The bus struggled and huffed along the coast road like an old man climbing a long flight of stairs. I was the only passenger as I sat huddled in my jacket, staring out toward the Sea of Japan. White-capped waves broke along the shore, hammering down upon the stones crushing them slowly into sand while beyond the thrashing waves the sea roiled black and formless, like a beast from a nightmare threatening to devour everything in its sullen maw.

I shuddered, a shock of fear inexplicably rushing up my spine. I didn’t care for the inky blackness of the sea, it was too dark, too deep, too frightening. Maybe it was some sort of familial trauma from hearing grim tales of my great, great grandfather going down with Ayanami in 1942. Perhaps some remnants of horror as the child me pictured the Demon of Solomon, ablaze, slipping beneath these same squid ink black waves half an ocean away that was the genesis of my fear. I had nearly drowned in swimming class when I was young, my leg cramping up as I surged and flailed impotently in the deep end of the pool, maybe that was the beginning of it. Whatever it was, the dark ocean frightened me in a deep and primordial way.

The heater in the bus gave out an occasional gasp of hot hair but not nearly enough to warm the empty interior and I pulled my jacket closer to my skin to ward against the cold. I had heard nothing from Aria. No texts, no calls, only the deafening cacophony of silence. Had I screwed up that badly? Were we already over? If so, with the way news always managed to avoid the affected party, I imagined I’d be the last to know. I’d read somewhere only 2% of relationships between high school students lasted. I imagine that same sex couples’ percentages were significantly lower, most likely dipping into the realm of getting hit by lightning.

Of course, the hopeless optimist part of my brain reasoned, the chances of us meeting were so staggeringly small as to be similar to that of getting hit by a meteorite. That optimistic bit was being forced into a higher gear than it had ever bothered running at in an attempt to drag me out of my misery. Honestly, sitting hunched over in my seat as the bus staggered around a hill, I would kind of prefer getting hit by the meteor if this is the way being in a relationship felt.

I couldn’t be that attached to her, I thought fiercely. We’d only been dating for a month. Ships that pass in the night and all. If it was over, it was over. My jaw clenched. I had fallen into a pit of melodramatic fatalist listlessness because she hadn’t called me in a day. What kind of poison got injected into your veins when something as stupid and insignificant as not getting a text or phone call could tear you up that badly? What had people done before phones? That must have been absolute horror.

“Miss?” The bus driver’s voice cut through my reverie, and I blinked, looking up. “It’s the end of the line, Miss. Your stop.”

“I’m sorry,” I yelped, gathering my things quickly and stumbling out of the bus, the awkward angle I was dragging my backpack causing it to bump against each seat and swing wildly as I made my way out of the bus and into the night.

If the bus was cold the wind blowing off the water was positively glacial. Fortunately, our school didn’t have a uniform code. I couldn’t imagine the horror of having to wear a skirt in weather like this. I’d imagine the fear of losing a leg to frostbite was very real. I hiked my backpack onto my shoulder and trudged away from the faintly flickering light of the bus stop onto the street leading to my house. Clouds raced across the face of the almost full moon which gave more than enough light to see by, even without the streetlights casting faintly orange pools of light.

Well, I decided, I’m not going to let it bother me. I had bigger issues than one butt-hurt American anyway. Jun was a pain in my ass and had been for years but now that he was back the dynamic in the house would shift once more. More sobbing girls running through the house. More half naked high schoolers trying to use the bathroom. In short, more Casanova Jun.

There were many different Juns I’d interacted with over the years. There was the Jun I first came to know who I emulated. The Jun who worked hard at martial arts and inspired me to do the same. Then there was the monster Jun which the diligent one morphed into who lashed out at everything and everyone, especially me. Then he morphed once again into studied disinterest Jun who was far too cool to interact with people at all, once again especially me.

Studied disinterest Jun gave way rather quickly into wannabe American Jun who collected magazines filled with car photos and called everyone “babe” for some indiscernible reason. Americanized Jun quickly morphed into his final form like in an anime. Casanova Jun. Casanova Jun decided he was God’s gift to all women, including for the longest two months of my life, me.

It was more than awkward, descending to the point where it was hovering on the border of being criminal. I would wake at night with Jun hovering over my bed with his hands on or sometimes even inside my blankets or see his shadow outside the door when I was taking a bath. He would grab my chin and try to pull my face in to kiss him. I would come back from a beauty pageant to have Jun ask me what it was like whoring myself. I tried to talk to my parents and the basic gist of the conversation seemed to be that I was ‘antagonizing’ him and needed to stop.

The end of any chance at a decent relationship Jun and I could have had and the subsequent death of my faith in my parents happened on a lazy Sunday morning when I was 11. I came out of my room to get some breakfast; my parents having gone to town to buy some teaching supplies my father needed. Jun and three of his friends were laughing and eating in the living room, watching some porn video one of them had gotten hold of. The catcalls started immediately when I emerged.

“Nice shorts, Cumsumi,” One of the older boys called, followed by snickers from Jun and the others.

“Seriously, your sister’s got a nice ass, Jun,” another said, loud enough to make sure I heard. Say something, Jun, I thought to myself. Please say something and stand up for me. Please prove I’m wrong about you.

“Shame about those itty-bitty titties,” the third member of Jun’s entourage lamented. “But it’s not a deal breaker for me.”

“She’s got good nipples. Must be all that posing she does for her beauty pageants. Makes ‘em nice and puffy,” Jun finally weighed in and what remained of the love and respect I once held for my big brother shattered like glass and fell to pieces in the bottom of my heart.

