The Future of Magic

by Bakanasakusha

Magic is wonderful, magic can do anything. But with Takeo and Sae, it tends not to do quite what they meant. Can their growing relationship (and the greater Tokyo metropolitan area) survive the strains it brings?

3. The Boy, The Girl, and The Magic of Sex?

The Future of Magic

Chapter 3. The Boy, The Girl, and The Magic of ... Sex?

I managed to catch up to Sae on her way into school the next morning.

"It worked, Sae!" I said. "Last night, I took two steps, and ended up right at my front door!"

"Great! So you can do it, too. Now we can go everywhere together!"

I shook my head. "So far I haven't gone more than a few blocks on my own. I think I'm going to need a lot of practice before I can be the one taking us to Hawaii."

She smiled. "Ah, so you want more practice kissing."

I laughed. "I hadn't quite thought of it that way, but I guess you're right." I looked around, and no one was nearby. "Let's just try a short one. I won't tell you the place, so we'll know it's me doing it."

"OK, sure."

I quickly pulled her to me and kissed her sweet lips. When I could feel the warmth rising up around us, I broke off and said, "All right, here we go!"

And we stepped around the corner and ... right into our club room. Or actually into our cramped former club room, as I had been concentrating so much on trying to summon the power that I had forgotten about the room swap.

Along with that, I had forgotten that someone else might be using the room. Miyama was sitting at the lone drawing table working on something when we suddenly popped up in front of her.

"Ahhhhhh!" she cried, then, "Oh, it's you two. Playing around with the transporter, no doubt. Don't you think it's wasteful to use such an advanced technology simply to avoid having to walk to school?"

"Uh, we were, that is, I was just practicing," I said. "I'm still working on mastering the, uh, the technology."

"I see. Well, you had best have it mastered by this afternoon. I have plans."

"I'm not sure I can promise that. Sae is the real expert on it, not me."

"Oh, is she now?" Miyama directed a withering stare at Sae, who shrank back before it.

I stepped in front of Sae to block the confrontation. "Yes, she is. Now if you'll excuse us, we have to get to class."

"All right." As we turned to go, though, Miyama said, "Wait – you, I mean you, Takeo, that girl can go."

"What's this about?" I asked, though I was afraid I knew the answer.

"I just need to confirm some minor details," she replied.

I looked over the edge of her drawing table and saw, as I suspected, that she was doing a sketch of me, and – yikes! I was nude! And, contrary to her previous assurances, everything was on display, including one particular "minor detail" between my legs that she was currently working on.

"Uh, sorry, some other time, maybe. We've got to go now," I said, and I grabbed Sae's hand and dashed out of the room.

"What's going on?" Sae asked, when we stopped at the end of the hallway. "She was drawing a picture of you, wasn't she? I only caught a glimpse, but that's what it looked like."

"Oh, I don't know about that."

"No, I'm pretty sure it was you. And" – here she blushed – "it looked like you weren't wearing anything."

"Well, maybe, but I, uh, I didn't ..." I trailed off, not sure what to say.

"Is that what she was asking about? She wanted you to pose for her? She's never seen you naked, right?"

"No, certainly not! Not ... not ... well, not since we were kids, at least. She used to pull my swim trunks off as a prank and – no, never mind that. Anyway, it wasn't anything you needed to see."

"Oh, so you don't think I should see you like, um, like that." She smiled while blushing even more heavily.

"What? No, no, it's like what you said – we'll do it when we're ready. On our own terms. And without anybody else around. Least of all, her."

She squeezed my hand. "That's fine with me."

I figured that required another kiss, but as I was about to go for one, a bunch of people burst through the doorway next to us, headed to class.

So instead, "Uh, see you after school," I offered awkwardly, and we went our separate ways.

I don't suppose any of you will be surprised to hear that, as a result of our little discussion, all I could think about during class was when Sae and I would be ready to, uh, share everything like that. We'd be in Sae's bedroom, perhaps, sitting on her bed together; we'd just taken a couple of Ryoko's pills; Sae would say in the barest of whispers, "I'm ready"; she'd start to unbutton her blouse; but I'd say, "Don't you think we should undress each other?"; and we'd begin to undo –

"Mr. Takakura, would you please answer the question?"

Startled out of my, let's say, reverie, I looked up and saw a quadratic equation on the board. Simple enough – this was just a review session – but what exactly was the question?

I decided to cover all the bases. "The x intercepts are at 3 and 5, the maximum is 1, at x=4, and the y intercept is of course -15."

"A very nice catalog, Mr. Takakura, but that was not my question."

I looked blank. What could he be asking, then? Fortunately, at that moment, Aburatsubo held up his notebook so I could see it, and pointed to the word "derivative" he had written in large letters.

"Oh, yes, of course, the derivative is -2x+8."

"Thank you. I do apologize for how boring you evidently find my class to be. Perhaps you will find this set of problems more interesting." And he handed me a lengthy worksheet. "Let's hope you can pay attention enough to finish all these by tomorrow."

That set the tone for the whole day. In English class, I was preoccupied with how to undo Sae's skirt – there was a (short) zipper, I was pretty sure, but was it a button or a snap at the top? In chemistry, I had moved on to her bra – a hook in the rear, and not one of those front closures, right? Classical Japanese was taken up with some techniques I had read (never mind where) on smoothly removing a girl's panties. By the time Modern History class rolled around, Sae was completely undressed (in my mind, I mean), and we were busy exploring each other, and not the causes for the growth of militarism in the late Taisho era.

At the end of the school day, I had a stack of supplemental worksheets to complete, along with a set of mental images that caused a bit of, let's say, discomfort when I ran into Sae in the stairwell. There she was, wearing all the clothes I had made detailed plans for removing, and having the body that I had made detailed plans for, well, you know.

"Uh, hi, I, uh ..." I began, then trailed off, too embarrassed by my thoughts to say anything more.

Sae turned bright red on seeing me. Which made me suddenly remember what Miyama had said about telepathy. Sae had all these unexpected powers showing up – could she have developed telepathy, too? If she could read my mind now – yikes, she'd never speak to me again!

But it turned out it wasn't my thoughts that were the issue. "Hi," she said. Then, turning even redder, she went on, "I was thinking, we have a few minutes before the meeting, so maybe we could practice the, um, moving stuff. Just a short one, say over into the greenhouse. OK?"

"Oh, ok, sure." I looked around, and the stairwell was empty. "Let's be quick, before somebody comes."

She nodded, and I folded her into my arms, and kissed those lips which, along with various other body parts, had occupied so much of my mind that day.

The body parts proved to be an issue, as they were all I could think about as I felt them pressed against me. I only managed the barest image of the greenhouse amidst my continuing obsession with Sae's charms. Oh, well, it wasn't far, and Sae was thinking of it too, so that should be enough to take us there.

When the warmth rose up and surrounded us, I reluctantly pulled back and said, "Let's go!"

We took two steps, there was a blinding light, and a violent wrenching feeling overcame me. Then everything cleared and – nothing. I mean, nothing had changed; we were still standing in the same stairwell.

"I guess it didn't work," I said. "Sorry, I was having trouble concentrating, and –" I stopped, noticing there was something off with my voice. It was much higher, almost squeaky. And I had this weird, light feeling. And my legs felt kind of ... cold?

I looked down and saw why. Huh? My legs were totally bare! My pants were gone! Had our magic somehow disintegrated them?

No, wait, it wasn't that, it was I was wearing ... a skirt? One of the school uniform skirts. And the socks and shoes and – "Uh oh! It looks like I teleported into your clothes somehow. Sorry!" I said, still in that odd high voice.

A strangely familiar male voice replied, "I ... I don't think it was just the clothes."

I turned and saw ... me. Or someone who looked like me, at least. "What the – who are you?" I asked, totally confused.

"I'm Sae, of course. Or rather, I'm you. Or rather, I'm Sae in your body. Just like you're Takeo in my body."

"Huh?" A sudden panic swept over me. Was I really now Sae? Or in Sae's body, at least? Involuntarily, I reached up to my chest and felt ... breasts?! When I realized what I was doing, I jerked my hands away and cried, "Ack! Sorry! I didn't mean to – to touch your ..."

The Sae-who-was-me giggled, which sounded very peculiar in my voice. "You should apologize to yourself, not me. They're yours, at least for now."

"Oh, right. So what happened?"

"We must have teleported into each other's body somehow, instead of to the greenhouse. Apparently this spell is capable of more than we realized."

"Ah, that makes sense." Sae-as-me's voice was calm and reassuring, which was just what I needed in my jittery, panicked state. Quite a role reversal, I thought. I wondered, what caused my panic? Female hormones? No, that's sexist! I was just caught off-guard, is all.

"I'm afraid it's my fault," Sae-as-me said. "After this morning, I kept thinking about you, um, your body, like in the picture. So when we kissed, I guess I went there, I mean here, in your body, which must have pushed you here, I mean there, in my body."

"Oh." I felt my face turning red. "Actually, it's just as much my fault. More, even. Ever since this morning, I've been thinking about, uh, when we'll be ready to, uh, you know, see each other, and what I'd see and all, so I guess I ..."

Sae-as-me [this is getting tiring, so I'll just say Sae from now on] put a hand on my shoulder. "That's ok. It's like you said, we're not destined to have secrets from each other. But I think we need to get back to our own bodies now. We're better off seeing each other from the outside rather than the inside."

"I agree. So, we just think of our own bodies and do it again, right? That should be easy enough. Let's go!"

I concentrated on what my (original) body felt like and prepared for the kiss – but pulled away. "Oops, sorry," I said. "It's just weird to try to kiss myself. Or at least what looks like myself."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Let's try closing our eyes first."

Which we did, but which also made it a little hard to find each other's lips, especially with Sae being taller than I was used to, and me being shorter. Finally, after some flailing around, we made contact.

Unlike (the original) Sae's soft and warm lips, the new Sae's – that is, mine – were somewhat rough and hard. But the feeling of being enveloped in her – I mean his – no, let's stick with her – strong arms was soothing, and I quickly fell into the mood of the kiss. I didn't really feel the usual warmth around us, but I figured that's because I still wasn't used to the bare legs.

When we had done it long enough, we parted, took two steps, and – nothing. No flash of light, no feeling of movement, nothing at all.

"That's odd," Sae said. "Let's try it again."

We did, but again with no result. As we were about to try a third time, though, Kimura-sensei, the vice principal, appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "Hey, you two!" he said. "None of that on school property! You especially, Takakura! Remember, you already have one strike against you."

"Sorry!" we cried, and dashed upstairs.

"I'm not sure what's going on," Sae said, when we stopped in a little alcove to catch our breath. "It's like our magic isn't working any more."

"Hmm, let me see," I said. I pulled out my – or actually, Sae's – wand and tried a few simple spells. Absolutely nothing happened. "Why don't you try, Sae?" I asked.

"OK, here goes." She did a few spells, with the same (lack of) results as mine. "Should we try something together?" she asked.

"All right." I thought for a moment. "Let's do that object visualization spell again." I smiled. "And since we apparently can't stop thinking about it anyway, let's use Miyama's drawing as the object."

She blushed slightly, but nodded. And together, the two of us repeated:

"Kushushu kasukes! Igomas tez kasukes! Towindour tez kasukes!"

But again, nothing at all happened.

I scratched my head, which was a little startling when I felt Sae's mass of hair up there. "Now that I think about it," I said, "I remember reading something about how true magic arises from the connection between soul and body. I guess for us, those are kind of disconnected right now."

"That's for sure. But what are we going to do about it?"

"We'll just have to ask the other club members for help getting us back. Maybe Ryoko, too. The four of them together should be enough, I think."

"All right. We'd better get to the club room, then."

"Yeah, ok." I was about to head off, when I realized I was feeling a pressure, uh, down there. "Oh, wait, excuse me," I said, "I better stop at the restroom first ..."

"Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot to go earlier."

"That's ok, I'll handle it."

But when I pushed on the restroom door, Sae said, "Stop! Don't go in!"

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because that's the boys' restroom."

"Yes, and – oh, right. Sorry."

I turned, faced the door of the girls' restroom, and froze. Was I really going to go in there? Into what years of conditioning had told me was forbidden space? But then the pressure from my, or rather Sae's, bladder informed me I had no choice. Just go in and act like you belong there, I told myself. Because, for now at least, you do.

So I did. Through the door, where I tensed up again when I saw a girl standing at the sink, looking herself over in the mirror. Ah, I knew her – it was Tomoko, who's been in my class since kindergarten. I relaxed. She was fine; we've always been pretty friendly with each other.

"Hi, Tomo-chan," I said, in a deliberately casual tone.

She turned and looked me over. "Do I know you?"

"Sure, it's me, Takeo –" I stopped. Oops. "I mean, I'm Takeo's boyfriend, er, girlfriend. Sae. Sae Sawanoguchi."

"Oh, that's right, I've seen you hanging around him lately. Well, my sympathies."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"He's kind of a – No, never mind. You'll find out soon enough. Goodbye."

That was disconcerting, but Sae's body again reminded me I was there for something else. I entered one of the stalls, shut the door, and – uh oh, now what? I was going to have to, how shall I put it, work equipment I wasn't familiar with. And which I didn't exactly have the owner's permission to look at, let alone handle.

But the only alternative was to pee all over Sae's clothes. No choice, then. I wasn't too sure of my ability to aim, so I figured it was safest just to take everything off. I undid the skirt which, I noticed, did indeed have a button above the short zipper, and stepped out of it. I looked down at Sae's panties – white cotton, with baby blue polkadots – and took a deep breath. Again, no choice, I told myself. And I quickly slipped them off.

I suppose you're expecting me to describe what I saw. Except, I don't know, it seems a little unfair to Sae for me talk about all her private parts when, again, she hadn't exactly given me permission to see them in the first place. Anyway, you know what girls look like, right? And if you don't, you probably shouldn't be reading this sort of thing as a source of information. Let's just say, she looked nice. Everything was in order. Very neat and tidy. Just the way that – oh, yeah, I really needed to pee.

