Lillian wasn’t really sure what to do after that. She considered just going to bed and turning in early, but when she stepped into her bedroom she could hear disturbing sounds filtering through the two closet doors and decided maybe she should wait. She wasn’t interested in listening to that.

She eventually decided on finishing the movie, by herself. She didn’t even bother turning off the lights, just sat down and hit play on the remote. She was able to half-focus on in for a few minutes, then she put her head in her hands and groaned. No, she couldn’t stop thinking.

She thought about how she’d just given up on her date with Claire. Now she was off having fun with someone else while Lillian was sitting there being useless.

She thought about how unfair it was that Lia got to have the life she wanted, embracing her true self and earning one (maybe two!) hot lesbian girlfriends.

She thought about the shaky excuse she’d made to herself about why she isn’t trans. Yeah, no, now that she thought about it again with a bit clearer of a head, her shoddy reasoning wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. The magic did a weird thing that nobody could explain—not even herself—and it didn’t detract from the heaping pile of evidence stacked against her.

That’s the problem with this whole situation. She knew for a fact that she was not transgender. It was a truth that she simply knew in the core of her being. She knew the trans community was all about embracing the person you feel you truly are inside, right? She felt like a woman. That was all there was to it. And she should know better than anyone else because she’d lived her whole life feeling that way.

The movie was forgotten as she pulled out her phone and started searching. ‘How do I know if I’m a girl?’ ‘How do I know if I’m transgender?’ ‘Am I a tomboy or a trans man?’ The results were… well. Hm.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. The room was quiet. The movie had finished.

Claire stood in front of her wearing some casual clothing. Her face flushed red.

“Ian, do you still wanna cuddle?”

Ian smiled up at her. “Are you sure? I mean, I’m a guy, so…” He stood up and looked her in the eye.

She nodded. “Yes. Look, I’m sorry for leaving you alone like that.” She looked crestfallen and took a step back, glancing to the side. “Tonight has been just crazy. There’s no getting past that. And, I mean, I was really worried about you. I should’ve been better about being there for you. You just had your entire identity called into question! You thought you were a lesbian girl, now… maybe you’re a gay man?” She offered.

Ian considered her words. Seriously looked her over again. His feelings were the same as ever. He thought she was super cute and pretty. Her hairdo was beautiful, he loved the vibrant color and the way it swished and flowed, even though it was quite tousled by this point. Her makeup was ruined but earlier in the night it had framed her angular tanned face really well. The dress she had worn earlier was stunning, it framed her body perfectly, showed off the curves of her waist and her ass, her lithe arms and legs, her small perky tits. She had changed into what looked like a more comfortable t-shirt and jeans combo but it worked no less well on her.

Ian cared about her a lot. They had spent the past year working together, bonding over shared experiences: of how they hated work, hated their lives, and dealt with the existential dread of the world. She meant a lot to him and he could see in her eyes that he meant just as much to her.

So what about physical attraction? He looked at the woman and he saw her as a woman, not as an object of attraction or desire. He wanted to be friendly with her and hug her and be there for her, but he felt no urge to take her clothes off. It was clear to him now that that was the case after he had resisted her coming onto him earlier that night. He knew that she was objectively hot, and any straight guy who was particularly clueless about queer fashion would want a piece of her. Deep down he just didn’t feel that inclination.

“Yeah, that sounds about right. Maybe I am.” He grinned at the thought. Maybe that was really it, but being a gay man was such an absurd notion that he’d never considered it. “So if I’m not attracted to you, and you aren’t to me,” he said, and followed through on the hug, “then I’m okay with it. It’s not weird. You’re my best friend.”

She sighed and leaned into him. “I’m glad you think so. You mean a lot to me. So yeah, like I was saying, forgive me, because—” she pulled back with a slightly wild look on her face “—it’s not every day you get to live out one of your wildest fantasies. That was insane, man!” She giggled and hopped in place a bit.

He nodded. “Yeah, I think I get it. I’m happy for you, Claire.”

 

 

While they were preparing for bed, Ian found himself in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror while his arm did the mechanical motion of brushing his teeth.

Seeing his short hair was still so different and new. On Monday when he got it done it was exciting, it was fun, he spent the rest of the day just touching his head and smiling. It was a miracle he had built up the courage to actually do it, and it was thanks in part to Claire’s encouragement and support. At the time, he thought he had been a lesbian. It was a part of the ‘lesbian aesthetic.’ Now he didn’t care because it just made him feel good regardless.

