Yuri Worlds
[51] Enter
Yuka didn’t have the show with her, but it was an easy matter for Bianka to poke around some questionable websites and find exactly what they needed. Using Yuka’s phone, they were able to stream the episodes to the television in their suite. Misaki had no idea what to expect.
The show had all the elements of a sci-fi program from the 1960s. It utilized limited sets, a model- and matte-painting-fueled aesthetic, and lingering camera angles. Misaki‘s internal confusion came from the fact that this wasn’t 1960s animation as she knew it back home. Even the 1940s Fleischer Studios stuff didn’t quite apply. This was a world of living animation, and seeing it replicate this style in media was a struggle for her brain to parse. Logically, her mind told her it had to be rotoscoped or actually made much later. But it wasn’t. Getting over that uncanny part was challenging.
Then, the roles and stories were adapted by an all-girl world. This wasn’t just someone’s fan-fictional iteration of the short-lived animated series. Miss Kirk exuded the same presence as the live-action work she knew. The performance had all the same dramatic quirks. It didn’t take her long to witness how naturally shirtless certain characters were allowed to be. No wonder nudity wasn’t such a hangup. The use of heels, nylons, and copious miniskirts also brought on confusion. She had to remember that this wasn’t a parody.
Even articulating her thoughts to appease Yuka’s curiosity was a hopeless struggle of vague statements and uncertain muttering. Misaki found herself essentially in her mother’s shoes. The character had genuine sex appeal, which her Franklin perspective could understand. Her initial judgment that this series seemed made by and for lesbians felt embarrassingly shallow. Lesbian didn’t even exist here. It implied a certain alternative aesthetic and androgynous perspective. This existed as its own thing. No comparable translation.
And even trying to fit the cultural puzzle pieces into the shapes she understood from female-focused anime didn’t work. Even those works back home came from a place of contrast, where girls were presented traditionally or irreverently. Soft, caring, boisterous, private, emotive, sincere, confident, and sharp. She was also sure her perspective was off the mark. The concept of yuri clearly applied through the evident sexual tension in the scenes. At the same time, the story had a wide depth of goals in mind. Fitting all this into any specific framework of understanding felt functionally impossible. This was a classic drama from a world she only faintly comprehended. Don’t bother trying to make sense of it; just enjoy it.
And the animated human actors definitely did their job. The Captain didn’t carry anything close to the same weight of command as Namiko. Misaki amused herself with that analogy and simultaneously apologized for slipping her dear friend into farcical parlance, although she knew Namiko would’ve been just as entertained. But Kirk certainly pushed forth a commanding, Ayame-like presence. In addition, she enjoyed the Captain’s legs. Yuka chimed in with appreciation for the actress’s face and the curve of her hips. With delight, she compared some of the best qualities of the fictional character to her real girlfriend, seated comfortably close to her. They snuggled up even closer.
Getting over the non-parody of Spock was an even more challenging prospect for Misaki. The flat, precise, and thoroughly logical hairstyle of the character, with her nimble eyebrow occasionally raised, contained no remix or reference. It was just the sincere original, but in a drastically different form from anything Misaki had ever seen. This character’s outfits naturally trended towards reservation. Rigid, narrow black tube skirts, which she moved within comfortably. The lines of her body were precisely controlled. A firm, visual translation of the character’s psychological qualities. She wasn’t above wearing a striking miniskirt, even though her presence made it feel much more clinical than the Captain’s bold shape.
Not to be forgotten, the third part of the trio fit firmly into what Misaki saw as the tsundere mold. Her short and tightly framed mop of hair reminded Misaki of her own look. The woman’s blushing, fuming, and frustrated face carried the same glowing sheen as the original in all its remastered, high-definition glory. The doctor’s outfit wove its way between cool blue nurse’s scrubs and an icy white coat.
The rest of the cast fluttered through the picture with lighter presences in the first episode. The ladies at the helm occasionally looked familiar. The head engineer had on overalls and a grungy aesthetic, along with lines of exhaustion as she crawled through tight spaces. When it came to characters already portrayed by women, from her perspective, Misaki noticed the scenes felt different. Certain flirtatious elements remained and were occasionally one-sided, but they all meshed together in new ways. Words again failed at translating it.
Glumly, Yuka pointed out an item of shame. The communications officer, when the program originally aired in this country, often had her scenes reduced or cut all together if they didn’t interfere with the main plot. The government pushed programs of cultural hegemony in that era, and the color of the actress’s skin was the key point of contention. Misaki acknowledged with melancholy that her home universe didn’t fare much better when it came to censorship in that era.
