"So that's the hairstyle you went with?" I said, greeting Lea in the school hallway.
"Yep," she said. "Thanks again for giving me the go-ahead on changing it."
"Happy to," I said. "I mean, it's probably not going to be my hair again anyway."
"Speaking of that..." Lea said, her voice lowering. "Could we talk after school today? In private?"
"It's about that time, isn't it?" I said, matching her volume. "Sure thing. My house?"
"Sure," Lea said. She started inching in the same direction she was walking before we spotted each other. "I've gotta get to class," she said. "But I'll see you at lunch!"
"See you then!" I said, holding my arm up in a 'goodbye' gesture. And when we next meet after that, I thought, I guess we decide our fate. To put it dramatically.
---
It was time for Lea and I to decide once and for all whether to swap back, and the reason we had to decide now was actually pretty mundane. The plan we bought from the swap clinic allowed us to swap back for free, but only within five weeks of the initial swap - and that deadline was fast approaching. If we let the deadline pass and then changed our minds, we'd have to start all over, getting together the money to pay for another swap ticket.
After school that day, Lea and I walked back to my house. Without even voicing agreement on it, we went up to my bedroom, closed ourselves in there, and sat down together on the side of my bed.
"So... to be sure, how do you feel about that body?" Lea asked.
I thought for a moment. "I'm still feeling good about it," I said. "Probably better than ever. And definitely better than how your body felt on me after a while. I'm feeling more and more like this one actually belongs to me. I like that people are seeing me as a guy again. And it doesn't hurt that this body is pretty great as far as male bodies go." I paused. "What about you? Ever get the urge to swap back?"
Lea smiled. "No way," she said. "I'm in love with this body. In an identity way, I mean. Not even my first period could put a stop to that. And not even this one time when I was walking home from school, and this middle-aged guy on the street was blatantly checking me out. It was really creepy - but it also reminded me that I'm a girl now, and that made me happy. My period did that too, I guess."
I grimaced with empathy - from personal experience, sadly - when I heard about the ogling episode. But after Lea was done, I just nodded. "If we're not swapping back, do you want to keep that particular female body?" I asked. "Or would you want to trade it for one that's, well... Chinese, like your family?"
"I've thought about that," Lea said. "I know this body isn't what people will expect to see when they hear the name 'Lea Cheng'. If I keep this body, part of me would want to just tell my gender transition story to everyone who learns my last name, so they know I'm not some self-hating Asian girl who bought a white body to be more 'normal'. But on the other hand, that's the kind of behavior I might be enabling if I trade this body for a Chinese one. And besides, I'm getting kind of attached to this body, and if I wanted to swap again, I'd have to worry about paying for it. I think I'll want to keep this body at least through college, and see how it goes."
"Makes sense," I said. "If you don't mind, I don't think I mind having a Chinese body. I mean, I know it might give me grief from time to time. But I don't think people will think I'm that weird for having a white family, at least. If they don't know my history, they'll probably just assume I'm adopted. And with body swapping becoming more and more common, people in the future probably won't care about stuff like race as much as they do now, right?"
"I don't know," Lea said. "But I sure hope so. And as long as you're honest about your family, I don't have a problem with you using that body. I mean, if I did, I think I'd have to have a problem with actual transracial adoptees too."
"Thank you," I said. I spent a couple of seconds searching my thoughts. "I think that covers everything. Except..."
"Yeah, there's an elephant in this room," Lea said. She sighed. "I've tried everything. Spending time with you. Checking out guys from school. Watching porn and checking out the guy in it. Watching a rom-com and checking out the male lead. But even in this body, I think I'm just not into men."
"So, if we don't swap back..." I said.
"I think we'll have to break up," Lea said. "You know I love you as a person. For your personality, and our history. But... I want to love my partner's body too."
I nodded solemnly. "Well, there's one thing you don't have to worry about," I said. "This didn't really come as a shock to me. I mean, we haven't even kissed since we swapped. But I hope you know I don't blame you for that. I could tell you never wanted to. And if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to kiss guys... then that's just who you are."
"I'd offer to swap back," Lea said. "Or find another way to get you a female body. So we could be attracted to each other again. But I know you're a guy, and being a girl for me was making you miserable."
"I wish I wasn't stuck as a guy on the inside," I said, frustration growing in my voice. "I wish I didn't care so much about this stupid gender thing. I wish I could just get used to being a girl without feeling like a fake."
"Don't feel bad," Lea said. "It's just who you are."
"I know," I said. There was silence for a few seconds.
"If we don't swap back," Lea said, "do you still want to be friends? Or should we... spend some time apart? If it'd hurt too much to be around me, I understand. I won't take it personally."
I looked at Lea. She was kind, and mature, and beautiful. It was plain to me that she was worthy of so much love. But I felt that ever since that evening at the restaurant, we couldn't quite love each other like we used to. We loved each other's souls, but loving the bodies those souls felt trapped in... that induced too much guilt in me, at least. And after we swapped, my love was held back by the sense that Lea didn't love me the way I wanted to love her. The decline of our romance had been long and slow. And I think that made its death less painful. Deep down, I think I had already forgotten my dreams of a future with her.
