Chapter 1: Wrong Bag, Right Body
The hotel room still smelled of other people’s sunscreen and airport air. Marc dropped his backpack on the tile floor with a thud, the sound lost under the rhythmic whisper of the ceiling fan. Through the wall of windows, the Mediterranean stretched out, a lazy, turquoise blanket under the fierce Mallorcan sun.
“Home sweet home for two weeks,” Gabi announced, flopping onto the nearest king-sized bed. She kicked off her sandals, which hit the wall with two soft ticks. “I call this one.”
“They’re identical,” Marc said, but he was already hauling the larger suitcase—a sturdy, masculine black one—onto the other bed.His back ached from the cab ride. He unzipped it with a decisive rip.What came out wasn’t his cargo shorts and faded band t-shirts.
It was a waterfall of silk, lace, and spandex. A sheer black bodysuit slithered over his wrist. A dress made entirely of silver chains spilled across the duvet with a sound like rain. A pair of leather shorts, so small they could have been a pocket, landed on his foot. Something pink and feathered caught in the ceiling fan’s breeze and drifted slowly to the floor.Marc froze, his hands still clutching the empty shell of the suitcase.
Gabi sat up slowly.A slow, wheezing sound escaped her, then erupted into full, howling laughter. She rolled onto her side, clutching her stomach.“Oh my god,” she gasped. “Oh my god, Marc. You packed light, I see.”
“This isn’t mine,” he said, his voice flat with disbelief. He pinched the strap of a crimson lingerie bodice between his thumb and forefinger, holding it up like a dead fish.“The airport. The black carousel. There were, like, six of these identical cases.”
Gabi scrambled off her bed, her curiosity instantly overriding her amusement. She began sorting through the pile with the reverence of an archaeologist.“This is haute couture. This is expensive trouble.” She held up a pair of stiletto heels with dagger-like spikes at the back. “Someone is having a much wilder holiday than we are.”
“We have to take it back,” Marc said, running a hand through his short brown hair.“My stuff is in there. My swimming trunks, my—”
“Your boring beige trunks and your three variations of a grey tee?” Gabi interrupted, a wicked glint in her eye.She tossed him the sheer black bodysuit. It fluttered against his chest before he caught it on reflex.The material was cool, slippery. “Try this on.”
“What?No.”
“Come on!It’s just us. Let’s see what the other side looks like.Whoever owns this has legendary taste.” Her grin was infectious, challenging. It was the same grin that had talked him into skinny-dipping in the lake behind her parents’ house, into karaoke-ing in a packed Berlin bar.
“It’s not ‘us,’ Gabi.It’s some stranger’s private stuff. It’s weird.” He dropped the bodysuit back on the pile, but his gaze lingered on it.The cut was absurd, predatory.
“It’s an adventure,” she corrected, already digging in her crossbody bag. She pulled out her phone, her thumbs dancing across the screen.“And you know what? It’s an opportunity.”
A familiar, uneasy thrill snaked down Marc’s spine.That tone meant trouble. “What kind of opportunity?”
She didn’t answer, just bit her lip, scrolling. Then she turned the screen to him.The app icon was unassuming: two intersecting arrows inside a circle. He’d seen ads for it plastered across the Tube for months. BodyChange: Experience a Different View.“No,” Marc said, taking a step back. “Absolutely not.”
“Think about it!” Gabi pressed, advancing.“Two weeks in Mallorca.No one knows us. You’re swimming in a wardrobe fit for a rock star’s mistress. It’s the perfect experiment!”
“It’s a violation of someone’s privacy. And my… my everything.”
“It’s temporary!The free trial period is fourteen days.Exactly our holiday. It’s fate.” Her eyes were alight with pure, unadulterated mischief. “You’re always saying you want to understand women better.This isn’t understanding, Marc. This is knowing.”
He looked from her eager, freckled face to the pile of impossible clothing. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant crash of waves and the hum of the fan. He thought of his own suitcase, probably popped open in some stranger’s room, his dull wardrobe causing similar confusion.A bizarre, rebellious curiosity began to push aside his dread.What would it even feel like?
“It’s just for a laugh,” Gabi whispered, as if reading his thoughts. “One photo.We’ll change you right back.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “One photo.”
“Yes!”
“And you are sworn to secrecy. This never, ever leaves this room.”
She drew an X over her heart with her finger.“Scout’s honor. Now, stand in the light. The instructions say you need good lighting.”
He moved awkwardly to the pool of sunlight near the windows. The air here was warmer, scented with salt and the jasmine climbing the hotel wall outside.Gabi pointed the phone at him. The screen displayed his own image—a slightly flushed, fit twenty-four-year-old man in a rumpled travel t-shirt, looking profoundly unsure.“Okay, scanning,” Gabi said. The camera lens seemed to darken, drinking in his form.A soft ping.“Now, we need the template. The new you.” She pointed the phone at the bed, at the cascade of fabric and leather. “It needs to work with the… available materials.Let’s see what it suggests.”
