Dude, Why Are You a Girl?
I started getting ready to leave the house early that morning.
I was going to meet a gaming buddy I'd played with for four years without ever knowing their face, their voice, or even their age.
What kind of person would they even be? The picture I'd imagined from the start—some balding middle-aged guy with leg hair like a thicket? Or, against all odds, a clean-cut college student in his twenties? Maybe, judging by the way they talked, a middle schooler or a high schooler.
Whatever they turned out to be, I was excited as hell. Someone who ran their mouth with every sex joke, shitpost, and brain-dead line imaginable would be hilarious as any of the three types that had just popped into my head. Even the username was TextbookOfTightness. Seriously… I hated to say it, but that was a truly, truly vulgar, idiotic name.
Anyway, I reached the meeting spot carrying all that anticipation, and what I found waiting for me was—
"No way…! This is a lie, I'm telling youuu…!"
A girl.
And a ridiculously pretty one.
Shoulder-length black hair. Sky-blue eyes so clear they looked transparent. Porcelain-pale skin, and a body that came out where it ought to and went in where it ought to. A tear mole that lent her a strange kind of sexiness, and eyes and an expression stirred together from a little sharpness and a languid droop. The sort of face that made you think she'd probably led a ridiculous number of men around by the nose.
The ache in my side was a separate matter. The gap between her and everything I'd pictured was so enormous that I simply toppled over and lay flat on the ground.
Ah—the ache in my side was because I'd said something stupid and gotten jabbed in the ribs for it. When I'd asked whether she'd been hit by a gender-swap beam, she'd let it slide well enough, so I'd gone and asked, for no good reason at all, whether cross-dressing was a hobby of hers.
I scrubbed my dry hands over my face and wailed like I was at a funeral.
"This can't be haaaappening……."
Which only cemented my conviction that TextbookOfTightness—Tight, for short—had been blasted by a gender-swap beam.
You might think I was overdoing it… but this person could not be a girl. And for good reason. Listen to the way they talked, and there was simply no way they were actually a woman. Even one verbal habit that sprang to mind was the likes of ahn, feels so good, ahn, sex. It wasn't some sex-parrot gimmick, squawking sex, sex just to fake being a guy… those lines came from a place you could not reach unless you really were a man!
Still sprawled exactly as I'd fallen, I kept spitting out things like "this can't be real…" like a machine that had broken down. I didn't even get tired. I just kept going, and going, and going.
How long passed like that?
Tight finally seemed to decide she couldn't watch any longer and nudged my side with the toe of her shoe. Then, in a small voice, she muttered:
"…Is it really that shocking. That I'm a girl."
I lowered the hands covering my face just a little and peeked out at her with only my eyes.
"Yeah. That much."
"…Why?"
"Think about it. How do you think you'd feel if I'd turned out to be a girl?"
"That's… mm, uh… now that I think about it, I'd probably react about the same."
She considered it for a moment, then said so with a strangely serious face. I'd only tossed it out as a light joke, and seeing her take it like that was pretty funny.
"…So. When are you getting up."
"The aftershock hasn't worn off yet, so maybe another hour just like this……."
"I'll step on you. If you don't get up."
"Yes, ma'am. Hup—!"
She lifted her foot in a gesture that looked like she fully meant to plant it on my stomach. Faced with that kind of resolve, I scrambled upright in a hurry.
Once I was on my feet I patted the dust off my clothes. Only then did Tight set her raised foot back on the ground. Then she folded her arms beneath her chest.
She was wearing a pretty baggy hoodie… and yet her chest was large enough that its outline drew itself right through the fabric, declaring its full grandeur in no uncertain terms.
What do you even do to get them that big? Less lewd than just astonishing.
I tore my gaze off that obscene view before I knew what I was doing.
"Anyway, you really are Tight, right?"
"Yeah."
"This isn't some hidden-camera bit where you dragged a girl out here and you're hiding somewhere watching how I react?"
"…I said it's me."
"I seriously, seriously, seriously can't believe it, so I'm checking one more time… there's a character with the name TextbookOfTightness, and the real name is Shin Yumin… ack!"
"…It's me, it's me, it's me!"
Wham, wham, wham. Her fists hammered my chest over and over.
God, that hurt. The garbage personality was exactly like Tight's, too. Seeing that, it really did seem to be the person I knew.
I rubbed the spot she'd hit, easing the pain bit by bit. It still stung, but she clearly hadn't put her full strength into it; the ache faded quickly.
Tight kept that blank look on her face, watched me groaning, and said:
"So. You planning to stay like this all day?"
"Huh? Oh, right. Finding out you were a girl shocked me so bad I forgot."
"Unbelievable. …Well. I didn't let it show. That I was a girl."