I squatted down and spread my, I mean, Sae's legs obscenely wide, trying hard not to get any on myself anywhere. Fortunately, her body knew just what to do, and after some initial splatter I successfully relieved myself.

I was starting to relax when I remembered I wasn't quite done. I'd have to clean up before getting dressed again. Which meant I'd have to (gulp) touch things down there. I grabbed a wad of tissue and delicately dabbed it against the area. It was more than a little strange, not having the usual, you know, male stuff there, but I decided after a while that it felt all right anyway. I started pressing harder, making sure everything was nice and dry, and it felt even better. Mmm, this was kind of nice – wait, what the heck was I doing?

I quickly stood up and flushed. Get the clothes back on before you get too involved down there, I ordered myself. I pulled the panties back up, redid the skirt, and smoothed everything out until it looked more or less ok. I stepped out into the (fortunately empty) restroom, washed my hands, and exited to meet up with Sae.

"Sorry to take so long," I said. "I had a little trouble –"

"Your skirt!" she said to me in a low voice.

"Oh, it's fine, I didn't get it wet or anything."

"No, you have it on backwards. The button is supposed to be on this side."

"Oh." That explained why it was lumpy in the front and tight in the back. "Sorry, I'll just –"

"No, not out here! Go back in the restroom to redo it."

"Oh, right." I quickly headed back, redid it, and checked everything over carefully until I was sure it was right.

"Sorry, I'm still getting used to this girl stuff," I said to Sae when I returned. "It's harder than it looks."

"You're telling me!" she laughed. "But I'll admit this boy stuff is a little hard to get used to, too. Hopefully we'll be back to our usual pretty soon."

We hurried off to the club room, where the meeting had already started. Which meant we'd have to wait until afterward to get things straightened out. Oh, well, being Sae wasn't that bad. Actually it was kind of interesting.

What wasn't so interesting was the cross look Aburatsubo gave us when we entered. "I see our distinguished ex-president has finally deigned to make his appearance. Takeo-kun, if you please."

I looked blank. What was this about? Then I remembered that we had decided yesterday (which now seemed like eons ago) that I should give the new recruits a lecture on the history of magic, in the hopes that would help bore some of them out of the club. Which was a little disrespectful of me, but oh well. It was certainly a subject I knew well.

We made our way to the table in the front where the others were seated, set down our stuff, then I stood up and began, "The magic we practice is a blend of European and Asian traditions. Which is not to say there are not other traditions – African, Australian, New World – but these two lines have been in contact the longest and hence have developed the deepest relationships. The European tradition has roots in the Ancient Near East, in Babylonia, in Egypt, in Minoan Crete, in Greece, disparate threads that were first synthesized in the works of Hermes Trismegistus –"

"Sawanoguchi, what on earth are you doing?" Aburatsubo interrupted.

"The history of magic," I replied, puzzled. "That's what we agreed on, right?"

"We agreed Takeo-kun would talk on it, not you."

"But I am – oh, right, um, Takeo isn't quite feeling himself right now, so he asked me to do the lecture for him."

"Really?" He turned to Sae, or I suppose I should go back to Sae-as-me here, and asked, "Is that true? You really want her to do it?"

Sae-as-me nodded. "Um, yes, I'm not myself right now, but he, er, she can certainly handle this."

"She can? But she's such a ditz!"

"Aburatsubo, that's enough," I said, sharply.

Everyone turned and looked at me, startled. There were whispers of, "How dare she talk to Aya-sama like that? What's gotten into that girl?"

Oops. I quickly tried to cover, "Sorry, I mean, Takeo entrusted this to me, and I worked really hard on it last night, so please let me finish."

Aburatsubo still looked skeptical, but shrugged. "All right, go ahead."

And I did, going through the elements, sympathetic magic, the law of contagion, the philosopher's stone, the Taoist quest for immortality, transmutation, and so on. All in all, a pretty good job, I thought.

Aburatsubo evidently did too, after a fashion. After I finished and Ryoko led the recruits out for more field training, he came up to Sae and me and said, "I admit, I was wrong. You did a perfect job, Sawanoguchi. You struck just the right tone – informative but tedious, and without any of the sexual innuendo Takeo-kun kept adding."

Nakatomi added, "I was amazed, Sae. All of that, without any notes? How did you learn all that so quickly? Though I did think you were being a little disrespectful to Aburatsubo-senpai. That's rather uncharacteristic of you."

"Yeah, um, that's the thing," I said. "When I said Takeo wasn't himself, I meant that literally. I'm Takeo, and he – she – is Sae."

"Huh? What? Is this some kind of illusion?" Aburatsubo asked.

"Ah, no, it was a teleportation accident, sort of. See, we found out last night that I can now do the teleportation, too, so Sae and I decided to practice together before the meeting, and, uh, we sort of got distracted during the kissing, and ended up more or less teleporting into each other rather than the greenhouse."

"'Into each other'? You mean, you're in Sae's body? Yuck!" Nakatomi exclaimed. "Sae, you need to get him out of there right now! And disinfect everything after he's gone!"

Aburatsubo was focused on a different point. "What's this about kissing? Why were you doing that?"

"Oh, uh, that's what activates the spell. When Sae and I kiss." I guess I hadn't quite made that clear before.

He grimaced. "That's disgusting. Actually, this whole thing is rather disgusting."

"Wait a second," Nakatomi said. "You said the teleportation worked by you, or rather Sae, thinking of a place, then you'd take a couple of steps and be there. So how did you end up, uh, inside each other?"

"Um, I'm afraid we were kind of thinking of each other's bodies," Sae said, blushing. "After some, um, stuff this morning."

"WHAT? What 'stuff this morning'? What have you two been doing?"

"Oh, no, it's no big deal," I said. "It's just, we happened to run into Miyama this morning, and her artwork was, uh –"

The artist herself chose that moment to enter, letting me off the hook for describing her artwork. She was wearing a maillot, beach wrap and sandals, and carrying a large umbrella. "All right," she said to Sae-as-me, who cowered before her. "I hope you are ready to go, because I certainly am. Oh, and don't worry, I brought you a little something to wear." Little was right, as she held out a set of skimpy Speedo-style swimtrunks.

Sae was too surprised to say anything, so I quickly intervened. "I'm afraid there's been a slight problem. The, uh, transporter isn't functional right now. We're trying to get it fixed, but it may take a while."

"Oh." She turned to Aikawa, who had been sitting there watching the whole proceedings with interest. "Well? Why aren't you working on it?"

Aikawa was understandably puzzled. "Um, I'm sorry, what?"

"The transporter! You're the one who knows the alien tech, right? Because of your telepathy?"

"I really don't know what –"

"Excuse me," I intervened, then took a deep breath and launched into my best technobabble. "Miyama-senpai, you have to understand, it's not simply a matter of translating an alien repair manual into Japanese, or figuring out which Allen wrench fits. The whole nature of their technology is different. This device relies on a hidden fourth-dimensional extension which must be periodically recalibrated to the local space-time coordinate system; however, lacking any visible reference point outside that system, it's very difficult for us to check the precision of our adjustments, especially when we can make no direct observations of the kthynxatl – sorry, there's no equivalent word in our language – but must rely on experimental runs each time we make a change, in order to verify our settings. I'm afraid if we tried to move you any distance now, there's an excellent chance you'd end up 20 kilometers below the Earth's surface, or somewhere out in space. Sorry, but I'm sure you'd agree it's not something to be rushed. We have to get it right."

"Oh, I see. I suppose you're right. How soon before you have it done?"

"I'm afraid I can't promise anything tonight. Hopefully by this time tomorrow."

"Well, I hope so, too." She looked me up and down. "I have to say, you seem different, somehow. Much pushier than before."

"Oh, um, I'm sorry, but when it's a matter of safety, I guess I can get a little intense."

"Very well." She turned to Sae-as-me. "Was it your little escapade this morning that broke the thing? I told you not to play around with it like that."

"N-no, of course not! Takeo wouldn't – I mean, I wouldn't do anything like that."

"Yes, um, that's how we knew the alignment was off," I added. "We were supposed to go into this room, but instead ended up bothering you. Sorry!"

"Very well. Just make sure everything's fixed for tomorrow." She started to leave, but then stopped and turned back to Sae-as-me. "Why don't you go ahead and try this on now? I need to make sure I got the right size."

"T-try this on? Here? In front of everybody?"

"We can retire to my studio next door if you prefer. In fact, why don't we do that, so I can finalize my sketches?"

"But I can't – this isn't my –"

I stepped in front of her/him. "I'm sorry, but Takeo is my boyfriend. I'm the only one that can see him, um, that way."

"Oh, really now?" She stood directly in front of me and glowered. "You're pretty cheeky for someone who's only a junior." And she thrust her, uh, boobs almost into my face.

Oddly, her display didn't affect me like in the past. Hmm, maybe female hormones actually make you tougher. Which is also sexist, but oh well. "That may be, but Takeo is mine. Please leave him alone."

"And just why should Takeo be yours? Why do you deserve him?"

"Because I love him, and he loves me!"

My bold declaration brought silence, then an unexpected reaction. Miyama clapped her hands and said, "That's perfect! That's the conflict I've been looking for! Hold that position for a second and I'll do a quick sketch –" She pulled a pad and pencil out of her beach tote and quickly began drawing. "The details don't matter; you're not really the type I'm looking for as the rival; I think I'll just substitute Asami's features for yours ... There, done!" She packed everything up and turned to go again, but stopped one last time. "Oh, and little missy, you may have won this time, but in the long run you'll lose. Both in the story and in real life. And Takeo" – turning to her/him – "Do be ready tomorrow afternoon. Ta ta!" And with that she finally left.

Everyone turned and looked at me. "Um, what was that all about?" Aikawa asked. "Why was she talking about me fixing something?"

"Oh, uh, she figured out the Hawaii thing was real," I said. "Except she decided it was because of some alien technology we had stolen, and not magic." I quickly went through the details. "So anyway, she's doing some manga based on her version of events. I figured throwing people off the trail like that was for the best. If she gets to be too much trouble, we can just say the government found out and confiscated all the alien devices."

"That's all very interesting," Aikawa said, then giggled, "But it sure sounds like she's in love with you, senpai." She turned to Sae. "Or maybe I should say with you? I'm not sure who to point to now."

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "I think she's just after the free trips to Hawaii."

"Of course, of course," she replied, but giggled again to indicate she didn't really believe me.

"Enough of that," Nakatomi said. "Who cares about that Miyama? You two need to switch back now. I'm afraid to even think what this guy could get up to in Sae's body."

"But we can't!" Sae said.

"Yes, that's what I meant when I said the transporter was broken," I added. "Somehow, when we changed bodies, we lost all of our magical power. We can't do any spells at all, either of us."

"So we need you to switch us back," Sae finished.

"I see," Aburatsubo said. "Hmm, now how can we do that? I suppose the exchange spell should do it."

He had Sae and me sit in two neighboring chairs, then the three of them gathered around us and said the spell,

"Fjushu qasqes, iomuz qasqes, dvindu diz qasqes!"

There was a blinding flash of light, and I was in the other chair. "It worked!" I said. "I moved over to – oh, wait." I had moved over to the other chair, sure, but I still had the high voice, the short skirt, the entirety of Sae's cute form.

"Looks like we moved too much," Aburatsubo said. "Let's try it again, but maybe lower the power a little."

So they did, but the result was the same. "All right, let's just do a bunch in a row, and maybe at some point we'll get the bodies switched. You two" – pointing to us – "raise your hands or something whenever you're in the right bodies, and we'll stop."

They closed in around us and rapidly did a dozen more, until I started getting dizzy from all the shifting back and forth.

"Ack, stop! I'm going to be sick!" I said. I stumbled out of the chair and collapsed against the nearest solid object, which happened to be Aburatsubo. I had to grab onto him to keep from falling.

"My, my, this change does have some benefits," he remarked. "Finally, Takeo-kun, you admit that you need me." He pulled me upright and looked down at me – it was strange how we had gone from the two of us being around the same height, to him being almost a full head taller than me. "I can't say I care much for the new packaging, but perhaps I can get beyond that."

He then took a deep breath and sighed. "And get beyond it is what I'm going to have to do, because I think the only way to get you out of this situation is what got you into it."

"Huh?" I said. "But Sae and I already tried that."

"After you had already lost your powers. But we still have ours." He turned to the two other girls. "And that's where you come in. Aikawa-kun, I'll need you to repeat the spell one more time. And Nanaka-kun, I'm sorry, but as I told you, there's a price to leadership. As vice-president and president, you and I will be responsible for the kissing part."

"T-the kissing part? What?!"

"Yes, a kiss seems to be needed to activate the peculiarities of this spell. So I will kiss Takeo – that is, Takeo in this particular guise – and you will kiss, um, whatever you want to call this." He indicated Sae-as-me.

Nakatomi's eyes grew wide, as she realized what Aburatsubo wanted. "B-but, I can't do that!"

Aburatsubo looked puzzled. "Why not? She's your best friend, after all. And with her as a boy now, well, I'd assume that would help."

Nakatomi shook her head. "You don't understand, it's my first – my first kiss. And I can't have it be with him, even if he's really Sae."

"Oh. I see." He paused for a moment, seemingly deep in thought, then shrugged. "Let's just take care of that." And he let go of me, wrapped Nakatomi in his arms, and kissed her deeply. "There, that should do. Now we're only talking about a forgettable second kiss."

Nakatomi looked dazed, while the rest of us were shocked. Aburatsubo was, as usual, unperturbed. "Well? Are we ready?"

Nakatomi nodded numbly, and gingerly put her hands on Sae-as-me's shoulders, while Aburatsubo gathered me up in his arms again. "All right now, while Aikawa-kun repeats the spell out loud, Nanaka-kun and I will repeat it to ourselves, while at the same time thinking of the appropriate bodily destinations for our charges. Understood?"

