Ann raises an eyebrow. "Something on your mind, Akira?"

"Yeah. It's about the thing we talked about on our shopping trip earlier, and all. And if Ryuji was here..."

"The thing we talked about on the shopping trip — oh, yeah, that." Ann glances over at Shiho. "I think you know what I think about that."

Yeah, of course, everyone has an opinion.

It's clear enough that Ann's going to end up telling Shiho eventually. Might as well do it now. 

Akira draws a slow breath and looks over at Shiho. "I, ah..." She rubs the back of her head. "I'm not sure if... Ann told you I'm trans or not."

"Oh! I had no idea! Just to be sure, calling you Akira and using she/her is still correct?"

"Yeah, it still is." 

... that's a lot easier than she expected. 

"Well thanks for telling me, Akira. Who else knows, so I make sure I don't accidentally out you?"

"You, Ann, Boss, and Takemi. Uh, Boss is my guardian, his actual name is Sakura-san. Takemi's my doctor and sort of my mentor? She's cool.

"I'm also thinking of telling Ryuji when he gets back, I've made a couple slips in front of him and he deserves an explanation."

She nods. "Okay. He'll take it fine, Ryuji's a good boy. Anything I can do to help?"

"Well, don't spread it around at school, obviously. But otherwise nothing leaps to mind..."

"Okay then."

She smiles at Akira and takes another bite out of her crêpe.

It's really that easy? 

Huh. 

"Okay. Thanks for... being cool with it, I guess."

Ann's focusing on her own crepe, but she offers Akira a small smile. 

"I mean, with everything you've done for us..."

Shiho nods. "You've done so much to help us. But also..."

She shrugs. "Gratitude aside, you're a girl either way. People just didn't know it at first. Explains why you know about abusers, though. I haven't heard good things about how people treat trans girls."

Wow, that's... 

She takes a long deliberate breath. She is not going to cry about this. 

"... Thank you, Shiho. There are a lot of people who might not see it that way."

"Started researching queer stuff when I figured out I was bi," she replies. "Seemed worth knowing."

"Oh! That makes perfect sense." Akira flushes a little. "Of course." 

She laughs to herself a little.

"To be fair, I didn't really do any research myself, so I think that's more down to Shiho being wonderful than anything else." She looks over at Shiho and favors her with a deeply sappy smile.

She smiles back at Ann and squeezes her hand, polishing off the last few bites of her crêpe.

Ann squeezes back and finishes off her own crêpe as well.

The mystery solved, even Akira is able to focus on her food.

A few minutes later, Ryuji shows back up, bag in hand.

"Hey! All set."

"Great to hear!" Akira smiles her brightest smile at Ryuji. 

"Come sit, there's a thing I wanted to say first."

He pulls up a chair and sits down. "Sure, all ears."

"So I made a comment earlier about dysphoria while I was kind of half-lucid, and I wanted to explain that. The answer's really pretty simple, uh. It's that I'm trans. I'm a trans girl."