That's Why It Doesn't Work
No matter what position I slept in, it was never entirely comfortable.
Back when I was a guy, I could always drop off in nothing but loose cotton clothes and shorts. Now, just because my breasts sagged, this firm bra that squeezed them tight was a constant source of discomfort. I wanted to free myself of it at least for sleep, but the moment I lay down I understood the problem.
On my back, the weight pulled my breasts apart to either side and the sensation drove me crazy. I had expected gravity to press down and leave them feeling stuffy—I had never imagined they would spill sideways. Rolling onto my side stopped the sagging, but the position itself was miserable. Some people are used to sleeping curled up like shrimp, but I could never fall asleep that way.
“Umm.”
So it took me longer to drift off. Waking up got pushed back as a result, but I was in the middle of my unemployed stretch; there was no one around to give me grief about it. I could live however I wanted until school started and fix my rhythm then. No problem.
“Hey. Hey. Wake up.”
Those peaceful thoughts shattered as the calm sensation was yanked apart. Every time my body shook, dreams and half-formed ideas crumbled and my brow furrowed. The pure unpleasantness of being forced awake flooded through me. My tightly shut eyes fluttered open, searching for the cause.
“Nngh…”
“My body’s weird and it won’t go down. Can you tell me how to deal with it? You said the morning wood was the problem.”
The completely out-of-nowhere words while I was still half-asleep made my brain freeze solid. They weren’t complicated, yet it took a long moment for them to sink in. I buried my face in the pillow and mumbled.
“What time is it?”
My own condition came first. My head already felt ready to split; piling a headache-inducing conversation on top of it was more than I could handle.
“Eight-thirty.”
“…I only got five hours.”
“Five hours? Why’d you go to bed so late?”
When discomfort keeps you from sleeping, your eyes naturally drift to the phone lying next to you. If you don’t have to get up early, there’s no real reason to fight it.
“Just… it happened.”
“Get up for now.”
“Let me sleep a little more…”
“This won’t go down… at least tell me how to take care of it. It’s seriously driving me crazy.”
The frantic stream of words gradually dragged my hazy mind awake. Wondering what the hell this was about first thing in the morning, I opened my eyes and lifted my head—and only then did the situation become clear. Maybe I had simply refused to understand it until now.
“It’s up.”
“It’s up, so tell me how to deal with it already…”
He didn’t look embarrassed so much as simply at a loss. From the way he was floundering, he clearly knew how uncomfortable it was.
“Haa.”
Morning wood was an unavoidable physiological fact of life, but it refusing to go down was a whole different story. Some days it resolved quickly; other days it stubbornly hung around. That was normal—but being stuck was still being stuck.
“Follow me.”
“Uh…”
He seemed to realize how ridiculous he looked and slightly averted his eyes. I was the one who had to expose things, so the awkwardness was mostly mine. Whether he was reading the room or just embarrassed, I wished he would catch on in one go.
“Open the drawer—there’s lube in here. Squeeze a decent amount on and rub it roughly with your hand.”
“You actually buy this stuff and keep it around?”
“If you do it bare-handed it feels like you’re dying, that’s why. How am I supposed to live without relieving it?”
I gave him a look of pure disbelief.
“I never thought you’d prepare this much just to jerk off…”
“Yawn—everyone does. Some people claim you don’t need it, but then the friction rubs you raw. I don’t even know why I’m talking about jerking off with you.”
Given the situation, even conversations I normally would never start came tumbling out. I wouldn’t have brought this up first if I could help it—this was all Song Haneul’s fault.
“Th-this… where do I do it?”
“In the room or the bathroom, whatever.”
“Sitting?”
“Sit, lie down, stand—figure it out yourself.”
The consecutive yawns told me I really was short on sleep. Scratching my belly, I looked for the nearest place to collapse.
“I’m going back to sleep, so don’t touch me.”
“O-okay.”
If I lay down on my own bed in this body he would probably throw another fit, so I quickly flopped onto the living-room sofa.
“Tired.”
I closed my heavy eyelids and exhaled deeply. Warm sunlight streamed through the living-room window. My reflection in the dark TV screen made me flinch. Even knowing the truth, twenty years of familiarity wasn’t something I could simply forget. After the initial jolt, managing an “Ah, right” was the best I could do right now.
I needed to pee. How long had it been?
Without thinking I opened the bathroom door—and found Song Haneul still grunting and gripping himself. Lube was poured thickly, dripping everywhere. His hands, trying desperately to grab and rub, shone with the stuff. He must have dumped so much that it ran down into his pants; in the end he had simply stripped his lower half completely bare.
I had gotten used to seeing myself washing, but this sight made my nose wrinkle in automatic disgust. Sure enough, the pants tossed into the corner were soaked wet right through the middle from all the lube.
“What are you doing…? Still at it?”
I made a face of pure incredulity. Song Haneul, as if he had been waiting for me the whole time, mixed frustration into his expression.
“This… isn’t working…!”
I was pretty sure I had shown him before I went to sleep. Had I really only napped about five minutes?
“So you’re doing this here without even locking the door?”
“Nngh…”
“I told you to rub it with your hand—why’d you just dump the entire bottle?”
If this tube got used up like a disposable, the whole world would be in the lube business. Pouring it like water—how much was he planning to go through?
