Morning light crept through my blinds, painting gold bars across the lavender dress where it hung from my closet door. I lay still for a long moment, feeling the familiar weight of the plug still nestled inside me from yesterday, and the unfamiliar lightness of my chest without a bra. The dress waited for me like a promise I had already made.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood. The floor was cold against my bare feet. I walked to the dress and ran my fingers along the fabric, feeling the thinness of it, the way it would cling to every curve the hormones were giving me. I pulled it over my head and let it settle against my skin. The fabric brushed my nipples, and I felt them stiffen immediately, pressing against the lavender like twin accusations.
I didn't look in the mirror. I didn't need to. I could feel everything — the bareness of my thighs where the dress ended mid-thigh, the absence of anything between my legs except the plug's silicone base, the soft swell of my chest where breasts were beginning to form. I grabbed my backpack and slipped out of the dorm before I could think too hard about what I was doing.
The morning air hit me as I stepped outside, cool and sharp against my bare legs. I kept my head down, my sandals slapping against the concrete path as I made my way across campus. A group of guys passed me, and one of them let out a low whistle. I felt my face burn, but I didn't slow down. I kept walking, the dress swaying with each step, the plug shifting inside me with every stride.
The lecture hall loomed ahead, a brutalist concrete block that had seen a thousand mornings just like this one. I pulled open the heavy glass door and stepped inside. The smell hit me immediately — stale coffee and floor wax, the particular scent of institutional cleaning products and too many bodies in too small a space. The fluorescents hummed overhead, casting everything in that flat, unforgiving light.
The hall was already half-full. Students scattered across the tiered seats, laptops open, phones out, the usual pre-lecture murmur filling the air. I kept my eyes forward as I walked down the aisle, my bare thighs brushing together with each step. The wooden desks were worn smooth by years of elbows and notebooks, and I could feel the eyes on me as I passed — the pause in conversations, the double takes, the whispers that started and stopped.
I reached the front row and slid into the seat closest to the professor's podium. The wooden desk was cold against my bare thighs, a shock of cool that made me catch my breath. I set my backpack on the floor and placed my hands flat on the desk, palms down, fingers spread. I could feel the weight of the room behind me, all those eyes on my back, on the thin lavender fabric that did nothing to hide the shape of my body underneath.
Sarah was two seats over. I saw her out of the corner of my eye — the sharp intake of breath when she recognized me, the way her hand froze mid-reach for her notebook. She stared for a long moment, her eyes tracing the line of my shoulders, the curve of my chest, the place where the dress ended against my thighs. I kept my eyes forward, my face burning, my hands steady on the desk.
"Jason?" Her voice was barely a whisper, but in the hush of the pre-lecture room, it might as well have been a shout.
I didn't turn my head. I just shook it once, a small movement, and said, "Not anymore."
The words came out softer than I expected, breathier, almost girlish. I heard Sarah's breath catch again, and then the scrape of her chair as she turned to face forward. I didn't look at her. I couldn't. I just kept my hands flat on the desk and waited.
The whispers started then. A low murmur behind me, spreading like ripples in a pond. I caught fragments — "that's the guy from the library" and "I saw him in the gym in a dress" and "look at his chest, is he wearing anything?" — and I felt my cheeks grow hotter, but I didn't turn around. I kept my hands flat, my back straight, my eyes fixed on the empty podium.
Professor Hendricks entered through the side door, a stack of papers clutched to her chest, her reading glasses perched on her nose. She was a small woman in her fifties, with graying hair and a no-nonsense walk that commanded the room. She set the papers on the podium and looked up, her eyes scanning the room with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing this for decades.
Her eyes reached me, and they stopped.
I saw it happen — the moment of recognition, the pause, the slight furrow of her brow as she processed what she was seeing. Her gaze dropped from my face to my chest, where my nipples pressed visibly against the thin lavender fabric, where the soft swell of my breasts was unmistakable even through the dress. She blinked. Her mouth opened, then closed. For a heartbeat, she looked almost lost.
Then she looked away. Deliberately. Her eyes skated past me like I wasn't there, and she cleared her throat and said, "We'll begin with Chapter 12 on narrative voice. Open your books, please."
Her voice faltered on the last word. Just a stutter, barely audible, but I heard it. I felt it. I kept my hands flat on the desk, my nails painted a soft pink from the bottle I'd bought at the convenience store days ago, and I stared at the podium as Professor Hendricks launched into her lecture.
She didn't look at me again.
Not once.
She called on a student in the second row, then a student in the back. She asked questions and answered them herself when no one spoke up. She wrote notes on the board in her neat, precise handwriting, and she never once let her gaze drift to the front row, to the girl in the lavender dress with her hands flat on the desk and her face burning.
The whispers behind me grew louder. I heard a snort of laughter from the back row, a sharp "dude, look at him" followed by a shushing sound. I heard someone whisper "he's got a boner or something?" and felt my stomach drop. I knew what they could see — the soft little dick that didn't work anymore, the small bulge where it pressed against the dress, the complete and total absence of anything masculine underneath.
Sarah shifted in her seat two rows over. I saw her turn to look at me, her mouth opening as if to say something, then closing again. She shook her head and faced forward, but I could feel her eyes on me for the rest of the lecture, glancing over, looking away, glancing back. Like she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.
I kept my hands flat on the desk.
The minutes crawled by. The fluorescents hummed. The wooden desk pressed cool and unyielding against my bare thighs, and I felt every second of the lecture like a weight pressing down on me. My nipples ached against the fabric, sensitive from the hormones, and I could feel the plug shifting inside me with every small movement, a constant reminder of what I was, what I was becoming.
"Now, if we turn to page 247," Professor Hendricks said, her voice steady now, her eyes fixed on the book in her hands, "we see an interesting use of unreliable narration. Can anyone identify the key markers?"
