The Izakaya Reversal
“Good work today!”
Slipping under the noren curtain of the izakaya “Kacho Fugetsu,” Ryota Osaki retreated into the back of the shop as if seeking sanctuary. The interior lighting was a misplaced, calm amber, but it only served to grate on his nerves, already worn thin by the day’s labor. He was incompetent. He produced no results. His boss’s shouting echoed in his ears like a persistent ringing, and the mocking glares of his colleagues clung to his back like a cold sweat.
“…Am I the only one left behind again?”
Lagging in promotions, overtaken by juniors—his place in the company was shrinking by the day. To numb this reality, even temporarily, Ryota needed this space soaked in the smell of cheap sake.
A female staff member in a Japanese-style costume handed him his first beer. Ryota stared at her young, vibrant form with clouded eyes. These women could simply stand there and deliver drinks without being loathed by anyone; rather, their very existence was validated as a form of value.
“Another one… please.”
Ryota emptied glass after glass. Alcohol eroded his brain, melting his thoughts into sludge. Just as his vision blurred and his movements became clumsy, the same waitress returned.
“Are you alright?”
Her voice was the polar opposite of Ryota’s low baritone—a clear, bell-like tone, yet tinged with a hidden weariness. Ryota tried to respond, but his tongue wouldn’t obey. As his body tilted and he nearly struck his head on the corner of the table, the world went silent.
Or rather, it wasn’t that the sound vanished; it was that gravity inverted. A high-pitched, electric ringing raced through his skull, and his vision turned pitch black, as if someone had spilled ink across it. Moments before losing consciousness, Ryota felt a horrific sensation of peeling—as if his very physical being were “molting.”
…When he came to, the first thing to hit Ryota’s nostrils was the heavy stench of the kitchen: a mixture of grease and detergent.
“…gh, cough, cough.”
Hearing the sound of his own coughing, Ryota froze. It was not his thick, low voice. The sound vibrating in his inner ear was the high alto of that waitress he had been listening to moments before.
His vision slowly began to focus. First, he saw his own hands resting on the stainless-steel counter.
“…What is this?”
They were not the knuckled hands of a man who had spent too much time pounding a keyboard. They were the white, delicate hands of a woman, with fingertips slightly reddened from waterwork. The skin of the palms was incredibly thin, with translucent veins testifying to the fragility of this body.
Driven by shock, Ryota tried to stand, only to be struck by a violent sense of “wrongness” that forced him to his knees. His center of gravity was completely off. First, there was the physical “weight” on his chest. This was no gentle “fullness”; it was the mass of several kilograms of flesh fused to the outside of his lungs, independent of his will. Every time he leaned forward, it sagged according to gravity, pulling relentlessly at his skin and compressing his ribs from the outside. With every breath, that weight obstructed his lungs and limited his oxygen intake.
“Wait… what is this…?”
The voice that came out was, again, not his. Ryota crawled to a corner of the kitchen and snatched a dusty hand mirror. The person in the mirror was not Ryota Osaki. It was the face of the waitress who had been pouring his sake. Young and beautiful—but at close range, dark circles from lack of sleep lurked beneath heavy makeup, and the fatigue of daily life had begun to rob her skin of its luster. This was not “woman” as a sexual symbol; it was the raw image of a human being wearing down under the weight of labor.
“Could it be… did we swap?”
As he spoke the words, Ryota felt a terrifying surge of arousal at the sensation of his (the waitress’s) throat—devoid of an Adam’s apple—vibrating minutely.
He looked back to see the body of “Ryota Osaki” slumped on the floor in a drunken stupor. His former self. The unwashed, greasy skin, the slack belly, the face painted over with despair. Looking at it, Ryota felt no longing to “return,” only a bottomless revulsion.
(…Do I really have to go back to that garbage life?)
No. Ryota crossed his arms, effectively hugging his (the waitress’s) body. As he wrapped his arms around, he felt the flesh of his back shift unnaturally. The sensation of the waistband tightening around his abdomen. To support the heavy chest, the shoulder straps dug into his trapezius muscles, inviting a chronic heaviness. Yet, this pain, this weight, this “restriction” seemed to him like a glorious sign of salvation.
As long as he lived as “Osaki,” he would eternally be a “failure of an employee,” unable to escape the sneers of those around him. But if he lived as “her,” perhaps the world would show a completely different face.
Ryota stared at himself in the mirror and tried an awkward smile. The cheek muscles moved far more lightly than they had in his male days.
“…Hehe.”
He felt a slight narcissism at the sound of his own laughter. It was the beginning of a “madness” called adaptation.
The weight of the body did not vanish. The sensation of the inner thighs rubbing with every step and the strain on his lower back due to the unstable center of gravity tormented him as distinct pains. But Ryota began to enjoy even that pain as the “admission fee” to a new life.
“I’m going to make good use of this body.”
He gave a cold glance to the “thing that used to be him” intoxicated on the floor. He didn’t know whose consciousness was in there now. Perhaps the soul of the waitress herself had been thrown into his “sludge-like daily life.” But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the fact that he had shed the burden of Ryota Osaki and acquired this heavy, restricted, yet “possibility-filled” cage of flesh.
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