“It’s my first time using it, how am I supposed to know… Just do it for me instead. I’m going crazy.”
“Are you insane? Why would I jerk you off for you? Get out already. No—I’ll use the master bathroom.”
I had never once imagined I would end up watching myself masturbate from a third-person view. Other things I might eventually accept, but this was something I simply could not take with a clear head. Clutching my skull and groaning, I ultimately chose avoidance.
With a clatter the door burst open. An arm squeezed through the gap and locked around my wrist.
“Eek!”
“W-wait, don’t go. My arm strength is completely gone too… I don’t even know how long I’m supposed to keep going…”
He was grabbing my arm with the same hand that had been covered in lube and wrapped around his dick? Was he in his right mind?
“Let go—let go!”
“If I let go you’ll leave!”
He claimed his arm strength was gone, yet the grip on my wrist felt like stone. It wouldn’t come free easily; shaking him off and walking away looked impossible.
“What do you think Mom would say if she saw this?”
“Mom went to Hong Kong!”
“Oh, right, she did…! No—wait a second. This is your body? When I said I’d go sleep in my own bed you threw every fit imaginable, and now suddenly asking me to jerk you off with this hand makes sense to you?”
Hearing that, he seemed to realize how weird it sounded and froze. His lips twisted as the thoughts visibly deepened. I didn’t like the sight of him standing up from the toilet with his dick dangling, but I didn’t feel enough pity to touch it for him either.
Even though it was my body, it didn’t feel like I was touching my own, so the repulsion was real. It was different from becoming someone else and handling what used to belong to me. This was a matter of the feeling and the sensation of accepting it—and that made it far from easy.
“I-I’m fine with it…”
“You know your standards are completely messed up, right? This is okay but that isn’t—it doesn’t make any sense.”
Utterly speechless, I yanked my arm free. Because of the lube, the moment his grip loosened even a little it slipped right out. The faint warmth that transferred was unpleasant.
“I said I’m fine with it! Fine—okay—I’ll close my eyes while you do it, so just do it…! It keeps standing and won’t go down, I feel like I’m losing my mind…!!”
The tearful edge in his voice made it sound like he was about to cry. Watching him fall apart this thoroughly was bewildering. It had only been about three days. He was experiencing things he had never dealt with as a woman one after another, and the fact that it wouldn’t resolve was this serious? I honestly didn’t know.
Since the swap I had seen him swing between a little cold and a little excited, but I never expected him to look this close to the edge. It was shocking. Still, he was the one who had said it was hard and was now loosening the standards that had basically been force—so I had no real reason to refuse. It was a bit uncomfortable and unpleasant, but I supposed it couldn’t be helped.
“If I do it, what do I get?”
“I said I’ll let you jerk me.”
“Besides that? Jerking is something I’m doing for you. If you’re not going to do it for me instead, what are you offering?”
“Then I’ll do it for you.”
“No, I don’t want that. This seems less troublesome for you, doesn’t it? Then just handle it alone.”
There was nothing for me to gain or lose, so no reason to feel desperate. They say the thirsty dig the well—this one wanted to dig it with someone else’s hands. Younger sisters seemed to have a bit of that quality. Spoiled from being coddled? No, we were twins—did that even apply?
“I’ll give you money.”
“…How much?”
That perked my interest a little.
“Fifty thousand.”
“Fifty thousand?”
Fifty thousand won for jerking him off once. Better than I expected, yet somehow ambiguous—hard to just call it a good deal. Maybe because the money I had saved in the military was so large that this felt small, or maybe the amounts I saw every time I opened a delivery app were the real problem. After a brief hesitation I doubled it.
“A hundred thousand won. Nothing less.”
“…You crazy bastard.”
“Not doing it?”
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it. Just give it after. I’ll transfer it to your account when it’s done.”
In the end Song Haneul was the first to declare surrender. I hadn’t even needed to raise a white flag, so of course. The face he made at the thought of blowing a hundred thousand on a single session was kind of funny.
“I’ll only teach you once, so don’t ask me to do it next time.”
“Okay.”
He seemed a little calmer now, a tiny bit more composed. He clearly knew he had done something shameful. With his lower half dangling obscenely exposed like that, he didn’t even need a mirror to see the state he was in.
“Geez. Sit down.”
“Like this?”
“Spread your legs.”
“Lube is for the pain from friction—if you dump the whole bottle what are you even going to feel? First scrape some of it off.”
The clumped lube formed into something like jelly and dropped onto the bathroom floor.
“Do you remember the stuff you used to watch?”
“What?”
“The videos you watched in the living room.”
“……”
“What did the guy do then?”
“I only watch ones with women—how would I know?”
The blunt tone mixed with a man’s voice always turned scary. I flinched, wondering if my own voice had really been this low. I should have been used to it by now, but the pitch kept shifting so I could never get a handle on it.
“How did you do it when you were with a woman?”
“I thrusted.”
“You thrusted? Every time you thrust, this part rubs—and that’s why you cum.”
I poked the glans.
“See? Just rubbing here gives you the idea, right? The rest is just whatever.”
“I know that… but rubbing only there keeps making it sting… stop touching it.”
I realized that was exactly why he had instinctively dumped the entire bottle of lube.
“That’s why it doesn’t work.”
I had to earn the pay properly.