Chapter 2: Forbidden Desires
The walk back to Donghae’s apartment was a study in silent, shared terror. Every shadow in the campus elms seemed to hold watching eyes. Every distant laugh from a group of students made Hyukjae flinch and shrink deeper into the oversized jacket Donghae had forced on him—her—after they’d scooped up Heechul’s notes. The vanilla scent clung to them, a ghost in the cool night air.
Donghae’s apartment was a third-floor walk-up that always smelled of old paper and yesterday’s instant noodles. He shoved the door open, ushering Hyukjae inside before quickly locking it behind them. The familiar chaos of his space—the towers of books, the single neon desk lamp glowing like a blue sanctuary, the lumpy sofa buried under laundry—should have been comforting. It felt like a bunker.
“Home sweet home,” Donghae muttered, tossing his keys into a bowl.
Hyukjae didn’t move from just inside the door. He stood rigid, staring at the single, narrow bed tucked against the far wall. His breathing hitched, a soft, unfamiliar sound. “Your roommate’s really gone?”
“Visiting his family in Jeju. We’re alone.” The words hung there, heavy with new meaning.
“Good. That’s… good.” Hyukjae finally moved, a stilted walk into the center of the room. He shrugged off Donghae’s jacket, letting it fall to the floor. The too-tight hoodie beneath strained against his chest. He grabbed the hem and pulled it over his head in one frustrated yank, getting briefly stuck before emerging, hair tousled.
Donghae turned away, a reflex so fast it was pure instinct. His face burned. He’d seen Hyukjae shirtless a hundred times. At the gym, after practice, changing in his room. This wasn’t that. This was different. The rules had evaporated.
“Relax, it’s just a sports bra,” Hyukjae said, but his voice was tight. “It feels like being strapped into a life vest. A really small, annoying life vest.”
Donghae risked a glance. Hyukjae stood in a pair of those same jeans and a simple black compression top, staring down at his own torso with a look of profound bewilderment. The lines were all wrong. Softer. Defined in places Donghae’s eyes didn’t know where to land.
“Do you have, like, a big t-shirt or something?” Hyukjae asked, not looking up. “Everything I own feels like it’s strangling me.”
Wordlessly, Donghae went to his dresser, dug out a faded grey shirt from a long-ago rock festival, and held it out behind him. Hyukjae took it. The rustle of fabric, the soft sigh. Donghae stared fixedly at a poster on his wall.
“Okay. You can look now. I’m decent.”
Donghae turned. The shirt drowned Hyukjae’s new frame, hanging loose past his hips. It made him look smaller, younger. More vulnerable. He’d pulled his hair into a messy knot on top of his head. Without the bulky clothes, the transformation was even more undeniable. He was… slight.
“I’m hungry,” Hyukjae announced, as if stating a scientific fact. “But not for ramen. I want… fruit. Strawberries. Do you have strawberries?”
“Since when do you like strawberries?” Donghae blurted. “You live on fried chicken and coke.”
“I don’t know! I just do. It’s all I can think about. My body wants strawberries.” Hyukjae threw his hands up, pacing again. “See? It’s not just the outside. Things are… rewiring. It’s itchy on the inside, Donghae. In my head.”
The panic was creeping back into his eyes. Donghae needed to ground them. “Okay. No strawberries. But I have an apple. And we need a plan.”
He went to the tiny kitchenette, grabbed an apple, and tossed it. Hyukjae caught it with a snap of his wrist—a familiar, athletic gesture that looked utterly bizarre coming from those slender hands. He bit into it with a decisive crunch, wiping juice from his chin with the back of his hand. A very Hyukjae move.
“The plan is you call Heechul again. Right now.” Hyukjae talked around the apple.
“He won’t answer. You know he won’t.”
“Then we go back to the lab. We take that… that stabilizer stuff. We analyze it.”
