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The first time Hitoka put on a binder, he was seventeen. His bedroom door was locked (checked thrice for good measure), the remnants of the torn packaging spread over his bed as he held the small piece of fabric with careful hands, as if it could break if he ever let go.
Hitoka took his sweet time with it, feeling it between his fingers and smelling the neutral scent that was inherent to new things. He cradled it as his most precious, most clandestine possession, wondering already where he could stow – hide – it. It took him three months of worrying and building up the courage to buy it – praying that it wouldn’t arrive whenever his mom was at home –, Hitoka was going to take good care of his first ever binder.
When Hitoka started to put it on, the task proved to be harder than it looked. It was difficult to clasp the hooks together by himself and the hurried, awkward fumble with small breasts was both uncomfortable and nerve wracking.
He forced himself to take a deep breath, grounding himself and pushing through the task until his chest became flat. When he was done, his reflection looked back at him; his body, source of so much uncertainty, for once letting him take a lingering look. His sweatpants hanged low on his narrow hips, the hems bunched up around his feet with abundance. Hitoka slipped onto an oversized t-shirt he had nearby, relishing the way it swallowed him whole, erased the edges that put him on edge.
Hitoka looked and looked and kept on looking.
He was so small, so delicate – as everyone always said. No one was ever gonna take him seriously.
If anything, the prickly feeling at the back of his eyelids was familiar and, diverting his suddenly evasive eyes from his reflection, Hitoka threw himself on his bed, letting the familiarity of tears embrace his body. Hitoka breathed differently with a binder on, he realized. And he cried differently too, sobs raking up his body in what, he wasn’t sure, could be happiness, desperation, relief or a resounding sense of dispersion.
–
Hitoka was fifteen when they locked themself in a stall on the girls’ bathroom during lunchbreak to cry over gendered uniforms.
They hated how a simple comment – seemingly harmless – could get their throat itching, the flesh constricting with the need to hold back flaming (and fearful and shaky) words, to restrain frustrated tears. You were a girl if you wore skirts and a boy if you wore pants, an apparent universal and unquestionable truth no one dared to doubt. Hitoka liked skirts, and they liked pants and everything in between too. What they absolutely hated was the fact that a piece of fabric was such a determinant factor to one’s gender.
So the tears fell. Angry, hurtful ones.
Hushed, so that no one else could hear them.
After they excused themself and fled the boring, superficial conversation, Hitoka let their cheeks get wet and red, helpless in the midst of words they didn’t have yet. Unable to voice it out, Hitoka just sobbed quietly, wiping the tear tracks to open space for more, for new, fresh ones.
Hitoka didn’t like it, that other people got to decide things for them. But Hitoka – irrelevant villager B that they were – didn’t have the guts to step up and cut those people off, speak louder than their thoughtless words and claim a position only ever occupied by protagonists.
–
Hitoka couldn’t tell when it began.
There were glimpses of clarity, occasions in which it all became impossible to ignore but, somehow, the discomfort was always there. Sometimes more prominent, so disconcerting it became tangible – and Hitoka could feel it in her skin.
Laying just quite under the surface of a binary system that, over the years, just proved itself as violent, meaningless and cruel, Hitoka didn’t have the appropriate words to describe what she felt on the daily – the fluctuations that seemed so inherent to her.
For just a little while, at least.
–
The first person Hitoka came out to was Tadashi. They were sixteen that day.
It was through so much uncertainty, shame, stammering and fiddling that Hitoka was able, one word at a time, to string a phrase together. Tadashi waited for each word, patient and understanding, a small smile settled on his lips as he waited for Hitoka to finish. Hitoka, who looked everywhere else but at Tadashi, afraid of what they could find in his eyes if they ever went searching.
I think I might be genderfluid. I don’t know.
It was what, intermissions removed, they said. Because when everyone doubted you, it was easy to doubt yourself as well. Never say it with fortitude coating the words, since the follow-up was usually a joke anyways.
“Ok.” Tadashi had answered when it was clear Hitoka wasn’t going to add anything else. “Thanks for telling me, for trusting me with this part of yourself.”
When Hitoka lifted their eyes to meet Tadashi’s for the first time ever since asking him to talk, they saw nothing but acceptance on their friend’s face. His smile was all the same, gentle and unassuming, not once inconsiderate. While they knew they tended to overthink and get anxious over everything, Hitoka felt a little stupid for worrying this time around. This was Tadashi, their best friend, and Hitoka should’ve known it would go along lines like that.
