#HI wow sorry a lot idea spilled out can you tell I've been hyperfixatin creatin for a short while here

[vimbry]

You have been prompted hit us with those ideas :)

so shockingly, it’s a yotsubato au idea. I hope that’s what was expected haha but um. I've just been thinking about mr yousuke koiwai actually being trans. and by extension the one who had yotsuba. :)

I’m being super indulgent here in that he is someeewhere on the non-binary spectrum. teetering on masc; presenting as masc, refers to himself in a masculine way for convenience because you know, explaining that identity to people is hard and potentially troublesome. it doesn’t really bother him, so long as it’s not his agab.

he’s stealth, of course. moving away to the suburbs with new people made this a hell of a lot easier. apart from with his immeadiate family, naturally. and jumbo, he’s aware too, cause they were friends from being little and it’d be pretty unavoidable. yanda isn’t; koiwai was already presenting as male by the time they met and it just never comes up. he prob never even makes much of an effort to have it be a secret around him, he’s just cis, naive, and oblivous lmao but he’s a good guy really.

the reason the name yousuke took so long to crop up in the series is because he spent a very long time choosing it. he’s not really encountered anyone in the past 5 months of the manga’s timeline who ever needs to know/use his given name, anyway. even his bestie settled on referring to him by his family name until he felt comfortable with one and now it’s sorta stuck.

despite his family’s general acceptance and support of koiwai, they don’t actually know that he’s yotsuba’s bio parent. they highly Suspected it, but they didn’t pry, and he wouldn’t tell, so they eventually pushed it out of mind as families will do with things and it became irrelevant. she was an adorable big hit with everyone when they eventually came back home anyway, so that was more the focus! altho I do like the idea of jumbo being the exception, how there’s some things you could tell your closest loyal friend but not your family. it might’ve just slipped out between them.

jumbo got caught off guard when ena asked him about yotsuba’s mother and came up with “oh she was uhhh abandoned. she doesn’t have one” on the spot, and koiwai just rolled with that when fuuka later asked about it. look he even stalls a sec while trying to think something up. :)

“(internally panicking and buffering) hahaha yea an orphan right jumbo’s such a jokester haha - it’s true tho”

as for her real origins, it’s as boring and simple as you’d expect from a character frequently described as casually irresponsible lmao. (nah I’ll cut him some slack. sometimes things can’t be avoided/you’re on T and think it’s an impossibility, easily done). you've had a lot of heavy projects to deal with, you find a local lgbt friendly hotspot to wind down in, you end up meeting someone, it happens all the time. so he got stuck somewhere overseas in some apartment "””working away””” a little longer than anticipated.

his age was confirmed in an interview with the creator as “very early 30s”, so this would put him in his mid-to-late 20s when yotsuba’s born. still a bit in flux with his identity, this definitely not helping. took a few years to get everything together and return to japan.

we all know the experience of navigating gender can sure be, difficult. koiwai’s still a relatively young guy, and like most people, is taking things each day at a time. so I’m also just gonna go ahead and use this au to overexplain the basic style-shifting in-universe as hormone treatment microdosing/trying out different ways to present as the months progress aha. I mean, he looks SO drastically different. I know a few of them do but man! that is 2 different guys.

(also why he has that little bit of stubble there in chapter 7 and never again. unfortunately discovered that he’s apparently very good at growing a beard. didn’t like it, not for him. shaving is one of the few things he will force himself to do often. thanks azuma for deciding to draw him unshaven once and then likely deciding it was too tedious to replicate in future chapters so I can take this n run with it).

yotsuba’s also unaware that she’s Not adopted because she’s 5 and would tell everyone lol. also koiwai’s built up these nerves and reluctance around sharing it. it’s one of his reasons for harshly reinforcing how she shouldn’t lie. he’s projecting in keeping an especially large one up around her himself, and he also wants to raise her to feel she can always be honest with him about anything. she’s probably told one day as she gets older anyway. I think it’d be cute if they ended up looking super alike. 🥺

anyway yes thank you that is my thoughts !