I got isekaied but not the way I wanted (wished to be a girl♀ but I’m a guy♂ again)

「Kaori」

Contrary to popular belief, Kojou Kaori is scared of quite a few things. Large insectoid demons, worker's unions, and of course the untimely losses of her loved ones. An ever-present possibility considering the family business. But one stands above the rest: her father, Lord Kojou.

Not that the man has ever raised a hand against her in anger. In fact, he didn't yell either. An even further peculiarity in the matter is that he has not once been angry at her at all. He's a loving father and doting husband. The very pinnacle of a man—though Kaori never considered herself an expert on men—one who moves with the carefree confidence of a man who knows he's better than his peers. Who looks upon the pathetic jockeying so intrinsic to his gender and laughs.

No, what Kaori fears is his disappointment.

She enters the garden, stepping along the manicured stone paths and flowering bushes, upkept by an army of servants. He stands further along, back to her, beneath the shade of the verdant tree that stands in the center of the family gardens. Around him is his collection of bonsai. A hobby he adopted in his self-described "old age", though he's only in his fifties. Even turned around as he is, his stature is no less imposing. Broad shoulders and muscled arms. The signs of his warrior past remained, even though he and mother lowered their swords before she was born.

Just out of earshot, Kaori halts. He's the only man who had ever given her pause, and that is due only to the fact that she loves—and more importantly—respects him. It may be cliche, but she has always taken after her father more than her mother. She showed the most interest in his dealings. Much more than her brothers, who were more interested in following their family's more martial responsibilities, and thus she became his protege above them.

But he's a relentless teacher. One who doesn't accept excuses, and demands the absolute best. Not perfection, of course. He is not foolish enough to believe in the concept, but the best. He has a frightening ability to determine just how much a person is capable of, and her childhood was one filled with firm words of encouragement.

And the rare frown of disappointment.

A prominent one she still remembers clearly. She was about twelve or thirteen, and was out with him on some errand or another. She caught sight of two men discreetly holding hands where they clearly thought they wouldn't be seen. So she in the infinite wisdom of a preteen made a homophobic remark to her father. One she learned from her classmates at the private school. Hoping for his approval. Instead she received his scorn.

'Bigotry is the domain of the weak, Kaori. You lower yourself to even think of it.'

Those words combined with the scathing look on his face? Slapping her and calling her a fool would have hurt less. But the sentiment is a correct one, and is the only thing that reassures her that the secret she holds will not be received with scorn.

After a long inhale and even longer exhale, Kaori steps forward.

"Hello, father."

She sits on the stone bench that rests under the tree. He shoots her a small smile.

"Kaori, rare to see you out here."

"I had time. The meeting with the Nishikawa Corp reps went better than expected."

He grimaces, and returns to studying his bonsai intently, holding a pair of scissors. "Apologies for throwing you to the wolves, but I knew you would handle them well."

"Of course," she replies, head high.

Silence falls between them. Its been… weeks, must be. Since she was alone with him outside the bounds of work. She missed this. Reluctance to break this peace is a ball and chain around her ankles, yet as always, she will do what must be done.

"Have you heard of Katsumi, father?"

The sudden tension in his shoulders is unmistakable.

"No."

With one word, it's like a door has been shut in her face. Some could read it as callousness, but in the response Kaori sees herself. It does not bode well for her task. Still, she lets the silence hang. The wind rustles through the leaves overhead, and warm shafts of sunlight dance among the leafy shadows on the ground.

A memory comes to her, one of her little sister running along the paths when she was very young, back when she used to laugh freely and her eyes used to sparkle. A moment, caught in time. Her younger self hadn't known how fleeting it was.

Her father snips a leaf. It floats to the ground. Something sharp and uncomfortable makes it's home in her chest, forcing the words out that she had meant for later.

"What if we were wrong?"

A heavy sigh leaves her father, and he turns towards her. "Katsumi made his own choices."

"Sh-" Kaori bites back the retort, clenching her teeth around it. Her father raises his brows, and she draws in a steadying breath, thinking over what she intended to say. "Father… what other choices did you expect him to make?"

Surprise flits across his face like the shadows of the leaves. "Kaori…"

"You used to be so busy with the company, and mother was too sick. Who was there to guide him?"

