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When someone is important to you, you tend to notice the little things about them. For example, Aigis had noticed that Makoto very rarely actually listened to music, but he always had them on. He put a different amount of sugar in his coffee every day. Her analysis had concluded that there was no pattern to this at all – he just did it.
And every time he went for a walk, he would stop outside clothing shops and stare in the windows for a minute or two before walking on.
No. That was incorrect. He stopped in front of clothing shops no matter why he had passed them. The amount of time he wasted doing this was not inconsiderable, either.
It was also incorrect that it was just any clothing shops. He would only stop if the clothes in the window were for women. Men’s fashion appeared to be of absolutely no interest to him at all.
This really was a small thing, but it had piqued Aigis’s interest. Now that she’d noticed it, she couldn’t get it out of her head.
Her interest in this seemingly anomalous behaviour was only furthered after a curious incident in Tartarus one night.
“No.”
Yukari’s arms were crossed, and she was glaring at Makoto. The leader of SEES had the same neutral expression as he always did on his face. In his hands, he was holding what could only be described as a French Maid outfit.
“I thought it would liven things up.”
Another thing that Aigis had noticed was that Makoto always spoke in a very monotone voice. The same couldn’t be said for Yukari, who was about the same shade as her SEES armband.
“I said no.”
“I don’t know,” said Akihiko, who was busy wrapping his hands, “I think it’d be a good idea for us to change clothes in battle. It’d lessen the damage to our uniforms.”
“What damage?” Junpei squawked. “I swear these things are made of chainmail!”
Akihiko ignored Junpei’s interjection.
“And it’d be a good idea for us to get practise fighting in varied clothing,” he continued. “You never know what might happen.”
“Right, so you’ll wear the maid outfit, then?” Yukari snapped.
Akihiko looked up, apparently seriously considering it.
“That one wouldn’t fit me. But if Makoto-kun could get one dress, surely he could get more. We could all wear them.”
“Sure!” Yukari brightened up. “What about it, Makoto-kun? Would you wear the maid outfit?”
That was when the curious incident occurred. Makoto hesitated, fingers gripping the dress tightly. When he spoke, it was with a waver that Aigis had never heard before. It sounded a little like he was afraid.
“I can’t get one in my size.”
“Then I’m not wearing the one that’s in my size.”
Makoto seemed to accept this and put the maid outfit away. The rest of the trip into Tartarus proceeded normally (save for them stumbling onto a floor with a lot of golden Shadows and subsequently having to run like hell away from the Reaper).
And yet, the seed of a question had been planted in Aigis’s head. She wasn’t quite sure what her question was yet. All she knew was that something was wrong with Makoto. He was important to her, so logically, she had to figure this out.
*
The first person she asked was Junpei. She only asked him first because he was the first person he found, and he didn’t seem to be going anywhere.
“So he just stares into shop windows?” Junpei’s attention was mostly on the handheld console in his hands.
“That is correct.”
Junpei thought about it for a minute while he killed zombies. Then he made an ahhh of realisation.
“He’s checking the mannequins out,” he said at last. “Kind of pathetic, I mean that guy could get any girl in Gekkoukan, but who am I to judge if that’s how he gets his rocks off?”
“I see.” (She didn’t.) “Thank you, Junpei-san.”
Aigis left Junpei to his game and went upstairs. She’d meant to go to her room, but when she got up there, she found Makoto struggling with a large package.
“Hey, Aigis,” he said when he saw her, “can you help me with this?”
Aigis took the package from his hands. It was pretty heavy, she had to admit. She carried it into his room and set it down on his desk.
“Thanks,” he said in his typical monotone. “Tanaka always puts way too much packaging on this stuff. At least it never arrives damaged…”
“Makoto-san,” she said, “are you sexually attracted to mannequins?”
There was a lengthy pause while Makoto processed what the hell he had just heard.
“…no.”
“Then Junpei-san was incorrect?”
Makoto pulled a confused face.
“Junpei thinks I have a thing for mannequins?”
