A Challenge Declared

My throat had improved a little.

On the third day I streamed the way I had on the first, baiting the room with army talk, and held an audience in the low hundreds. My fan club hit thirty that day and earned me another fifteen points. I was at twenty now. I'd picked up the next missions without trouble, and a hope had begun to take root that I might actually keep growing.

That hope lasted only until the awful thing happened to me.

"Aaaagh!"

"I-is this really the time for that bullshit?!"

Maybe I had been forcing myself not to look at it until now. The mental shock, the sheer dislocation of a body that had turned female overnight. For the record, I still wasn't wearing a bra. The size wasn't such a problem even if I didn't, but still.

"No, I wasn't originally a woman— ha! Fine. Drop it."

Post-nut clarity had arrived. Wait. No. Without my precious little guy down there, did post-nut clarity even show up anymore?

I walked into the bathroom with a blank face.

There was blood. My period. That magical little season that, for a woman, comes around roughly once a month. The cruel reality I had been desperately ignoring, under the hope that I might turn back into a man, blotted out everything in front of me.

Right. I was a woman now. Not the man who had lived twenty-eight years. A woman.

Every time I'd had to deal with it, I had forced myself to pretend I didn't notice. Each morning I grumbled at the long hairs shed across the bed, swept them into the trash, and never went outside. I was scared. Scared of showing this appearance to anyone else. If those people made me consciously register that I was, at present, a woman, I didn't think I could bear it.

"Ugh, seriously, read the room. Are your eyes painted on?"

Maybe I had been treating this body like a game avatar. To erase the dissonance. To comfort myself with the idea that nothing had really changed. But the pain starting from below forced me to feel every bit of the truth in my bones.

A woman. I had become a woman. With no promise of when I might ever go back.

Is this the period talking? All I'm getting are ugly thoughts.

It hurt. And because it hurt, my mood was rotten. Negative thoughts came on their own, and the feelings that had been piling up began to show their faces one by one. This wouldn't do. I needed to change the air.

I searched the internet for ways to ease menstrual cramps, and looked up medicine that actually worked. When the search was done, I got ready for a rare outing. My first time outside since becoming a woman. Which is to say, all of three days.

I opened the closet that had stayed sealed all that time, and it was a spectacle: airy dresses, skirts, blouses, the works. The moment I pictured myself in a skirt, my face creased on its own. If the outside at least looked like a beauty, the revulsion might have been milder. I wasn't all that different from how I'd looked as a man, and without the help of makeup I didn't even want to imagine it.

All my life, makeup had meant slapping on toner and lotion, so of course I went out bare-faced. Cropped pants and a short-sleeve tee. It was summer, so I chose what was practical.

Looked at this way, if my hair were just short I'd pass for my college self. Aside from the lines being a little finer and the skin being better.

I jammed my wallet and phone into my pockets and left the house.

First stop was the pharmacy, where I bought the medicine they recommended for cramps. Fortunately it wasn't the kind that required a doctor's note, so I was spared a trip to the hospital. Next I stopped at the mart and, summer or not, hunted down the hot packs buried in the back and bought some. They said a compress would help a great deal with the pain, and I could only be grateful for the tip. Sanitary pads, too. Like the beginner I was, I searched hard online and bought several well-reviewed kinds.

"Haah. That's nice."

On the way home I stopped at a small park. I set the bag of purchases down beside me, sat on a bench, and savored the breeze drifting through. Between the wind and the shade cast overhead, the heat passed me by.

Go get yourself beaten. I mean it. Go get beaten.

I grumbled, but my thoughts turned naturally back to the broadcast. I wanted to do well. Even now I thought the numbers were excellent for a newbie. But greed kept creeping in. More viewers, more donations, more fan-club sign-ups. I wanted to pile up points fast and show off a version of myself that had grown.

Maybe life until now had just been too dull.

A boring loop of home, work, home, repeated without end. They called it a sudden accident, but turning into a woman and starting a broadcast had been a real adventure. A real challenge. I wanted to produce a decent result. Doesn't everyone? Wanting to be the lead of your life rather than a supporting role is the same for all of us. A life that had until now blended in harmlessly with everyone around it might, just maybe, step up into the role of protagonist.

If I think of this as the pain required for that, does it get a little easier?

I stared blankly down at my waist. The reason I had dared to go out today. I wiped the gloom away. It was the first time. It felt strange and hard precisely because it was the first time. If it kept happening, I would get used to it. Someday I would be able to let it pass with a light laugh, as if it were nothing.

I did a lot of thinking in the park, then came home. The rare outing had been nice, but when it came to feeling settled, home was still the best. My own space, where I didn't have to mind a soul. After a light meal I took the medicine and lay down on the bed.

And here enters the hot pack.

The moment it was in my hands, the cold-weather training that had shipped out the week after I was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠assigned to my unit came back to me. They told us to eat shit and forget the two-week new-recruit adjustment period. Under the brigade commander's order to minimize anyone excused from training, you transferred in on a Friday and marched out to cold-weather training the very next Monday. A truly legendary term of service. They opened the PX over the weekend, but hoarding had already wiped the hot packs out, and a private was sent into that training without a single one. The sad fate of that private.

