“So, the main character of Universe City is written to be agender. Is there a reason you decided to write the character in this way?”

Aled looked from the interviewer (she was a neatly dressed woman wearing heavy makeup, he remembered quite well) to the camera. “Uh, I really just liked the idea of representation in media.” His hands picked at his sleeves. It’s always been a nervous habit of his. “I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts and shows, and none of them had any characters that were agender, or genderqueer, or anything like that. So I decided,” he shrugged “Why not?”

“I see,” the woman replied. The camera was never pointed at her, it was only on Aled. He was staring at her shoes now. He couldn’t make eye contact with her or the imagined audience.

“Yeah, and I know there’s people out there, like, I knew people at my secondary school, when I was first making Universe City, that are gay and transgender and stuff like that,” his knee started bouncing, another nervous habit he had. It’s almost like he forgot he was even on camera. “And I thought that they may be drawn to it.”

“So it would be another selling point of the podcast to a…” she twirled her pen around at this, seemingly fishing a word out of the air with it. “genderqueer audience?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” The camera was still on him. At least his voice was steady, albeit impossible to listen to without cringing. He always knew how to record audio properly.

“Okay. How did you find ideas for other characters in-“

Aled pauses the video he was rewatching for the seventh time. Well, it wasn’t the entire video, just the one portion. He knows interviews mean possibly spilling your secrets to a camera because you’re too caught up in everything to lie. Or if you do lie, it sounds incredibly suspicious. But still, he came up with that? He expected more from his past self.

He hears a knock on the door. Getting up from the couch, he glances at the clock. He knows Frances is here, and judging by the time, she’s fashionably late, too. He is nowhere near ready for anything, let alone company.

He opens the door and she’s standing there, in casual but clean clothes, hair already tied up. She cocks her head slightly when she sees him. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Aled says. “Just didn’t brush my hair or anything before.” Did he even brush his teeth? He doesn’t remember. He’s still in the hoodie and sweatpants he fell asleep in last night. He wasted all morning on the couch, watching and rewatching that 40-second clip of himself. It messed with his head, like he just watched a movie and came out of the theatre, the bright sunlight and harsh sounds transporting him into another reality. How self-obsessed of him, to be dazed at his own image.

“I was gonna say,” Frances grins. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to look good to make great things.” She slides past him, even though he’s taking up most of the doorway. “Do you want a hair tie, though?”

“Yes, thank you.”

After tying back his hair, they get set up to work on the podcast. They have a method now, after doing it for so long. First came the last of their brainstorming, ironing out details that needed finalizing, or that would be really interesting to add. Then he would record and she would work on the drawing that would accompany the episode, pulling ideas from the script and putting them onto her paper as they worked simultaneously. Then the final editing that he didn’t do while recording, the more drastic changes to the final product like voice-pitching and sound effects. Then the end song. He’d gotten a pedalboard for his amp a few months ago, and he changed its settings for each recording.

The video still knocks around in Aled’s head through all of this. It’s a fly buzzing around his brain, the words he chose and stumbled over, and how his voice sounded strained and too full, and how absolutely terribly he presented himself when answering what should have been a simple question.

“Why do you think I made Radio agender?” he asks Frances. They’re eating dinner now, which is also part of their routine. They’ve made a point to try all of the restaurants that deliver in a 5-kilometer radius. Tonight, it’s Indian food.

“I think you would know the answer to that best,” Frances replies.

“No, just guess. Why do you think I did it?”

She puts down her fork. “Well, you do the thing where you pitch up or down Radio’s voice. I really do love that, so maybe it gave you an excuse to use that kind of audio manipulation. At least, that’s why I would do it. Why do you ask?”

That may be part of it, but not in the way Frances is thinking. “I came up with a bad answer on an interview the other day,” he replies. “I said I did it to ‘provide representation’ or to like, I don’t know, suck trans people into listening to Universe City.”

“I don’t think you would’ve done it for that.”

“I did, though! I said I did, at least,” he corrects himself. “And now the mass media is going to say I’m baiting people out of their money, or something like that.”

“When have you ever cared about what the mass media says? I thought you were against The Man.” She says it with all the assurance that Aled was missing.

“It’s not even just that.”

“Well, why did you lie?”

He does not have a response to give her.

“Okay, so you don’t want to say that. Can you tell me why you’re upset?” It’s an odd question, one that a teacher would ask a child when they’re complaining about something small. But Aled knows her, and Frances knows him, and this is how they ask each other questions that need a detailed answer.

“It was a terrible lie, and now all the Universe City fans are going to watch the latest interview with the Creator, and they’re going to overanalyze me talking about the podcast I made in secondary school when I was… dealing with things…” His voice trails off, and he barely whispers the last few words of the sentence.

Frances fills in the blanks, and nods. “I think you’re overanalyzing this yourself.”

“I’m really not. You’ve seen the fans.”

“Maybe they’ve learned their lesson.” Her voice turns upward, as if it were a question. “It’s been a while since… all that.”

