I felt myself slowly start to wake up. Ugh, I hate waking up, it hurts and it’s really cold and ugh. All my barely not asleep mind can think is that it wants it to stop and go back to warm sleep. That actually sounds like a good idea, let’s do that.

Except the cold harsh world had other plans, I felt being nudged by something and a familiar voice saying “hey, wake up” or some silly thing like that. I rolled to my side, covered myself with that warm thing over me more and let out a grumbling noise.

“Umm, seriously, you might wanna wake up for that.” The voice repeated. The voice I now recognised as my sister. Maybe. 65% sure it was her. “Ugh, you won’t have to go to school today, but seriously, please, I can’t skip uni today, I have exams...”

Okay, 72% sure it was my sister. Slowly but surely, I started movement that was vaguely taking into a non-sleeping pose, turning towards the speaker. I let out another noise that was meant to communicate I really didn’t want to go into the cold of awake, “Uhh, what is it…?”

With great pain, I opened my eyes. Shocked face. On a person. Okay, my sister, Emily, brain finally booting. Something was different from our usual act of doing just that. I should have been in school over an hour ago, but you know how it is… Ouch owie eyes hurt, need to close.

I heard my sister go move a bit, and when I opened my eyes, I saw her handing me my eye drops. I got on my back and applied them, waiting for my sister to say what was going on. When she didn’t for several seconds after I put down the drops, I looked at her expectantly. What has happened, and more important, did I really not have to go to school or was that one just meant to lure me out?

“I’m gonna be honest, at this point I’m seriously considering just waiting for you to notice.” Wha? Notice what? Did I get sick and somehow didn’t notice? I wouldn’t put this option out of reach for morning me.

“Can you please just te-” Wait. That voice sounded different. Not as in sick different, and not ‘I’m still waking up and feel like I’m dying’ different. “Wha- what happened?” Wow the voice went high now. I was barely awake enough to recognise that this voice was coming from my mouth. Sounds like something I’d rather process when I’m conscious.

“Just… Take a look at yourself…” Emily sighed. I looked at my body. Now that she mentioned it, it feels different too. Soft. Nice. My body isn’t soft or nice, my body is rough and off-putting. I propped myself with my arms into half sitting position to take a look at it. Ummm, that isn’t how my body is shaped, and if my guess is correct which my senses really tell me it is, then…

“Ummm… Don’t tell me…” Fear and uncertainty really present in my voice, which, now that I thought about it, also strongly suggested my guess was correct.

“Yup, looks like your body transformed to one one could call a girl one.” Emily said in a weird way she always uses when there’s more technical stuff she’d want to say that’d make her statement factually correct but knows it probably wouldn’t be appropriate.

I started to feel panic as my brain realised reality of the situation and all the potential consequences. I didn’t want the consequences. “Umm… So… Umm… What do we do? Like, to undo it or something…?”

Emily let out a big sigh and put her hand to her forehead, “Listen, I really, really don’t have time for this, have big exams today, so, what about this - I call Hana so she lets school know you won’t be coming and it’s serious, and to come here after school, I should get back around the same time, and then we’ll discuss this stuff together, okay?”

“Yea, okay, that sounds… yea, sounds good, thanks…” I stumbled over my words, still really on edge. I hated getting Hana into it, since it’d mean bringing all of two people I was close to and being a really huge bother for them, but in this situation I think it’s unavoidable anyways...

“Okay then,” she took out her phone and called Hana, knowing well when we have breaks in our school. Might be my fault…

“Hi there,” She started. I couldn’t hear what Hana said, but it was pretty easy to guess from context, “Yea, about that… You know this thing that thing where sometimes people just wake up transformed? Because that’s exactly what happened…” After a few seconds she looked at me awkwardly and added, “I think you’ll need to see for yourself… Come here after school?” Oh, you could feel how awkward and uncomfortable it was for her, and the guilt for that was terrible… “Okay, cool, bye.”

I hated being a bother for people like that, it felt awful, I was worse than useless, “I-I’m sorry…” I felt pain in my eyes, but in a different way than I was used to.

“Don’t”, she firmly put her hand on top of my head and looked straight into my eyes, “you even start with that. It’s not your fault, let people care about you, it’s our choice to do it.” She repeated the message I’ve heard from her countless times, something about me needing to internalise the message. She ruffled my hair a bit, got up, and took the hand away, “Okay, I really need to go now, we’ll take care of that situation later, okay?”

I nodded, and got a smile from her. She waved her hand, said her goodbyes and left the room, and then the apartment.