He looked at his face. He’d stopped wearing his glasses except when he was in front of his computer. Since he’d stopped bothering applying any makeup, his face looked tired again. The bags under his eyes were sharp, his skin porous and flawed. His eyelashes were almost invisible. It wasn’t a good look, he knew—from his experience of, well, being criticized or asked if he was feeling okay? It made people worry. But that wasn’t really the case this week. Everyone saw him trying on a new look and just went with it, like it was totally normal. He’d been relieved. He was happy for an excuse to take an item off his morning routine for sure.

The excitement and euphoria from those changes led to him trying more and more, just because he could, as he rode the high of it. He was genuinely happy.

Then, after she rinsed her mouth and put her toothbrush away, reality settled in. When she looked in the mirror she saw the face of a confused young girl who was destroying her body. She had sheared her beautiful locks off, put little metal studs in her ears. She pulled off her jacket and looked at the fresh tattoo on her left upper arm. What a disgrace; now she couldn’t wear cute sleeveless dresses without shame, betraying how she had grossly defiled her body. She had even began thinking of herself with masculine pronouns again. What was her problem?

Lillian would clearly never be a man. Her soft cheeks, unassuming eyebrows, full red lips were unmistakable. She had slim, narrow shoulders and wide hips. That wasn’t even to mention the bulging breasts which couldn’t be contained by the stifling sports bra she’d decided to wear today.

She would never be a man and she had to stop believing otherwise. Nobody would believe her, because she couldn’t pretend to be someone that she’s not. She wasn’t transgender.

She changed into a nightgown and then left the bathroom to find Claire, having taken off her pants and sitting in her bed, who smiled at her as she walked towards the bed to join her. She would have to tell her the truth, and to cut out this ‘Ian’ bullcrap.

But then she wrapped him up in a hug with one arm and pulled them both down into a laying position, pulling the covers over them with her other arm. Ian felt all his insecurities melt away with the presence of his close friend. He was so lucky to have Claire there to look after him.

He had the lingering feeling that he had something to talk to her about, but he let it go for now. Maybe he wanted to follow up on Lia’s suggestion to have a talk with her about trans stuff so he could understand it better, but that could wait until tomorrow. He snuggled closer to her and felt the world float away.

 

 

In the morning, the two lay cuddling, talking quietly to one another.

They discussed more details about last night. Ian told her more about his identity, as it stood. He was going to try using the name Ian and he / him pronouns among his friends but not yet at work or anywhere else. He still wasn’t sure that he was transgender and admitted he had more thinking to do on the matter. Their relationship would stay the same, with no plans to spend the night again but Claire made clear that the offer was on the table.

Ian was tempted. He had to admit it felt really nice, being that close to another person in bed. There was nothing sexual about it, it just felt nice, it was a sleepover between friends. Actually, heck, why not? He was about to ask about her plans for next weekend, but…

No, this was weird. Lillian shouldn’t be sleeping with her friend; she shouldn’t have done this in the first place. Sleeping together was something that couples did. And since Claire thought she was a man, they were a man and a woman sleeping in the same bed and they weren’t even—! No. She had to extricate herself from this situation.

Lillian gave Claire a chaste little kiss on the cheek and smiled politely. “I’m gonna go make us some breakfast, ‘kay? How does scrambled eggs and sausage sound?”

She frowned and shook her head. “I’m vegetarian.”

Lillian giggled. “I’ll make you some damn fine eggs then.” As she slipped out of bed, she saw Claire stretch cutely and wrap the comforter around herself. She averted her eyes.

Breakfast was easy. She decided to chop up bell peppers and onions to add some extra flavor. She—er, he felt disappointed he hadn’t spent just a little while longer cuddling in bed, but he supposed breakfast was more important.

Had he accidentally used feminine pronouns for himself in his head just then? Ugh. If he was going to give this trans thing a serious try, he should at least try to be consistent about it.

 

 

Amelia ended up inviting the two of them to her dining table so all four of them could eat together. She would have made them all breakfast, too, but since Ian had already started, they just split the work accordingly.

They discussed some things about their lives, comparing and contrasting the two worlds. When Ian found out that Lia had gone through a computer science program in college, it was quite a shocker. Far removed from his digital arts major. They each had had different aspirations growing up, and yet somehow they ended up landing the same job in frontend web development. It was almost freaky that they hadn’t even noticed how far their pasts diverged while landing in the same spot in the present.

For Claire’s part, she and her double had identical pasts, which they quickly confirmed. Even their feelings about Ian and Lia were the same save for Ian’s Claire having always been open to the possibility of being amorous with him while the other had never considered it before that week.

The topic could only inevitably lead back to the magic itself. “So when I used the wand on the mirror and I created your world—”

“Was it you who created my world? Or was it me who was responsible for yours?”

