“Well, today sure sucked,” I mumbled into my pillow.

It had started off as a normal day; I’d gotten up, had breakfast, and went to work. When I got to work, everything was fine and we opened up the bakery right on time. For about the first half of the day everything was smooth sailing, but then some asshole customer decided to show up. Now we obviously get assholes from time to time, but this guy was a real dick; to start with, he would only let a guy take his order for some reason, which is already a colossal dick move in my opinion, but whatever -- at least it would be over quick. Then when he noticed my nametag had my pronouns, which everyone’s did, since it was store policy, he started to aggressively use “ma’am” and “miss” for me, which made me feel really weird since I’m not trans. I’ve had people think I was trans before because I naturally look somewhat feminine, but no one has ever thought I was a trans man. Eventually the old man left and my boss came over to make sure I was alright. I told her I was, but I think she could tell I was a bit rattled, so she sent me home early.

Then when I got home, I found out that my roommate had been arrested for emu smuggling, which meant now I need to find a new roommate. After lying on my bed in my own self pity, I decided to see if any of my friends were online to take my mind off things. Thankfully, my best friend Rowan was online playing some weeb game, so I sent her a message asking what’s up.

Wackywoohoopastryman: Hey Rowan what’s up?

Horn-yonmain: Oh hey Azzy nothin much just playing some VNs and looking for a new place to stay.

Wackywoohoopastryman: Oh shit is everything ok?

Horn-yonmain: Yeah I’m fine, just getting kicked out by my roommate, not the first time it’s happened.

Wackywoohoopastryman: Why would anyone wanna kick you out you’re like the nicest person I know.

Horn-yonmain: That’s nice of you to say but it’s really no big deal, anyways why did you wanna chat? You don’t normally just hit me up out of the blue.

Wackywoohoopastryman: You got me there I just kind of wanted to vent about my shitty day to someone, I had this one real asshole of a customer at work and then when I got home I found out that my roommate was arrested so now I need to find a new one.

Horn-yonmain: What was your roommate arrested for?

Wackywoohoopastryman: Emu smuggling

Horn-yonmain: Well that’s certainly something.

Wackywoohoopastryman: Yeah I really couldn’t believe it when I heard, but hey I don’t want to presume or anything but you could always stay at my place since I need a roommate anyways.

Horn-yonmain: I don’t know I really don’t want to ruin our friendship.

Wackywoohoopastryman: Hey don’t worry about it and we can just do this as like a trial run for a month or so.

Horny-yonmain: Ok I guess we can try it out but I reserve the right to leave if things start to be too awkward between us.

Wackywoohoopastryman: No problem you can move in any time.

We then proceeded to hash out the details of when Rowan would move in, and we decided it would be best if she moved in the following Saturday when I was off work. I still couldn’t figure out why one person, let alone multiple, would ever kick Rowan out. Rowan is the nicest and most compassionate person I’ve ever met, and I really couldn’t imagine her doing anything so heinous as to be kicked out. Nevertheless, the rest of the week passed without incident, and before I knew it, Saturday had arrived. It took a couple hours, but eventually we got all of Rowan’s things into the apartment and we decided to have some takeout for dinner.

“Thanks again for doing this for me, Azzy,” Rowan said while shoveling the Kung Pao chicken into her mouth.

“It’s no problem, Rowan; honestly, you’re the one doing me a favor here. I absolutely hate looking for a roommate, I never feel like I can trust any guys in the same place as me,” I replied while taking much more reasonable bites of my sweet and sour chicken.

“Yeah, I can understand that, but why not try to find a roommate who’s not a guy?”

“I’ve thought about it, but I wouldn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

“Well, that’s considerate of you, but really you’re a great person, Azzy; I’m sure you wouldn’t be making anyone uncomfortable.”

“Thanks, but can we change the subject? I don’t like talking about this.”

“Sure thing; what would you rather talk about?”

“Why are you so afraid that you moving in would ruin our friendship?” I asked, finally seeing an opportunity to ask what I had been wondering for the past week.

Rowan sighed in response.”I suppose I should have seen this coming; come with me into the living room and I’ll show you.”

I followed Rowan into the living room, wondering why she couldn’t just tell me why she was so worried. I knew that she was really worried about this, so I went along with it, hoping that she wasn’t secretly an axe murderer and I was her next victim.

“Okay, so I need you to promise me that you won’t panic, okay?” Rowan pleaded.

“Okay, I promise I won’t panic.”

“Alright, here goes nothing, then.”

In an instant, Rowan was suddenly engulfed in flames that seemed to somehow not be setting anything else on fire. After the flames died down, standing before me was a cherry red succubus. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I took in what she looked like. The most noticeable thing aside from the red skin was the fact that she had two horns coming out of her long straight black hair, curling out and then in to look like an s-curve. As I looked at her face, I was struck by the fact that her eyes were completely different; where they were once a lovely green they were now an almost glowing orange with black sclera. The next thing I noticed as I moved down her body were a pair of black leathery wings that looked like bat wings, and a bit further down was a thin tail with a heart-shaped tip. Moving all the way down, there was one last notable thing: instead of ordinary feet, there was a pair of hooves with a little bit of fur around them. As I took in the sight before me, all I could think of was how gorgeous she was.