I was left alone, and the first thought I had was, of course, I didn’t need to go to school! A big source of existential dread that had potential of having serious consequences for the rest of my life, but I got to stay home on a school day? Sounds like a good deal.

I automatically got out of bed, wrapping my quilt around my torso, ignoring all the ways in which those actions felt different now, and turned on my computer. It’s really the only way of spending free time I had. I thought about what to do as I logged into my profile, and got welcomed by reopened browser with countless tabs open.

I probably should read about the whole transforming thing. I mean, like most people, I had a vague knowledge of it, it’s rare but happens sometimes, always when people are asleep, something about ambient magic energy sometimes being more concentrated in places and it causing people to transform because people have natural connection to magic or whatever, even if most don’t use it.

I opened a site from search results that sounded promising, about why and how it happens and what causes people to take on forms they do. Intro was about ambient energy, it flows and sometimes is more focused in certain places sometimes, blah blah blah, I know that part, I want to know how and why… No. After reading a first sentence of explanation how, and my eyes skimming thru a later paragraph, I closed the tab.

Time to do something that isn’t reading that stuff. What was it I was doing lately? I struggled to remember… Oh, right, there was a youtube playlist I had on, fun stuff, and I’ve only watched most of it 4 times too.

But that wasn’t enough to distract myself, what to do what to do. I glanced quickly at tab with some ‘I woke up as a girl’ type manga I started reading some time ago. No, thank you very much, that’s the opposite of what I need right now. I don’t even know why I read those, they’re full of toxic tropes, most characters are terrible people, plot barely exists, and a lot of those border on part of main character’s personality being forcefully changed, which I find deeply disturbing. Despite all that, there’s just… something that always makes me come back, or start reading new ones whenever I stumble upon them. I wouldn’t even call it a guilty pleasure, it’s just… a thing I do… and I don’t know why…

My next thought was the Minecraft server I’m on together with Hana and her Discord friends. I got on it and ran around for 15 minutes, only to feel combination annoyance and boredom that caused me to close the game. It’s not that I didn’t have ideas for what to do, and I wanted to do these things too, I just… didn’t have the drive to do any of it…

I opened up Steam in my continued search for distractions. I looked upon many games that I know are good and I have but I never have it in me to commit to starting playing them, and, well, today wasn’t going to be that day either. Then I eyes fell onto RimWorld. I didn’t play it in couple months, it could work.

I started the colony with a custom start, making sure my only two colonists were ladies with the “gay” trait. I checked it with Hana to see if it’s okay for me to do that, she said yes. She also said something about not needing to ask her but I always want to make sure, it feels awful when I screw stuff like that up, and despite my best attempts I still do so quite frequently…

And they became lovers on day 3. First when I did it I thought I had to set them up to already be in a relationship for it to work out, but it turns out that no, I just need to crashland two gay ladies on a hostile world and they always fall in love with each other in first couple of days. When I showed that to Hana, she laughed really much and said that it’s ‘relatable’. And then she asked me how many times have I played this scenario to know stuff like that, and the answer was every time I played the game since I had the idea. It just always seemed like the most… appealing thing to do. Again, I didn’t know why…

If you think that I can’t just distract myself from the fact that my body is completely transformed for several hours just with a videogame and a youtube playlist in the background, I must inform you that distracting myself from all sorts of existential dreads with those things is practically the only thing I do with my free time.

I didn’t even notice when it happened, but I heard the door to the apartment I shared with Emily open. I was pretty sure it was more noise than she usually makes, so, with interest, I got up and put my ear to door of my room to listen in on what was going on.

I’ve managed to hear Hana’s voice, “So, since you insist I must see what happened myself, can you at least say something so I can ready myself?”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing… inherently bad, just… it might be for the best if you’re careful with your words and stuff, and prepare staying here late.” Emily responded with anxious tone.

“Okay, just a sec, I’ll text my parents.”

I tried my best to quickly, yet silently return to my desk, and… minimize the game or not? Ugh, I never know with this stuff, better to be safe.

I heard a gentle knock on my door, followed by it opening a bit, revealing my sister’s face, “Hey, is it okay if we come in?” I nodded…

She slowly opened the door and went in a bit, revealing Hana, who stood there speechless for a couple of seconds with a visible surprised on her face. “Wow.” was all she managed to say. She looked me up and down, then looked at Emily, back at my face, and at Emily’s again. There’s something I didn’t get there.

