After the first shop went so poorly, I thought Crystal was being careful, ignoring the boutiques (as the game had called them) and choosing more of a general clothing store. There weren’t any seamstresses around altering clothing, just racks and shelves of ready-made clothes. It was still feminine clothing only, but, well, there was a section with maid outfits and animal ears where a couple of boys were shopping.

We didn’t go to that area. No, she took me straight to the lingerie.

“Do I really need a bra? My… boobs are tiny,” I whispered, self-consciously crossing my arms.

“If you don’t want to, no,” she said, and it sounded like she was trying not to sound disappointed. “But you should at least get, like, a sports bra, I think. In case they rub and get sore.”

I sighed, already losing my resistance. “Fine.”

She perked up and I thought she might have misunderstood, but she took us to a section with what looked like sports bras. Not that I’d seen any in real life. Honestly, it was really lucky for us that, despite being a fantasy MMO, it wasn’t a realistic medieval sort of one, so there were magic lights and flushing toilets and something like sports bras.

Anyway, they were called armour binders. I left her to pick one out for me, only to be utterly broken by her saying, “Okay, so we need your measurements in Units.”

Because it was obvious what measurements she meant and neither of us knew them and she was pulling me over to a changing room. “W-wait,” I said.

She stopped and turned around.

“Do we really need to?” I asked, hopeful.

It seemed like she understood, but her giggle wasn’t reassuring. “If you’re shy, you can keep your shirt on—we just need a rough measurement for your band size.”

“Oh, okay,” I said and let her drag me into the changing room.

Then I started panicking again, barely enough room for the two of us. Every move she made, I was so conscious of how close she was, so close it was hard not to look at her. It didn’t help that she had to use my pocket to take out a measuring tape.

In a brief moment of clarity and peace, I asked, “Why do you have that?”

“You never used it? Oh yeah, I handled the apartment,” she said, pausing to chuckle. “It’s a utility in your inventory, like the stopwatch and notepad. I used it a lot to check how the furniture would fit. In real life… I guess that’s our old life now? Anyway, I had a drawer full of graph paper where I drew up designs. It was fun.”

While she talked, I was calm, but then she stopped and I realised just how close her hands were to my boobs, reading the number on the tape. My heart pounded, twice as hard since it forgot to freak out when I flashed her this morning.

“Just over a hundred,” she mumbled, letting go of the measuring tape; it dissolved into nothing before it hit the floor.

“Is that… big?” I asked, desperate for something to say.

Chuckling, she shrugged. “I think that makes you a large? At least for the binders,” she said, stepping out.

I followed her and we went back to the armour binders. Sure enough, my size fell into large. That made sense. I’d turned a lot of the sliders to max to make Alexa look more masculine—except for breast size.

“This one’s pretty cute,” she said.

The one she picked out was pink, I guessed to blend in with pink armour. “Yeah.”

“Ah, this is, like, my worst nightmare,” she said, suddenly deflating. I worried for a second, only to be glad I didn’t say anything. “Do you pick out underwear first and match the outfit, or the outfit first and match the underwear? I always get stuck on this.”

After a deep breath, I forgave her and thought over what she said, and what that meant. “Um, maybe… not pink, then.”

She turned to me with a small pout, which really only made her look more wronged. “You don’t like pink?”

“Maybe when I… level up,” I said, falling back on gaming terms out of desperation.

I thought she was going to argue, but instead she put it back, no questions. “Okay. What colour do you like, then? Maybe a pastel blue?” she asked.

Relieved, I didn’t want to spend any more time on this. “Sure.”

With that in hand, she led us back to the front for a basket—how convenient—and then we went to the actual clothes. Less nervous now, more things started sinking in for me. For starters, the clothes were all very feminine. Blouses, she called them, shirts that were a bit loose, big necklines, maybe with some ruffles or bunches or whatever it was called. No normal t-shirts, no jeans, no hoodies.

The other women in the store also, well, they were in cute outfits, looking very pretty—and not giving me pretty looks. I hoped it was in my head and they thought I was just here with my girlfriend.

Thinking that, my heart twinged, and I noticed how she seemed to pull me around by the hand like it was nothing. Smiling, it reminded me of when we were kids. Back then, though, it was always me pulling her.

That gave me a brief moment of happiness before she then pushed me into the changing room with the binder and an outfit. “Check it all fits.”