We pitched tents and slept on a riverbank where the temperature swung around four below zero. It was so cold, and my feet ached so badly, that I couldn't sleep. All through the small hours I rubbed those feet, sure they were about to freeze solid, and stayed awake with my eyes open. The memory welled up fresh. If my direct senior hadn't shared his hot packs the next day, saying he'd brought plenty, I might have taken frostbite right there.

"Shut up."

Anyway, as I gently rubbed my lower belly with that hot pack of precious memories, the pain seemed to ease a little. Or maybe the medicine was already kicking in. Either way, I had decided to take a rare day off the air, so I figured I would keep a vow of silence, let my throat recover as much as it could, and unwind by watching the broadcasts I had been neglecting for days.

"Hmm. What's even on at this hour..."

Five years of watching had given me a wide range of streams. Most were tied to games, or to voices good enough to carry what people called radio broadcasts.

After work, something light and calm just feels better.

You can't spend the whole day working hard and then take on more stress from the stream you're watching. For that reason, the game streams I followed were mostly skill streams. Ones that boasted a high tier, or were called artisans of a particular hero. Watch the bizarre plays of too low a tier and I couldn't stand not backseating.

"Three of them are even on."

Of the channels I'd favorited, three were live. Two were game streams and one was a radio stream. I hesitated a moment, then picked one of the game streams.

Radio streams are hard to study until my own voice gets better. And the game-stream pie is a lot bigger, too.

The one I chose belonged to BJ Lac, whose main role was marksman. He mostly lived in Grandmaster, had a gift for talk, and pulled a serious following. The live audience alone was seventeen hundred. The main room was so full that relay rooms were opening.

A bit more than usual. Normally it was around twelve or thirteen hundred.

Sure enough, the stream title said a duo broadcast was underway.

And whether by coincidence or not, the BJ duo-ing with him was none other than BJ Mia, whom I had met in-game two days ago.

"Mia, shield, shield me. Hurry! I'm dying!"

"Ah, just wait. I'm running over as fast as I can."

The two of them were on red side, playing the upper half of the map. Lac was on Kai'Sa as the marksman, and Mia was on Lulu as support.

"Ooh, nice. Nice save! Now give me W. Chase like this and we catch Jinx."

"Uh, it's on cooldown..."

"What? No. I only got E. Why is W down?"

"You were nagging so hard about how urgent it was, I used it to get back to lane faster."

"What? Haah... This is exactly why hardstuck supports are just— (whisper)."

"You say the whole thing loud enough for everyone to hear and then tack 'whisper' on the end. What, does my memory just fly away?"

While the two of them bickered, Jinx got away clean and recalled. The game rolled on. They had locked into a concept of squabbling like brother and sister, and there wasn't a spare second of dead air. Truly, veteran pro BJs. And the game itself was flowing along just fine.

The bracket where the two of them duoed was Platinum. Lac's main account sat in Grandmaster, so in this bracket a massacre was well within reach. Viewers teased Mia every time as a Hyeji riding the bus, but three years hanging around a schoolhouse aren't for nothing. Her mastery of Hyeji champions was considerable, and so long as the marksman's skill backed her up, she could hold her own in Platinum without trouble.

"Carry! That was not easy."

"I had my hands full keeping you alive because the marksman kept diving in too hot. That Flash-ult earlier more than earned the name super save."

"Hmph! I had Stopwatch, you know? I was looking at the angle. Ult in, finish the enemy marksman, aggro ping-pong on Stopwatch, and once the team engages, Flash out. But I suppose a Platinum support just can't see that angle..."

"Aigoo, thank you for five hundred Water Balloons, ProBusDriverAssaulterMia. No, no. You have no idea how many assailants I've met. Someone on Mia's level isn't wearing a seatbelt, sure, but she's at least sitting in the seat."

"Grrr! ProBusDriverAssaulterMia, who are you! You change your nickname and then go stir up aggro on other streams? I'll blacklist you!"

They won the game, and cheerful laughter spilled over. I was quietly riding that mood, just watching, when a chat I had never expected popped up.

At first it was a chat that got buried like nothing. Unexpectedly, though, a fair number of people in this room seemed to know me, and several viewers started chaining messages one after another. Then other viewers began shaming them for talking about another BJ, and someone spilled the story of what had happened with Mia two days ago.

Once the chat grew noisy, Lac, who was running the stream, naturally noticed first. Whatever he told her over Discord, Mia started reacting as if something was off.

"Is Hani really here? Then you're hearing my voice too, right?"

"Mm, Hani, could you hop on Discord right now? Mia says there's something she wants to say."

The situation was escalating fast, and I was flustered, but I'd already been caught. There was no way to dodge.

"Ah, hello. This is BJ Hani. My throat isn't in great shape, so please bear with me if I speak a little quietly."

"Hello. I'm BJ Lac. Hahaha, so this is our first meeting. Anyway, Mia's business looks more urgent than mine, so I'll step aside."

"...?"

Mia's sharp voice sliced clean through Lac's words. What she meant was unmistakable.

"Let's 1v1. You and me."

The chat began to burn like a furnace.