Mulan(Yoonmin)

Chapter 1

*Qingzhao is that lady that cleans Mulan in "Honor to Us All" It's not her actual name but I had to give her one so that I didn't have to call her "the lady"*

          I sat down on my bed, rice bowl in front of me, paintbrush in my ear, as I use my chopsticks to balance a grain of rice from the bowl. "Quiet and demure...graceful, polite", I said to myself as I wrote it on my arm. I had to meet the matchmaker today, and I knew I was going to forget something. She's not someone that you want to mess with. She basically depicts if you're suitable for anyone in all of China. It was an honor to the family for their daughter to get a match from her. I would normally be happy for this sort of stuff, but there's one little problem...I'm transgender. I was born women, but I think of myself as a man. I haven't done any transformations or anything just yet, but I still don't feel like a woman. I take my chopsticks and grab some rice and put it inside of my mouth. "Delicate, refined, poised..." I dip my paintbrush into the ink as I make the last stroke on my arm. "Punctual!" I then hear the sound of a rooster crowing in the distance. "Aaiee!" I jump out of my bed and start running towards the door, blowing on my arm to dry the ink. "Little Brother!", I yell, trying to find my pet dog. He normally helped with the chores and did a pretty good job at it. "Little Brother! Little-" I glance down to see a sleeping dog on the floor, just like usual. "Ah! There you are!" He then wakes up, lifting an ear at first until jumping up and sticking his tongue out. I turn him around to have him looking the same direction as me. "Who's the smartest doggy in the world? C'mon, smart boy! Can you help me with the chores today?" I tie a sack of chicken feed to his back as well as a pole with a bone attached to it. Little brother immediately starts to chase the bone, running promptly into a wall and then out the door, scattering grain everywhere. He starts to run towards the small temple that sat on a small hill near our house. I notice my father inside of it, so I grab the tea kettle and some cups and walk over to him. As I'm walking over, I see him put a lit stick on the tray above him, get down on his knees and start praying to our ancestors. "Honorable Ancestors...please help Mulan impress the matchmaker today." As he says that, Little Brother, followed by a herd of chickens, bursts into the family temple, pouring seeds all around him. "Please, please help her.", I hear him say. I start to get anxious but try to hide it as I walk over to him. Little Brother tries to eat the bone from the stick as I bend down and push it closer to his mouth so it's easier for him to bite on it. "Father, I brought you some-" I accidentally bump into my father, who catches the teapot on his cane while the cups hit the ground and shatter into a million pieces. "Mulan..." "I brought a spare!", I say as I pull out a cup from my pocket. "Mulan...", my father says grudgingly. I then start to pour tea into the small cup. "Remember, the doctor says three cups of tea in the morning" "Mulan." "..and three at night." I hand it to him reluctantly. "Mulan. You should already be in town. We're counting on you to-" "Upload the family honor, I know. I don't even wanna do this anyway. And stop calling me Mulan. It's Jimin, remember?" "You were born with the name Mulan, so I'm gonna call you by that. You were also born as a girl so that's why you're doing this. It's a family tradition." "Yeah I know but it's not my fault if the matchmaker hates me once I walk in there. Anyway, I'll try not to let you down so much. Wish me luck!" I then run down the stairs, holding my dress in my hand to make sure I don't step on it. "Hurry!", I hear him yell.

          "Fa Li, where is your daughter? The Matchmaker isn't a patient woman.", Qingzhao says as she closes the curtains in a huff. "Sigh...of all days to be late! I should have prayed to the ancestors for luck.", I say to myself. Where is my dau-...son anyway? I sometimes forget that she wanted to be a he and wanted me to call her a he. I was fully accepting of him being a male, but everyone in China wasn't so I had to make him do this. "How lucky can they be? They're dead.", I hear my grandma say next to me with a cricket in her hand for some reason. "Besides, I've got all the luck we'll need." She holds up the cage that has the cricket and starts talking to it for some reason. "This is your chance to prove yourself.", she whispers as she covers her eyes and steps off the sidewalk. "Grandma! No!" She continues to walk as carts come out in all directions, some even crashing into each other. She gets over to the other side, unharmed as she takes her hand away from her eyes and looks down at the cricket, smiling. "Yup! This cricket's a lucky one!" I sigh in relief as I see my son riding his horse towards me and jumping off. "I'm here!" I looked at him angrily as I see bits of wheat sticking out of his hair. "What? But, Mama, I had to--" "None of your excuses. Now, let's get you cleaned up." I lead him to where the door is as he tries to grab his skirt. "But Mama I don't even wanna do this, you know this." "I know, honey. But no one else in this entire village knows and won't accept it, trust me." I notice that his head goes down, almost in a depressed way. I didn't wanna make him sad, but I had to tell him the truth. Qingzhao looks at him thoroughly, eventually taking some hair and pulling it up to look at the back of it. "This is what you give me to work with? Well, honey, I've seen worse." She then pushes Mul--...Jimin over to a curtain and starts to take off his clothes. "We're gonna turn this sow's ear into a silk purse." She then pushes him into the tub, which was pretty small in my opinion. "It's freezing!", he says. "It would've been warm if you were here on time.", I say as Qingzhao takes bottles of shampoo and pours them all over Jimin's head. "We'll have you washed and dried. Primped and polished until you glow with pride. Just my recipe for an instant bride, and with this, you'll bring honor to us all." "What's with all of the sing-songy sentences you're saying?", he says as I grab the sponge from next to me as well as grab his arm. I flip it over and notice black ink all over his arm, "Jimin, what's this?" "Uh...notes...in case I forget something." "Hold this." Grandma then hands me the wicker cage that holds the cricket. "We're gonna need more luck than I thought." The ladies next to her then grab Jimin and sit him down on a table. They start to do his hair, pulling on it at every angle, eventually putting it into a bun. It looked pretty cute in my opinion, but I could tell that he hated it. We lead her outside and notice women in all corners were being fitted into dresses by their mothers. I start to walk over to the dressing room as I notice Jimin at a checkers table, staring down at it for a minute until moving it a few spaces. I pull him away and walk him over to where two ladies were standing with fabrics and rulers. They place him onto a stool and start to wrap pink silk around his arms. "I don't really like this color.", Jimin says as he lifts his arm up, staring at it with disappointment. One of the ladies walks over to Jimin with a ½ blue and ½ red silk fabric and wraps it around him. "Men want girls with good taste." "But I'm not a-" "Zip it!", I say before he can finish his sentence. The other lady takes a measuring tape and wraps it around his neck, almost choking him. She then takes a red ribbon and starts to wrap it around his waist. Once the dress is done, we walk out and start to walk over to the makeup room until I notice that Jimin isn't next to me. I turn around and notice him near these two kids, who were sword fighting, and took this girl's doll from her, which Jimin gave back. "Hey! Jimin! Come over here", I shout from across the room. "Coming!" he says as he scurries over to me. We walk in and see one girl sitting down on a carpet with a bench next to her with makeup and all sorts. I sit down next to her while Jimin sits in front of her. She starts to put on white powder onto his face, which makes him sneeze every five seconds. After that, she puts on the blush and the red paint as well as the eyeliner. Once she's done, I grab my hair clip and place in the middle of her hair. "There. You're ready." "Not yet", my grandmother says as she walks over with a necklace and for some reason an apple. She then shoves the apple inside of Jimin's mouth and he pulls it out in confusion. "An apple for serenity. A pendant for balance" she says as she places a ying and yang pendant in his dress. "Beads of jade for beauty. You must proudly show it." She then pulls out the cricket randomly and attaches it to the dress. "Now add a cricket just for luck and even you can't blow it." "Hehe ill try not to, Grandma."

