JULIA

Gosh, it feels good to be myself.

This weekend had been so busy, and things had fallen into place in such a mechanical sequence that I hadn’t taken the time to appreciate how right going outside as me, Julia, felt. Of course, the uni administration had been made aware of what was going on in advance; I couldn’t just show up as someone else randomly, after all. A few weeks ago, when I’d originally had the idea of this whole weekend makeover transition thing, I’d gone to see Jonathan, the counsellor. Jonathan was a young man who looked only slightly older than me, and he had just gotten this job the year before. Short hair, well trimmed beard, some tattoos and piercings here and there. He looked so good holy sh— Anyways, I’d told him I was trans and what I wanted to do. And, well, that day I’d learned he was trans too. And he seemed to think this was a great idea. Just text me when you’re ready for it, and I’ll start the whole process, he’d said with a smile while walking me to his office door, I’ll do my best to make this as seamless as possible.

Today, I learned that ‘his best’ consisted of updating my student ID to my preferred name across all university registers in the span of two days despite both the usual sluggishness of the administration and the fact that I hadn’t gone through a legal name change yet, as well as informing my teachers of what was going on and how to address me. Everything had indeed gone as seamless as it could have, and I was left unable to wish for more.

Also, the whole Shawn de-eggification process had started at last. Perhaps not the way I’d imagined it would, but I couldn’t go back anyways.

Maybe I had gone a bit too fast? I couldn’t know whether they had done research on transness over the weekend or not; perhaps they had, and already knew they were transgender? In any case, it’s not like I’d had the choice; When I’d seen them start to… well, have a mental breakdown by themselves in the corner of the lecture room and all that, I couldn’t very well stay in my seat, even if I’d been so apprehensive of our first interaction.

And now, we had a date scheduled. From this point on, my plan was simple: I would go for a walk with them tonight, as Julia, and see how the whole thing went. I’d help crack their egg if they hadn’t already done so, or affirm them as a girl if they had, and find a moment during the evening to muster the courage to finally reveal who I’d been since the start.

Regardless, when leaving the arts building, I still had the gut feeling that I should have said something more during our conversation. Think, Julia. Maybe they haven’t figured out they’re trans after all and they just need a bit of clarification. You know what, sure. Let’s do this. I grabbed my phone and opened Discord. So that was them, huh? No pronouns, an empty bio, and a default profile picture. Makes sense for an egg, I guess; you don’t really want to have any typically masculine stuff, but you feel like you can’t display anything feminine either. I’d never seen how their profile looked; as mine was kinda… unambiguously feminine, I’d never added them as friend on the app. Alright, time to clear things up for them.

Juwulia _{Today at 16:02}
Hi
I realise i might have rushed things a bit
I’m sorry if this made you uncomfortable
That being said, I do think you’re cute
My offer was genuine :3

They had always appreciated me being direct and saying things in an unblurred manner, so I figured this was the best way to go about this. Now, for the final blow. This was it, the point of no return. After all, maybe they hadn’t seen the part of my bio that said I was a lesbian. I had to make sure they knew where I was going with this.

Juwulia _{Today at 16:05}
Sorry i’m so awkward about all this, never asked another girl out before 😓

My heart was beating a bit too fast for comfort, so I steadied my breath to calm down, and put my phone down on my lap. And I waited.

UnidentifiedBlob _{Today at 16:19}
That’s okay
Never been asked out by a girl either.

Oh?

Juwulia _{Today at 16:21}
Wait, I’m actually so dumb. I forgot to even ask your name lol

I waited a bit more.

UnidentifiedBlob _{Today at 16:30}
Dw about it
I’m Lily

Okay. Okay, alright, this is fine, you expected this, you knew that was gonna happen, take big breaths, Julia, big breaths. Don’t— no, NO, do NOT pass out on a bench in the middle of campus.

I can’t believe it. She has actually figured it out!! aaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Juwulia _{Today at 16:33}
Lily
What a pretty name

LILY

Okay, so hear me out.

I’m not a girl, and I’m not trans either, whatever that means.

But…

Why not just go along with it? We’re literally only going for a walk, after all. I’m not lying to her, I’m obviously a guy, right? She knows what she’s getting into, it’s not like I look or sound like a girl or anything... I guess if she wants to address me as one, I’m not gonna stop her, since it doesn’t make me feel particularly bad.

And yeah, fine, all of this is my brain trying to justify whatever the fuck it did when we read Julia’s messages, it and I. For my part, I was just stuck in the passenger seat, and the autopilot came on by itself, for some reason. And it replied the first thing that came to its mind—or to my mind, I guess—picking a cute name that it thought would fit me in the process.

You know, I’m seriously starting to doubt Elijah’s words that this is not what every guy wants. ‘Cause, like, how? How does it feel so good to be called a girl, and to be told that your name, a girl one, is pretty? Also, she called me cute??? This is definitely what every guy wants, there’s just no other way.

After all, maybe I am trans. Yeah, admittedly, I still haven’t done research on this, but it’s not hard to figure out what it means. You think you’re a boy, but one day, you turn into a girl, only to realise you’ve been a girl all along. Or something. That might happen to me, for all I know; I’m not a big science head. I guess only time will tell. And fuck, I wish it’ll say yes.

