“Parehas tayong girl”

“Parehas tayong girl” is a recurring expression used by Yohan Xyle Laroses to deny that his affectionate or intimate behavior toward Kazumi Lhynx Valeres has romantic meaning. Its decisive significance lies in the gap between what the phrase claims and what the relationship gradually becomes: Yohan identifies himself as gay, presents himself in strongly feminine ways, and initially insists that Kazumi can be only a best friend, yet the same language accompanies physical tenderness, domestic partnership, marriage, parenthood, and a lasting life together.

Meaning and First Function

The expression belongs to Yohan’s playful, gendered vocabulary. Kazumi works for Yohan as his assistant, but the two are also longtime best friends who first met in sixth grade and remained close through college. Yohan is introduced as Kazumi’s only boss and as a gay man, while Kazumi openly treats his sexuality as his own choice rather than something for other people to judge. Against that background, “Parehas tayong girl” functions less as a neutral description than as a ready-made defense: it turns intimacy between them into something supposedly harmless because Yohan imagines both of them within the same feminine category.

The phrase is therefore tied to performance as much as to explanation. Yohan is repeatedly associated with feminine presentation, and later evidence shows that he continues to wear dresses, apply makeup, and cultivate his appearance. His gender expression is not presented as a temporary disguise. It is part of how he understands and displays himself, even though he does not complete the planned sex-change procedure and chooses to keep his penis. The expression draws on that self-presentation while also simplifying the emotional situation: if both people are “girls,” Yohan can claim that closeness carries no heterosexual or romantic implication.

Repeated Use in Intimacy

The phrase becomes especially revealing when Yohan’s conduct is more intimate than his explanation. At one point, while his face is pressed into Kazumi’s neck, Kazumi jokes that he behaves as though he loves her. Yohan answers that the contact has no “malisya” and repeats that they are both girls. The physical gesture and the verbal denial pull in opposite directions. His body creates tenderness and charged proximity; his language tries to neutralize the charge before it can be named.

The same logic appears in practical domestic situations. When Kazumi needs help dressing, she invokes Yohan’s own claim that there is no impropriety because they are both girls. Yohan reacts with exaggerated disgust and refuses the implication, showing that the expression is useful when he controls its direction but uncomfortable when Kazumi turns it back on him. The exchange makes the phrase reciprocal rather than authoritative: once spoken, it becomes a shared joke that Kazumi can deploy to expose the weakness of Yohan’s boundary.

The expression also coexists with moments in which Yohan’s attachment becomes possessive or openly caring. When Kazumi is close to him, Yohan asks whether she belongs only to him, using a deep voice that Kazumi rarely hears from him. Her surprise matters because the altered vocal register makes the moment feel unusually direct, while her embarrassed response registers the emotional force of words that the “both girls” explanation cannot comfortably contain. The phrase remains available as banter, but the relationship increasingly produces actions and tones that exceed banter.

Contradiction with Identity and Desire

Yohan later states the limits behind his earlier denials with unusual clarity. He tells Kazumi that he cannot love a woman, that he is attracted to men, and that he feels disgust when a woman flirts with him but becomes excited when a man does. For him, Kazumi can remain a best friend, and he apologizes for not being able to offer more. This declaration gives “Parehas tayong girl” a serious context: it is not simply a secret confession disguised as a joke. Yohan’s stated homosexuality is genuine within the story, and the phrase reflects his attempt to place the relationship outside the categories he associates with heterosexual desire.

Yet the phrase does not resolve the contradiction; it dramatizes it. Yohan’s gender expression, bodily behavior, romantic orientation, and social role do not line up neatly. He can describe himself through feminine language while still rejecting the idea that his relationship with Kazumi is a love relationship. He can refuse to become what Kazumi hopes for and still move toward a form of permanent attachment. The recurring expression thus marks a divided social vocabulary: one set of words names identity, another registers intimacy, and neither alone explains the whole relationship.

Marriage, Parenthood, and Reinterpretation

The expression gains further weight after Yohan proposes to Kazumi. Kazumi hopes the proposal might mean that Yohan loves her, but Yohan explains that he wants to protect their child from growing up confused about an unfamiliar partner and that marriage will allow him to stand fully behind his responsibility as a parent. He even accepts the maternal designation of “mom” in the conversation, treating parenthood as a role that can be assumed without surrendering his self-understanding.

Kazumi asks whether marriage might eventually allow Yohan to love her. He again refuses that hope, insisting that he cannot love a woman and can treat her only as his best friend. The wedding nevertheless proceeds, with Kazumi taking Yohan as her husband and promising to remain true to him, love him, and honor him throughout their life. The formal language of marriage places them inside conventional husband-and-wife terminology, while Yohan’s prior explanation places the union inside responsibility, friendship, and parenthood rather than conventional heterosexual romance.

The birth of their child extends the same tension into family life. At the hospital, a nurse addresses them as Mrs. and Mr. Laroses and hands the baby to Yohan. The titles and the newborn’s arrival give their relationship an institutional and familial form that the earlier phrase had seemed designed to avoid. “Parehas tayong girl” cannot erase the fact that Yohan and Kazumi are now recognized as married parents; instead, it becomes part of the unusual route by which they reach that arrangement.

Later Significance

Years later, Yohan is thirty-eight and Kazumi is thirty-nine; they have known each other for twenty years, have been married, and are described as having fallen in love ten years earlier. Yohan still dresses, wears makeup, and makes himself beautiful, while his child sees nothing wrong with this presentation and understands it as his way of being true to himself. He also tells Kazumi that he never expected their life together to last in this way. These later circumstances transform the earlier expression from a fixed conclusion into a historical remnant of how Yohan once tried to explain their closeness.

Yohan’s eventual acceptance of the name “Eclavu” from Kazumi reinforces the affectionate vocabulary that develops around their relationship. He still says that he cannot act like a man, and Kazumi responds that gender and sexuality do not determine whom she can love: love is love. Her response does not force Yohan into a different identity or require him to abandon feminine expression. Instead, it separates love from the demand that either partner conform to a predetermined gender role.

As a result, “Parehas tayong girl” operates on several levels at once. It is comic slang, a boundary, a flirtatious excuse, and a sign of Yohan’s self-fashioning. It also records an early attempt to make friendship and bodily intimacy safe by treating gender as a shared category. The later marriage, parenthood, and enduring partnership do not make the original statement simply false; they show how inadequate it was to contain a relationship whose meaning kept changing. Yohan remains gay and feminine in presentation, Kazumi remains emotionally attached to him, and their family persists without resolving those facts into a conventional heterosexual model.