“With what? A poetry textbook and a bad attitude?” Donghae ran a hand through his hair, exhausted. “Hyukjae, we need to be smart. If we mess with it and make it permanent—”
“It might already be permanent!” The apple core flew across the room, bouncing off the sofa. Hyukjae’s chest heaved. “Don’t you get it? Every minute that passes, this feels less like a costume and more like… like me. And I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”
They stood five feet apart, the only sound the hum of the mini-fridge. Donghae saw it then, the sheer tectonic terror beneath the anger. The fear of being erased.
“Okay,” Donghae said, softer. He picked up his phone. “I’ll call. Again.”
He dialed the number from memory, put it on speaker. It rang once, twice. Hyukjae held his breath.
A click. Then the smooth, automated female voice: “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to taste. Heechul had cut the line. He’d truly vanished.
Hyukjae made a small, broken sound. He sank onto the edge of Donghae’s bed, the frame groaning under a weight it wasn’t used to. He buried his face in his hands. The position made the oversized shirt slide off one shoulder, revealing a curve of smooth skin and the strap of that sports bra.
Donghae looked away, a knot in his throat. He sat cautiously on the far end of the bed, leaving a canyon of worn comforter between them. “We’ll think of something else.”
“What?” The word was muffled by Hyukjae’s palms.
“I don’t know. But we will. Together.” He reached out, hesitated, then placed a hand on Hyukjae’s back. The touch was electric. He could feel the heat of him, the delicate architecture of spine and shoulder blade through the thin cotton. Hyukjae flinched, then went very still.
Slowly, Hyukjae lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry. He looked at Donghae’s hand on his back, then at Donghae’s face. The neon lamp painted everything in cold blue and deep shadow.
“Does this feel weird for you?” Hyukjae asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Donghae’s mouth went dry. Because I’ve wanted to touch you for years, and now I am, and it’s all wrong. Because you’re my best friend and you’re a stranger. Because you smell like a lab experiment and my stupid heart is racing. He said none of it.
“Because you’re you, but you’re not,” he managed.
Hyukjae turned his body slightly, facing Donghae. The movement made Donghae’s hand slide, coming to rest just at the dip of Hyukjae’s waist. They both froze.
“Your hands are bigger than I remember,” Hyukjae said. He wasn’t pulling away.
“Your everything is smaller.”
A faint, wry smile touched Hyukjae’s lips. “Not everything.”
The joke, crude and perfectly Hyukjae, shattered the tension. Donghae snorted, a shocked laugh escaping him. He pulled his hand back as if scorched, rubbing it on his jeans.
“You’re impossible.”
“You’re just now figuring that out?” Hyukjae laid back on the bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling. “I’m exhausted. My body aches. Everything’s sore. New parts are… heavy.”
Donghae lay back too, careful to keep a space between them. They lay side by side, not touching, in the darkening room. The shared silence was easier now, a fragile calm after the storm.
“We’ll sleep,” Donghae said. “Tomorrow, we’ll go to the library. Use the academic databases. There has to be something in Heechul’s published work, a clue he left behind. We’ll treat it like research.”
“You and your research.” Hyukjae sighed, a long, weary sound. “Fine. But if I wake up and my voice is even higher, I’m blaming you.”
Minutes passed. Donghae thought he’d fallen asleep. Then, in the dark, Hyukjae’s voice came, small and uncertain.
“Donghae?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. For not freaking out. For… this.”
Donghae closed his eyes. The scent of vanilla and stale coffee and his own laundry was a confusing tapestry in the air. “Where else would I be?”
There was no answer. Just the slow, steady sound of Hyukjae’s breathing evening out into sleep. Donghae stayed awake, listening to it, hyper-aware of the warmth radiating from the other side of the bed. The shape of his world had been bent into a new, impossible configuration. His best friend was a softly breathing silhouette beside him, and the problem they faced was written in a language of unstable chemistry and shifting bone. Sleep, when it finally came, was thin and full of flickering, purple light.
Sleep, when it finally came, was thin and full of flickering, purple light.
