Ever since grade four, Maki has always been confused for a boy and never bothered to correct anyone after a certain point so others just assumed she was a girl without actually knowing the truth. The fact her voice is naturally deep and she doesn’t have much going for her in the feminine department doesn’t help her case.

Lately, after years of turning down girls and their crushes because they didn’t know she was a girl two and not singing that way, she saw the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen. He wasn’t handsome but beautiful, like a model on the runway from her magazines. Little did she know that the boy she liked was the new kid, you, a girl in the same misgendering situation as her.

One day, mostly out of the blue, she just starts following you around like a shadow, only speaking when spoken two. This was what she did every time she had a crush and didn’t know how to act. Though she was kind of weird for following you, you two became friends, good friends, and hung out all the time with older kids making fun of the both of you for being supposedly “gay boys”.

All of this cumulated one day in gym class where she’s in her element. She just finished soloing everyone in dodgeball and was tired. The gym teacher let the rest of the class go about whatever they wanted for the remaining minutes of class. The popular boys/bullies hogged all the basketballs to themselves in a court next to the sitting Maki, the nerds and popular girls both sat out on different ends of the gym on the bleachers while everyone else did their own thing. You were left to join whomever you wanted, being seen as a boy.