On a winter holiday, Yuya let out a long sigh in the corner of a café.
The glass window in front of him reflected a face he did not recognize as his own.
Long hair.
Narrow shoulders.
A soft-looking sweater.
No matter how he looked at it, the reflection belonged to his friend Aoi.
“How did this even happen…?”
Yuya had woken that morning to find himself trapped in an impossible situation.
His body had somehow been exchanged with Aoi’s.
At first, he assumed he was dreaming.
He washed his face.
Then washed it again.
Nothing changed.
In a panic, he contacted Aoi, and the two agreed to meet at the café.
Now, standing across from him with her arms folded, was Aoi—
inside Yuya’s body.
Judging from the hard expression on his own borrowed face, she was every bit as confused as he was.
“What is going on!?”
Aoi slapped one hand lightly against the table.
“I wake up and suddenly I’m stuck in this sweaty, masculine body! You did something, didn’t you?”
“I have no idea either!”
Yuya raised both hands defensively.
“I just went to sleep like normal last night. I never dreamed something like this would happen—well, except apparently this isn’t a dream…”
“Oh, great.”
Aoi buried her face in her hands.
“What are we supposed to do now…?”
Yuya watched her for a moment.
Then, despite the absurdity of the situation, a small mischievous impulse began to stir inside him.
This was confusing.
Inconvenient.
Potentially disastrous.
But if he was going to be stuck in Aoi’s body for a while…
maybe he could have a little fun with it.
So Yuya deliberately began exaggerating what he imagined to be “cute, girlish” behavior.
“Hey, Aoi-chan♪”
He tilted his head and looked at her with an artificially sweet expression.
“If something like this happens, shouldn’t I act like a proper girl so nobody figures us out?”
Aoi stared at him.
“What is that voice?”
Her face twisted.
“That is seriously creepy.”
“Aww, don’t say that!”
Yuya pressed both hands to his cheeks.
“Eek!”
Then he struck an exaggerated pose.
“A girl has to be cute, right?”
For a fraction of a second, Aoi’s expression changed.
The irritation hardened into genuine anger.
“Stop screwing around.”
Her voice dropped.
“I’m serious. That actually pisses me off.”
Yuya blinked.
“Come on. The real Aoi is kind of like this anyway, isn’t she?”
He laughed.
“You like cute gestures. Cute clothes. That kind of stuff.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to make fun of me for it!”
Aoi’s voice sharpened.
The anger was not as simple as Yuya had assumed.
For Aoi, dressing cutely and behaving in ways she found feminine were not meaningless habits.
They were part of how she chose to care for herself.
A way of deciding what kind of person she wanted to be.
Having that reduced to a joke felt uncomfortably close to having herself reduced to a joke.
“Yuya.”
Aoi sighed and stared at him coldly from inside his own body.
“You really don’t get it, do you?”
Yuya stopped smiling.
“Have you ever actually thought about why I choose the things I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why I wear cute clothes.”
“Why I like certain things.”
“Why I act the way I do.”
Yuya hesitated.
“Well… I mean, you’re a girl, so I figured it just came naturally—”
“No.”
Aoi cut him off immediately.
“I do it because it feels like me.”
Yuya fell silent.
“I choose things I like because I want to live in a way that feels right to me.”
Her expression remained severe.
“It’s how I take care of myself.”
She looked directly at him.
“So when you turn all of that into some stupid imitation and laugh about it, it feels like you’re laughing at me.”
The words hit harder than Yuya expected.
Until that moment, he had never imagined that Aoi thought about those things so deeply.
He had assumed her preferences were effortless.
Automatic.
Just another visible part of being Aoi.
But inhabiting her body had already made one fact impossible to ignore:
nothing about being another person was automatic.
The body might be borrowed.
The identity was not.
“I’m sorry.”
Yuya scratched his head awkwardly.
“I think I got carried away.”
Aoi studied him for a moment.
At least he sounded sincere.
After that, the two began talking more seriously about what it was like to live in each other’s bodies.
Aoi complained about the difficulties of moving through the world in Yuya’s body.
The heavier frame.
The unfamiliar strength.
The different expectations people seemed to place on him without ever saying them aloud.
Yuya, in turn, admitted that presenting himself convincingly as Aoi was far harder than he had expected.
The clothes were only the surface.
There were gestures.
Tone of voice.
The way she carried herself.
The way people addressed her.
The constant awareness that even when the vessel looked exactly right, one wrong reaction could reveal the person inside.
For several hours, they compared experiences.
Not to decide who had things harder.
But simply to understand.
And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, the hostility between them began to fade.
Several hours later, without warning, their bodies returned to normal.
Neither of them understood why.
One moment Yuya was looking across the café at his own face.
The next, he was back inside himself.
Familiar hands.
Familiar shoulders.
Familiar weight.
His own center of gravity.
Across from him, Aoi stared down at herself and released a long breath.
They had no explanation for what had happened.
But perhaps the explanation mattered less than what they had learned.
For a few hours, each of them had been forced to experience the other not as an idea, but as a life.
And afterward, they understood each other just a little better.
“From now on, try to think before you start messing with people, okay?”
Aoi said it in her usual light tone, a smile finally returning to her face.
Yuya smiled back.
“Yeah. Got it.”
He paused.
“I won’t make fun of you like that again.”
Aoi nodded.
And this time, he meant it.
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