Donghae woke to a weight on his chest and a scent of vanilla in his nostrils. He opened his eyes to the grey pre-dawn light filtering through his cheap blinds. Hyukjae had shifted in the night, curling into his side, one arm flung across him, head tucked under his chin. His—her—hair tickled Donghae’s throat.
He didn’t dare move. Hyukjae’s breathing was deep and even, a soft rhythm against his collarbone. The shape of him fit against Donghae’s side all wrong, a new topography of curves and softness. A fierce, protective ache bloomed in Donghae’s chest. This was still Hyukjae. The person he’d secretly loved for years. The knowledge felt like a shard of glass in his heart.
Gently, he extracted himself, sliding out from under the warmth. Hyukjae murmured, frowning in sleep, but didn’t wake. Donghae pulled the comforter back over his friend’s shoulder, his fingers brushing the skin there. It was impossibly smooth.
He shuffled to his desk, the scattered papers from Heechul’s lab a chaotic mosaic in the dull light. He needed a system. He needed coffee. Mostly, he needed to stop feeling like his world was balanced on a knife’s edge.
The notes were a nightmare of half-finished equations and manic scrawls. Words like “subjective plasticity” and “pheromonal feedback loops” were underlined until the paper tore. Donghae rubbed his eyes, the futility of it all settling in his stomach like a stone.
A soft rustle came from the bed. “Find anything?” Hyukjae’s voice was sleep-roughened, still higher than it should be, but husky.
“Just more of Heechul’s genius insanity. ‘Catalyst bonds to endogenous identity markers.’ What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m stuck.” Hyukjae sat up, the oversized shirt slipping again. He didn’t bother fixing it. “My ‘endogenous identity marker’ apparently thinks it’s time for a new look.”
“It’s not permanent.” The words were out of Donghae’s mouth before he could think, a desperate reassurance.
“You don’t know that.” Hyukjae swung his legs over the side of the bed. He moved with a new, careful grace, as if testing the ground. “It feels pretty damn permanent.”
Donghae’s eyes caught on a loose sheet that had slipped from the binder, different from the others. The paper was crisp, the handwriting slightly more controlled. A sticky note at the top read, in Heechul’s familiar scrawl, “POST-STABILIZATION PROTOCOL – CONTINGENCY.”
His breath hitched. “Hold on.”
He snatched it up. It wasn’t a detailed report. It was a single paragraph, a footnote to an apocalypse.
“‘The metamorphic state is self-sustaining but theoretically reversible,’” Donghae read aloud, his voice flat. “‘The compound aligns the physical form with a perceived, psychosomatic ideal. Stability is maintained by a feedback loop between form and conscious self-image.’”
“English, Donghae.”
“‘To break the loop, an… exogenous biological agent of high compatibility is required.’” Donghae’s throat tightened. He forced himself to read the last line, the words feeling like stones in his mouth. “‘A fundamental, physiological confirmation from a compatible male source can reset the baseline morphology.’ There’s a… a clarifying note scribbled in the margin.”
Hyukjae was standing now, watching him. “What does it say?”
Donghae looked up from the page, meeting Hyukjae’s gaze across the cluttered room. The neon lamp’s hum was the only sound. He recited the margin note verbatim, his own voice alien to him. “He wrote… ‘In layman’s terms, not permanent. Body will change back once a male semen is in Hyukjae’s female body.’”
The silence was absolute.
Hyukjae blinked. He looked down at his own hands, then back at Donghae. A laugh bubbled out of him, sharp and jagged. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“So Professor Crazy’ grand solution is…” Hyukjae trailed off, running a hand through his messy hair. “Is that? Sex? That’s the protocol?”
“It says ‘exogenous biological agent.’ ‘Physiological confirmation.’” Donghae’s face was burning. “He made it sound like a… a chemical key.”
“A chemical key.” Hyukjae’s laughter died, leaving his face hollow. He paced two steps, the limited space making the movement seem caged. “So to fix this, I need to… get…”
He couldn’t say it. Donghae couldn’t say it either. The sentence hung between them, vulgar and absurd and horrifyingly specific. Male. Semen. Hyukjae’s female body. The clinical words from the page morphed into a brutal, visceral image in the quiet room.