“Want to give us a hint of what those men get after your beauty thing, Cumsumi?” The second boy, a toad with dyed red hair named Hiro leered at me.

“Yeah, Cumsumi,” the first boy who’d coined my new nickname which, admittedly, I did not understand, giggled as the four of them stood and began to make their way toward me. “Give us a taste.” He licked his lips disgustingly.

“Leave me alone,” I warned them, my eyes stabbing at the monster who had once been my brother.

“Or what, Cumsumi?” Hiro mocked me. “Gonna call mommy?”

One part of me wanted to run and escape back to the sanctuary of my room. However, a new part of me began to emerge as well. A part filled with indignation and rage. A part afraid of what would happen to Mio, even if I did manage to escape. A part that now hated the creature who had once been my brother. That part was filled with a white-hot rage, and I felt the muscles tense in my legs and belly as that part roared to life and all thoughts of fleeing were pushed aside. All right, I thought angrily, eyes narrowing to slits; if you want a taste, I’ll give you a whole three course meal.

Hiro made the mistake of getting too close to me first. I rocked backward like a coiled spring, my form perfect from 6 years of karate and my foot lanced outward, catching Hiro in the groin. He doubled over immediately, and I uncoiled in a tight arc, my foot crashing into the side of his head and sending him to the floor in a heap.

Jun was so surprised he couldn’t react before I’d swept his legs, bringing him to the ground. A second later my elbow came down on his face and his nose shattered. I was up immediately and back into my stance, daring the other two to move in. They never did. My parents walked through the door and all hell broke loose.

It must have been quite the sight; me in a pair of shorts, my brother’s blood streaking my Hello Kitty! tank top. Jun lay writhing on the ground covering his destroyed nose with his hands blood seeping from between his fingers. Hiro lay unconscious on his side a short distance away while the last two stared in shock and fear. I tried to state my case, but it was already too late.

All of them, of course, made it out to be my fault and my parents came down on their side. I was the aggressor, they were doing nothing more than innocently playing with me, while I had lashed out. I was sent to therapy to deal with my anger issues. Jun had to get surgery to repair the wreck I’d made of his face, and I was labeled a “problem child.” Shortly after, I refused to participate in any more pageants and what was left of my family and I’s relationship eroded to what it was now. An armistice at best.

My mother had made her choice crystal clear, which meant I had my own choice to make. I could either toe the line and behave and try to play nice, or I could rail against the machine and see how tense things got. Jun had already shown in the short time he’d been back that he was not going to be content to sit in his room. He was feeling confident enough there would be no repercussions for his college troubles and decided he was going to treat the house as his own kingdom and us all, especially me, as his subject.

Jun had stopped going to Karate when he was 10. I still practiced three times a week. If push came to shove, he stood no chance. If he did choose to shove, I’d simply have to remind him that all the hard work his plastic surgeon had done on his nose could be undone quickly.

I had read quite a few stories and articles and, of course, manga, and it seemed to me like every author wanted to explain away being a lesbian as attributable to some childhood trauma by a male. It was as if they had to be lesbians because of something some man did to them. And, perhaps I was wrong, but the underlying inference was that if the “right” man came along they could get over their unnatural proclivity and be a normal member of society once again.

Even before Jun and his friends got their comeuppance on a blustery Sunday morning, I had no interest in men, whether in real life or in the movies or anime I watched. Long before Jun decided he was a lover for the ages and had crept into my room on many nights to do…whatever he thought he was doing; I had no desire to be a mother or wife, or princess tied to some half-wit prince. I was attracted to women because I was attracted to women, that was the end of it for me. The notion of some psychiatrist trying to analyze why I “thought” I was attracted to women and concluding it was Jun’s fault made me sicker to my stomach than Jun himself did.

Jun was a player, a fool and possibly more and acted like a spoiled child, but his actions had no bearing on my sexual disposition. My stomach dropped as I thought about the lies I’d told (or more to the point, tried to tell) Komari earlier. Was this how it was always going to be? Was I going to be forced to lie all the time? Forced to hide in the shadows while pretending to be disgusted by what I was? What, I reminded myself, not who. Who I was hadn’t changed. I was still the same Kasumi Fujimoto I’d always been. I was just attracted to women. I glanced up slightly, the wind making my eyes water and scowled as Mizuki’s house hove into view.

She was an entirely different issue. I’m not sure what she’d eaten or drank but she was changing. Quickly. We had been growing distant for a few years, I supposed. She fell into her world of one-sided crushes and then Yuto whereas I avoided that whole situation like the plague. Somewhere along the line we’d drifted away from each other. She was still Mizuki but had become some new variant, like a mutating virus. She was growing more traditional, more rigid in her views and less accepting of alternate points. She was becoming, in short, my mother. I shook my head sadly.

I would have liked to have blamed Yuto. I mean, he was an easy target. He was plainly a moron, which was precisely why it was hard to blame him for anything. I seriously doubted he had the intellect to wield whatever sliver of influence he had to convince anyone of anything. If it wasn’t him, then what was it? Her family? The town? The culture? The world itself? Or maybe, much like how I liked girls, maybe she was simply a slave to her instincts and her instincts told her to be a stick in the mud old bitty at the age of 16. At this rate, by the time she turned 30 she’d be weathered and bent and beating people on the street with her purse for being deviants.

I was nearly to Mizuki’s house when my phone began to ring. I pulled it from my pocket with nearly frozen fingers and saw Aria’s number flash on the screen. A mix of fear and relief washed over me. Had she finally gotten around to telling me it was over? My jaw clenched tightly, and my heart began to thud ominously in my chest. I exhaled deeply to try to calm myself before pressing the accept button.