And before I could object, that's what happened. Aburatsubo crushed me in his arms and kissed me, hard, the hardest kiss I've ever had. A haze rose up around me and I felt like I was about to faint, but gradually, the feeling and the haze faded away, just in time for me to hear:

"Aaaahhh! What! He's kissing ... that girl!"

We quickly broke it off, turned and saw two of the Aburatsubo fan club girls staring at our little tableau. Ryoko soon followed with the rest of the recruits, though by that time we had returned to our seats, so they didn't see anything. Not that it mattered, as the whispering campaign would soon be in full force.

"All right, good practice today," Ryoko declared, speaking loudly over the growing murmuring of the crowd. "Or rather, good practice for most of it. There are a few things I wanted to address ..."

She went on, but meanwhile, there was one thing I wanted to address. Maybe it was all the teleporting around, or maybe it was because Sae had drunk a bunch of water beforehand, but I had to go pee again. I managed to slip out unobserved during Ryoko's harangue. I made it to the girls' restroom, where I had a much easier time of it, what with now being an experienced pee-er and all. While I was zipping up, though, a couple of other girls entered. I held back, and overheard them talking:

"Really? He was actually kissing her? That girl who had insulted him?"

"Yes, Madoka saw it. Full on the lips and everything."

"I don't get it. Why her?"

"Don't you read romance manga? That's the way it always is – the girl who argues with and insults the boy, that's the one he falls for in the end. Boys like the feisty ones."

"I guess you're right. Hmm, but I don't see how I can insult him like that. He's just so dreamy!"

"I know, but if you're serious about him, that's what you're going to have to do."

Looks like I'm not the only one with girl troubles, I thought. Oh well, that will be Aburatsubo's problem. I'm sure he can handle it.

When I made it back to the club room, just the usual set plus Ryoko were still there. They were in the midst of discussing our little gender swap situation.

"So you're a girl now, eh, Takeo? Welcome to the club!" Ryoko seemed to find it very amusing.

"I am for the moment. Though I don't think I'm a very good one."

"Oh, I dunno about that. You had two guys kiss ya already! And one of 'em is even an actual guy!" And she slapped Aburatsubo and Sae-as-me on the back. "I bet not even half the girls in your school can claim that."

"Well, be that as it may, the kisses didn't do what we were hoping for. We're still stuck like this."

"And that's where ya need good old Ryoko's help, right?"

"You know how to undo this?"

"Of course I do! My family's been in magic for generations. We've seen it all before." She paused, then continued in a lower tone, without the accent, "One thing I don't understand though – were you two really just kissing?"

I blushed. "Um, yes, of course."

"You sure? Just kissing, and no, like, sex?"

"WHAT?"

"You know, sex. Intercourse, coitus, the old in-and-out. That kind of stuff."

"No, no, of course not! We're not doing that! Well, I mean, not yet."

"If you say so. But that's what's strange. See, the soul-body link is a real strong one. Normally, it lasts your whole life – only death can break it. And getting your soul into somebody else's body? That kind of thing almost never happens. The only exception I know of is sometimes, when the sex has been really, really good, it's happened. I think it's because it's a little like death – la petite mort, the French call it."

"Uh, well, that may be, but that's not what happened here."

"Not at all? You guys weren't, like, thinking about sex, maybe?"

"Uhhhh ..." Sae and I both turned beet red.

"SAE!" Nakatomi was upset. "Were you really thinking about ... that? With ... him?"

"Um, well, you see ..." Sae was beyond red, into purple, and maybe even ultraviolet. "Um, this morning, Miyama-san had, um, drawn a picture of me – that is, of Takeo – where he was, um, that is, he didn't have anything on, so, um, I kind of couldn't help thinking about, um, ..."

Ryoko slapped her on the back again. "That's ok, we get the idea. And hey, teenage hormones – we all know about 'em." She paused, and then looked thoughtful. Or, again, at least thoughtful for Ryoko. "There's a problem, though. Even the four of us don't have magic strong enough to push you back when you're just thinking about that stuff. You're gonna need more. But doing it, for real, in front of all of us? You willing to do that?"

"IN FRONT OF US? YUCK!" Nakatomi cried.

My face was burning hot. "No, there's no way we can do that. This isn't even my body, I can't – Sae has to be the one to agree to, uh, allow ... that."

"Yeah, yeah, never mind, I'm not gonna ask for a sex show," Ryoko said. She mused over the situation, but then brightened and clapped her hands. "I got it! It's a story my dad used to tell me, when I was a little kid. See, there was this whaddya call it, the king-types they used to have in Egypt –"

"A pharaoh?" I offered.

"Yeah, one of them. And he had this beautiful queen he really loved. But his, uh, visor or whatever – you know, the guy that tells him what to do –"

"You mean vizier?" I said.

"Yeah, that."

"Though that's kind of anachronistic; it comes from the Turkish period almost two thousand years later. The Ancient Egyptians would have called him tjaty."

She rolled her eyes. "Thank you for that pedantry. Anyway, I'm just gonna call him vizier, all right? I can't even pronounce that jotty or jutty or whatever that was."

"That's fine."

"Thank you. Anyway, the vizier gets the hots for the beautiful queen, so he uses black magic to seduce her."

"But magic can't make someone fall in love. Everybody knows that."

"Who said anything about love? This was straight up sex. Like your questionable recruits want."

"Oh."

"So like I was saying, the two of 'em get it on, and it's really really hot, but turns out the vizier overdid the magic, and they end up swapping bodies at the end of it. So the queen runs to her husband and confesses everything, and the pharaoh gets mad and says he's gonna execute the vizier. But see, now he's got a problem. He can't execute the vizier's body, 'cause then he loses his dear wife's soul. And he can't execute his wife's body, 'cause, you know, she's really hot. So he's got to get 'em swapped back. But how can he do that? He's not about to let them do it again, and besides, even if he did, the vizier could just hold back a little and not allow a swap.

"He asks his court magicians, and they come up with this great idea. The Egyptians have this thing, the Book of the Dead, which has all the spells you need to push the soul along on a safe journey to the afterlife. Well, say the magicians, how about we adapt some of those spells to push these living souls? If we can get 'em out of the wrong bodies, they should pop back into the right ones. Pharaoh's not too sure, but they experiment on some prisoners or something until they get it right, then get the vizier and queen secured together, work their magic, and BAM! push 'em back into the right bodies. Complete success. Well, except that when the vizier's back in his own body, he has his powers back, and vanishes off somewhere, so they never can execute him. And it turns out the queen misses the vizier's big D, so she runs off to wherever he's hiding so they can boink a bunch more. But hey, the spells worked, at least."

"Uh, ok," I said. "Your dad actually told you that story when you were a little kid? Isn't it rather inappropriate for children?"

"Hmm, I hadn't thought about that. Oh well. Anyway, the modified spells all still exist. In fact, I think you've got a copy of 'em here."

She rooted around in the club's collection, and came up with a volume I had never looked at before. "Here it is, 'The Hidden Wisdom of Tetisheri.' You can read up on it if you want."

I grabbed hungrily at the book, opened it up and saw, "Wait a second, this whole thing is in Greek – no wait, this isn't Greek, it's ... Coptic?"

"Yeah, sorry. But don't worry, there are members in the House who know this stuff. I'll ask my dad to get 'em to help. The whole thing is a little involved to set up. It'll probably take a day or two to get ready. So you two are gonna haveta get used to being like this for a while."

"I suppose if that's what we have to do, then that's what we have to do," I said.

"That's the spirit! Tell you what, in the meantime, you said you weren't very good at being a girl. So how about if we take you out and teach you? We could get makeovers, do some karaoke with fruity drinks and all, braid our hair – well, ok, you can't really do that last one. Anyway, it'll be fun, and also help prepare you in case you end up being stuck this way."

"S-stuck?"

"Ah, don't worry, everything will be fine. I think." She turned to Sae. "Sorry, I don't know much about being a boy, but if you want, I can get my cousins to come out and show you a good time. See an auto race or go to a strip bar or whatever it is guys like to do."

"Um, I don't know ..." Sae said nervously.

"Thank you very much for your kind offer, Ryoko," I said, trying to imitate Sae's level of politeness. "But I think Sae and I will just head home now. It's been a trying day, and we're both tired."

We managed to get out without further hassle. Nakatomi accompanied us, seeming rather out of sorts.

I guessed at the reason. "I'm sorry for involving you in all this, Nakatomi-kun. I'm sure this wasn't what you had planned for a first kiss."

I was a little afraid she would strike back in reply, but instead, she smiled ruefully and said, "That's ok. It's not like it was going to teleport me to Hawaii or anything. Unlike some people I know."

"Don't worry. We promise we'll take you to Hawaii when all this is over."

"Yeah, you better!" she laughed bitterly. "After all you've put me through over the years, you owe me!" She paused, then went on, "Anyway, I can't really complain. I mean, it's not like I could have expected a better first kiss from, um, from him."

"Nanaka ..." Sae said, noticing she was on the verge of tears.

I awkwardly moved to comfort her. "Nakatomi – er, Nanaka, I guess I should say when I'm like this – I, uh, I know we've had our differences in the past, but I do think you're a great person. You have the most sense of any of us! I know you'll find the perfect guy out there someday. There's more to the world than just our own weird little corner of it."

"Uh-huh." She shook her head. "Now I know I must be in sad shape, if even you are pitying me."

"Nanaka, no! It's not pity. It's the truth."

"Uh-huh," she repeated. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled, and patted me on the shoulder. "I'm probably just feeling generous because you look like Sae now," she began, "I don't know. Anyway, I'll say this. Yes, it's true you tend to goof up a lot, and get us in all kinds of trouble, and, let's face it, have some questionable personality traits, and –"

"There's going to be a 'but' in there at some point, isn't there?" I asked, concerned.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there. Despite all that, I have to admit, you're a decent guy at heart. And you and Sae do make a good match, really the best anyone could ask for."

"Is that because we both goof up a lot, and get us in all kinds of trouble?" Sae asked.

Nakatomi laughed. "I refuse to answer that question. Anyway, don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Especially after you take me to Hawaii."

After we left Nakatomi at her house, I said to Sae, "Before I forget, let's trade school bags. I'm afraid I got saddled with some extra homework, and it wouldn't be right to stick you with that."

She smiled. "I was about to say the same thing. I was a little distracted in class, and unfortunately the teachers noticed."

We were both blushing, so it was clear our "distractions" had been pretty much the same thing. "I guess we really are a good match," I said.

"Especially now that we're each half the other," Sae said. "Is this what they mean by 'better half'?"

I laughed. "I think I won that one. Or at least I have the cuter half."

"Hey, no fair!" she replied. "You can't do flattery when it's of yourself!"

"Myself? Oh, right." I thought for a moment. "Though I can't call you handsome either, because that's still sort of complimenting myself."

"I don't think we should be concerned about compliments now," she said. "What we should be concerned about is how we're going to handle these bodies for the next 24 hours."

"Oh, uh, handle?" That's exactly what I had been thinking – or maybe fantasizing – about. Sae handling my body. In particular, when she first takes off those pants, discovers what's down there, becomes curious, takes it into her hands and ...

I shook myself out of it before it went any further. "Please, Sae, don't worry about that. It's your body now. You can handle it all you want. I won't mind. We were pretty much at the stage where we were ready for, you know, that sort of thing anyway."

"Handle it all I –? No, no, I didn't mean it like that!" she cried, her face turning red. "I just meant, how are we going to act like each other so that nobody else will notice."

"Oh, right." I turned even redder than her, as I realized that she had just realized exactly what I had been thinking about. "Yeah, um, of course. Actually, for acting like me, it shouldn't be too hard. Just walk around with your nose in a book all the time, and seem distracted if anybody asks you about anything. It'll be fine."

"OK, but what about at your house? I've never even been inside there! I don't know where anything is!"

"You haven't? Hmm, I guess you're right. Here, let me draw you a map." I took my school bag from her, pulled out a sheet of graph paper, and sketched out a rough layout of our house. "That's my bedroom, but I usually just change into comfortable clothes and do my homework in the living room with my sister."

"Is there anything I should know about your sister?"

"Takako? She's ok. She'll probably tease you about the, uh, girlfriend thing, though. It's best just to ignore that."

"All right, I'll see what I can do. Can you handle being me?"

I laughed. "Not as well as you, but I'll try. C'mon, I'll walk you to your, that is, my house."

"No, I should be the one walking you home," she replied. "I'm the boy now, and you're the girl."

I was going to object, but just then a cold breeze blew through, reminding me that my legs were almost completely bare. "Brr, I'm freezing!" I said. "How can you stand to dress like this all the time?"

She shrugged. "I'm just used to it, I guess. But now you know some of what we girls have to put up with. I hope you appreciate it!"

"Oh, I appreciate it a lot. But I'll appreciate even more getting in out of the cold!"

"Of course, of course, Takeo. You poor girl. Come on." Sae seemed rather too amused by my predicament, but at least she wrapped her – that is, my – arm around me and held me close, so I felt a lot warmer.

"Um, thanks, Sae," I said. "This is nice." And it really was. This is probably the most sexist thing yet, but I found I liked the role reversal, that Sae was the one protecting me, rather than the other way around. I snuggled up against her, as we walked the couple of blocks to my, or rather her, or, no, for now at least, my house.

"So I guess I'll see you in the morning," I said, when we reached it.

"Assuming I don't get into too much trouble at your house first," she replied.

"Don't worry, you'll be fine. I'm sure of it. Oh, and I'll make sure Aburatsubo helps you get through school tomorrow. We're just reviewing stuff now, so it shouldn't be a big deal."

"I hope you're right. Well, goodbye, then."

"Yes, goodbye."