The flash of guilt is quickly hidden behind a frown. "He had you and your brothers. None of you stooped so low."

"Anyone with eyes could see that Katsumi was never close with Aoshi or Kenzou and I… I was never a role model."

His expression darkens. "This sounds very close to an accusation."

Kaori's elegant fingers curl into fists in her lap, and she looks away. "If it is an accusation, then I am among the accused."

Another stretch of silence wafts between them like a cool breeze. Her mind has been a flurry of activity ever since she left Katsumi at her home. Over and over she'd examined it from every angle. Tried to find some way to assign responsibility to the cruel whelp she had once known. Yet every time it came back to the same terrible conclusion. Father was busy with the company, mother was too ill, and her brothers were too carefree. It had fallen on her, and she had failed.

Failure… It was a concept as alien to her as thrifted clothes. A thing absolutely intolerable, but she had failed when it had mattered the most. Now her sister was out there among the masses, vulnerable to the vultures that lurk in dark corners.

Something needs to be done. She needs to fix this.

A heavy arm drapes over her shoulders and pulls her close. Her father sits beside her now, bringing with him memories of them like this when she was half as tall as she was now.

"I thought you two hated each other," he says.

"So did I."

Her father lets a beat of silence pass, then says, "Tell me your plan."

A huff escapes Kaori's lips. Of course he knows she has a plan. At any given moment she has a dozen contingencies at minimum. But… is it too soon to do this? Should she wait?

Katsumi's face, sad and forlorn, flashes in her mind's eye.

Or… is she many years too late?

■ ■ ■

「Katsumi」

『 . . . 』

No.

This can’t be happening.

Yesterday the thing with Hikari and my sudden inability to maintain my weapon, now this?

Rough morning.

I called in sick to work.

I wrote the girls.

The group chat is going fast, I can hear my phone vibrating.

I’m not looking at that.

Fuck…

This is what I get for my stupid obsession.

The old work uniform was too big for my petite pretty boy build.

Didn’t matter at the time. It was all what Mr. Kataoka had.

He grumbled on occasion that it made me look disheveled, that it was giving the wrong impression to customers. Yet he never did anything about it for months.

Now he has.

This new one is my size.

Fuck…

I twist and turn in front of the mirror.

It’s no use.

Even with the tight tank underneath, it makes it appear as if… well… it looks like I have breasts!

FUCK!!!

There is no hiding this. Nothing that I've tried worked!

I can’t go to work like this! I can’t show my face, not when I look like this! Everyone would know!

They’d ask questions and then what?

I’ll tell them about how I’m someone who wishes to be a girl, so much so I didn’t even blink at the prospect of giving myself a girl-puberty by taking some pills!?

I can’t possibly do that!?

So what’s there to say?

Fuck…

They’ll see that I’m developing breasts and I’ll have no explanation for them!

I’ll lose my job and what little social standing I have!

And then what!?

Katsumi you’re such an idiot!

This is all your doing, why did you do this?

I could’ve stopped. I should’ve.

But it's nice. I wanted this. I just… need to hide it somehow until I can turn myself into a girl…

But how!?

I venture forth into the wild group chat.

■ ■ ■

「Mayumi」

There is little that text translated into electrical signals and rendered via a matrix of interlinked LEDs can achieve at this point.

Chie told her to wear a sports bra. The girls told her a lot of things. Simple platitudes as effective as spitting on a housefire. This situation became untenable a while ago. It will not continue. The girls can try their little song and dance of empty compassion, a thing at best a cooling balm for one’s own soul, not another's. Katsumi is crippling herself with this senseless wallowing and they all want to hold her hand and encourage her own slow march towards self destruction. No. fuck that.

Underneath the low cloud cover that casts the city this early in the morning in the cold colors of steel, I jog up the stairs to her sad little shoebox of an apartment building. There was no time to get decently dressed, so an old grandma on route got an eyeful of a distressed black jeans and crop top combo.

The sounds of my sneakers on the stairs sound too clean. Out of place. I stop before her door.

Maybe it’s my mood, the strangulation of having witnessed the drab life of the worker ants on the subway. I feel like stomping the ground, instead I pound on her door.

Katsumi opens, spkeaking my name in a tone that makes her confusion obvious.

