KatherineInfernal powers of the demon realms themselves. Nichole is weeping.

  The bottom falls out of my stomach, as the insight and wit is drained in its entirety from my thought processes, complexity of vernacur drowned out by monosylbic repetition: No, no, no, no, a desperate plea as powerless as it is repetitive. The stupid man within the depths of the immacute shell identity we have crafted for our conspiracy wavers, traumatized by the very act of injecting estradiol.

  The flesh, too, rejected the needle, demanding such immense force as to wound the skin, and yet this warning went unheeded. The elixir of feminization was injected regardless, and for what? In service of some quixotic pursuit of a mere monetary incentive! Could any amount be worth this? Could any sum compensate for this degree of pain, witnessing which—I am quickly beginning to realize—causes me a degree of undue distress I had not foreseen?

  Wait. Distress? Keep your motivations in order, Katherine. Have you lost sight of your original goal, that of protecting Nichole from her- wait, no, that of protecting Nichos from his ill-considered participation in this absurd competition? I am of two minds about this extreme commitment to the cover story now. Has it interfered with your judgment in evaluating which course of action is to be taken in Nichole’s best interests, Katherine?

  Ack. It has. The notion of referring to her as a man, that css of unfortunate beings to whom the blessed estradiol is anathema, becomes counter to intuition upon insisting on her improvisationally decred moniker and associated substitutional shorthand utterances. Once estrogenization was inevitable and her choice to falsely transition was decided upon, I lost sight of the true stakes, for it was all too easy to downpy the horror that awaits one who cks the capacity to flourish in feminization.

  I presume that such individuals are indeed scattered across the leaderboards of Ranked Competitive Breast Growth. It could not possibly be the case that all who participate are trans women, locked in a perpetual duel of the minds, all of them doing as I am. That, truly, would be an absurdity beyond all reason.

  What were we thinking about again? Wait. Yes. Nichole, who is in front of me, and I am staring at her. “Nichol-” e? -as? The silent E sneaks itself into my hesitant vocalization, as pernicious as the E currently within her veins, an accidental default which yet again makes me complicit in sealing her fate. How am I to be of assistance if I hesitate in my quest to let this man be masculine, free of the pressure to transition?

  What pressure to transition, exactly?

  No…

  Have I been-

  Of course. Katherine, does your sapphic depravity truly reach such an extent that it is not sufficient to pursue those who are already women? Do you, in fact, need to realize some potential womanhood you have falsely observed in your friend?

  Was this, in fact, my motive when I revealed the existence of the competition to her? To seduce her with the promise of monetary gain, in hopes that she would indeed adapt, that she would flourish under the competition? Am I truly so frightened of the bisexual implications of my inexplicable attraction to this man that I have decided to overrule her manhood?

  Have I inadvertently constructed a Nichole that appeals perfectly to my sensibilities in a manner which has now incited some absurd yearning for her to be real?

  Or is this a ploy on Nichole’s part, some malicious scheme of revenge for my previous act of aggression at the tribunal? Is she deliberately shedding tears, knowing that I would react to it in this precise manner? Has my investment in her potential womanhood and my resulting compulsions to that end been apparent all along? Therefore, is it in fact I who is consequently being maniputed into this feeling of coercive feminization guilt? Would Nichole be capable of such a scheme?

  I must probe this distinct possibility through a mindgame of my own.

  “Kathy? You said ‘Nichole’ and then just stared at me for a full minute, what’s up?”

  Shit. Think of something quick. What would Daniel the true believer in Ranked Competitive Breast Growth say in this situation, precisely? What would Daniel’s fwed assessment of Katherine’s ideal next move be?

  “Nichole, I lo-”

  Before I am able to deploy my masterful gambit, a sudden rap at the door interrupts us.

  “Well that’s kickoff done!” Jeffrey ughs, poking his head in. “One down, right Nichole?”

  “Uh, yeah! One down, tits to go.” Nichole turns away from me fully, leaving me even more irrationally, inexplicably forlorn. “Guess we’re officially competitors.”

