fix your hearts or die 🏳️‍⚧️

Yoshiki knew he was different than other people in his village, town, school, than the norm. He knew he was hopelessly attached to and in love with his best friend and had shame over these feelings. His mom works as a hairdresser, she left the city to live in Yoshiki's father's hometown. Yoshiki's dad gave up on his dreams to work in his family's traditional job in lumber. Yoshiki's parents fight often. His dad gets physical with objects. Yoshiki hates that he looks like his dad. He could be strong and buff if he put some effort in to working out, but seems to choose not to. He prefers his school uniform over other clothes. For a long time, he hid behind his hair despite people commenting on it. His bathroom was briefly haunted by the spirit of a wig ghost.

His best friend practically since birth, who seemingly excels at performing traditional boyhood, dies. Hikaru dies (quite literally cracked open lol) while trying to uphold a ritual specifically meant to be done by the men of his family-- one that it's suspected that his father died doing. While lying on the ground bleeding out, Hikaru does not wish to be saved. Instead he wishes for something, anything to take his place "...and stay by his [Yoshiki's] side". He doesn't want people to be sad about it.

Upon wishing this, an incomprehensible being with no personal experience of being alive (or human) acquires Hikaru's life, memories, and material existence. This Hikaru hides his nature in the body by mimicking the affect of the boy who came before. Once discovered (first by Yoshiki, then by Asako, and maybe by a mother who accepts him no matter what), Hikaru struggles with hiding himself, even physically containing himself inside his body.

Yoshiki simultaneously struggles with the grief of his friends death and accepting this new person. He's afraid of Hikaru, what his existence means for others ('he is a threat/danger/etc'), what his existence means for Yoshiki (guilt, grief, shame, a pillar of normalcy for Yoshiki, shattered and gone and replaced with something so, so not normal). Hikaru gives him half of himself, and Yoshiki begins the process of accepting him from a place of burden.

By the time he starts to truly feel understanding towards Hikaru, Yoshiki is beginning to accept himself. He is actively able to recognize his place inside his suffocating position in society...AND, more concretely than before, he can dream of something else.

All the while, Hikaru struggles with being himself AND having a body. And, since he HAS this body, he also struggles with the concept of being alive.

Primarily he struggles with he implications that has for how his actions affect others and how his relationships with others are important to him -- even if that means being bound by a certain level of material existence. Of course this is all spurred on by the violence he commits against a little girl while returning from the Leg Hole in Ashidori (did I mention the whole region is shaped like a body and fed by body parts? Ahem, anyway--), where he is separated from Hikaru's body briefly, and ceases to fully exist as himself. -> (I've discussed this before a little more acutely...HERE!) Immediately after this he heals the girl he harmed, and Hikaru is left despondent drifting around, avoiding Yoshiki in his guilt. He is lead by Kurebayashi-san to an ambush where Satou and the company has several workers split his body into pieces and bind his incorporeal being with spiritual tags. In the process, his father's watch is shattered.

Hikaru is then physically outed as non-human to the entire town, with Satou and the company seemingly understanding him to be a powerful natural resource and wanting to harness his wish granting power.

--At this point I feel like its worth mentioning that the company has a history of taking in disabled / othered / queer individuals, providing them with some sort of treatment or aid, and then indenturing them into service in return. There is a particular connection being made here between queer and disabled theory that is really interesting and I appreciate it being a part of the story, because its really key to understanding the role of material conditions and how bodies and 'who we are' within our bodies functions within the themes of the story! :)

Yoshiki comes in riding high on Motherly Acceptance and Girl Power (thanks Asako!!!!!!), pushes through the crowd, is protected by his dad, says GOODBYE to his dad....and...