Ordering the Skin
"...What time is it?"
Waking up and glancing at the clock, my first thought was I'm screwed. It was half past one in the afternoon, long past any reasonable morning.
"Showing up late to my major classes from the second day of the semester would be a pain... wait... right, it's the weekend."
Only then did I remember what day it was. Why had I, a returning student no less, gone to the semester kickoff party and drunk that much when it so clearly wasn't my scene? Thinking about it now, it was stupidity of the highest order. Especially since I don't even like being around people.
"My head huuuurts."
I lay back down, clutching my throbbing skull and letting out a long sigh. As I shook my head from side to side, the state of my messy studio apartment came into focus. Clothes strewn every which way, books lying wherever they'd landed, and a corner stacked with drained water bottles. Seeing it laid out like this, I realized anew just how long I'd been living without so much as a sweep.
It just so happened that today was a day off from my part-time job, so for a moment I entertained the idea of a proper deep clean for the first time in ages. Of course, less than three seconds later I gave up because it sounded like too much work. Still, a little while later I did drag myself up and tidy the room a bit, partly to sweat the alcohol out of my system.
Today's late lunch was the eternal companion of every student living alone: cup ramen. While the water boiled, I got a little bored and decided to hop onto eBay. What I was looking for was a female mask.
A female mask is, quite literally, a silicone mask shaped like a woman's face. With current technology, nobody can produce a mask identical to a real human face. Something mannequin-adjacent, vaguely human at best, is about the ceiling.
I had no intention of buying one. I was just browsing. This was an extension of a longing I'd carried since childhood. I look, I feel satisfied. It's nothing more than a pathetic hobby of taking comfort in the knowledge that other people out there harbor the exact same craving I do. That's how it had always been, and that's how it would stay. That's how it should be, and yet...
"What's this?"
It was a set of photos of a blonde woman with a perm, her hair falling to her shoulders, wearing a backless dress and striking pose after pose. The kind of thing you'd scroll past a hundred times on Instagram or any other social feed. Except for the last photo.
The last shot had been taken from behind. Across the pale back clearly visible above the dress ran a zipper. More precisely, the zipper pull sat just below the nape, and below it a faint line traced down along the spine. As if the whole thing could be unzipped straight down the back.
Beneath the photo, this text was written:
Skinsuit for sale — become anyone when you wear it
Send your specifications by email
$500 each
It was a remarkably... unique listing. Three lines of description, total. No questions asked, no verification — just email your requirements if you want to buy. Normally when people sell silicone masks or suits like this, they spell out the sizing and care instructions in exhaustive detail.
Who falls for this stuff? It's obviously fake.
Of course it was. Photoshopping a zipper into a picture is something anyone with a laptop can manage. At the very least, you could tape a real zipper onto your own back. A skin that turns you into someone else the moment you put it on does not exist in this world. If it did, the whole planet would have known about it ages ago.
A lazy description and convincing-looking photos — a vicious little prank designed to hook idiots. No, come to think of it, surely not even the dumbest person alive would read that listing and wire money.
I turned off my phone, tossed it onto the blanket, and poured the water into the cup ramen. While the noodles softened, I drummed my fingers against the desk.
Tap, tap, tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap...
Without my noticing, the rhythm kept accelerating. I sighed, pushed myself up, and began pacing circles around the table. Why was it? That photo, that listing, kept circling in my head no matter what I did. And from some corner of my mind, an idiot started to whisper.
You've got about five hundred dollars sitting in your account right now, don't you? Nothing urgent coming up, so what's the harm in spending it?
No, you idiot. That thing's fake. You're seriously going to send money to some scammer?
But what if it's real? There's the slightest chance it could actually be real. Right?
Make some sense. That's impossible.
Why?
Why? Isn't that obvious? — that's what I was thinking, anyway, until I came to and found my phone already open on the eBay page again. What was wrong with me? Why was I about to order something that was so transparently a scam?
"Haaah..."
I let out a deep sigh. I could have sworn the alcohol had burned off by now, but my head was throbbing again. I tilted my face back, staring for a moment at the ceiling, then down at the floor, and made up my mind.
"Fine. Let's just do it."