Hyukjae stopped pacing. He looked at Donghae, a strange, assessing glint in his eye. “Compatible male source. What does that mean? Medically compatible? Like… blood type?”
“I don’t think Heechul was thinking about blood type,” Donghae said, his voice low.
“So anyone?” The question was a challenge.
“I don’t know!” Donghae stood up too fast, his chair scraping the floor. “It’s not a recipe! It’s the deranged footnote of a mad scientist who turned you into a… a…”
“A girl.” Hyukjae finished for him, his voice suddenly quiet. He hugged himself. “So that’s the choice, huh? Stay like this forever, or… find some guy to…” He shook his head, a violent, rejecting motion. “No. Absolutely not. There has to be another way.”
“The notes don’t mention one.”
“Then we make one!” Hyukjae’s temper flared, beautiful and fierce. “We don’t just blindly follow the instructions of a guy who can’t even answer his phone! We… we synthesize an antidote. We reverse-engineer the catalyst.”
“With what?” Donghae gestured helplessly at the papers. “We’re literature and dance, Hyukjae. We’re not biochemists. This is the only concrete thing he wrote about reversal. It’s the only thread we have.”
Hyukjae stared at him, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Donghae could see the calculations happening behind his eyes, the dreadful logistics of it. The sheer, violating impossibility.
“Who, then?” The question was a whisper.
Donghae felt the world narrow to a single, piercing point. The unspoken truth he’d carried for years pressed against his ribs. He looked at his best friend, standing there in his borrowed shirt, trapped in a body that wasn’t his, asking the most terrible question imaginable.
The air between them crackled, charged with everything unsaid. Donghae opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The momentum of the night, of the revelation, carried them forward into a silence more deafening than any scream.
The silence stretched, thin and brittle, ready to shatter. Hyukjae’s gaze was a physical weight, searching Donghae’s face for an answer he couldn’t possibly give. The vanilla scent from the lab seemed to have seeped into Hyukjae’s skin, faint but persistent, mixing with the stale coffee air of the apartment.
“Who, then?” Hyukjae asked again, the words barely audible.
Donghae’s mouth was dry. He looked at the floor, at the scattered notes, anywhere but at the person in front of him. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. The words from the margin note burned in his mind. A compatible male source. He thought of strangers, of faceless men, of the violation of it. His stomach twisted.
Then he thought of Hyukjae, really thought of him. Not the new curves or the softer voice, but the person inside. The one who danced until his feet bled, who laughed too loud at his own jokes, who trusted him enough to walk into this room looking like this. The one he’d loved, secretly and hopelessly, for what felt like forever.
The answer, when it came, was shockingly simple. It bypassed fear and logic and virgin anxiety. It was a cold, clear fact in the chaos.
“Me.”
The single syllable dropped between them. Hyukjae took a sharp breath, a little inhale of surprise. Donghae forced himself to look up, to meet his friend’s wide, confused eyes.
“What?”
“It should be me.” Donghae’s voice gained a shred of strength, clinging to the practicality of it. “The ‘compatibility.’ Heechul’s notes are insane, but they’re based on something. If it needs to be… someone you’re close to. Someone whose… biological signature… somehow resonates. Who else is there?”
“No.” Hyukjae took a step back, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. That’s… that’s insane. You don’t just… volunteer for that.”
“Why not?” Donghae heard himself say, the argument forming as he spoke it. “You need a key. I’m a key. It’s a procedure. A messed-up, disgusting procedure.” He was lying to himself and they both knew it. He gestured helplessly at Hyukjae’s body. “This is the problem. I’m the logical solution.”
“You’re my best friend!” Hyukjae’s voice cracked. “You don’t get to turn yourself into some… some lab rat. My personal lab rat.” He wrapped his arms around himself, a defensive hunch. “It’s wrong. You’ve never even… I mean, have you?”
Donghae felt a hot flush creep up his neck. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The answer was written in the sudden, awkward set of his shoulders, the way his eyes flickered away.
