Chapter 3: The Hunt for Clothes
The towel was a fortress. Wrapped tight around me, its bulk was the only thing that felt remotely manageable in a world that had shrunk and softened and curved in all the wrong directions. Mark led the way out of the lab, his broad back a wall of tension. I followed, my bare feet silent on the polished concrete, then onto the plush carpet of the mansion’s main hall. The fibers were lush and deep, tickling my arches. Every step was a calculation in balance. My hips seemed to want to move in a way my brain hadn’t programmed, a slight, involuntary swing that made me feel off-kilter.
“My room,” Mark said over his shoulder, not slowing. “Closest thing I have to a solution right now.”
We passed through the cavernous living area, all sharp modern angles and cold elegance. I’d been here a hundred times, but now the scale was oppressive. The ceiling yawned above me; the distance to the leather couch seemed like a hike. I was a child in a giant’s house.
His bedroom was a monument to minimalism. A vast platform bed, low and severe. A single painting, an abstract splash of dark color. Everything in shades of gray and black. It smelled like him—clean linen, a hint of sandalwood soap, the underlying scent of ozone that seemed to follow him from the lab.
He went straight to a section of wall that looked seamless. A touch of his palm on a hidden panel and a section whispered open, revealing a walk-in closet deeper than my old apartment’s bedroom.
Light bloomed automatically, soft and ambient. The closet was eerily organized. Rows of identical black trousers, shelves of pristine white t-shirts, a regiment of dress shirts in shades of charcoal and navy. To one side, a collection of leather jackets hung like sleeping bats. It was a wardrobe for a man who had eliminated choice as an inefficiency.
“Nothing here will fit,” he muttered, more to himself than me. He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Even my smallest shirts will drown you.”
He began opening deep, walnut-veneered drawers beneath the hanging clothes. The first contained precisely rolled belts and ties. The second, watches in individual felt slots. The third made him go still.
I lingered in the doorway, clutching my towel. I saw his shoulders rise and fall with a slow breath before he reached in.
What he pulled out was a splash of color in the monochrome space. A soft stack of fabrics in pale lavender, dove gray, and cream. He held them as if they were made of glass.
“Cara,” he said, the name a flat statement. “Left some things. Years ago. Never got around to… discarding them.”
He turned and laid the stack on a low leather bench in the center of the closet. The items seemed to exhale a faint, ghostly perfume—floral, expensive, utterly feminine. It was a smell that belonged to a world of parties and soft whispers, a world far from burnt circuitry and code.
“Try these,” he said. He wouldn’t look at the clothes, or at me. He stared at a point on the wall above my head. “The… proportions might be closer. I’ll be outside.”
He left, pulling the closet door half-shut behind him, leaving me in the soft light with the artifacts of a stranger’s life.
Alone, the silence was a physical pressure. I let the towel drop. The cool, climate-controlled air kissed my skin again, raising goosebumps. I reached for the first item. A pair of yoga pants, the fabric a impossibly soft, brushed charcoal. I sat on the bench—the leather was cool and supple under my thighs—and tried to put them on.
The process was a comedy of errors. My legs were so much shorter. I had to bunch the fabric, guide it over my tiny feet, my narrow ankles. As I pulled them up, the sensation was a revelation. The material glided, a whispering caress over my calves, my thighs. It clung, not tight, but with a possessive, elastic embrace that mapped every unfamiliar contour. Over my knees, which felt knobbier and sharper. Over my thighs, which had a new, soft fullness to them. When I stood to pull them the rest of the way up, they snapped into place around my hips and waist. They fit. A little loose in the waistband, but they fit. The fabric held me, a constant, gentle pressure from ankle to hip. I could feel the seam of the pants, a soft line running directly between my legs, a persistent, faint presence against that bare, vulnerable skin.
Next was a scrap of lilac fabric. A thong. I held it up, the tiny triangle of lace and the thin elastic band seeming like a impractical joke. My old self would have laughed. My new self felt a hot wave of shame, and beneath it, a prickling curiosity.
Putting it on was an awkward dance. Stepping into it, pulling the flimsy fabric up. The lace settled over that shaved, alien landscape, a scant, scratchy veil. The waistband sat low on my hip bones, which protruded in a way I could now feel with my thumbs. The back was just a string, disappearing into the cleft of my ass—a cleft that now had a pronounced, rounded shape I could feel with every clench of my glutes. The feeling was pervasive. I was constantly aware of the slight, silken friction, the way the fabric moved with me, a minimalist harness on a body built for sensation.
The tank top was cream-colored, simple. I pulled it over my head. My long hair caught for a moment, a snarling blonde cascade, before settling down my back. The fabric was thin, soft cotton. It settled over my torso.
