Karmic Balance

The sudden lack of pain was the first thing Jun noticed as she reflexively opened her eyes. She instinctively moved to feel herself before realizing with a blink that she didn't have any hands. She also realized she didn't seem to even have eyes and yet she could still blink. All she saw around her was a void that seemed to go on for eternity, only marred by a single screen in the middle of her vision that she wasn't sure how she missed earlier. The screen was... odd, like a popup from a video game.

After she died, she expected just about anything, from fluffy clouds and winged toddlers playing harps hovering over flaming pits of screaming souls, to nothingness. She definitely did not expect to be an incorporeal thing staring at a respawn menu. The fuck is this shit?! Is life just a game to the universe?!

The screen pretty much confirmed she was dead, and for some reason she was pissed off. She wasn't even sure how she died, just that it was... painful. It felt like the memory had been locked away, but if she pushed in just the right way, it would unlock. She wasn't sure how long it took her pushing at the strange mental lock in her mind, but with a sudden *pop*, it vanished, and a new screen popped up below the respawn screen.

The screen gave her pause. Traumatic? It had to be bad if the universe itself was telling me not to, but she had to know. The curiosity ate at her. With trepidation, she mentally selected "Y" and screamed as the screen popped, revealing another somehow darker void that seemed to suck her consciousness up.

The bullying at school, the abusive parents, the uncaring teachers. Constantly feeling like an alien in her own body, before suddenly realizing that despite being born a boy, she wasn't one. Of course, that realization came too late. The society around her had never been welcoming, but it somehow grew worse and worse, especially for anyone who wasn't considered "normal" like her. By the time she'd realized a simple truth about herself, what few options would have been available to her had gone up in smoke, sometimes literally. She'd ordered some medications online, discreetly packaged because they were considered illegal for what she was going to use them for, but that hadn't been enough.

Jun forgot she lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone, and there was no such thing as secrets. Private delivery companies didn't deliver there because it was too unprofitable. Instead, everything went through a single public post office run by a postmaster that just so happened to also be the town gossip. If it was secret, you didn't rely on the post there. She'd forgotten that fact when she'd filled out the delivery information. Forgotten that secrets didn't stay secret if you let anyone else in on them. It proved to be a fatal mistake.

Jun finally decided to come out to her best friend, Ash. Ashley, Ash for short, was that blonde cheerleader country girl in just about every country song. They'd grown up together as neighbors, Jun the half-Japanese boy, one of the only Asian people in town besides his mother, and Ash, the extroverted tomboy that was excited to see a new kid moving in next door. Ash had come over while Jun's parents were still unloading the trailer, with short cropped hair and overalls covered in mud, accompanied by her father and older brother Bobby carrying a pie and a neighborly offer to help. Jun's father took one look at Ash and Bobby's dad, a big brute of a man with the brawn of a farmer and the beer gut of a good old boy and readily agreed, the men shaking hands as Bobby handed Jun's mother the pie.

Jun was too little to help and she and Ash were sent off to play, while her mother was left to clean and unpack the kitchen. Woman's work, her and Ash's fathers had joked, while Bobby joined in with the too earnest laughter of an awkward teen. That afternoon had been nice as Ash showed her around the woods between their houses.

That first day of play quickly sprouted into a fast friendship as they ran about that summer catching frogs and squirrels, fishing, and playing games with the other neighborhood kids. Jun loved playing hide and seek, learning all the best places to hide, but Ash was always better. Always climbing trees, wedging herself into cracks and hidden places, finding newer and more unexpected places to hide.

It wasn't until late that first summer that Jun learned Ash was a girl. Boys and girls didn't usually become friends at that age, but something was different between her and Ash. Ash had always seemed more like a boy to her anyways, and Jun wasn't even sure she understood what the difference between a boy and a girl really was. Still, the adults seemed to know and always made comments about how close Jun and Ash had grown, how they would grow up and marry one day, that Ash would make a beautiful bride and Jun a handsome husband.

The end of summer heralded the start of the school year, and Jun got lucky. She and Ash were in the same class. Their summer friendship stayed and they played games during recess and walking home from school. Of course, it wasn't all fun and games. Jun was the only Asian kid in the school, her name and foreign features and deeply black hair first a novelty, then a distraction, and eventually, a target.

The teasing started small. Jun's name, pronounced like the month of June, was called a girl's name. The kids insulted her parents, calling them dumb, saying that they didn't know that Jun was a boy, called her gay and a girl and a freak. When she went home crying about the teasing, her mother got her to stop, showing her the strange symbol that represented her name in another language. Her name wasn't a girl's name, it meant that she was genuine and pure, her mother said. That when she was born, her mother named her that so that "my son would grow up to be a genuine and pure man." Her mother's words worked, and she stopped responding to the teasing about her name, and eventually their insults stopped bothering her, though they never stopped.

