(This next passage refers to a character who sexually harasses Serena: it takes place before the first, so the reader does not know Serena is transgender yet, and assumes she is a cis lesbian.)

Kirihara's propensity for agitation mixed with attraction towards Serena reminded her of someone else from her past: one this narrative will later deal with. To her, Kirihara's verbal remarks were simply continuing the string of thorns that hung from the mouths of many in Serena's life. She had spent highschool hated by boys for being too feminine, and when she socialized with straight girls, they were usually the type who saw her more as a gay accessory than a thinking person.

(Similar. Note how this takes on dual meaning once her transness is revealed.)

She despised the police almost as much as Mia did. Her one interaction with them had been around her sixteenth birthday, when she decided to try some goth clothes & makeup. Feeling pleased on her way back, a police car had pulled up to the sidewalk, and a voice out of it shouted to get on the ground.

Assuming it was for somebody else, she kept walking, and the next thing she remembered was her face being slammed in to the wet asphalt, and her being shoved in to the back of a squad car. They said nothing as they drove her back to the station, and she hated that they forced her in to a holding cell with a few men. It was only after a few hours (and a phone call where her mother had chewed the sergeant down to the blood) that she was released, and told that they had suspected her to be a prostitute, due to her outfit. Later, her & her mother were told that they were conducting an internal misconduct investigation: the results of which were predictable.

Though she usually tried to deal calmly with the rotten hand life dealt her, part of her hoped that some Urasaria contract would bring her back to North Carolina. She had begun to like making Blackburn transhistorical in her life, implanting it back to certain memories. She thought about how his knee on her back would've earned him an legful of knives, and smiled at how Blackburn could fog the separation between her ideation & reality.

(This is trans-related, but very realistic and small, not melodramatic.)

This and other things about this moment were bringing her back to a shopping trip she had been on in highschool. She had come out to her group of female friends a year prior, and was out with them buying new women's clothes - which she preferred to just think of as clothes. As she came back from her section of the store, a few of her friends were coming out of the changing rooms, complimenting each other.

She went inside, tried one of her dresses on, and when she came out, one of the lesbians had said: "Aww, that makes you look like a real girl." The rest agreed, but what that meant Serena was in their eyes otherwise, was what stuck with her. No matter what she attained or how well she passed, she simply could be nothing but herself, and transgender.

(This refers to a normal conversation Serena overhears from another character.)

This bothered Serena, not because Kate had no idealization of Urasaria - Serena also saw it as just a job - but because she had no clue what 'conniption' meant, yet Mia did when she asked her later. This feeling of ignorance reminded her of when she had nearly failed a grade in highschool, that remained with her not because it proved she was stupid: but that she was only four points away from it. This was perhaps worse for Serena, for where failure may have engendered passion to change, now she was merely precarious and worried.

(This next one is a metaphor, of course, and comes at the end of an arc where Serena's dysphoria temporarily worsens.)

Yuruko handed her a second controller. "Uh, you have to use my third-party controller, though, sorry. It's basically the same, though."

Serena looked down at it: to her, it looked nothing like the official models. As she picked it up and started playing with Yuruko, though, the game onscreen centered her eyes, and she forgot what, exactly, had seemed wrong with it. Aside from an off-center trigger or smaller button, nothing bothered her in it.

A few minutes in, she accidentally pressed some extraneous button. Her character onscreen began spamming the same attack, and she paused as she mumbled to Yuruko she must've accidentally hit its turbo function. As she unpaused, her grip clenched, then relaxed, knowing she would not be bothered again until these features again appeared too steep.

(Finally, a dialogue on Serena & her father.)

"France-? -oh, yeah, you did." Serena rubbed her eyes. "Actually, this is kinda reminding me of when my dad died. I mean, not when he died, because I was too young to remember that."

"When you were younger?"

"Yeah, he died when I was a baby. But when I was growing up, my mom would talk about him all the time, and people from my family would always tell me about him, but... I just never really cared. My mom brought me to his grave when I was ten, and told me she was going to leave me alone for a few minutes, so I could, um, 'say what I wished I could say' to him."

"Did you say anything?"

"No. I just stood there and looked around until my mom came back. I've never gone back there by myself. And not because I don't think he would accept me being trans, but I just don't have anything but an idea of what he was like. He isn't real. Um, not even that, because I've cried at stuff like Attack on Titan, but I've never cried over my dad. The only reason I even remember it is because it's the only time my mom left me alone for a few minutes."

"Is she that protective of you?"

"Yep. I told you about when she called the cops on my ex-boyfriend, right?"

"For abusing you, yes."

"Yeah. He knew I was trans when we started dating, but he used to tell at me over stupid stupid, or threaten me in to...um. I don't really wanna talk about that stuff. I think his dad hated us dating, too, so he just dragged him out to the cops when they came. But I still dated my ex for a long time, and one time when we were cuddling, I remember I asked him why he still insulted me for being trans, even though he chose to date me. And he told me that he didn't really know why, and that he didn't like thinking about it because it made his head hurt."

"He didn't even try to excuse it?"

"No, it was pretty pathetic. But I didn't get what he meant until when I was talking to Yuruko, um, before we started dating, and I told her I hated how she was treating me like I was empty. A lot of people just expect me to do too much for them. But when we were walking back, um, I remembered something my ex said about how his family had this tradition where… every son had an -o name, right? Like, because they got cursed a hundred years ago, so every one was named Dino, Vito, Geno..."

"It sounds stupid."

"That's what I told him, and he just fucking exploded on me, that's why my mom called the cops on him. And I think it was because when I said it was dumb, he felt like there wasn't anything unique about him anymore. He was just some stupid tradition and he didn't know why."