[story] acceptance
author: kizoke (littlekasumi)
email: kizoke [at] gmail.com
From the day of her birth, Kwan Shun had been marked as a failure.
The only ones capable of becoming guards of the Eastern Door were first-born males and this duty was assigned solely to the Kwan family, her family. Everyone before Shun had been a guard despite the fact that there had been no threat of invasion from anywhere for many previous generations.
Their personal seers had predicted that in 15 years, one of the four doors, whether it be the East, the West, the North, or South, would open, and that the Kwan family would have to raise a respectable warrior. That was in 1991, the year Shun was born.
Shun wished the seers had also predicted that the baby human kicking at Kwan Fen's stomach would not be a boy.
She constantly imagined how the aftermath her birth went; her parents never told her much.
Her mother, still exhausted from labor, would have begun to weep and mutter in complete disbelief, "No no no."
Kwan Tai, her father, would have found his face contorted into some kind of a cool rage (Shun had never seen him get angry) and his fists clenching and unclenching. "Check again," he must have commanded, not trusting himself to look at the baby in the midwife's arms. (She created her fantasy when she was 6; she learned about sexual organs at the age of 11. Shun did not change her frequent daydream. She guessed that maybe she gained some kind of odd, morbid amusement out of it.)
When no encouragement came from the doctor or the midwife, her mother buried her head in her pillow and her silent weeping turned into noisy, choked sobs. Her father's eyes narrowed in quiet fury and he took a few steps towards the doctor.
"Do not," he said calmly, even though his hands were red from where his fingers were digging into his skin, "Do not tell anyone this child's true gender. It is a boy. Not a girl. A boy who will grow up to be a guard. Understand?"
Her father continued when he saw the doctor hesitate. "You do know what will happen if anyone finds out about this don't you?"
The midwife backed away silently when her father's hands lashed out and grasped the doctor's shoulders; the doctor whimpered, her abnormally tall father looming over him. "Who will avert the crisis that will happen in 15 years if our leader finds out it's a girl? We can't try for a son now because he would be too young and the second child, not the first! This child is the one who must make up for its shortcomings, not us!"
When the doctor nodded rapidly in an obvious and slightly comical mixture of agreement and fear, her father pushed him away and an uncomfortable silence filled the room. Her father sucked in a breath and his posture relaxed awkwardly.
"Shun."
Her mother's wretched sobs stopped briefly as she picked up her head and voiced one word from her raw throat. "What?"
"We're naming her Shun." (She was certain that this was the first and final time her father used a feminine pronoun to refer to her true identity.)
Her first years as a boy were fairly easy. Wearing boys' clothing didn't bother her at all; they were the only clothes she knew.
Her mother made sure that her hair never grew past her ears and that it mirrored the same style as the hair of the other boys her age. Her father taught her how to speak like a man, not only by teaching her words but also by crafting her voice as he taught her how to sing in private; his low tones influenced hers and she soon sounded like any other boy.
She didn't understand why at the time but it took her a little while to master the walk of a man; sometimes this made learning Wu Xing difficult for both her and her master, Xun Jian. He was an old friend of her father and the only one outside of her immediate family who knew that she was really a woman; even though he never answered her properly, Shun always felt that he listened when she needed to vent about her issues with masquerading as a man.
When she turned 13, Shun started to wonder how she would feel about puberty if she hadn't been a part of the Kwan family at all. In her many fantasies, she looked forward to developing breasts; in reality, she cursed vehemently as it became apparent that she had failed to inherit her mother's small chest. When she started to develop, her mother bound her breasts so tightly it almost prevented her from breathing at times. Kwan Fen said she did this to keep them from getting any bigger. This only made Shun's hatred of irony and the whole situation increase. As time went on, the binding loosened enough to allow her to breathe properly but it was tight enough to push the melons down; her mother bought her loose clothing as an extra precaution.
Menstruation only made things worse for the masquerading girl; her father made her stay in her room the first time it came and her mother all but shoved disgusting medicine down her throat that would reduce the frequency of her bleeding. Shun knew she had to be extra cautious when she was in public; there were only so many reasons a boy might have blood on his pants.
Her parents avoided the subject of her sexuality. Shun constantly asked them whom she should love. Should she fall in love with boys because she was really a girl even though she looked like a man or should she love girls because everyone regarded her as a boy? Her mother's lips twisted into a grimace while her father told her that she should focus on preparing for the opening of one of the Doors.
