Queen
"I'm going, Mom."
Kae's mother turns her head, frowning. "You've made your choice? So soon?"
"It's not soon at all." It's been nearly six months. Six months of, alongside her fujoshi activities, listening to the boys degrade her about her fatness, watching the ways they looked at her. In six months, only one has stayed consistent in his kindness of her.
Her kind aren't human. They can afford to be picky, because they only mate once. Her mother took two years to find her father - an incredibly short amount of time, by their kind's terms. So Kae imagines she's probably looking like she's jumping the gun far too soon, but in truth she knows deep down that waiting longer will accomplish nothing.
Shedding her skin, however, will. Once her old skin is gone, she can begin her courtship of Mutsumi.
"You have supplies?" Her mother follows her upstairs. "Food, water?"
"Yes, and yes. Do you need to check?"
Her mother does check, because she knows how long shifting can take. Disturbances won't be tolerated. Once Kae is in here, she's here until the bitter end. Whether the shift goes wrong and something breaks or she dies choking in her own bodily fluids, she will be by herself. Nobody will come to help her.
Her mother nods at last, satisfied, and in the dark her eyes gleam with a wrongness that speaks of her other crawling beneath her skin. "I hope you know what you're doing."
"Don't worry," Kae says, as she closes the door, and bolts the locks behind her. "I do."
0-0-0-0-0-0
Transformation is painful.
It begins as a sluggishness, a stiffness in her old body. She tucks her feet under the metal bar at the end of the bed, holds herself there while her body hardens. Her skin becomes like glass; hard and easily breakable. Inside, she breaks apart from her old skin, her new body weak and mushy, and sleeps.
A week passes by in the blink of an eye, and soon she and her new body are writhing out of the old one; wings and extended jaws coming out as multiple pairs of claws drag her out. Her eyes roll around in their sockets, examining her room and ensuring she is safe. At last when it is over, she lays there in sodden sheets, panting for air, naked in her new - and final - skin.
All the weight she bulked up with is gone now, used to help her shift through the transformation. The inside of her old shell is bloody and gunky, and she happily drags it out of the bed and breaks it down, putting it into the garbage by her bed in bits and pieces. Her mother will see to the proper disposal.
She feels lighter, but also less protected. Kae grimaces at the sticky sensation covering her - remnants of her shell. She goes to the shower and washes them off, and then looks at herself in the mirror. Thin and beautiful, just like was promised. A seduction technique passed down from generation to generation, to help them find men to breed with, so they could produce children. Because of these genes, their kind have stayed alive, side for side with humanity far longer than the other breeds that elected to remain estranged from the humans.
She touches her lips. There's no gloss on them, but they're shiny regardless. Her eyes are shadowed, a touch of color on them, the lashes thick and beautiful, all the better to bring out her eye color. If she cries, she can break men's hearts.
She takes in a deep breath, and steadies herself.
She is only here for one.
0-0-0-0-0-0
School is more difficult in some ways, incredibly easy in others. As soon as her classmates know who she is, they flip out. Some of them - Nana and Iga - immediately attempt to pressure her into a date. She snubs them with a subtle flick of her hair and a turn of her back, and walks straight over to Mutsumi.
"Would you like to go to the library this Sunday with me? I have an author I think you'll enjoy reading."
Behind her, the boys make furious sounds. She ignores them. If she doesn't, she'll eat them, because right now the Queen inside her is making all kinds of noises about how they are weak and worthless, and so should provide for the next generation with their flesh. Her mother dealt with similar thoughts. She refuses to partake in flesh-eating, however tempting it might be in some cases.
The boys try again, and she snubs them a second time. This time though, when they surround her and try to grab at her, she uses her new body to push back.
"I said no. What part of that are you not understanding? I don't want to date you, or go out with you, or have you in any part of my life. You were cruel and nasty to me for years, and now suddenly you want me just because of this body. Get lost."
They don't go quietly, but at last she rails about them so furiously that they flee, terrified of what they don't understand. Mitsumi is her choice, and she will court him and remain with him if he wants her, for better or worse.
"Do you have the second book in that series you lent me earlier?" he asks her when she returns to class.
"I do," she says with a smile, and goes to get it for him.