But when I looked at her, a lover wasn't all I saw. Lea had been my friend for years and years. She and I had eaten lunch together, played video games together, complained about school together, time and time again. In the chaos of teenagerhood, her presence had been an island of stability for me. And in recent months, our openness with each other had made our bond stronger than ever. That bond wasn't one I foresaw going away, even if our love did.
"I want to stay friends," I said. "It won't hurt me. I promise."
Lea gave me a squeeze with her arms. "Thank you so much," she said. "You're the best."
"Of course," I said. "You're the same person I've had fun being around for years. And at this point, you know me better than anyone else. Even if we're not life partners, I definitely want you in my life."
"One hundred percent agreed," Lea said. "And you know I'm really grateful to you, right?"
"Yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah," Lea said. "If we hadn't gotten as close as we did, and had that talk about our gender feelings, I don't know how long it would've taken me to figure out I should've been a girl. I don't know how many years of my prime I would've spent feeling like an empty shell of a guy. And once we both understood everything, you even gave me your body to make me feel complete. You're the reason I'm going to be smiling in my graduation photos, instead of shying away whenever someone tries to take one. You're the reason I'm going to meet all of my college friends as myself. Hell, I'm even tempted to go to prom now. Me, at a dance. Maybe wearing a pretty dress..." She shook her head. "I guess what I'm saying is, even if you didn't save my life, you saved my youth. Thank you forever."
"You're welcome forever," I said, my heart full of warm fuzzies. "But I only had that body for nine-ish months before I agreed to give it to you. You deserve at least as much credit for giving me the body you had your whole life."
"And what a good home it went to," Lea said with a smile.
In the following silence, something occurred to me. "Oh, and since I think I forgot to tell you earlier... I love your new hairstyle."
"Thank you!" Lea said. "A bit more expensive than the haircuts I used to get, of course. But it was well worth the cost."
"Yeah," I said. "That body's had a lot of occupants recently. But giving it that look? With the dye and everything? What a great way to make it your own."
"That's a lot of what I was going for," Lea said, beaming at me. "I'm happy you noticed." She paused. "Don't take this the wrong way, but... I love you, Will."
I smiled back. "I love you too, Lea."
---
GAME!
Corrin wins!
"Is it just me," I said to Ben, "or have you gotten a lot better since last time?"
"While you two were busy dating," Ben said, "I studied the blade. And the dragon fang."
"I'm glad we're doing this again, all four of us together," Oliver said. "I was afraid we wouldn't get to hang out much before we all parted ways."
"Got college on the brain?" Ben asked him.
"I'm procrastinating on my application essays as we speak," Oliver said.
"Mood," Ben said.
"Hey, does anyone want to do teams this time?" Lea said as we began setting up the next match.
"Good idea," I said. "That way, two of us can gang up on Ben, and the third can be his ball and chain."
"You're all just jealous," Ben said. "But you're not intimidating. I'll take any pair of you on by myself."
"At this point, I'm probably the weakest player here," Oliver said. "I haven't practiced in a while, and I just came in last place. I can be Ben's ball and chain."
"A noble sacrifice," I said.
"So it's you with me, and Will with Lea?" Ben said. "I like those odds."
As we were selecting our characters, Oliver said, "Lea, I know Lucina's your main, but do you always pick her?"
"She's my waifu, man," Lea said. "You gotta be loyal to your waifu."
"Wasn't I your waifu for a while?" I said.
"We both thought you were a waifu," Lea said. "But all along, you were a trap."
"Lea, are you sure you can say that?" I said, laughing despite myself.
"I'm a trans girl! I can say 'trap' if I want to!" Lea insisted as she started to laugh too.
Someone must have hit the Start button, because with that, we began again.
---
Looking back on that period in my life - my time as "Sarah", and my relationship with "Jack" - I don't regret it any more than Lea does. I mean, I did get a hot new male body out of it. And more importantly, I helped my best friend discover her true self, and grew closer with her while I was at it.
And besides that, I also discovered something important about myself. I, Will Martin, am bisexual. It's been five weeks since I swapped into this male body, and if I'm becoming less attracted to it, it's only because being in it all the time is making it mundane. On top of that, now that I'm not trying to be sexually loyal to Lea, I've found myself checking out guys besides myself. Honestly, I think I might have been bi even before I swapped into Lea's current body, and it just took the expectations that come with girlhood for me to see my attraction to guys for what it was. The bisexuality followed me out of Lea's current body, instead of being passed to her, because it was mine all along.
I don't know if this story has a moral. If it does, it might be a "butterfly effect" thing - that actions can have completely unintended consequences down the line. If Kirsten hadn't tried to sneak past her grounding that one night, none of these big changes in my life and Lea's would have happened. Not that I'm giving Kirsten credit for the good stuff, of course.
In the end, though, I'm just happy Lea and I managed to learn and grow so much before even graduating high school. I think a deeply buried part of me still wishes that things had gone differently with us - that she had turned out to be the sort of person who could love my true self. But that was never going to happen. And we're still in each other's lives, exactly where we're meant to be.
I know I'll find love again someday. I mean, with this body, it can't be too hard. And whenever Lea finds her real soulmate, I'll look forward to meeting her.
THE END
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