Chapter 9 And Back’s to the Wall…

It is said that nothing happens in a vacuum. So the opposite should be that if you don’t have a vacuum everything happens. It was certainly the case with our second term. The sewing classes were hard at work producing outfits like ours that could be sold in the school shop to pay for the materials they used during the year.

The communications classes had a team filming our practise sessions and taking interviews with all of us to put in a documentary they were producing. Even the art classes had their part by producing posters. On the night of the social we had a stall selling the costumes and the communications guys had set up several camera positions to film the entire show. They had linked into the sound system and added their own mics to record the sound. It would be interesting to see the result and they were all getting real-time experience.

The social night was a resounding success, inside the venue. The audience was happy, the school was happy, the singers were happy and our band and dance group were over the moon. We got a bit of press out of it that was completely positive. There was also, unfortunately, a group of devout zealots outside the venue with placards saying ‘Keep the Harlots out of Osaka’ and the like.

It seemed that they were not happy with our singers, especially the very sexy Scarlet Witch costumes but also their history before the singing. Funnily enough, all of these zealots had heard of, or seen, them as actresses in porn movies and didn’t want them leading the young of Osaka down the wrong path! It was something that none of the rest of us had even known about and, as far as the school was concerned, whatever they had done before was well behind them now they were friends of the school. That history may be the reason they were so sexy on stage and why most of the adult males in the audience would have been sporting woodies. I was learning, very early in my life, that sex sells.

After we had finished our set we all mingled with the audience, the girls surrounded by a lot of male teachers and many fathers who wanted selfies. The rest of us were busy chatting to our siblings and other fans in the school. Aiko had put on her own Scarlet Witch costume so was getting a bit of attention herself so I went over and joined her, creating a bit of a crowd which increased when the three singers, all in the Scarlet garb, joined us and the cameras went crazy for a while. I think my mother must have used up her whole memory and I had to smile when I saw my father try to stand up, only to sit back down quickly and pour a glass of water, trying to look uninterested.

After that, our exams were almost an anti-climax and Aiko and I did well again. Christmas break was very different this year as the entire dance team, plus Aiko and a bunch of other girls, had been asked to sing at different venues around the Mino City. We split into four groups and did hospitals, aged care homes, shopping centres and the like. This was something new for us but was a great experience and helped the school promote itself in a good light. Of course, we did some of the places in costume so Raven was out and about a fair bit.

The last term of our school year meant that we had to get the gymnastic team into top shape. We left the dance classes to Tamura and Masuko to supervise as we did not have anything to work on. They decided that they would take the group down a new path and picked a Jazz/swing piece of music and developed a complete set of steps for that. I dropped in when I could and helped out with the presentation but basically left them to it.

The gymnastic work was mainly just that now, working hard to perfect the moves and to keep up the strength while not getting any injuries. It did allow me to spend more time making sure my own studies were kept up to scratch. I did very well at the exams this year and had built up an enviable stack of credits for my gym and dance work so I would be going into my fourth year on a high. At fifteen now, and having been on hormones for a full year, I was developing a very shapely body while the last vestige of my manhood had shrunk to a nub. My hair was now almost to my waist and I was getting regular visits to a salon, with Aiko, for the works, my mother making sure that her two girls looked beautiful. I certainly felt beautiful these days, an odd feeling for a boy but just right for me.

The competition went well for us again. Our new boy gymnasts were all placed on the apparatus and we took out the individual floor routines, as well as the team one again. It was very close, though, and I could see the effort that the other schools were now putting into it. This was the last year that Okemia and I taught the gymnastic class as we now had a couple of very good second years who would take over from us. It had done wonders for our grades, though, and had cemented us into the school fabric.

In March we all dressed up in our costumes and attended the Osaka Anime Street Festa. It was a lot of fun and we were once again the centre of attention, now apparently local heroes. This year Aiko was starting fifth year and working towards her entry to the University of Economics where she would be studying Business Management. I was up for my fourth year and the normal lessons would be a load in themselves. I would have the dance team to get some new routines sorted and we would have a new dance teacher. I decided that we would include the boys as much as we could this year as they had done very well dancing with the band at the social.

On the first day of the new school year I met the new dance teacher. She was a little older than I would expect and was more versed in the ballet, tap and ballroom dances. This, I thought, could work well but it all depended on the students that would be starting with us. She expressed a surprise at my age but seemed friendly enough.

As I had expected we had a lot of students wanting to do dance training and it took a couple of weeks to sort it out. Those that wanted to work with me on modern and J-Pop were told that they needed to do gym as well and, if they didn’t, they could work with traditional. The new teacher, Miss Kikuo, followed our lead and said that any girls wanting to do ballet should do basic gymnastics as well. This sorted them out and we met with Machiko to co-ordinate our classes. She had a huge influx herself and the school had employed another gym teacher to help her out.

Okemia and I worked out an equitable sharing of the rehearsal room with Miss Kikuo and we would be using it two evenings a week with her having it for three. She also got to use it in the final period of several days as it had been decided that traditional dance would be part of the arts stream from this year on. She looked like she was thinking that our side of it was mere child’s play until Tamura and Masuko showed her the dance they had developed for the jazz/swing track and she had a good look at the video that the communications guys had produced from the December social.

It was a wrench for her to accept J-Pop dance as all she had seen before was the occasional clip on TV. She watched our routines with Honey Popcorn twice through before she admitted that the steps and moves were as good as she had seen. With the air now clear and the students sorted into their preferred dances we began the year trying to get them moving as one. As usual, we had lost several of our second and third years so it was almost a complete group of new dancers and it was almost all term before we got into any routines. Of the ten that danced in December we still had the four of us and just two others so we had the basics for a team, just needing four more if we did a ten person routine.

During the term I spent some time in hospital to have my penis tucked into a fold so that I could present as a girl better and they also went over my whole body with a laser hair removal tool so that I came back home hairless, nutless and now, apparently dickless. I was able to keep up with my normal classes remotely and was just a week or so away from the dance school. I could now wear my skirts and dresses with a lot more confidence and when I put on jeans I was now as smooth as Aiko down there.

Okemia and I were now considered old enough to go out with each other by ourselves and we saw a lot of movies and did a lot of cuddling in the back row. Oddly, she was more loving when we saw an anime movie dressed in our costumes. She really did love Raven more than Miyoko but I didn’t mind as it was one and the same for me. If it made her happy then I was happy as well. There was never a suggestion that I would dress in any other costume so I was destined to be Raven for her.

She did tell me that she would pull back from the dance instruction next year as her parents wanted her to take on extra lessons in direction and production because they wanted her to work more in the movie world. It made me sad but I kissed her and told her she would be fantastic at whatever she does.

Marianne G 2021