It's a quiet trip back to Yongen-Jaya.

Leblanc is quiet when she gets inside. Sojiro's tidying up after a few customers, and he looks up when she walks in. "New dress, kid? It's cute. Looks good on you."

Akira puts on her brightest smile. "Yeah! I made a friend at school and everything! It's a long story, but I ended up coming out to one of the girls in my class and she got me this and a cami. Her name is Ann, she seems like a really cool person."

She rubs the back of her head. "Sorry for being late back, I would have called to let you know where I was if I had your phone number."

"Glad to hear you had a good day. And good thinking, kid." 

He gives Akira his phone number.

Akira accepts Sakura-san's phone number. "Thanks," she says. "I'll try not to bug you with it too often. Speaking of which — I want to go over to Ann's house after school tomorrow to play Dissidia with her and get to know her a bit better. I hope that's okay with you."

He nods. "Fine by me. I'm not going to try to restrict what you get up to, as long as you don't get into trouble."

Her parents would never have given her this much rope.

Akira smiles. "Thank you for your trust." 

It sucks that she has to break it, but needs must. 

"Then I'm going to head over to the Takemi clinic again and talk to the doctor there a little more about treating my headache attacks and maybe further steps for my transition." She gives Sakura-san a little wave. "Be back in about an hour, probably."

He waves back.

Dr. Takemi looks up as Akira walks in. "Back so soon, Akira? How's the painkiller working out for you? Any side effects with anything?"

"Good afternoon, Doctor Takemi. I'm not actually here for medicine today, I'm here for advice. You're the only trans adult in my life, and, well, I've encountered a situation at school that I could use the help of a trustworthy adult with."

She ducks her head. "I know it's a lot to ask, since I barely know you, but I could really use someone to talk to about this who I know has their head on straight."

She arches an eyebrow curiously. "This sounds like quite the story. Come on back and let's talk."

"Alright." She heads back into the clinic, where she takes a seat in the same chair she had last time. 

"Where should I start..." She rubs her chin with two knuckles. "... Start with the basics. One of the students I've met at school today, Ann, is being harassed by her gym teacher. I encountered him trying to get her into his car with him on the walk to school, and pretended to be lost and asked for directions so that she would have an excuse not to get in. We talked a little more about it after the incident and it came out that he's been pressuring her for a while. All of it is fairly plausibly deniable - mostly he talks about kicking her friend Shiho off the starter position on the volleyball team whenever she starts resisting him too hard. 

"I have reason to believe that the gym teacher is also able to resort to violence, because of an incident where he broke one of his students' legs in 'self-defense.' I've also heard rumors that he's physically beating up the men's volleyball team he heads, though I haven't confirmed them myself. 

"Normally I would go to the school principal with this kind of problem, but I spent fifteen minutes in a room with him while I was registering for classes and that was long enough to learn that he is a raging transphobe. I seriously doubt that he would take this with the gravity it deserves.

"What do you think is my best option to keep Ann, Shiho, and everyone else in the school safe from this man?"

"That's a serious mess, Akira-chan," she replies with a frown when the story's finished. "Getting predators like that tossed out and locked up is hard work. You have three main problems: evidence, credibility, and re-traumatizing the victims. 

"First, you need hard evidence," she states, ticking off a finger. "You're working against a reputation-obsessed school that would rather cover this up. They will not corroborate your claims unless you back them into a corner. Best options here are recordings or photos of something that isn't deniable."

She holds up a second finger. "Next, you have the credibility problem. Your friends are going to be asked why they didn't come forward sooner, whether they're looking for a payout, whether they misunderstood, whether they were 'asking for it', and more. The authorities want to believe that other authorities are more trustworthy than random teenagers. Partly you can solve this with more evidence, and partly by making sure the victims who make the initial reports are innocent and photogenic."

Then she counts off a third finger. "Finally, this process is going to take months at minimum, and it will be absolutely brutal on your friends. They'll have to relive the trauma for multiple different officials and retellings, they'll be disbelieved and invalidated, they'll have to face him down in court, and their names may get released publicly."

"Don't get me wrong. It's possible. I've seen it done. But the process of doing it is miserable, for all that it's extremely necessary."

"I was afraid that would be your answer. It sounds like the best plan would then be to gather as much hard evidence and support as possible before making any report. Especially given that my own reputation is not one that's likely to stand up well, unfortunately. I tried to stop another man from committing sexual assault a few months ago and lost the case. I ended up being charged with assault for laying a hand on him — not a punch, just laying a hand on his shoulder to keep him from grabbing her. There's no way I'd be believed in this case, given that's on my record." 

She sighs. "For now I guess I've got to keep my head down and help the victims as best I can. If I take point on evidence-gathering it'll work against the whole prosecution, probably."

"Sorry to trouble you with all this," she says. "I was hoping there'd be some silver bullet that'd just fix it all, but I guess real life just doesn't work that way."

She sighs and smiles ruefully. "I wish. I've seen the injustice first-hand, though."

"On a more positive note, are those painkillers helping at all with your headaches? And it sounds like you made a friend?"

"Yeah, I had an attack this morning but the painkiller had already kicked in and made it much more bearable. And yeah, I did make a friend! Ann actually got me this dress I'm wearing right now and I came out to her and everything. It's been such an all over the place day, you have no idea."

"I'm glad to hear about that at least. You're a good girl, Akira-chan, I can tell. You deserve good friends."

She blushes a little.

"Thank you, Doctor Takemi. It's good to hear that from someone who's been there."

"Looks like your new friend's got good taste, too. The dress is cute on you."

The blush is only intensifying. 

"Thank you. I'm still not used to cold-shoulder tops like this but everyone seems to think it's cute so I guess I've got to keep wearing it."

Tae nods. "I didn't start out this stylish. I picked things I liked that were just on the edge of my comfort zone, wore those, and then tried again when I was ready to stretch more."

She's wearing another short dress today, and a different pair of strappy heels.

"That makes a lot of sense. It really seems to have worked out for you, honestly."

"And it's already starting to do the same for you," she replies with a smile.