Concealed

Trigger warnings: guns, poor mental health, mentions of past bullying, swearing.

*

People wouldn't underestimate me any more unless I wore a sign with a list of suggestions as to how they might manage the task. Part of it was how I looked, most of which I honestly couldn't help.

If you googled the term "femboy" someone has probably posted my picture with it. People liked to use words like "slender" and "willowy", but my penchant for fishnets and heels quickly got me dubbed a "trap" and a "disappointment to my parents".

I was considered tall for my lineage at 5'6" but was always much shorter than my peers in school. That tends to happen when you're a freaky Japanese genius kid who skips grades. People also tend to bully you or shun you. I prefer shunning, honestly.

Oh well, I thought to myself. You're 19. If you survive this you still might shoot up a few inches.

And then I laughed to myself about using the word 'shoot' in this situation.

*

If I'm honest, as a child prodigy in a public school, I had to make the best of my situation. And that meant tutoring other students –preferably the ones who looked like future Yakuza, but I tutored a lot of gay kids and half the jocks as well. It was the junior Yakuza that were most important though. People stop fucking with the weird kid after the scrappy rough kid shoves them into a locker.

So when my boss pointed a semiautomatic handgun in my face, it never even occurred to me that I should be intimidated.

Daiki, my ex, had always told me that running my mouth would get me in trouble. Usually, he was rolling his eyes at something I said. But this was fucking ridiculous.

Jerome Stone had decided he did not like me the moment they hired me. It didn't help that I was half his age and fresh out of college. Or Harlan Leeland, the CEO and primary owner of the company, thought I was the best thing since sliced bread. Mostly because I caught a teeny, tiny error that saved him thousands of dollars.

It was sort of a shame. He was a blonde with pale blue eyes that could freeze you out like a glacier or melt you into his tight family unit. The rest of the department adored him and chattered about him constantly. I stuck out like a sore thumb in Accounting because he didn't talk to me unless absolutely necessary and he treated me as coldly as he could.

Still. Where in the nine hells had this absolute nerd gotten his hands on a gun –let alone bullets?

"Maybe you will think twice about putting your hands on another man's husband." His icy tone trembled.

Oh, Vishnu. This was all about that slimy piece of shit? That man wasn't worth Jerome's time. Or mine. I had dated more than my fair share of unsavory trash, so I was an expert, and boy did he set off alarm bells.

At some point, I should be too afraid to argue with this man, my boss, who was holding a gun on me –right?

Wrong. Mostly because I was more enraged than anything by the situation.

This. This shit right here was what happened when you became a doormat and put everyone else's wishes first.

I hadn't even wanted to go into accounting. I had wanted to reach further, try harder, make something of myself. But my parents had insisted

My parents hadn't approved of my friends, so I lost my ragtag family that had been my shelter and protection.

My parents wouldn't understand what I am so I stayed their cute little smart gay son. Because what I really was, well that was scarier still and at least they could work gay to their advantage.

I gave up so much to please people who couldn't be pleased, who should have been able to love me without conditions.

Maybe in another life, I could have all the things I had wanted. I just had to survive this first.

I remembered what my friend Kenji used to say with a grin after he helped bail me out of some stupid situation in high school. "Haru, your mouth is dangerous. Have you ever considered not antagonizing people?"

So I opened my mouth and let myself make the situation a bit more dangerous. "There's so much wrong with that I am not sure where to even start. Your husband came on to me and if Sherri Linn from Marketing hadn't been there, he probably thought he wouldn't have to take 'no' as an answer."

Which actually wouldn't have phased me much. My looks made me seem like easy prey but the knife I carried because it was habit, like my true self, was easily concealed.

The trembling became more pronounced as he spat out words. "You're lying, Haruhiko."

It saddened me how desperately he wanted to believe it. It saddened me more that I had to be the one to correct him.

"Elias is very much not my type." He was a dominant, overbearing asshole, if I wanted to be honest. What in the hell Jerome thought was so great about him I would never know. He surely wasn't the sort of man Dolly begged Jolene not to take!

I had to be aware of how people looked at me all the time, the assumptions they would make based on the way my body was built. It was more amusing because they were wrong. Jerome, with his soft giving personality and submissive side, was much more my type despite being twice my age. Then again, being twice my age made him 38. I could work with that.

Tears began to well up in his eyes. I felt responsible for those tears, even though the real culprit was none other than his own husband.

I gestured to the gun being pointed at my face. Well, now it sort of lagged towards my shoulder. "Do you even know how to use that? Your favorite pastime is Pokemon Go."

As his brain sort of froze, trying to process my question, I wrapped my hand around the gun and pulled it from his grasp. It was less than two minute process to pull the clip and strip the gun.

Fuck, I needed to go back to hanging out with a better class of criminal.

"You didn't even turn off the safety. What did you think you were going to do, dumbass?"

He blinked at me mutely, as though he had lost his voice when all the fight had leached out of him.

"Right then. I'm going to offer you a little free advice: divorce that sack of shit and find someone who will give a damn about you. And, since you're not going to fire me, I quit. Effective immediately," I informed him serenely.

And then I walked out of his office, out of the department and back into the lobby.

It was just my shitty luck that Elias happened to be coming in.

It was his shitty luck that I packed a mean punch and had nothing left to lose. It appeared he had somewhere between two and five teeth to lose, which should not have been nearly as satisfying as it was.

"I'll press charges, Haruhiko Yamada!" He bellowed as I sauntered away.

"You do that and I will fuck your husband," I return, before disappearing into the crowd of people and off onto the street.

*

A week later, I received a letter from Leeland Advertising –my now former employer.

Here we go. Probably some sort of lawsuit or something I needed to pay back because of some contract I signed as a naive child.

I opened it slowly. In it, there was a document detailing a generous severance package as well as a check cut for all of my accumulated vacation time. as I slid them back into the envelope, a pale blue sticky note fluttered to the floor.

"Thank you." It read, in a neat efficient penmanship I knew very well. He had signed it with a "J" but I would have known his handwriting anyway

I couldn't help but smile.

Now both of us had a chance at new lives.