Synopsis: Peter always wanted to know what it felt like to be a woman. The answer comes unexpectedly: in sleep, in fragments, and in the borrowed lives of Elizabeth and Akari. At first it feels like a gift, then the edges begin to blur. Memories bleed, and lost hours become lost weeks as he struggles to understand whether he is witnessing other lives or slowly disappearing into them.

Prologue

The platform at Beauty World station was underground and air conditioned, which was a welcome relief from the humidity.

It had only been a short walk from my apartment but the sweat was already pressing into the back of my neck and settling in the creases of my arms. One of the major negatives about Singapore.

The carriage filled fast. Men in short-sleeved shirts, a group of young women in uniform consumed with their phones. There was a smattering of Mandarin and Singlish in the air. I stood near the doors at first, then found a seat past Sixth Avenue when the crowd thinned.

Two women.

The first sat across from me: mid-twenties, Chinese, a green cotton dress that ended just above the knee. She was reading a paperback, its spine cracked. Her lips were moist and slightly parted. The second was older, Caucasian, tall even while seated, her posture upright. Her thumb scrolled through her phone screen. I don't think they noticed me looking. The train curved and the green dress shifted against the young woman's thighs. I pretended to look at my phone. Newton station arrived and the carriage emptied. Twenty minutes spent in close proximity to two complete interior lives I would never have access to.

The office air conditioning ran several degrees below comfort, but the locals preferred it that way.

Tang Xue was already at her desk when I passed. She looked up and her eyes went straight to the cup in my hand.

"Not Starbucks again," she said.

She leaned back in her chair with one arm draped over the rest.

"I'll get you something from Luckin tomorrow," she said, "or maybe something from Toast Box, if your American tastebuds can take it."

"Hey, my tastebuds are almost localized by now."

She gave me a dubious look.

"Standup at eleven?" I asked.

"Yah. I'll send you the updated ticket before then."

She had already turned back to her screen before I finished nodding.

Chapter 1: The First Dream

I was alone at the concert hall again. I had thought of inviting Tang Xue but she didn't seem like someone who would be interested in classical music.

Two or three minutes passed; the orchestra members were talking among themselves, practicing certain passages.

She came from the left aisle, murmuring a soft excuse to the couple already seated in the row. I stood and she passed through the gap between us.

Shoulder-length hair, black and straight, the ends just brushing the collar of her dress. The dress itself was white and light blue, gathered at the waist and ending mid-thigh. Her legs were slim and bare, the skin smooth and slightly pale. Low heels, the kind with a modest block that could manage a full day without complaint.

She sat. I sat.

She crossed her ankles, right over left, a gesture that drew her legs together and slightly to one side. She was reading her program, one hand flat against its cover. I returned to my program as well: Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1, a crowd pleaser but something which I hadn't heard live in a couple of years.

She reached into the small bag at her side and drew out a scarf; light brown, probably a wool and cashmere blend; and arranged it across her lap. Her fingers smoothed the fabric.

I did not turn my head.

Was it the air conditioning? Was it me? Or was it something she had noticed only after sitting, the way the seat exposed more than she had calculated when she stood in front of her mirror that evening? I didn't know. I would never know.

The lights dimmed. The conductor emerged to applause and began the first piece of the night, something inspired by the music of Indonesia and the gamelan.

Over the next hour, I stole glances, always on the pretext of surveying the right side of the hall. Each time I brought back a fragment: the stillness of her hands on her lap, fingers interlaced over the scarf. The rapt angle of her head, tilted slightly forward. The slimness of her body in profile, the gentle line of her collarbone above the neckline of the dress.

I could barely see her face. The angle was wrong and the darkness of the hall conspired with my own unwillingness to turn fully. I caught the curve of a cheek, the slight flatness of her features, but nothing I could judge or desire. Not that I had any desire to be with her. I simply wanted to know what the scarf felt like against her thighs. Not to touch them, to be the skin it touched.

The Chopin entered its second movement and I was enraptured by the Romanze-Larghetto. I did not turn my head to gaze at her for the rest of the night.

I was on the MRT. The carriage was half-empty, at least for the moment; whole rows of orange seats vacant.

And I was a woman on my way to work.

There was no moment of transition.

