On Friday, my classes once again ended with P.E. I took almost an hour just to get finished with showering after the fact, but at least I did it. Couldn’t exactly come back to my room smelling like… well, like a teenage guy after P.E. I was disgusting, and I deserved it, but my roommates didn’t deserve for me to torture them with my presence any more than necessary, so I showered. It was surprisingly difficult, even by my standards, both physically and mentally. I considered just giving up several times over, but I powered through. I really hoped my life wasn’t going to be like that forever, but then again, I knew exactly what hoping led to.

I still hadn’t explored the crushing majority of the building, and today wasn’t going to be the day I’d go see anything new. I hesitantly entered the room, as per what was now becoming a routine.

“You know you don’t need to knock, right? It’s your place too, after all,” Lilith said with a smile on her face.

Something seemed… off. I looked around the room.

“Oh, right, Faye and Emma will be gone for a while, they went to a community room or something,” she added.

“Oh…” I eloquently responded.

“Yea, it’ll be just two of us for a while. At least two hours by now still, just like we planned.” She smiled while slowly getting closer.

“Uhhh…”

She laughed. “Sorry, just really wanted to say that. Don’t worry, I just want to talk.”

“T-talk? About what?” I finally managed to get actual words out.

“Well, there are a couple things, though I think it’d be nice for us to talk in general, since we’re roommates and all,” she responded.

“O-okay, we can try, I guess…” I stammered out.

She sat on a chair close to my bed, and invited me to sit on said bed.

“Guess we should start with clarifying some things -- first of all, we know you are not okay. Like, I know you’re trying to hide it, but it’s very clearly visible,” she said.

Great. So I was bothering my roommates with that too, like they didn’t have enough of me…

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you like that...” I responded.

She let out a deep sigh. “It’s okay, don’t… just, don’t worry, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She was clearly lying, but I nodded anyway; when someone confronted me like that, it was generally the best to get it over with as fast as possible. It wasn’t comfortable to be in a spotlight like that…

“It’s up to you if you want to share what’s been bothering you, but I’ve been through a fair bit myself, and I can try to help,” She offered.

What she was saying didn’t sound entirely unreasonable, but it felt that way. I couldn’t find any logical reason for what might have been wrong about it other than ‘it never happened to me before’, but… I was still apprehensive.

“M-maybe later…” I tried.

“Okay then. So I guess the next thing is about… what happened this Tuesday.” She sighed again, “The three of us were talking about stuff, and we discovered we have something in common, and, well, due to the nature of that thing, some… potential assumptions became clear to us. That’s what Faye asked you about in her very untactful way. It’s… a rather sensitive subject, or at least it can be…”

“I can see a couple of things the three of you have in common that I obviously don’t…” I attempted to joke.

She chuckled; her voice sounded nice when she did that. “You’d be surprised.”

I looked at her with what I could only assume was a confused expression.

“Well, I could just tell you or try to explain it from the beginning, but I don’t really think it’d be the best… Like I said, the stuff is rather sensitive, and, well, personal, so it’d probably be better if I knew you a bit before I tried that. And, again, we are kinda roommates for the next three years, I get that you have an episode or whatever, but going to bed without a word for that long doesn’t really sound like the best strategy,” she explained.

“Y-you don’t really want to know me…” I responded.

“Yea? And why is that?” she asked as she got a bit closer on her chair.

“Because I’m… I don’t want to hurt you, okay?” I half yelled, trying to get deeper into bed and almost falling on my back.

“Hurt me? Have you ever hurt anyone before?” she asked confusedly.

I… I didn’t… it didn’t make any sense my mind was empty of answers, I was an awful lazy person, and… and a guy, and guys always hurt everybody around them, even each other, I’d seen it so many times… Why couldn’t I remember who I’d hurt, then? I must have hurt someone, I was just so ignorant I didn’t even bother registering, that’s it!

Before I could speak up and break the silence, Lilith got even closer and slowly reached out towards me. I panicked, got even further on the bed, and hugged my knees close to my chest, disregarding the fact my shoes were still on, to which Lilith responded with a concerned face.

“I… I must have hurt someone! The fact that I don’t remember makes it even worse!” I finally responded.

“Are you sure? You’re acting much more like someone who was hurt rather than someone who did the hurting,” Lilith said gently.

“I… I… There are people out there… people who were actually harmed by others… and I… I’m just…”

Before I knew it, I was on my side, desperate to make myself as small as possible.

I felt my bed shift slightly, and a comforting hand appeared on my shoulder as Lilith started making soothing noises.

“Shhh… It’s gonna be okay… Don’t worry…” she gently said.

“Ah… I… I’m… so…” I tried to say in between sobbing.

Wait, sobbing? Was I crying? How did this happen? I didn’t cry anymore!

“It’s okay, hun, take your time,” she added.