Her eyes swept the room. They passed over me — I felt them skip, like a needle jumping a groove — and landed on a student in the middle row. "Ms. Chen?"
The student answered, her voice confident, and Professor Hendricks nodded along, her gaze never once drifting back to the front row. I watched her avoid me with the same precision she brought to her lecture notes, and I understood, with a clarity that felt like ice water in my veins, that she was doing it on purpose. She didn't know how to look at me anymore. She didn't know what to call me. She didn't know if I was still Jason, or if I was something else entirely, and she wasn't willing to find out.
The laughter from the back row came again, louder this time. A male voice, carrying in the acoustics of the hall: "Dude's wearing a dress with no panties. That's just sad."
A few people laughed. A few more shushed them. I felt my face grow impossibly hotter, my hands trembling against the desk, but I didn't move. I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes fixed on the podium and I breathed, in and out, in and out, the fabric of the dress soft against my skin, the plug solid and present inside me.
Sarah's voice, barely audible: "Leave him alone."
The laughter stopped. I didn't turn to look at her. I couldn't. I just stared at the podium and breathed.
Professor Hendricks cleared her throat. "If we could focus, please." Her voice was tight, strained. She still hadn't looked at me. "Page 247. The unreliable narrator."
The lecture dragged on. I stopped hearing the words. I just sat there, hands flat on the desk, and let the minutes wash over me like water over a stone. The whispers ebbed and flowed behind me, but I stopped tracking them. I stopped tracking anything except the press of the desk against my thighs, the ache of my nipples against the fabric, the weight of the plug inside me.
And then, finally, the bell rang.
The sound cut through the room like a knife, and the murmur of conversation rose as students began gathering their things. I sat frozen for a moment, my hands still flat on the desk, my body unwilling to move. Then I pushed myself up, the wooden desk scraping against the floor, and I grabbed my backpack.
I didn't look at Sarah. I didn't look at Professor Hendricks, who was already gathering her papers with her eyes fixed on the door. I just turned and walked up the aisle, my bare thighs brushing together, the plug shifting inside me with every step, and I felt the eyes on me — all of them, everywhere, burning into my back as I walked toward the exit.
The whispers followed me out the door.
The heavy door swung shut behind me, cutting off the hum of the lecture hall and leaving me in the relative quiet of the corridor. I stood there for a moment, my hand still on the cold metal push bar, my breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The hallway stretched out before me, empty except for a janitor pushing a mop bucket at the far end, and I felt the weight of what I had just done settle over me like a second skin.
I had sat in the front row. I had let them see me. I had let Professor Hendricks look at me and look away, and I had not run. I had stayed, hands flat on the desk, and I had taken every whisper, every laugh, every burning stare, and I had not broken.
My hands were trembling. I looked down at them, at the soft pink polish on my nails, and I watched them shake. The trembling traveled up my arms, into my shoulders, and I felt my whole body start to vibrate with the aftermath of it. I pressed my palms flat against my thighs, feeling the cool fabric of the dress against my skin, and I breathed.
In. Out. In. Out.
The plug shifted inside me as I stood there, a reminder that I was still wearing it, still carrying yesterday's task with me into today. I clenched around it without thinking, and the sensation sent a small jolt through my body, a reminder of what I was becoming. I felt the soft little dick between my legs, useless and small, pressing against the dress in a way that anyone could see if they looked closely enough. I had felt their eyes on it during the lecture, heard the whispered speculation, the cruel laughter. And I had stayed.
The janitor's mop bucket squeaked as he pushed it past me, and I caught his eye for a brief moment. He was an older Black man with graying stubble and tired eyes, and he looked at me without judgment, without curiosity, just a brief acknowledgment of my presence before he looked away and continued his work. I felt a strange gratitude for that — for being seen without being examined, for being just another person in a hallway instead of a spectacle.
I pushed off from the door and started walking. My sandals slapped against the linoleum floor, the sound echoing in the empty corridor. I kept my head down, my backpack slung over one shoulder, the dress swaying with each step. The fabric brushed against my thighs, soft and insistent, and I felt the cool air of the hallway against my bare legs, against the exposed skin of my arms, against the curve of my chest where the dress did nothing to hide the shape of me.
I reached the end of the corridor and pushed through the glass doors into the morning light. The sun was higher now, warmer, and it fell across my face as I stepped outside. I blinked against the brightness and kept walking, my feet carrying me along the concrete path that led back toward the dorm.
The campus was alive around me. Students hurried between buildings, coffee cups in hand, backpacks slung over shoulders. A group of girls passed me, their conversation pausing as they registered what I was wearing, and I heard one of them whisper something I couldn't catch. I kept my eyes forward, my pace steady, and I let them stare. I had no choice. I was wearing a thin lavender dress with nothing underneath, and everyone could see exactly what I was.
I thought about the app. About the tasks still ahead, the seventy-three that remained. I thought about Derek and Thomas and the apartment at Maple and Third. I thought about the hormones coursing through my body, reshaping me from the inside out, turning me into something I had never imagined I could be. And I thought about the girl I was becoming — the one who sat in the front row in a dress with no panties, the one who let the whispers wash over her and did not run.
She was me. I was her. And I was still walking.
The dormitory came into view ahead, and I felt a small measure of relief. I just had to make it back to my room, to the privacy of four walls and a locked door, where I could sit with everything I had just done and let it settle. I just had to make it through the next few minutes, and then I could breathe.
But as I approached the entrance, I saw someone leaning against the wall beside the door. A tall figure, broad-shouldered, with dark skin and a familiar posture. He was holding a phone in one hand, scrolling idly, but when he heard my footsteps, he looked up.
It was Derek.