Chapter 100: Epilogue 1: Hostel

Peach had never been to Diamond City before this month.

Well, she had been here on official capacity, yes, but that was hardly visiting, now was it? Official visits as the royal ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom were hardly even visits to begin with; they were more comparable to a layover at an airport than anything else.

So in effect, Peach loved being able to truly explore somewhere.

It had been several months since the end of the Battle of Dark Land. The world had once more turned to peace, and so Peach used this opportunity to fulfill her dream of seeing the world with fresh eyes: not those of a regal princess with responsibilities and geopolitics, but those of a woman with a full life ahead of her.

Right now she was staying at a hostel, in a cramped bunk bed room with six other coeds, and was doing her laundry, a mix of t-shirts and boxer shorts and long pants for the cold days. The hostel had free washing machines, but it definitely did not have any dryers, and she was having to hang everything up on the clothesline out on the balcony.

West Side neighborhood in Diamond City was nice. It was quiet at this time of day, other than the constant influx of cars and traffic, but after a few weeks here, you could usually tune out the vehicular noise. The occasional gunshot or two at night was barely enough to wake her at this point.

A young Koopa named Holly, always dressed up in the nicest sundresses and prettiest hats, entered the bunkbed room and began rummaging through her locker.

Everyone in this hostel was pretty much like Peach: young wanderers trying to explore what they could while they could.

Peach, of course... was already married and had eight step-siblings of her own. So she wasn’t quite as much of a free spirit as she would have liked. But she’d been given her wife’s blessing to go on this journey, and through sixteen different towns and cities, she had done exactly that.

She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pull it off, as famous as she was and as much as her face was plastered on posters and billboards and TV screens all across the planet all her life. But all it took was a radical haircut--she started with a bob and ended up with a buzz cut-- and some baggy clothing and she wasn’t only unrecognizable as Peach Toadstool, she was constantly being asked if she was a boy, as well.

Peach sort of understood the way Bowsette might have felt when she first discovered what it was like to present herself as a different gender. For everyone to see you, to treat you differently in those subtle ways people probably didn’t even notice about themselves. The more androgynous she had gotten, the more people would ignore her. No more cat calls on the street, no more courtesy door-holding, no more being able to chat up random girls on the street without attracting rude glares. It wasn’t good or bad-- but the fact it was different was pretty interesting.

Peach had toyed with this for a while. When she was in Glitzville she had decided to go by Edward, and it honestly felt like a pretty nice fit while she was in such a rough-and-tumble place. She had to work on keeping her voice from being too shrill, but nobody seemed to mind too much.

In the end, she decided she was going to stick with Peach, and eventually she’d grow her hair back out. She had no problem with her femininity. Girlishness and womanhood basically defined her personhood, after all, and she had made a promise to her wife to become a loving mother once she had returned to her side.

“Hey, have you seen my bonnet?” Holly asked. “I can’t find it anywhere around here...”

“Yeah, it’s in the common room, last I saw,” Peach answered. “You were wearing it when we all had that drinking night last weekend.”

“Whew, man, that was crazy, wasn’t it...” Holly giggled. “Thanks, Edward.”

“You’re welcome.”

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But...

But.

Maybe it was something about the spirit of adventure or the intentional isolation, but Peach thought she was going to keep going by Edward for a little bit longer. Even in Diamond City, it was a nice fit.

Ha. She wondered what Bowsette would react like if she saw her like this, dressed up like a guy, calling herself Edward, socializing with a bunch of college-age travellers like just another bro.

She’d probably love her just the same.

Because it didn’t matter what was on the outside if you truly loved someone. What mattered was the content of their heart, and nobody was ever going to take that away.

Also, that sounded pretty sappy, didn’t it?

She looked at her clothes up on the clothesline. Almost entirely summer outfits, the kind that men and women could pull off just about as easily as one another during the hotter parts of the year. But as the season was winding down and the temperature was getting chillier, she knew she might have to get a new wardrobe... and she had been seeing so many adorable autumn outfits in downtown Diamond City recently...

That was going to be a problem if she stayed in Diamond City where everyone knew her as the quiet young man Edward.

As Holly started to leave the room, though, Peach stopped her. “Hey, Holly.”

“Yes?”

“What would you do if I... uh, started wearing dresses around the hostel?”

Holly blushed and stammered for a moment before saying, “Well, if that’s what you want to do Edward, I’d probably be a bit uncomfortable for a couple days, but... that’s because I’m not good enough, more than anything. After I got past that I’d try to support you in whatever you want to do. Because... that’s what friends do.”

“Aw, thanks.”

Peach had to hold her laughter in as much as she could before Holly finally closed the door behind her.

She was so glad to be taking this journey.

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