Especially as she continued hanging out with Ash at school. Boys didn't hang out with girls, the other boys said, even as they all played games at recess together. She was "gay," whatever that meant, because she spent so much time together with a girl. Her father just grunted, saying boys were boys and that she needed to be tougher, that "no son of mine is such a pansy. Even the neighbor's daughter is more manly than you!"

Her eyes were too slanted, they couldn't tell if she was awake or asleep. Again, her father told her to toughen up and be a man, that if they other boys teased her for her eyes, she should give them a black one. That had been the start of things, her father teaching his son how to throw a punch, how to hunt, how to toughen up and be a "real man." Even though she didn't feel like a real man. It never felt right, never felt comfortable, but she was a good son and listened, at least where her father was watching.

When teasing her for spending time with Ash wasn't enough, when she finally gave another boy a black eye and repeated her father's words to them, they found a new weak point.

Things escalated one day when the other boys started pulling her aside during recess to tease and hit her, even escalating to shaving her "weird hair" so that she'd look "normal." When her father found out, he went ballistic at the school and the bullying stopped for a time. But that didn't stop Jun's suffering. The weekend boxing lessons turned into forced outings to learn to hunt and shoot and spending time with her father and his friends to learn to be "a real man."

Then puberty struck. It started slow, Ash stopped wanting to catch frogs and go fishing and started wanting to do more "girly" things. Jun loved the change. Doing those things was fun enough, but only because she got to spend time with her best friend away from her father and his expectations. With her, she wasn't "he" or "boy" or any of the mocking names so many of her classmates called her. She was just Jun. They started to talk more, do more things that Jun knew her father wouldn't approve of. Braiding hair, knitting, gossiping, telling ghost stories late into the night. It was the best time, at least, until it wasn't.

Ash changed more as she grew out more and started to act even more differently. She started to spend less time around Jun, instead spending more time with just the girls. Jun was jealous of her and missed her at the same time. Then, puberty hit her too, only it was different. Her body started to change, but not like Ash's. Her shoulders grew wider, her hips narrower, and her voice deeper. Hair, thick and black, started to appear in places it hadn't been before. On her legs, her arms, her face. Each new patch felt like a stain, an infection, something she wanted to get rid of. And for once, her father helped. He taught her to shave her face to military standard, getting rid of the unwanted hairs cleanly. But then she went further and shaved her arms and legs too. Her father didn't approve.

Afternoons and weekends spent with Ash and the other girls became Little League baseball and football. She was terrible at them. A youth spent running through the forest and fleeing and hiding from bullies made her fast. She could run and catch, but she couldn't hit or throw. Though she hated it, it gave her an excuse. Science classes and helping her father at his auto shop taught her about something called wind resistance, and that was enough for her to convince her father that getting rid of the extra hair didn't make her a "pansy boy," it was for sports. It was even partially true.

She never really got the hang of baseball, and eventually, her father pulled her from it, but not from football. She was just good enough at running and not getting hit that she made a decent running back, but her heart wasn't in it. She didn't want to spend time running from aggressive and testosterone fueled boys. She missed spending time with the girls, with Ash. But playing made her father happy, and she told herself that doing something that made her father happy made her a good son. That lasted until high school.

She wasn't good enough for the high school team and she knew it, but her father made her try out. She didn't make the cut, and it relieved her but disappointed her father. He grew distant again, muttering when drunk about his failure to make his son a success. Then she and Ash grew close again. While she'd been forced to play football, Ash became a cheerleader. She was always popular, but now she was the darling of the town, and better yet, they could spend time together again. Where before spending time with girls as a boy was weird, his friendship with Ash was a source of mockery, now their friendship was a good thing, something that boys were jealous of.

Then, things changed again. They became more than friends and started dating. What they shared was special, deeper than just a surface friendship, and Ash even seemed to understand how Jun felt about her father's disappointment, how she wasn't a very good son. So Ash helped her. Told her why she needed to act a certain way, why the way she acted wasn't right for a boy, taught her to be more manly. Ash succeeded where her father failed. She started to act more like the other boys, even started helping her father more at his shop, learning a bit more about fixing cars, and stopped shaving her arms and legs. It didn't feel right, but Ash was right that doing things that way helped make her father happier.

