Chapter 18 – Fragments and Mec chen House

Carolyn was first to her side. He supported her neck and lifted her gently. I had only a moment to be reminded of Nathan’s treatment of Ami before Kimi roused and squirmed away from us across the floor.

She panted and tapped the wall behind her, as though looking for a hidden switch. Carolyn crouched on one knee, a small, pale towel in his hand. He looked at me and asked, “How did someone manage to name her ‘Kimi?’”

I would’ve liked to give him a sheepish smile, but I barely noticed his question. I crawled closer to Kimi and asked, “Are you okay? What happened?”

Kimi looked at me and around the room. I could tell the look. I wore the same one not too long ago. I reached a hand out. Kimi tried to climb the wall.

I tried speaking. “Jamie! It’s me. It’s okay.”

She looked at me, then at Carolyn. She seemed so small, even though she was actually taller than me.

After a few breaths, she spoke. Her eyes still darted around. “What? No. Nothing happened. I’m okay.”

Carolyn cleared his throat and leaned closer. “Anime eyes don’t lie.”

Kimi scrambled to her feet. “Get away from me… Umm please… Get away from me.”

She crouched low along the wall until she got to her feet. She didn’t look very steady. We both gave her a wide berth as she plopped down in a chair near the window and covered her face in her hands. Her shirt seemed to be tenting.

I leaned to look around her arms. I shuffled and peered. I felt a sickly-warm sensation in my stomach as I looked at Kimi. At the sensation, I patted my chest to assure myself. I was still flat.

Unlike Kimi.

Her shirt wasn’t tenting. It was pressed out by the shape of her flesh. The bottom of the shirt lifted and curled upwards, flashing a hint of her midriff. From this angle, the chest itself took on the appearance of an advancing ridge with a soft pinnacle. Part of me felt entranced just to look at Kimi and the other part shouted that this was my male friend I was looking at.

It didn’t take Carolyn long to realize what I was looking at. He dipped his soft-serve tentacles of hair and smiled. “Wow. I never thought my ex-boyfriend would have bigger ones than I ever did.”

Kimi leaned back. The ridge shifted and deformed like a fault line under her shirt. She looked down and formed, “No!” with her mouth-line. She tried to press the soft shape. It resisted her. She squirmed in place.

Carolyn dusted himself off and said, “Relax. I know a place where you can buy a bra.”

Kimi’s head twitched. “No! I don’t want a bra! Never! Get me an ace bandage!”

Carolyn shook his head. “Do you really expect to hide something like that?”

Kimi flattened her chest to the point of pain, holding her breath. She still looked like a girl.

Releasing her chest, she gasped out, “I have to do something! These are too big! They feel… I can’t even… they feel…” She trailed off, trying to stand from the chair. Kimi held onto it for support. She shuffled carefully.

“No… no… no… I’m sure they’ll go away… Somehow they’ll go away.” She pressed again but the protrusions showed no signs of following Kimi’s wishes. She smacked a hand into the chair and then the nearest wall.

She slid down the slick surface. When she plopped down on the floor, her chest gave a little quake, as did her fanned hips. She curled in on herself, hiding her eyes. Her head soon darted up and she said, hoarsely, “It all smells different, and I can’t get this scent off of me.”

Kimi took to pulling on her breast, but that seemed even more painful than her attempts at pulling her hair out at the roots. Kimi grunted, clutching them protectively. She sat still for a moment then looked up.

She looked at me and said, “I look like a girl. A girl that Nana or Hitomi or whoever wanted to make me into. And I’m a freaking C-cup!”

Carolyn snorted. “Oh, come on, you’re not as small as a C-cup. You’re clearly a D-cup.”

“C!!”

He shook his head. “D. As in denial.”

Her hands shook and probed her chest gently. “This protrusion… thing… is only… It’s comparable to what you had.”

Carolyn walked over and said, “Stand up, Kimi.”

“Jamie! MY NAME IS JAMIE!”

He rolled his head back with a sigh. “Why you defend that name… I’ll never know. Just stand up so I can look at you and settle this.”

‘Jamie’ looked away. “I don’t want to… why should I? Why should I have someone feel around this… protrusion?”

“I’m not going to ‘grope’ you,” Carolyn assured her.

“Your words. Not mine.”

Carolyn threw up a hand. “Listen. You want it like nothing has changed. Ergo, this ‘protrusion’ is nothing to be worried about. You just stand up, pull your shirt taut, and I do some estimation. I’m just assessing a ‘growth’.”

‘Jamie’ pressed her legs together and stood slowly. Her hands remained against the chair until she looked sure she wasn’t going to tip over. She tugged slowly on the shirt, setting her feet, and created a valley between two, shaded pinnacles on her chest. A hint of what was underneath peeked through.

‘Jamie’ looked away, embarrassed.

Carolyn leaned left and right and finally decided, “That settles it. You’re absolutely a D-cup. Maybe even a double denial cup. Oh wait. I keep forgetting… the sizes are different here. You’d probably be more like an F. For female.”