“Well, as far as I know, I’ve been alive for the past 24 years. I didn’t feel like I suddenly started existing the moment it happened.”

“See, that’s the thing about Last Thursdayism—”

One of the Claires finally interrupted. “Stop it. Neither of you were directly responsible.”

“Or it was both of you, equally?” the other one said. “Can’t you think of something that doesn’t step on eachother?”

Ian shrugged. “If both of our universes always existed, independently of one another…”

“Then an infinite number of them must exist. And all the wand did was find one that matched what we were thinking of,” Lia continued.

“So all we did, the two of us, was… to find the other one and open a door between them.”

Claire smiled. “See? That’s a lot easier, right?”

Claire looked at her twin thoughtfully. “So, is it time to…?”

“Yeah. We’ve been meaning to ask,” Claire said.

Together they spoke: “How the heck did you get your hands on magic?!”

Ian and Lia winced. They both opened their mouths and closed them again, then scratched their heads. One of the Claires giggled.

“So this is something we shouldn’t tell people,” Ian started, and Lia waved him to continue. “We, um, kind of had to buy it off the black market?” At their shocked expressions, he held up his hands defensively. “Look, I was as careful as I possibly could! I went through all the safest channels; I did extensive research before I made my move. I know how dangerous this stuff can be. Hell, misusing magic is an order of magnitude less risky than being caught with it, either by the feds or by people you’ve never heard of. There’s a reason nobody has taken over the world or whatever, and you never see news about this sort of stuff.”

Lia had taken her phone out and pulled up an encrypted note-taking app, showing her Claire everything she had collected. Claire blanched at the sheer volume of everything there, flicking the screen repeatedly to scroll until it finally reached the bottom. “This is a lot,” she said. “Look, Claire,” she handed the phone to her twin who immediately looked confused.

“Why is all the text backwards?”

“Oh, you can’t read it because of the mirror thing. You’ll just have to take her word for it,” Lia said, taking the phone back.

Ian looked around again. It was still so weird sitting in a room that looked exactly like his own home, except that it felt unfamiliar because it was all backwards. He even had to stare at the picture frames on that one wall for several seconds before he recognized them. Lia and her Claire were eating their food left-handed. So weird.

“We’ll keep quiet about it, promise,” Claire replied. “By the way, if you know how to access magic and stuff, why couldn’t you just find a spell to swap bodies with eachother? Wouldn’t that solve your little trans problem?”

“It’s… not that simple.”

“Magic can’t do everything. It can brute force the universe in crazy ways, but the precision is lacking,” Lia said. “At least, as far as anyone can tell. Even when you know where to look for this stuff, the knowledge is spread thin. That wand we’re using is ancient technology. It had to have been mass-produced to some degree because it isn’t so rare that I couldn’t grab one without breaking my bank.”

“Dang, so,” Claire cupped her chin in her hand in thought. “If this stuff is so powerful, how come it isn’t more widespread? How can a few shady organizations keep it suppressed on their own? And why aren’t there huge advancements in magical technology, like there are in every other field of science?”

Ian sighed. “The best guess we have is that, if magic could allow time travel to become possible, and people have gone back to change the past, then the universe would settle into a timeline where time travel never gets invented in the first place.”

 

 

Their discussion got side-tracked into science fiction theories for a while until the Claires remembered they had other things to do that day, and they left Ian and Lia to talk about what to do next. They decided on a mutual arrangement which could benefit them both, rather than ignoring the other like they’d been doing.

The first step in their plan was to swap out their closets. Apart from the height difference and the presence of boobs, their bodies were the same size, so they found a lot of clothing they could trade. Ian eagerly let go of all the most feminine junk he’d accumulated but opted to hang onto some of his more androgynous stuff, just in case she needed it (because she was still a girl after all!).

With that out of the way, they decided the bedroom closet wasn’t the most convenient place for the portal, but they were happy to discover that the mirror was still a free-standing object they could move around. Ian set it down on its side and was able to lift it on his own. Well, not before sticking his hand through and shuddering at the creepy feeling of gravity tugging in a different direction. He was not eager to discover how the portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not. So he carefully carried it out, making sure not to reach through the surface again. They stopped in the bedroom to carry Ian’s vanity over to Lia’s side, him promising to teach her to use it and earning a giggle of excitement in response. It just barely fit through the mirror. Finally, they brought the mirror out into the living room and leaned it against one wall. Now it was far enough away from the bedroom to afford them more privacy.

That evening, Lia again offered to cook for the both of them, and Ian agreed on the condition that they would figure out a way to evenly split the load between them.