Emily laughed awkwardly, “Yea, I noticed that too, not the biggest change, but still a bit weird…”

Okay, that’s enough, “What?” I asked, uncertainty clearly present in my… new voice… New voice that gave me some confusing feelings, I kinda forgot it was there to be honest…

“You two look… really similar. Even more than before.” Hana responded, almost breathlessly.

“W-we do?” I asked. Wait. We did before? I mean, maybe a little, but my face was… rather disgusting to be honest. Unlike me, Emily was conventionally beautiful. I was more than a little confused by all of this.

“Yea, kinda a lo- wait. Does that mean you haven’t seen yourself in a mirror yet?!” Hana yelled at me. I shook my head, feeling more than a bit scared. Something about people raising voice suddenly, besides, she knew I hated mirrors…

“Okay, shhh, it’s okay, don’t worry,” Emily stepped in, trying to comfort me, she always did when she saw me start loosing it like that… “Okay, but how did you get breakfast? There’s two full-body mirrors in the living room.”

I blinked. “I knew I was forgetting something…” Now that I thought about it, I was rather hungry. “Besides, I learned how to avoid looking into those, you know how I feel about mirrors…”

“So you just spent all this time since I left, sitting here, and” she looked at my screen, “playing Rimworld.”

“Maaaaaybeeee…” I kinda hated being put on a spotlight like that. Yes, I’m a failure, I know, no need to remind me…

“Ehh…” she gave me that sigh and shook her head, something she probably picked up from mom. I kinda felt uncomfortable with her doing that, since from mom it always meant disapproval or disappointment, but there’s no way I’d be telling her that, I’m inconveniencing her enough as it is… “Okay, so how about I make us all some food, and you go use a mirror with Hana,” I retracted into my quilt, it was too warm at the moment, but it served as a protection, “Listen, I know it’s hard, but it’s a special situation, so please, at least try?”

I gave the weakest nod, “O-okay, just give me a moment.” I needed to set my brain to that task. Usually, when I looked into a mirror, I knew it was bad and probably making an impact somewhere deep, but I didn’t get to actually feel any of it… It’s really strange, but my instinct was to avoid it, and so I did just that. I mean, it’s not like the reflection would be anything other than that disgusting face, bleh.

“Can I see what you did in RimWorld?” Hana asked, clearly wanting to give me more time. I nodded. She clicked on the game and unpaused it, “Playing that ‘gay ladies’ scenario again?” she asked like she was trying to get onto something.

“Yea…” I practically whispered, more than a bit ashamed.

“And one of them is a catgirl?” she asked, then looked at the screen again, “With blue hair?”

“Yea, what about it?” I asked, she clearly had a some point she was going to.

“Nothing… nothing…” she said in tone that shown that she indeed did notice something, I wouldn’t know what though… “We probably shouldn’t get distracted like that, you really need to see how you look like, given that, you know, you look like that now…”

“Hopefully not for long…” It was way too much stress for me, I didn’t know how long I could handle this situation.

“Even if you manage to get it undone, it won’t be overnight, so my point still stands.” I sighed. She was telling the truth… The truth I wasn’t ready to deal with quite yet… She extended her hand to me, “Come on.”

I reluctantly took it, and got dragged up. Hana was really strong. And smart. And beautiful. I honestly didn’t know didn’t know why she stuck with with such a failure like me, but I guess that I should add altruistic to that little list too…

“And leave the quilt” Hana commanded. I obeyed, goodbye my connection to the safe warmth of bed.

We walked to the living room, which was also the same room that held the half-open kitchen. It wasn’t really big place, Emily was a student after all. I stopped just before the area in which I’d see my reflection if I looked into the mirror. Hana let go of my hand and made an inviting movement. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, here goes nothing.

I took the step and turned to face the mirror. “Now, open your eyes.” Hana said softly.

I very slowly started to open one of my eyes, and when I could see more than a blur of colors, I gasped. I opened both of my eyes widely, taking it in. My mind had major troubles with the concept of the person I was seeing in the reflexion being me. That face was… beautiful. Similar to my sister’s, yes, but at the same time pretty in its own unique way. And… and it was blushing. I was blushing? Oh no, that’s bad, must think about something else.

Right, hair! Why was my hair long now? Changing me into a girl shouldn’t have done that. Oh wait, I didn’t specifically get changed into a girl, it was magic, it could have done any number of things. That was a bad distraction, I thought as I found my eyes wondering onto something arguably worse than my face - my body.

My pajamas only a bit loose, it showed the way my body looked surprisingly well, and I couldn’t help but continue looking, devouring every little detail with my eyes, and admiring how it all got together into this soft and beautiful whole.