“I asked him if he could find a reason why you would stop and stare into the windows of clothing shops, but only if they were womens’ clothes – Makoto-san!”
Makoto had gone neon red and was spluttering. His nails were digging so hard into his desk that they would undoubtedly leave marks. More concerning was the sudden increase in his heart rate that Aigis had noticed.
“Are you all right?” She walked over to him to check, but he backed away a little. Aigis hesitated, not sure what was wrong. Makoto stared at her face for a minute, then sighed.
“…Aigis. If I told you a secret, and then told you not to tell anyone, ever, would you keep that secret?”
“Of course. You are important to me. I would not tell anyone, ever.”
Makoto hesitated.
“Shut the door.”
Aigis immediately did so. Makoto shoved his desk chair under the handle for good measure.
“I’m only telling you this,” he said, “because I know I can trust you.”
Aigis nodded.
“I’m not a boy.”
“I… do not understand. My records indicate that you are male…”
“Yeah, that’s what the records say. Doesn’t mean they’re right.” There was a powerful note of bitterness in his voice. “Look, I don’t – I don’t know how I know it, I just know that I’m not a boy.”
Aigis attempted to process this. Nothing came up in her data banks. This was clearly not something that the researchers had expected her to encounter.
“So… you are female?”
“Sometimes.” He put one hand on his chest. “I mean, sometimes I’m fine with the idea of being a guy. And sometimes, I know for a fact that I’m not one. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, sometimes, I can’t tell if I’m either. But no matter what I am, I always feel like the skin I’m in is wrong.”
“And the clothing shops?”
Makoto’s head dropped.
“Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to wear those clothes.” Now he (she?) sounded wistful.
“I understand.”
Makoto looked up so fast Aigis almost worried for a moment that (they?) would get whiplash from the movement. Their eyes were full of hope.
“You do?”
“You are male, or female. It depends on the day.” She shrugged. “I do not comprehend the emotions behind it, but I can tell that this is important to you. And you are important to me, so I will comprehend it.”
Makoto smiled. (Now there was something that didn’t happen a lot.)
“Thanks. Just don’t mention it.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
*
Aigis’s confusion did not stop there, of course. Her initial question had been answered, but now she had about a million bajillion more, and none of them could be answered with what she already knew. Clearly, the only answer was to find more data, but that was complicated by her promise not to tell anyone about what Makoto had told her.
And so, she ended up on the Internet. She was getting rather good at using it, even if Captcha still made her extremely uneasy. (Pretty much everyone had reassured her that she was allowed to answer the Captchas herself, but it still felt like lying.) After a struggle to phrase her questions in a way that Google would understand, she finally started to learn things.
First of all, gender was in the mind. This made her wonder why anyone had bothered making her look feminine if gender was mental. It did, however, explain how Makoto could apparently change gender.
Secondly, there were more than two genders. Aigis had pretty much figured this out from what Makoto had told her.
Thirdly, the term for Makoto was “genderfluid”. There were apparently a lot of people like that, or at least enough that they had an official name.
Fourthly, a lot of “non-binary” people experienced a condition called “gender dysphoria”. It sounded very unpleasant. Aigis suddenly understood why she’d been made to look female.
It was during her attempts to uncover how one treated gender dysphoria (because she was not going to let the most important person to her feel like that) that she was interrupted by a sharp knock on her room’s door. Three knocks, evenly-spaced, precise – Aigis knew who that was before she even opened the door.
“Mitsuru-san?”
Mitsuru looked slightly harried, but otherwise nothing seemed amiss.
“You’re in, good. May I come in?”
She gestured to Aigis’s room. It was a bit of a mess. There was ammunition everywhere.
“Of course.”
Mitsuru gingerly stepped through the piles of ammunition and bullet casing, eventually sitting carefully on Aigis’s desk chair.
“I wanted to speak to you about our tactics in Tartarus,” she said once Aigis had closed the door. “Yuuki mentioned this the other day, and it seems like a good idea…”
The conversation passed quickly. Aigis was interested in Mitsuru’s suggestions, but she would really rather get back to her research. Her conversation quickly became peppered with “I understand” and “of course”.