"Anyway, let's go. If you remembered. Otherwise the seats'll be gone."
With that, she pointed at the building behind her. The building was a PC bang. The whole reason she and I were meeting.
You might wonder why two people who'd known each other for four years without even knowing each other's gender were suddenly meeting in person… but there was a reason. The game we played—Arcana Saber—was running a PC bang event. And Arcana Saber's PC bang event could only be joined at a handful of cafés the company itself had designated.
The rewards were fat enough that skipping it felt like taking a massive loss. Even so, you could only participate at specific cafés, and honestly it was enough of a hassle that I'd been planning not to go.
I'd brought it up in passing, and for once Tight asked if I wanted to go together, which was how I'd ended up here. From what she'd said, there was one near her place, so she'd called me out. Considering how she usually refused, to a pathological degree, to share a single thing about herself, that was a pretty unexpected move.
We walked toward the building she'd pointed at, and before I knew it we'd reached the PC bang. I opened the door and stepped inside, and the bell hung there to announce customers gave a bright little chime. A glance around showed the place packed wall to wall.
Arcana Saber was a well-known game, sure, and they were only handing rewards out at certain cafés… I still hadn't expected this many people this early in the morning.
While I was quietly panicking, Tight moved like she knew the place and started loading time. From a glance, it looked like she'd fed in a ten-thousand-won bill—about ten dollars.
"You're going for twelve hours?"
I asked, eyeing the time charged to her account. No matter how much you liked the game, no matter how determined you were to vacuum up every last reward… honestly, I didn't have it in me to sit on the same game nonstop for twelve hours.
Fortunately, Tight gave a small shake of her head.
"I come here a lot. This is just charging while I'm at it. But if you want… burning all of it today. Doable."
"I'll pass. I like this game, but not enough to run it nonstop for twelve hours."
"You don't even care that much. Casual."
"What are you talking about. You only kept pace with me because your drop luck is disgusting. I've got way more playtime than you, for the record."
"Doesn't matter. You still get stat-checked. By me."
"You're barely thirty higher and you call that a stat-check…!"
"It is a stat-check. You're lower than me. Anyway, charge first. Time's wasting."
"Hey, you little—"
This little shit.
She needled me with practiced ease and wandered off to hunt for open seats. Which left me alone, chanting fuck under my breath in a steady stream while I charged my own time.
Right about when I finished, the phone in my pocket chimed. Looked like Tight had found seats.
Number 59… let's see. Ah, over there.
I went and sat in the chair beside her, where she was leaned back against the rest, perfectly at ease. The leather gave its signature squeak, and Tight flicked her eyes over to me.
"Seats I barely found. Take these away and everything else is scattered."
"If we'd looked a little harder, wouldn't there have been better ones than these?"
"…If a certain someone hadn't been face-down in front of the building. I'd have found them. Way better than these."
"Ahem. Is there even a benefit to grabbing a good seat in a PC bang?"
I brushed it off like it was nothing and changed the subject.
"Oh, right. Speaking of me being face-down, that reminded me. Didn't you say, with your own mouth, that you were a guy?"
"Did I…… mm. Ah. Now that you mention it, I guess I never said it."
She thought for a second, then spoke as if she'd only just realized.
"So how was I supposed to not be shocked. A kid who went around saying, in her own words, that she was a guy—who talked exactly like a guy, completely—shows up, and she's a girl."
"…I'll give you everything else. But I didn't show up having turned into a girl. I was always a girl. And I never advertised that I was a guy. No making things up over one time."
"Anyway, you did lie, didn't you? I was seriously surprised."
She let out a strained little groan. When I shot her a look that said explain, she sighed softly and opened her mouth.
"I wasn't trying to trick you. If you go around letting it show you're a girl while you game, the whispers come. A disgusting number of them. To the point it feels like the system is hand-picking only the truly revolting ones and delivering them straight to me. So I went around talking like a guy."
"Ah, yeah, that's fair. If you're a girl, guys who'll hit on you for no reason are everywhere."
"The username's like this for the same reason. So nobody would think I was a girl."
"I wasn't really asking about that, though?"
"……I just wanted to say it, so I said it."
So that was why. Then it made sense that I'd mistaken her for a guy all this time. She never let on that she was a girl—how was I supposed to know? Which meant me being shocked wasn't strange in the slightest.
Still, tossing in that one unnecessary remark earned me a look bristling with irritation. She held up a single finger, arched a brow, and glared.
I paid her no mind, turned my eyes back to the screen, and said:
"I get it now. Anyway, let's just play. We're already logged in."
…It was absolutely not because I was scared of the way she looked ready to start tormenting my ribs with a finger at any second.