I started changing the pose I was standing in, just to see how it looked from different angles. I marvelled at the fact that the person in the mirror reflected my movements. How is it possible that something so wrong got turned into something so… It seemed like too much, even for magic. When I was looking at myself angled a bit to the right, my eyes wandered a bit too high, back to my face. I was crying, tears flowing down my cheeks like there was no tomorrow, and smiling the biggest most honest smile I’ve ever felt myself make.

It was bad. It was really really bad. Emily and Hana’ve just seen it too. They’re gonna think I’m so so disgusting. They’re gonna be right. I needed to stop myself. I closed my eyes so hard it hurt, and turned my face away from the mirror. I gave out a high pitched whimper as I started crying in a different way. I was having a breakdown.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Hana said. She tried to put her hand on my shoulder but I immediately jerked away. I’ve always felt awful for people who felt compelled to touch such disgusting thing as myself, they didn’t deserve it. It was one of those things I didn’t tell even Emily and Hana. I knew they’d feel strongly about this, and I didn’t want to inconvenience and bother them like that.

“Okay then, let’s sit down and eat.” Suggested Emily. I turned myself away from the mirror and tried to slowly open my eyes, to see that she was handing us plates with toasts on them. Isn’t it supposed to be a dinner for these two? And I probably could use a bigger meal now too? I suppose the toasts take less time to make, though I tried my best not to think how long I was looking in that mirror…

I weakly nodded, took a plate, and went to sit on the coach, Hana did the same joining me on my right, and Emily sat left to me. Normally I’d be more than happy being literally surrounded by the only people I really felt comfortable around, but given what just happened, it added a layer of anxiety about what they could be thinking now.

Turns out that missing breakfast and being probably a bit late with the second meal resulted in me being rather hungry, something somewhat masked by other kind of stomach ache. So, yea, I didn’t really bother with manners while eating…

Nobody really spoke during the meal, which, needless to say, made me even more nervous. I also kept catching myself trying to take a quick look into that cursed mirror again. I managed to stop myself, but couple of times were close enough to be noticeable. And by noticeable I mean I jerked my head violently away from it when I noticed I turned towards it despite my better judgement.

When Emily and Hana put down their plates too, it became pretty clear what they wanted to do next. Makes sense, definitely in this situation, they’d want to talk about it, very logical. Too bad that’s not how feelings work…

“I’m sure you know we’re going to have to talk about this...” Emily started.

I nodded.

“I know that you probably don’t feel ready to talk about it now, but you do realize that it’s probably for the best if we at least try it now, right?”

I nodded again.

“You have no idea how to approach is, do you?”

I shook my head and accidently let out a… squeaky sound?

“Okay, let’s do baby steps then - how do you feel? Like, generally.”

“I… Really… really anxious…” I let out in a rather high voice. It’s a thing that my voice does when I’m scared, it goes high, except now my voice is already pretty high…

“Okay, that one’s kinda obvious, isn’t it… Okay, let’s try something more specific, how do you feel compared to how you usually look like?”

Wait! That’s it! Compared to how I usually look like! That’s an explanation, or at least an excuse that doesn’t make look like the worst person in the world! “Hah, anything would be improvement compared to that.” Wow, that was a tone I didn’t expect myself to produce… That voice had a range, and not a range of ear killing noises like my regular voice.

“What do you mean by that?” Hana finally spoke, while taking out phone out of her pocket.

“I mean, isn’t that obvious?” I asked, a bit confused by the question.

“No, it isn’t? Could you try to clarify that?” Emily asked, then added, “Is… is there something about your prev- regular body that you dislike?”

“Yea, obviously,” surprised look on my sister’s face prompted me to continue, “I mean, have you seen it? It’s disgusting, my face is so ugly, it smells weirdly, and don’t even get me started about the body hair…”

“It is… your body was not disgusting, or even ugly, at least not by any standard I know…” Emily responded, sounding a bit confused.

“I… I… I don’t… wh-why…” Oh that’s right sis if you think you’re confused you should try being me trying to figure out what to say now.

“So, you say that anything would be improvement, right?” Hana looked up from her phone, “Then tell, me how’d you feel if you were instead transformed into, for example… a big tall muscular guy. Would you prefer that?”

“Eww, no!” I recoiled more than a bit too much, “I-I mean… I was already way too big as it was.” Besides, big muscles on men look just… eww…

“You were literally shorter than me though.” Hana responded.