  “For the quarter’s prize I think, it sure is going to be hard for anyone to catch up with Laura for the grand prize, now that I see what a Champion’s chest looks like!” Jeffrey shrugs good-naturedly, effusing a maddening esprit-de-corps I cannot help but be thoroughly irritated at. “So I guess you and I are direct competitors now, just like Kathy and Kyle.”

  Wait.

  “Just like …” Nichole is simirly thrown off by Jeffrey’s matter-of-fact procmation. “Kyle? Our fourth and final roommate Kyle? That Kyle?”

  “Well, yeah. Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was in!” Jeffrey turns from Nichole’s expression of disbelief to mine. “You’ve spoken to him on the server!”

  “I have?” I inquire, sincerely.

  “His username on the Accord is ‘Kyle’!” Jeffrey’s appalling ignorance is on full dispy, as he forgets to account for the common knowledge that multiple people may indeed be homonymous to each other. A common simplification, yet one I have left behind, due to its strategic inadequacy for anticipating the actions of one George, when operating on fwed intelligence which was provided regarding a separate, distinct George. Such failures do not weigh heavily on me, for I have risen above them, and do not dwell on them during sleepless nights, at all, I swear. I counter:

  “That could have been anyone.”

  “You’ve yelled at him in the strat channel!” And? I have eviscerated many foes in the colosseum of strategy. Such incidents are of no note to me.

  “Oh, that Kyle.” I frown. “I didn’t really make the connection.”

  JeffreyKickoff was eventful.

  I go to Nichole’s room to congratute her. She already looks more alive. Her smile is radiant now in a way mine has never been. Perhaps never could be.

  The estrogen to her is a missing balm. To me it is a newfound addiction. A drug I take because I want to be more like what guys truly desire.

  I push back thoughts of how unappealing my form is. Especially to …

  “Kyle?” Nichole asks, stunned. “Our fourth and final roommate Kyle? That Kyle?”

  Yes, Kyle. Sure, he keeps to himself, but how could they have not noticed? How could they be so uninterested in Kyle?

  I turn to Katherine in disbelief. “You’ve yelled at him in the strat channel!”

  “Oh, that Kyle.” To my surprise, she actually frowns. “I didn’t really make the connection.”

  Of all the faults that Nichole and Katherine dispy as roommates, their self-absorption is both foremost and frankly inexplicable. Kyle commands attention. Kyle has been impossible for me to ignore, no matter how hard I tried, and I’ve been trying since the day we moved in.

  He’s not exactly buff, but nor is he slight—stocky, well-built, taller than even me, which isn’t uncommon but is still appreciated whenever I see it in a man. The moment I id eyes on him—you know how in those romance novels that you’re not supposed to read as a man but that you guiltily steal from your older sister to frantically page through under cover of dark, that always describe how tall, dark, and handsome men are, but for some reason everyone insists “dark” means “dark-haired white man”?

  Well, I never pictured that. I swear this is true: I think I’ve always pictured Kyle. Not “guys like Kyle”, but Kyle, with his jet-bck hair and eyes and swarthy skin that on that day was gleaming slightly from perspiration and exertion, and just the safest-looking arms and shoulders and chest.

  Yes, I’ve always pictured Kyle.

  I didn’t know then exactly where he was from—still don’t, and he hasn’t told me. I offered to help him move a box upstairs but he just grunted and did it himself, because of course he didn’t need the help in the slightest. I wondered if he didn’t want to appear weak in front of me, another man, a man belonging to a demographic that frequently belittles and denigrates guys like him, to my utter and undying shame. I was painfully aware at that moment that Kyle was likely painfully aware of having to room with three white people, and whether he was from here or anywhere else, I knew that I had to go out of my way to make him comfortable. The second I was finished packing away my own things, I sought him out in the common room.

  “Kyle, I want you to know that I have absolutely nothing against your kind.”

  I confess, I was not expecting him to stare at me with shock, nor roll his eyes the way he did.

  So I tried to figure out where I’d gone wrong without burdening him further, and to my mounting mortification, I realized that my being so sheltered and inexperienced in matters of talking to people external to my own homogenous, somewhat conservative culture had led me to other him needlessly, even when trying to convey the best of attentions. Resolving to do better, I read up on everything I could regarding both the topic of racial justice—a subject my own school and parents had never exposed me to—and the travails of South Asian immigrants in particur. When next I spoke to Kyle, I knew I’d have the perfect apology in hand.