‘Jamie’ looked down at her body, darting lower every so often, and said, “But… I’m not really a girl… I just look like one. No matter what happened to my body, I’m still who I always was…”

Carolyn finished his size-check and shot ‘Jamie’ a look. “Do you really want that?”

“What? Why wouldn’t I?”

Carolyn cracked his neck and peered out the window at the occasional passerby. “You had your share of shortcomings. I blame most of it on your family. I could never stand your sister. If you want to be who you were, then you’re just some aimless, disengaged, and emotionless ‘ronin’ trodding in silent steps through life, living only for petty opportunities.”

Jamie stood straighter. “So, that’s how you really feel about me? What about you, AriSU? You like this compared to the slacker boy?” She glared over at me.

I didn’t respond to her.

“I am not something to be manipulated and remade and be expected to just accept it. I will fight it in my heart with everything I have! And if that… whatever it is… thinks it can change me with trippy visions… it has another thing coming!”

“Visions?”

She clenched her mouth-line closed tightly and said, “Trippy changes, I mean. What’s been happening here…”

It was a poor lie by Jamie. I called her on it and said, “That’s not it. You saw something… Something happened to you when you passed out for a moment. Was it like what I experienced? Tell me as much as you can.”

Jamie flapped her hands in front of me. “It’s nothing! Forget it. I already have.”

I reached for Jamie’s shoulders. “It could be really important. Remember what you said? …I was the only one experiencing these strange clues. But now you’ve experienced something as well. You can’t just shrug it off… What if it’s something that could help us to change our circumstances?”

She tried, half-heartedly, to bend out of my grasp then slumped. “I really...don’t want to talk about it.” She glanced away with her eyes narrowed.

“What could possibly be so bad?”

Jamie scowled at me.

I let go of her shoulders as a silent compromise. She paced slowly. Carolyn shoved the boxes back into a crude tower of clustered collectibles but held onto the turtle. He passed it to me, and I tried looking it over. Jamie grimaced. “Keep it away from me!”

I took a step back so there was some distance between the two of us as I held the turtle. It looked like a simple, mud-colored ceramic turtle. I looked on the underside but found nothing remarkable about it. I passed it back to Carolyn, who set it on the counter.

Jamie crossed her arms over her chest. She shuffled with careful steps across the tile floor. She had to correct herself several times and pressed her chest in frustration again.

She muttered, softly, “This is the worst… I can’t stand this. I feel so fat and bizarre. I feel utterly grotesque.” Her voice rose to high indignation.

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I slipped my hands on my padded hips and rephrased, “How could it be so bad that you can’t even tell me about it? You do acknowledge it could be quite important?”

Jamie stretched one leg far ahead and the other back and said, “I said I didn’t want to talk about it. But I know it probably is important. I mean it… could be… confirmation. But I’d need to check it out.”

I prodded my finger into that little opening she offered me. “Check it out? How? Check what?”

She shuddered and turned. “I can’t say really but… now I have a real reason to revisit the library.”

That was an even bigger opening. I had to ask, “What’s at the library?”

“It’s just an idea I had. There’s probably nothing to it. But if there is, then… well we’ll talk about it when we get to that point.”

I was utterly mystified. Carolyn sprayed from a bottle of water on a colorful set of plants near one of the mirrors.

Jamie seemed to settle on an arm placement which covered enough of her changes. She turned a little and looked in the mirror. I thought the pose made her look particularly feminine, like an image for a cosmetics magazine.

I urged Jamie, “Can’t you tell us anything more?”

She glared and spoke deliberately. “I told you I don’t wish to talk about it. The only use for what… may have happened is as confirmation or denial of assumptions and theories.”

“Why are you doing this?” I couldn’t help but feel personally offended by Jamie’s tone.

Jamie sent a tremor through her hair with an arm brush. “Doing this? Don’t I have a right to keep certain things confidential? It’s a right you’ve exercised a lot lately. Or am I excluded from that? Don’t you realize how much I’ve told you? I said I had… umm…that I…You know! …Back on the path!” She glanced over at Carolyn suspiciously.

Carolyn watched us. I didn’t know how long he’d been watching, but he had a curious expression on his face. He moved closer to Jamie and smiled. “Well well, Kimi. You’re reduced to stammering. What could that mean?”

‘Jamie’ set her feet, grimaced, and declared resolutely, “I am not, nor will I ever be, Kimi. My name is Jamie.”

Carolyn grinned. “And I thought you loathed that name.”

“I found something I loathed more.”

He rubbed at his lips with a prying gaze. “You remember what you said?”

“Said when?”

“Last we talked. I was thinking about it. I called it your fatal flaw.”

‘Jamie’s shoulders slumped. “You know, I really can’t recall. But I assume you had some point. Care to refresh it?”

Carolyn rubbed his hands and took some rather slow, but playful steps back and forth. “You said ‘I will never be connected, now or ever, with a man in any intimate sense.’ But it was the way you said it. I could sense it. I said it was your ‘fatal flaw’. A little over-dramatic, but do you know what I mean now?”