I cried for at least several more minutes, during which Lilith continued her comforting support. I tried forcing myself to stop, so I could apologize properly, but I painfully discovered that it wasn’t an option.

When I finally calmed down to the point of being able to speak, I sat back up on the edge of the bed, now next to Lilith.

“Feeling better now?” she asked.

I nodded. “I’m sorry for… whatever that was…”

“Please don’t be, it’s only natural.” She paused for a bit, “Can we keep talking, or do you want some time to yourself?”

Was I feeling overwhelmed? Yes, of course, but did I want to be left alone with it right now? Hell no.

“W-we can keep talking, if you’re not sick of me yet…” I said.

“You haven’t done anything even remotely bad since we met, you know? You’re more than okay so far,” Lilith mentioned.

I opened my mouth to make a rebuttal, but nothing came. “You’re way too good at this…”

“From my experience, it’s easy to get lost in negative feelings and spiral lower and lower, and you just need someone to provide an outside perspective sometimes. Doesn’t mean your struggles aren’t real, just that other ways of looking at it can make it easier to deal with. And of course, human contact also helps a lot, and I have a feeling you haven’t gotten much of that lately…”

“Is it that obvious?” I asked.

“Well, there’s a reason I approached you on my own with this; you do get clearly anxious around multiple people,” she started listing off. “And you literally hadn’t started a single conversation with any of us. And…”

“Okay, okay! I get it, I’m not really good at this whole… life thing… I just don’t know how to do a better job at it…” I explained.

“I mean, what we are doing right now is a good start; we can try going from here again,” Lilith started. “Can you try to say something about yourself? Doesn’t need to be much, just something we can start from.”

“I don’t know, I’m not a very interesting person… I don’t exactly have any hobbies, at least nothing I’ve stuck with for longer than a couple weeks. I don’t really read any books or anything, I’m not a huge fan of any show... or movie… I watch some stuff… but it’s mostly just to kill some time… or I browse some sites… but I… I don’t really like stuff from there too… and… and… I don’t… I don’t know!”

Before I knew it, I was in tears again, with Lilith’s arm around me. I slowly leaned in, desperate for comfort, to which she responded with more contact, until she practically had me in a hug. At some point, I started a weak hug back of my own. Thousands of voices in my head told me it was not an okay position to be in, but I was falling apart way too much to care about the implications of hugging into a tall nice girl who was currently patting my head and gently saying comforting things to my ear…

I was at awe of the fact that I was the smaller one between me and Lilith. I didn’t know why, but it was incredibly comforting.

By the time I calmed down a bit, I noticed Lilith switching from patting my head to gently scratching in my hair, which made me feel a little weak, but it also felt a little too… nice, given that I still barely knew her.

I made a sound of protest, as I still didn’t trust my ability to say proper words, and it seemed to work.

After a bit of silence, I expected myself to start the spiral of thoughts that would lead me even further down, as I always did, but I found that there quite literally wasn’t much to dwell on. I was, for the lack of a better word, empty, and that realization hit me hard in my already weakened state, but it wasn’t really anything new. In fact, having that kind of perspective on my life could even make things… better?

I couldn’t believe I was thinking like this, that I was letting myself think like this, but… I should really stop overthinking all this stuff, should I?

“How are you holding up?” Lilith asked gently.

“Surprisingly not terrible, actually…” I responded softly, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m still kinda really freaking about that last bit, but I guess it’s not exactly new that I’m like this…”

“I mean, if you want to look at the good side, having somewhat of a clean slate makes it easier to make a change for the better,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, you know, if you’re unhappy with the way you are now, which you seem to be, then you can work on that. Just choose a thing that sounds nice, maybe even a couple of things, and try going with it. If anything doesn’t feel as good as you’d think it would, you can always try something else. Just, like, experiment, you know? It’s one of the ways people grow, after all,” she explained.

I nodded. It made sense, I kinda wondered why I hadn’t thought of it earlier…

Being a blank canvas is kinda exciting. I thought about what kind of person I’d want to be. I definitely wanted to be someone nice, someone who wouldn’t hurt others, might even help if they could. An image of a confident, sociable person jumped to my mind. No, I couldn’t pull that off, I was way too shy… So maybe go with it? Nobody could assume I was just like other guys if I had a shy, but kind image. But how would I do that? Even if I could somehow get rid of my much-hated height, the image in my mind both still didn’t fit, and was surprisingly close to how I’ve seen myself now. Yes, I imagined myself smaller than I really was, sue me.

I tried making the image in my head a couple more times, but no matter what it was I changed, the person that came up just wasn’t someone I’d really ever want to be, even if some results were better than what I currently was… The ones that were, paradoxically, least realistic…

With disappointment I realized that I wasn’t really a blank canvas. People already saw me a certain way, some of which I just couldn’t change, no matter how empty on the inside I was...