Aigis was very relieved when Mitsuru was finished speaking.
“Well, we’ll have to try that later,” Mitsuru concluded, “Yuuki has vanished off the face of the earth again. You can get back to doing… whatever you were doing.”
Mitsuru gestured at the computer screen. Then she froze, and looked back at the screen. A very peculiar look crossed her face – a mix of surprise, confusion, and… nervousness?
“Aigis, why are you researching treatments for gender dysphoria?”
“I have been instructed not to tell anyone.”
To Aigis’s relief, Mitsuru just nodded.
“I understand, but here’s some advice: clothing of the appropriate gender works wonders, but it’s often awkward to get your hands on. That’s all.”
Mitsuru stood and walked out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind herself. Aigis stared at the closed door for a while, then turned back to her computer.
“Clothing of the appropriate gender…”
A plan emerged in her mind.
*
“Penthesilea?”
“Apparently.”
Mr Kirijo frowned.
“Wasn’t Penthesilea a woman?”
The researcher hesitated.
“Yes, sir…”
“Why would a boy have a female Persona? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, sir… It’s always possible that your grandson has a more feminine mind than would be expected.”
The director of the Kirijo group looked at his grandson, who looked down at the floor.
“Well,” he grumbled, “I think we’ll have to talk about that, won’t we?”
*
The next day, Aigis found that an envelope had been posted under her door.
It was full of money, and a note that said: For the treatment.
Aigis understood.
*
RA-TA-TA-TA-TAT!
Makoto groaned and rolled over.
“Why do you keep doing this to me, Aigis?”
“It is the most efficient way to wake you.”
“…Five more minutes?”
“No.”
Aigis leant in and shook Makoto’s shoulders. The wild card child sighed and sat up, blinking the sleep from his eyes. Thank god it was a Sunday. Last night in Tartarus had been hell. He didn’t want to have to go to school after that.
“I have a present for you.”
Makoto blinked, and the world came into focus. The sun was shining almost directly onto a pile of bags on the end of his bed. He leant over and picked one up. It seemed to contain clothing.
“You bought me clothes? Aigis, you shouldn’t have.”
Aigis shook her head.
“It is necessary for your treatment.”
Treatment? Makoto reached into the bag and pulled out a white shirt with blue lace on the sleeves. He put it to one side and took out… a black skirt. It took him a moment to realise what he was looking at.
“What?” He turned to stare at Aigis.
“Gender-appropriate clothing is part of the standard treatment for gender dysphoria,” she explained. “However, it would be difficult for you to obtain feminine clothing due to your apparent gender. Therefore, I took the liberty of purchasing it for you.”
“…what?”
“You are important to me. I do not want you to be unhappy, and I could tell that your inability to appear feminine was making you unhappy. So, I am attempting to help you.” She tilted her head curiously. “Is it working?”
Makoto did not reply. Instead, they threw their arms around Aigis’s shoulders and burst into tears.
A few hours later, when no one but Makoto and Aigis were in the dorms, Makoto tried the clothes on. It turned into a bit of a fashion show. Not all of it was Makoto’s style – she would never be caught dead in a ruffled blouse with poofy sleeves – but she tried it all on anyway. Aigis told her that it all looked good on her, though how much of that was just the robot girl trying to make her most important person feel good was debatable…
In the end, Makoto found herself in a black t-shirt with a kitten on it, a blue skirt, and white tights. At some point Aigis had left the room and come back with a red ribbon, which they barely managed to make stay in Makoto’s hair.
Now the two of them were sitting on the floor of Makoto’s room, trying to sort and hide the rest of the clothes before the rest of SEES got back.
“When I was little, my parents always let me wear girls’ clothes,” Makoto began.
“Oh?”
“Mm. I think they thought it was a phase, though. When they died, I ended up in foster care. None of my foster carers ever let me wear skirts, even when playing dress-up. They told me that boys couldn’t wear skirts.” Makoto set the shirts she’d been folding to one side and picked up a skirt. “They even said that when I wasn’t a boy.”