So, Shun decided that she would avoid both genders until she had total control of her life. As a consequence, she didn't make many friends but she and her parents all breathed a sigh of relief when they noticed that she wasn't popular with any of the girls; Shun always felt awkward when she had to reject them.
Her uncertainty about whom she should love brought up another question: Would she be disguising herself as a man for the rest of her life, even when her duty as a guard was over? Her parents, constant as always, avoided the subject directly. Shun thought about it frequently and shortly before her move to America, she announced her opinion to her parents.
"When this is over, you can tell everyone I'm dead or something. I'll come back as a woman. Don't worry, Mama," she said when she saw her mother's eyes widen in shock as she pushed a stray hair behind her ear. "I'll change my name so no one will associate me with you; you've done enough." Shun hoped that they didn't catch the slightly bitter tone or the hitch in her voice.
"I'll live as a woman for awhile and then I'll decide what I want to be on my own."
To say the least, Shun didn't feel surprised when the seers told her that a Door had opened in the North; she was even less surprised when they told her that she would be heading to America, and more specifically, New York.
Truth was that Shun was ready to get away from everything at home; she didn't care where she went, whether it was the USA or Brazil just as long as it meant that she could get away. She knew she would possess a tiny amount of greater freedom there than she had at home, even though her parents informed her that their leader's servants would keep a strict eye on her actions.
"Don't slip up, Shun, my boy." Shun twitched at the forced emphasis on the final two words.
She faked a grin and a chuckle ('Boys grin, smirk, and chuckle. Girls smile, beam, and giggle' was a mantra that had been drilled into her brain since she could talk.) and replied, "I'll try my best not to, Father."
In her head, the last things Kwan Tai said to Shun before she left for New York were the words 'I'm proud of you, son.'
"If you were proud of me, you wouldn't have made my life a total hell of confusion," she muttered to herself as she sat on the plane, playing mindlessly with her handheld; there hadn't been any turbulence for a while so she gave her full attention to shooting away at various objects.
"What was that, Shun?" Jian asked from her right, momentarily taking his eyes off the window.
"Nothing, Master Xun," Shun replied politely; she tried her best to hide a smirk when she shot and blew up a plane in her game.
"My name is Shun Kwan but please call me Shane. I hope we can all get along with one another."
She pretended to ignore the applause and the hushed whispers that accompanied her introduction; the boys pointed out how small 'he' was compared to the rest of them and the girls giggled over 'his' slight accent.
Shun tried not to let out a disheartened chuckle. It was absolutely ridiculous for her to believe that there was a chance for anyone to acknowledge who she really was; for someone to see through her elaborate disguise as a man and see her as a girl was an impossible dream.
Her teacher directed her to a seat towards the middle of the room; she ignored the glances of the others as she took her place behind a girl with long black hair. The girl turned back to look at Shun and raised her hand in a friendly greeting.
"Anima Paxton," she whispered to Shun as their teacher's voice bellowed around them, talking about various ways to write their book reports.
Shun kept her eyes on the blackboard but she murmured a slightly awkward greeting, and Anima gave her a small smile and turned back to face her teacher; Shun re-directed her eyes to the back of Anima's head and began to chew on the end of her pencil.
She didn't believe that she could meet another guard so early on.
She had made a promise to her father, as a man, as a son, and as a guard, that she would not screw up; she promised she wouldn't let out her secret.
At least Shun managed to avoid being a failure for about three months.
Shun should not have let her guard down for a second, especially after letting herself get injured by a low-life spirit. She should not have let Anima whisk her away to her home so she could have her cut treated. She should not have said, "Fine then, but I can treat myself."
The Chinese guard should not have pulled down the front of her shirt, revealing the cut and her binding the exact moment Anima opened the door to give her a bottle of water and a washcloth. The other girl almost dropped the bottle of water in shock but she soon recovered and set Shun in place with a curious but calm look.
"If I leave for a couple of minutes you'll still be up here, right?"
And for the umpteenth time that day, she was flabbergasted and caught completely off-guard. All she could do was nod her head as she pulled her shirt back up to an appropriate level. As Anima shut the door, Shun allowed herself to fall to the floor. She kept a firm grip on her bound chest on the way down.
"What do you refer to yourself as? When you're alone, I mean."