High school passed quickly and again things changed. Jun and Ash broke up, better as friends than lovers, but they remained close. After graduation, Jun's father wanted her to follow in his footsteps and join up with the military, hoping his "son" would toughen up, but instead she went to school, attending classes at the local community college at night and on weekends while helping out at her father's auto shop. While being an "egghead" wasn't what her father envisioned for her, he didn't complain about the extra help even as he not so privately mourned his "son's" weakness.

Then came the final change in Jun's life, the one that would mark her like never before. A simple psychology class. It wasn't anything special, an introductory course that Jun only took because it was one of the few courses available at night, and the material didn't truly interest her. At least, not until they talked about gender identity. Her classmates, as expected of the town she lived in, were not amused to discuss the topic, complaining that it was "unnatural" and that "men are men and nothing will change that." It quickly turned political and derailed from there, and then the next week they moved on to safer waters. But the discussion and the section in their textbook stuck with her more than anything else.

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Things just seemed to click, and she realized something about herself, something she'd ignored and shoved deep down inside of her. It was an exciting and dangerous discovery, but that didn't matter as much as finally figuring out why she never felt right, why she'd never been a good son to her father, always felt more comfortable with the girls than the boys, why she felt inadequate as a boyfriend. Because she wasn't a son and wasn't a boyfriend, she'd always been one of the girls, just no one realized it. Least of all her.

Finding this out about herself was exciting, but she knew it was something she would have to keep hidden so long as she stayed in that town. Different was bad. Different was evil. And her being a girl, not a boy, was different. Too different. She needed to leave.

But not before she told Ash, not before she asked her best friend to come with her. Ash was different from everyone ese in their town. They grew up together. They shared their first, secret kiss and more. They told each other everything, even the things that no one else in that town, even their own families, would understand. They shared everything with each other, so what was one more secret? One more taboo confession.

She met up with Ash at their secret spot, an old willow tree next to a small creek in the forest between their childhood homes where they played as children, where they'd sneak out to meet up as teenagers to drink and do all the taboo things teenagers do that were publicly discouraged but quietly tolerated. It was their place, the perfect place to share a secret. Jun told Ash that she was transgender, that she wanted to transition. She thought her friend would understand, but she didn't. They argued, they fought. "You'll never be accepted as one of those freaks!" Ash screamed, her face red and tears leaking. "Take it back! Don't do it! People here will find out, and they'll never let you stay here if you do! You'll be forced to leave the town, leave me!"

"I need to be true to myself Ash! I can't live a lie, not when it eats at me every day! If this town can't accept that then I'll just leave!" Jun ran away from the woman she thought was her friend, thought would understand. Maybe, Jun thought, maybe she'll come around, maybe she can leave with me, and we can start over together somewhere else.

When the text from Ashley popped up, she thought her silent hope had been realized. It read "I'm sorry. Meet at the spot tonight?"

Excited and relieved, Jun quickly texted back. "You're forgiven! I'll be there after work!"

The rest of the day seemed to rush by. Jun couldn't pay attention in any of her classes at the community college, and kept making simple mistakes while helping out the mechanics at her dad's auto shop. She was just too excited that Ashley had a change of heart, too busy imagining their future lives when they left this backwards, small town.

She'd stopped by the liquor store after work to pick up a bottle of whiskey. She and Ashley could celebrate their making up at the spot, she thought with a grin. "A bottle of Makers, Auntie May," she told the older woman who'd owned and ran the liquor store her whole life, as she fished her wallet and ID out of her pocket.

"Makers, eh Jun? Ain't you a bit young to be in here?" Auntie May shook her head as Jun pulled her ID out of her wallet and handed it to her.

"No ma'am, just turned 23 a couple months ago!"

Auntie May took a close look at Jun's ID, glancing between the photo and Jun in front of her. "S'pose so, you been legal for a while then," she muttered. "You celebratin' somethin'?" Auntie May handed Jun her ID back and pulled a bottle out from under the counter and ringing it up.

"Yes ma'am. Meeting up with Ash tonight to discuss some stuff and celebrate!" Jun pulled a few bills out of her wallet and slid it over to the older woman as the cash register dinged and the drawer slid open.

"That right? Well you two always made a cute couple." Auntie May flashed Jun a toothless grin as she swept the bills into the register and handed the change back along with the bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. "You be a good man to her you hear!"

Jun mentally winced at being misgendered, but shrugged it off as she smiled back at the older woman. Auntie May didn't know, and by the time she did, she and the townspeople would either accept Jun as she was, or Jun, and hopefully Ash as well, would be long gone. "It's not like that Auntie May, Ash and I are just friends now!" Jun said as she quickly retreated to the door.

"Me an' Paul were 'just friends' up until he got me pregnant with my first son too!" Auntie May cackled, watching Jun's face turn bright red as she reached the door. "Be a good man, and cut your hair 'fore the wedding, you're starting to look like a girl!"