The first thing I felt was the bra. Two lines of pressure, one across each shoulder, cutting fine grooves into my skin. Another band circling my ribcage. Not uncomfortable exactly, but wonderfully tangible. My breasts, resting in their cups; warm, supported, and enclosed, shifting minutely with the train's movement.

Below, my panties sat against my hips. Soft cotton, the elastic gentle rather than biting, the fabric smooth against skin that was plumper. The skirt fell to my knee, a modest hem, workday-appropriate; and below it, bare skin. My thighs were pressed together, the contact continuous and faintly warm. Nothing between them. When I shifted, the insides of my thighs slid against each other like two pieces of silk laid face to face, and I felt a small, involuntary pleasure at the sensation.

My whole body was lighter; my arms, resting in my lap, slimmer. The shoes. Low heels, the same modest blocks as someone, somewhere. They tilted my weight forward onto the balls of my feet, even seated; calves slightly taut, feet angled.

Hair touched my cheek. The train took a gentle curve, and strands of it brushed against the side of my neck and the line of my jaw. Each small sway of the carriage moved it. I could smell it, something faintly woody and fruity.

I did not look down. I did not lift my hands to examine them. The train was public, and this sensation of being was enough.

I sat with the bag across my lap, its strap looped over both wrists. Inside: my purse, my phone, my compact pressing through the leather. My knees were together, angled slightly to the left. I felt the question arise: whether to cross them; how much thigh crossing them would expose; whether the skirt would ride up; whether anyone across the aisle would notice. I stayed as I was. Knees together.

In the dark glass of the window opposite, I caught my reflection. A woman in transit; altogether unremarkable. I could not make out my face in the dim glass. I did not need to. This was enough.

The announcement came in three languages, a station name. The doors opened, and a man boarded, middle-aged, briefcase, and took the seat directly across from me.

He looked at me.

Not for long. A glance that started at my face and moved briefly downward before his gaze shifted to his phone. I drew my shoulders and pressed my knees more firmly together. And even this transient vulnerability felt right.

I did not want it to stop.

The train carried me forward; and I sat inside it and inside her.

Chapter 2: The Second Dream

The trail climbed steeply.

The path up Bukit Timah Hill was plain asphalt with dirt trails branching out for the more adventurous. Sweat had already soaked through the back of my shirt and was working its way down my spine.

I had been running for maybe ten minutes. I would head for the peak, rest, then head back down, maybe take a side path to the quarry view.

The dream from Tuesday night was still there. The feeling of being a woman. The bra straps resting on my shoulders, the way my thighs had pressed together, the tickle of hair against my neck. I hadn't told anyone of course; I wasn't into therapy. Besides, what would I say? I dreamed I was a woman on the MRT and I didn't want it to end?

The road leveled briefly and there was a small pavilion where an elderly couple had stopped to rest. My pace reduced to a slow jog.

Then she appeared.

Coming toward me from the opposite direction downhill, maybe thirty meters ahead on the trail. Tall, pale blue exercise crop top, blonde hair pulled back. Her pace was brisk and effortless, as if she meant to run back up the hill once she had completed the first circuit.

The distance closed.

Her legs were long and lean beneath jogging tights, the muscle definition visible even in the dappled light. Her face: attractive, angular, mid-to-late thirties. A faint, telling smoothness across her forehead, a slight fullness in her lips. Not obvious.

Her eyes met mine. Then she was past me.

I slowed, not stopping, and glanced back quickly over my shoulder.

Her ponytail swinging; the narrow waist; the defined curve of her hips and buttocks beneath the tights.

The pull came. I recognized it now. It wasn't attraction in the romantic sense; I had no interest in being with her as a man. More like curiosity. And envy. The same all consuming feeling I had felt in the concert hall, watching women in their separate, fully realized lives, amplified now by what had come after-the dream.

What was it like to wake up every morning in that body? To have grown up in it; to feel the slow reshaping of girlhood into womanhood; the inevitability of being looked at, assessed; to run this trail with those legs; the sensation of that ponytail swinging against the back of my neck. And what obligations came with it? What history?

I did not stop running, and I did not look back again.

I was standing on cool marble, barefoot. A bathroom immersed in the scent of rose tinged essential oils.

I knew what this was. Not immediately, but faster than the first time

I was inside someone else. And this time, instead of simply being, I let myself settle into it the way you lower yourself into water. The memories seeped in, an accumulation of experiences pressing through the walls of my awareness

Her name was Elizabeth Rice.

She was thirty-nine; had two children, six and three, asleep down the hall. She had a husband in the bedroom. She had been at a dinner tonight, the kind with linen napkins and three wines, and she had come home and unzipped her dress and hung it in the wardrobe and now she was here.

The bathroom was large. Double sinks, a freestanding bathtub at the far end. Lighting overhead and at the sides of the mirror, both dimmed. Along the vanity: jars and tubes arranged neatly; prescription retinol with a pharmacy label, toners, micellar water, cotton pads stacked in a clear acrylic holder.

I knew the face and the body. There was a residual tightness in her calf muscles. The same calves; the same long, carefully maintained legs I had watched retreating down Bukit Timah Hill.

Her body was extraordinary and I felt every inch of it. The lightness; the sheer, startling lightness of her frame. Her arms were slim and toned, the muscles defined but not heavy, the kind of definition that came from years of targeted work. Everything about her was engineered toward a particular ideal of femininity.

I was wearing an ivory silk bra and matching underwear. The bra was beautiful, the kind of piece that existed partly for the wearer and partly for an audience that might materialize. But beautiful or not, it had been on for hours, and I felt it. The underwire pressed into the soft flesh beneath my breasts; and heat had gathered underneath the cup despite the air conditioning. When I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, the fabric of the underwear moved against my hips and rode gently against the inside of my thighs.

My hands were already moving. I pressed a pad soaked with micellar water to my forehead and drew it down in a long, slow stroke. The foundation came away and I worked across each cheek, around the nose, along the jawline. Another pad for the concealer beneath the eyes, and then the mascara.

The movements were enjoyable for the first time. And when it was done, I looked up.

The mirror showed me without the mask.

I was beautiful: symmetrical features that age had complicated but not defeated. But without the makeup, I looked my forty years. Fine lines radiated from the corners of my eyes, and deeper lines bracketed my mouth. My skin tone was uneven, slightly darker across the bridge of my nose and, across my forehead, the skin was smooth in a way that didn't match the rest, the telltale presence of Botox. My lips were full and there was a faint ridgeline where the filler met the natural tissue.

I touched my face, then moved lower, to the collarbone, where the bone rose elegantly above the edge of the bra. Then I let it drop further, running absently along the outside of my thigh, following the curve of the muscle there.

I looked fine, I told myself. Not many forty year olds with two kids could say the same.

I reached behind my back, my fingers found the hooks and unclasped them. The bra released.

The relief was immediate; almost startling. The pressure across my chest vanished and my breasts settled into their natural position; lower, softer, smaller than they had appeared inside the cups. The cool air of the bathroom found skin that had been covered for hours, and the sensation was extraordinary.

I set the bra on the counter. Applied moisturizer, a light, slightly pearlescent cream.

A silk sleep camisole hung from a hook behind the door. Pale grey, thin-strapped. It settled against my chest and stomach, and I felt my nipples tighten briefly against the silk in the air-conditioned cold.

I switched off the bathroom light.

The bedroom was dark and Michael was asleep, lying on his back with one arm across his chest.

I pulled back the duvet on my side and slid in.

The linen was cool and startlingly smooth against my bare legs, and I felt the camisole ride up slightly against my stomach as I settled, the silk bunching. I pulled the duvet to my chest and lay still.

Michael's warmth radiated across the gap between us, close enough to touch. He was right there and yet entirely elsewhere. I turned my head on the pillow and looked at his profile;p his lips, slightly parted. I scratched below the surface and found something. Not hostility; love was in there somewhere, and frustration, and on top of that a weariness.

My hand found the phone on the nightstand. The Mandarin app opened to where I had left it. Vocabulary cards.

一直. Yìzhí. Always, continuously. I tapped the audio and the phone whispered the word at me. My lips moved and I got it the first time. Next card. 考虑. Kǎolǜ. To consider.

I drilled Mandarin at midnight, sometimes in the car waiting for my children, sometimes while watching TV alone. It wasn't casual. But why? Was it an escape?

The app chimed again. I had done it perfectly. But was it this body or the previous one that had managed it?

My mind drifted.

Sophie. Six years old and already forming opinions about everything; her hair, the particular injustice of bedtimes. Was it my fault? The precociousness. She had recently announced that she wanted to learn Japanese instead of Mandarin, a declaration that had produced a silence at the dinner table lasting several seconds. Michael didn't really care and, more importantly, wasn't even there. It was obviously the anime that I had let her watch. Callum. Three going on four. Still small enough to reach for my hand in car parks, his fingers closing around mine with complete trust. He slept with a stuffed wombat.

I loved them; of course I did.

Michael's business dinner. Last Thursday. He had come home at eleven, later than the dinner itself would have required, and when I had asked about it he had offered the usual précis and then mentioned a colleague. A woman. A local. Her name surfaced once in the recounting, casually, the way you mention someone who happened to be there and had no particular significance. He had not mentioned her since.

It was not proof of anything, certainly not evidence.

I closed the app. Set the phone face-down on the nightstand.

I lay beside my husband and listened to him breathe. We had known each other since college. I still loved him or I wouldn't have cared.

And the bewildering thing was that none of it felt borrowed. None of it felt like a costume or a dream. It did not feel like someone else's life at all.

Chapter 3: The Gap

I was sitting at a table near the drinks stall, and in front of me was a plate of vegetarian bee hoon, half-eaten. The noodles were pale and fine, tossed with shredded cabbage and sliced mushrooms. Beside it, a bowl of clear soup: some lotus root and soft tofu cut into cubes. A pair of chopsticks rested across the plate where I had apparently set them down.

I did not eat vegetarian bee hoon. And I hated lotus root.

My last clear memory was of my desk. The pull request had been open on my monitor, and I had been reading through a function refactor that one of the junior engineers had submitted. The standup had ended twenty minutes earlier.

That was eleven-fifteen, maybe eleven-twenty.

Now the clock on my phone read 1:45 PM. Two hours, gone, as though someone had lifted the needle from a record and set it down two tracks later.

I picked up the chopsticks and brought some noodles to my mouth and chewed slowly.

I picked up my phone. Two new messages, timestamped during the missing window. The first, sent at 11:47 AM, was a reply to a vendor query about API rate limits correctly citing the relevant SLA section. The second, sent at 12:09 PM, was a comment on the pull request I had been reviewing. The tone was professional but warmer than my usual register, the suggestions framed as questions rather than corrections, the kind of review that made the recipient feel guided rather than criticized.

I read the comments twice. They were good. Better than what I would have written if I was honest.

My calendar showed a one-on-one with my manager at 12:30, marked completed. Thirty minutes. I had apparently sat in a room with a man who controlled my performance review and…

Suddenly it was there; the meeting with my manager. He seemed more happy with me than he had been in months, clapping me on the back.

I set the phone face-down on the table. The soup was cooling. I picked up the spoon and began working through it. I ate the lotus root as well, chewing through it without enjoyment but also without the mild revulsion I would normally feel.

I should have been frightened. Two hours of my life had vanished. Someone had used my hands to type coherent emails; my voice to hold a meeting; my legs to walk down to this food court and point at dishes I would never have chosen.

Instead, what I felt was closer to recognition. The lost hours did not feel stolen, they felt like an exchange.

The office floor was deathly still, half my colleagues were bent over documents or their screens tapping into the void. Someone's Slack notification pinged.

Tang Xue's chair rolled toward me.

She was leaning back and holding a pen she was tapping absently against her knee.

"Hey," she said. "Were you okay earlier? You walked right past me." She raised one hand and mimed a wave. "I was this far away." She held her thumb and forefinger a few inches apart.

"Sorry," I said. "I was deep in a problem. Zoned out."

She nodded. "Yeah," she said. "You looked like you were somewhere else entirely."

Her eyes stayed on me.

"Won't happen again," I said.

She turned back to her screen and I turned to my monitor.

The pull request filled the screen. I scrolled to the comments section and found them; my comments, timestamped between 11:32 and 12:30, two separate threads of feedback on the junior engineer's refactor. I began reading.

The first comment was about error handling. The original code swallowed exceptions silently, logging them but not surfacing them to the caller. My feedback had been specific, the tone generous. Patient. It read like someone who remembered what it felt like to be junior and had decided to teach rather than correct.