          I walk off to where the matchmaker was supposedly supposed to be and started to pray that I don't fuck it all up. "Ancestors, hear my plea. Help me not to make a fool of me and to not uproot my family tree. Keep my father standing tall." I look back and see my mother and grandmother waving at me. I wave back and then notice my mother running up to me with an umbrella. Shit, I almost forgot that. I grab it from her and continue to walk and hear other girls singing. "Scarier than the undertaker, we are meeting our matchmaker." I then see the line of other girls and start to follow it. I notice that they are all doing the same position and I copy them in the risk of not being left out. We then all get into a straight line and bend down with our umbrellas open. The doors open and the matchmaker comes out. She's a lot fatter than I expected. She looks at her clipboard and calls out my name. "Present!", I say while standing up and waving. She turns around and starts to write on her clipboard "Speaking without permission" Shit I already fucked it up. I then follow her inside and hear the doors close behind us. She then examines my body and again writes something down "Too skinny. Not good for bearing sons." After she says that, the cricket then suddenly jumps out of his cage and lands onto her shoulder. I then grab it before she can notice because she would have killed me if she saw. Unfortunately, it jumps away from my grasp and starts to jump around me. Once I catch it, I then shove it in my mouth so that she doesn't notice. "Recite the final admonition." "Mhm" I say as I spit the cricket out and pull out my fan. "Fulfill your duties calmly and respectfully." I look at my arm to see what the rest of it was and notice that it all smudged in the bath. God damn it. Ok i just have to wing it, I guess. "Reflect before you snack...ACT! This shall bring you honor and glory!" Great, I fucked it up. Hopefully she doesn't count that as a fail. She then grabs my arm and examines my fan. She then hands it back folded and drags me over to a table. When she lets go, I notice that all the ink got on her hand. Damn it. She then walks over to one of the sides of the table with a tea pot and puts it on the table. "Now, pour the tea." I sit down next to the cup and stare at her ink filled hand for a second until picking up the tea pot. "To please your future in-laws, you must demonstrate a sense of dignity and refinement. You must also be poised." She then brushes her fingers onto her face, more especially her chin area and makes a fake beard, which distracts me from pouring the tea, ultimately pouring it on the table. Once I noticed, I then poured it into the cup and saw that the cricket somehow got inside the cup and was taking a bath inside the cup. She then took it away and I tried to tell her,"Pardon me.", but she then snapped at me randomly. "And silent!" Like damn what stick has been shoved so deep up your ass? I then get onto the table to try to take it away. "Could I just take that back?" "Um bitch no give it back." She then starts to pull it closer to her and this starts to be a little ol' tug o' war thing. After a bit, she then falls back and it all spills on her, as well as having the cricket stuck inside her tits. She then gets up and looks like she's about to choke me. "Why, you clumsy..." Before she can basically kill me, the cricket starts to jump around in her body, which makes her move backwards and hit the tin holding the hot stones. She then falls down on her ass and sits directly on them, causing her dress to catch on fire. As she tries to put it out, I do the same and use my fan, but accidentally make it worse. She then falls onto the table, breaking it because of her fat ass, and continues to run around, breaking everything. Once she opens the door, she starts screaming "Put it out! Put it out! Put it out!" I hear this and grab the tea pot and throw the tea onto her face accidentally. The fire gets put out, and I give her back the tea pot and walk away in embarrassment. I walk over to my mother and the matchmaker walks over and slams the tea pot next to me, panting. "You are a disgrace! You may look like a bride, but you will never bring your family honor!" She starts to walk off and head inside her temple. Oh great I fucked it all up.