Jun nodded dumbly and pushed down the mixed anger and embarrassment from the older woman's teasing. She doesn't know, she doesn't know, she doesn't know. Jun thought to herself as she fingered her messy shoulder length hair and shouldered her way through the swinging glass doors.

The drive home helped cool Jun's anger and embarrassment. It sucked to be in the closet like this, but it wouldn't be for that much longer. She'd been saving up for over a year now, stashing her cash in an old coffee can under the seat of her car every week. Her father controlled her paychecks and her bank account after all, and would notice if it got too high and start paying her less. He thought that as long as he controlled her money, he could control her. Luckily he didn't know what school cost, and thought Jun was just taking classes as an excuse to meet "college girls." That was an acceptable use of the money he paid her after all. That and partying like a "normal guy." Instead, most of the cash from her paychecks she stashed away, and it was getting close enough for her to leave. She'd pack a bag, pick up Ash if she decided to come with her, and they'd just drive out of the county, maybe even to another state, anywhere other than the town that she'd been trapped in since she was a child.

With those thoughts whirling in her head, Jun parked in the yard next to the house and grabbed the paper wrapped bottle before hiking to the spot. The shadows grew long as Jun got to the spot. She wasn't too surprised to see she'd beaten Ash here. Ash worked on the other side of town at the beauty salon, while her father's shop was just over the bridge from the neighborhood they grew up in. Sighing, Jun sat against the old willow tree while she waited for Ash, drumming her fingers on the paper wrapped glass bottle. The shadows grew longer and it wasn't long before she heard footsteps coming up behind her. Excited, she jumped up and turned around, bottle in hand to greet her friend. "As-huh?"

It wasn't Ash. It was her older brother Bobby and his two buddies Ray and Charlie. They were a few years older than Jun and Ash, and had always been pretty decent guys. Bobby was a Sheriff's Deputy and was always sending broken down tourists to Jun's father's shop for repairs. Ray and Charlie had joined up with the Army, just like Jun's father, and just like her father, they'd come back to town after a couple tours to settle down. "Hey Bobby, Ray, Charlie." Jun nodded at the 3 men as they surrounded Jun on 3 sides, her back to the willow tree. "What's going on?"

Bobby sneered at her, his hands hooked in his duty belt. "What's going on Jun, is that my baby sis told me you're one of them tranny fags. That true?"

A look of shock spread over her face as she flinched back, the hateful tone in Bobby's voice hurting more than a gut punch. "Wha-what're you talking about?"

"We heard filled little Ash's head with a bunch of evil poison and lies like the evil fag you are!" Ray snarled as he stepped closer, his fist clenched tight.

Jun stepped back and bumped into the tree, her heart racing as the three men crowded in closer. Her eyes darted towards the gap between Charlie and the tree that was closing with every step he took towards her. "It ain't like that!" She yelled, getting ready to bolt.

"Nah, enough of your lies and bullshit you little twink. I should've done this before you ever laid hands on my baby sis!" Bobby yelled as he threw a quick punch at Jun's gut.

Jun jerked left, her back scraping against the rough park of the tree as she darted for the gap she'd eyed moments before. A high pitched yelp echoed through the woods as a hand grabbed the collar of her stained work shirt and pulled her back, followed by a brutal blow to her side that shoved the air from her lungs and choked her scream off. She flailed, her fist tightening around the bottle in her hand as she tried to ward off another blow. She felt more than saw the thud as she caught Ray in the temple with the edge of the bottle, the durable glass refusing to shatter. Ray's grip on her collar grew slack as he fell back, landing awkwardly on the roots of the willow tree.

Everyone froze for a few moments, staring at Ray's unmoving body in the dimming light of dusk. The bottle spilled from Jun's loose hand and thudded into the forest dirt. Bobby and Charles snapped their gazes back to her, eyes narrowed in anger. "The fag killed Ray!" Charles screamed, charging at her like a rhino. Jun leapt to the side again, barely avoiding Charlie's grasping hands as he flew past her in a rage. She turned to the woods and ran towards home. Get to the truck, get out of town. Get to the-

Her whole body suddenly locked up in pain, her nerves feeling like they were on fire. It was like the first time she'd worked on an electrical repair at her dad's shop, and had forgotten to unhook the battery before touching a live wire, except a thousand times worse. She felt her nose crunch as she fell face first into a tree, her warm blood already starting to drip down her face. She started pushing herself back up to run again, when her raw nerves lit back up and she crashed back into the dirt.