Tadashi seemed to be aware of what kind of thoughts were swimming in Hitoka’s head because he chuckled lightly – fond like whenever Hitoka said something particularly smart and funny, only to have to explain it further when Tobio and Shouyou were a bit slow to get it – and opened his arms, inviting them for a hug.
Hitoka smiled back and crashed into his arms, feeling safe.
“Let me know your pronouns later.” He added. Just because he was Tadashi, and best friends listened to each other.
And Hitoka choked on a quiet, soft sob, pressing their face harder against their friend’s chest and nodding curtly. If they were to say something, the words would come out weird and jumbled but, for once, out of a joyful feeling.
–
Hitoka and her best friends were around eighteen the day she roped them into making pronoun bracelets with her, the five teens sitting around a multitude of colorful plastic beads and other cheap tools for the handicraft.
Hitoka knew, for sure, that she would always have them in her life. But, soon enough, they would all be taking on different paths, carving a life for themselves accordingly to their wishes. While Tadashi and Hitoka were going to attend the same university, she was bound to miss Shouyou, Tobio and Kei on the daily, such constants in her life throughout high school.
She felt grateful and blessed to be able to relish this time with all of them, retouch on the edges of a private world where safety was a given.
Maybe Hitoka was a bit spoiled, having them help her with the task when they had helped her so much already, each in their own ways. Though, as long as they were willing to indulge her, Hitoka was going to treasure the time they shared together, not taking it for granted. For not everyone was like them.
“Why are we making so much of these? Shouldn’t you only need three?” And not everyone was like Tsukishima Kei either, who, despite working the fastest and having a bigger pile of bracelets in front of him, was still complaining. Apparently, some things never changed.
“Don’t be a party pooper, Tsukki.” Tadashi scolded, snickering unbothered when, as expected, Kei told him to shut up.
“Well, if you must know,” Hitoka cheekily said, reaching for a couple of blue beads, “I like fashion ok, so I need various options to go with my outfits. But you can tap out whenever you want, Tsukki.”
Kei only grumbled and continued his work because, again, it was how he did things – dramatically.
“‘Toka, if fashion is your concern, you won’t be able to wear the ones Kageyama’s making.” Shouyou butted in through provocative bursts of laughter. “His are ugly.”
Tobio, surprisingly, didn’t even acknowledge Shouyou’s childish taunt, concentrating fully on the meticulous task. He was so focused on it; everything else seemed to slip away from his attention. In the end, he only bumped his shoulder against Shouyou’s in a silent reply, Shouyou pouting at the lack of a proper irritated response.
Hitoka only chuckled at their antics, used and amused by it, finishing another bracelet and placing it in her little pile. She stretched her arms overhead and groaned, asking her friends for what they wanted to eat.
There were a lot of finished bracelets already, and a bunch of available beads as well. She smiled at the sight, at the gentle warmth she could feel hanging in the air. That place was a special, lovely one and, as much as Hitoka wanted to stay there forever, she knew it wasn’t possible. Still, the simple – and yet empowering – bracelets they made together carried fragments of it, constituting small shields for Hitoka to wear as she pleased.
Hitoka took a ‘she/her’ bracelet and put it on, pushing herself up to grab them some food.
–
When Hitoka shaved their hair for the first time, they were twenty-two.
Summer slowly crept into the increasingly stuffy Tokyo days, making every corner of the city a little hotter and a bit more unbearable. That day, Hitoka closed themself in the bathroom of their dorm, taking with them their recently acquired supplies for the hair cutting.
Patches of hair fell down on their shoulders and down to the floor as Hitoka worked the hair clipper through their scalp. The machine’s continual buzzing sound filled all the corners of the small bathroom, crystallizing the change in Hitoka’s hairstyle as blond strands of hair gave way to the short, a tad darker, simplicity of a buzz cut.
When they finished, the bathroom was nothing short of a mess. Despite knowing that they would have to clean it anytime soon, a beaming smile could be found on Hitoka’s lips. It was a bold haircut, impossible to hide in a way that it was freeing, provocative and tenacious. It was kind of hot too, if Hitoka allowed confidence to bleed into thoughts directed at themself. Finally, it was the kind of haircut Hitoka never thought they could have – never allowed the desire for it to fledge – although the allure it always held.