I immediately drafted the email to the seller. An East Asian woman in her early twenties, 163 centimeters tall, a cat-like face, deep red eyes, long black hair spilling down to her waist, F-cup breasts...
Swept along by some incomprehensible impulse, I poured the ideal I'd always sketched in my head onto the page. The instant the email went out, I hit the payment button, and a short while later a text arrived confirming the overseas transaction had cleared. I exhaled heavily and toppled backward onto the floor.
"What the hell am I even doing..."
It felt exactly like the hollow clarity that follows jerking off. Why had I done that? Right — when this happens, the correct move is to run from reality. I immediately called a friend.
"Hello?"
"Hey, you busy right now?"
"Busy. Playing games with the guys at the PC bang. Why?"
"Let's grab drinks tonight. I'm bored."
"You drank like a fish yesterday and you're already after more booze?"
"That was yesterday. Today is today, so what does it matter?"
"You're a genuine drunk, you know that... Fine. The usual place?"
"Yeah, that's the one. Nine tonight work?"
"Works. See you then."
"Alright."
Baek Chiwon. One of the few friends I'd kept since middle school, all the way to now. The all-around class president who aced his exams and dominated on the sports field, popular with guys and girls alike. If the guy had a single flaw...
"I still can't figure out why this guy's never dated anyone."
He had zero romantic experience. With specs like his, not having a girlfriend defied belief, but it was the plain truth. Was it his nineteenth birthday? When we went out for our first legal drinks to celebrate becoming adults, we made each other a promise: whoever landed a girlfriend first would introduce one of her friends to the other.
And years later, that promise showed no sign of ever being honored. Sad to say, I was a lifelong single too. They say a man who makes it past thirty untouched gains magic powers — and in a few more years, I was on track to prove that superstition with my own body. A gloomy feeling crept over me for no good reason.
"Whatever. Might as well sleep..."
Soothing myself, I crawled back under the blanket and curled up like a pupa. Just a little more sleep until we met up.
The next few days passed in a restless haze. Every morning when I left my apartment and every night when I returned, I checked for a delivery, but all that ever greeted me at the door was useless advertising flyers. I emailed the seller a few more times, but no reply ever came. I zoned out mid-lecture and nearly jumped out of my skin when a professor called on me, and even my coworkers at the part-time job started asking whether I was coming down with something.
Right, it could happen. Just write off the five hundred dollars as a donation to a worthy cause. Pick up a few extra shifts and I'd earn it back in no time... I tried the rationalization, but the deflation refused to lift. The fact remained that I'd fallen, like a complete idiot, for a scam too obvious to fool anyone.
Then, two weeks later — right around the time I'd completely forgotten the whole affair — a package arrived from the United States. When I got back to my apartment after class, a large cardboard box sat in front of my door. At first glance, I couldn't begin to guess what it was.
But the instant my eyes caught the word skinsuit printed on the side of the box, it felt like a hammer swinging into the back of my skull. Really? What came? For real????
My heart hammered and cold sweat broke out across my forehead. Even when I'd won third prize on a scratch-off ticket on a whim, even on the day my college entrance results dropped, I had never been this tense. Without even thinking of opening my door, I frantically started tearing into the packaging. A man ripping open a package in the middle of a shared hallway — anyone who saw me would have been well within their rights to call the police.
But I had no room to care about any of that. Finding out what was inside that box was, in that moment, the only thing in the world that mattered.
I drew a deep breath, then let it out. Inside the package, what my trembling fingertips touched was flesh-colored skin, folded over in layer after layer.
I fumbled the door open and practically hurled the package into my room. Without even pausing to kick off my shoes, I rushed to the box and lifted the skin up to examine it.
It was incredibly soft. I'd braced myself for the stiff, rubbery drag of silicone, but this was nothing of the sort. A supple, smooth texture indistinguishable from living skin spread through my fingertips. The head was covered in dense, rooted hair — black, silky strands flowing down long in several loose sections.
Not a wig? It's built in?
Masks used for passing as a woman normally don't come with hair attached. It makes sense — rooting hair into silicone strand by strand is terrible value for money, and from the wearer's side, it's simpler to just throw on a wig. But this skin had hair growing from it.
Everything I thought I knew about female masks and skinsuits shattered to pieces. Could this thing... actually be real?