Wait, since when was I back in my flat? I’d been so absorbed in my thoughts I hadn’t even realised I was now home, sitting on my bed. Since, as usual, said thoughts were kind of all over the place, I chose to organise them a little.

I was Shawn, a guy, but being called Lily, a girl, felt way better. As far as I knew, there was no law that said it was forbidden to act and think of yourself as a girl even though you were definitely a dude, so why could I not just do it? How would it be called, crossdressing, I guess? I didn’t wear girl clothes, although that would be nice, so for now, let’s not worry about this.

And what of Julia in all of this? She was a lesbian, according to her Discord bio, so I wasn’t sure why she had asked me, a dude, out on a date. Perhaps she saw no difference between a girl and a guy who wanted to be a girl. Did this mean she actually saw me as a girl? Would that make our evening walk an actual… lesbian date? Simply imagining this was enough to make me blush. Alright, thoughts more or less organised, that was enough questions. I decided to just wait and see, and I tried my best not to think about it again for the rest of the afternoon.

And then, the hour came.

Before leaving for the town hall, I took a shower and carefully picked out the most androgynous clothes I could find in my closet, which wasn’t an easy task as I only now noticed they were all pretty much gender-neutral. I ended up going with an off-white hoodie and a pair of jeans, then I had a look in the mirror, something that I didn’t do very often. And like, yeah, if I was being honest with myself, I could see why, even if she had to know I wasn’t a girl, Julia had picked up on the fact that I wanted to be one. My hair was long enough that I could tie it into a ponytail if I wanted to, though I usually didn’t do that since feeling it brush against my neck and back was the best feeling ever, for some reason. This time, I simply let it flow over my left shoulder, which I had to admit did look pretty cute.

Night had already fallen when I arrived in the main square. There was also a somewhat chilly wind so I put my hood up, grabbed my phone and waited for Julia. A few minutes after getting unsurprisingly jumpscared by the much louder than usual church carillon, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder.

“Hii! Sorry, I hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” she said with a confident smile.

I tried to reassure her, but nothing came out of my mouth. I could think of two reasons for this, the first one being my voice. I hadn’t even thought about this; I couldn’t really talk the way I usually did, could I? The other reason was my brain losing its marbles because holy shit she was so pretty I could literally feel my crush for Eli fade away in real time. ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. Also, you look great by the way!’ I tried to say, though my voice probably whispered something along the lines of “H— hey… um, no… also you pretty…”

“Aww, cute. I guess you’re not wrong,” she admitted in a giggle, while dramatically running her fingers through her hair, unaware of the effect both this gesture and the fact that she’d just called me cute again ahhhhhh— had just had on me. Fuck, with the way the moonlight reflected in her eyes and large round glasses, the scene looked like something out of a movie.

I finally recovered the ability to speak in a normal way. “So, uhhh…” Holy shit, was that my voice? Instinctively, I’d pitched it up and had spoken in a softer way than usual. It had never been particularly deep before, but now, even if it might have been on the lower-end for one, it straight up sounded like a girl. I continued, with no acknowledgement of the solid ten seconds long pause I’d just performed in that sentence. “Is there somewhere in particular you wanna go?”

“There is, actually. There’s this, like, golf course about a kilometre north of the town. I’ve always wanted to see what it looks like at night!”

“Uhh… sure! I’ll follow you.”

We silently made our way through the town’s northern suburbs, which were among the wealthiest ones in the area. I never came up here; nobody I knew lived in these wide and empty streets, and only a few of the modern houses surrounding us had the lights on inside. Having reached the end, we crossed the ring road, the only way for cars to access the outskirts of the city as most of the centre was pedestrianised, and we arrived at the golf course. During all this time, Julia and I had barely exchanged any words; I was way too intimidated for that, and she wasn’t exactly shining with confidence either. We began walking along the central fairway of the course, following it from east to west.

“Huh, we can barely see a thing here,” she remarked, breaking the silence. She wasn’t wrong; there were no light poles or anything, and the alley was surrounded by hedges several metres high, which blocked even the moon rays. Apart from the headlights of the occasional bicycle that overtook us, it was almost pitch black. “Let me just… here. Is that okay?”

A current ran through my arm as she held my hand, and I suppressed a yelp. “Oh, uh, y— yeah… I’m sorry, I’m so bad at all this, I’ve never done it before,” I said in the shyest voice the surrounding trees had probably ever heard.

“You’re doing great, Lily.” Alright, this was starting to be too much fuzzy feelings for my poor brain to handle. I must have been blushing so hard I was on my way to become a street lamp myself, but Julia couldn’t notice it, as I wasn’t quite at the point of producing any light yet.

After walking in silence for around ten more minutes, we reached the western end of the golf course, and were greeted by what I’d always assumed from looking at Google Maps would be a small, very dense wood. The alley didn’t go further. “Should we… go back?” I asked.

