“I grant your guess is probably right, but... could we wait a bit before we take the choker off?” I said. “It’s a good theory, but it’s still just a theory. Maybe the choker doesn’t have anything to do with it after all. Or if it does, what if there’s some order we’re supposed to follow to take it off, one that could be dangerous to mess up? What if my consciousness never comes back? What if it vanishes from this body, and the other one doesn’t wake up? I sure wouldn’t want that.”
“Well...” Shinichi-san started, but there wasn’t much else he could say. I thought my reasons were pretty convincing, if I did say so myself. And they weren’t completely outside the realm of possibility. The whole choker-body double connection was just a theory.
“True enough,” Minori-san said. “All fair points.” She and Shinichi-san nodded at each other.
“Right now, there’s nothing really problematic about this body other than being an unfamiliar gender,” I said. “I’d like to wait and see how things go for a bit. Maybe Her Majesty can discover something more certain.”
And with that, the day’s discussion of the “Ayasaki Hikaru Gender Swap Incident” concluded.
My consciousness gradually floated up from the depths of sleep. I opened my eyes, and was aware of waking up.
“..............................Mn.”
The sunlight coming in through the window seemed so bright. I reflexively closed the eyes I’d just opened, and waited for them to adjust to the light. I blinked a few times, and when it no longer hurt, I finally opened my eyes all the way and took in what was around me.
The first thing I saw was myself, sleeping peacefully beside me. After my decision the night before to stay in my female body a while longer, I’d chosen to sleep beside my original body. I admit it was a slightly unsettling experience, but I wanted to be right there if anything happened. Notwithstanding how surreal it was to fall asleep looking at your own face.
“Mn... Mnnn......”
I gave a lazy stretch and sat up. My whole body felt strangely lethargic, like my joints and muscles were too loose, too easy to move. I couldn’t remember having that sensation yesterday, but maybe I’d been unconsciously storing up anxiety since turning into a woman. Anyway, this was no time to be enjoying a doze. It would take me half an hour to do my makeup, and another half an hour to do my hair. That was an hour just getting ready for the day. That much hadn’t changed since I’d become a woman; if anything, I had to pay even more attention than before. And I had to be careful in case anything was subtly different, which could be a headache.
At this house, we all ate breakfast together. It wouldn’t do for me to make everyone wait because I was running late.
I got out of bed. Feet on the floor. And that was when I noticed something... off.
No—that wasn’t quite the right word for it. It was something deeper than “off.”
“No...” I mumbled, unbelieving.
I quickly ran a hand over my body. Even with clothes on, I could tell that two things that had been there yesterday weren’t anymore. And down below, something that hadn’t been there yesterday, was. All of which meant...
I touched a hand to my neck. The choker was there.
“I’m... back to normal...?” I whispered. I looked back at the “me” sleeping on the bed. There she was, still dressed in the pajamas I’d put on last night. Shinichi-san and I had both guessed that that body could have been created by the gelatinous slime from the coffin, but the other Ayasaki Hikaru was still very much there, with no sign of being about to collapse into shapeless goo.
Was it possible the thing couldn’t go back to its original form after taking on someone’s body?
“Ah... That would explain the coffin shape.” I nodded to myself. If all you needed was something to store some gelatin in, there was no call to shape it like a coffin. A ball, or maybe a cylinder, might have made more sense.
“Geez...”
I sighed, not quite sure what I felt. I was sort of relieved—and sort of disappointed. Whatever the stuff was, evidently your consciousness just automatically returned to its original body with enough time. The weird sensation I’d felt in my joints and tissues was probably just from not moving them for an entire day. Kind of like how when you oversleep, your body can actually feel slower and heavier than normal.
In any event, I guess my adventures as a girl had had a time limit on them. I took off the choker and placed it on my desk. I marched in place, swung my arms, and otherwise made sure to move my body a bit. I still felt some of that fatigue, but I’d lived in this body for close to twenty years, and it was comfortably familiar. In fact, this being morning, there was a certain part of me that had really woken up...
“Sigh...” I looked back and forth between the male body I was in now and the female one lying on the bed. I guess I should have been happy to be back to my old self. But I couldn’t help feeling a certain loneliness, too. It was funny, not to really understand what I myself was feeling.
“Eh... Oh well.” I let out another breath and set about doing my makeup. This body had gone without for a whole day, and it looked like this could take a while. I turned to the mirror and got to work.
The next day, we took the female me
