Chapter 1: Essays are Scams

“Essays are a scam,” I grumble to myself, as I press the submit button and try to blink blear out of my eyes. I’m pretty sure my eyes remain just as bleary as they were a moment ago, though.

Even so, in the moment, I am thrilled. “Thus, the penultimate barrier is passed!” I crow, not that anyone can hear me. My roommate is out doing whatever she does for her degree, and I am in doing whatever this is for my own degree. We make it work.

I get up and stumble over to the kitchen. I stare at the various foods around before I just shrug and butter some bread and nom it alongside some cheese. I can probably remember to eat a healthier thing later; now, I am totally test-exhausted.

I try to bite off some more bread, but I find that I’ve eaten it all already. I dejectedly nibble the last of the cheese, and ponder getting another slice, but that just sounds like giving up all hope of a balanced diet today, so I slump over onto a couch and practically pass out, only barely awake enough to read some friendly words off of a screen. Words that are not related to anything like an assigned reading, or a paper, or how to write a reference, or anything like that. Friendly words. It seems to involve a girl who didn’t realise she was one for most of her life. It sounds uncomfortable to be so dense about something so clearly important to her, but ehh. I don’t think I have the mental space to judge right now.

My roommate enters to find me blinking, still bleary-eyed, at my phone, trying to hit the ‘next chapter’ button without realising that there are no more published chapters.

“Heya,” she says, smirking at me.

I deign to respond with a blink in her general direction.

“Essay done, I guess, huh.”

I jam my hands, phone still included, into my face and grumble.

“It’ll be okay, you’ve got this. You’ve got this down-time and then your last exam thing in two weeks, right?”

I nod. I’m not sure why she cares. I’m not sure why anyone would care. Essays are scams. Tests are scams. Exams are not scams; they’re outright blackmail and torture. Maybe I’ll have recovered from this mess before that mess starts showing up. I can only hope, though if I recall my grades right, I don’t have that much to worry about? I let the phone fall out of my hands (across my face) onto the couch seat, and curl up into a ball, pulling the blanket that is always handily draped over the couch over me to make a nice little burrito.

My roommate moves around the room a bunch. I don’t really remember much more of that day. I think she said something about pills. I think she’s studying for something like that? And then later, I think I remember thinking that yeah, she’s right, I should probably take a pill or something; they’re supposed to help, right?

[ = ]

I wake up to my door – my very squeaky, probably a world record squeaky door – being gently pushed open by, presumably, my roommate. I crack open an eye to check, and yep, roommate.

“You doing okay?” she asks, looking at me lying on my bed, barely no longer asleep.

“Mnnh,” is my response. I’m not sure what I mean by it, but it is how I am doing. Mnnh.

A moment of silence echoes after my Mnnh. Truly an appropriate response to how perfect a summary it is.

“Holy shit!” her words explode into the silence. Truly, the appropriate response to Mnnh. “Shit shit shit! Are you, okay? I can’t imagine -- this wasn’t -- I’m sorry!”

I hug my pillow tighter. “Nggh, settle down, ‘sfine.”

“Um. No, I’m sorry, but you need to wake up.”

“What? Why?” I ask, lugging my body into a sitting position, blankets getting wrapped around in the most ingenious knots. A weird corner of the blankets seemed to have gotten on top of my head, and is now draping down in front of my eyes in the most useless way. I lift it up with my arm and scratch my forehead.

“I thought I told you to not touch the experimental pills that I was going to deliver to my professor as the final element of my degree. I mean, I thought you were smart enough not to touch pills which were in a container that you need three hands to open, and labelled with bright warnings like “Do Not Consume” and “Biohazard,” even if it isn’t really a biohazard.”

“But I needed a pill for something,” I mumble back, looking up at her with my best ‘offended’ face.

“Oh my god, you are useless in your post-exam state, aren’t you. And now...” she trailed off into a super quiet whisper that I think I heard the phrase ‘uselessly cute’ in. “But anyways. You have done the Big Silly, and now I guess you’re going to have to live with it. I can’t imagine the sort of pain this’ll cause you, but hey, the classic methods worked for so many, maybe they can help you, too.”