“B-but I was much wider! I got in the way all the time and I kept taking up too much space…” I said, increasingly uncomfortable with conversation starting to be about my complexes…

“You were barely wider than me, if at all.” Hana said calmly...

This was starting to be really bad, not only were my biggest insecurities demonstrated to be wrong, but also Hana and Emily were definitely not buying it. That means my excuse wasn’t really going to work even if what I said about my body is still how I felt. I really don’t want to lose them, I don’t even want to try imagining what they must be thinking of me right now.

“Anyways, it’s not important.” Emily added, “I mean, it is, but it’s not the most important thing right now.”

Oh no, it was coming. I wanted to close my eyes and brace myself, but I just froze.

“Have you read up on how exactly the whole ‘transforming randomly is your sleep’ thing works?” Hana asked… carefully? I think it’s a right word?

It took me couple second, but I somehow managed to force words out, “I-I tried to, but…” I sounded absolutely terrified.

“Right… That’s okay, but I did, and I think you need to know this part,” she paused for a couple of seconds, “the important thing is that people don’t just randomly transform when there’s enough ambient magic around them. It’s that their subconscious uses that magic to enchant themself. And… and it’s always something that they deeply wanted on some level”

That… That was… I… I couldn’t take that anymore.

I broke into tears right then and there.

I got my legs up to my torso and I covered my face with my hands. I also made a lot of loud, ugly crying noises.

I felt a hand slowly start touching my left shoulder, and that was what allowed me to “IF YOU ARE GOING TO HATE ME JUST GET THIS OVER WITH!”

That hurt. Those words hurt. Being here hurt. On a more practical note, shouting the loudest I could and crying my eyes out hurt a lot as well.

After my shout, my crying transitioned to more silent, but still intense cry. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t say anything even if I tried to.

Several seconds passed, when suddenly, I felt a force from my right, and then something enveloping me, I was… I was being… hugged?

Then, second hug joined from my left. What’s happening?

“We’re not going to hate you, silly,” soothed Hana. Emily added an affirmative sound.

When I processed what was happening to some extent, I impulsively started to wriggle out of the hug, or at least attempt to. Hana and Emily, having clearly noticed just that, backed off. I didn’t… dislike the hug, but it was hard to ignore the thoughts saying it was wrong…

After I calmed down somewhat, Hana asked, “Why did you think we would hate you?”

Does she really want me to say it out loud? That I’m a disgusting pervert on top of being a waste of resources and a drag on everybody’s lives? But her tone seemed… confused… Like she really doesn’t understand… I made several attempts to form first word of a sentence, “B-b… bbbbb… beeee… beca… ca… cause…” Okay, no, I didn’t think I’d manage to sob it out, and I went back to being a crying mess for half a minute.

After that, clearly having noticed it’s not going to work, Hana continued, “Okay, okay, it’s fine, we’ll try another way - back in front of that mirror, you liked what you were seeing in it, right?”

I gave the weakest nod.

“And when we noticed that, you were afraid we were going to hate you because of it?”

I nodded again.

“So, you couldn’t come up with any way in which that wouldn’t make you some sort of bad person?”

I gave a defeated nod and looked down. I knew this needed to happen for some reason, but I still didn’t enjoy being interrogated like that…

“Oh.” Emily blurted.

“I know, right? I kinda suspected that was the case but still, how’d you manage to be so sheltered with both of us around?” Hana laughed.

I looked up in surprise. She knew something I didn’t. They both did. I mean, they always did, no matter what’s the topic, but still.

“That’s right, guess what, you’re allowed to like seeing a girl when you look in the mirror, you are allowed to like being a girl!”

“H-how?”

“Because you’re allowed to be a girl, if that’s what you’re most comfortable with, in fact, feeling most comfortable being a girl means that you most likely already are one, on the inside!”

That’s… new… “That’s… new…”

That is new…

“Yea, feel free to take your time with processing that one, it looks like it might be important one for you.”

I nodded. I was allowed to enjoy it, that’s shocking. I thought I was just being some disgusting pervert, taking an idea of being a girl and making it into this object of attraction or whatever. Doesn’t make much sense, especially given that while I don’t know how being aroused as a girl feels, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t feeling that in front of that mirror. I just assumed that it was the only explanation of why a guy would feel happy when placed is such situation. But… that was under assumption that a guy was the only thing I was ever allowed to be.

But I was apparently allowed to be a girl? And not only that, if that’s why I enjoyed, I might not only already be one, but have always been? I definitely preferred seeing that girl in a mirror that my ugly regular guy self. And I guess that explains that one question from Hana, because I absolutely wouldn’t prefer being a tall muscular guy, or any other kind of guy, over what I am now.