For a long moment, I just stood there, staring at the clothes I was holding.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

Suddenly very worried she’d come in and help, I said, “N-no,” and started undressing.

My morning outfit was sort of beige, apparently the closest to neutral clothing I had. This outfit she’d picked out was soft blues. I started with the binder, very glad it fit comfortably. Despite the name, it was shaped, so my tiny chest wasn’t flattened out. Next was a long skirt. It felt pretty heavy, but was comfortable once I got it over my hips, going all the way down to my ankles. For my top, a blouse. Thankfully, the neckline wasn’t too deep, so it didn’t show off my lack-of-cleavage, and it pulled in at the waist.

That was important as I discovered when I looked in the mirror. My hair was still done up, makeup too, and the clothes made me look less blocky, my sides more wavy.

Despite that, I still saw a man in the mirror, something like a mental block where I couldn’t unsee the truth. But he was blurry now, not as clear as before. That was the best way I could explain it to myself.

“Are you done? Can I see?” she asked.

I took a last look at myself—ignoring my face, just looking at the clothes. “Yeah,” I said and opened the curtain.

Immediately, her face was there, staring at me. Not at my clothes, at me. After a second, she smiled and inspected my outfit, looking very pleased with herself. “It’s hard to go wrong with matching colours, so how about some hair clips too? And some shoes—I guess we can skip high heels for now.”

“Okay.”

By the time we got home, I had a few outfits and matching accessories. It wasn’t like we were short on money. But there was a reason we’d come back home instead of having lunch in the city.

“After a hard day, nothing beats ice-cream,” she said, heading straight to the kitchen.

I went to my room to put my stuff away, but shouted after her, “You mean creamed ice?” Because a fantasy world couldn’t just have ice-cream. When I got to the kitchen, she had two bowls out already, crammed full of not-strawberry not-ice-cream. “Thanks.”

Her mouth full, she just smiled.

For a while, we sat in silence, eating our troubles away. I wondered if we’d gain weight now it wasn’t a game. If we did, I wondered if there were weight-loss potions. Lost in those stupid thoughts, I finished my bowl and just sat there, staring at nothing.

Eventually, she spoke in a soft voice, barely a whisper. “Really, you don’t get used to it, you just get used to ignoring the pain, but I’m here for you.”

I smiled and wanted to tell her that it didn’t bother me, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie. “That’s what it was like for you? For… twelve years?”

She tried to smile and failed miserably. “Fourteen. I wanted to tell you as soon as I was sure, but I… I was so scared of losing you.”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. There wasn’t anything for me to say, though, the fact I was still here twelve years later what mattered.

After letting out a long breath, she managed to smile. “Anyway, it was different for me in person since… you know. But just because I looked like a man didn’t make it any easier hearing everyone call me one.”

Her words—not exactly fear, more like dread. I had this growing anxiety that it was pointless. That she could fit in because she had been a woman, but I was now a man in a woman’s body and everyone could tell. And I felt so guilty, the only reason why I was in this state, why I wanted to try being a woman….

“Crystal, I think I should just be a guy. There’s no way I can act feminine enough to fit in with the other women here, and the same thing’s going to happen if I try to be a muscle woman, so….”

Everyone had to be super feminine or super masculine, no matter their gender. But even the women in heavy armour and shaved heads still walked like a woman, their “deeper” voices still higher-pitched than mine, all these tiny things about them that told my brain they were women—and that I wasn’t.

“If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do. But, before you decide to give up, can you do something for me?” she asked, her voice so gentle.

“Sure, anything.”

She led me to my bedroom, had me stand in front of the mirror, and she was right behind me. Then she reached around and covered my eyes a bit, taking her a moment to get it right. “You can’t see your face?”

“Only my body,” I said.

“Perfect. Now, look at yourself,” she said.

So I did. I looked at the kind of blocky body hiding under the pretty clothes, part of me wishing I did fit them, that maybe that was how people knew. Once those thoughts trailed off, I kept staring. It was funny, I’d never really looked at myself wearing clothes before, just checked I looked okay. Tie straight, buttons done up, time to go. But it made sense to me now why girls liked to go shopping even if they couldn’t buy anything—and why women liked to go when they could buy clothes they liked.

“How do you feel?” she whispered.

“Fine, I guess,” I said.

