Work Text:
Futaba Sakura is staring in the mirror.
And it is not an enjoyable experience.
Everything one could criticize about a body, Futaba is finding.
For a while now (and by a while, that means a couple months, and by couple months, that means years) Futaba has been secretly updating. Sort of like a shadow drop for a video game, like a wordless edit for a story, a random revision for a manga. The patch notes to a life that didn’t start until recently.
Futaba is trans – F utaba is a boy – and that's what he’s been feeling since… forever, now (at least since he was old enough to realize his skin didn’t feel like his own). A hidden secret he feels terrified saying out loud; especially to Sojiro, especially to the rest of the Phantom Thieves, and especially to himself.
And he’s staring into the mirror.
And it is not an enjoyable experience.
It’s a completely miserable one.
(He starts constantly nitpicking his body – chest is too feminine, hair is too unmanly, legs are too thin and girly. Futaba is smart enough to know that there isn’t a masculine ideal, and it’s childish to try and obtain something that’s impossible. But Futaba’s mind isn’t logical when it’s like this.)
There’s an urge to grab a knife and lop all of his hair off. A nice, short length – like how Ryuji has his. But Futaba doesn’t have a knife, and he has a lingering feeling that he’ll just look like a clown with short hair.
He flops onto his bed – pathetically. Because he feels pathetic, he can be an expert hacker and a badass Phantom Thieves but he can’t even tell his friends or his dad how he feels. About what he’d rather be referred to. About how he wants to be treated. About how much he hates being in his own skin. And how miserable he feels lying to everyone like this.
Futaba now realizes he’s shaking, almost shivering, and he makes an executive decision to try and go to bed.