Borrowed Flesh: Grabbing the Future
It was a twilight that seemed to freeze the very depths of my lungs with its cold wind. The streetlights flickered on one by one, giving the town an air of unreality, as if I were wandering through a damp watercolor painting. I kept walking, haunted by the illusion that even the sound of my own footsteps was pursuing me.
The police sirens. Every time I heard that distant wail, my heart leaped as if it would burst through my ribs. I was running. I was fleeing from the “irreversible crime” I had committed on impulse a few nights ago. My own hands dyed bright red, and the lightless eyes of the man lying on the floor—that scene was scorched into the back of my eyelids and would not leave.
I knew full well that I could not escape my past sins, nor the justice that goes by the name of the law. Still, I felt that if I stood still, the shadow of death would swallow me whole. I had no choice but to keep running.
“Hey, why don’t we talk for a bit?”
The sudden voice nearly made my heart stop. I instinctively tensed my shoulders to flee, but standing before me was a woman with a thin—altogether too thin—smile. Her face was obscured by the backlight of the streetlamp, but her eyes were strangely sharp, as if she could see right through to the filth hidden in the depths of my chest.
“…What do you want? I’m in a hurry.”
“You’re running from something, aren’t you?”
my throat went bone-dry. She had hit the mark. Her words sliced through my defense mechanisms like a keen scalpel. How did this total stranger know of my plight? Was she an undercover agent for the police trying to get me to confess, or—
“I’m much the same, you see. But I have an interesting proposal. Why don’t we try living different lives?”
“Different lives…?”
She closed the distance, bringing her lips close to my ear. The scent of her perfume—cloyingly sweet, yet carrying an underlying scent of death—hit my nose.
“Why don’t we swap bodies? Let’s experience each other’s lives for a little while.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I didn’t even have the breath to ask if she was sane. Swap bodies? Normally, I would have scoffed at such occult nonsense and walked away. But to me now, that “unreality” looked like the only spider’s thread of hope. If I could discard this male flesh. If the “me” who was being hunted as a murderer could simply vanish.
We headed to a corner of a dim, deserted cafe in a back alley to escape the bustle of the city. The woman sitting across the table introduced herself as Miyuki. Her features were well-formed, but she possessed an exhausted, lifeless pallor.
“It’s simple. We just hold hands and close our eyes. With that, you become me, and I become you.”
Miyuki’s eyes were dead serious. I felt no hesitation or deception in them. There was only a powerful, starving urge to reset her current reality. I reached out a trembling hand. A future where I surrendered and was sent to the gallows, or a gamble where I entrusted my soul to this mysterious woman’s body. It wasn’t even worth weighing.
“…Fine. Let’s do it.”
The moment I grasped her hand, an icy chill traveled up from my fingertips.
“Now, close your eyes. No matter what happens, don’t let go.”
Following Miyuki’s instructions, I squeezed my eyes shut. In the next instant, the world began to spin violently. My sense of balance vanished, replaced by a horrific sensation of weightlessness, as if my internal organs were melting and mixing together. A roar like thousands of birds flapping their wings echoed in my ears, and my consciousness drifted away.
“…Ah.”
When I came to, I was about to tumble off the chair. As I opened my eyes, I realized the height of my vision had changed. And more than anything, my hands felt wrong. The hands resting on the table were not those of a gnarled man, but those of a woman with slender, white, supple fingers.
“Amazing… we really switched…”
With trembling hands, I touched my face. Soft skin, a high nose, long eyelashes. I looked across from me, and there sat “my” body. A being wearing my clothes and possessing my face. But dwelling in those eyes was that dim, cunning light that had been in Miyuki’s eyes just moments ago.
“Now we can both enjoy a different life for a while. See you later!”
Miyuki (inside my body) clenched and unclenched her fists as if testing the feel of her new “vehicle.” Then, with a satisfied smile, she walked out of the shop in my body without a moment’s hesitation.
I watched her back in a daze, trapped inside her body—Miyuki’s flesh.
The body was heavy. As I tried to stand, I nearly sat back down again. The center of gravity was clearly different from when I was a man. My pelvis felt wider, and my hips swayed strangely with every step. And more than anything, the constriction of the clothing was unpleasant. The corrective tool called a bra pressed against my ribs, making my breathing shallow. The thin film of stockings tightened around my legs, constantly transmitting external stimuli with oversensitivity.
(…But this is fine.)
I stared at my reflection in the cafe’s mirror. Standing there was a young, beautiful woman, no matter how anyone looked at her. The police were looking for a man of average build with a sharp, unpleasant gaze. Who could imagine that the soul of a murderer lurked within this delicate frame?
I took a mirror from Miyuki’s bag and traced my lips.
“From now on, I am Miyuki.”
My voice trembled with a high, transparent resonance. It was my own voice, yet it didn’t feel like mine. But that very dissociation was my salvation. My past as a murderer, the blood-stained memories, the fear of execution—I had pushed them all onto “my body” that had just walked out of the shop.
I left the cafe and began to walk through the night city. The cold wind now fluttered the hem of my skirt and chilled my legs through the stockings. Every step was awkward. The high-heeled shoes mercilessly transmitted every bump in the asphalt to the soles of my feet, placing an unnatural strain on my ankles.
Still, I kept walking. People passing by looked at me. But those gazes were not “eyes searching for a criminal,” but “eyes gazing at a woman.” I felt a debased satisfaction in that shift of perspective.
I had escaped the “death” I was supposed to have discarded—into this cage of unfree, heavy flesh that smelled of someone else.
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