Being a girl. The idea itself felt like… like the best thing in the world. Something so good I didn’t deserve it. I always felt a sort of kinship towards girls, they were amazing, nice and… and there was this weird feeling their girlhood itself was something so good it elevated them above others, but… but it’s exactly how a girl that wasn’t allowed to be a girl would feel, isn’t it? If… if what Hana said wasn’t true, Emily would have already corrected her, she literally studies this kind of stuff.

Is… Is that why I hated the way I used to be too? My body, it’s shape, my face, my shoulders, my… thing, every single bit, I hated them because… because they weren’t what I’ve seen as feminine. I’ve hated myself for a lot of reasons, most of them were illustrated to be wrong by either Emily, Hana, or my therapist, but there was still something deep down that was so disgusting and… and I think that was it. I hated myself for not being a girl. Except that I was one!

“I’m… I might be… Is it really okay?” I finally asked, new tears in my eyes, this time not sad ones.

“Yes, it is more than okay,” Hana smiled wildly.

Before she could react I practically jumped on her to hug her, “THANK YOU!”

“Oh wow, I take it you’re liking the idea of being a girl”

“Yes!” I cried loudly.

I hugged her for some time, and she returned the favor. Then she sat up. With me on her. She just moved both of us like that. Did I mention that she’s strong? Because wow, she’s strong.

“You went from ‘please don’t touch me’ to attack hugging pretty quickly there, I assume it’s not unrelated?” Emily suggested.

“Umm, yea, it’s… it’s something you’re not going to like, and I kinda might have avoided it on purpose?” I gave a weakest smile, and then inhaled, “Okay, so, you know how I have this thing with low self esteem and stuff? I… I felt disgusting, like even touching me was one of the worst things one could do, so I just… avoided people touching me, so that they wouldn’t have this happen to them. And yea, it… it turns out it was connected apparently, which I guess explains some things…”

“I… see…” Emily responded, clear disapproval in her voice.

“I-I also might have been a bit emotional just there…” I admitted.

“I definitely get why that’d be a case.” Hana got her hand around my torso and dragged me into some sort of half hug.

What followed was Emily giving me a lecture about how I should have told her about all those feelings I was getting, but she ultimately understood why I didn’t. She also gave me some of her old clothes so that I wouldn’t be walking around in oversized pajamas anymore, and measured me in order to order some properly fitting clothes from the internet, so that was exciting. I also spent more time in front of the mirror, I swear, I could get addicted to this.

After ordering clothes I liked the look of, Emily had to go to her room to study for tests so that we could “do more stuff” in the evening. So, Hana and I ended up in my room, and I impulsively unpaused my game.

“You know, that bit with with you always playing gay ladies should have been a red flag for you in retrospect.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, if you like girls, and have also are a girl, that means…” She said with a biggest excited grin.

“O-oh…” I felt my face heat up. Is that how blushing feels like? If so, then I just blushed.

“One of us! One of us! One of us!”

I blushed even more.

After a bit, Emily looked the screen and laughed, “Did they… Did they just have sex three times in the same night?”

So, that was a feature of this game. Made mood management for colonists much easier, so there’s that. “Yea, they… they do that a lot…”

Hana proceeded to laugh uncontrollably. When she finally stopped, I said “I don’t get it…”

“Oh, I’m so going to need to introduce you into the community!” She dragged me into half hug again, this time by my shoulders. My life was definitely going to get more interesting.

When Emily finished with her studying, we went together to the living room. We played some multiplayer games, we talked, joked around, even ordered a pizza and ate it together. It’s not like we never did this stuff before, but I felt more engaged in it today. I hoped it’d last. It was nice.

Emily talked about how we had to correct stuff in my documents, and then update it with school, so it’d probably be some time before I’d be going to go back there. I was understandably rather happy about that. Hana mentioned how I seemed to be far less anxious than usual, and I assured her they’d still need to drag me out of the apartment at least first couple of times. I was riding on a wave of something apparently called euphoria, but that didn’t mean my anxiety was gone.

In fact, my anxiety was still really bad and I had a long way to go. But that was okay.

My depression wasn’t gone too, and I had to work on that, but that was okay.

I still didn’t rid my head of all the toxic ideas I’ve internalised, but that was okay.

I still didn’t choose my name, or felt ready to present myself to the world as a girl, but that was okay.

Because I had time to figure it all out.