She tapped the screen. A spinning wheel appeared.Marc’s stomach tightened.This was insane.The wheel stopped.
Gabi’s eyes widened.She let out a low whistle.“Oh, buddy. It’s committing to the bit.” She flipped the phone around.The image on the screen was a woman. Stunning, in a way that felt more like a statement than a suggestion. Sharp cheekbones, full lips, eyes a bright, knowing blue. Her hair was a mass of thick, platinum blonde waves. The physique was athletic but undeniably, dramatically curved, perfectly suited to the wardrobe spilled across their bed.“It’s… a lot,” Marc croaked.
“It’s perfect,” Gabi breathed.“You’re going to be a bombshell. You ready?”
He wasn’t.Not even close.But he gave a single, tight nod.
Gabi hit ‘CONFIRM.’
A soft buzz emanated from the phone, a frequency that seemed to vibrate in Marc’s teeth. A tingling started at his scalp, like a million ants wearing tiny ice skates.It spread down, a cold, racing wave over his shoulders, down his spine.
His bones didn’t crack or break—they shimmered, a strange internal fluidity, as if someone was gently reshaping clay from the inside. His perspective shifted, the room tilting a few inches downward. His t-shirt and jeans, perfectly fitted a moment ago, became a loose, baggy sack.The fabric felt coarse, alien against a skin that was suddenly, undeniably softer.
He looked down at his hands.They were smaller, the fingers slimmer, the nails neatly oval. A delicate silver ring he’d worn since graduation now hung loose on a finger that had tapered.
“Whoa,” Gabi whispered, phone forgotten in her hand, recording nothing but the wall.
Marc stumbled to the large mirror leaning against the wardrobe. The reflection was a stranger, a beautiful, stunned stranger wearing his clothes.
His—her—face was the one from the app, but alive, breath catching in a tighter, narrower chest. The blonde hair fell just past her shoulders, thick and real. She raised a hesitant hand to touch it, and the reflection mimicked the movement, the eyes wide with shock.The physical sensation was overwhelming. A new center of gravity, lower, making his stance feel precarious. A lightness in the arms, a profound difference in the way his—her—hips met the legs.Everything was reconfigured.It wasn’t painful.It was profound.
“Marc?” Gabi’s voice was small.He turned from the mirror. The movement felt different, a shift of weight he didn’t yet understand. His voice, when he found it, was what undid him.It was higher, clearer, melodic where his own was raspy. “Say something else.”
Gabi just stared, her mouth open.Then the shock melted into delirious wonder. “Your voice.Oh my god.It’s… posh. You sound like a newsreader.”
Marc tried to laugh, but the sound that came out was a light, feminine flutter. He clapped a hand over his mouth. The feel of that new, softer skin against new, fuller lips was another electric jolt of wrongness and fascination.“Okay,” Gabi said, shaking herself into action. Her initial glee was now tempered with a sliver of awe.“Okay. Phase one is a startling success.Phase two.” She grabbed the sheer black bodysuit from the bed. “The wardrobe.”
Marc looked from the garment to his—her—oversized clothes. A wave of vulnerability crashed over him.This was real.He was inside this now. “I don’t think I can.”
“You have to,” Gabi said, gently. “You’re swimming in that t-shirt.And we need to see… the whole picture. For the experiment.” She wasn’t teasing anymore.She was his co-conspirator, his anchor.
With stiff, unfamiliar movements, Marc peeled off the t-shirt and stepped out of the jeans. The cool air from the fan hit new terrain, raising goosebumps on arms that were smoother, on legs that were shaped entirely differently.He didn’t look in the mirror. He focused on Gabi’s face, which was a mask of focused concentration.She helped him into the bodysuit. The material clung, a second skin of cool nylon, tracing every new contour.It was a full-body whisper. When she zipped it up the back, the finality of it clicked into place.
He turned slowly toward the mirror.The person staring back was a knockout. A stunning, statuesque blonde clad in sleek, provocative black.The app’s promise rendered in breathtaking, three-dimensional flesh. It was him, but it wasn’t. It was a sculpture of possibility wearing a look of pure, unadulterated panic.“Wow,” Gabi said, softly. “Just… wow.”
Marc couldn’t speak.He was a guest in his own existence.
A sharp, electronic ding-dong echoed from the door.The hotel room doorbell.
They both jumped, their eyes locking in sudden, shared panic. The outside world, with its rules and expectations, had just pressed its way into their secret.“Housekeeping?” Gabi mouthed.Marc shook his head. It was too late for that.