We still stood there looking at each other, not quite willing to part. Finally, I said again, "Don't worry, Sae. Everything will be fine. Just remember, I, um, I love you. No matter what you look like." And I reached up and pulled her – that is, my – face down to me, and kissed her. This time, I felt no need to close my eyes. Kissing that (admittedly, somewhat goofy-looking) face just seemed right. It belonged to the one I loved, whatever gender she was.

I put those noble thoughts behind and entered the house. "Tadaima!" I called out, but Saki was not yet there. Just as well, I had enough to get done before trying to deal with her.

I went into the bedroom, stripped off the school clothes, and searched for something warm to wear. I came up with a fleecy pink outfit that looked like the cute sort of thing I imagined she'd choose, and quickly put it on. Ahh, much better.

I looked myself over in the mirror. Not bad, not bad at all. I tried out various Sae expressions – the cute determination, the cute excitement, the cute distress, the cute smile (yes, there's a theme here) – until I was satisfied I could do them all properly. Perfect. No one will know.

Just as I was thinking that, though, I glanced over and saw Sae's little teddy bear, Jeff-kun, sitting on the dresser, seeming to look at me with disapproval. It knows? I've done something wrong, something to give it away?

The teddy bear didn't really move, but somehow I felt it was directing my attention toward the bed behind me. I turned around to see. Oh, yeah, I had just left the school uniform scattered across the bed. Sae wouldn't do that, would she? I picked things up and hung them up neatly. Except, hmm, the blouse seemed a little ... Fortunately, she had a second one in the closet, so I just put the dirty one in the clothes hamper. Except that was kind of full, so all right, sure, I took all the lighter-colored clothes to the washing machine in the bathroom, filled it up and started it.

Back in the bedroom, the little bear somehow seemed satisfied now. "Thank you, Jeff-kun," I said. "I promise I will take good care of Sae's things for as long as I'm like this."

Time for the homework. I put on my cute determined Sae face and got to work. Fortunately, these were just review sheets, so no real thinking was required. Just writing.

Except the writing proved harder than I thought. I started on the first question on the history sheet, but stopped when I saw – huh? That didn't look much like my handwriting at all! It was all sort of rounded and cute and ... and a lot like Sae's handwriting. About 80% Sae's, and 20% mine, I estimated.

What was going on? Then it occurred to me – handwriting, after you've been doing it for a while, isn't exactly a conscious operation. Much of it is handled, so to speak, by your hands and your cerebellum. I assume what got transferred, when we switched, was just our conscious minds. All the other stuff stayed the same – I mean, it wasn't like we had to relearn how to walk or breathe or anything in our new bodies.

All very interesting, except I couldn't have my homework look like someone else had done it! I tried again, and found if I forced myself, I could get the ratio more like 80% Takeo / 20% Sae. Not perfect, but good enough, unless they brought in a handwriting expert.

After an hour of this tedium, I was finally finished. Whew! I stood up and stretched, which is when I noticed a curious-looking book on the nightstand next to Sae's bed. As I'm sure you know, I'm all about the curious-looking books, so, being curious, I picked it up and looked.

It was all handwritten, in a handwriting that was quite familiar to me – because I had been strenuously trying to avoid using it for the last hour. Looking more closely, I spotted my name on the page I had opened it to:

"Nanaka says she thinks Takakura-senpai likes me. (Actually, what she said was he has the hots [yow!] for me.) How can this possibly be? Yes, he's always nice to me, but he's always nice to everyone. That's just the way he is. And he must know what a klutz I am [splat!], how I always mess everything up [sigh], how much trouble I cause ... But [strange thought], what if she's right? I've never had a guy like me before. What should I do? Do I even –"

I felt a burning sensation on my back. Whirling around, I saw that Jeff-kun, although it had not moved at all, seemed to be staring at me malevolently. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I cried, quickly closing up the diary and putting it back. "I didn't mean to be nosy! I won't pry into her things any more!"

The burning sensation passed, but I still didn't feel comfortable being watched over by that bear. I picked up the last thing I had to work on and took it into the living room.

It was of course "The Hidden Wisdom of Tetisheri." I figured I had best get a sense of what I was getting myself into before Ryoko sprung it on us tomorrow. I opened it up to the spell Ryoko had indicated, and took out the Coptic dictionary and grammar I had borrowed from the club library.

If you're not familiar, Coptic is the language of Ancient Egypt – or, more precisely, the version of it that was current during the time of the Roman Empire. Unlike older Egyptian that was written in hieroglyphics, this is written in an alphabetic script based on Greek letters. Which helps a lot with sounding it out, but doesn't help much with Coptic grammar which is ... interesting. Some people claim to see a (distant) relationship between Coptic and Japanese, but to me, that just means that some people have very active imaginations.

Several of our spells come from Egypt, of course, so I've had to learn a little bit of Coptic. But mostly just to pronounce the words of the spell itself; usually there's an explanation of how the spell works and what's needed to invoke it, in a more familiar language like English or (if I'm really lucky) Japanese. Here, though, I had page after page of dense text with nothing other than a single vague illustration to help. No way could I puzzle all that out.

Looking a little more, though, I found that after some introductory stuff, there was a section that appeared to be a list of instructions. One phrase seemed to be repeated a lot – ah, yes, according to the dictionary, it was "the man and the woman." Great! If I concentrate just on those sentences, that should be the part I need to know.

But even those sentences were tough. Maybe just try to pull out the verb and object, and that would be enough to get the sense of it:

First: "The man and the woman ... enter ... chamber." That makes sense. And I think the illustration was supposed to be the chamber layout. Nothing too unusual there.

Second: "The man and the woman ... remove ... garments." Uh, wait a minute. Is that really what it says?

Third: "The man and the woman ... lie down ... table." Oh, ok. Is this some kind of medical procedure?

Fourth: "The man and the woman ... bind ... hands and feet." Or no, it's "Bind ... hands and feet ... of the man and the woman." Uh-oh. I was starting to get afraid about what might be next.

For good reason – as fifth was: "Insert ... something into the something ... of the man and the woman." Now hold on here! What the heck was this? Whatever it was, my dictionary, which was one made for reading nice, staid, religious texts, was not about to divulge the necessary words to me.

I struggled to make out what happened next, but my lack of vocabulary was defeating me. There was something about "not death," always reassuring, and a "lower heaven" or maybe "lesser heaven," which might be all right. Certainly better than a "lower hell," at least.

I was in the middle of contemplating these potential celestial arrangements when I was startled by a tap on my back.

"Hello, Sae? Are you there?"

I whirled around and saw – uh, oh, I had suddenly blanked on her name. "Um, hello, um, little sister. Sorry, I didn't notice you come in."

"'Little sister'? What?"

Oops. I had been so deep in my fog that I had used "imouto," which is what I have, as opposed to what Sae has, which is, "Sorry, oneesan! I was reading a story with a little sister, and I guess I was still stuck on that."

"Oh, that's all right. I'm not insulted. So that's what you're reading now?" She glanced at the book. "Wait, what is this? It's not any language I've ever seen before."

"It's, uh, Coptic. Egyptian."

"You read Egyptian?" She was quite surprised.

"Um, no, not really. That's why it's so hard for me."

"This is for school?"

"No, it's for our club. We're trying, um, something new."

"New? I'll say! But you're actually trying to read that? My, my, our little Sae has depths we never realized."

"I'm not sure about that, but I do feel like I'm in over my head. That's almost the same thing."

She laughed, then went on, "Since you're so busy, do you want me to fix dinner?"

Uh-oh, Sae had warned me about Saki's (I finally remembered her name) cooking. "Um, thank you, but I need a break from this anyway. I'll handle it."

I was a little less sure of that when I entered the kitchen, though. I've done some cooking, of course, but only of relatively simple things. What could I come up with that wouldn't turn into a disaster? Poking around in the cupboards, though, I came up with a box of curry mix. Hey, that much I could handle! I gathered up appropriate ingredients and got to work.

As I was measuring rice for the rice cooker, Saki, who had been watching me with interest, asked, "Why are you adding so much?"

"So much?" I was puzzled – making the rice was one of the things my mom had me do frequently at home, so I was sure I had that part right at least. "I'm just doing the usual –" Oh, wait. The usual amount for my family, which must be at least twice as much as we two would need. "Sorry, I guess I got distracted." I took out half the rice and set it to cooking.

The rest of the preparation went fine, and I even made a salad to go with it. I was feeling pretty proud of myself when we sat down to eat.

But then, "This is ... a little unusual," Saki said.

"It is? What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing's wrong, it tastes fine. It's just spicier than you usually make it. A little more ... intense."

"Um, I guess I wanted to try something different."

Saki smiled knowingly. "This has to do with your boyfriend, right?"

"My boyfriend? What?"

"He likes things spicier, doesn't he? A lot of guys do, I know. So are you practicing cooking for him?"

I blushed heavily. "Umm, I don't know, maybe ..."

"Don't be embarrassed! I think it's great! You're definitely becoming the ideal girlfriend. Way more so than me, I have to admit."

"I don't know about that!"

"Sure you are! You know exactly what he likes and doesn't like, don't you?"

"Um, well, I suppose so." Couldn't argue with that!

"People dream of finding that kind of connection, and here you have it right off the bat. You're so lucky!"

After dinner, I got back to the Tetisheri book. I made a little more headway – there was some talk of a "dream union" or "dream joining" which sounded interesting – but it had been a long and trying day, and I was getting tired.

Saki obviously noticed, as she came by after a while and said, "Look at you, Sae, you're falling asleep! C'mon, that can wait for another day, can't it? You said it was just for your club."

I sighed. "I suppose you're right."

"Of course I'm right. Now, I have the bath all ready, so put that aside, and we'll go get washed up and then head to bed."

"B-bath?" Yikes! She wanted me to – with her – together?

"Yes, a bath. That thing with water, you know? Now, come, let's get started, before the water cools off too much."

"N-no, that's ok. You go ahead. I'll do mine later."

"Oh, come on, don't be silly. I need you to scrub my back. Don't worry, I'll do yours as well."

Try as I might, I could not talk her out of it, and ended up following her numbly into the bathroom. Oy. Sae might well be becoming the ideal girlfriend, but this was beyond what even the ideal could tolerate. Sure, your girlfriend expects you to see her naked eventually, but to see her sister that way?

But I was stuck. All I could do was try my hardest not to look directly at her – I should be pretty good at that, right? It's what guys do in the locker room with each other all the time – and hope that Sae never ever finds out.

I failed at the first part almost immediately. I was staring resolutely at the wall while removing my clothes when Saki asked, "Sae, are these your things in the wash?"

Without thinking, I turned around and saw –

Yes, uh, here's the thing. If it was problematic for me to describe Sae's naked body, it's way worse for me to describe her sister's. But you're going to want me to say something, right? And no doubt something more specific than just, she was very pretty?

I suppose could say she looked a lot like Rina Sawaguchi. I'll admit, I had been struck by the similarity of names (Sawaguchi/沢口, Sawanoguchi/沢野口), and, uh, by Rina herself, so was quite familiar with her look. Except I assume now you're going to ask, how do you know what Rina Sawaguchi looks like naked? What kind of magazines have you been reading? And I'll have to answer, the ones hidden under my bed at home, which now that I think of it, I sincerely hope that Sae doesn't stumble across when she goes to bed tonight.

Further complicating things was when I looked toward Saki, I also saw myself in the full-length mirror that was on the wall. Which was the also first time I had seen myself – I mean, of course, Sae – fully and completely naked. (The stuff at the school bathroom had been partial, and I had had other concerns at the time.)

The combined images of Saki, Rina and Sae, all naked, was the sort of thing I had fantasized about before a few times (all right, a few hundred times), but now was fully real. Well, 2/3rds real at least. The 2/3rds reality of all this naked female beauty left me momentarily stunned. I stood there in my stunned state, everything other than the view in front of me gone from my mind.

Saki was understandably concerned. "Sae, what's wrong? Are you feeling all right?"

"Huh?" I shook myself out of my stupor, and tried to come up with an answer. "Sorry, I, um, I forgot completely I had put my clothes in there. I'll move them."

Saki shook her head. "You do seem rather distracted this evening. Come on, I'll help you."

We started pulling my stuff out of the washing machine. "Sae!" Saki exclaimed. "You really must have been distracted. You put your bras in here. You're only supposed to hand wash them! Let's hope they're ok."

"Oops! Sorry!" Well, there's another thing about being a girl that I didn't know.

Saki smiled. "I think I know what your problem is."

"You do?"

"Yes, you're in the throes of new love. You're walking on air. Everything else has faded into the fog."

"You really think so?"

"I know so. Like this Egyptian thing – you said it was for your club, but it's really for him, isn't it?"

"Um, sort of, yeah."

She tousled my hair. "That's so sweet! I hope the magic never fades for you!"

"I hope so, too!" That was something else I could fully agree with.

We sorted out my things, which fortunately weren't damaged, got them drying and put Saki's clothes in the wash. Handling all that underwear was a little overwhelming too, but at least it provided a brief distraction from the nakedness.

Only brief, as we still had the whole bath thing. I got through washing myself, studiously avoiding paying too much attention to the interesting areas. But then it was Saki's turn. Just be careful and methodical, I told myself. Stare only at her back, and avoid anything else. And whatever you do, don't think about the fact that you're rubbing a beautiful, nude woman.

My efforts succeeded maybe a little too well, as eventually Saki said, "Sae, how long were you going to keep this up? You've been scrubbing my back for like five minutes now. You're going to scrub all the skin off!"

"Oh, sorry, I guess I was zoning out again."

"I'll say. C'mon, it's your turn now."

Whew, I thought, the rest should be easier now. I didn't have to do anything, and in fact would be facing away from her, so wouldn't even be seeing any naked bodies.

Except when I sat down, it turned out there was another mirror which gave me a perfect view of the whole scene – a scene which almost exactly reproduced a picture in another one of those magazines which were hidden under my bed at home. And with me sitting there with nothing to do, I had no distractions from the feel of Saki's hands gliding over my back. It was all getting to be more than a little much.