He was sitting on a stool at the bar between Lia’s kitchen and dining room, keeping her company while she cooked. He was messing with his phone which was connected to her WiFi network.

A few things were breaking. He received cell service about half the time; it kept flickering on and off. Same thing with the WiFi which made it annoying to use. Some apps would fail to authenticate and ask him to sign in again, but wouldn’t accept his username and password. The weirdest were the apps that logged in fine but they displayed Lia’s account information and whatever she engaged in on social media. He immediately closed them to protect her privacy, but he didn’t fail to notice what similarities and differences there were. Once he felt like he’d seen enough, he went back to his side of the portal and left his phone where he knew he’d find it later.

“Let’s leave our phones behind when we visit eachother,” he told her when he got back. “Mine was acting a bit screwy and it didn’t seem like I could do anything with it.” He briefly described what he’d seen.

“That does make sense,” she nodded. “Some things between them are going to be identical when they shouldn’t, like the MAC address and SIM ID. So the network can’t tell the difference between our phones. That might be why the signals kept getting cut out. And if we signed into our accounts at the same time, we would have each gotten identical auth tokens, so your phone would’ve been able to access my accounts that way. It’s actually strange that some of them failed. Maybe if our usernames or passwords were different, and they were used as part of the hashing process?”

Ian laughed. “I have no idea what half of that means, but I’ll take your word for it! Not like it really matters.”

“Yeah, not really. I might dig into it later though, just to try to figure it out for fun.”

Ian shook his head. When he was using apps on his phone, he was scrutinizing the layout and design of it, the color choices, the legibility and UX and so on. But he wondered if Lia saw things differently. Maybe she could suss out the code working behind the scenes. Maybe she knew why it slowed down sometimes and why it threw the incomprehensible errors that he could only curse at.

Then he looked at what she was cooking. She’d just dumped the rice into the wok, close to finished making stir fry rice with the sausage they’d had leftover from breakfast. Exactly what he was thinking of making for dinner. Dang. The similarities and differences still took him by surprise.

They decided to open a case of wine cooler to have with dinner. Ian picked out a show for them to watch on the TV while Lia served the food and brought it to the couch. They each pulled a can from the 6-pack box, cracked them open and took a swig.

Ian hesitated before starting the show. “Amelia, I have a weird question for you.”

“Have you been thinking about the trans stuff?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s related to that. I just… it feels like I have this voice in the back of my head that keeps saying, ‘I’m not transgender!’ and it won’t shut up. It won’t listen to reason and I’m trying to keep it from influencing me too much.” He shrugged. “Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m still not totally sold on the idea, and I know I still have to look into it more. But…” he wanted to bring up all the fun he’s had in the past week, but he figured she knew already. Besides, the more she kept quiet, the easier it would be to just go back to being Lillian, and nobody would have to suspect that she was any different than normal. She would inevitably realize that she couldn’t pretend to be someone she wasn’t. She couldn’t risk the harassment and discrimination and the risk that would come with such a drastic life change. And she wasn’t really transgender anyways, like that much was just plainly obvious, and she would stop playing make-believe soon. What would her parents think?

Lia shuddered. “Yeah, I have thoughts like that too, sometimes. Just less often now that I’ve taken the time to really internalize my decision. It becomes easy to ignore those thoughts once you realize how silly they are. You’ll figure it out, Ian.” She gave her a bright smile.

Lillian smiled back. “Alright. Yeah, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. Thanks for the advice, Lia.” She started the show and dug right into the food, cutting the conversation off there. She didn’t think going on and reading stories would do much to change her mind on the matter, so she resolved to put it off for a while. For now, she would just enjoy the show she’d picked. It was a cute little cartoon, perfect for Lia the girly-girl, she thought with a smirk.

 

 

It was an hour later, the two had finished dinner and Ian had just downed the dregs of his third can of wine cooler. He put it down on the coffee and slouched back into the couch. The show they were watching was really entertaining but he’d kinda spaced on half of the third episode. Why couldn’t he pay attention? Alcohol didn’t usually hit him like this, and he’d only had three drinks.

He looked over at Lia, and she seemed to be doing fine, sitting upright and laughing at something. She looked at him too. “Pretty good, right? The guy totally just—” She frowned and leaned forward. “Hey, are you good? You look out of it.”

He opened his mouth to respond and instead just groaned. He couldn’t think clearly. He only knew that something was very wrong. He clutched his head and fell to the side, curling up on his side of the couch.

“Ian? Are you okay? Ian!” She was patting his shoulder, trying to get him to respond. That was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness.