Reposting this as it wasn’t posted before sequentially. Other chapters were posted before. I am first time author and would appreciate feedback / comments!

Chapter One: The Unexpected Beginning

Arjun Patel had always lived his life along carefully drawn lines.

He was the kind of man who measured his days in deadlines and conference calls, whose tidy apartment in suburban New Jersey reflected his tidy sense of identity. Thirty-two years old, with an engineering degree from Mumbai and a green card secured after years of grinding away in the corporate world, he was exactly what his parents back in India had wanted him to be: respectable, reliable, unremarkable.

Or so he thought.

It was on an ordinary Saturday in early spring—sunlight slanting through his blinds, a pile of laundry waiting to be folded—that his life tilted in a direction he could never have anticipated. His neighbor, Melissa, a fashion photographer, knocked on his door in a mild panic.

“Arjun! I know this is the strangest request, but you’re the same build as the model who just canceled on me, and I have a client waiting in my studio. Would you—just for the shoot—stand in? It’s just some test shots, nothing serious.”

He blinked. “Melissa, I… I’m not exactly model material.”

She grinned, breathless. “Trust me, it’s perfect. We just need the outfit to fit, and you’ll be in full makeup. Honestly, nobody will even know. You’d be saving me.”

He wanted to say no. It was absurd. Him? Dressed as a woman for some fashion test? But the panic in her eyes softened something in him, and against all reason, he heard himself mutter, “Fine. Just this once.”

Within minutes, Melissa had whisked him into her loft-like studio. On a rack hung the outfit in question: a sleek, knee-length sheath dress in pale lavender silk, paired with a delicate jacket and impossibly high heels. His pulse jumped.

“Melissa, I can’t—”

“You can,” she said firmly, ushering him into a chair. “Sit. Let me work.”

She moved with practiced efficiency, brushing foundation across his skin, darkening his eyes with liner, softening his mouth with gloss. Arjun stared at his reflection as it shifted, feature by feature, until the man he knew blurred. The sensation was… unsettling. Yet when Melissa fitted a chest plate beneath the dress, cinched a waist with padding, and finally zipped the lavender silk around his frame, a strange thrill chased through him.

The wig was the last touch—dark waves that cascaded to his shoulders. She fluffed it, stepped back, and smiled.

“Aria,” she whispered, christening him with a name that wasn’t his. “You look incredible.”

Arjun—Aria—stood, legs shaky on the heels, the fabric hugging him in ways he’d never felt before. His reflection in the mirror was startling. Not a joke. Not a caricature. But a woman, elegant and poised.

The camera clicked. Lights flared. Melissa called out gentle instructions—tilt your chin, soften your smile, let the jacket slip from one shoulder. He obeyed, awkward at first, then with growing confidence. Something inside him unfurled, a quiet part that had never been given air.

And when the shoot ended, when Melissa thanked him profusely and promised the images would never leave her client’s folder, he found himself lingering before the mirror. Running his fingers along the silk. Tasting the gloss on his lips.

He should have felt foolish. Instead, he felt… alive.

That night, back in his apartment, he couldn’t stop replaying the sensation—the weight of the wig, the brush of fabric against skin, the strange, liberating surrender of slipping into another self. A self that wasn’t burdened with expectations. A self that could be someone else entirely.

It was supposed to be a one-time accident. But the seed had been planted. And as the weeks passed, Arjun found himself searching online—quietly, secretly—for makeover studios in the city. Places where professionals could transform him again, properly, completely.

Because deep down, he knew: he wanted to see Aria again