Saki of course noticed. "Sae, you're so tense!" she exclaimed. "You need to relax!" She kneeled down closer to me. "Here, just lie back and let it all go." And she got me to lean back against her, so my head was nestled between her, um, breasts, while she put her arms around me, surrounding my own, um, breasts.

Reenacting something out of a pink film was not exactly conducive to me relaxing. I tried my best, though this had the effect of me snuggling even more closely into Saki's, um, bosom.

"Poor Sae," Saki murmured into my ear. "I know how hard it must be for you."

Hard? I thought. Good thing I don't have those male body parts right now, or something would be very hard! Paradoxically, that thought did help me relax, just through its sheer silliness. That couldn't be what she meant, of course, so I asked, "Hard? How so?"

"I mean, without Mom and Dad here, and you having to fend for yourself."

"Myself? But you're here! And you always take such good care of me."

She shook her head. "That's sweet of you to say, but we both know that's not true. Look, you didn't even trust me to fix dinner tonight, as busy and as tired as you were."

"Oh, but, um, you work so hard all day, it's not fair to expect you to have to do more work when you come home. And I'm happy to do the cooking."

"Mmm, you're so generous, Sae." She hugged me, a nice sensation. "Let's hope no one takes advantage of that generosity. Well, no one other than me, that is."

After all of that, the bath itself was actually a relief. Sure, we were still naked and sort of looking at each other, but the steamy water hid the details, and the warmth made me finally relax for real. At least for a little bit.

"I almost forgot," Saki said, as we sat there soaking. "Speaking of Mom and Dad, Mom called – she wants to know whether next weekend would work for you and, um, what was his name, Takeo?"

"Work? Work for what?"

"You know, for them to come down to Tokyo and meet your boyfriend. Though she did say something weird about the two of you trying to fly up there and see them?"

"Oh, um, yeah." I had forgotten all about that little detail. "Yeah, um, Takeo got some free, um tickets, and we thought we'd go visit Hokkaido, but it turned out that was the weekend they were at the fair in Akita. So we'll have to do it some other time. Takeo's kind of busy now anyway, what with college entrance exams and all. In fact, he has a big one next weekend, so maybe not then?"

"Entrance exams? Oh, that's right, he's a year older. Hmm, what will you do when he goes away to college? Maintaining a long-distance relationship is really hard. Especially when you've just barely begun one."

"It's ok. Takeo is planning on staying here for college, so he and I can still be together."

She seemed nonplussed. "Is that so? He's that dedicated?"

I blushed. "Yes, um, I really love – I mean, he really loves me."

"Impressive. But you know, Mom and Dad want you to go to college in Hokkaido. What will you do next year?"

Huh, Sae hadn't mentioned that to me. Though to be fair, we had only just started going together, and a lot of stuff had happened in that time. "I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We'll have to see what colleges either of us actually get into."

"Oh, I don't think that will be a problem. You're such a hard worker! And from what you've told me, your boyfriend is, too. And so smart!"

"Well, um, we'll see!"

Finally, the bath was over, and I was able to crawl into bed. Alone at last. No more having to put up a front, I could just be myself.

Except, well, um, I was being myself in a body which I found kind of interesting. Kind of worth exploring. Especially after the bath experience, my interests were pointed that way. OK, sure, they pretty much always are pointed that way, but now even more so than usual.

It's important research, I told myself. Not mere idle curiosity or self-indulgence. After all, if I was going to be Sae's boyfriend and, soon(?), lover, I should know how to, um, please her. What felt good and all that. So I started doing some good feeling underneath my pajamas. Ooh, that was nice, I thought. And here ... start out lightly, until things start warming up, then apply a little more pressure ... Ah, yeah, that's the ticket. Now I think we're ready to move on into here and –

My explorations were interrupted by a sudden flash of light. I stopped, frightened. Was Saki checking on me? But when I looked toward where the light had come from, all I saw was Jeff-kun, sitting on the dresser as always. Except, had his eyes been glowing? No, it was just a reflection from the headlights on a passing car, right? Right? Right?

I shuddered. Was this going to happen every time I tried to do anything, you know, sexual with Sae? But no, Jeff-kun had witnessed, so to speak, our makeout session, our kissing, our flitting in and out, all of that stuff, and had never raised any objections. It must be that whatever was all right with Sae, was all right with Jeff-kun. I could live with that, I thought. I mean, of course I would never try to do anything to Sae that she wouldn't approve of.

I tried telling Jeff-kun that. "Please understand," I said in a low voice, so as not to disturb Saki in the next room, "I want to be the best boyfriend I can for Sae. So I need to understand everything I can about her body and –" The glow in his eyes returned. "You're not buying it, are you?" I sighed. I suppose I could just turn him around or move him to another room. Only the mood was kind of gone now. Even worse, I suddenly realized, Jeff-kun could no doubt communicate with Sae far more clearly than with me. What would he tell her about what I had been up to? "Fine, fine," I said. "I'll just go to sleep now." And I did.

I awoke that Friday morning feeling weird and disoriented. I stumbled out of bed – my balance seemed off, somehow – and over to the mirror, where ... AAAHHHHH! Oh, wait, that's right, I was Sae now. Somehow I had forgotten that little detail.

The shock having rendered me fully awake, I now looked myself over more carefully. Sae's familiar cute face was indeed familiar and cute – apparently she really does just wake up this way – but her, I mean my, hair was a mess. Yes, cynic, Sae's hair is never exactly straight, but this was well beyond the usual. I got a hairbrush from her dresser and worked and worked at it until it was in some semblance of order. I picked out one of Sae's hair ribbons and tied it on. Hmm, not bad, not bad at all. I was starting to get the hang of this girl thing.

Only starting, though, as next I had to deal with getting dressed. And in particular, putting on a bra. I struggled getting it hooked, until I remembered something I had read in a story that had a girl slowly getting dressed after, well, after some questionable activities. I turned it around so I could snap it up front, then turned it back and wiggled my breasts into it. There! You see, pornography can sometimes be educational. Everything else went easily enough, and after a quick breakfast, I packed up and was on my way.

I stopped by Nakatomi's – oh, this is awkward, I'll just say Nanaka from now on – Nanaka's place. She was rather surprised to see me. "Sae! You're here so early! Usually, I have to go get you. Oh, wait, that's right, you're not Sae."

"True, but for today at least, I'll have to be her. And so" – I assumed a humble position – "would you be willing to help me? Lead me around, let me know what I need to be doing?"

Nanaka shrugged. "I suppose I have no choice. After all, if you screw up, it's the real Sae who'll suffer for it." She then adopted a stern look. "But you have to do exactly what I say. Understand? Exactly!"

I nodded mutely. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but, just like Nanaka, I didn't have much choice, either.

She regarded me critically. "So you were in that body all night long. I hope you didn't get up to anything too dirty in it."

"What? No, of course not! I just did, you know, the usual things, whatever I had to get ready."

"Uh-huh. Well, you did an ok job of dressing yourself, I admit. I'm a little surprised, considering how you look as a guy."

I decided not to delve into what she meant. "Um, I need to meet up with Sae before school, so she and I can exchange school bags," I said. "And also Aburatsubo, to get him to agree leading her around today. Would you come with me?"

"Yeah, sure. I'm curious how Sae did at your house last night."

Mom (that is, my real mom) was quite surprised to see us when I knocked at the door.

"Um, hello? May I help you?"

"Hi, I'm Sae, Sae Sawanoguchi, and this is my friend, Nanaka Nakatomi. Is, um, Takeo still here?"

"Sae? Wait, are you the Sae that Takeo keeps talking about?"

"Um, yes, I assume so. I don't think he knows any other Saes."

"Ah, so you're his amazing girlfriend."

I blushed. "I don't know how amazing I am, but we do, um, like each other."

"Well, I hope you're amazing enough to straighten him out. He doesn't quite seem himself this morning. Come, he's still in his room."

We found Sae struggling with getting her tie tied. "Oh, hi, sorry, I'm having trouble getting this lined up right for some reason."

"Oh, the boys' ties are longer, that's why," I said. I quickly redid the tie for her, and, while I was at it, straightened out her/my hair so it matched my usual style. Doing all this gave me a funny tingly feeling, like I was a good girlfriend taking care of her guy.

When I glanced around the room afterward, though, I found out that Sae had done a much better job of that than me. My room, which, I admit, had never exactly been noted for its neatness, she had straightened up completely, organizing all the books and papers and construction supplies and other odds and ends I had left scattered around.

"Wow, this is incredible!" I said. "You did all of this?"

"I hope you don't mind. I just wanted to make things easier for you."

"No, this is great. I've been meaning to clean things up for a while – for about ten years, if I'm honest – but never quite got to it. Thank you!"

"It was the least I could do. I'm afraid I had a lot of trouble being you otherwise."

Before I could ask what she meant, a voice behind me said, "Ah, that explains it!"

I turned around. "Huh? What do you mean, Takako?"

She looked at me strangely. "You know my name?"

"Oh, um, yes, Takeo talks a lot about his wonderful sister."

"I'll bet. Anyway, I now know why he was acting so weird and nervous, and why he spent all this time cleaning up his room. It's all because you were coming over! He had to impress his girlfriend!"

While I may or may not be clever in general, one thing I am clever about is exploiting openings my sister has left. And I went straight for this one.

"Takeo!" I said. "You did this all for me? That's so sweet! But really, you didn't have to. I'd love you no matter what." And I hugged him, er, her. The sound of gagging from Takako behind me proved I had hit my mark.

Outside, Nanaka was cross. "What was that all about?"

"I was just getting back at my sister."

"Uh-huh. By making Sae look like some kind of love-struck nut!"

"Oh. Uh, sorry, Sae, I didn't think about that."

"Well, it's only fair," Sae replied. "I'm afraid I made you look like, well, I don't know what. I was kind of nervous, and forgot everything you told me, so I didn't know where anything was in your house, or anybody's name, or anything like that. Then your sister wanted help on her homework, but that just got me completely confused."

"That's ok. Now I can just say love had us all mixed up. Which is certainly true!"

We encountered Aburatsubo out on the street, talking to a girl, who I recognized as one of his fan club members.

"You're so stuck up!" she was saying. "You think, just because you're better than everyone else, that you're, um, better than everyone else. No, wait, that didn't come out right."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Aburatsubo replied mildly. "Though I should say, I don't think I'm better than anyone else. We all are what we are, no more, no less. The abilities we may have were determined by our birth and our circumstances. They're not something we can claim personal credit for."

The girl noticed the three of us approaching, and whirled around to confront me. "You! What do you think you're doing!? Making out with Aya-sama, and now holding hands with this guy? You floozy!"

I was on the verge of laughing, but instead bowed and said, "I'm sorry. Aya-kun and I have decided our love was not to be. So I have returned to Takeo-kun, my one true love."

Her eyes grew wide. "Y-you mean ... he's f-free?"

I shrugged. "Only for the one worthy of his heart."

"I will be worthy! You'll see!" She then bowed to Aburatsubo. "Aya-sama, I, um, I hate you! But not really! Goodbye!" And she ran off.

After she left, Aburatsubo turned to me and asked, "Would you happen to know what's going on here? That's the third girl who's been like that this morning, along with four others last night."

"Oh, um, it's kind of my fault, I guess. They decided that, since Madoka had seen us kiss after I had been, um, a little short with you, that the secret to winning you was to insult you. I think they've read too much romance manga."

"I see."

"I'm sorry have caused you such trouble," I said, with a slight bow. "Even more so, because I will have to trouble you again. Could you assist Sae at school today? She's going to have to act as me for the time being, and will need some help."

He sighed. "I suppose so. In a way, it's really my fault. I'm the one who pushed you two together."

"For which I am forever grateful," I replied, bowing again.

He regarded me thoughtfully. "You know, you're a lot more polite now that you're a girl."

"I am?"

"Yes. It's nice, I suppose, though I still don't prefer you that way."

"Well, Sae and I will hopefully be back to normal soon enough."

At homeroom, a girl I vaguely recognized came up to me. "Morning, Satan," she said.

"Um, excuse me?" Even though she used the Japanese pronunciation (Sah-tahn), it still didn't strike me as a particularly nice thing to be called.

"Sa-tan. Sae-tan. Sae-chan. You know, you!"

"Oh, right. Good morning!"

"You're still all distracted, aren't you?"

"Maybe a little bit. I'm sorry, I'll try to do better!"

"Oh, that's ok. I understand. And I have to admit, I'm a little jealous."

"Um, jealous?"

"To have two guys fighting over you like that! It's every girl's dream!"

"What? Oh, no, no, no one's fighting over me. Aya-kun and I – we realized that was not to be. Takeo-kun is my true love."

"Huh? You went with the weird one?" She shook her head. "I don't get it. Why do opportunities like this only happen to girls who will waste them?" She paused, then, "Oh, wait, I forgot! He has you hypnotized or whatever, doesn't he?"

Oh, yeah. I had forgotten about that little bit, too. I mean, it dated all the way back to the beginning of the week. Sigh. "No, no, there's no hypnotizing or anything!" I said. "Takeo and I – we have a very deep connection. Deeper than I can explain. One that can never be broken."

"Really? Oh, that's so romantic!" she sighed. "If only I can experience that someday!"

"Be careful what you wish for," Nanaka said from behind me, snickering.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"She's just, um, saying everyone's experience of love is different," I intervened. "Mine wouldn't work for you, but you'll have your own, and I just know it will be great."

There were similar encounters with other girls, but let's move on to the first class. Algebra with Mr. Hamada. I had had him the previous year, so knew pretty much what to expect. Or so I thought.

Except he began class with, "Miss Sawanoguchi! What did I tell you?"

"T-tell me? What?"

I flailed around, until Nanaka nudged me and whispered "Worksheet!"

"Oh, right, the worksheet!" I said.

"Yes," he said. "The one you were supposed to have on my desk at the beginning of class."