‘Jamie’ glared. “I have no clue what you’re trying to get at.”

Carolyn pouted in an exaggerated fashion. “Aww… so there’s no lucky boy you’ve met?”

“WHAT???”

He gained a half-grin. “A very strong and cute reaction from a girl.”

“I’M NOT… uh… NOT ACTUALLY A GIRL!”

“Even stronger…”

“Listen! I… don’t see how this is important. You clearly don’t have anything useful to offer us except for weird comments.”

He went back to pouting. “Ouch…”

‘Jamie’s mood rumbled. “You brought it on yourself. If you can’t cut our hair, then you’re really no use to us. You’re just an obstacle in our way. Can you prove to us that Hitomi or whoever didn’t intentionally put you here because you’re a hindrance?”

I couldn’t stand by with that. My steps flared in a way even Katsumi would be proud of. My words blazed.

“STOP IT! It’s not Carolyn’s fault we came here. If you want to blame anyone, blame me! I thought of coming here. And you didn’t think it was a bad idea. You wanted to get your hair trimmed. Just because Carolyn can’t cut your hair doesn’t mean you can be nasty to him! And here I thought, with all that happened to change us, that you were different.”

‘Jamie’ stomped back with her hands on her hips. “Just because I get girl parts doesn’t turn me into a sweet and cute girl who is nice to everyone!”

Carolyn smiled. “Ahh, idealized notions of women. As if I haven’t heard that from my customers so many times… I wouldn’t ever think ‘Jamie’ here could manage sweet and cute. That’s Nathan’s territory. But boy… you just ring true as a girl.”

‘Jamie’ looked alarmed. “Wha? No. That’s bull! Do you have one iota of proof that I’m anything like a girl?”

Carolyn cracked his knuckles and said, singsong, “Demeanor and mood, your whole attitude, posture and the way you carry yourself. It’s clear you’re a girl to any you’d pass on the street, from the top of your head… all the way down to your feet. You piss and you moan about everyone that you meet. You argue and declare with long silky hair, where you’re going and why. And fair also to say, if any get in your way, your claws will come out as a treat. And with the presence you emit I can say, though it may be cliché, if ever there was a girl, you are it!”

I’d known Carolyn to break into a rough, rhyming melody only once before. It was when she and Jamie had an argument about musicals, and she did it to shut him up.

Jamie seemed to get the reference. She massaged her temple and replied, “Those are pretty weak reasons.”

“Oh well, it’s hard to put it like that and express all the facts clearly. Basically, I’ve hinted at it before but the three of you all felt like girls to me. And I know girls. The real jerks especially. Not to imply anything about any of you… Especially Jamie-Kimi… Jay-Kay. There’s just something to a girl, again to touch on cliché. Like a pheromone or a mood or something. I can remember it vividly despite there being new associations for me.”

Jamie flopped her hair. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about…”

He leaned close. “It means, despite how much I still like boys, your body prompts a reaction from my new body.”

Jamie stumbled, flailing for the chair behind her. “Umm… I see.”

Carolyn chuckled. “I bet. So, what about a guy who has… caught your eye?”

“I don’t care about those sorts of things. We have more important concerns.”

I chimed in, “Like keeping vital information from one another.”

Jamie lobbed back a reply. “Not as though that’s anything new. For some people.”

Carolyn held his hands out to each of us. “Now girls, don’t make me have you both sit in the corner on your hands. That’s something my mother did with me and my female cousins when we started being… like girls… to one another.”

Jamie slumped in the chair. Her whole body shuddered. The crystalline tears began to flow behind carefully-positioned hands. Carolyn sighed and sat next to Jamie. He put a hand on her shoulder.

“Listen. I didn’t mean to upset you. You can hit me if you like.”

Jamie took him up on that offer and gave a hearty slug in Carolyn’s side. He grunted, laughed a little, and said a raspy, “Good one…”

I approached, not sure what to offer Jamie in the form of comfort, knowing close contact just upset her. A slug wouldn’t seem right, so I crouched near Jamie and spoke, “Please… I’m sorry for what I said. But I need to know… at least a little bit of what you experienced. It could be important.”

Jamie didn’t look at me at first. She dried her eyes with rough rubs of her hands. She turned to Carolyn.

“I’m not going to talk to you about whatever sensations occurred or anything like that. Add that to whatever tally you make about boys and girls. I have my secrets about what’s inside me, and I intend to restrict what others know. So, forget an outpouring of girly emotions or romantic imaginings or any of that other junk my sister tossed around. I don’t have any of that. Think however worse of me you like. I can’t stop that. I’m not angry at you. But emotions that… slip in like this really suck. I hate them…”

Then he turned to me. “I don’t have to tell you about what happened to me. And I accept your apology, though it was quite unnecessary. Still… you have a point. There could be vital information. For now though, I have no reason to believe it. But… in the interests of a compromise, I can… offer some minor parts. Things I saw which you might be interested in. Parts that don’t unsettle me as much. Would you accept that?”