Part 3

"Hey Izayoi…" Akiza eventually managed to dig herself out of the pit of self-loathing. She observed Izayoi’s annoyance at the interruption and twiddled her fingers, unsure of how to proceed. Her view of him was shaken, her mind still recovering from his bombshell.

“What do you want now?" He sounded more insensitive, more normal.

"Is there something going on between you and that woman from your school?”

“Huh? Do you mean Ms. Takagawa?”

“If that’s her name, yes.”

“No! What?! She’s my teacher!”

“So, the two of you have never…you know—done it?"

Izayoi’s shock nearly caused him to spit his juice all over Akiza. He choked on the contents in his mouth, beating his chest to soften the descent down his throat.

"Of course I haven't!" Akiza raised an eyebrow in suspicion. Izayoi avoided her gaze in favor finding everything else in the room more captivating. "Why would you ask that?"

"Because I think she’s the one who swapped our bodies.”

“What? Ms. Takagawa? You’re joking. What mental gymnastics did you have to perform to come up with that stupid conclusion?”

"Just answer the question,” she snapped back, showing more annoyance. “Is there something going on between you two?”

.

..

…

“No. I mean ‘yes’. It’s complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“We’re not together or anything. And we haven’t done anything either.”

“Doesn’t sound complicated to me.”

“Well, complicated in the sense that we…almost did it. I think. I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I remember going over to her place and…fuzziness.”

“I knew it.”

“Huh? Knew what?”

“After you left, I tried to distract myself with more research into what happened to us. I made a list of everything I remembered, and everything weird that’s happened to me lately.”

“Okay, and…?”

“A little while ago, I had a dream where I had sex with your teacher—in a man’s body.”

Izayoi’s eyes widened. “What?”

“At the time, I couldn’t recognize the voice, but now…I think it might have been yours.”

“You’re saying you and I switched bodies before?”

“I think so. How else do you explain me doing your teacher in the butt with a…you know…like some cheap whore.”

"Wait, what? You had sex with Minori’s ass?"

Akiza’s cheeks flashed beet red. “Hey! It’s not my fault! Besides, dreams never make any sense while you’re having them. And it wasn’t like I had any control over it. At the time, I just thought my subconscious wanted to show me what it was like to be on the giving side.”

“Only it wasn’t a dream.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

 *

"Are you sure about this?" Izayoi turned to Akiza for a final confirmation. They were situated outside Minori’s front door, mustering up the courage to ring the doorbell.

"I am. Even if she isn’t directly responsible, Minori knows something.” Izayoi cast his mind back to all the evidence Akiza presented.

It wasn’t much.

Nothing really except for one small detail he could easily explain away…if he wanted to. 

Akiza flashed a confident look. She waited for him to confirm too before ringing the doorbell. The door eventually opened up, revealing a slightly taken aback Minori.

"Oh, it's you Izayoi. Is something the matter?" It must be a peculiar thing having your students know where you live, let alone show up on one’s doorstep unannounced. "And you’ve brought a friend."

"Minori, this is my step sister, Akiza." She answered Minori’s offered hand shake folding her arms.

"Did you need something?"

"Actually, there's something we need to talk about."

"Can’t this wait until class?"

"No!" Hissed Akiza. "It really can't." Minori hesitated but eventually gestured for them to enter. Once there, the pair took up seats next to each other, but leaving a painfully large gap between them on the sofa.

"Now then, what is so important it couldn't wait?"

"You can drop the act. We know you're responsible for switching our bodies." Izayoi’s jaw wanted to drop. So much for tact and subtlety. Minori’s expression carried on as though nothing had been said, before finally deciding to adopt a more perplexed mode; one that felt a little too slow to be true disbelief.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"It's no use hiding it. Izayoi told me about your little tutoring session the other day." 

"Did he now?" Minori looked Izayoi over with a piercing stare of disapproval which made him look away. 

"He did. Which is strange because I had a dream about you too...having sex with me." 

"Sounds like someone needs a cold shower." Again the comment felt forced and unnatural to be real comment.

"Probably, but I'm still right. You're doing this somehow. Making Izayoi and I switch bodies whenever we’re aroused."

Minori smiled a rather bouncy smile. "What gave me away?"

"Hold on, so she's right? You're behind all off this?" Izayoi couldn’t believe it.

"When we were..." Akiza paused out of embarrassment.

"Having sex?" Minori helped.

"Please don't say it like that.” Akiza pushed the mangled images of that dream aside. "When we were having fun, you knew we had swapped and that it was me in Izayoi’s body. You told me to give in to my new body. My ‘new’ body." 

"That's it? A simple slip of the tongue? That’s all it took?"

"I chalked it up to a depraved fever dream until I saw you at school. When Izayoi and I switched again. People have dreams about folks they've met all the time. But I've never heard of someone dreaming about a person they've never seen before and that person actually turning out to exist…" 

"Clever girl. I'm impressed."

"Don't patronize me. You're messing around with our lives and I want to know why." 

The statement was the first to outright surprise Minori. 

"I take back my compliment,” she said in a more defeated tone.

"What are you? How is something like this even possible?"

"Answer my question first!" Akiza insisted.

"I'll answer both your questions at the same time."

"Huh?" Minori briefly savored the siblings’ shared confusion.

"I am an Erocian."

"I don't think that word is in my dictionary."

"I’m not surprised, given the new world.”

“New world?”