The Porcelain Cage, or a Lovely Imprisonment: Their Bizarre Daily Life
For Misaki Sato, the world was nothing more than a backdrop or a specimen used to measure her own beauty.
At 6:00 AM, her ritual begins.
Cleansing, moisturizing, priming, and foundation. With each layer she applies, the “biological female” in the mirror is gradually overwritten, transformed into a “perfected idol.”
When she draped herself in the excessive ornamentation of Lolita fashion, she felt a fleeting illusion of having gained an invincible, hard shell. Multiple layers of petticoats and a corset that forcibly reshaped her ribs—these were less like garments and more like a sanctuary, or a mobile cage, designed to repel the impurities of the outside world.
“…Perfect.”
The whisper directed at her reflection wasn’t meant for anyone else’s ears. It was a daily morning offering to the temple that was herself.
When she acquired the power of “Body Swapping,” she didn’t feel fear. Instead, she felt a curiosity akin to a pure, collector’s greed. She wanted to gaze upon her own beauty from the outside. Or perhaps, she wondered what would happen if she imprisoned another soul inside this perfect cage.
The subject chosen for her experiment was her childhood friend, Kenta Tanaka.
Kenta was a typical twenty-four-year-old man, the polar opposite of Misaki. He wore cheap shirts and kept his short hair casually trimmed. While he acknowledged Misaki’s beauty, he looked upon her excessive self-consciousness with a somewhat cold, detached gaze. For Misaki, that “cold gaze” was the target she intended to trample and overwrite.
“Kenta, do you have a moment? I want to show you something interesting.”
One Saturday afternoon, in Misaki’s private room. Kenta hunched his shoulders uncomfortably in the air of the room, which was filled to the brim with frills and lace.
“Something interesting? Are you just going to brag about a new dress again?”
“Just hold this. Look into my eyes.”
Misaki grabbed Kenta’s hand. Her hand was cold and slender. Before Kenta could say a word, Misaki released the “Power.”
—His vision inverted with a violent flicker.
The next thing Kenta felt was a physical sense of “suffocation.”
His lungs couldn’t expand fully. Something hard and rigid was digging into his body, from his chest down to his abdomen.
“…Gasp… Wheeze… H-help…”
The sound that leaked from his throat wasn’t the voice he was used to hearing. It was a high-pitched, bell-like female scream—one that was now desperately panting for oxygen.
His field of vision was low. No, it wasn’t just the height. The edges of his sight were constantly invaded by the fringes of fluffy lace and heavy bangs.
“What is this… what the hell is happening!?”
Kenta tried to stand up. But his knees betrayed his will. His ankles were locked into thick-soled, unstable pumps. He couldn’t tell where his center of gravity was. Every time he tried to rise, his calf muscles screamed in protest, and a dull shock pulsed through his lower back.
And above all, the “pressure” on his chest was unbearable.
Because of the bra and corset, masses of flesh were forcibly gathered and hoisted upward. They held heat—foreign objects that transmitted his heartbeat directly to his brain. Every time he moved his arms, that flesh pressed against his armpits, and the sensation of skin rubbing against fabric grated on his nerves.
“Interesting, isn’t it? That is ‘Me,’ Kenta.”
In front of him, his own body—the physical form of Kenta Tanaka—was speaking in Misaki’s familiar voice.
Misaki (now inside Kenta) handled his body carelessly, flopping down into a chair. She spread her legs and slouched her back. These were movements Kenta did every day, but seeing his own body treated “roughly” by someone else’s will brought a wave of nausea, as if his internal organs were being stirred by a bare hand.
“Misaki… change us back. Change us back right now!”
Kenta (now appearing as Misaki) crawled on the floor, looking up at the mirror. There stood a girl of peerless beauty. A face as perfectly set as a doll’s, with translucent skin. But her eyes were clouded with terror, and the chest of her exquisite dress rose and fell violently with her ragged breathing.
“I’m not changing you back. This has only just begun. Tell me… that body is heavy, isn’t it? It’s painful, right?”
Misaki rose using Kenta’s body and stepped behind her own reflection (now inhabited by Kenta). Large, masculine hands gripped the slender female shoulders. Kenta’s current body reacted hypersensitively to the touch. Fingers brushed against the collarbone. A level of pressure that the old Kenta wouldn’t have thought twice about was transmitted to this “thin skin” as a sensation bordering on pain.
“This is the reality behind the beauty you always dismissed with a simple ‘You look pretty.’ To maintain this beauty, I imprison myself in this cage every single day.”
“I don’t care… that’s your own choice…”
“Yes, it is. That’s why I’m going to force you to experience my ‘choice’ too.”
Misaki opened her closet. Inside were rows of even more excessive dresses, ones that looked even more restrictive.
“Now, shall we change your clothes, Mr. Kenta Tanaka? The game won’t end until you throw away that ugly male ego and become a perfect part of me.”
Kenta tried to run.
But the hem of the long skirt tangled around his legs, and he collapsed helplessly onto the floor. The inorganic sound of petticoats being crushed echoed in the room. The flesh of his chest, pressed against the floor, was flattened by his own weight, sending a bolt of inescapable pain through him.
“…Ugh… ah…”
Tears spilled over. It wasn’t so much sadness as a physiological rejection of the physical disability and the way his self-esteem was being ground down by physical force.
Misaki (in Kenta’s body) looked down at her former self prostrate on the floor, wearing a cold, rapturous smile that Kenta had never once shown in his life.
At that moment, Kenta did not yet know.
Even if his body were to return to normal, a self-consciousness that had once been altered inside this “cage” would never return to its original shape. To him, the whiteness of the lace surrounding him no longer looked like a symbol of purity; it looked like the color of a burial shroud from which there was no escape.
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