“I don’t know about this, I just can’t see how I could change things in any way that would actually feel good…” I eventually responded.

“Are you sure you aren’t just limiting yourself in ways you’d allow yourself to change? I mean, there’s transformation magic after all; that kinda opens up a lot of possibilities.”

Right, magic, I can do the unrealistic. I mean, not I as in I doing the magic, I’d never actually done any magic before, and I was to study enchanting, which is far removed from human transformation, but, like, still, it could be done. Another image jumped to my mind, kinda like the small shy and soft one I imagined earlier, but more… androgynous, maybe even bordering on femi--

I shook my head. What was I thinking about?

“It doesn’t really matter, no matter what I’d just be another guy…” Speaking of thinking, I was very much not when I said that sentence.

Before I could clarify or take it back completely, Lilith chuckled, “I mean, you don’t have to be a guy if you don’t want to…”

What?

“What?”

What?

“Like, you can just… not be a guy. If being one makes you as uncomfortable as you’ve been letting on by the way you act, you probably weren’t really made to be one in the first place. Like the number one rule, mind is sacred, yeah? Well, body can be changed, and if your body is causing problems for your mind, then…” she explained.

The rule number one of magic, mind could never be changed beyond what it truly is; even the most powerful dark magic couldn’t shape mind.

What she said made sense, and it was rather terrifying… I couldn’t come up with a reason why it couldn’t be done, neither practical nor moral one.

That meant that I had to consider this as an actual option.

“I-If not a guy… then, you mean… like… a…” I slowly stummered out, each word harder to make than the last.

“A girl? Yeah, if it fits. Or something else, if it doesn’t; there’s no need to limit yourself to just two options just because they’re the most popular ones,” she said.

A girl. There it was. It was implied before, but it being outright stated made it much more real. I felt my heart start to beat stronger.

“T-there’s no way that’d work out, though.” I desperately tried avoiding having to think about it.

“Why not? It worked out for me just fine.” She smiled, bits of magic energy flickering between her fingers.

My eyes shot wide open. “I… I don’t think I understand what you are trying to say...”

“I think you understand exactly what I’m saying.” She looked me straight in the eyes, still smiling a beautiful smile.

I found myself at loss of words, and loss of means to actually say them, which was becoming a theme of that day even more than it already was a theme of my life. On one side, the possibility of such a thing even being an option felt like the best thing ever, like something I should jump on immediately, but on the other, actually acknowledging that it was a real path I could take, and what would come next, felt like the most terrifying thing in the world…

But then again, I couldn’t just ignore it, no matter how scary it was… It could even be the thing I was missing, something that wouldn’t necessarily fix my life, but give me a small opening to finally try getting better. I could actually live my life, free to be myself, not having to worry about the fact that people who looked at me saw someone else than who I really was. I should probably think about exactly who it was I wanted people to see, who I wanted to be… Couldn’t just make stuff up on the spot, despite the countless daydreams I had…

Then there was Lilith. She’d just strongly implied that she’d… done the thing that I might or might not do in the future. For some reason, I had a feeling that such confession would generally be frowned upon by most, but to me, it just made her look even cooler in my eyes. And it wasn’t an easy feat, either; during the course of that day, my opinion of her only kept rising as I saw more of what kind of person she was, to the point where she was basically the coolest person I’d ever met before that confession.

I found this all obviously very confusing, given I’d never been in a situation even remotely close to a situation that could have resembled any part of what I was dealing with now…

“I… I think I’m going to need to think about it some more…” I finally said.

“That’s completely okay, this stuff always takes time, so take how much you need. Just try not to fall into denial; it can seem like a good option at first, but it can leave you in a really dark place.” She looked down, as if trying to remember something. “Oh, right, it’s called being transgender by the way. I can give you some links to resources if you want to; just googling stuff like that can be pretty risky at times.”

I nodded. We took a bit to exchange contacts, which included me installing and making a new account in this app called Discord. It was apparently what people who knew other people used these days.

After a bit, she asked, “So if you have a thing you know for sure that you’d want to change about how you look now, what is it?”

I looked down, pretending to think for a moment despite knowing the answer, “Definitely my size. I mean, why would I even need to be this huge?”

My eyes opened wide as I realized I just said that to the lady that easily towered over me. I tried my best to put together a nervous apology.

“Don’t worry, I completely understand.” She laughed. “I mean, do you think I was this tall before?” Magic flickered between her fingers again.

I felt my face heat up.

After I recovered, we spent some more time chatting, and browsing stuff together on Lilith’s phone. When our roommates finally made a return, I got a bit more anxious, but surprisingly, not nearly as much as before. I spent the rest of the day reading up on resources Lilith sent me, and the stuff they led me to, which included an unfamiliar, but better kind of memes. For the first time in a rather long while, I fell asleep feeling optimistic, instead of anxious.