“Sorry. And thanks,” I said, bowing my head. Minori-san left, heading after Shinichi-san and Her Majesty. Elvia and I followed her out to the hallway and watched her go.
Breakfast involved those of us left in the house—me, Elvia, Brooke, and Cerise—eating what Myusel had prepared. Afterwards, it was business as usual. Brooke went to do the gardening, Cerise went to do some housework, and Elvia went back to her room. As for me, I found myself with some time on my hands, and eventually I just went back to my room, too.
I heaved a sigh as I settled into my space. Without Shinichi-san, Minori-san, or Myusel here, the mansion seemed awfully quiet. Brooke spent most of his time outside, and Cerise was doing some outdoor cleaning, so it was really just me and Elvia in the house at the moment. And with her cooped up in her room drawing most of the time, it was only natural for the place to seem kind of empty.
I finally picked up a novel I was in the middle of, but somehow it didn’t feel quite right, and before long I closed it again. I couldn’t seem to settle down. If it turned out I couldn’t go to school at all as long as I was in this body, then Myusel would have to fill in for me teaching. There were a few things I could do at home in my capacity as an Amutech employee, but to the extent Myusel was taking over my teaching duties, maybe I would have to take over her housework, at least some of it.
I let my eyes wander around as I thought, when suddenly I spotted the mirror on the wall, a full-length thing I’d brought from Japan. I never left my room without checking myself in it. Any cosplay costume, not just a woman’s outfit, is delicate: the illusion can be ruined by the smallest things. I wanted to make sure my hair looked right, obviously, but I also checked for any accessories out of place, the slightest trace of mustache, the quality of my skin, and anything else that could conceivably make people feel something was off. If anyone questioned what they were seeing, I had failed.
Therefore, any time I was going to go out in public, anywhere people might see me, I would always look at myself from a third-party perspective. It had been a habit of mine even back in Japan.
Now I looked at the mirror, and saw myself: Ayasaki Hikaru. At a quick glance, I was all I saw; I looked just like I always did when I was wearing women’s clothing. But hiding beneath the outfit was an actual woman’s body. When I stripped down to my underwear, that was readily apparent. Not just the bulge of my chest or the lack of a bulge between my legs, but more subtle things, too. Even the exact shape of my bones seemed ever so slightly different. When I looked back at my other self, the male body still sleeping on the bed, it brought home to me even more powerfully that I was in fact a woman now.
I don’t mind saying that I was always confident in my ability to cross-dress convincingly. I worked hard to make my language gender-neutral, so I could seem more girlish, and I had always paid close attention to the curves of my body. You had to be more than just slim to be a believable girl; you had to be careful no one part of you got more muscled than it should. I was diligent about my makeup, of course, and I shaved my mustache fastidiously so the pores wouldn’t open and show black.
And yet, for all that effort, when I was confronted with a real woman’s body, it became glaringly obvious that I wasn’t one. Take those curves, for example. Now that I had a woman’s body, there was more plumpness—not fat, but everything, the chest naturally, but also my butt and thighs, my arms, and even my fingers, were more fleshy, without the hardness of muscle. I guess this is what it really meant to have soft skin. Honestly, as I ran my fingers along my arms, they felt nice even to me.
I stood there for a moment, massaging my arms. It probably would have looked pretty weird if there’d been anyone to see. But there wasn’t; I was the only one there. Maybe this would be the perfect opportunity to get to know a woman’s body, to learn something about them for future reference. It would make my costumes even better when I got back to my male body.
There was my swelling chest, the ultimate symbol of womanhood. There was the way the curve of my body puckered in slightly from just below my side down to my navel. And then, between my legs, there was...
“........................”
It would be a lie, of course, to say I had never seen one before. Anyone who could do an internet search had a vast wealth of such things at their fingertips. You could even check out the videos on overseas websites, places where they didn’t censor them like they do in Japan. I had seen my fair share, partly as research when I was trying to get my “look” right, and partly out of a more unabashedly animalistic interest. I was, as I think I’ve made clear, a man, with a man’s desires.
So even though I knew I was looking at my own body, I couldn’t keep my heart from picking up the pace when I saw all the gentle curves of my naked form.
Argh. I guess this means I can never laugh at Shinichi-san again. I reflexively looked at the floor, away from my mirror.