Shun avoided the pale girl's eyes and focused on one of Anima's swimming posters. The guard of the Eastern Door gripped the carpet as she was once again reminded of one of the many things she was unable to do. "You're taking all of this pretty well, you know." Her grip on the carpet relaxed but she took her gaze off the posters and directed it towards the floor. "I thought you would come back asking different questions than that."
"We've seen stranger things over the past couple of months," Anima retorted calmly as she crossed her legs. "Now, can you answer that question for me?"
The only reason the whole room wasn't enveloped in complete silence was Shun's harsh breathing. "Everyone around me sees me as a boy. But I see myself as a girl. It's frustrating to be told otherwise."
"Why should that matter?" Anima inquired as she stretched her long arms over her head.
Shun's silence was the only response.
"Look," Anima said, sitting up straight on her bed. "I won't call you a girl in public or when we're around Vincent and Jareth but I don't want to think of you as something you're not."
No one had told Shun any of that for as long as she had lived.
She didn't realize she was crying until she felt something wet hit her hands. Frightened, she wiped her nose against the sleeve of her shirt, hoping that that would somehow stop the waterworks.
'Men don't cry unless someone has died.' She remembered that phrase well from her childhood. She shook her head against her arm and this only made it wetter and made her tears flow more. Honestly, she was not much of a man right now.
"Did I do something wrong?"
Anima made a motion to touch her shoulder in sympathy but Shun stopped her with a raise of her free hand.
"It's fine." Her constant sniffs said otherwise but she didn't care at the moment. "I'm fine."
"You're home rather late."
Shun jumped in surprise at her Master's voice as she tried to push her way through the apartment door quietly. "I thought you would be asleep," she replied, shutting the door behind her. Shun slung her jacket over the coat rack and began to walk past the couch where Xun Jian sat and towards her room in earnest.
"You look a bit strange today. Relieved, it seems."
Shun repressed a sharp breath and stopped walking. She faced her Master head on. His dark brown eyes seemed bright and he had a sly, knowing smile on his face. Despite this, Shun did not feel uncomfortable at all; she actually felt relaxed and light.
"What happened?"
For the first time in years, Shun smiled.
"I think I'm finally starting to be accepted for who I truly am. It's... rather nice."
the end
email: kizoke [at] gmail.com
From the day of her birth, Kwan Shun had been marked as a failure.
The only ones capable of becoming guards of the Eastern Door were first-born males and this duty was assigned solely to the Kwan family, her family. Everyone before Shun had been a guard despite the fact that there had been no threat of invasion from anywhere for many previous generations.
Their personal seers had predicted that in 15 years, one of the four doors, whether it be the East, the West, the North, or South, would open, and that the Kwan family would have to raise a respectable warrior. That was in 1991, the year Shun was born.
Shun wished the seers had also predicted that the baby human kicking at Kwan Fen's stomach would not be a boy.
She constantly imagined how the aftermath her birth went; her parents never told her much.
Her mother, still exhausted from labor, would have begun to weep and mutter in complete disbelief, "No no no."
Kwan Tai, her father, would have found his face contorted into some kind of a cool rage (Shun had never seen him get angry) and his fists clenching and unclenching. "Check again," he must have commanded, not trusting himself to look at the baby in the midwife's arms. (She created her fantasy when she was 6; she learned about sexual organs at the age of 11. Shun did not change her frequent daydream. She guessed that maybe she gained some kind of odd, morbid amusement out of it.)
When no encouragement came from the doctor or the midwife, her mother buried her head in her pillow and her silent weeping turned into noisy, choked sobs. Her father's eyes narrowed in quiet fury and he took a few steps towards the doctor.
"Do not," he said calmly, even though his hands were red from where his fingers were digging into his skin, "Do not tell anyone this child's true gender. It is a boy. Not a girl. A boy who will grow up to be a guard. Understand?"
Her father continued when he saw the doctor hesitate. "You do know what will happen if anyone finds out about this don't you?"
The midwife backed away silently when her father's hands lashed out and grasped the doctor's shoulders; the doctor whimpered, her abnormally tall father looming over him. "Who will avert the crisis that will happen in 15 years if our leader finds out it's a girl? We can't try for a son now because he would be too young and the second child, not the first! This child is the one who must make up for its shortcomings, not us!"