I blink again, finally getting that pesky blear out. “What did I...” I trail off, realising that my voice sounds nice now. I cough, and I feel my torso move in a way I never thought it should, but now that I think about it, I just never thought about it before at all. “Oh.” I look down at myself, and see the gentle rise of breasts tenting my wonderfully comfy pajama shirt. “That’s what I did.”

I pause, thinking hard.

“Nonono, what, I didn’t do this. You did this. How can you do this?! You can just turn people into girls now!?”

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“Uh, first, I didn’t turn you into a girl, that would be so much ethically worse, and weirdly better, if I did, I guess? But I just gave you a feminine body. Second, I’d say we both did this. Third, trans people exist. Sure the classic methods are slow, but they work, and very well in my opinion.”

I blink at her, trying to think, but I’m pretty sure I’m missing some important foundational concepts. “You turned me into a girl.”

“I gave you a feminine body.”

“Look at me, I’m a girl!”

“I gave you a fem--”

“I’m actually a girl!” I feel my voice spiralling out of control into pure joy.

“...what?”

“I didn’t know you could do this, I had no idea, how dare you not tell me sooner?”

“I -- you --”

“THANK YOU!” I yell, and my voice goes screechy in a way that I both never want to hear again because oww, but also makes me so happy. I launch and tackle my roommate into a deep deep hug, and the way our bodies kinda match now is weird. I realise, with a start, that I’m crying.

I feel her return the hug slowly. The pressure makes me feel warm and safe, so I’m happy. “Well, I guess you won’t need to transition back, then.”

I lean back in the hug, and look up at her face in the meagre lighting, an oval with two dark eyes, some bright reflection glinting despite the darkness. Her mouth is tight, but smirking all the same. “How on earth do you just give someone a... whatever it was?”

“A feminine body,” she sighs. “Well, it starts off as a simple...” Her explanation immediately starts going over my head, and I come closer into the hug again. I feel my body moving, like bodies should. I didn’t even realise all the little bits of sensory information that I wasn’t getting before. I just did things, before. Now I think I could experience things, too. I grin. And I feel the smile on my face. I feel it in my eyes. Or well, right beside the actual eyes in the parts of the face that people also call the eyes because eyes are really important but not actually as important for how we see them as the skin and muscles and around the eyes are.

I giggle.

“-- yeah, I guess it is kinda funny, huh. Anyhow, if we skip over the boring super-small-scale stuff, that’s what my pill does. Quick-acting feminine body pill. Going to be great for trans women. And apart from some of the details of making the thing, the quick-acting masculine body pill won’t be far behind. And then we’ll try to go for some non-binary options. Gotta help everyone, if we can.”

“Well...” I grin and squeeze her for a moment. “Thanks.”

“Hmm. You’re welcome.” She squeezes me back, then extracts herself and backs off a few steps “By the way, you are hugging me very tightly right now, is there a side-effect I should be aware of?”

“Am I huggier than I was before?”

“Or, well... more sexually attracted to me, or people in general?”

“I, uhm.” I pause, and try to think of things and people. “I’m pretty sure not really. Yeah, no, I’m still just me. Me, but a girl now. And in a ~feminine body~.” I do the little hand-vibrate for extra effect. “It’s kinda comfy.” I rub my chin. It’s smooth. “I think I may be a little bit more sexually attracted, maybe. Not because you are sexier, but because I’m less un-sexier? I don’t want to think about this right now.”

“I’m glad to hear it isn’t a side-effect, then. Probably. I think I’ve heard similar things from other trans women.” She smiles at me. “But also... maybe you were always a girl?”

“Maybe,” I nod. “Hard to prove either way. I didn’t realise until I took your pill though, so your pill kinda did turn me into a girl.”

She sighs. “I’m never going to win this argument, am I,” she asks in the flattest monotone.

“Maybe not,” I giggle. “But at least you got a happy roommate out of it?”

“... Eh, I’ll take that trade. C’mon.” And with that, she drapes a hand around my shoulder and escorts me forth from my room. “You should eat something, I don’t know if you actually ate a good meal yesterday.”

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