Chapter Text
It was another day at the hideout, and another day where Kel felt weird about himself. In those moments of weirdness, he always looked toward Mari.
Kel looked at Mari with a sense of admiration. Well, everyone admired Mari - who wouldn’t? But for him, it was something… different. He couldn’t place the feeling exactly, but he felt a sort of yearning when he looked at Mari. It wasn’t like how Hero yearned for her, it was…
“Kel? Do you need something?”
Mari’s question broke him out of his haze. Everyone was playing at the hideout and while Hero was supervising Sunny, Aubrey and Basil, Kel found himself looking at Mari.
“…ah, it’s nothing!” He excused.
Mari smiled, tilting her head. “Oh come on Kel, I can read you like an open book! There’s something on your mind, right?”
Kel looked at her, thinking…
“You look very pretty today!” He complimented.
She placed her hand on her cheek, blushing. “Aw, thanks Kel, but you know…” She glanced over at Hero, who was currently running from Basil, who found a neat spider on a stick. She smirked, watching him freak out as Aubrey and Sunny tried to calm him down. “You shouldn’t let Hero hear that. He might prefer dealing with the spiders over you complimenting me.”
“…ehhh, I doubt it.”
They shared a laugh at that, but there was still something on Kel’s mind.
“…Hey Mari?”
“Hm?”
In a rare moment, he stopped to think about what to say.
He finally gathered the courage to ask: “…do you think I can be pretty too? …not like in the Aubrey way, but like, in the you way.”
Mari was caught off-guard by that question. “Well, um… yes, you can be pretty if you want! You shouldn’t let anyone stop you! I mean, Basil isn’t “manly” - but he’s happy!”
“Yeah you’re right, but, um…” he scratched his head. “I don’t mean it in like the Basil way… um… ugh, sorry, I don’t know what I mean!”
She smiled gently patting him on the shoulder. “Well, you’ll figure something out eventually. Now come on, your brother needs a little help, don’t you think?”
The next day, Kel still felt troubled, so he went over to see Mari. Normally, he’d ask his brother for help on things, but he felt that he wouldn’t be much help here.
Mari was the only one home when she answered the door. “Oh, hello Kel! If you’re looking for Sunny, he’s over at Basil’s!”
“Yeah, I know…” Kel scratched his arm sheepishly. “Hey, remember when we were talking at the hideout yesterday?”
“Yep! Still on your mind?”
“Well…” he gazed away from her.
“Kel?”
“I… I was wondering…” he gulped. He never felt this nervous about anything. “Do you have… old clothes I can try?”
He looked back at Mari. Her expression was hard to read. Was it an expression of judgement? He couldn’t tell.
But finally, Mari’s expression was replaced by a welcoming smile. “Why don’t you ask Aubrey? I’d have to dig in the storage for my old clothes, but I’m sure her stuff can fit you, easy.”
Kel stuck out his tongue. “Bleh! Her clothes are probably covered in cooties!”
Mari couldn’t help but laugh. “Cooties!? Come on, you’re 11, Kel! Cooties aren’t real! And besides, wouldn’t I have cooties, too?”
Kel crossed his arms, refusing to admit that she was right. “That’s different.”
She playfully rolled her eyes. “Sure, sure. Well, how about you come in and help me look?”
Kel felt a bit giddy. “Alright, sounds fair!”
“Ooh, that feels like a perfect fit on you, Kel!” Mari complimented.
For about the past half hour, Kel had been delving in and out of the storage room while Mari stood outside, modeling clothes for her. There was an old dusty mirror inside for Kel to judge himself with, but he needed a second opinion. A girl’s expertise.
He had been trying to figure out a style of girl clothing he liked. Skirts and dresses? Not his thing. Mari’s old formal clothes? Nice fit, but he jived with it as much as he did men’s formal clothes (as in, not really). However, he felt right at home with the clothes Mari used for exercising, and right now he was rocking the clothes she used to have for middle school softball.
