The Innocent Specimen: Embers of the Expiration Date
It was right after a grueling afternoon at the construction site that Kenichi Sato received a message from Misaki, a friend from his university days.
He pulled off his helmet and wiped the sweat from his brow. At twenty-eight, Kenichi worked as a site foreman for a mid-sized general contractor. His days were spent immersed in concrete, rebar, and the company of rough-edged laborers. To adapt to this environment, his body had acquired a thick chest, calloused palms, and an authoritative voice designed to ensure he was never ignored. To him, these physical traits were a form of capital, as natural and essential as the air he breathed.
“Kenichi, it’s been a while. I know this is sudden, but there’s something I desperately need to ask of you.”
In the corner of the cafe where they met, Misaki sat with a pale, haggard face. The glamour she once possessed had faded, replaced by the shadows of a twenty-eight-year-old worn down by life. She placed a palm-sized device on the table. It emitted a dull metallic luster—too precise to be a toy, yet too eerie in shape to be a medical instrument.
“I want us to swap bodies. In my current job… I’ve reached a limit that I just can’t overcome without a man’s body.”
“…You’re joking.”
Kenichi let out a derisive snort. But Misaki’s eyes were dry, lacking the playful moisture of someone telling a joke. She continued her explanation in a flat tone. It was a prototype for a cutting-edge neural transfer device, she claimed, capable of a total exchange of consciousness and physique under specific conditions.
“It only needs to be for a little while. Lend me that sturdy body of yours. In return, you’re free to use my personal bank account however you like.”
Kenichi agreed not out of curiosity, but from a faint sense of pity for Misaki. He was also pushed by that distinct masculine sense of omnipotence—the belief that his body could easily smash through whatever “limits” she was facing. If it was just a temporary “loan,” he figured he had nothing to lose.
“Fine. Let’s give it a try.”
Misaki flipped the switch. In an instant, a silver flash seared his retinas, followed by a sickening vibration that felt like his brain was being stirred directly. Kenichi felt a violent surge of nausea as his internal organs seemed to defy gravity, pushing upward.
When his vision cleared, the first thing that struck him was the shallowness of his breath.
His lungs wouldn’t expand fully. On his chest, he felt two masses of soft fat—weight he never had as a man—sagging under the pull of gravity. They pressed against his ribs, and with every breath, the wire of a bra dug into his skin.
“…Ah… ngh…”
He tried to speak, but the sound that left his throat was not the roar he knew. It was a thin, fragile vibration of moist membranes. Standing across from him was “someone” inhabiting his own form. Misaki (now inside him) was clenching and unclenching Kenichi’s large hands, rotating his—no, Kenichi’s—shoulders as if testing the density of the muscle.
“This is incredible. Power packed right down to the fingertips. I can feel it… my back won’t break even if I carry something heavy. This… this is exactly what I needed.”
Misaki (appearing as Kenichi) laughed in Kenichi’s deep voice. Every movement she made lightly traced the physical “habits” he had cultivated over twenty-eight years.
“Wait… Misaki. How do we switch back…?”
“Work is waiting. Goodbye, Kenichi. Enjoy your new life.”
Misaki grabbed Kenichi’s worn business bag and strode out of the cafe with powerful steps. Kenichi tried to give chase, but his knees buckled the moment he stood. His center of gravity was different. As a man, it had been just above his waist; now, it had sunk deep into his pelvis, a lower and more burdensome position. With every step, the flesh of his chest swayed, the vibration acting as a centrifugal force that threw his balance off-kilter.
Kenichi looked at his reflection in the cafe’s mirror. There stood the form of twenty-eight-year-old Misaki. Her hair was long with split ends. Her skin was thin enough to see the veins beneath. And above all, her expression bore the imprint of a fundamental anxiety—the look of someone who feared they might be threatened by anyone at any time.
Kenichi had no choice but to return to Misaki’s apartment.
All of Misaki’s clothes were restrictive. Just putting on stockings exhausted his fingertips as he worried about snagging them with a nail. When he went to the bathroom, he noticed a dull discomfort in his lower abdomen. It was “menstruation”—a physiological tax this body was forced to pay periodically. Intermittent pains, like being kicked in the stomach, pulsed through him, and blood was discharged involuntarily. Kenichi felt a violent loathing and inescapable despair toward this messy, uncontrollable phenomenon.
“…Did she live like this every single day?”
That night, he lay on Misaki’s narrow bed. The flesh of his chest flowed to the sides, pressing against his armpits. Sleeping on his back made breathing difficult under the weight of his own meat. When he turned on his side, the heat of his overlapping thighs was stifling. The rest he knew as a man—the ability to “just lie down and sleep”—was gone. The body itself felt like a “debt” that required constant maintenance and adjustment.
The next morning, Kenichi (inside Misaki) was jolted awake by a notification on Misaki’s smartphone. It was an urgent message from the construction site he used to lead.
‘Sato-san, I consulted Misaki about the crane placement, and she solved it in an instant! I guess people who truly know the site really are different!’
Kenichi scrolled through the screen with trembling fingers. Misaki (appearing as Kenichi), using his body, had overwritten years of trust he had built at the site in a single day. She was using Kenichi’s brawny arms to roll out blueprints, using Kenichi’s gruff voice to command the laborers, and using Kenichi’s iron stomach to drink and expand her connections.
“My… my body…”
Kenichi looked in the mirror. There stood Misaki, her face pale from menstrual pain and dark circles under her eyes. He tried to call his company in a panic. But he realized the hand gripping the receiver was far thinner and more fragile than before. Even if he called, what would he say?
“I’m actually Kenichi Sato, and the person there now is an impostor.”
Who would believe such words shouted in this “woman’s voice”?
The pitch of the voice, the smallness of the stature, and the social attribute of “being a woman”—all of these stripped his words of any objective legitimacy. Kenichi understood, through the stinging sensation of his own skin, that he had fallen into the status of a “transparent existence” in this society.
Meanwhile, at the site, Misaki was pushing Kenichi’s physical form to its absolute limit. To her, his body was nothing more than a “disposable resource.” She minimized rest, forced his muscles to move with caffeine and supplements, and finished three days’ worth of work in one. Kenichi’s flesh was being rapidly ground down for the sake of its new master’s ambition.
Kenichi (inside Misaki) sat at an administrative desk in Misaki’s place.
“Misaki-san, could you make copies of this?”
“Oh, and tea too. We have a lot of visitors today.”
Requests for trivial but incessant “service”—things the old Kenichi wouldn’t have even spared a glance for—rained down on him like a drizzle. He tried to argue. But as he went to speak, his throat constricted on its own, and his voice trembled. His body, following Misaki’s long-standing “habits,” automatically produced a smile to avoid making waves.
His spirit was being slowly corrected by the structure of the flesh and the treatment he received from those around him. Kenichi realized that what he once thought was “power” was merely a “privilege” attached to the hardware known as a male body.
And that hardware was no longer in his hands.
All he had left was this “heavy skin”—prone to chilling, easily fatigued, bleeding once a month, and constantly expected to look after everyone else.
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