“You...you’re a monster!” Shouts your mother. “Now my daughter is...well...a bitch! And I can’t seem to remember her otherwise! How dare you!”
“Wow, please relax, Stephanie,” says Kurt in his calm voice. “Why don’t you kick back and enjoy this next round? I think you’ll like it.”
“I’ll never like it until you make things normal again!”
“If I do that, you won’t exist...at least as who you are now.”
Stephanie stood still, paralyzed with fear and confusion and sadness all at once.
“Now where were we?” Asks Kurt, turning back to you, his Galatea. “Hmmm...Valerie, you’re Japanese.”
“Um...like...are you, um...fucking kidding me?” You retort, knowing that couldn’t be true. Stephanie couldn’t bring herself to speak; she fell to her knees with a sudden feeling of discomfort. Kurt, growing frustrated, swings the pendulum as crazy speed.
“Valerie, you and your parents are as close to 100% Japanese as it gets.”
“I...I...I’m, like...Japanese...oh...”
With those words, and with the pendulum going so fast, your resolve shatters as your whole body changes. You’re now shorter, paler, thinner, and far less busty, though your hair stays it’s dyed blonde despite being naturally black now. As your face reconfigures, your eyes get narrow as new winged makeup accents their new oriental shape. Your memories about your ethnicity alter completely: you’re an ethnically Japanese girl, plain and simple. Your whole identity is new. In your endless stream of new memories growing up Japanese, you remember all of the times you visited your grandparents (who were rich businesspeople who lived in the states for a while before moving back) in Japan every year. You weren’t too high on the native culture and never learned the language, however. So whitewashed you just soaked up all of the attention you got as a fabulous American supermodel. Nevertheless, it was your identity.
“Good, good girl,” says Kurt. “But Valerie is such a white name, isn’t it? That’s why your name is Yui.”
“My name is Yui,” you say without hesitation. That was always your name: Yui Morimoto. You loved your name, too.
“By the way, Yui...you model geisha clothes. You’re dressed in them now.”
“I...I model geisha clothes...” you say, almost reluctantly. You did enjoy the style, but it just wasn’t your favorite. Either way, just like your mother, you strutted your stuff in them. Today, you were in a sexy (and short) black and pink floral tunic, with your dyed blonde hair up in a bubble (with modest jewelry to boot). You looked like a slutty Japanese princess, which was fine by you.
Kurt pauses for a moment, but once his face lights up like a Christmas tree, he gives you one final command.
“And Yui, one final thing: you moved to the United States last year.”
“Wuh...what?” You say, groggily. You were born and raised in America! How...how could he suggest otherwise.
“You were born and raised in Japan, Yui.”
“I w-w-was...” you start, struggling mightily as your head gets so fuzzy. “I was born and raised...in...in...”
“Japan. Japan. Japan.”
At that moment, you gave in.
“Yui...Yui come from Japan...no from America” you say slowly in highly accented, broken English. You came from Japan as a model and TV star like your mom, moving to the states to sign with a new agent and do modeling in California. You don’t speak very good English (but you are obviously fluent in Japanese) and being slow on the uptake in general you aren’t very culturally acclimated just yet. Fortunately, being rich and famous had made the adjustment easy, and you love the American boys and hate the American girls for thinking they are somehow better than you. You can’t wait until you make it really big here like you did in Tokyo.
Kurt is absolutely beaming.