The person in the mirror—the blonde woman in the terrifyingly beautiful bodysuit—took a deep, shaky breath.The sound was unfamiliar in her new lungs. This was the first test.Not of the body, but of everything else.
The doorbell rang again, impatient.
The doorbell rang again, impatient.
Gabi snapped into motion, shoving Marc’s discarded male clothes under the rumpled bed with her foot. “Get in the bathroom!” she hissed, her voice a frantic stage-whisper.
Marc moved on instinct, the unfamiliar pivot of his hips nearly sending him stumbling into the doorframe. He shut the bathroom door, leaving it open just a crack. He stood frozen, listening to the soft rush of his own new breathing, his back pressed against the cool tiles.The black bodysuit felt absurd against his skin.
He heard Gabi open the main door, the chain lock rattling.“Hola! Welcome drink for you,” a cheerful male voice announced.“Cava, fresh!”
“Oh! Gracias,” Gabi replied, her tone shifting instantly to bright and normal. Marc heard the clink of glasses being set on a tray, the fizz of pouring bubbles.“Perfect. Thank you so much.”
A moment later, the door clicked shut.The lock turned.
“Coast is clear,” Gabi called, her voice laced with a new, giddy relief.Marc stepped out. Gabi was holding two flutes of sparkling cava, a wide, liberated grin on her face. She offered him one. “To new perspectives.”
He took the glass, his smaller fingers curling delicately around the stem.The gesture felt performative. He took a sip, the bubbles sharp and clean on his tongue. The normalcy of the act—a welcome drink in a holiday hotel—clashed violently with the reality of the mirror’s image. He was drinking cava while wearing a stranger’s sheer bodysuit, in a body that wasn’t his. The surrealism was thickening, becoming its own atmosphere.
“Okay,” Gabi said, draining half her glass in one go.She set it down with a decisive click and turned back to the loot spread across the bed. The initial shock was hardening into a mischievous, determined curiosity.“That was a fun test run. But this is just the base layer. We haven’t even scratched the surface.”
“What are you talking about?” Marc asked, his higher voice still a jolt each time he used it.
“The luggage, dummy.We have two weeks. You can’t live in one black catsuit.We need to see what we’re working with. Try everything on.”
“Everything?” The word came out as a squeak.“Well, not the spiked heels yet. Baby steps.” She was already rifling through the pile, pulling out garments and assessing them like a stylist. “This is research.Anthropological fieldwork.Who is this person? What’s her story?”
She tossed him a bundle of emerald green fabric. It unfurled into a cocktail dress, sleek and backless.“Let’s go. Start with this over the bodysuit.”
The next hour blurred into a bizarre, disorienting fashion show. Gabi, perched on the foot of the bed with her phone discreetly recording, became a director of the unreal.
The emerald dress hugged the new curves with a confidence Marc didn’t feel. He kept expecting the seams to burst, the zipper to fail, but the fabric stretched and flowed like it was made for this form. Which, technically, it now was.“Walk.Turn.Good, good! Now give me ‘mysterious gaze into the middle distance,’” Gabi instructed, swirling her cava.
He complied, moving with the careful, stiff uncertainty of a foal. Each garment imposed a different posture. A tiny, electric-blue bikini top and bottom made him hyper-aware of the weight on his chest, the exposure of so much suddenly-smooth skin. The sun from the window warmed places that had never felt sunlight directly before. He stared at his reflection, at the flat stomach and the dramatic sweep of hip now accentuated by the triangle of fabric, and a strange detachment settled over him. This wasn’t him.It was a mannequin. A very detailed, physiological mannequin.
A lace bodice with boning cinched his waist tighter and pushed his chest up into a startling, shelf-like prominence.Breathing became a shallower exercise. A silver, shimmering mini-dress made him feel like a disco ball, catching and throwing shards of Mallorcan light with every slight movement.Gabi was in her element, oscillating between enthusiastic praise and thoughtful analysis. “That color is definitely you.Well, her.God, your legs are insane now. Can you even feel your thighs? They’re like… they’re monumental.”
“They feel like they’re attached to me,” Marc replied flatly, stepping out of the mini-dress. The casual intimacy of her commentary was both grounding and deeply weird. It was still Gabi, but she was talking about parts of him that didn’t exist yesterday.
They moved through silk kimonos, a leather skirt that laced up the side, a jumpsuit with a plunging neckline that plunged to a point far closer to his navel than he was comfortable with. With each change, the initial shock faded into a numb, practiced routine: step in, zip up, look in the mirror, move for Gabi, step out.The pile of tried items grew on a chair. The untouched pile on the bed shrank.
