I’m supposed to be writing for school, but this came out of nowhere instead.

A young Haruka tries wearing the girls’ uniform to school. It doesn’t go well.
~1000 words, vaguely sad backstory fic/drabble.

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Haruka is twelve, and girls are pretty.

More than pretty, really;her mother grudgingly gave her the birds and the bees talk two months ago—yet another joy of puberty—and Haruka knows, sheknows that she doesn’t feel the things her mother described, or not the way she
described them, at least.

She looks in the mirror
now. Everyone had always said it would happen. With a haircut like that, you’ll be lucky if your daughter doesn’t end
up a d–… Why don’t you wear the girl’s uniform, Haruka, people are going to
think… They were wrong, it was just what she felt comfortable in, but now… now
they aren’t wrong.

She rummages through her
mother’s drawers to find a headband. With it and the school uniform, she can’t
see any difference between herself and the rest of the girls at school, even
with her hair so short. She looks like them. She looks normal.

Haruka wears it to
school, to see if it makes a difference.

“Haruka!” her friend Yuko
calls when she gets to class. “You look so nice today!”

It is all she can do to not
to run back out the door.

Yuko and Kaori fawn over
her headband, and her skirt, and why doesn’t she wear this every day? She can’t
explain the lump that has formed in the pit of her stomach to them. She’s used
to everyone’s eyes being on her—she’s the prince of the first years, after all—but
now it feels wrong. And Kaori is still pretty, even with the transformative
powers of the skirt.

She finds herself
wondering if the skirt harms or improves her chances.

If it improves them,
she’s not sure it’s worth it.

That was the opposite of
the point, anyway.

Kaori asks if she’s going
to grow her hair out now. Haruka’s no
is harsher than she intended, but also it isn’t. These are her friends, not her parents, didn’t they
choose her as she really is? Didn’t they choose the Haruka Tennoh who wore
pants and loved racing the way they loved idols?

Kaori pouts. “But you’d
look like an actual girl with long hair.”

She leaves. Class hasn’t
even started, but she’s done. She can’t do a full day of this. Outside, she
hides under the bleachers to watch the gym classes run. It’s calming, not as
calming as running herself would be, but it’s the best she can do in this skirt
and these shoes. Her legs start to scream from crouching, but she can’t bring
herself to move. She’d get caught if she moved now, and the last thing she
needed was to be stuck in detention today. In the break between classes, she
lets herself sit down in the dirt. It’s good no one can see her; she can’t figure
out how to sit without exposing her boxers.

Her finger draws
nonsensical patterns in the dirt and she wonders what she really wanted today.
Her reaction to Kaori proved she didn’t really want to change, didn’t it? An
alternate scene pops into her mind. Yuko and Kaori see her and are horrified. “But
Haruka,” Kaori says, “we like you the way you are. I like you the way you are.”

Haruka draws stick
figures in the dirt to represent this. Then she draws herself and Kaori in a
car, riding towards the sunset. The car looks more like a box on lopsided
wheels. Never mind that there’s a twelve year old behind the wheel. She wipes
the foolish fantasy away with her foot.

Haruka sneaks away at
midday and walks home. Her stomach sinks when she sees her mother is there,
waiting. Of course the school let her know she was skipping. Of course she
would leave work for this. Haruka isn’t sure if she dreads punishment or her
mother’s reaction to the girl’s uniform more.

The yelling comes first.
She is a delinquent, she is ruining her mother’s life. She’s heard it all
before. But before the “No phone, no running, no television for a week,” before
the normal threats of being kicked out or sent away, her mother stops. “At
least you’re finally dressing normal.”

“This’ll never happen
again.”

“You have a
choice anymore. If I’m going to get called out of work because you’ve skipped
class or failed a test every few days, you’re going to at least look like the daughter I wanted.”

Haruka doesn’t bother to
fight the exaggeration. She had the sneaking suspicion that she’d find most of
her clothes gone from her closet when she looked. But she’d been resourceful
before, she could be resourceful again. Make a deal with a boy at school to
pretend to be slower than him in exchange for a spare uniform, steal a pair of
safety scissors to cut her hair in the school bathroom, she’d make it work.

But she thinks of Yuko
and Kaori. Does everyone want her this way?

She retreats to her room
and lies on her bed. The only exception she can think of is her aunt, her aunt
who lives in Tokyo and said on her last visit that really, these small town
people are so behind, there are plenty of girls in the city like Haruka. It has
been years since then, probably because Haruka’s mother took that as an insult,
but it stuck with Haruka.

Is it just this place?

Is there somewhere that
would feel right?

Yes, says a voice inside her, quiet but as strong as the sea.

Haruka packs right then
and there. There isn’t much to take— a pair of pajamas, the one pair of pants
left in her closet, the souvenir toy car from the first race her father took
her to. She makes herself include a photo of her and Yuko and Kaori, because
maybe someday, they’ll feel right again. The contents of her piggy bank are
dismal, but it should be enough for a bus ticket and some food. Hopefully her
aunt in Tokyo will want a roommate for a little while. Hopefully, the city will
be different.

Haruka is twelve, and she
is running.