[Video | Week 9, Day 1]
[ The video opens with an enraged scream that sounds like a woman's, the Hitomi flying as it is hurled and smacks into a wall, then falls with a rather inconsequential plunk onto the ground. Feet stomp stomp stomp over with earnest -- tiny feet, by the looks of it -- the flowing hem of a yukata brushing against dainty ankles. Small fingers grasp
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Chrome hears the words. The ideas behind them. Pride as a man. Sees herself in her dream, standing before a mirror holding scissors, with sprays of hair like piles of sliced flower stems at her feet, soft and delicate -- a wild, half-realized dream of adulthood in her mind. She would simply become a boy.
She had not, in truth, thought of it in those exactly physical terms. Become a boy. Have boy parts. No, it had been a more intangible longing. A more chaotic recognition. For Mukuro-sama had artful hands and straight shoulders and beautifully long bones, and no one, she knew, ever called him weak or stupid or ugly or worthless, those terms which she dealt with so often -- and even had they done so, those words would have held no power over him. Because, and she could see, he was on a higher rung somehow. A lot of boys were like that. Words made her feel smaller. Even all those benign words which came later: cute, sweet, adorable. Accompanied by smiles. Men, women. People she considered her friends. Those words made her feel small, too. Only . . . quietly so, because you couldn't argue, because, well, people wouldn't get the point. Cute was a nice word, wasn't it? A friendly word?
Cute, like a little puppy. A little kitten with sawed off claws. Can't be trusted to make her own decisions. Helpless, in need of protection. There are days when she barely notices anymore. Living in a cage of those benign and those harsh words.
She had thought, in that idealistic moment with the shorn hair, that the end would come soon. She wouldn't be a little kitten with sawed off claws. She would be another Mukuro. She swore to herself.
But that had never happened. No. Nothing like that. She stayed cute. Quiet. Lost a fight. Had her organs fail her again. Laid on her back and coughed blood before all those men. All those men who had already underestimated her; deemed her unworthy. Well, that was how it went.
Blood spots on tissue papers. Staring at pads or tampons while being a knobby, motherless girl under the cold lights of the pharmacy. She had almost cried, that first time. Inexplicably shameful. Sore breasts. Her hips swelling with the years. She couldn't stop herself from becoming less and less like him, at least physically. Couldn't tear out all that cuteness no matter how many of the later battles she won, survived --
Because she knows what they see when they look at her.
And most of the time, it isn't worth speaking to them. Not much to say, anyway. She is, she guesses, cute. Small. Female.
She understands what this person who was a man means.
Exactly, painfully so. ]
I'm sorry.
That was wrong of them.
[ And she is.
And it is.
Because though there have come days that Chrome has looked in the mirror and admired her pretty long hair (and she never let them, the stylists, remove the tuft -- much as they had questioned it; no, it was never to be removed!), her wardrobe of the clothes of what had once been the enemy of all that she had imagined at thirteen: it's not the enemy anymore, no. Not now. Old friends, now. But this man didn't choose. And it's not fair.
To manipulate someone's body against their will. ]
. . . no right . . .
[ And she almost bites her lips.
Words, to strangers -- to angry strangers -- still so difficult, sometimes.
She hopes his body will be restored to the way he wishes for it to be, soon. ]
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