School Uniform
"Allow me to escort you, miss."
When the sunglassed giant in a suit—nothing but muscle—came toward me, what I felt was nothing other than fear.
Well, of course it's terrifying when a man that huge walks up to you! I can say it without hesitation: even back when I was a guy, I was a complete pushover who never once threw a punch, because fighting scared me. Now that this body had grown frailer still, it was worse, not better.
I edged aside to keep clear of the man closing in, and he stopped dead.
"Ah... miss?"
As if my reaction had shocked him, he halted and took off the sunglasses.
"It's... it's me. Kwon Seongwook, your driver, miss..."
At the sight of him pleading his case in a thoroughly wilted voice, I realized I'd misunderstood something.
"My... driver?"
Since when did a driver look that menacing? In my memory, Driver Kim, the one who'd handled getting me to school, had been a fairly slender man. Absolutely not some bear of a guy built like that!
He looked at the sunglasses with a troubled expression.
"My coworkers recommended I try them... I never thought even you wouldn't recognize me, miss..."
"Uh... I... I'm sorry?"
It wasn't the sunglasses. From where I stand, I'm seeing him for the first time...
"No. My pointless little stunt is what startled you. I apologize."
"Huh? Oh, it's fine. Um... shall we get going?"
I'd been a little startled, but not badly enough to deserve an apology like that.
"Yes, of course."
I'd been about to get in on my own when he kindly opened the door for me, and the image that surfaced—a movie gangster attending his boss—made me quietly shake my head. Still, he was my driver. Thinking of him that way was rude.
"It should take about thirty minutes."
"All right."
I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. I'd always been quite prone to carsickness, so in a car I didn't even touch my phone; I had to keep my eyes shut or the nausea wouldn't ease. Riding that way, on driving so steady it barely swayed and on the comfort that came with it, we headed for the uniform shop.
The EliteX shop, proud to call itself the number-one school-uniform brand in the country, was packed to the doors with students.
February 2023. A long winter break, with a month still left before the new semester. Incoming students had come to be fitted for the uniform of the school they were about to enter; current students had come because they'd grown out of the old one and needed a new set. Each had a reason, and the store was full of them. Most of the staff were taking measurements and shortening skirts or trousers to order, while the students studied themselves in the mirror, pleased, and took photos.
With that many students gathered, the mood was fairly chaotic—until one customer's arrival quieted it at once.
The bell chimed.
Through the door came a muscular man whose suit still couldn't quite contain his body, and—
"Is this the place?"
—a cold-looking girl, walking in on a clear, ringing voice.
Navy jeans, a black turtleneck, a beige coat. The outfit itself was ordinary, the casual sort anyone might wear, but they say the face completes the fashion, and the students and staff who saw hers agreed with that saying one after another. A medium bob falling to the base of her neck, brown eyes that gave off a hard chill, and—set against all of that—a height that didn't even look like five-foot-one, with a small head that kept that small stature from standing out. Sharp and cold as the impression was, a height below even the average for girls her age was more than enough to make her more striking, not less.
"Yes. This is the place."
The pair called beauty and the beast to mind, and the students and employees inside stared blankly until the manager stepped forward herself. Only then did people come back to their senses.
"Hello. I'm Hwang Seoyeon, general manager of the EliteX XX District store. You would be Choi Eunha, yes?"
"Yes. I'm Choi Eunha."
Staff with a few years behind them, and anyone who paid attention to clothes, would already have known that every piece the girl had on was what people commonly call luxury—each one priced accordingly—and that her family was anything but ordinary. Everyone else only grasped that she was no ordinary presence once they saw the manager, who had kept quietly to her place through all these customers, step out in person.
"We had it made to the measurements you gave us, but it might not fit, so would you like to try it on?"
"Yes. Just a moment."
The girl took off the coat she'd been wearing, and the people watching her—which was to say, most of the shop—startled.
"Holy shit..."
"That size, on that frame?"
"Padding. Has to be."
She handed the coat to the bear of a man in a suit beside her, and the figure she'd been hiding under it came into view. Of all things, she was in a black turtleneck and jeans, clothes that clung, so the lines of her body showed with nothing to conceal them. The short stature could, in a way, read as cute, but her face and figure were less cute than grown. That was the fairer way to see it.
"Damn. I'm definitely getting her number."
"Yeah, right. Don't embarrass yourself."
While she carried the uniform into the fitting room, the girls debated whether that figure owed anything to medical technology or to some particular product, and the boys kept glancing at the suited man they took for a bodyguard, fidgeting with their phones.