He was sweating slightly, a new, lighter perspiration that carried a faint, different scent.The cava was gone. The ceiling fan chopped the heavy afternoon air.Gabi reached deep into the now nearly-empty suitcase, her hand feeling around the interior lining. “I think we’re almost… huh.” Her expression shifted from curiosity to puzzlement. She pulled her hand out.It was empty. She felt along the edge of the suitcase again, fingers probing a nearly invisible seam along the interior base. “There’s a false bottom.”
“What?”
A crisp rrrrrip of Velcro echoed in the quiet room. Gabi peeled back a thin panel of lining. Nestled in the hidden compartment, devoid of any decorative packaging, was an object.It was a strap-on harness, made of sturdy black nylon with adjustable straps. Attached to it was a realistic, substantial silicone prosthesis.
The playful energy in the room evaporated, replaced by a sudden, dense silence.The thump of waves against the cliffs outside seemed to grow louder. The fan whirred.
Gabi looked from the object in her hand to Marc, her face a canvas of suspended animation. Her mischievous grin was gone, replaced by a kind of stunned, pragmatic shock.Marc stared.The clothing had been an abstract exploration of form, of aesthetics. This was not abstract.This was functional.This was a tool with a very clear, specific purpose. It spoke volumes about the owner of the suitcase, about the kind of holiday she—or perhaps they—had planned. It was a sudden, violent wrench into a realm of intimacy and intent that no amount of lace or leather had prepared him for.Gabi held it up slightly, the straps dangling. The weight of it seemed to anchor the whole surreal afternoon back to a planet with real gravity, real consequences. Her eyes met Marc’s in the mirror—his wide, blue, thoroughly spooked eyes.
“Well,” Gabi said finally, her voice careful and low, the word hanging in the perfumed air.
“Well,” Gabi said finally, her voice careful and low, the word hanging in the perfumed air. She held the harness up by one strap, letting it dangle between them. The silicone appendage swayed slightly, catching the sunlight in a way that felt absurdly theatrical.
A slow, wicked smile spread across her face. “Someone came prepared for a very specific kind of adventure.”
Marc—no, the person in the mirror—felt a heat that had nothing to do with the sun flood her neck and face. She looked away, focusing on a crack in the tile floor. “Put that away.”
“Why? It’s educational.” Gabi’s tone was all mock innocence. She gave it a little shake. “Think of the possibilities. The sheer… logistics. I have questions.”
“Gabi.”
“Fine, fine.” She laughed, a bright, unapologetic sound, and tossed the harness back into the open suitcase. It landed with a soft thud atop the discarded silk. “Let’s leave this for later. We should enjoy the sun. It’s literally blazing out there and we’re playing dress-up in a dungeon.”
She clapped her hands together, decisively breaking the tension. Turning to the bed, she sifted through the remaining fabric until she found it: a bikini. It was less a garment and more than a suggestion, two tiny triangles of electric-pink fabric connected by strings so thin they looked like dental floss.
“For you,” Gabi announced, holding it up. The bottoms were barely there. “This is what we call a ‘microkini.’ It’s basically sunscreen with attitude.”
“I am not wearing that in public.”
“You’re not ‘Marc’ in public right now, are you?” Gabi’s eyes gleamed. She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “Marc doesn’t make sense anymore. Not like this. We need a name. Something that fits.” She looked at the blonde reflection, at the sharp cheekbones and wide, uncertain eyes. “Mia. Let’s call you Mia. It’s sleek. It’s Mallorca. It’s you, now.”
Mia. The name landed like a stone in water, sending ripples through the strange calm. It was a sound, not an identity. But Gabi was right—Marc felt like a rumor, a ghost from another life lingering in this sun-drenched room.
“Mia,” Gabi repeated, testing it. She nodded, satisfied. “Yeah. Mia. So, Mia. The balcony is calling. The sea is doing its sparkly thing. And you have the body of a Bond girl who actually gets stuff done. We’d be committing a crime against vacation to stay in here.”
Mia—she had to start thinking it—looked from the pink scraps in Gabi’s hand to the breathtaking vista beyond the glass. The vulnerability was terrifying. The potential for disaster, infinite. But the alternative was to hide in this room for two weeks, a prisoner of her own shock.
Gabi saw the hesitation. She softened, just a fraction. “Hey. It’s just me. And the sun. And maybe a few hundred strangers who will be too busy worrying about their own tan lines to psychoanalyze yours. One hour. We’ll find a quiet spot. You can always wrap a sarong around yourself like a burrito.”
The warmth of the room, the salt air, the sheer absurdity of it all pressed in. The momentum of the day was pulling her forward, toward the light.
Mia took a deep breath, the air feeling different in her narrower lungs. “Give me the stupid thing.”
Gabi’s grin was triumphant. She tossed the bikini over. The fabric was impossibly soft, lighter than a breath.
“Welcome to the experiment, Mia.”