When the doctor nodded rapidly in an obvious and slightly comical mixture of agreement and fear, her father pushed him away and an uncomfortable silence filled the room. Her father sucked in a breath and his posture relaxed awkwardly.
"Shun."
Her mother's wretched sobs stopped briefly as she picked up her head and voiced one word from her raw throat. "What?"
"We're naming her Shun." (She was certain that this was the first and final time her father used a feminine pronoun to refer to her true identity.)
Her first years as a boy were fairly easy. Wearing boys' clothing didn't bother her at all; they were the only clothes she knew.
Her mother made sure that her hair never grew past her ears and that it mirrored the same style as the hair of the other boys her age. Her father taught her how to speak like a man, not only by teaching her words but also by crafting her voice as he taught her how to sing in private; his low tones influenced hers and she soon sounded like any other boy.
She didn't understand why at the time but it took her a little while to master the walk of a man; sometimes this made learning Wu Xing difficult for both her and her master, Xun Jian. He was an old friend of her father and the only one outside of her immediate family who knew that she was really a woman; even though he never answered her properly, Shun always felt that he listened when she needed to vent about her issues with masquerading as a man.
When she turned 13, Shun started to wonder how she would feel about puberty if she hadn't been a part of the Kwan family at all. In her many fantasies, she looked forward to developing breasts; in reality, she cursed vehemently as it became apparent that she had failed to inherit her mother's small chest. When she started to develop, her mother bound her breasts so tightly it almost prevented her from breathing at times. Kwan Fen said she did this to keep them from getting any bigger. This only made Shun's hatred of irony and the whole situation increase. As time went on, the binding loosened enough to allow her to breathe properly but it was tight enough to push the melons down; her mother bought her loose clothing as an extra precaution.
Menstruation only made things worse for the masquerading girl; her father made her stay in her room the first time it came and her mother all but shoved disgusting medicine down her throat that would reduce the frequency of her bleeding. Shun knew she had to be extra cautious when she was in public; there were only so many reasons a boy might have blood on his pants.
Her parents avoided the subject of her sexuality. Shun constantly asked them whom she should love. Should she fall in love with boys because she was really a girl even though she looked like a man or should she love girls because everyone regarded her as a boy? Her mother's lips twisted into a grimace while her father told her that she should focus on preparing for the opening of one of the Doors.
So, Shun decided that she would avoid both genders until she had total control of her life. As a consequence, she didn't make many friends but she and her parents all breathed a sigh of relief when they noticed that she wasn't popular with any of the girls; Shun always felt awkward when she had to reject them.
Her uncertainty about whom she should love brought up another question: Would she be disguising herself as a man for the rest of her life, even when her duty as a guard was over? Her parents, constant as always, avoided the subject directly. Shun thought about it frequently and shortly before her move to America, she announced her opinion to her parents.
"When this is over, you can tell everyone I'm dead or something. I'll come back as a woman. Don't worry, Mama," she said when she saw her mother's eyes widen in shock as she pushed a stray hair behind her ear. "I'll change my name so no one will associate me with you; you've done enough." Shun hoped that they didn't catch the slightly bitter tone or the hitch in her voice.
"I'll live as a woman for awhile and then I'll decide what I want to be on my own."
To say the least, Shun didn't feel surprised when the seers told her that a Door had opened in the North; she was even less surprised when they told her that she would be heading to America, and more specifically, New York.
Truth was that Shun was ready to get away from everything at home; she didn't care where she went, whether it was the USA or Brazil just as long as it meant that she could get away. She knew she would possess a tiny amount of greater freedom there than she had at home, even though her parents informed her that their leader's servants would keep a strict eye on her actions.
"Don't slip up, Shun, my boy." Shun twitched at the forced emphasis on the final two words.
She faked a grin and a chuckle ('Boys grin, smirk, and chuckle. Girls smile, beam, and giggle' was a mantra that had been drilled into her brain since she could talk.) and replied, "I'll try my best not to, Father."
In her head, the last things Kwan Tai said to Shun before she left for New York were the words 'I'm proud of you, son.'
"If you were proud of me, you wouldn't have made my life a total hell of confusion," she muttered to herself as she sat on the plane, playing mindlessly with her handheld; there hadn't been any turbulence for a while so she gave her full attention to shooting away at various objects.
"What was that, Shun?" Jian asked from her right, momentarily taking his eyes off the window.
"Nothing, Master Xun," Shun replied politely; she tried her best to hide a smirk when she shot and blew up a plane in her game.