The second comment addressed a design decision. The junior engineer had built the feature as a monolithic handler, and my feedback noted that the tightly coupled structure would become difficult to test and maintain as the system scaled. I suggested extracting the core logic into a service layer and wrapping data access behind a repository pattern. The explanation was lucid and the reasoning airtight.

The timestamps fell squarely inside the hours I had lost. The knowledge was all mine but the tone was someone else's; as though that other version of me had access to something the current version did not.

I closed the comment thread and stared at the diff view. Green lines, red lines. Code added, code removed.

Tang Xue's keyboard clicked softly behind me. The office was normal. Everything was normal.

The MRT home was quieter than the morning commute.

I stood near the doors with my jacket folded over one arm, watching the stations slide past through the windows. My hand went into the jacket's inner pocket; an obsessive-compulsive checking for my phone and keys. My fingers closed around a folded slip of paper, stiff and slightly glossy.

I left it in the pocket until I was off the train and walking the path from the station to my condo. I unfolded the receipt under a void deck's fluorescent light:

Tanjong Pagar Fitness Club. A membership receipt. Twelve-month premium access, paid in full. S$980.00. Payment method: Visa ending 4471. Member name: Peter Huang.

Dated four days ago. Saturday.

I opened my banking app. The charge was there, sitting in my transaction history between a $4.80 MRT charge and a $8 lunch at the office food court.

I had a vague memory of that afternoon: waking from a nap, a lazy weekend with no plans. But between that and the evening there was nothing solid, just a smeared residue. I did not remember wanting a gym membership. I had never been to Tanjong Pagar for anything other than a restaurant a colleague had recommended once.

I folded the receipt and put it back in my pocket and took the lift up.

The next morning I was on the MRT to Tanjong Pagar by 6:45.

I had not decided to go. I simply noticed myself going and knew my destination. The memory of buying the gym membership was now firmly fixed in my mind-I was flabby and needed to shape up. I was dressed in a T-shirt and running shorts under sweatpants, and I had a small sports bag on my shoulder.

The fitness club occupied both floors of a shophouse off Tanjong Pagar Road. The early crowd was already inside: a few serious lifters, a woman on an elliptical, a man stretching near the mirrors.

I pushed through the glass door. A reception counter to the right, staffed by a young guy in a branded polo shirt, lanyard around his neck, his hair neatly parted. He looked up as I approached.

"Morning, Peter," he said.

He reached under the counter, and the turnstile beside me clicked open.

"Morning," I said.

The locker room was down a short corridor, past the water fountain and a bulletin board pinned with class schedules and personal training rates. I pushed through the door and found a row of metal lockers. My feet carried me to number 37, halfway down the second row.

A combination lock. My right hand reached for the dial and my fingers began turning. The lock opened. Inside: a clean towel; a pair of trainers; a water bottle, half full.

I changed into the trainers. I filled the water bottle at the fountain. And I walked out onto the gym floor, because my body knew what came next, even if I didn't.

Chapter 4: The Third Dream

The farewell was for someone in DevOps, a tall, cheerful guy from Penang who was moving to Vancouver for a job at a company that made software for dentists.

He had bought the first round, which meant everyone else had to stay long enough to seem grateful.

I was at a table in the middle of the room, not at the bar itself. Tang Xue was up there, holding court with three engineers and someone from marketing, her laugh cutting through the noise intermittently. The beer was getting warm now. I turned the glass on its coaster.

That was when I saw her.

She was seated alone at the far end of the bar counter, separated from our group by four or five empty stools. Early thirties, possibly Japanese. A silk blouse in silver and a matte black leather skirt. Her makeup was immaculate: winged liner that drew the eye outward, matte red lipstick. Her skin was smooth and warm-toned under the bar's lighting, though I was too far away to know for sure; her hair dark, falling past her shoulders to her mid back.

In her right hand she held a gin and tonic with a citrus twist. She lifted it once while I watched, brought it near her lips, and set it back down without taking a sip.

I did not approach her. I did not make eye contact. I sat at my table and watched her the way I had watched women before. Every thirty seconds, her gaze moved to the entrance. She was waiting for someone.

I recognized the pull.