Stepping back from the serious elements and contexts, it was fun to observe and detail the obvious sexual charge between the leads. The program originally bombed when it was first broadcast locally, Yuka noted. While the characters clearly flirted with one another, viewers wanted to see real hookups by the end of the show. When that didn’t happen, they voiced their discontent. They both found that silly, and Yuka was especially glad that in the time since, the series survived, thrived, and expanded, with sometimes questionable quality but depth beyond expectations.
Their watch party set-up included their rollout futons practically merged together into one plush entity with the accompaniment of every pillow they could reasonably snag without getting in trouble, along with blankets to augment the comfort. Another peculiarity was that the program was dubbed from its original language into what was spoken here. Whatever translation capabilities she had dealt with it well enough.
Spock, with tense seriousness to rival anything Haruka could throw out, glumly wanted to resign her position when events seemingly led to the captain’s death. The preceding sequence, where her alien blood required a mating ritual more physical than spiritual, felt like it crossed a content threshold when she stalked around the ship half-naked and covered in crazed sweat.
The enthusiastic kisses and embraces she gave the captain echoed in residual feelings. During this ending sequence, the captain made a miraculous reappearance among the living thanks to an intervention from the doctor. An out-of-character smile and adamant embrace with a relieved kiss escaped her controlled façade before she reined it back in and offered a logical explanation and apology for her behavior, claiming she was still under the influence of her alien biological cycle. Some sly, smirking references to other cycles of a biological nature were made.
Having Yuka to chat with and riff on the silliest, most dated bits made the entire experience worth it, and Misaki communicated this in no uncertain terms.
Quietly, and with warm delight spreading across her face, Yuka hunched down with her head dipped, hiding her blush as she brushed her hair back. They squeezed even closer. The next episode involved some little girl godling bleeding off her abilities and accidentally affecting an entire world, but their focus soon drifted from the program to one another.
They kissed, softly at first, then needily and insistently for one another. Whatever hesitancy fell away, and their yearning touches sought out all the tender, yielding spaces between them. Their warm arms and legs linked and laced like the forest of cables behind Gal Hotner’s streaming setup. Misaki didn’t flinch when Yuka embraced the still-sore spots, around her chest and concealed beneath her cheek. Yuka endeavored to respond in kind, though her leg, showing no sign of injury or illness, still moved as though something within her worried about getting hurt again. That cautious instinct soon relaxed, and she wrapped herself around her lovely girlfriend.
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Some clothes came off while others remained, but they felt even more revealed to one another than when they were naked in the bath. With a heady realization, Misaki slipped past some invisible veil of physical connection and actually encountered what she could only describe as the presence of Yuka‘s soul gently ebbing and flowing against her like a great, humming ocean tide. Was this similar to what Ayame ran into when doing her thing? She didn’t have the faintest idea.
The presence that buzzed against her own felt whisper gentle but also dark and looming, like her sense of the sea. A puppy and a snake? More than anything else, she was overwhelmed by a striking melancholy. It was like being adrift in a storm and barely holding your head above the black waters. A large, black figure held steady in the distance. She thought of a sense like a guard dog, a devoted protector making sure the storm didn’t get out of line. Simultaneously, that presence sheltered so small, buffeted by the chaos, and struggling to stay on their feet.
It reminded her of the little girl in one dream and the prisoners in another. She imagined a feral child, abandoned to the wilderness, just looking for one moment, one iota of precious kindness in a dark and dismal life. Misaki reached out and eagerly offered that kindness. She kissed Yuka so close that it was like they merged with one another. The disconcerting combo left her with the surreal split of two bodies, neither of which she was quite certain how to control.
When they parted, tenderly but achingly receding from one another to breathe and collect themselves, Misaki found she was looking at a shy, nervous, gorgeous girl with reddish-purple eyes and dark hair with a familiar tint of violet. She was looking at herself.
A heart that wasn’t hers thundered in her ears as she fumbled for what to say. Ultimately, she settled on needing to use one of the shared bathrooms at the end of the hall. A voice she wasn’t used to hearing from the outside cautiously and almost flirtatiously asked if she needed any help. She shook her head and slowly got to her feet. She adjusted her dress before heading over to the door. Walking wasn’t too much trouble, even with someone else’s legs.