Hyukjae stared. The anger bled out of his expression, replaced by a stunned realization. “Oh. Donghae. You haven’t.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The words were tight, forced out through clenched teeth. “It’s just a thing. A biological process. We need to reverse a biological process. It’s… symmetrical.”
“Symmetrical.” Hyukjae repeated the word like it was in a foreign language. He gave a short, brittle laugh. “You’re a virgin and you’re offering to… to fix me. Because some crazy professor wrote it in a margin. That’s not symmetrical. That’s tragic.”
“It’s not about that.” Donghae took a step forward, driven by a frustration deeper than embarrassment. “It’s about you! Don’t you get it? I can’t watch you live like this, trapped in some… some costume you can’t take off! I can’t watch you disappear!” The truth of it, raw and unfiltered, spilled out. “If there’s a way to get you back, I’ll do it. Even if it’s this. Especially because it’s this. Because it’s you.”
The room went very still. Hyukjae’s defensive posture softened, just a fraction. He searched Donghae’s face, looking for the joke, the hesitation. He found only a desperate, resolute certainty.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
Hyukjae looked away, towards the window where dawn was beginning to bleach the sky a pale grey. His throat worked. “It wouldn’t be… it wouldn’t be you and me. Not like that. It would be a… a transaction. A clinical thing.”
“I know.” Donghae did know. The hollow finality of it echoed in his chest.
“And you’d really do that.” It wasn’t a question anymore. It was Hyukjae trying to comprehend the shape of the offer, the sheer magnitude of its awkward, terrible intimacy.
“Yes.” Donghae’s voice was firm now. The decision was made. It had been made the second he’d read those words. His own inexperience, his own quiet fantasies, they were irrelevant weights on a scale that only held one thing: Hyukjae, whole again.
Hyukjae turned back to him. His eyes were bright, shimmering with a sheen of unshed tears that refused to fall. He took a slow, deep breath, his shoulders squaring with a familiar, determined set. It was the look he got before a difficult dance routine, assessing the challenge.
“Okay,” Hyukjae said, the word exhaled on a puff of air. “Okay. If we’re going to be idiots about this, we do it right. We treat it like Heechul’s stupid experiment. A protocol.”
“A protocol,” Donghae echoed, the clinical term a small shield.
“We need rules.” Hyukjae started pacing again, two steps each way. “No feelings. No… no romance. It’s a medical intervention. We’re solving a problem.”
“Right.”
“And afterwards, we never talk about it again. Ever.” Hyukjae stopped, pinning Donghae with a look. “It never happened. We go back to normal. You’re you, I’m me. We’re just us.”
The condition felt like a shard of ice slipping between Donghae’s ribs. He ignored it. “Agreed.”
Hyukjae nodded, once, sharp. The practicalities settled over them like a shroud, masking the earthquake beneath. “We need to… prepare. I don’t know how any of this works now. Not really. The… mechanics.”
Donghae’s brain, already reeling, stuttered at the word ‘mechanics.’ He hadn’t thought that far ahead. The sterile theory of it was collapsing into the painfully, embarrassingly physical. His face burned anew.
“Right,” he managed. “We’ll… figure it out.”
Hyukjae looked at the narrow bed, then back at Donghae. A faint, hysterical laugh escaped him. “This is the most messed-up thing that has ever happened to me. And that’s including the actual transformation.”
“Same.” Donghae’s own laugh was weak, more of a shaken exhale.
They stood there, two friends in a dim, messy apartment, bound by a secret more profound than any they’d ever shared. The hum of the neon lamp was the only sound. The “how” loomed, immense and terrifying. But the “if” had been decided.
Hyukjae moved first. He walked to the bed and sat down on the edge, his movements deliberate. He looked small swallowed by Donghae’s shirt, his new form outlined by the gathering morning light. He patted the space beside him, not looking at Donghae.
“So,” Hyukjae said, his voice deliberately flat, a forced calm over a sea of panic. “We should probably start.”