“It feels perfect!” said Kel, proudly flexing.
“Yeah, being a sporty girl is a perfect look for you,” Mari mused.
Kel paused, chuckling nervously. “Girl? Nah, I’m not a girl, I just wanted to see how it was like to dress up as one.”
Mari tilted her head. “Hmmm, are you sure about that?”
“Yeah! I mean, it’s not as if I can just become a girl, right?”
Mari caught that Kel’s voice wavered a bit.
She had some suspicions on what was going on from a social studies class, but she didn’t want to push Kel on it. This would be a decision solely up to Kel.
But, maybe a little encouragement to explore more would help. “You know, you remind me a bit of Captain Spaceboy.”
“Captain Spaceboy?” Kel wracked his thoughts on the Captain Spaceboy comic books, which he studied way more than actual homework. A memory came to mind: a comic where he was offered a dress, but he vehemently rejected it. “Eh? I dunno what you’re talking about, he hates that stuff!”
“Well… you’ll have to watch the original Japanese series to see what I mean.” She watched a bunch on an overseas trip, and she saw a vision of the character that her friends have not seen.
“No fair, I don’t have Japanese relatives to go to to watch tv with…”
It was highly unlikely that Hobbeez would stock the original Japanese Spaceboy material, either. It was still a small locally owned hobby store in a somewhat conservative town. Mari wasn’t sure if there was a feasible way for Kel to see the vision she saw.
However, she at least left the idea of it hanging, for Kel to explore on his own if he ever got the chance. “But well, if you ever want to try clothes on again, I’ll be here to help.”
“Aw yeah!” Kel leaned forward and gave Mari a big hug. “Thank you so much, Mari!”
Mari really was the big sister she never had. Too bad she’s gone, now.
It was years since the days where Kel regularly snuck off to do girl things with Mari and about two years since she hung herself. Kel tried to face life with optimism, but she’s had to deal with a lot of things.
For one, there was Hero’s bout of depression. She still thinks about the day he yelled at her, where their parents comforted him when she was the victim. But things were getting better now. Hero was finishing up with high school and trying to adjust to a new normal.
Secondly, the friend group fell apart in light of Mari’s death. Basil became reclusive, and Sunny even moreso. Aubrey was for whatever reason angry at Basil and kept herself away from everyone else. Kel didn’t know what to do besides giving everyone else their own space.
And third, of course, Kel decided that she was a girl.
Kel grappled with feelings for some time, but it got worse when Mari was no longer around to provide her an outlet to explore herself. It got so bad that Kel decided to go to the public library of her own volition.
But sometimes, being a nerd paid off. She had been looking for things about girls, shrugging off prying eyes by saying she was trying to get a girlfriend. In her search, she learned what being transgender is, and she dug deeper into both the books and herself.
And in one of those books, she saw something that awoke a years old memory. “…an example of a transgender character in popular culture is the original Japanese iteration of Captain Spaceboy, by the mangaka (Japanese comic artist) Clover & Sealife. Due to concerns about possible overseas controversies, localizers erased the transgender part of his identity…”
Kel felt her eyes bug out when she read that. Stuff about Captain Spaceboy she didn’t know? Was this the stuff Mari was talking about?
So she hopped on the library computer for further research, looking at fan sites - and more information on being transgender while she was at it. And it was all true. Her favorite character was a trans man. Localizers had removed most allusions to it, and various scenes of him being shirtless was edited to remove the scars.
Suddenly, Spaceboy rejecting the dress made sense.
Suddenly, her wanting to try on a dress made sense.
And so she thought, “If Captain Spaceboy can choose to be a boy, I can choose to be a girl.”
And so, Kel is a girl. “Did Mari know that?” she found herself asking sometimes.
…She wished that Mari was around to properly show her how to be a girl. Kel felt that she could be honest with her.
