while keeping the piano part pre-programmed. Third song was "The Tme of Our Lives" from Il Divo and Toni Braxton. If you were football/soccer nut, you might had heard that song before. Same approach, I did mostly vocal and light dance, with second stanza (which are in Spanish) in violin. Fourth song was "Nanka Shiawase" from Japanese band AYSTARS in violin with piano pre-programmed. For the older weebs among you, it was the first opening of Flame of Recca anime.
After exam period, the art teacher (Mrs. Devi) called me to complaint that she had to give perfect score and asked me how on earth I could play multiple instruments.
"I hate you," she blurted, "because I had to give you perfect score. How in the Lord Shiva's name you can play multiple instrument AT THE SAME TIME?"
"I...uh, programmed the keyboard to play the instrument part of the latter songs, especially...the last one I played on violin. I had the driver installed on my laptop, I set the melody, and they had the instrument part...generated automatically. Then I store them on a thumb drive and plugged it into my keyboard on exam day."
"Why you make it sound so easy?"
"Uh...maybe because I'm a geek? Someone who loved tech so much."
"Now us teachers would have to insist to current second years not to go that way. How long have you been playing violin?"
"Two year-ish by now...why asking?"
"I don't want students to think your performance was what we expected and what we taught. So, we had to say that yours were just plain music genius' madness ramped up to twenty."
"I... I'd like to excuse myself."
"Wait. Can you teach us how you pulled it off?"
"There are... a few requirements that we need to fulfill. First up, the keyboard needs to be programmable, then some sort of drivers installed to the computer, one of the teacher needs to be trained in digital music, and then we are ready."
"Hmm, we'll think about it. You may leave."
/ POV switch: Professor Aoyama, Head of Music Department, Seisou Gakuen
Aoyama sipped his coffee when a recording arrived at his desk from their international scouting department with message telling, "You need to see this."
He plugged the recording to his screen. The video loaded.
A girl, young, petite, Southeast Asian with clear East Asian features, looked like 12, stood alone on a small stage. She bowed silently, hands on her violin. No flair, no drama. Just presence.
Then she performed. She sang and played her keyboard, nothing out of the ordinary. Then she switched to violin. Technically competent, and somewhat precise. But the performance evolved. She improvised. She layered in loops, harmonized with programmed keyboard. A Balinese folk song blended with Western classical crossover. It was raw, bold, and... unteachable.
He felt like the room around him just vanished.
By the time the girl finished the off-vocal, rearranged performance of Nanka Shiawase, he realized that he hadn't blinked. He rewound the video and played the instrumental parts only. Still, no blinks.
"Who is this girl?" he muttered.
Then he opened the attached paperwork and saw her biography. She was 14 and about to graduate from Indonesian middle school system. The "special condition" section caught his attention: "funded by UCLA medical team-cancer survivor, transitioned in coma, now a musical genius. This girl's story is unreal."
He turned off his screen, still had the echo of the violin in his mind.
Aoyama stood, grabbed his jacket, and headed down the corridor.
"Get me the admission board. Go to Japan's immigration office and Indonesian Embassy if needed be. I want her in Seisou, stat!"
/End of POV change, Back to Annika
Some time after that exchange, I was surprised by an offer by Semarapura town government to study music abroad. Someone in the school must had recorded it and it went wild. What I thought happened was that my government sent the recording to music schools and one happened to accepted it. Then, they offered us the scholarship to continue there.
Initially, I was reluctant to go there, but after talking to Seisou Gakuen's representative alongside my school and the government, I reconsidered after I made some demand to keep the math, science, and ICT part of my brain as sharp as before.
Here were my concerns: I already secured an offer to top high school in Denpasar, then my grandma's conditions making me either stay away from taking care of her or suffer the agony of getting mobilized to take care of her. Knowing my temper, I decided it would be of my best interest to take the opportunity to be away from home with both feet. I could flip the middle finger to the offer in the capital and argued, "It is in my best interest if I could broaden my horizon." Another concern that bugged me was that if I were to enter music school, I ran risk of losing my math mojo (and I loved computer). Not to mention music scene in Indonesia was not really that big.
I agreed to take the offer. Then, I was to learn Japanese to middle-school level, their customs, and their school topics. I was whisked away from conventional curriculum until mid-March when I would depart for Japan to get acclimatized and to arrange for basically everything.
As part of the agreement, I was also to return at least once a year primarily to teach what I learnt in Japan. I had spent about 8 months getting accustomed to Japanese language. At that point, I was fluent enough to pass for native middle-schooler. I had oriental face, so I could pass for native.
It was May 2008 when all exam session (including the nationally-dreaded Ujian Nasional aka National Exam) was done, so us graduating students can relax a little, but not me. I was drowning in Japanese textbooks, prepping for a life I didn't ask for. They would start school years on early April, because of course they do, so I had enough time to master a new language, cram enough kanji to read their textbooks, and try not to embarrass myself in a school uniform.
Spoiler: I only failed one of those.
By the way, I picked up feminine but casual tone in speaking, so I usually refer to myself as "atashi" rather than the standard "watashi".