"My name is Shun Kwan but please call me Shane. I hope we can all get along with one another."
She pretended to ignore the applause and the hushed whispers that accompanied her introduction; the boys pointed out how small 'he' was compared to the rest of them and the girls giggled over 'his' slight accent.
Shun tried not to let out a disheartened chuckle. It was absolutely ridiculous for her to believe that there was a chance for anyone to acknowledge who she really was; for someone to see through her elaborate disguise as a man and see her as a girl was an impossible dream.
Her teacher directed her to a seat towards the middle of the room; she ignored the glances of the others as she took her place behind a girl with long black hair. The girl turned back to look at Shun and raised her hand in a friendly greeting.
"Anima Paxton," she whispered to Shun as their teacher's voice bellowed around them, talking about various ways to write their book reports.
Shun kept her eyes on the blackboard but she murmured a slightly awkward greeting, and Anima gave her a small smile and turned back to face her teacher; Shun re-directed her eyes to the back of Anima's head and began to chew on the end of her pencil.
She didn't believe that she could meet another guard so early on.
She had made a promise to her father, as a man, as a son, and as a guard, that she would not screw up; she promised she wouldn't let out her secret.
At least Shun managed to avoid being a failure for about three months.
Shun should not have let her guard down for a second, especially after letting herself get injured by a low-life spirit. She should not have let Anima whisk her away to her home so she could have her cut treated. She should not have said, "Fine then, but I can treat myself."
The Chinese guard should not have pulled down the front of her shirt, revealing the cut and her binding the exact moment Anima opened the door to give her a bottle of water and a washcloth. The other girl almost dropped the bottle of water in shock but she soon recovered and set Shun in place with a curious but calm look.
"If I leave for a couple of minutes you'll still be up here, right?"
And for the umpteenth time that day, she was flabbergasted and caught completely off-guard. All she could do was nod her head as she pulled her shirt back up to an appropriate level. As Anima shut the door, Shun allowed herself to fall to the floor. She kept a firm grip on her bound chest on the way down.
"What do you refer to yourself as? When you're alone, I mean."
Shun avoided the pale girl's eyes and focused on one of Anima's swimming posters. The guard of the Eastern Door gripped the carpet as she was once again reminded of one of the many things she was unable to do. "You're taking all of this pretty well, you know." Her grip on the carpet relaxed but she took her gaze off the posters and directed it towards the floor. "I thought you would come back asking different questions than that."
"We've seen stranger things over the past couple of months," Anima retorted calmly as she crossed her legs. "Now, can you answer that question for me?"
The only reason the whole room wasn't enveloped in complete silence was Shun's harsh breathing. "Everyone around me sees me as a boy. But I see myself as a girl. It's frustrating to be told otherwise."
"Why should that matter?" Anima inquired as she stretched her long arms over her head.
Shun's silence was the only response.
"Look," Anima said, sitting up straight on her bed. "I won't call you a girl in public or when we're around Vincent and Jareth but I don't want to think of you as something you're not."
No one had told Shun any of that for as long as she had lived.
She didn't realize she was crying until she felt something wet hit her hands. Frightened, she wiped her nose against the sleeve of her shirt, hoping that that would somehow stop the waterworks.
'Men don't cry unless someone has died.' She remembered that phrase well from her childhood. She shook her head against her arm and this only made it wetter and made her tears flow more. Honestly, she was not much of a man right now.
"Did I do something wrong?"
Anima made a motion to touch her shoulder in sympathy but Shun stopped her with a raise of her free hand.
"It's fine." Her constant sniffs said otherwise but she didn't care at the moment. "I'm fine."
"You're home rather late."
Shun jumped in surprise at her Master's voice as she tried to push her way through the apartment door quietly. "I thought you would be asleep," she replied, shutting the door behind her. Shun slung her jacket over the coat rack and began to walk past the couch where Xun Jian sat and towards her room in earnest.
"You look a bit strange today. Relieved, it seems."
Shun repressed a sharp breath and stopped walking. She faced her Master head on. His dark brown eyes seemed bright and he had a sly, knowing smile on his face. Despite this, Shun did not feel uncomfortable at all; she actually felt relaxed and light.
"What happened?"
For the first time in years, Shun smiled.
"I think I'm finally starting to be accepted for who I truly am. It's... rather nice."
the end