One time, Riku had experienced rejection because of his hobby. We’d been in our first year of junior high; the beginning of puberty had naturally put some distance between us, and we didn’t talk as much. We still had a good time together when our families went out, but we basically avoided each other at school.
At that point, Riku was shorter than me, and had long hair for a boy. He was pale and slender, and his voice hadn’t yet started to change. If he’d worn a skirt, he probably would’ve been mistaken for a girl.
The incident occurred while we were in a group with a girl who’d gone to a different elementary school than we had.
“Is it true you wore skirts in elementary, Riku-kun?” she asked almost menacingly.
It was true. Back then, Riku had worn girls’ clothing like it was the most normal thing in the world. He came to class in pants, but always wanted to wear my skirts, so I often swapped bottoms with him after school.
“Yeah,” Riku responded truthfully to the girl questioning him with the brusqueness of an interrogator. He looked a little confused, as if he was thinking, Why would you even ask me that?
The girl looked repulsed by his answer. Furrowing her brow and turning up her nose, she replied with a vehement “That’s gross!”
She spoke so emphatically that droplets of spit flew from her mouth. All Riku could do was stare in stunned shock at her display of unfeigned disgust.
That single phrase triggered the whole class to gang up on him.
“Riku’s got a bunch of dolls in his room. It looks like a girl’s!”
“Riku’s always played more with girls than boys!”
“I thought he just wore those skirts as a joke, but I guess not.”
“The keychain on his bag is weird, and his pencil case is so babyish.”
And even, “Don’t talk to Riku, or you might turn gay!”
The mean comments rolled in one after another.
Fortunately, this teasing didn’t last long. As puberty kicked in, Riku grew taller, and his voice deepened. He cut his hair, took the keychain off his bag, and made sure everything in his pencil case was nondescript, with no interesting colors or patterns.
Puberty helped, but Riku poured blood, sweat, and tears into changing himself. He gave me his beloved keychain, and somehow his strawberry-scented erasers ended up in my pencil case. The teddy bear he slept with every night found a new home in my room. He forced himself to walk and talk like the other boys. Eventually, his hard work paid off—he achieved the natural roughness typical of his peers.
We’d been distant for a while, but around that point, we started getting close again. He brought all his keepsakes over to my house, and it was surprising how cute and girly my room became, almost like he’d copied and pasted his room on top of mine.
That was why he came over every day. He knew I wouldn’t say a word about him prancing around in skirts and the like, so he only ever wore them in front of me. At some point, he started dressing me as well. He learned to apply makeup and cultivated more and better techniques, pushing his femininity to new heights.
I had no issues with Riku’s interest in cross-dressing. That incident in junior high had occurred at a time when the girls were just starting to get their periods, and they were extremely sensitive when it came to topics like boys or sex. By our third year of junior high, when my period finally came, our classmates were no longer scrutinizing Riku, and spending time with him felt as natural as breathing.
More than anything, I felt a sense of superiority about being someone special to him. I’d harbored feelings for Riku for a long time; as a little girl, my dream was to one day be his bride. As months and years passed, I simply came to accept the strange turn our relationship had taken.