The same attraction that had preceded the concert, when the woman in the white and blue dress had settled into the seat beside mine. The same tightening of attention that had occurred when Elizabeth had passed me on the Bukit Timah trail. The same consuming want to know; not to touch, but to inhabit. To be. To feel what the clothes felt like from inside, to know the texture of her life.

The entrance opened and a man came in. White, mid-forties, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a light jacket. He scanned the room once and found her immediately. He did not wave. He walked directly to her stool and greeted her by touching her elbow. She turned to him and smiled. They exchanged a few words, his head close to hers.

I turned away.

My beer was flat and warm. I finished it in two swallows and set the glass down.

I stayed another twenty minutes, long enough to shake the Penang guy's hand and wish him well in Vancouver, and then I was out in the night air.

I walked to the taxi stand carrying the image of her. I knew it would come for me tonight. Whatever was going to happen, the dream current would find me.

I was tall in the new pair of heels, taller than I was used to.

The memories arrived even more keenly than the way Elizabeth's had, like stepping into a room where every light was already on. My name-Carol Nakamura Akari-my age, the cost of the blouse and the shoes I was wearing; more than I would have ever considered spending, but they were gifts.

Mark was sitting on the edge of the bed. The entire far wall was a sheet of glass, and beyond it the Marina Bay waterfront glittering in the dark.

He had taken off his jacket and draped it over the desk chair. A glass of whiskey sat on the nightstand beside him.

"You look beautiful," he said. "I know, I've said it more than once tonight."

"Thank you," I said.

"Do you like the shoes?"

"I love them," I said, pointing my heeled foot towards him.

"You deserve them."

The words were warm and the exchange was a call-and-response we had performed often enough. The silk sat against my skin, cool and liquid, and beneath it my bra: black lace; pushup; the cups holding the modest curve of my breasts.

He reached for a bottle of red wine on the desk, poured a glass, and set it on my side of the nightstand. I would not finish it. I never did. But the gesture mattered to him.

I sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave beneath me, and my skirt rode up against the backs of my thighs. The pantyhose was sheer, nearly invisible against my skin, but I could feel the faint constriction around my waist, the smooth compression along my legs, and the touch of nylon against skin that had been shaved and moisturized. He came up behind me. I felt the mattress shift with his weight, and then his hands were at my shoulders.

"May I?"

I nodded.

His fingers were unhurried. This was the thing about Mark, he was always attending to me, not the other way round. I felt the cool air find the skin of my chest. His thumb grazed me as he worked the lower buttons, his breath warm against the side of my neck.

The blouse slid from my shoulders. He eased it down my arms and I lifted my hands slightly from my lap to allow the fabric to pass over my wrists. He laid it carefully behind us. Then the skirt. His hand found the side zipper, and the fabric loosened around my hips and fell.

I moved to kick off the heels but his hand touched the side of my thigh.

"Keep those on tonight," he said. His voice was soft. "And the pantyhose."

I settled back. The heels stayed.

He was behind me still, and his hand moved to my waist, to the waistband of the pantyhose, his fingers sliding beneath the elastic. Beneath the nylon, beneath the thin lace of my underwear, his palm found me and cupped me.

The orchiectomy had been two years ago, and the hormones before that had done their work-softening and reducing what was there to something vestigial. It did not match. It had never matched. And the discomfort of being touched there was not revulsion exactly but something closer to the feeling of hearing your old name spoken aloud.

Beneath that, a pragmatic note: Mark paid thirty percent above my standard rate specifically for this.

I turned my head, and his face was close, his expression unambiguously tender.

"You're beautiful exactly like this, Akari" he said. "You know that, don't you. Nothing needs to change."

He meant it. That was the problem. He was framing his preference as my completion, offering his desire as though it was a final diagnosis. The surgery I had been saving for was unnecessary, extraneous.

He said it again, softer: "I mean it. You're perfect."

The room was very quiet; the only sound a low hum from the air conditioning vents.

"I've offended you again," he said, reading my face. "I won't say any more. I'm sorry. Forgive me?"

"No," I said. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I shouldn't be this way, especially with you."

"It's almost like we're married, don't you think?" he smiled.

I let my gaze move to the window. The nightly fireworks show had just ended at the Marina Bay waterfront. Eighteen months of this, of evenings in hotel rooms with men who touched me with varying degrees of care, and then the clinic in Bangkok, and the recovery, and then my real life would begin.