“Hopefully.”

The conversation halts. They keep eating in silence. The butter chicken and dal Aled ordered should be delicious, but he can barely taste it.

“Why did you make Radio agender?” Frances asks. “If you’re willing to share.”

He can hear the earnest curiosity in her voice. If he was going to tell somebody this, it would be Frances, so he has some sort of incentive to answer.

It’s still hard to get out, though.

He takes a deep breath. “Okay, way before, like the beginning of secondary school, before I even thought about recording anything, I had Radio in my head. They were a boy, then. It was- they were really just me in a Welcome-to-Night Vale-slash-Doctor-Who-style universe. Then just-” his voice catches “-everything started happening, and I spend more time developing their character, and I changed them to fit with myself.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s weird.”

“I made you fanart and you hired me onto your podcast. That is weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“You’re weird. Like, weirder than weird.”

“Weirder than Jughead?”

“Yeah, you’re weird.” She puts on an American accent. “You’re a weirdo. You don’t fit in, and you don’t want to fit in.”

“Have you ever seen me without this hat on?” He points at his bare head. “No, that’s weird.”

They laugh together, and he feels normal for the first time that day.

“It’s not weird, by the way,” she adds. “Just because it’s not common, doesn’t mean it’s weird.”

“I know. It’s… it’s just another thing about me. You get it.”

He’s told Frances about his orientation a long time ago, and she was bi herself, so Aled’s worries were somewhat eased on this topic. Hopefully, she would understand this part of him, too, even if it’s not quite the same as sexuality.

She gets it, and nods. “Yeah.”

“Yeah. When I was- well I don’t want to call it ‘research,’ but that’s what it was,” and his leg starts bobbing again, like it did in the interview. He really cannot talk about this subject normally, can he? “I was researching what was going on with me and Daniel and sexuality in general, and I got caught up with the other side of the community, and it just felt nice. The label, I mean.” He starts laughing, a choking sound coming from his already broken voice. “Honestly, I think part of it was to get back at my Mum for everything. Like ‘look at me, I’m not your little boy anymore!’”

He slumps down, and says in a feeble voice “I’m not anything, actually.”

Everything came down to his Mum, doesn’t it? Even when he’s cut contact and hasn’t talk to her in months, she’s still infesting some of the most vulnerable aspects of his life. There’s no denying that she affected him negatively long-term. Long sleeves, night terrors and other’s reactions to normal occurrences when he lived with her showed him that much. He really hopes that this isn’t another one of her side effects, her words and actions causing him to be disconnected to what should be normal.

“You don’t have to be anything. You can just exist.“

“Well, I’m doing that now. Guess I’m okay, then,” he replies sarcastically.

The silence is deafening when she doesn’t reply.

“I’m still figuring out what to do about it.” He’s already done so much. He’s had his hair long since he went to university, and that hasn’t changed since he dropped out. He hated the sound of his own voice, and he pitch-shifted it on the podcast for a reason. He owns all types of clothes, now that his Mum isn’t controlling his closet (there’s his Mum again. He may just rip all his hair out and become a normal man because of her, just like she wanted). But he likes his name, and he’s perfectly fine with his physique. And ‘they’ always felt more like a Radio thing than an Aled thing. Those boxes seem so necessary to check before giving himself the label. “I would like to figure it out before everyone does it for me.”

“I understand that. But you can tell me when you figure it out. Or if you need help with anything.”

“What are you going to help with?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs, then snaps her fingers. “I can make you another self-insert OC you can play with.”

He laughs, and it’s not so bitter this time. “I think I’m good, thank you. I’ve got Radio for that.”

He remembers something important after dinner, and his anxiety returns. “Don’t tell Daniel. He doesn’t know anything. I haven’t talked to him about any of this.” Or anyone, for that matter, but he leaves that out.

“No worries,” replies Frances. “You can tell him in your own time.”

“Okay.” He really should, but it’s going to be hard. He knows Dae-Sung is strictly gay, and they’ve had conversations before about how not attracted to woman both of them are. Aled has no idea which side of the binary he’d fall into for Dae-Sung. They’d gotten over their relationship troubles from the end of secondary school, and he doesn’t want to go back to the game of “Is he even attracted to me?” again, especially on the other end of it.

He can deal with that when it comes, though. Right now, Frances knows. That’s about all he can handle right now.

Frances is leaving when she says “I’m glad you told me.”

Aled wishes he didn’t immediately know what she was talking about. The topic is still bouncing around his head from dinner. They listened to the episode one last time before queueing it to upload for tomorrow. He picked a medium-pitched up effect for his voice, which is still too deep and large for himself, and Frances still didn’t comment on his pseudo-coming out until now.

“No problem, no problem.” Aled says twice. His brain feels a bit less fuzzy, but he’s still so awkward about the whole topic.

They say their informal goodbyes, last-minute jokes and conversations before Frances leaves.

Aled doesn’t realize until the door shuts, and he’s back sitting on the couch, that he’s glad he told her, too.