  “Kyle, I’m sorry, but I’ve realized that as a white person, I will always benefit from your marginalization.”

  That was when I realized that Kyle made me too nervous to talk like a normal, sane human being.

  It’s not his fault, you know. It’s not his fault that I’m just an idiot white guy who will never get a perfect, sweet, soft-faced but firm-chested nerdy Adonis—or in his case, Arjuna—like Kyle to give me even a second gnce, not when I look a ft sb of sour abaster hewed from a grimy ancient marble column that some fucking racist probably cims proves the ‘innate superiority of white culture’, barf.

  Still, I try. I can’t stop trying. I tried as little as two hours ago, before kickoff.

  “I’ve been reading up a lot on your culture and customs, Kyle,” I announced to him while doing the dishes—he does the dishes a lot because Nichole and Katherine just don’t, which isn’t fair, so I’ve been doing them more. “The festivals and poojas and temple rituals—it really is a rich, vibrant tradition.”

  When Kyle’s response was preceded by his signature intake of breath between his teeth—indicating how much his patience was being tried—I wasn’t any more upset than usual. I’d made peace with the fact that I would never be able to utter a word to him with the appropriate degree of sensitivity.

  “I’m Christian.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “We have those, you know,” he pointed out, understandably vexed at my incessant fuck-ups.

  “Of course—I mean, I should have known, given your name,” I muttered sheepishly.

  “You know Kyle isn’t my actual name, right?” Kyle put away the pte he had been drying—even when he can’t stand me and knows he’s doing more than his fair share, he still lends a hand because he’s just a saint and I’m just a worm. “My actual name’s been mangled so many times, I had to make a more anglicized one for y’all’s benefit.”

  “I mean, I’d be happy to use it!” I perked up, hoping he’d tell me.

  “It’s Kaappan.”

  Nope, that is not a name I should even attempt to besmirch with my stupid uncultured white mouth.

  “Wow, that’s so, well, it’s very …”

  “Foreign,” Kyle finished for me, putting down the st bowl with the dishrag. “I’ll be in my room. Good luck with kickoff.”

  For my sake, I really, really hope that I only imagined his door smming shut a bit too hard.

  He has a girlfriend, you see. I think about that miserably whenever I’m in my room trying on new outfits, thinking about how much prettier she’d probably look in my newest skirt or leggings or frilly ce thing. Why would Kyle ever give me, in my unremarkable, uninspired, unattractive ghastly get-ups, any attention? I bet he’s hounded by pretty girls who aren’t secret perverts, who don’t have to look up slur-filled erotic videos every time they have a pang of longing for him.

  Why couldn’t I have been a pretty girl? Why couldn’t I have been trans? Why did I have to just be a silly boy who didn’t know how to move on, a cliche stereotype of a bottom pining for his heterosexual roommate ssh competitor in a ranked breast growth competition?

  I am happy for Nichole and Katherine. I do not understand them. Shaking my head, speechless, I simply close the door to Nichole’s room and retire for the night.

  I don’t cry as much into the pillow this evening.

  I fall asleep eventually.

  KyleThe wordy one accosts me when I return to put away the rest of the dried dishes.

  “So, finally, it is revealed,” she blubbers, already worsening my headache. “We are in the same quarter, you and I.”

  “Yes. I’ve mentioned that. Several times.” I reach up to open the cabinet doors, gd for the excuse to turn away from whatever trite cartoon gestures she’s now making. “Just like I’ve mentioned your inability to actually do any dishes. Several times.”

  “I assure you, I was merely biding my time.”

  “Sure you were.”

  There’s still half a linear algebra problem set waiting on my desk, so I’m hoping whatever overly-loquacious, now in-person bther Boymoder Sephiroth has in store for me can at least be concise by her standards.

  “Firstly, I apologize for characterizing you as, um …”

  “I believe it was ‘one whose low standing is predestined by inferior genetics’.”

  “... Given this context I was cking at the time, I ought to have chosen my words with more caution.”

  “Much more awkward when you have to look the guy you’re delivering vilin speeches to in the eye, eh?”