"You're sweet," I said.

He kissed the side of my neck. Then he moved lower, his mouth moving down my back. His hands hooked the waistband of the pantyhose and underwear and drew them down just far enough, and his mouth found me.

The Sildenafil I had taken an hour ago was doing its work. I hardened in his mouth, and the pleasure was completely real. Mark's mouth was warm and his rhythm was steady. I reciprocated, though he was already hard; stroking him and taking him into my mouth.

Then he turned me over. My hands found a pillow and I placed my head on it. He was careful and always used protection. I knew I could trust him but I had added the lubrication ahead of time out of habit. The pressure came slowly, the fullness building, my hips angled in a way that experience had taught me made it bearable, even pleasurable. My body knew this. And then, briefly, a warmth that spread upward through my abdomen. I sighed unconsciously, and his hand tightened on my hip.

Afterward, his breathing slowed against my back, and I lay still and waited for the tenderness that always followed, as predictable as the bill.

He was still on top of me, one arm curling around me, another stroking my hair affectionately in the same way one might pet a cat they believed had fallen asleep. I lay still. My breathing had returned to normal. The heels were off now; I had kicked them free at some point, and they lay on the carpet somewhere. My legs were bare, the pantyhose gone, and I could feel the moisture drying in the frigid room.

"I'm serious about it," he said.

His voice was quiet, close to my ear.

"About what I said before," he continued. "The offer."

I knew what was coming. He had raised it twice in the last month; once over dinner, once in a moment very much like this one, both times delivered with the earnest quality of a man who had been building up to it.

The condo in the Orchard area. A monthly allowance deposited on the first, enough to live on comfortably, enough to make the day job optional. No more scheduling. No more other clients. Just him.

"I'm sorting things out with Jess and the kids," he said. "Back in Melbourne. It's going to take time, but I'm serious, Carol. I love you. You deserve better than this."

The sincerity was there, but it did not make the offer less complicated.

The condo would eliminate rent. I was paying seventeen hundred a month for a studio in Geylang that smelled of the noodle shop below it. Seventeen hundred saved, just like that. The allowance, whatever number he had in mind, and I could guess the range, would accelerate the SRS timeline by several months. Maybe even a year earlier to the life that waited on the other side.

But.

The dependency would end the autonomy my current arrangement preserved. I chose the clients. I set the schedule. I controlled the terms. I could walk away from any of them. Mark's offer would replace that with one man's continued interest. One man's continued solvency. One man's wife in Melbourne.

I still had my day job. Customer service at a Japanese electronics firm in the Paya Lebar area, answering calls about warranty claims and product returns in Japanese and English. Poorly paid but mine. The monthly transfer to my mother in Osaka-thirty thousand yen, deposited on the fifteenth-had not been missed once in four years; just enough to supplement her pension.

"I'm grateful," I said. "But I need to think about it. It's a big step."

He nodded. He was at my side now, propped on an elbow, looking at me, his other hand gently stroking my posterior.

Then his hand moved to my face, his thumb coming to rest at the corner of my mouth. He turned me toward him, gently, and he kissed me tenderly on the lips. It was indistinguishable from love, maybe it was love.

"I just want to take care of you," he said.

I held his gaze, and I kissed him.

Chapter 5: Someone to Watch Over Me

I woke with a headache.

My last clear memory was going to the supermarket, the Cold Storage near my apartment. I had picked up a loaf of wholemeal and a carton of milk and put them into a plastic bag at the self-checkout. After that, nothing.

My phone was on the mattress beside me.

The first notification sat in a banner at the top: Tanjong Pagar FitClub. Check-in: Friday, 8:02 PM. Duration: 45 minutes. Great workout, Peter!

I closed the app and scrolled down.

The only thing of note was a long text thread in Whatsapp. Tang Xue. The timestamps ran from 9:14 PM to 11:47 PM: two and a half hours of conversation, the messages stacked in alternating grey and green bubbles. I opened it.

The first message was mine, sent at 9:14: Hey, you free for dinner next week? I owe you for covering me in the standup last Thursday.

Her reply, three minutes later: Finally! I've been waiting for you to ask

Me: You're the only person at the office worth talking to. Don't tell anyone I said that.

Her: !!! Pick somewhere with chili crab. We can split the bill.