"Sorry, I forgot, just a minute, I'm getting it ..." I opened Sae's satchel and dug through it. Where could it be ...? Fortunately, though, she had everything neatly organized, so when I pulled out her math notebook, what was clearly the worksheet was right on top. Whew! I then felt a twinge of guilt, though, as I realized I had just stuffed all my things randomly into my bag. Sae would have to sort through all that to find anything. Hopefully it wouldn't cause her too much trouble!

I brought the sheet up front and laid it in front of him. "Here it is. And I'm sorry, I promise I will pay better attention in class in the future."

"I should hope so. Now return to your seat."

As I did so, he picked up the sheet and regarded it critically. "Wait a minute!" he cried. "Come back here!"

Uh-oh. What was wrong? I quivered as I returned to his desk.

He pointed to the first answer. "This is not your handwriting!" he said. "You had one of your boyfriends do this for you, didn't you?"

I looked, and saw that Sae had had the same issue as me, but in reverse. The handwriting showed a strong base of my sharp angularity tempered only weakly by an overlay of Sae's cute curly script. "Um, no, no, that's not what happened!" I said. "It's just, I strained my hand playing, um, basketball, so my handwriting was a little off."

"Oh, really? Let's see if we can work that strain out a little more. Step up to the board, please."

He then had me work a bunch more problems there, in front of everyone. Fortunately, they were all of the kind I knew well, especially because we had just reviewed them in my own math class. And my composite handwriting was close enough to what was on the sheet to be convincing. Eventually, he was mollified, and sent me back to my seat.

I wasn't so lucky in the next class, English. Not that my English is that bad, but they were doing a book I had never read. Sae had had to write up a summary, which the teacher (Ms. Harano) had me read, but she kept interrupting to try to have me expand on some point or other. Not knowing the book, I responded with some generic blather about the human condition and that kind of stuff, which she quickly saw through. So I ended up being saddled with another essay to write. Sorry, Sae!

Other classes were somewhere in between those two, but let's skip all that and get on to gym class. Where it turned out we were going swimming. Which meant we were all changing into swimsuits.

Nanaka cornered me before we entered the changing area. "Remember, you have to do exactly what I say. And right now, that's don't you dare look at any of the other girls while they're changing. In fact, I'd rather you didn't even look at yourself, if possible. Keep your eyes closed or something."

"I don't think I can manage that."

"Well, all right, I suppose. Just don't look at anyone else, or I'll kill you. And especially don't look at me, or I'll kill you twice."

I should by all rights be speaking to you from the afterlife, because this is what happened: I was busy staring into my locker, ignoring all else, avoiding death, when I was startled by a tap on my shoulder.

"Sae! Are you deaf?"

Without thinking, I whirled around and saw – Yumi, I believe her name is. She's not that tall, curvy, with a round face and long thick black hair, and – oh, who am I kidding, all I saw was that she was totally naked. And beyond her were a bunch of other girls in various stages of undress. Including, off to one side, I caught a glimpse of Nanaka's bare backside.

17 years, I thought. 17 years, and my life is already over. Oh, well, at least I got a girlfriend before I died. But hold on, wasn't this like the vizier and the queen, and Nanaka would have to wait until after we were swapped back to execute me? So that would give me a chance to – oh, wait, Yumi was still talking –

"... borrow your hair brush? You have it with you, right?"

"Oh, yes, of course." I ducked my head back into the locker and rooted through Sae's stuff until I came up with it, then handed it out without looking. Maybe, just maybe, if Nanaka hadn't noticed, I'd escape with my life.

Unfortunately, Nanaka had noticed something, as I saw out of the corner of my eye that she swiftly pulled on her swimsuit and stepped between us. "Could I have that after you're done?" she asked Yumi. "I'm afraid I forgot mine, too."

"Sure, of course. Sae sure seems distracted lately, doesn't she?"

"Yes, well, she's had some boy trouble of late. You may have heard."

"Oh, yeah! Poor Sae. Or I should say lucky Sae, right?"

"Maybe. Though I suspect her luck is about to run out."

That sounded ominous, something Nanaka confirmed when she cornered me again on the way to the pool. "Don't think you got away with that," she whispered to me.

"I'm sorry, it was an accident! And I didn't see much of anything! Well, except Yumi, but –"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. And don't worry, I've changed my mind. I'm not going to kill you. Too messy." She then smiled evilly. "Instead, I'll just tell Sae."

I felt all the color drain from my face. "No! P-please, don't!"

"What, you don't think she deserves to know the truth? How about this – you tell her yourself. Either that or I will. Deal?"

"Um, ok," I said in a small voice. "I'll do it." Gulp. Sure, better from me than from Nanaka, but how could I confess all this to Sae? I'd have to throw myself on her mercy.

At least in the pool I was able to put such things aside. I'm an ok swimmer in my own body, nothing special. But Sae had said once that she must be part penguin – clumsy on land, but totally at home in the water. And that's what I felt as soon as I dove in. For the first time since, well, really, since all this had started, the body I was in felt normal. No longer was I a boy awkwardly trapped in a girl's body, I just was.

They had us swim laps, and every stroke came naturally, as I sprinted down my lane with ease. No, I didn't break any Olympic records – I didn't even win my heat – but I did fine. For the last part of class, they divided us into groups of four for a medley relay race, with me somehow being made the anchor, and our team won! OK, we mostly won because Ai, this really athletic girl, had put us so far ahead on the second leg, but I held my ground and even gained on the second-place finisher, after our third member, Yumi, had floundered on her leg.

The other girls jumped back in the pool when I finished, and we all hugged each other excitedly while bobbing up and down. We were still laughing and chatting together as we made our way back to the locker room.

It was then that I first thought, I could do this. No, not the swimming part – sure, I did ok, but I'd never be good enough to make our school's swim team, let alone the Olympics. No, I meant, being a girl. Being Sae. I still wanted my own body back, of course, and I'm sure Sae wanted hers, but if I was stuck this way, it'd be all right. I could handle it.

As usual, events promptly proved otherwise. Ai was talking with me about Namie Amuro when we entered the showers. She had an extra ticket to the singer's upcoming concert and wondered if I'd like to come. And I was like, whoa, are you kidding me?

I should explain here that Ai Aihara is probably the most popular girl in our school. She's a junior, of course, but all the seniors know her, too. Especially the senior guys, who all have the hots for her. (I'm totally devoted to Sae, of course, but I won't claim I hadn't noticed her before.) They often call her "Ai Iijima," because she looks sort of like that former AV star. So her, talking to me, inviting me out – a hundred guys in my school would have killed for a chance like that.

Of course, at the moment, I was a girl, not a guy. Which lead to: we were talking about Namie's tan, and how to get it, and I was saying, yeah, Hokkaido girls are not know for their tans, while at the same time thinking that with a tan, she'd look even more like Ai Iijima, when we stepped underneath the showers, where I figured I'd quickly rinse off and head back to my locker to change, but Ai immediately stripped off her suit and held it under the shower, then turned to me and said, "Aren't you going to rinse yours out, too? You can't let the chlorine sit in there!" and ...

And sorry about the run-on sentence there, but I kind of had to get it all out before I thought about this too much more. Because of all the naked girls I saw during this little adventure, she was the, uh, nakedest? I mean, the one whose nakedness was the most striking. Ai Iijima might even have been a little envious of her figure. Her breasts were perfectly rounded, with – oh, wait, I said I wasn't going to get into details like that. Anyway, she was so striking that I was struck dumb. And I mean that in both senses of the word.

What restored my (relative) intelligence was catching a glimpse of Nanaka glaring at me. I shook myself out of my stupor and – except, wait, what was I supposed to do now? I could hardly act like I wasn't looking.

No choice but to go for it. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, then stripped off my own swimsuit and held it under the water. I felt weirdly exposed, standing there naked in front of all those girls. No, no, wait, I told myself. It's ok. Remember, you're a girl, too! Be bold! I straightened myself up and said, with a slightly forced smile, "I hope my Hokkaido tan isn't blinding you."

She laughed. "I wish I had my sunglasses, but it's ok. I'll survive."

We strode back to the lockers still chatting, while I tried to ignore all the stares I imagined we were drawing. Or maybe not imagined – not that the other girls had any interest in my naked body, but, as I later discovered, they were mystified by Ai's "new friend." Apparently Sae and Ai had never even talked to each other before.

"Oh, say, are you free after school today?" Ai asked. "There's this new cafe that opened up on Sumiya Street that I wanted to try out."

Wow, a girl asking me out after school? That had never happened before in my entire life. Except – "Oh, sorry, I'd love to, but I'm doing something with my, um, my boyfriend then."

She sighed. "Ah, figures. Boys always get in the way. Another time, then?"

"Um, sure!"

Nanaka snagged me again on the way out. "Quite the social butterfly we're becoming, aren't we?"

"What? No, no, I'm just trying to blend in."

"Fine. Just remember, any dates you set up, Sae's the one going on them, not you."

"Oh, right. Assuming Ryoko can switch us back, of course."

She looked askance at me. "What, there's a chance she can't? That you two will be stuck like that?"

"Uh, well, I'm sure it will be fine. Ryoko is pretty reliable about magic stuff, even if she's kind of weird otherwise. But if it doesn't work, I promise I will be the best Sae I can!"

"Uh-huh." She looked me up and down, then shook her head. "You know, in a weird way, I think you are becoming more like Sae. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

Finally, after many travails, school was over. When I spotted Sae on the way to the club room, I ran over and wrapped my arms around her/him. "At last!" I said. "You wouldn't believe the day I've had!" I snuggled up against her, desperate for that feeling of comfort and reassurance.

She hugged me back and sighed. "Actually, I would believe it. My day was ... difficult. Um, I don't know how to say this, but I saw some, um, things I really shouldn't, and, um ..."

I smiled up at her. "Oh, you mean naked guys, right? Well, don't worry, I saw the same thing."

"What? You saw naked guys? What were you doing?"

"Oh, no, no, I mean I saw some of the girls with, um, I mean without their, um, clothes. In gym class, you know."

"Oh, well, of course. That's, um, kind of the same as what happened with me."

I could feel my face burning red, and a glance at Sae showed she was in a similar state. Oh, well, at least I had fulfilled my promise to Nanaka. Something else occurred to me as well. "So, um, I guess it's no longer a big deal if we see each other naked," I offered.

"No, I suppose not. Especially when we're just seeing ourselves."

"Yeah." We stood there for a moment, until I remembered, "Oh, yeah, I was talking with Ai – you know, Ai Aihara – and she invited me, which I guess really means you, to go see Namie Amuro's concert next week."

"Ai? But – but – I don't even know her, not really!"

"Oh, don't worry. It'll be fine; she's really nice. And easy to talk to – we have so much in common!"

She wrinkled her nose which, being my nose, looked really odd. "It sounds like you're making a new girlfriend."

"What? No, no, it's for you! Or, well, I guess it could be for me, but only if we can't change back. Except I'm sure we'll be able to. So –"

"Ah, there you are!" an all-too-familiar voice called out. "Hold up, I need to talk to you two."

Taking advantage of my new-found immunity to the sight of her, I turned to face Miyama and began, "We're sorry, but the transporter isn't quite fixed yet, and –"

"Yes, yes, I know about that. I talked with that model friend of yours. She says you've had to bring in outside help, a representative from some kind of secret government organization ..."

"Secret government organization? Wait, are you talking about Ryoko?"

"Of course. Sure, she wears that high school uniform, but one look at her, and it's clear she must be, what, 30 years old?"

Ryoko? 30? She is of course the same age as me, and like I said before, looks like a kid. Well, aside from her (Sae's not going to see this, right?) rather impressive, um, breasts. But if Miyama thought that way, then so be it. "Sorry, I can't confirm that," I replied, in a deliberately mysterious way.

"Yes, of course you can't. But no need, it's quite obvious. Now what I do need to know is, once the spies get this fixed –"

"Spies? What?"

"The 'House of Spooks' this Ryoko of yours works for. 'Spooks' are spies, you know."

"Oh, um, it's House of Spirits, actually."

"Spirits, spooks, spies, whatever. My question, though, is once it's fixed, how many people can your transporter take at once? At least five, right? Because it's how all of you escaped the Bell?"

Sae and I looked at each other. "Um –" we began together. Then, "We don't actually know its limits," she said.

"It does have to be a fairly tight grouping," I added. "Everyone in close contact."

"I see." Miyama considered this. "I suppose that explains the regrettable makeout session the two of you were apparently having back in Hawaii. But, fine. Five should not be a problem, then, especially with two of them being on the small side."

"Um, what are you talking about?" I ventured, afraid of the answer.

"Ah, yes, there's been a change of plans. We're changing the Hawaii trip from a regular vacation to a working vacation. But you should be happy about it, as it means you're both coming. Which reminds me, they're here somewhere ..." She rummaged around in her bag and pulled out two swimsuits. "Now I know this one will stretch to fit," she said, indicating the Speedo she had selected for Sae – that is, for Sae-as-me – before. "This one, though, I'm a little concerned about."

She held up some sort of black strappy number against me and regarded it critically. "Hmm, just like I was afraid of, it's a little loose at the top. We'll have to add some fill here," she said, patting my breasts.

I flinched and pulled back from the unwanted familiarity. Which is when I looked down and saw the "swimsuit" was ...

"What the –? That's a dominatrix outfit!" I exclaimed.

She arched an eyebrow. "So, you actually recognize it? Perhaps you're not as naive as you seem."

"Um, well, never mind that. What's this all about?"

"Ah, you see, I've finally determined what the grand finale of my manga will be. An absolute classic – a battle on the beach at dawn! It's between the heroine – that is to say, me – and the villainess – that is to say, you – with the victor obtaining the prize – that is to say, Takeo here. We'll stage it on that beach in Hawaii, and Rinpun and Kojin, now that I've straightened them out on where their loyalties lie, will come along to document everything for my drawings."

"A battle? But I don't want to fight anybody!"

"Oh, really? So Takeo isn't that important to you?"