  “And yet I cannot help but notice that you are, indeed, distinctively a guy.” She looks smugger than usual. “If I’m competing with someone whose meagre ‘gains’ his girlfriend hasn’t even noticed, I suppose I have less to worry about than I thought.”

  So that’s what it’s come to. Offline as well as on. I tuck away the st bowl and close the cabinet door, rounding on her with a little more anger on my face than I wanted to show. At least the sight of it leaves her suitably chastised.

  “You talk more smack than the champion with the middest gains in the whole cohort,” I snap. “So even if I had reasons to worry about you, your numbers wouldn’t be one.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean if?”

  “I mean that you’re not competition,” I scoff. I knew that’s what this friendly chat was about. “You’re so obviously trans-identified it’s not even funny.”

  Miraculously, I have the pleasure of witnessing her speechless.

  “Such accusations, I suspect, are merely the filings of one who cannot succeed at this brilliant scheme,” she eventually recovers. “Especially not whilst courting a woman of the heterosexual persuasion.”

  “This is not a retionship worth a hundred thou.” I’m sneering now, gd to finally let it out. “Honestly, after all this time cooped up with you and Jeffrey and all your gay antics, I’m going to enjoy beating you at your own game. Then I can maybe finally move out of this bloody fruit basket of an apartment.”

  “... So that is the nature of your scheme.”

  “Oh, not right away!” I ugh, actually enjoying myself. I see why she does this. “I’ll let you stew for a bit, get your hopes up, make you wonder whether I have enough to knock you out. Then I’ll do it. When I feel like it. Because you’re not that careful, ‘Daniel’.”

  When I see her reaction, I do wonder whether using the other name was a bit too far.

  “Anyway, do your damn dishes and I might give you an extra week. Goodnight.”

  There was more I wanted to say to that idiot white girl and her obliviousness, but I honestly couldn’t stand the look she was giving me. For the second time in one evening, I sm my door shut, hoping I’ve made some kind of point.

  Hoping no one notices I’m hiding my mounting panic.

  I just want the money. I just want to be able to get out of here fast, without having to endure two more years of college under the yoke of my hovering fundie parents. That is all I want. Money. Nothing else.

  That’s why I’m so distressed when I strip my torso bare and stare at myself in the mirror instead of starting my problem set. No gains. The barest hint of breast buds. The primal, animalistic cwing within my stubbornly-ft chest as I look at myself for the hundredth time today, trying to will the fat from the rest of my body into my infuriating ftpecs, is purely for monetary reasons.

  Well. Monetary reasons, and knowing that without that money, I have to call my mother religiously, every two days, and smile brightly while telling her just how much I get along with her best friend’s daughter, so as to keep her hopes of an eventual long and happy marriage between my girlfriend and me alive.

  A marriage where I’d live with my parents until I was forty-five, working at dad’s company 9-5, day after day after identical, monotonous day, wearing suits and carrying briefcases and sporting the fttest of ft pecs.

  Grow, dammit.

  KatherineInconceivably disastrous. Utterly repugnant. A wreck of a conversation on every level. Kaappan has attained the coveted high ground across all strata of rhetorical combat, and I am left failing to wield this pathetic brush, the might of which pales in comparison to that of the encrusted stains left by meals from a bygone era.

  I must account for this new information and reassess my priorities. Primarily: Is my trans woman cover strategy truly as precarious as he cims? If so, I must devise a counterpy, accounting for all new information I have obtained.

  It depends on the server culture, and how I may leverage its biases in my favor. Certainly, its perception of masculinity is skewed to an extent where an accusation of transfemininity from him might, under the right circumstances, be turned around, reflected, ultimately causing his defeat. It would be a simple matter, to weave a narrative of one who is envious, enraged by the injustice foisted upon her, that she is to have none of what I am getting in such abundance.

  Yes, and surely the server’s demographics, notably menin-deficient as they are, would tend to biases that operate in my favor. A reprehensible stratagem, one that cws at the edges of my morality, yes.

  But would the man I am pretending to be harbor such reservations?

  Is it not essential to my survival within this game that I act according to the morality of that fictitious individual?

