A Trade of Youth and Interest
For twenty-two-year-old Yuichi, the world was far too hard, inorganic, and parched. Since graduating from university, he had worked a part-time job at a logistics warehouse, operating himself daily as a “tool” for moving cargo efficiently atop the freezing concrete. The body reflected in the mirror was not an object of affection for him, but merely a “resource to be managed.” Square shoulders, large gnarled fingers, and the protrusion at his crotch that asserted its presence with unpleasant dampness in the summer—all of these were objects of physiological repulsion to him, viewed as “crude, violent symbols.”
He was drawn to Keiko, a forty-eight-year-old housewife living next door. She was by no means the “ageless beauty” glorified by the media. She was a woman who bore the weight of life at its actual scale, with fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes appropriate for her age and a habit of unconsciously rubbing her knees when she stood up.
However, Yuichi was intensely attracted to that “weight.” The way Keiko’s back looked as she hoisted water-heavy sheets to dry in the garden. Her supple but somehow sluggish movements that did not resist gravity. Or the shadow of fatigue etched into the backs of her knees, her calf muscles trembling slightly as she walked carrying heavy grocery bags. To him, it looked like a harmony with the “gravity” of daily life—something she had attained in exchange for losing the radiance of youth.
“Just once, I want to feel that weight from the inside.”
Initially, the desire was a mere delusion. But as he became immersed in a dubious technique found in the deep reaches of the internet—a “displacement of consciousness” combining self-suggestion and breathing exercises—it transformed into a concrete “plan.” Every day, Yuichi observed Keiko with obsessive persistence, tracing her stride, her breathing intervals, and how she accepted the inconveniences of daily life within his own mind.
One afternoon, on a street corner where the merciless western sun scorched the asphalt, Yuichi called out to her.
“Ma’am, I have a small favor to ask.”
Caught off guard, Keiko adjusted the grocery bags in her arms and stopped, looking puzzled.
“Oh, Yuichi-kun. What is it? You’re acting so formal.”
There wasn’t a trace of youthful freshness in Yuichi’s eyes. Instead, there was a light of physiological craving—a hungry beast appraising its prey, yet harboring a deep sense of despair.
“I want to experience how a woman’s body feels the world… how it accepts gravity. Just for a short time.”
At first, Keiko didn’t correctly grasp the meaning of his words; she laughed, thinking it was an out-of-place joke. But the moment Yuichi began to explain the “secret power” and transmitted his own energy into her palm, the composure vanished from her face.
“…You’re serious. But is such a thing even possible?”
“It is. Please trust me. I’ll return you to normal immediately.”
Keiko knit her brows once at the weight of her grocery bags, then nodded slightly, as if shaking off the boredom of her own life.
“Fine. If this worn-out body is enough for you. It sounds a little interesting, at least.”
The two entered Keiko’s house—a dim living room where old curtains were drawn against the western sun. The air inside was a mixture of humidity, mothballs, and the lingering scent of cooking oil from years past. Yuichi faced Keiko and gripped her gnarled, warm hands.
“I’m starting…”
The moment he sank his consciousness and dissolved the boundaries of his soul following the procedure he had learned, the world inverted with a violent vertigo.
“…gh, ah…!”
His vision dropped by several centimeters, and the colors grew muddy, as if the saturation had been lowered by a grade. The first thing Yuichi felt upon entering the cage of “Keiko’s body” was not the “suppleness” he had dreamed of. It was an overwhelming “decline in function” and the inescapable “pressure of flesh.”
“Heavy… what is this…?”
Yuichi stared at his (Keiko’s) trembling hands. The fingertips were swollen, and the first joints were slightly deformed. Simply trying to lift his arms caused the inner muscles deep in the shoulders to scream, transmitting a heavy sluggishness like frictional heat to his brain.
And above all, it was the sensation of the chest that terrified him. Two “massive lumps of flesh” that had not existed when he was a twenty-two-year-old man were ignoring the support of the pectoral muscles, pulling relentlessly downward toward the center of the earth. These were absolutely not the “sexual fruits” of his delusions. They were merely “restrictive weights” that served as a permanent cause of stiff shoulders, aggressively compressing the skin via bra straps and making the lungs feel cramped with every breath.
“Incredible… a young body is so light…!”
Using Yuichi’s voice—his original body—Keiko cried out in delight. She stretched Yuichi’s robust arms as if seeing something unbelievable and performed a light hop on the spot with spring-like legs.
“I can’t believe it. There’s no pain anywhere. The joints move as if they’ve been oiled.”
Meanwhile, Yuichi moved toward the mirror as if crawling. With every step, the silt of fatigue accumulated behind his knees throbbed with pain. Reflected in the glass was a single “woman” who had piled up forty-eight years of “labor” called daily life. Deep horizontal wrinkles ran across her neck, and the backs of her upper arms had lost their firmness, swaying loosely yet heavily every time she moved.
Yuichi touched his (Keiko’s) face with trembling fingertips.
“Ah… this is it. This is the ‘reality’ I wanted to know…”
He attempted several poses in front of the mirror. However, the body did not move as he expected. When he tried to pull a model-like pose by putting his arms behind his head, a dull pain shot through his shoulder blades, and the flesh refused to extend the range of motion any further. When he twisted his waist, the abdominal fat squeezed into the girdle bit into the seams of his clothes, creating a sharp sense of pressure and a discomfort akin to acid reflux.
The figure in the mirror was not a glamorous adult woman. It was the sight of a comical, chilling creature, wearing an out-of-place expression of shame and excitement, trying to forcibly flaunt a body that was beginning to spill out of the “female” attribute due to aging.
“How is it? Delicate, isn’t it? But it’s a very troublesome body.”
Keiko (in Yuichi’s form) approached and traced her (Keiko’s) cheek with those robust, functional fingers. The sensation of those fingertips—while belonging to the “own hand” Yuichi knew—was transmitted to Keiko’s current body as a violently powerful and invasive stimulus.
“…Yes. It feels… very itchy. All over. Especially where the bra wires are.”
“That’s because the skin is dry and sensitive. Becoming an ‘old lady’ means accepting those kinds of inconveniences.”
Yuichi reached for the “void” at his crotch. What he felt there was a poorly ventilated, damp, and claustrophobic sensation. The aggressive sense of pushing outward and piercing the world, which the previous “protrusion” had governed, had completely vanished. Now, all he (she) had was the sensation of a “receptacle,” merely accepting the pressures of gravity, the friction of clothing, and the gaze of others.
In that humiliating passivity, Yuichi felt an unexpected and unhealable, crazed pleasure. It was a desperate acceptance of his own dignity sinking into a bottomless swamp called “daily life.”
“Hey, try posing some more. Do everything you wanted to do with my body.”
Keiko smiled cruelly with Yuichi’s voice. She watched as if from a high vantage point as the young man willingly took on the “curse-like weight” she had just shed, letting himself drown in it.
Yuichi stared at himself in the mirror again. The bangs forcibly held up by a headband, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes he couldn’t hide. To confirm the “softness” unique to Keiko’s body, he gripped his own chest tightly, until his fingers dug in.
Pain. And that pain settled into the core of his body along with gravity.
This was the “female reality” he had sought. However, at this moment, Yuichi did not yet realize that the excitement of this instant would continue to gouge his psyche as a “scar” that would never fade.
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