"What? Of course he is, but –"

"Then it's settled. We'll schedule it for Monday after school. That will give your secret agents time to get everything in order. Oh, and a suggestion – you might want to use the time to tone up that midsection a little," she added, poking at my stomach. "You may not think it's that bad, but trust me, every little flaw like that really stands out in the photographs. I can try to fix it in the drawings, but really, especially for the action shots, it's hard to get the lines right if they're covered in flab."

While I was still in shock from this insult, there was a sudden commotion at the other end of the hallway. "Outta the way! Outta the way!" another all-too-familiar voice was shouting.

We turned, and saw Ryoko rushing down the hall, followed by two guys I recognized from the House of Spirits. The guys were pushing wheelchairs, while Ryoko was dressed up as a nurse and looked –

"Wow! That looks really cute on you, Ryoko!" I said, grateful for the distraction.

Ryoko flashed a brief smile, then looked serious. "No time for that now. We have to get you two off for your treatment!"

"Treatment? What's this about a treatment?" Miyama demanded. "I thought you and your other agents were just here to fix the transporter."

Ryoko winked at me, then addressed Miyama. "Yes, well, that's the thing, ma'am. It appears these two picked up a condition while handling the, um, device. So we have to take care of that first."

"A 'condition'? Wait, do you mean some sort of alien virus?" Miyama shrank back slightly from us.

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss the details," Ryoko replied. "But there's no cause for alarm. It does not appear to be particularly contagious. Short of exchanging bodily fluids or the like, that is."

"B-bodily f-fluids?"

"Yes, blood, saliva, that sort of thing. Mere physical contact isn't enough. So assuming you haven't been, say, French kissing Takeo here, you should be fine."

"F-french k-kissing?" Miyama's face turned white. "Um, excuse me, I'm feeling a little under the weather." She dashed into the nearby restroom, from which we soon heard retching sounds.

Ryoko grinned at the two of us. "Whaddya think? Pretty clever, right?" she said, picking up the Osaka accent she had dropped while talking to Miyama. "That'll keep her off your tail for a while."

"Uh, maybe, but if she tells the school, they'll probably demand to quarantine us."

"Oh, yeah. Didn't think of that." Ryoko shrugged. "Oh, well, best get you off to be cured, then. C'mon, get in the wheelchairs."

"Is that really necessary? We can walk just fine."

"Sorry, hospital policy. Now get in, and let's go."

And before I could object any more, they wrangled us into the chairs, and wheeled us down the hall and out the front door, where a white ambulance-style van painted with the "House of Spirits" logo was waiting, Ryoko's father at the wheel.

"Ah, it's our young cross-dressers," he said, as we were shoved inside.

"We're not cross-dressers!" I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry. What is the terminology these days? Transvestite? Transsexual? Transgender? I'm not really up on these things."

"Dad! C'mon, stop that!" Ryoko said. "I already told you. They just changed bodies, that's all."

"Yes, yes, of course. So that would make them ... transcorporal? Transcorporeal? Hmm, sounds like they are on the edge of divinity."

"Well, seeing as we're gonna take them halfway to heaven, it's only appropriate." She turned and grinned at Sae and me. "Don't worry, it's really only about 8% of the way to heaven, but 'halfway' sounds better."

I had trouble following this linguistic discussion, as I was instead focused on hanging on for dear life, while the van careened down the streets of Tokyo, sirens blaring. "W-why are we going so fast?" I managed to get out. "It-it's not that urgent, is it?"

Ryoko's dad laughed. "No, but I hardly ever get a chance to drive like this in the city. Anyway, we're here."

He had pulled up in front of a large, European-style mansion, which also had a "House of Spirits" logo, hanging over its front door. "Wow, you own all of this?" I asked him.

"Ah, no, not exactly. This is a theme wedding venue a friend of mine runs. The people that were going to use it backed out, so he's letting us have it for the weekend. We also borrowed their van; they normally use it for flower deliveries and such. Don't worry, we have you two set up in the bridal suite. It's really nice."

"B-bridal suite?" Sae asked.

"Haha, yes, part of the reason we got this place is I said I knew a young couple that might be interested in renting it for their wedding and, well, never mind all that, let's get you ready for the procedure."

And before we could say anything else, we were quickly wheeled through the front door and into a large, softly-lit room, decorated in pinks and lavenders, furnished with plenty of mirrors and a comfortable seating area. Somewhat spoiling the serenity, though, were two hospital beds which had been placed together in the middle of the room, along with a cartful of medical-looking equipment.

The two "orderlies" unstrapped us from our wheelchairs and exited the room, leaving us only with "Nurse" Ryoko.

"Sorry about my dad there," she said. "It's kinda my fault, actually. Ever since I surprised him with that 'safe sex' stuff, he's been obsessing about weddings 'n' all. But never mind that. It's time to get you guys prepped. I'm gonna need you to undress and get in those beds."

I had been expecting as much, but Sae was shocked. "Undressed? You mean take off everything? Get n-naked?"

"Well, yeah, that's what getting undressed means. But don't worry, you'll have a sheet over you during the procedure."

"Um, ok," I said. "But for now, while we're getting undressed –"

"Sure, go ahead. We're all girls here, right? Well, you're an honorary girl, but still ..."

"But still, right now, Sae's, you know, me."

"Yes, and – Oh, I get it. You don't want me to see your thing. Yeah, I know, guys can be sensitive about that. Especially if it's on the small side."

"Hey, now, wait a minute!" I cried.

"Just kidding. I'm sure it's impressive. All right, I'll give you guys some privacy. See you in 5."

After she left, Sae and I looked at each other, our faces growing red. "Um, this shouldn't be a big deal," I offered. "I mean, we're only seeing ourselves, really."

"I know that, but, somehow ..." She sighed. "Well, here goes."

We undressed slowly, self-consciously, and it was not at all how I imagined it would be when we first got naked with each other. Except I did help her undo her tie, so in that sense, we undressed each other.

It was more than a little weird, seeing myself naked like that, especially now that I had just sort of gotten used to seeing myself naked like this, that is, as a girl.

We stood there, blushing fiercely, trying not to stare at each other and not really succeeding. I was trying to figure out something to say when there was a knock on the door.

"Are you two ready?" Ryoko called out. "You're not making out in there, are you?"

"Just a second!" I replied. We quickly dove into the beds and pulled the sheets over ourselves. That's when I noticed the mattresses were cold and hard, and the single sheets we had were rather thin. Brrr! I hoped the whole thing would be over quickly. "OK, ready!" I said.

Ryoko came back in carrying a black bag. "Sorry to interrupt your mutual explorations there, but it's time to get this show on the road. First, I'm gonna need you to take these." She pulled out a couple of familiar-looking blue pills.

"Aren't those more of those, um, you know, sex pills?" Sae asked.

Ryoko laughed. "Ha, you were the ones who turned them into sex pills. They're really just for redirecting magical energy. But don't worry, with your magic gone right now, they're not gonna make you into horndogs. We just haveta make sure no resistance develops while we're doing the soul swap. C'mon, down the hatch!"

I sat up and reached out for a pill, which unfortunately caused the sheet to fall off my top half and expose my, that is, Sae's breasts.

"Oops!" Ryoko said. "Looks like you need to work on your feminine modesty."

"Sorry," I said, and quickly covered up again. "I suppose I'm still not that good at being a girl. Good thing Sae will be taking over again soon."

"Too bad for you. 'Cause you know, once you get used to it, being a girl can be pretty awesome. You're really missing out."

"I suppose. But I think it's better when Sae is the girl."

Ryoko then started strapping our arms and legs to the rails on the sides of the beds.

"Wait!" Sae cried. "What are you doing?"

"Just a precaution, that's all. So you don't thrash around, or fall out or that kinda stuff."

"What? Are we likely to do that?"

"Nah, but better safe than sorry." After she had finished trussing us all up, she added. "Don't worry, everything's gonna be fine. These guys know what they're doing."

"Well, that's good," I said. "So they have experience at this?"

"Uh, well, not exactly. Yeah, it seems this is the first actual case of this kinda swap in something like 85 years. Or at least the first we know about – I mean, maybe some couple switched more recently, but then decided to keep it that way."

"Hold on! You mean they've never done this before?"

"Yeah, but don't worry. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"

"That's an excellent question. What is the worst that could happen?"

Ryoko thought for a moment. "Hmm, I guess your souls could get stuck in some sorta limbo, and your bodies would fall into a coma. But that's not too likely. At least I don't think so." She turned to the door and shouted out, "C'mon, everyone! They're ready!"

And before we could say anything else, a flood – well, six – men came in, wearing cloaks and surgical masks, and began chanting something in a low drone. Ryoko fastened breathing masks over our faces and began, "You'll be on the path to the Duat shortly. Now remember, when you reach the Akhet, you have to –"

And I was asleep.

And almost immediately, I was awake again.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" I asked. "What do I have to do?" But there was no answer.

Which is when I noticed I wasn't in the bed in the room in the mansion in Tokyo. Instead, I was lying on what seemed to be a semi-solid cloud – white, fluffy, soft and cushiony. I sat up, and saw that I was still a girl, and still quite naked. But the nakedness wasn't a problem, as here it was nice and warm, and the cloudy surface was very comfortable.

I looked around, and the cloud seemed to stretch out endlessly in all directions. Above was a featureless light gray sky, softly glowing, which provided the modest illumination, a sort of uniform twilight glow. No, wait, Akhet was the land of dawn, wasn't it? So a uniform pre-dawn glow.

Though twilight vs. pre-dawn wasn't what was important. What was important was, what the heck was I supposed to do now? Wandering around in this featureless cloudscape didn't sound very promising, especially with that "stuck in limbo" stuff as a possible outcome. But what else could I do?

I stood up, gingerly balancing on the spongy surface, and slowly turned around, scanning to the horizon in all directions. At first, nothing stood out, but finally, I thought I spied something a little darker in the otherwise uniform field of undulating white.

I figured I should make my way to it, but as soon as I started walking, I lost my balance and fell on my face. Fortunately, with the soft surface, I didn't hurt anything, so I got up and tried again, only to fall again almost immediately. It was really hard making any progress on this yielding cloudstuff. I finally settled on a high, bouncing stride, like I was an astronaut bounding across the lunar surface.

It made for fast progress, and the spot I had seen quickly grew into the figure of a person – a very familiar person, one that I had in fact been only a little over a day before. "Sae!" I called out as I neared. "It's me!" Unfortunately, stopping walking proved about as hard as starting, and I ended up tripping and falling across her.

"Ack! Sorry!" I cried, and tried to extricate myself which, even more unfortunately, led to me putting my hand squarely on top of her – that is, my – uh, you know, that thing, my, uh, genitalia. "Sorry, sorry!" I repeated. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Sae had an odd look on her face. "N-no, I'm fine, but what are you doing?"

I looked down and saw that I was absentmindedly stroking the, uh, thing. "Oops!" I cried, pulling my hand away. "Sorry, I just, er, um, wanted to make sure it was, um, ok."

"It's fine, it's fine. Actually, that felt a little – well, never mind that. At least we're together now. But what do we do next?"

"Yeah, speaking of that, did you happen to catch what Ryoko was saying when she put the masks on us? I'm afraid I fell unconscious right in the middle of it."

"Sorry, I didn't hear it, either. But didn't you take home that Egyptian book to read? Did it say what we're supposed to do?"

"Yeah, I did, but I couldn't make much out of it. Just that we'd be sent to a 'lower heaven,' and there would be a 'dream joining' and –" I stopped dead when I suddenly realized what it all meant.

"Um, Takeo, what is it? Why did you stop?"

"I, uh, I think I figured it out."

"Great! So what should we do?"

"Yeah, um, about that. You remember when Ryoko said it was unusual that we did the swap with just a kiss, that usually it needs, um, more?"

"Yes, and ..."

"And that's what we need to do. More."

"M-more?" Her face turned bright red. "Wait, do you mean –"

"Um, yeah. We have to make love." Into Sae's stunned silence, I added, "That's what this is about. We, uh, join, but it's in the spiritual world, not the physical world, so it's ok. I mean, it's not really any different from just having a wet dream."

"A wet dream?"

"You know, a dream about sex."

She blushed even harder. "I, um, I don't do that."

"Oh."

"Um, why is it a 'wet' dream?"

It was my turn to blush harder. "Well, it's when your, um, your body reacts to the thoughts about, um, sex, and, um, you know, there can be a release or, um, emission of, um, sexual fluids, and ..."

There was an awkward silence as Sae digested that. I finally broke it with, "So anyway, it's not really real, so don't worry about that. Just think of it as, um, practice for when we're finally ready for it in real life. Plus, it should be interesting to experience how it is for the, um, the other half. It'll make us better at, you know, doing it, because we'll know what feels, um, good for the other one, and, um ..."

I trailed off when I noticed Sae was looking more and more distressed. "Um, Sae, what's wrong? I mean, I know it's our first time and all, but since it's not real, it shouldn't –"

"But I don't know what to do! I don't even know what a girl is supposed to do, exactly, and I certainly don't know what a boy is supposed to do! And the boy is the one who takes the lead and all, so ..."

"Oh," I repeated. Yeesh, I thought. This certainly wasn't how I had imagined our first time would be! Clearly, I would have to take charge. But that would be ok, right? I mean, I had read enough stories about experienced girls seducing naive boys – hmm, I probably shouldn't reveal I have a taste for such things – that I thought I had a pretty good idea how to go about that.

"It's ok, Sae," I said. "I can handle everything."

"You can? But doesn't the guy have to be, um, ready? I mean, his, um ..."

I smiled. "Don't worry, I'm very familiar with that particular item. Just leave it to me."

And I began – ok, this is by far the most embarrassing part yet. I mean, you know what I was doing, right? What? Yikes! No, no! Not with my mouth, with my hands!

Sae squirmed at first, but soon settled down. "This is ok?" I asked, though from the way a certain item was responding, I knew the answer.