“And so you stopped dressing as a woman.”
Makoto nodded.
“It wasn’t so bad originally, even if I got a bit upset. It only became a real problem when I hit puberty.” She thumped her chest. “After that, I never liked what I saw in the mirror. Sometimes, I felt okay, but most of the time it was hell.”
“Are the clothes helping?” Aigis asked.
Makoto considered the question.
“Actually, yeah, they are.” Makoto turned to look at Aigis quizzically. “Where did you even get the idea?”
“Mitsuru-san saw that I was researching gender dysphoria,” she replied. “I told her nothing, but she somehow knew what to do anyway.”
“…huh.” Makoto shrugged. “I don’t think we should be questioning that too hard…”
*
Mitsuru Kirijo was not someone who liked to be disturbed, especially not late at night. She stayed up late most nights, so she appreciated the nights off that she got. Therefore, she wasn’t especially happy to get a knock on her door at ten o’clock at night on a day that they were not spending in Tartarus.
“Who is it?” she asked, not getting up from her seat on her bed.
“Envelope full of money given to Aigis.”
That monotone was unmistakable.
“Come in.”
Makoto came in, once again dressed in male clothes. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“I thought it was you,” Mitsuru said once the door was closed. “I couldn’t think of anyone else who’d go to Aigis with something like this. Don’t worry, she refused to tell me anything.”
Makoto nodded.
“Thanks,” they said. “Really. Thanks. But, uh…”
“You’re wondering why I was so eager to help.”
“Yeah, a bit.”
Mitsuru put her book down on the bed.
“When my Persona first appeared, my grandfather was rather confused as to why she was a woman, when I was apparently a boy. He quizzed me on it, and the truth came out.” She smiled. “In the end, he and my father decided that if my Persona was female, that probably meant that I was too.”
Makoto nodded. Mitsuru leant forwards inquisitively.
“Although I’m rather curious… you use Personas of different genders.”
“I have different genders.”
Mitsuru nodded.
“I’m not sure all of my Personas have genders, though,” they continued. “I mean… Slime?”
There was a pause, then they both started laughing.
*
Two weeks later.
“You really want to see me in a maid outfit, don’t you?”
Makoto tugged at the hem of her skirt. It was the Gekkoukan uniform skirt – Mitsuru had been kind enough to obtain a girl’s uniform for them. Maybe now she’d feel less strange summoning a male Persona while being a girl.
Of course, there was the issue of it grabbing the attention of every single member of SEES who didn’t already know.
“This isn’t about the maid outfit.”
“…Really?”
“Really.”
There was a lengthy silence. Makoto tugged at her skirt again.
“Look, are we going to get to the next barricade tonight or not?”
Akihiko nodded in agreement and cracked his knuckles. Shinjiro winced at the sound.
“Why are you wearing a skirt?” Ken asked bluntly.
“Because she wants to wear a skirt,” Mitsuru replied.
“We figured that – wait, she?” Junpei pulled a confused face. “I mean I’m not gonna cause a scene or anything, but I get the feeling we should talk about it…”
“Arf?”
Koromaru was sitting on the steps that led up to the first true floor of the tower, trying to pick up his knife after dropping it to speak. Aigis was standing next to him.
“Koromaru-san is asking why we are hanging around the entrance when we all agreed we would reach the next barricade tonight. Also, I have been instructed not to talk about this.”
Makoto sighed.
“Koro-chan is right, we should get moving.”
“Right,” Shinjiro said, picking up his club, “let’s go.”
“Although…”
Everyone stopped and turned to look at Makoto, who was looking determinedly at the ground at her feet.
“Could you call me Makoto-chan? Just for tonight?”
“What about Mako-chan?” Junpei suggested. “It’s cuter! Like those hair clips!”
Makoto went bright red and continue staring at the ground.
“Stop teasing her, Junpei,” Fuuka said, giggling.
But Fuuka called her Makoto-chan, as did everyone else.
*
Long after that night, the Great Seal would look back on the memory, and be glad that they’d lingered by shop windows.