In thinking that, she thought, “if I can be honest with her, I could be honest with Hero.”
Yet, she found it hard to tell him.
Hero was only going to be around for a few more weeks before he was going to go to college. Kel felt that if she was going to come out, it’d have to be to Hero, even with that brief period of unrest.
“Kel?” said Hero.
Ah, there she was again, spacing out thinking about girl stuff while staring at someone.
“Oh, hey Hero.”
“Do you need something?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“…ah, it’s nothi…”
Kel caught herself.
She needed to do this eventually.
She needed to say it eventually.
It was now or never.
“Actually, can I talk to you about something important?” she asked.
Hero sat down on his side of the room, a look of concern on his face. “Sure, what is it? Is it a school thing?”
Kel shook her head. “No.”
Hero rested his chin in his hand, sincerely trying to think this through. Kel had seemed serious, which meant that this had to be serious… “Did you break something?”
“What? No!”
Hero relaxed. “Then what is it?”
“I… I… I’m…”
Kel stammered. She didn’t know how to get it out.
But something like recognition flashed across Hero’s face. That recognition turned into a bright smile. “A girl?”
“I’m a… huh?”
Hero laughed. “Come on, do you think I haven’t noticed the signs?”
Kel nervously scratched her arm, looking away. “Um, what signs?”
“Well, for one thing, I found your girl clothes. Kel, if you wanted to keep it a secret, you shouldn’t have gotten me to clean up your side of the room.”
Even with Mari gone, Kel still wanted to try on women’s clothes, even if she had no one else to judge. She did a little shopping at the cheap second-hand store for clothes, and she hid them under her dirty pile of boy clothes.
She completely forgot to move them when she won a bet with Hero to get him to do her chores, come to think of it. She just thought that she misplaced her clothes and didn’t think about it.
Kel laughed sheepishly. “Um… where are those clothes now?”
“I stashed them in a briefcase under your bed.”
Kel immediately scrambled to the floor, reaching her hand out underneath her bed. She pulled out said briefcase, an old one of their dad’s and eagerly opened it up. Lo and behold, all her secret clothes were there.
She couldn’t help but feel teary-eyed, especially as Hero got behind her and patted her shoulder encouragingly. She really thought that she could only trust Mari for something like this, but the fact that her brother found out her secret and happily kept it…
Kel turned away from the briefcase and pulled Hero down into a hug. “Herooo, thank you!”
Hero returned the hug, chucking a bit. “Anything for my little sister.”
A rush of joy filled Kel at those words. “Aww, I think I’d prefer being called sis, but thank you!”
They just spent a moment hugging it out, basking in the honest truth.
“…how else could you tell?” she asked.
Hero mulled it over. “I overhear you practice a higher pitched voice sometimes… oh right, and that time I saw you looking at mom’s magazine in the living room once… I don’t think you get that “just looking at the ads” is a good cover.”
Kel scoffed. “I was looking at the ads!”
“For women's products?”
“….yeeeah.”
“And, well…” Hero smirked. “When I heard rumors that you were actually going to the library, I just had to know what kind of stuff you were looking at.”
When he put on the charm to the librarian to learn what Kel was checking out, he initially assumed that Kel was getting an interest in girls… but everything started stacking, little by little.
“I’m proud of you, though. It’s great that you figured yourself out and found the strength to tell me.” Hero said.
Kel scoffed. “Well, you ruined the surprise by being all smart and stuff.”
Though she said that, she was glad that it took the pressure off her a bit. She was glad that Hero knew…
…but her face started to drop. If she wanted to happily live her life the way she wants to, other people would have to know.
Hero was a good first step, but now…
“Hero…” Kel’s voice wavered. “…Do mom and dad know about me?”
Hero thought on a bit before sighing. “I don’t know.”
“…”
Hero smiled encouragingly. “Do you want me to tell them for you? I mean, I know that you feel intimidated by them in general, especially ever since…”
Hero paused. The guilt of yelling at his sister’s sincere attempt at lifting him out of his bout of depression still hung over.
