Konojo ni naru hi ff

Emerge?

"Koko..."

The several doctors and nurses at work all jumped, looking for the source of the sound; they were a mix of male and female.

The boy licked his lips and tried again, his voice painfully hoarse. "Where's Koko?" His eyes only showed him blurriness and blinding white light, adding to the immense pain he was in.

The third time he spoke, his voice was much stronger, though he felt like he was dying and his limbs were on fire. "Where is Koko-chan?" he demanded, voice loud albeit still raspy. "Koko!" he yanked against the restraints holding him back. "Where's my sister? Let me see my sister! Bastards! Argh, I'll kill you!" he screamed, different than his original roar. It was the tiniest bit higher in pitch, though his voice was already an odd, gritty tenor. "Koko!"

"Sedatives," one doctor ordered calmly, though a bead of sweat dripped down his bald head. "We were warned he was tough."

The teen pulled again, nearly breaking the hospital bed. "Where is my dad? And my mom? Where are they? What are you doing to me? Answer me!"

A male nurse injected a clear liquid into his elbow and he immediately froze, more from psychological effect than actual effect. The injection felt like pure ice shot straight into his veins, and when it got to his heart he felt his face pale and he stiffened, falling back against the restraints as the ice was sent rocketing through his body.

"Calm down, Ryu," a second doctor said; she was female. "You are Emerging. It's going to be painful. You have to cooperate. The more you embrace it, the lower your chances of dying. If you struggle... Little Koko won't see her brother again unless it's in a casket."

Ryu surveyed her calmly as the drug began to wear off, his head cooled in more ways than one. "...I can respect that. You've got guts. No sugarcoating. I like it." He was strapped to the hospital bed in a gown; the staff had been notified of his aggressive nature. "I'm Emerging, that is correct? Turning into a girl?"

The female doctor nodded, giving him another injection; this one was tinted pink. It felt like carbonation in his blood.

"Fine. Whatever. It happens. I can't stop it. But I don't want any guys in here from now on if I'm going to be female."

The female doctor nodded. "Hotoke, out," she told the bald one. "You heard him."

The bald man left, taking the third doctor and two nurses with him. That left the female doctor and three nurses.

Ryu sighed, allowing them to keep giving him injections. "Female, huh? That'll be quite a change of pace. Hey Doc, will I like girls or boys?"

She focused on checking some of his stats before she answered. "Depends. Some never loose their original sexuality. Others change soon after. It depends on the person."

"Tch," he said, closing his eyes as liquid fire spread through his scalp. "And I'll go through all that crap that girls go through every month?"

"The full package."

"Well, shit," he said lightheartedly. "And here I thought I was past worrying about that."

"It does have its benefits." The obviously-female doctor's name was Ichika, a male name. "Luckily for me, I Emerged when I was seven. How do you feel?"

"Like my head is on fire and my blood vessels are going to burst," he replied in an atypically casual voice. "Oh, and everything aches- it's like growing pains all over again."

"It's more likely to be shrinking pains," a brunette nurse named Kaoru observed, peering at Ryu's chart over her narrow spectacles. "Females are typically smaller than males. Most of us shrunk when we Emerged."

"You all Emerged?"

"All of us except Rika over there," the second nurse said; she had pretty eyes and black hair with a name tag reading Uchida, and Rika was a natural-born girl with braids who was clearly interning and looked fairly nervous.

Kaoru picked up the flow of conversation again, loosening the Velcro straps around Ryu's wrists. "It's really not that uncommon, and you would never even suspect a thing unless you knew. Nearly a quarter of the female population is made up of Emergees at this point, or at least descendants. It's honestly not that peculiar anymore as the natural female population has been declining."

Ryuu sighed through his nose and closed his eyes. "My wrists hurt in particular, the insides. They really do feel like they're going to burst. And seriously? That's a high percentage. My little sister Koko emerged when she was a year old, so it wasn't that big a deal, and her name is androgynous anyway. Most people didn't realize she Emerged at all. She doesn't even know it herself."

His head began swimming and his wrists felt like they were bulging, something inside his arms straining to escape.

"We'll be right outside your cocoon, Ryu," Uchida said gently as Ichika helped the boy curl up into a fetal position, inner wrists aimed outwards.

"Will I be as strong as I am now?" he asked, slurring his words as his gown was taken away along with the bandages around his head.

"Likely not. Females are statistically weaker than males."

Ryu sighed, closing his eyes. "Let's get this over with, then."

Doctor Ichika took a scalpel and drew the blade over the insides of each of the teen's wrists, where he said it hurt the most, noting that his hair was already growing longer. She backed out of the way quickly after slitting his wrists, just in time for filaments like spiders' silk to shoot out of the cuts, attaching themselves to the walls. The three experienced women sat on the floor and the intern joined them, watching as the white fibers wove themselves around the teen until he was entirely encased in the white stuff, and it rapidly went from warm and sticky to cool and hard, forming a shell around to protect him during his change.

Rika watched the process with amazement, anxiety replaced with awe. "Wow," she whispered. "It's... actually beautiful." Creepy, but beautiful.

"No matter how many times I see it, it never gets old," Uchida said gently. "To think that I was in one of those at some point, turning into what I am now..."

"It's a metamorphosis," Ichika said quietly, standing up again. "And increasingly strenuous the older the boy gets. Our job isn't over yet ladies, we still have work to do, and sitting here admiring him isn't going to stop him from dying."

"Right," Kaoru agreed. "And he's seventeen, the oldest we've seen it happen. It'll be a miracle if he survives."

"Kaoru, monitor his hormone and pheromone levels," Ichika ordered. "Uchida, watch his vital stats closely. Rika, observe the process. We have to stay with him the entire week to ensure he lives."

"And if he doesn't come out in a week?"

Ichika looked at the cocoon grimly. "Then he's in trouble."