  No, Katherine. You will not succumb to this temptation. It is profane. A hard boundary of lows to which you cannot stoop is essential. The power of racism, whether wielded ‘tactically’, ‘ironically’ or otherwise, is a corrupting force. To forge pacts with this demon is a losing move, a failure point of far greater importance than mere victory.

  It is even more reprehensible than force-feminizing your unwitting companion.

  This, too, is an evident force of evil with which I have found myself inadvertently tampering. Truly, this sport is a test of all my morals, straining at my very strong moral foundations which I apply consistently, actually.

  Absconding from this frightening tendency only risks allowing it to fester, as it has before my realization struck. The only course of action to curb this beast within me, this devouring mother seeking to overrule all that is Nichole. I must face it head on. The conspicuously forward engineered love confession tactic must wait.

  I retreat to my chambers, ensuring that the door is locked.

  I must do research.

  EmmyI have been forced to consider, on more than one occasion, whether Laura’s true gambit is to neutralize me as a threat to her unquestioned dominance.

  Before, when I was simply boymoding in public, I certainly drew the odd gaze or excmation of ire, but I did not have to spend so much time on … this. On caring about what dress matches with what shoes, what shade of makeup suits my skintone best, and whether Laura and I can convincingly project the curated image of two lesbians when out and about, hand in manicured hand, visiting teashops and patisseries and even the occasional museum, of all things.

  All my number-crunching and statistical analysis on the median products best-deployed by women of my complexion amount to naught because Laura chooses anyway—decorating me like yet another accessory on her arm, painting me like one of her miniatures to adorn her victorious ps about the city, funting both the prize-winners she refers to as “the ideal male form”, as well as her utterly domesticated, diminished, disarmed pet.

  And I like it.

  That’s the one confounding variable I haven’t been able to account for, no matter how hard I tweak the parameters. I like being an accessory on Laura’s wrist, a prettied-up doll to accentuate whatever ensemble she wants to effortlessly dispy. I like coming to her apartment when she calls, dropping literally everything to spend another moment at her heel. I like feeling pretty, oh my gosh I like it more than I thought I would, given a lifetime of being told that I could never—should never—be pretty.

  I, Emmy, the runner-up of Ranked Competitive Breast Growth, the server’s only hope at ending the Mistress of Mammaries’ reign of terror, have stopped caring that Laura The Impenetrable is the single most obvious, brazen, and shameless trans woman to have ever graced the Accord, presiding over a throng of helpless men who can only look on in impotence and awe as she mangles gender philosophy to keep her participation in this sham secure.

  Because by gosh, she makes me feel pretty.

  She makes me feel other things, too. Used, in the best ways, in ways I’ve always wanted but I realized I never quite had, because no one else ever quite looked at me like she does. I wonder if it’s because she wants to literally fuck it out of me: the confession, the admission that, for all our accords about keeping our privacy private, she will gleefully leak the moment I, in the throes of body-shaking ecstasy, admit that I am in fact her pretty little princess.

  It’s not that I don’t want to.

  Unfortunately, Laura cannot sweetly, sensually torture out of me a truth that isn’t there.

  Laura The Impenetrable is the most beautiful woman who has ever deigned to consort with me. That much is beyond question. What I am beginning to suspect, however, is that her machinations, pleasurable though they may be, will cease the moment she cannot secure what she wants out of me. When she finally, heartbreakingly realizes that I’m just not what she believes me to be, all of this—the glitter, the gold, the locking me inside a cage I’d never flee if you handed me the key—will be snatched away, when I again prove unable to give someone what they want from me.

  See, I’m beginning to suspect that Laura thinks I’m like her.

  And I’m just not.

  That truth is so obvious, it threatens to blind me more harshly than the sheer radiance of her most wicked smile, or the aureate majesty of her dress, her immacutely-polished face—fuck it, her soul. Laura’s a real woman, see, because she actually wants to be one. She actually burns at the imposition of a sexed injustice on her perfect form, through an accident of birth that was never hers to be burdened with—though, everything she’s forged it into is all the more beautiful for her expert craftswomanship. Laura is a woman in a way most wish they could be, in a way I wish I could be … but most of us are common cy, not gold to be panned from silt.

  I don’t hate fucking Laura.

  I could never hate fucking Laura.