Slowly, she moved away her hand. “You’re smiling.”

I looked up and, well, she wasn’t wrong. “I guess?”

There was a long moment of silence, then she spoke, somehow even softer than she already was. “I’m not saying you were trans, and maybe it’s because you’re in a woman’s body now, but… most men don’t feel happy from seeing themselves in women’s clothes.”

My first impulse was to argue, but I stopped myself. Mind a mess, I tried to think of why she was wrong, stuck on that secret I was hiding.

“I know what wanting to pass as a woman is like, and I know it’ll hurt to get misgendered over and over, but… it’s not just about other people, it’s about you too. If this is how you want to dress, I’ll be right here with you. All I want is for you to be happy and we can learn together what that is.”

The disconnect in my mind grew, guilt filling in the gap, then it started spilling, tears rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. Crystal was the crybaby, not me.

She hugged me, but I pushed her away, hating the confused look she made—that she trusted me so much she didn’t even look hurt.

That finally broke me. I walked to the bed and sat down, rubbing my eyes, trying to stop the tears. When they dried up, she was still there. Waiting for me.

“There’s… something you need to know,” I said, my voice sounding worse than ever.

“I’m listening,” she said.

I tried to look at her, but it was too hard, my throat clogging up. So I stared at my knees and told her. “When we were kids, you were my best friend. I loved you so much I even asked my parents if you could be my br—sister. A bit older, I learned about husbands and wives, and I asked my mother if I could marry you when we grew up.”

Pausing, I had to laugh. “She shouted at me for an hour. No son of hers was going to be gay. Well, we were getting to the age where we liked people, and I knew I liked you, but I knew I couldn’t like you. So I sometimes wished I was born a girl. It’s funny, I always wished it was me because I knew it wasn’t nice to wish someone else was different.

“Anyway, then you told me you were a girl, and I felt like… everything was right. I wanted to tell my parents right away and ask them to talk to your parents so we could marry as soon as we finished school. But obviously, I didn’t, and I learned how hard your situation was. So I waited until we went to university and had the privacy and—”

Crystal said, “I told you I was a lesbian.”

Smiling, I nodded. “It was sad for me, but happy for you and I wanted you to be happy, so it became happy for me too. I thought how, this way, even if you couldn’t be yourself, at least you could still marry someone you liked. And I could marry someone else too, and we could live as neighbours, our children like cousins.”

Realising I was talking nonsense, I stopped there, letting out a long sigh. Then I carried on. “But we talked more and you told me you didn’t feel like you could lie to someone like that, and you told me your plan. Part of me… wanted to do the same. I was going to go wherever you did anyway, but… I sometimes thought, if I became a woman too, we could be together.”

There it was, the horrible truth I hid from her forever. I didn’t even feel better to get it off my chest. After all, I’d kept it in because I knew… it would hurt her. All my kindness, tainted by my selfishness.

I was too numb to cry, but I covered my face, afraid to see her reaction.

Then all she said was, “I accept you,” and hugged me again.

Maybe I wasn’t too numb to cry after all. And after crying every last tear, I felt drained. That was so much better than the guilt and shame I’d bottled up for years. She patted my back, and it actually comforted me. She knew and she still hugged me.

Eventually, she broke the silence. “The… reason it took me so long to realise I was a lesbian, was because I felt like… I loved you. It was so hard. I didn’t know if I just felt like that because… you were so kind to me and I could be myself with you. But I couldn’t lie to myself. I knew I liked women, and I knew I didn’t want to kiss men or do those kinds of things.”

I smiled, kind of nice to hear that. “We’re both such a mess,” I whispered.

She laughed and gave me a last squeeze before pulling away. “One thing… I think you were maybe trans. I spoke to a lot and a lot of people, learning about myself, and many people told me… a cis man doesn’t think about becoming a woman. Even if he loves someone, he won’t think about becoming a woman to date them.

“Obviously, that’s up to you to decide. There’s so many men, some of them must have thought things like that, but I think… knowing who you were might help you learn who you are now. Even if you decide you were a man before, you can still be a woman now, or be whoever makes you happy.”

Pausing there, she smiled, tears in her eyes.

“I’ll be right beside you the whole way, just like you were for me. Whatever happens, we’re best friends and nothing can change that, right?”

She really knew how to squeeze every last tear out of me. “Right.”