All in all, it looked really good, and Hitoka was very happy with it.
(Besides, there was the big bonus of cooling down the nape of their neck for the upcoming summer days.)
For a few minutes, Hitoka just regarded their reflection on the bathroom mirror while experimentally stroking their head, relishing the foreign feeling of the buzz cut against their palm. It was a big change, jarring even, and Hitoka surprisingly thrived under the knowledge that it was something no one would expect of them, dissident at its core. They could see now why Tanaka-senpai liked it so much.
Knowing that they had to clean the bathroom didn’t faze them, for the excitement over the triviality of getting a haircut was a large one. With that, Hitoka put their piercings back on their ears as well as blue and pink star earrings. They played some music and sang badly along the lyrics, sweeping all the strands of hair on the floor while feeling like the most powerful person there could be.
–
Hitoka was twenty when he fully realized, no matter the support system he had built around himself, how lonesome this whole gender thing could be. Furthermore, how it overspread to everything else in his life – to the point that he looked at all the things before his eyes through the lenses of his gender identity. Granted, with how it engulfed and shattered him, it was difficult not to and, in a way, it served as some sort of defense mechanism.
Hitoka didn’t go too often to college parties. Whenever he did though, it was only if Tadashi came along as well, for he needed a familiar face around in order to keep the social anxiety in check. It wasn’t Tadashi’s comfort zone either, so they rarely attended any. However, at the end of a semester, it was a tempting opportunity to get rid of pent-up stress and fatigue, so Hitoka and Tadashi joined other students in the community area of a dorm building for a round of cheap beers and loud pop music.
“Here you go.” Hitoka said as he rejoined Tadashi on the small couch they were sharing that night and handed him a bottle of beer.
“Thanks.” After a few silent sips, Tadashi turned a cheeky smile Hitoka’s way. “That girl was flirting with you, y’know.”
“What? No, she wasn’t.”
“Dude. She totally was!” Tadashi laughed, almost incredulously so. “I could see it all the way from here, how couldn’t you when you were literally talking to her?”
Finally, he jerked his chin towards said girl, who was one of the people in charge of the counter, currently handing drinks to a group of students. Hitoka followed Tadashi’s gaze and stretched his arms up while silently looking at the girl from afar. He groaned at the strain his binder was putting on his back and rolled his shoulders; it barely alleviated the pain, but it was something Hitoka was used to.
“I mean, she’s cute.” He said. “I still don’t think she was flirting, but even so… it wouldn’t matter.”
Tadashi turned to him, noting the shift in their conversation – from playful to private.
“You don’t seem very interested in this whole dating thing, Hito. Is there a reason for that?” He asked, knowing that if Hitoka didn’t want to answer he would simply let him know.
Hitoka sighed quietly and placed his beer bottle between his legs, trying to gather his thoughts before speaking. He took his hair out of a ponytail and tied it poorly in a bun, straightened his pronoun bracelet on his wrist and settled further into the couch cushions.
“When society is telling you that’s what you should aim for, it’s hard not to want it.” He began. “And I see the appeal of it, really.”
“But?”
“Can I get a little wordy with you?” Hitoka asked instead.
Tadashi smiled in response, gentle and open. “Of course you can.”
Hitoka smiled back and went on. “But it’s hard for me to be in a relationship right now. Or in whatever situation where my body will be in someone else’s hands. Because it is vulnerable, this body, and for a long time I’ve nurtured nothing but hate for it. You know this. I wouldn’t feel safe putting it wherever when I know how easy it is for it to break.”
He took a shaky breath and paused the words that felt like an irremediable torrent, feeling the telltale sting behind his eyelids. He sipped his beer and willed it away because why was he always crying over every little thing?
“Only recently I started to learn how to be more gentle with it, accept my body for what it is and take care of it. Of every little fluctuation and weirdness that it contains. It’s still hard though, and it’s fragile too. When I know for a fact that I struggle with loving it, how could I ask for someone else to do it? How could I place something so fragile on foreign hands and ask for affection when I don’t know what that is? I’m trying to figure it out by myself first, I guess. So I can’t. Not right now, at least.”
“I see.” Tadashi replied when he was done. “Thanks for telling me, I get it. A little bit, maybe.”