  I am just a fucking straight guy who just loves fucking the amazing woman who has for whatever reason decided he’s worth allowing the privilege.

  I want to be her girlfriend, sometimes. I really, really do. When her legs close around me and her fingernails dig into the muscles of my back and she says the raunchiest, loveliest, filthiest things into my ear, I really really want to believe I’d be happy to doing this with a strap, or my fingers, or just any other way where I could inhabit the same kind of body Laura clearly, desperately wants.

  But I don’t.

  That’s just not what I want.

  And it’s fucking killing me.

  She’s sitting there, moonlit, taking a moment in front of the mirror, removing jewelry and eyeshadow and other adornments she’d left on for my pleasure, as though I could ever deserve such consideration, such care from a goddess. She’s going to come back soon, going to want more, as much as I do, and I can’t fucking wait.

  And as much as I enjoy the body I now have, I can’t pretend I want it to change any more, not as much as Laura does.

  “Relentless, sis.”

  No sooner does she finish wiping her lipstick off than is she already straddling me again, and I’m unable to deny how much that excites me. I clench my fists, willing my body rigid, in a pantomime of straining against the fake restraints she’s strapped me into.

  This is different, though. She hovers, keeping me in a spot that I can only helplessly throb against, quivering with anticipation.

  “You’re so hard.”

  Laura snickers, and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.

  “Well,” I manage to gasp, somehow—she hasn’t put the gag back in. “The HRT did nuke my refractory period.”

  “Not more than I will.”

  Her torso descends, pressed against mine, and I could cry at the sheer intimacy of feeling practically all of her with all of me, barely suppressing actual convulsions.

  “You’re really not going to respecc, then?”

  Shuddering, I try to focus on what she’s saying, hard though it is. “I don’t want to. I’m sure.”

  Honesty. I don’t want her to be more disappointed than she already will be. I brace myself for her to freeze, to push away from me, to throw my clothes at me and demand I vacate her room at once.

  Instead, I feel her … grip me harder, like she wants to crush me between her thighs.

  “Good.”

  I gulp. “Good?”

  “Yeah.” Laura begins to move against me, keeping me maddeningly between—oh.

  I realize, finally, where she’s positioned me. The spot where it will be—where it should be.

  “Because when I’m back,” she whispers through fangs bared an inch from my ear, “when I’m done staying with my family and healed up and flying all the way back to you, my pet …”

  Sounds that I didn’t know I could make emerge from my throat.

  “I want you to be the first to cum inside me.”

  As if in anticipation, as if responding to that commandment, my body—as it always does—obeys Laura, giving her everything she wants out of me, and more to spare.

  NicholeOk. Holy shit. I’m on estrogen. Kathy is leaving me alone. I’m alone and I’m on estrogen.

  What now?

  Let’s see. Kathy was about to say something after kickoff. She did the stare where it looks like she’s about to say something important, and then?

  Hm. Okay. Before Jeff interrupted with Kyle Lore, which I sure hadn’t caught on to, she was starting a sentence.

  I pull up “words that start with ‘lo’” on some website covered in ads. There’s a bunch of them, and I should probably filter them down a bit for manageability. Katherine’s idiosyncrasies with sentence structuring don’t generally put anything other than verbs and adverbs after I, and–

  My thoughts are so fast? I’m so aware of what I’m doing right now? Holy shit. I check the Accord server. They’ve assigned her a role, “Boymoder Sephiroth,” because she keeps changing her username. Today it’s “Radiant Glory of Overwhelming Fury.” Timestamps. Nothing since kickoff, and before kickoff she was doing… “progcourse”. Shit, I need to look into prog strats too, but okay. Verbs on “lo”.

  Some of them fit her idiosyncratic vernacur, I guess. Wow, she was holding that in for a while between school and changing up her presentation. It suits her, honestly. Wonder why I felt the need to call it cringe back then?

  Loathe. Lout? Is that a verb? Guess it is, but she wouldn’t use that, I think. Look? ‘Nichole, I look upon you with something something, for it is such and such.’ Believable. Loiter? Yeah, she does do that, on my bed.

  Lots of possibilities, huh. Shit, I feel so alive.

  I love being on estrogen! Is it supposed to make my heart hammer this much?!