She blushed. "It's, um, really nice. But now what about you?"

From the way my own body had been warming up, that was also an easy question to answer. "I'm going to be fine. I'm, um, getting kind of excited, too."

"But aren't you worried? About it hurting? I've heard that girls, their first time, well, you know."

"Oh, I'll be –" I began, but froze. Sae was right. This is something else I probably shouldn't reveal, but I've also read plenty of stories about experienced boys seducing naive girls, and one theme has always been dealing with the, um, difficulties with the, um, deflowering.

But hold on, wouldn't I be expecting Sae to endure it whenever we were ready for it in real life? So how could I do any less for her, now that the shoe was going on the other foot? OK, not a shoe and a foot, but now that the you-know-what was going into the other you-know-what.

"I'll be fine," I repeated, more firmly this time. "Everything will be fine, because I love you." I arranged myself over her and grasped the, um, member, in preparation for the, um, insertion. I leaned down close to her and whispered, "OK, sweetie, here goes!" I steeled myself, gave her a quick kiss and –

And –

And everything turned white and I was falling, falling, falling through endless layers of cloud.

It was a dream-like falling, so I wasn't really startled or panicked, just quietly accepting. "The falling is ok," I thought to myself, in a variation of the old joke, "It's the stop at the end that I should be worried about."

When that finally came, though, it was anticlimactic. A gentle bounce against a slightly yielding surface, and I was back, back in the cool confines of a hospital bed in the borrowed mansion. "I-I'm sorry!" I said, my voice muffled by the breathing mask. "It looks like we got kicked out before we could –"

I stopped abruptly when I realized my voice, even through the barrier of the mask, sounded deeper, more familiar. And my body felt – well, I was still too bound up to really tell, but I was pretty sure –

"It worked!" I cried. "I'm back!"

I opened my eyes and saw Ryoko's face hovering over me. "Just a sec, I couldn't understand that," she said. She removed my mask and asked, "Is that you, Takeo?"

"Yes, it's me. I'm sorry, we didn't quite, um, finish, but I guess it was enough anyway?"

"'Finish'? What are you talking about? I told you, all you two had to do was exchange a kiss. The barriers are much lower in the spirit realm." She looked at me critically. "What took you guys so long, anyway? I had assumed it would be like, one kiss, boom! And you're back to your old selves. One, two minutes, tops. But you guys have been out for almost an hour! What on earth were you doing?"

"We were – I mean, I thought we had to – er, I mean, we ended up really far apart when you sent us there. It took me a long time to find Sae."

"Oh. Hmm, I guess we didn't coordinate things as well as we should have. Sorry about that. But at least it seems like you were really happy when you did find her. Or maybe she was happy about finding you – not sure who was in control of this at that point." She nodded down toward my midsection, where the item in question had pitched a circus tent in the sheet covering me. "It's nice to see you two appreciate each other this much."

"Ack! No, no, never mind that," I said, not eager to continue any discussion of the state of that particular item. "What we'd really appreciate now is being untied."

"Of course, of course." She quickly undid our straps and removed Sae's mask.

Sae shook herself and sat up, doing a better job of hanging onto the sheet than I had. "We're back to normal?" she asked. "But how? We never –"

"Everything's fine," I interrupted. "I'll explain in a minute. But Ryoko's going to leave now, so we can get dressed," I added pointedly.

Ryoko laughed. "Yeah, sure. But don't worry about your thing. I've seen enough now that I'm reasonably impressed. Sae should be content."

After she left, I moved over and sat down next to Sae on her bed. "I'm afraid I was wrong," I said. "It turns out all we had to do was kiss. Things are easier in the spirit world, so we didn't have to go through all that other stuff. Sorry."

She smiled. "Oh, don't worry. 'All that other stuff' was fine. I mean, I already revealed I kind of like it, remember? Back when we first took Ryoko's pills?"

"Oh, yeah. No way I can forget that." Something then occurred to me. "You know, we took more of those pills right before the, uh, procedure. They might still be in effect. So, um, how about if we –"

"What? With all of those people just outside the door? No, sorry, Takeo, I love you, but I'm going to need more privacy before we do any more of that. Let's just get dressed and get out of here."

"If that's what you want. But at least a kiss first, ok?"

"Oh, all right."

And we kissed, and it was nice, and I really wanted more, but ...

But it was a little too obvious that I did, as Sae looked down at my lap and giggled. "You know, that was one thing I couldn't get used to while I was a boy. That thing kept popping up at the most inconvenient moments. I don't know how you can put up with it all the time."

I blushed. "Oh, well, it can be embarrassing, but when the time comes, we'll appreciate it."

We got dressed and gathered up our things to go. I opened the door and called out, "We're ready!" But no one answered. We searched all over the first floor, only again to find no one. I was about to head up to the second floor when Sae noticed something stuck to the front door.

"It's a note from Ryoko. It says 'Sorry, something came up. You'll have to make it back home on your own.' Huh, I wonder what that's about?"

I studied the note. "Not sure, but with Ryoko, it could be anything. Anything, so long as it's ridiculous, that is."

I was half right, as it did prove to be ridiculous, but only in retrospect. While we were standing near the door, we suddenly heard a siren approaching. "That must be their van," said Sae. "Sounds like they're coming back after all. Maybe they found another case of body swapping to cure."

"Hmm, I suppose it's possible, but wouldn't that be quite a coincidence? Two cases in one day, after not having any for 85 years?"

"Well, something else then. If there's one thing we've discovered, it's that magic can create all kinds of problems."

I laughed. "That's for sure."

"Let's go see what it is," Sae said. "Maybe there's some way we can help."

"All right. Or at least find out something else we shouldn't do."

But when we stepped outside, what came to a screaming halt in front of us was not the House of Spirits "ambulance," but a police car, followed by a black limousine. Two policemen jumped out of the first, while a trio of men dressed in dark suits emerged out of the other vehicle.

"Halt! Stay right where you are!" one of the policemen shouted. Which was rather unnecessary, as Sae and I were too startled to move. The policemen ran up, grabbed us roughly by the arms and slapped handcuffs on us while the dark-suited men strode over to us.

The one in the middle, who seemed to be in charge, peered at us curiously. "Who are you?" he asked. "I don't recall ever seeing either of you before."

Sae beside me was trembling in fear, which made me angrier and angrier. How dare they frighten my perfect Sae? My growing anger led me in a perhaps inadvisable direction, as I replied, "I could ask you the same question. Who are you? What is this about? We haven't done anything!"

"Cheeky one, aren't you? We'll be the judge of what you've done and haven't done. Do you know a certain Ryuunosuke Ryugasaki?"

"Ryuunosuke? Uh, maybe. Is that Ryoko's dad?"

"Ah, so you do know him. And you must be part of the House of Spirits, then."

"What? No, we're not. We just needed some help from them."

One of the other dark-suited men spoke up. "Boss, this must be the couple they were talking about. The ones looking for a place to get married."

"Huh, so that part checks out, at least. The only thing so far." He looked us over again. "Except these two are obviously high school students. Little young for getting married."

"Maybe they have to get married," the third dark-suited man said, snickering. "Maybe he knocked her up. She doesn't look like the type that could say 'no' to a guy. Whaddya say, sweetie? Got a bun in the oven, there?" And he patted her on the stomach.

I was purple with rage. I couldn't reach him, but there was enough give in the handcuffs that I could grab Sae's hand. Quickly, I repeated the Fulmen spell and –

And I had kind of forgotten the police were still holding onto our arms. And that the lack of a wand was more than made up for by the power of my anger. So not only did the jerk's hand get burned, but the two policemen were sent flying, landing several feet away from us, dazed.

One of the policemen staggered to his feet and pulled out his gun, waving it unsteadily. Sae shrieked, then I heard her quickly repeat the barrier spell: "Morabideorcadideolaxideor!"

A fiery red ball appeared around us, then rapidly expanded outward, sweeping everything in its path. The men were all knocked about a hundred feet back, and even the cars were pushed off into the grass.

"We've got to get out of here!" I cried to Sae. Before she could reply, I scooped up our school bags and pulled her in for the kiss. I hoped enough time had passed for Ryoko's pills to have worn off, and fortunately that was the case, as the familiar warmth rose up around us. I grabbed hold of her hand – rather awkward, what with being handcuffed and holding our bags as well – and we took two steps forward –

And ended up in the middle of Sae's bedroom. "It worked!" I said. "We're safe!"

Sae sighed and collapsed onto her bed. "At least for now. But aren't they going to come after us?"

I sat down next to her. "I'm not sure. They didn't seem to know who we were or anything, so it would be hard for them to find us. It's really the House of Spirits people they're after, anyway."

"Why are they after them?"

"That's an excellent question. My guess is the story Dr. Ryugasaki said about how they got the mansion wasn't quite accurate. We're going to have to find them and get the answers out of them."

"I suppose. But in the meantime" – she held up her arms – "what are we going to do about these handcuffs?"

Right at that moment, there was a knock on Sae's door. "Sae, are you in there?" The door flew open and Saki stepped in. "I didn't realize you were home and –" She then noticed our wrist adornments. "Oh, my. Kinky! But shouldn't it just be one of you who's handcuffed? It must be awkward when both of you are."

I stood up. "Ha, ha, no, we're just practicing a magic trick. You know, the old escape artist routine. The secret release can be a little hard to reach sometimes, so –"

Yeah, so? So what? Just what could I do about the handcuffs? Then I saw Sae's teddy bear, Jeff-kun, on her dresser, and inspiration struck. I pulled my wand out of my bag, awkwardly positioned it over the cuffs, and repeated the exchange spell under my breath.

There was a flash, and suddenly Jeff-kun was in my hands, and the cuffs were – wait a second, they weren't on the dresser, they were now on Jeff-kun's arms! He seemed to be staring at me malevolently, so I said, "Sorry about that, let me get those." I slipped them off him and placed him back on the dresser.

Saki clapped her hands. "Marvelous! How on earth did you do that?"

"I'm sorry, but –"

"I know, I know, a magician never reveals his secrets. So Sae, how about you? Are you ready to put on a demo?"

Sae looked flustered. "I'm, uh, I'm still just practicing. I'm not very good at it yet."

"Oh, that's ok. Just give it a try! What's the worst that could happen?"

"You have no idea," Sae said ruefully.

I smiled briefly at the memory of some of Sae's more spectacular mishaps, but quickly got serious. "Don't worry, Sae. We'll do it together. It'll be fine."

She thought for a moment, then nodded her head and took on that look of cute determination that I love so much. "Right. Let's do it!"

I set Jeff-kun next to Sae on the bed. "Sorry about putting you through this again," I said to him in a low voice. "But it's for Sae's sake, after all."

That seemed to mollify him, so I handed Sae her wand and picked up my own again. "All right, we're just doing the transfer with Jeff-kun. No big deal, right?"

"Right," Sae agreed.

We carefully repeated the spell together, and flash! the cuffs were replaced with – wait a second, that wasn't Jeff-kun sitting on Sae's lap, it was ... Ryoko?!

Ryoko, Sae and Saki all screamed in unison, "AAAAAAHHHHHH!"

Saki was the first to recover, saying, "That was amazing! You had her hidden here the whole time? How did you manage that?"

"Ha, ha, sorry, but I'm afraid that's a secret, too," I said. "Anyway, let me handle the introductions. Saki-san, this is a friend of ours, Ryoko. Ryoko, this is Saki-san, Sae's older sister. I think we did a pretty good job for our first attempt at this trick in front of an audience, wouldn't you say?"

Fortunately, Ryoko took the hint. "Um, yeah, all that practice paid off, I guess."

"Yes. Now, uh, if you don't mind, Saki-san, we need to work on refining some of the details, and, well, like I said, it is secret."

Saki laughed. "Yes, of course. Have fun!"

As soon as she left, Ryoko demanded, "What the hell is going on? Why did you drag me here? And what the hell are these for?" she added, indicating the handcuffs, which had somehow ended up on her wrists.

Again, her accent had departed completely, not surprising under the circumstances. I quickly apologized. "Sorry, let me take care of those." I looked around for Jeff-kun, to try the swap again, but he was nowhere to be seen. "Uh-oh, I think Jeff-kun ended up wherever you were."

"Jeff-kun? Who's that?"

"Never mind that now, let me – ah, this will do." I held my wand over a snow globe I saw sitting on Sae's desk, did the spell, and with a quick flash, the snow globe ended up in Ryoko's hands, with the cuffs lying on the desk, just the way I had intended. I took the globe from her and set it back in its place. "There you go, free as a bird."

"Thank you. Now could you please explain what's going on? Why did you bring me here?"

"Um, I'm afraid that's kind of my fault," Sae said. "See, we were trying to get the handcuffs off of me, by doing an exchange spell with them and my teddy bear Jeff-kun, but at the last minute, I suddenly thought about you, what with those men going after you and all, and I guess I brought you here instead."

"Uh-huh. What's with the handcuffs, anyway? You guys get tied up in some kind of bondage game? Or cuffed up, I guess."

"Actually, we were hoping you could answer that," I said. "After we found you had all disappeared from the mansion, the police showed up, along with these men that must have been detectives, although they looked like they're from an American Mafia movie. The police slapped handcuffs on us, and the Mafia detectives started interrogating us. We managed to get away and teleport back here, but I don't know if they're going to try to track us down. And in any case, it sure sounds like they're trying to track the House of Spirits down. What's going on? Why are the police after you?"

"They showed up there that quickly?" Ryoko shook her head. "I thought you guys would be long gone by the time they arrived. Sorry about that."

"Yeah, we're sorry too. So why is your dad in trouble with the law?"

"The law?" Ryoko laughed bitterly. "Those guys are not the law. Far from it."

"They're not? Then who are they?"

"That's a long story."

"Then you better get started on telling us."

"Sorry, but you" – and here, she pointed straight out at you, dear reader – "are just going to have to wait until the next chapter."

– The End (for now) –