Kel considered it a bit. “…yes please.”
Hero nodded, turning away from her to go confront their parents.
“Wait, Hero!” As for Kel, fear hung over her - the consequences of being out. “Do you know… what I could do if they don’t accept me?”
Hero frowned. He expected that their parents would be accepting, but that was an expectation tinged by the fact that he was already the preferred sibling…
An idea came to him. “…Maybe you could move in with me?”
“What? Aren’t you moving into a dorm?”
“I’ll look for a small apartment,” Hero casually said as if this was more easily done than said. But he didn’t want to leave his sister in a bad home. He already felt that he let down the girl he loved, and he didn’t want to let down the girl that’s family.
“Hero…”
“I’ll be right back.”
Hero closed the door of their room behind him.
After several seconds, Kel could hear muffled talking from downstairs. After the wave of euphoria from talking with Hero, that was all replaced with anxiety. What were they saying? What were their parents thinking? She didn’t hear any shouting or anything, but maybe their parents were being angry in a subdued kind of way.
She was grateful that Hero packed all of her preferred clothes away in a convenient briefcase. If she needed to run…
That thought was interrupted by three sets of footsteps walking upstairs.
Hero walked in with a sheepish expression - a good sign? Their dad had an awkward smile - but the guy was always smiling, so Kel couldn’t tell how he actually felt. As for their mother, she had a small frown…
Their mother walked over to the briefcase, looking down at its contents. She shook her head and looked straight at her.
“Sweetie… you should have told me. I could get you some good clothes.” She shot a look of disdain at the briefcase. “You could get much prettier clothes than these!”
On one hand, Kel was delighted that she seemed accepting of her. On the other hand, she hated that she didn’t accept her style of clothes. “Mom, that’s the kind of stuff I like!”
Before they could launch into some argument about clothes, Kel felt a heavy hand grasp on her shoulder. Dad.
His smile was gone, a solemn look on his face. “Kel….
…
Do they have scholarships for women’s sports?”
The mom looked at him in disbelief while Hero fought back the urge to laugh. “Honey!”
Dad shrugged. “You know our daughter’s grades.” Mom rolled her eyes to that, but she had a clear smile on her face.
Kel felt a bit outraged at getting called out like this, but… “Daughter? Me?”
“Who else am I talking about?”
Kel tried to say something, but all that came out were stammers.
Hero walked up, all members of the family now crowded together in her name. “We all love and accept you. We’re all here for you,” he said.
“Y-you guys…!”
Kel did her best to wrap her family around in her arms, crying. She felt happy. She felt safe. She felt free…
Then, Hero interrupted. “Hey, actually… what name do you want to go by?”
Kel pulled out of the hug.
She honestly didn’t think about it.
In her library research, she learned that people usually pick a new name to fit who they are when they transition, with work needing to be put into replacing the old one in greater society.
But the truth of the matter was, she was happy with the name “Kel.” She balked at being called a boy, yes, but Kel still felt just right to her. Especially if you could consider Kel to be a nickname for something greater.
An idea popped into her head. “Hey, you know how we all call you Hero, right?”
“Yeah?” Hero answered. Of course, his actual name was Henry, but their parents were usually the only ones to call him that. Hero was a bit of a preferred name.
“I… I think I’d still like to be called Kel, but as a nickname like Hero’s!” She exclaimed. “As for my name… I want my real name to be Kelly!”
“Kelly…” their mom rolled it around in her mouth. “That’s a very nice name for you!”
“Hopefully it’d be easy to just add two letters on all your documents.” their dad joked.
“Kelly, huh? I bet Mari would have thought that name’s great, too…” Hero mused.
Kelly.
Kelly.
Kelly.
Kelly...
She echoed that name in her head as she went back to hugging her family.
It all felt just right.