Hanayo finally realizing she's a transgirl and not being too sure how to handle it.
She couldn’t exactly say she was surprised, honestly. She’d always had an inkling, that thought nipping at the back of her mind whenever she was around the rest of the boys in her class. “You’re not like them” it would say, but of course she ignored it. For as long as she could, of course. Until she actually understood what she was telling herself, she ignored the thought, contextualising it as just a difference in upbringing or just natural difference in enjoyment.
But then she met Rin, a boy that insisted he were a girl, even going to school in a skirt and bright yellow shirt a couple days. The other boys in her class made fun of him for it, but she- she wished she had that kind of bravery. She never quite knew why, but she remembers wishing it.
It wasn’t until almost the end of middle school, when Rin told her that she was actually a girl and was able to get into Otonokizaka, that Hanayo finally understood what she was trying to tell herself all those years ago. Because of Rin and her explaining what “transgender” was, Hanayo was finally able to put her feelings to words. To a tangible, real thing.
But finally having words to put to her feelings, to how she felt, didn’t help like she thought it would. She told her mother, of course, because she told her mother everything. In contrast to herself, her mother knew exactly what it meant and what she needed to do for Hanayo. The transfer papers were filled out, and suddenly she was an Otonokizaka student- a student at an all girls school.
But she still, still, didn’t quite know what it meant for her. How was she trans, why was she trans? Was she supposed to be trans, or was it just an accident? Was she supposed to tell her friends, if she ever had more than Rin?
And- how did she know she was trans? She wasn’t like Rin, she never wore girls’ clothes to school, and she never remembered feeling like she really wanted to. She didn’t feel any sort of desire when she looked at the other girls on the streets in their pretty clothes or with their pretty makeup and feel like she wanted to be them- so how did she know she was a girl? She’d always dressed like a boy, and was always treated like a boy- even though it never quite felt right, it was something she knew, and being a girl- she didn’t know anything about being a girl, so why did she feel like she was one?
And then she met Honoka, and Maki, and the rest of μ’s. They all and Rin, all of them only saw her as a girl, and treated her like a girl- in their eyes, she was a girl. And that behaviour, being treated like she was a girl and looking like a girl definitely felt more normal and natural to her than being seen and treated like she was a boy.
She’d finally started feeling like a girl because of them, and she finally understood how she knew she was a girl without knowing anything about being a girl- she never felt like a boy, no matter how she dressed or was treated. No matter how hard she tried when she was younger, she’d never truly felt like a boy, she just accepted that she was one because that’s how she was treated.
And she was- she was happy, finally. Being surrounded by all these friends that only saw her as a girl filled her with this great, giant sense of joy. And she loved them for it, really loved them for what they did for her.