And immediately, the problem was apparent. The front of the top strained, pulled taut across my chest. The neckline plunged, showing the pale, dramatic swell of my breasts. My nipples, hardened from the cool air and the brush of fabric, pressed visibly against the thin material. They felt hyper-sensitive, little points of electric awareness. Every shift made them rub, a tiny, shocking sensation. The tank top was designed for a woman with a modest bust. It was not designed for this.
A bra was in the stack. A delicate thing of pale gray lace and underwire. I fumbled with the clasp, my smaller, slender fingers feeling clumsy. I got it around my ribs, which were narrow and close-set. I hooked it. And then I tried to fit myself into the cups.
It was hopeless. I spilled out of the top and sides, the wire digging into the soft tissue. The cups were a good two sizes too small. A ridiculous, painful container. I unsnapped it with a frustrated sigh and tossed it back onto the bench. It looked like a defeated bird.
So I was braless. The weight of my chest was a constant, low pull. Without support, they moved freely. If I turned too quickly, I felt a distinct, delayed jiggle, a wobble that traveled through my whole torso. It was distracting, a physiological echo to every motion.
Mark’s voice came from beyond the door, strained. “You decent?”
“Define decent,” I called back, my voice still that unfamiliar melody.
He pushed the door open. He’d changed into a fresh black t-shirt, the cotton stretching across his chest. He’d washed the soot from his hands. His eyes swept over me, took in the ill-fitting clothes, the way the tank top barely contained me, my hair a wild spill over my shoulders. His gaze stuck for a fraction of a second on the tight pull of fabric across my chest, then flicked to the mirror on the back of the closet door, then to the floor.
“The bra didn’t fit,” I said, stating the obvious.
“I can see that.” He shifted his weight. “We’ll… order something. Later. Come on. You should see. You need to see.”
He meant the mirror. I didn’t want to. My body was a collection of confusing sensations, a internal map of vulnerabilities. Seeing it would make it real in a way I wasn’t ready for.
But he was right. I had to.
I took a step toward the full-length mirror on the door. My gait felt different in the clothes, the yoga pants whispering with each step, the lack of a bra making me unconsciously tense my shoulders. I stopped a few feet away, my eyes downcast, looking at my small feet in the plush carpet.
“Justin,” Mark said, softly.
I looked up.
The person in the mirror was a stranger. A stunning, heartbreaking stranger.
Long, tousled blonde hair framed a face that was all soft lines and youthful fullness. My lips were pale pink and noticeably fuller, slightly parted in shock. My eyes, a wide, luminous blue I’d never seen before, were huge in a delicate bone structure. I saw the gentle slope of my neck, the sharp cut of my collarbones above the dramatic neckline of the tank top.
My gaze travelled down. The thin cotton hid nothing. It clung to the pronounced, full curves of my breasts, their shape clear and heavy, the nipples unmistakable points. The fabric dipped at my impossibly narrow waist, then flared out again over the sway of my hips, which filled the yoga pants with a soft, rounded curve. The pants themselves clung to legs that were long in proportion to my new, shortened body, ending in those small, narrow feet.
I saw the ghost of Cara in the clothes, but the reflection was entirely its own entity. It was a young woman. Beautiful in a way that was almost aggressive. Vulnerable. Sexual. A body built for attention.
I saw Mark behind me, reflected in the glass. He was staring at my reflection, his face a mask of complicated ruin—guilt, awe, a dawning horror at what he’d done, and something else, something darker and more compelling that he was fighting to suppress. The sheer scale of him behind my slight reflection made me look even smaller, more delicate.
My mind, my thirty-six-year-old, logical, coded-out mind, screamed that this was wrong. This was not my map. These were not my landmarks.
But the body in the mirror breathed when I breathed. It blinked when I blinked. A slight, unconscious shift of my weight made the reflection’s hips cant, made the light catch the subtle jiggle in its chest.
I brought a hand up slowly, watching the slender, graceful arm in the mirror rise. I touched my own cheek. The skin was smooth, petal-soft. I saw the touch. I felt the touch. Both were true.
The disconnect was total. It was vertigo. It was a silent, screaming fracture in the core of my being.
“That’s me?” The question was a thin wisp of sound from my new, feminine mouth.
Mark’s reflected eyes met mine in the glass. He didn’t have an answer.
I stared a moment longer, at the woman who was and wasn’t me. The clothes that were a stranger’s. The friend standing behind me who now felt like a mountain of a man, a potential threat, a possible sanctuary, all at once. The emotions were too big, a chaotic storm with no outlet. The physical sensations—the constant awareness of my chest, the cling of the thong, the foreign balance of my hips—were the only anchors.
“I need to sit down,” I whispered, and my voice broke.
The reflection’s plush lips trembled. Its wide blue eyes glistened.
I turned away from her, from it, from me, pushing past Mark into the sterile expanse of his bedroom, seeking the solidity of the floor before my new, weaker legs gave out.