I press inside.

She's still wearing her work uniform, the one that had her all worked up, and I can see what she means. It’s not a lot, but together with her increasingly soft face, the hair and the fitting cut of the short sleeve shirt it’s hard to see her as anything but a woman.

Not sure how it works for trans girls, but if that’s her trying to hide her chest, and its at that size after a few months, she’ll soon leave Chie and me in the dust when it comes to cup size. Might even join Haruki in the back pain department by the end of it. This will only become more difficult for her as time goes on.

"Just… stop pretending to be a boy. Go to work, tell them you’re a girl.”

She glares. “Can you stop it with the honorary girl thing for a moment? This is serious.”

My brows narrow.

"What are you talking about?" Exasperation seeps into my tone. "You’re just a girl Katsu-chan. Obviously." I listlessly gesture to her whole body.

“I’m not a girl yet! I’m…“

I shake my head, saying, "You're what? A guy?" My scoff fills the flat. "You cannot be this dense. Katsu-chan, guys don't wanna be girls. Guys don’t wish to be girls. Guys don’t get all happy and flustered when people treat them like girls. Guys don’t take feminizing HRT, and they for sure as shit don’t go on a wild goose chase for a fucking sex-change device! Which, guess what, is going to give you period cramps!”

Katsumi's, face twists into a 'so what' expression.

"Fuck, you actually thought about the period thing."

“Of course I've thought about it! I want to be a girl! And that includes that doesn’t it!? I want it!”

I roll my eyes, a jot of annoyance going through me.

"For the love of fuck, do you hear yourself? Do you seriously think that a man would ever say anything close to that in a million years? Face it. You. Are. Not. A. Guy."

“Yeah, sure, whatever. Doesn’t make me a girl tho!”

I throw up my hands, this is absurd. "Yes it does!"

She crosses her arms, looking so assured of her correctness. It's infuriating.

“No.”

A feeling of cold fire starts in my gut.

"You are a girl," I say slowly, emphasizing every word. "A trans girl, but still a girl. You know, sometimes I think you don’t even know what trans people are. What trans girl doesn’t know about HRT but jumps at the opportunity? You make no sense!”

“I know about trans people,” she says, condescension dripping from her lips. A tone that sets me on edge.

"Bullshit!" I mock with bile on my tongue. If she knew shit we wouldn't be here right now.

“Yeah, I do! But why should I look into something I don’t want to be? I don’t want to be a trans girl, I just want to be a girl!”

No fucking way… For a moment, everything stops, then with the ferocity of spark in an oil drum, it all goes up in flame.

"Are you fucking serious?" I spit with grinding slowness through my teeth. "This is what all this shit is about?" I'm leaning into her space. "This is so fucking stupid… You know what, since you so obviously don't have a damn clue what the fuck is going on, let me spell it out for you real simple: Fuck you and your internalized transphobia. You are a trans girl, and guess what? Trans girls are girls! Shocker!!!"

She retreats a step.

"No! Its not the same! I’m not a girl! Not yet!”

I make my voice dangerously sweet. “Oh please, Katsu-chan, you are! No moronic sex-change device needed!" I gesture over her clearly feminine body. "You’re a girl right now in fact! Have been this entire time! Congratulations!!! You did it!!!”

I emphasize the point with sarcastic slow clapping.

A flash of anger washes over her, building into a truly enraged expression. She advances and I take a step back on instinct.

“Really? Is that what I am!?" she yells in my face. "Doesn’t feel like it, but if you say so—if I’m a girl already, then I've no interest in it! I don't want it!”

My jaw unhinges in an expression of disgust. "It doesn't matter what you want, you just are! You can't deny your gender any more than the rest of us!"

"WILL YOU FUCK OFF!" She screams, voice echoing off the tiny walls of her flat.

I'm left frozen in shock, I didn't know she could be this loud.

"If 'being a girl' means that everyone—from my school, to my parents, to my friends—expects me to be a boy… If it means I'll always be told I'm not allowed to be girly, and that I'm a failure and an embarrassment to everyone if I am... If being a girl means I'm not allowed to be pretty or cute, if it means I'm expected to grow up to be a strong reliable husband… if it means my family documents say I'm male… if it means I have to take stupid pills to go through girl puberty… if it means I can’t visit a public bath with my friends…"

Her fists are clenched, only a hand's width separate us. "…then the word girl is meaningless!! It means nothing! That's not what I want! It has to mean something! It has to! It has to… because I want to be a girl. A girl who actually gets to be one!"