Of course, there was one fact these students didn't know. The girl—former pro gamer Choi Eunha—had remarkably sharp ears.
"Haa... so, this is..."
The moment I stepped into the fitting room with the clothes in my arms, my head went complicated. Because what I was holding was a school uniform, and a girl's uniform, as a rule, came with a skirt. A skirt. If you thought about the pajama dress I wore around the house, nothing but princess frills, you might wonder what the problem was—but to me it felt entirely different. Unlike staying put in my room, this outfit meant showing myself, dressed this way, to other people. I might have become a seventeen-year-old high-school girl, but the thought of other people seeing me in a uniform left me with a strange feeling.
"...If I keep standing here, the manager and the driver are going to be waiting."
Standing frozen out of embarrassment would only inconvenience the two of them. In the spirit of taking the hit quickly if a hit was coming, I stripped the clothes off in one go. The mirror inside the fitting room showed me in my underwear.
"Mm... are these big?"
I brushed a hand over the two curves on my chest. Back when I was a guy, I'd had a fair amount of fantasy about a woman's breasts... Obviously, now that I was already a woman, touching them stirred nothing at all. Grab them hard and they only hurt. From the buzzing I'd overheard earlier, they were apparently quite large for kids this age.
I'd always heard better than other people, so I often picked up talk behind my back. Because of that, I used to go around with wireless earbuds in, just to avoid the hassle. Picturing that old habit, I set both hands on the two lumps of original sin that had gathered—onto one body, no, onto two—every bit of the envy and jealousy of the girls outside.
"Mm... more than that, these are actually really soft."
When I'd first turned into a woman, putting a hand on this body had felt like doing something wrong, so I'd held back. Now I thought of it as mine.
"Standing here like this, it even feels kind of calming..."
"Eunha? Do you need any help?"
"Eep! N-no! I'll be right out!"
The manager's voice came suddenly from outside the fitting room, and my whole body froze.
"...? Take your time changing. Come out whenever you're ready."
There was absolutely no way I could admit I'd lost track of time feeling up my own chest.
This is so fucking embarrassing.
The latch clacked.
After a brief stretch of self-loathing, I changed into the uniform and stepped out. The looks that met me felt quite different from before. The girls' jealous stares were the same... but the boys were somehow... avoiding me, if that was the word?
A moment ago my ears had been full of comments on my figure, people calling it insane, someone swearing he'd get my number. Now they were carefully dodging my eyes.
"Mr. Kwon?"
"Yes."
"Did something happen while I was in there?"
"...Nothing happened."
"...Really?"
I'd wondered if he'd said something to them, but apparently not. He really was scary, though—the boys flinched the instant I spoke to him. You're scared too, huh? I was the same the first time I saw him.
"Is the size all right, Eunha?"
The uniform's design was certainly pretty, and so was I in it. The problem was that I was the one wearing it. The skirt was definitely a burden, but it was more comfortable than pants. I couldn't get out of wearing it anyway, so the only path was getting used to it fast.
"Yes. This should be fine as it is."
"Then I'll have the spare sets laundered and sent over, as we discussed."
I went back into the fitting room, changed into the clothes I'd come in, put the uniform I'd tried on into a paper bag, and returned it to the manager.
"Get home safe, Eunha."
"Yes. Goodbye."
The moment I got in the car I collapsed against the seat. For a shut-in game gremlin like me, an outing like this was far too much work.
"Thank you for the ride!"
"Not at all. It's what I'm paid to do."
I thanked the driver who'd brought me all the way home, passed the gate and the front door, and went inside.
"Eunha, you're back? Hurry and wash up and come down, dear. You must be hungry."
The housekeeper was there to greet me. I really was hungry.
"Yes, ma'am."
I washed up in a rush, came down, ate my fill of the meal she'd set out, and went back to my room to rest. I'd thought about turning the stream on, but I was worn out from going out, and it was obvious I'd be signing off before long, so I left it off.
I was lying on the bed in a daze, scrolling for videos on Y-Tube, when I heard the gate in the yard open. A sound at this hour meant Father was home. He did dote on me, but the etiquette he'd drilled into me in childhood still held, so I hurried to the front door.
Tick, tick, tick, tick—and a bright little chime.
What the turning dial revealed was not my father. Standing in the entryway was not the cold-faced middle-aged man, but a young man with a tired look on his face. And he was someone I knew well.
"Huh?"
...Why is hyung coming out of there?