Jun opened her eyes and saw a dark figure stepping out of the shadow of the willow tree, a boxy object held in his hand. "Charlie, I got him, check Ray!" Bobby barked as he stepped closer to her. He crouched down in front of her and waved her department issued taser in her face. "You couldn't just take it like a man, huh little fag?" He growled at her. "You messed with my sister, you tried to run from your responsibilities, you hurt Ray. You got nothing to say?!" She convulsed in the dirt, her body wracked in pain as lightning seared through her muscles and nerves.

"Bobby, Ray's dead." Charlie's voice called out from behind the tree, full of anger and hurt. Jun struggled to breath, her breathes fast and shallow as she stared up at the man in front of her, her muscles refusing to listen to her.

Bobby grimaced and looked at Jun with naked fury in his eyes. "You killed my friend. You're gonna pay for that you tranny bitch!" A glob of spit hit her in the eye and dripped down as more lightning coarsed through her body. The lightning stopped, only for her to feel something shatter in her chest as a sharp and heavy blow pushed her through the dirt.

She lost track of how long it lasted, the heavy blows alternating with lightning. She screamed until her throat grew raw, then whimpered, then could only lay there in silence as beating continued. The pain was all she could focus on, the only thing in her mind. The loud pop of a bottle shook her out of it, telling her there was more than the pain of the beating. She felt a new kind of stinging pain as something liquid was poured all over her. Through one swollen eye, she could barely make out Bobby as he took a swig from a bottle before handing it Charlie and lighting up a cigarette.

"For what you did, you'll burn in hell like the tranny sinner you are you little bitch." Bobby took a deep drag on his cigarette. "Funny thing is, over in England they call these things fags, well guess I'm going to light another fag tonight." Bobby dropped the lit cigarette on her chest as he leaned over and put the bottle in her unresponsive hand. He blew the smoke in her face as he grabbed a handful of her hair and lit it with his lighter. "Keep warm you little bitch." Bobby stood back up as Jun tried to thrash and put the fire out, but she was too hurt. Her body wouldn't listen to her, everything was broken. She couldn't move, but she could feel the heat as the fire spread, first along her hair, carefully grown out over the past year, to the thin layer of alcohol all over here. Her clothes ignited quickly after that, and then she was left to a different searing pain. The last thing she saw before everything went dark was Bobby and Charlie staring at her through flames as if she was just a piece of trash to be disposed of.

Jun blinked as the memories of her life and death on Earth stopped coming. The ghost of searing flames licked at her soul, the trauma fresh and haunting, but the pain muted. Just an echo of the true pain remained, enough to remind her of what she experienced. Still, it hurt. Shoving the pain down deep inside was second nature to her though, a gift of sorts. It kept her moving at least.

As the sensation of tears leaking from her eyes drew her back to the present, she looked around at the strange place she was in again. The void containing her final memories had vanished, leaving only the infinite void of this place and the respawn screen.

She read the screen again, her previous Karmic Balance pulling all of her attention. Reading it had her confused. I had negative karma at the my life? The thought seemed to echo in the strange void as more memories from her life flooded into her.

College classes on religion and philosophy. Webpages when she went down rabbit holes of random research. Karma was a balancing force, weighing good and evil, or something like that. That it followed you from life to life, always changing based on your actions. The respawn screen seemed to say that she'd started with negative karma. Did she live a life so evil before that she earned such negative karma?

Memories of her life and death flashed through her mind. The joys and celebrations were few and far between, every happy memory tainted and spoiled. The pain and sadness of her life seemed overwhelming. All of it shaded by her death, full of pain and hate. Is that why I went through all of that?! Negative karma?

Anger at the injustice of it all raged inside of her. Is that why I suffered? Is that why my world was filled with hate for who I am? For who I wanted to be? Why the people I loved betrayed me? Fucking karma?! Consumed with rage, Jun lashed out at the universe, throwing her thoughts and memories and pain at it, screaming about the injustice of it all.

"Do you think some positive karma makes up for the pain?! What are you to decide what my life is meant to be? What are you to judge my life? To judge me?! Tell me why I suffered! Tell me what I could have possibly done to deserve that! Show me!" She felt no strange locks hiding memories away. No screens offering answers no matter how bitter. Nothing. Just silence, and an invitation.

She wasn't sure how long she lashed out. She never grew tired, never felt anything change, only the passing of her thoughts as she raged at the universe. She could have spent eons doing so, or simply the moment between moments. Time seemed meaningless here.

An unknowable time passed before Jun calmed down. Her emotions spent, Jun looked at the respawn screen again. Her negative balance caused a flare of anger in her spirit, but it quickly burned out. The next two lines made her pause and reread them. And reread them again. And again. Eventually, she made a choice.