After convincing their mom to order them pizza, Kya joined the rest of the gang downstairs in the lounge. Mike was always amazed how someone could afford such a large house, his mother had sacrificed a lot just to afford half of a duplex to rent. She kept promising that someday they’d own something, but he’d overheard enough conversations with people about where the deposit money was going that this was unlikely anytime soon.

He lounged back on a couch as Will queued up the pirating site for Dodo’s Odd Shenanigans on his laptop, adblockers enabled and ready to go. Kya was nervous at first about them pirating because of viruses, but Will was careful enough, being good-ish with computers, and this site seemed to at least have few enough ads.

The episode was something about Donald Dougherty and his escapades with his associated…avatar? Was hard to say, but its name was Captain Pepper. Mike rolled his eyes at the obvious reference. Couldn’t fiction at least be original with naming conventions? Still, the action was pretty neat, even if the characters were one-dimensional.

He was still anxious about watching it. The pizza arrived a little late, but that was perfect, giving them just enough time to finish up the season finale before the doorbell rang. Kya thanked the delivery driver and tipped them, closing the door and bringing over the greasy pizzas full of cheese and pepperoni.

This was a real treat for Mike, who dug in eagerly. The conversation around the table revolved mostly around school and the finale, Will and Lily arguing as usual until Kya made a comment about “would you just kiss already?” that silenced them. Mike stayed quiet until suddenly called on, snapping him out of his haze.

“Mike, would you pull up the anime you wanted? Just making sure we can get an early start without a lot of setup.”

“Uhhhh, yeah, sure!” Mike replied, pulling up the site on his phone.

The site he’d been watching on seemed to be having technical issues, so he sighed as he went back to the search results and tried to find another one that didn’t seem to have too much malware floating around. Near the bottom of the first page, another website called “WishAnime” popped up. Never heard of that before. As he entered, he got just one pop up–”do you want your wish fulfilled?”

He muttered as he tried to hit no, but clicked yes accidentally. Bracing for a redirect to some porn site, he tried to back out, but he noticed: nothing was changing, it just stayed on the front page. It even allowed him to search, and hey! There was Neko Motorcycle Club on the front page. Guess it was popular! He pulled it up to confirm it was the right show, and yep, the first episode’s audio and video seemed to play fine.

“Got it pulled up!” Mike announced.

“Great!” Will replied as he took another slice and began walking downstairs, “C’mon, I wanna see some Isekai!”

The group followed Will, and Mike linked his phone to the television, queueing up the first episode. The intro was skippable, but skipping the intro the first time felt wrong. Some sappy k-pop song played along with an animation of waking up in a catgirl’s body that made Mike feel weird things every time, almost if someone was watching him.

This time, however, he felt almost excited, like something was stirring in him. He hoped it wasn’t, um, any urges. That would be weird. But the more he thought about it, the more it felt like genuine anticipation for something new. He already could swear he felt more comfortable than he had seconds ago. He was glad he’d made the right choice.

All his friends were watching intently, especially as it cut into the guy. He was a real loser, the show pretty clearly displayed. Lots and lots of empty ramen containers, eye strain from looking at a computer screen all day, until the guy clicked on a site that sold mopeds and motorcycles. This part of the plot was classic. Even though he wanted a moped, out of curiosity, he clicked on one that had catgirl ears on the handlebars and was otherwise jet black.

After that, the screen went black, and Mike could swear he felt a little nauseous. Was he feeling nervous? He’d seen this plot before. He readjusted himself on the couch, hoping the feeling would go away if he sat up a little straighter. He still felt like he was slouching, noticing the TV was higher up.

Great, the pizza had given him a bug and he was dizzy, obviously. He felt weird in his ears, like he normally did when he was sick. He’d had a lot of ear infections as a kid. He meekly said “I’m going to the bathroom, I don’t feel great.”

Will and Lily nodded without their eyes departing from the screen, but Kya turned to look at him. Their eyes looked at him intently, curiously even, before they smiled gently and said ‘be safe.’

On the way, Mike felt like he was positively going to lose it. The stairs felt like they got higher every step up, and he really felt the urge to just curl up into a ball and sleep. Thankfully, he got to the bathroom before anything adverse happened, sitting himself on the lid of the toilet seat to catch his breath and bearings.

He looked at his hands, noticing how much smaller they looked for the first time. Did he have some kind of weird wasting disease? He’d need to tell mom, probably. He went to look it up but realized he'd left his phone charging in the other room while streaming the website.

He banged his head against the wall gently, partially to chide himself, partially because everything felt so…heavy. Come to think of it, that bathmat looked cozy. He lay down on it, drifting off gently before falling asleep altogether.

He woke up to knocking on the bathroom door. “Mike, are you okay?” Kya’s voice called worriedly.

“I’m fine!” Mike grumbled, noticing the squeakiness of his voice. He had really hoped that last year was the end of it cracking.

“You don’t sound fine!” Kya said, “Are you decent? I’m coming in to check on you.”

Mike looked down. Was he decent? He…oh, his clothes were so baggy. What had happened? It was like he was wearing one of the football player’s sizes as a joke, like they did on spirit days sometimes. The jeans felt like they were compressing him uncomfortably.

“Yeah!” Mike replied.

As Kya barged in, they stared at him. He felt uncomfortable, almost unwelcome, by the stare. He retreated back up against the sink cabinet instinctively.

“Who are you?” Kya asked.

Oh, it was that kind of thing. “Look, I don’t know what prank you guys are pulling, what with Helium and the baggy clothes, but it’s kind of fucked up you waited until I was sick to do it. You could’ve done it while I was sleeping?”

“Did Mike put you up to this? I don’t even want to think about what the deal was,” Kya said as they pinched the bridge of their nose. “Look, you can stay if you want, just tell me where Mike is.”

“Right here! On the floor! There, is that what you want? Did Will get his chuckles? Can I have my real clothes back now?”

“...Mike?”

“Yes, we’ve established that,” Mike replied with a huff.

“Oh, oh my gods, oh my gods,” Kya started repeating, “I am so sorry.”

“As you should be! I mean coming in and–”

“Mike, you should really look in the mirror,” Kya interjected, “and I mean really.”

“What, is there some hilarious part to this?”

“Just do what I say, dumbass,” Kya replied anxiously.

Mike stood up, wobbling a little, to find Kya supporting him as he tenderly got up. Whatever had happened to his balance had left him disoriented. He turned to Kya and gently thanked them, noticing oddly that they seemed to be a few inches taller than him. Probably wearing heels as part of the prank or something.

He turned to the mirror and gasped. With the height the mirror was at above the sink, there was no way this could be part of the prank. His head stood maybe a foot above the top of the sink, and so only his face and very upper body were visible over it.

What he saw was a very small catgirl. At first, he thought it might’ve been a picture, but he noticed, the catgirl moved with him in ways that would be hard to replicate with any sort of thing like that. As he reached up to the place where she had ears in the mirror, he grabbed something fluffy. As he pulled gently, he felt almost as if someone were tugging on his ear.

He reached down to the place where his ear should’ve been and…nothing. He turned to Kya in shock, who was nodding at him with an equally perplexed look.

“I’m a catgirl???” Mike asked.

“It appears so, Mike,” Kya replied matter-of-factly.