She simply looked at me, grinning. “Why? We’re just getting started.” And she stepped under the short trees, still taking me by the hand. I couldn’t help but follow her.

“Where are we going exactly?”

“I know a cool spot around here. You’ll see, it’s a surprise!”

We kept going, sneaking and weaving through the trees and ferns. At some point, I almost fell, tripping over some sort of root on the ground.

“Oh yeah, be careful, there are rails everywhere.”

“Uhh… rails?”

“Yup! There’s an old, abandoned train station in this direction,” she revealed, pointing her finger. “But we are going that way. It’s easy, just follow the track.”

Huh. She was right, I could make out a few old, rusty train tracks poking out here and there from the ground covered with leaves. The trees were now smaller and more sparse, and our progression was easier. We reached some sort of switch in the railway, and she followed it. After crossing another dense tree section, we were finally out of the woods. And I couldn’t believe what I saw.

In front of us stood a small rusty metal bridge crossing over the canal. Now that I thought about it, we had to reach the water at some point, as we’d been heading west for almost half an hour. We’d both stopped, and Julia let me take in the view, finally releasing my hand.

“So, how do you like it?” she whispered. “Wanna hang out here for a while?”

“Yeah. I think I’d like to.”

We sat there in the middle of the bridge, our legs dangling over the water. Now that the sky was no longer hidden by the trees, we could see each other again. And Julia looked at me with her beautiful eyes, a smile in the corner of her lips. And she was sitting next to me, very close. And her right arm held me from behind, after she had gently removed my hood, allowing my hair to flow down onto my shoulders. She looked at me with intent, and I nodded without even thinking about it. And now she was kissing me.

My brain stopped its thinking process for a few seconds, probably to let me enjoy what had just happened.

Julia’s voice broke the silence. “I… Uh… There is something I need to say before anything more happens.”

JULIA

As good as kissing a girl as a girl was, it couldn’t last any longer without Lily knowing the truth. She had already figured out she was trans without too much of my help, so it was about time I broke the other news to her. I should have done this sooner; hiding myself like that while having a date with her wasn’t the best move in the world. But my stupid brain had decided that it was too afraid to come out and say I was Eli, for some reason. And what reason was it, exactly? Had I been scared of the possibility of Lily being transphobic? Had I feared the case where she wouldn’t have liked me back because I was trans? Maybe. Should I have come out before, regardless? Probably. Anyways, I was definitely doing it now. Going further without her knowing was not a good idea.

She stared at me with wide, anxious eyes. I opened my mouth, preparing to explain the whole thing and apologise, but Lily spoke first. “Is it… Because I’m not a girl?”

“What? No, it has nothing to do with you! And… You’re absolutely a girl!"

Her voice trembled. “But… I’m not, though. Just look at me.”

“Lily, you stop right here. First, you’re incredibly cute, don’t listen to your dysphoria. Second, your body can change, you know? It can just… take some time!”

“No, it doesn’t!” Her eyes were all misty, now. “Look at you! I've presumably seen you before, but now you look so different I don't even know who you are! You just… became a girl one day!”

“I… didn’t? I’ve been transitioning for months!”

Then a thought struck me.

“Lily.”

“What?” she asked weakly.

“Are you trans?”

“I… I’m not.” Her face was in her hands, now, and tears were flowing down, falling on the rusty metal beams. Her voice broke. “I’m just a dude. You know that.”

Huh. I can be pretty perceptive when I put my mind to it. “Lily, I know you far too well. Listen to me.” I put both of my hands on her shoulders. “You. Are. A. Girl. Wanting to be a girl, wanting to just wake up as one someday, wanting to date someone as a girl, perhaps disliking the way you look like as a guy. All of that is what makes someone trans. Nothing else. You don’t magically turn into a girl overnight, unfortunately.”

The tears stopped flowing, and she slowly removed her hands from her face, which was a mess. “R— really?” she asked after a few seconds, with a shy voice that was close to the cutest thing I’d ever heard.

“Yes, really.” I gave her some time to process the whole thing and what it implied for her. “Okay. Let me ask this now. Are you a girl?”

“I… I think… I might be a girl, yeah,” she admitted.

“Okay, nice! But for as dense as you now realise you’ve been, I hate to break it to you, you’re still a whole lot denser.”

“What do you mean?”

I squeezed her shoulders tighter. “Lily. Look at me in the eyes. I’m Elijah.”

Alright, she was gonna need a few more minutes to process that. She looked like she was beginning to get lost in her thoughts, so I gave her some space. I stood up and walked a few metres on the bridge to stretch my legs. Shortly after, she got up as well and joined me, leaning as I had done against the railing. “Sure. That explains some stuff.”

“What?”

“Well… The fact that I’ve been thinking you’re the hottest person I’ve ever met, for starters. Like yeah, you’re the same person, but… you’re a girl. And it suits you.”

Oh. She was cupping my face with both hands now, which was absolutely fucking precious as she was about seven centimetres shorter than me. “It suits you too.”

And we kissed again, for good measure.

Luna_C

Thanks to @Querelle for their help and feedback on this chapter!
A short 600 word epilogue will be out tomorrow.