I'm left speechless. Nothing she said made any sense. She's a trans girl. Trans girls have to deal with some shit, but everyone has do deal with something. That's life!

"What?" she shouts, "Got nothing to say? Maybe you shouldn't talk about stuff you know nothing about! Fuck! Just… Get out!"

Her hands hit my chest. There's barely any force in it, I don't even move, but she may as well have punched me. There's only a bit of space between us but it may as well be a canyon. A Contact, a little push, a few words, like the slamming of a door. A rejection. Something in my chest twists…

"I don't know what I'm talking about?" I say, voice deathly quiet. A flash of something like fear in her eyes. "For months I have been here for you. Helped you. Tried to show you a different, safer way, because the night me and Haruki found you, you nearly got yourself killed! And for what Katsumi? A sex-change device?" I sneer. "You know what every girl like you does? They just go to a fucking doctor. They don't go on on idiotic, suicidal quests chasing after a pie in the sky!"

A whisper, "Get out."

Before I can even open my mouth I'm pushed again. I stumble back.

Shit that hurts.

"GET OUT!" she screams. Tears are in her eyes, her face red with anger.

A pang in my chest, something cold, something hot. Why is my vision blurry?

She pushes me hard enough I stumble towards the door.

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”

She's advancing on me again. I move. A blink and I'm outside.

Katsumi throws the door of her flat in my face with enough force that I wince. My hazy gaze falls to the ground, and something wet slips off my chin and drops onto dirty concrete. I'm crying? Who cries at a moment like this?

It happened fast…

I… I don't get it. After… after everything, she… I was always there for her. We… we're friends.

The door remains closed. Just one among countless others. A cold thing.

That’s it? Better to drown chasing an impossibility than grasping the hand reaching out? Better to swat away what you already have, better to vanish beneath the waves than to look the beast in the eye. Yeah it’s not pretty, it’s rotten, it’s unjust and it hurts, but she wouldn’t be alone, not a walking half-life on her way to the crematory.

Even short nails begin to burrow into your skin if press hard enough.

I would’ve fought for her. We're supposed to be family. More than her despicable lot that cast her into the street ever had the right to call themselves.

Beneath the waves, a face fading.

I’m not my mother. I’m not going to decide for her. I have girls who still need me.

My feet carry me away.

My phone chimes, I spare it a glance.

『 Katsumi has left the group 』

A breath rattles out of me. Oh… my chest aches.

A teary blink and I'm on the sidewalk. With another glance up at the bland apartment block, I step away into the dull grey of the city.

■ ■ ■

「Katsumi」

She doesn’t get it, no-one does!

How can I be a girl? I’m nowhere near them! They're out of reach. Girls are better, better than guys and better than me and I might successfully fool everyone, even myself into thinking I am one for a day. But that’s all I’ll get, brief glimpses where I can forget everything that’s wrong with me.

But I’ll come back crashing down every time. I’m never free.

It happened with the girls and with Hikari multiple times, over and over. Again and again.

It’s unfair! It’s unfair, I hate it!

But me hating it doesn't change anything.

And saying I’m a girl is an insult to girls, I’m nothing like them. They don’t have to deal with any of the things I have to deal with, because they aren’t guys—unlike me!

That’s why I need that restricted hunter’s gear!

So I can turn myself into a girl.

If I’m a girl they’d have to change my documents. One look at my body would be enough, they wouldn’t be able to deny it. And I could just go bathing with my friends!

And it would be totally normal for me to wear dresses and skirts and I wouldn’t have to explain it anymore, biting my nails fearing that my friends are going to hate me for it. And the dresses, they’d fit my girl body because they were made from such a body.

And no-one would expect me to be manly or behave like a guy because no-one expects that from girls. And I wouldn’t need to police myself and I wouldn’t need to hide. I could do the things I want to do. And I wouldn’t disappoint others with my behavior, because it would be perfectly fine for a girl to behave the way I do.

I would be happy.