Hitoka nodded, grateful for his friend. His body was always safe when Tadashi was by its side, and that was why he was able to talk so much, so openly about the things that ran inside his head. Confusing as it always was, Tadashi was there at any time, ready to listen and to hold Hitoka’s weaknesses with a tenderness that, after so long, wasn’t alien anymore.
“This isn’t as lonesome as I thought.” Hitoka added. Then, he chuckled and continued. “Despite my everlasting single status.”
Tadashi threw his head back and laughed, gently bumping their knees and raising his beer bottle to clink with Hitoka’s. “Take your time with this stuff. Who needs a relationship when you have friends anyways?”
Hitoka snorted, amused and fond. “Oh, what would Tsukki say if he heard you say that?”
“Tsukki is my friend and my boyfriend, so I guess it evens out. Probably.”
“Probably, huh?” Hitoka shook his head in amusement and once again caught glimpses of the girl working behind the counter. He felt a smile tugging on his lips. “That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, by the way. I heard she works part-time on the university’s lgbtqia+ community center. She’s cool.”
–
Whenever Hitoka got new books with a queer thematic (which, as a matter of fact, wasn't a rare occurrence, given the extensive and growing list she had on her phone), Tadashi was usually needed to drag her out of book pages as well as her dorm room.
Hitoka couldn't help herself, really. It was something that enraptured her – the reading – and, excuse or not, there were worse addictions to feed.
Tadashi never let the opportunity to tease Hitoka pass though, bantering half in amusement half in exasperation over the fact that – whenever she got her greedy little hands on a particularly good queer or gender studies theory book – Hitoka only functioned between its pages and the obligatoriness of her classes. Tadashi was sure she probably would forget about everything else if Hitoka's anxiety levels weren't so high; every week, she wrote down her schedule but, on occasion, she still arrived late for a coffee date or a study session in the library – the printed culprit always tucked under her arm.
Hitoka argued, whenever the topic came up, that the urge to devour one page after the other was beyond her power, and there was nothing she could do. (Not that Hitoka would stop it if she could, but we don't talk about that.)
Those books, they constituted worlds of acceptance and possibilities, small cosmos where uncertainty and trepidation weren't a first, where other people's fears didn't touch her and morphed into her own. It was, in a sense, like traveling through space, finding a place that maybe could exist someday, a place that Hitoka wanted to help build – she couldn’t help but want to drown in it. To hear the words of people like her – similar and yet distinctive experiences told on the string of captivating phrases – was something that Hitoka never thought could feel so validating.
“There’s so much to think about.” Hitoka had said once, a finger in between the pages to mark where she was. “And through the thinking, I see that there’s so much to feel too, and I’m finally letting myself feel all of what I once deprived myself from.”
She often found herself crying and laughing through the books, angry and frustrated at times, sad and powerless at others, but hopeful too – so damn hopeful and euphoric that they were all still talking, they were alive; and nobody was going to shut them up.
–
It took him ten years. Since the first time he came out, a decade was needed to get it right.
Or not right per se, but rather assertive, proud.
Hitoka was twenty-six when he came out for someone new. For the first time, when he said ‘I’m a trans non-binary person. I’m genderfluid and I’m using he/him pronouns today’, Hitoka didn’t stammer or stumble on the words. Instead, each word was spoken with clarity, loud and authentic, pride coating the syllables that, for once and from now on, fell freely and surely from his lips.
There was no hesitation in there anymore. Only truthfulness and hard-fought defiance.
Hitoka was out of a binary system, functioning in a world of possibilities most people couldn’t grasp. With how ignorant and harsh some people could be, Hitoka’s mere existence was a threat, a problem for them to scrutinize and solve – put back into the “right” place. He still struggled, of course he did, for it was hard to let go of the unfitting feeling when everyone always insisted that you are wrong, you can’t feel this way, shut up, you are lying, you don’t exist like this. Over the years though, Hitoka learned to forbid other people’s doubts to become his own, done with letting things that weren’t on his skin dictate how he felt about his own body.
The surface of his body – the parts that he loved, the ones he had some trouble with, the bits that changed, the ones that felt like remembrances somehow – carried scars, stories and secrets, a constellation of his own, increasingly brighter. For something once fragile, Hitoka felt how solid it felt now.
Still, it needed protection and, for how much transgression it flaunted, it existed. And it resisted.
Hitoka wasn’t going to let anyone say that it didn’t.