The smallness of this new reality was difficult to absorb. Walking as Misaki meant adjusting to different hips, unfamiliar legs, the unshakable presence of breasts, and so many other nagging minutiae that subtly twisted and contorted. The remix of being in Yuka‘s body subtracted hips, breasts, height, and countless other factors she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Misaki was a girl, but adamantly so. Yuka felt so insubstantial, like Franklin could imagine himself truly translated into this world. She wore his uncertainty and fear as a physical thing.
Yuka wasn’t that much shorter, but being a part of her was like returning to childhood with a quagmire of so many troubling fears. Looking back at the body she should’ve inhabited subtly eased the worst of that storm. She finally breathed on the other end of the door at the threshold to the inn’s hallway. The ninja-like maids loomed but didn’t approach as Yuka folded her slim arms over her tiny tummy.
Going to the bathroom as someone else felt deeply bizarre, despite Franklin‘s experience with Misaki. It wasn’t as though unfortunate restroom moments had been anything but a theme for the two of them, ranging from the train on that first day to sitting together on the bench to urgent chaos. This felt like being more than a mere passenger, a watcher on Yuka’s shoulder as she cleaned and washed up. She could imagine that this skin was also hers, but with a conflicting series of motivations and emotions. Not much different from normal.
Misaki looked at her face, and Yuka’s face looked back. She could feel the smile practice on her cheeks. Be cheerful, not anxious. Enjoy these moments, because you never know what’s next. Yuka carried a gently fragrant aroma. It saturated and infused her being, and Misaki couldn’t escape it. The private itinerary of Yuka's life played out without direct input from Misaki. She was a passenger, after all.
Wouldn’t this be the most appropriate fate? Reserved, unsure Franklin relegated to little more than a ghost. The morbid notion stirred an unseen stomach to queasiness. What if she was stuck here, as an inescapable part but not a participant of Yuka? Could this be some aspect of the Melting or a nefarious experiment from the company? Being Yuka for the rest of her life wouldn’t be the worst fate. But she wouldn’t be able to tell her how beautiful she is.
All the silly notions inside her head that might make this special girl smile would have to stay there. The chance to really hold her close again. To make her feel good. To let her know she wasn’t some monster and that the sea within her held such beauty beyond compare. That she could do or be anything she ever wanted. She could bring things together in peace and harmony, protect the weak, argue for justice in a court of law, and make sure all the puppies out there got their scratches behind the ears and rolled over in tongue-waggling bliss. Sasaki Yuka could be anything and anyone she ever wanted, so long as it brought her joy. If only Misaki could communicate all that to the girl she loved so dearly.
Softly and quietly, with little more than a faint whimper, Yuka cried with her arms bracing her on the sink counter. The tears came with little squeaks leaking from her trembling mouth. Misaki felt the flood of emotion too, with uncontrollable currents driving her in all directions. It was a lot, but it wasn’t a bad thing.
Being a girl in this world—being Misaki—was one thing. The way that the company provided them with immersive masks and suits that functioned as astronaut gear in this hostile realm was one thing. It was like an adaptation, a simulation of actually being an inhabitant of this place. The physical form, the sensations, and all the surface minutia, but not the deepest characteristics. Sharing with Yuka was like being exposed to the raw nature of space.
In her Gal examinations and discussions with female friends, Chika came to the conclusion that girls had a rich color palette of emotions and expressions of self, which could also lead to wild turbulence. Brains just work differently according to development, hormones, and so many other factors. Not that girl brains were necessarily limited to girl bodies, and likewise with boy brains. Franklin only had a faint hint of what all that meant, same as Gal. Sitting immersed in Yuka's presence showed her the vast gulf. Once again, as with so many other things, words failed her.
The tears weren’t sad or for simple pain; they had a vast array of interpretable qualities. If Misaki wanted to be bold, she could imagine the tears were little drops of motivation and uncertainty distilling from the heated emotion of her love for Yuka. Assuming what was inside her made it to her partner. If only she could do more.
A soft knock came at the door, and Yuka swiftly tidied up her appearance despite knowing and feeling she didn’t want to hide. On the other side of the door stood Naoko, doing her level best to resist the full lure of a yawn. It took less than a moment for her to rush to Yuka’s side and ask if she was all right. No shame in being weak. No need to be so private, even though Misaki felt that Yuka was one of the more reserved girls in this group. She still needed others.
Shaking off her turbulence, Yuka expressed reassurance that she was fine, passing along playful hints that the night was going well. But that sand castle of sentiment had to inevitably meet the tide. Yuka was scared. So very scared, and she needed to talk to someone. Naoko didn’t hesitate for an instant before volunteering all her shoulders.
They joined hands, and Naoko led her down the hall to her room.