It is I who left the domicile not as Akihiro, but as Akari, with a threatening feeling of estrangement that would be put down by professionals as an ontological crisis.
The heavy leather satchel, with which I had been employed to sling across one shoulder, was too large and rough against the fine floral blouse my mother had had me fitted to,an object of dress which now fitted this freshly reborn body with a marvellous exactness.
Each action was calculated and this was a delicate balancing exercise between the male self that I had been living and the female self that the outside world demanded. Even the simplest movement was dissonant. I have been used to a slow, deliberate walk the walk of Akari was light and almost airy, involuntarily setting the motion, which caused the eyes of passing men to stare at me.
Stop throwing your eyes at me, I besought to say. "I am not her!" But the circumscribed eyes were after me as iron filings to a magnet. I had always been viewed as Akihiro as someone respected and at times envied and a humble admirer. The modern gaze, though, was jealous, critical and too threateningly possessive, like being undressed and examined by the strange observers.
Kounan University with its well known and busy gates loomed before us. This school is my intellectual home, my kingdom, the place where Akihiro was very successful. It seemed like an alien planet now.
I passed through the front entrance of the humanities building. The traditional smell of old parchment and warm coffee usually relaxes me before a lecture, but this time I only smelled of a knot of anxiety that bound my stomach.
My sociology lecture started in hall 301. I shrunk and concentrated on the tiles on the floor, trying to make myself disappear. This endeavor proved futile. Strauss hair, long, sunlit, even with my bowed head they were reaching forward to the light, and, frankly speaking, screaming, on the one hand, Observe me!
The world had then suddenly straightened itself or rather, it was forcibly thrust back into its former pattern.
"Hey! Akari chan! Wait up!"
The voice was unmistakable. Dark, easy, and imbibing that casualness, which used to be mine. It was Hiroto, my middle school life-l long friend, my partner in crime, my wingman. He ran my way, and with a muscular physique he made a path among the students.
My blood became to icy certainty. Act normal. Act as if you know him. Act as Akari.
H Hiroto,' I said, in my tenor of panic.
He stopped in front of me with a natural easy smile, but then his eyes were slightly opened. He stroked the back of his head, a glow passing across on his cheeks.
You, uh, are pretty splendid looking to day, Akari chan,this time he looked right at me,the same look that he had spent hours and hours a studying in textbooks and baseball grounds. "Truly. Did you, with your hair, change something?
His question was absurd, nearly enough to laugh at, or sob. Different? Not just the hair! not just the hair! Hiroto, it is not just the hair! It is the whole of the skull on which is attached to it!
He was flirting with me. My best friend was playing around with me.
I remembered the last week, when I sat on his couch, and was decrying how hard it was to find a woman who would keep up with our conversation. At this moment I was that woman, and what he could not look at without flushing crimson.
No, not really, I said, and my efforts were to speak coolly but politely, as a polite lady would do in repelling a casual compliment.
"Right. Well. Either way, did you hear about Akihiro? He did not come to the dormitory this morning. His parents asserted that he came home sick, but he never even communicated. That is not his manner. You are in the same sociology course, right? Did he mention anything?" Hiroto changed his attitude of flirtation to actual concern.
The question hit me as a face blow. Akihiro was absent. He had merely disappeared, leaving them an excuse as weak as possible. And here I was, the solution of his loss, right in the midst of my finest friend, and I had to lie about myself.
"Oh, Akihiro?" I said it over again, pretending to think. "No, he did not contact me. I hope he is well."
The deceit was sickening, as though a chemical poison in the roof of my mouth.
Me too, the thought came to Hiroto and he was once more distracted by the presence of Akari,my. He moved his weight, and lingered an instant too long with his eyes. "See you after class, okay? Perhaps we can dine? My treat?"
The invitation was not applicable to us as mere companions. It suggested a date.
"I… perhaps. We will, I grumbled, and almost fled back to the door of the lecture hall and heard the lively, sure footed good bye echo in my ears.
I did not know what was worse, to find out that the world had assumed my abrupt, impossible change, or the agonizing truth that my male best friend had already fallen, hook, line, and sinker, into the beautiful deception that was Akari.