Me: You think I can't pay, is it? I know a great place in Joo Chiat.

Her: You say one ah.

The thread continued: a back-and-forth about restaurants that expanded to include opinions about laksa (she was a purist; I, apparently, was not up to scratch), a shared complaint about the DevOps migration timeline; the messages growing shorter and warmer. The last message was mine, a string of emojis: a crab, a chili pepper, a face with hearts for eyes. She had responded with a single laughing face, and that was it.

The tone was mine and not mine. The person who had written those messages had simply typed and sent, the way people do when they were comfortable in their own skin and certain of their welcome.

I set the phone face-down on the mattress.

It was clear what had happened: one if not all of the women I had encountered so far had access to my life.

And then, all at once, the memories became real, as if a card had been slotted into place. The gym first, the train, and then the jog home. A shower and then, sitting on my bed in a clean T-shirt with my hair still wet, picking up my phone and typing the first message to Tang Xue. The memories were seamless, completely lived in, rejoining a timeline they had always belonged to.

I lay back on the bed and my headache was gone.

I did not intend to dream of her again, but when I opened my eyes I was walking down a familiar hallway that smelled of white anthuriums.

It was a landed property off Chancery Lane. The place was Lian Wei's and I was leading from the front, showing Michael the way to the dining area. Four PH5 pendant lights hung in a descending line over a long teak dining table that was set for ten, each place marked with a cloth napkin. The other guests were already assembled. Four couples, all expat community regulars.

Michael was beside me during the introductions, his hand at the small of my back. He worked the room the way he worked everything: fluently and with a warmth that was real enough in the moment. He was going into the details of his recent road trip through Central Asia. I had heard it all before. Lived it, through sporadic Facetime sessions. Over a month away while I took care of the kids. It wasn't the first time he had left us to fend for ourselves. He needed his freedom after all.

At the table, Lian Wei was seated to my left.

The starter was a poached prawn salad with a lime-chili dressing. I ate it delicately, faintly aware of counting calories and how many miles I would need to run to work it off.

Between the starter and the main, Lian Wei turned to me.

"You're so lucky, you know," she said, glancing across the table at Michael.

There was nothing in her words that suggested malice. From the outside, it looked like the thing you were supposed to want.

"I know," I said. "We're very fortunate,"

Across the table, Michael was trotting out an old anecdote from a book he had read five years ago. Fine if you were listening to it for the first time; a bit tiresome if he forgot your face and retold it a second; embarrassing if you heard it a third. The couple beside him laughed. They were new to him, and he had good timing. Mid-punchline, his gaze found me across the table, and he gave me a small smile; warm, inclusive; the smile of a man who wanted his wife to know she was part of the evening, part of him.

Next was his story about an Australian translator who had described the relationship between two companies as "orgasmic" in Mandarin. Everyone was tickled, and I provided the correct translation to Lian Wei's amazement.

"You just started with the Mandarin six months ago," she said. "Are you some sort of language genius?"

"Just one of the many reasons I married her," Michael said.

I smiled dutifully.

When did it change? Was there a specific night, a specific conversation when the distance between us became the defining feature? Was it after the children? Or was it before? Had the marriage already been going when the children arrived?

The question did not resolve. It never resolved. I had asked it so many times that it had begun to sound like something from Michael's story repository.

Lian Wei touched my arm. "The lamb looks gorgeous, doesn't it?" she said.

I turned to her and smiled and said something about rosemary.

Sophie had settled down at nine-thirty after I had read her two chapters from the new book. Callum had been unconscious since eight, his stuffed wombat wedged between his chin and the pillow.

I was at the vanity removing my makeup with a cotton pad again.

The bra was pale champagne. New, bought because I thought Michael might like it. Lace trim along the upper edge, a small satin bow between the cups. Beneath it, my breasts sat in their cups with the kind of heaviness that came from twelve hours of support and compression.

This was fine. I still enjoyed this. Being a woman, that was all that mattered.

The bathroom door opened slightly.

Michael leaned against the frame. T-shirt and boxers, his hair mussed. His eyes found mine in the mirror, then moved downward.

"You look incredible," he said.

He crossed over to me and his hands were at my hips, his chin settling close to the top of my head. We watched each other in the mirror.

I set down the cotton pad.

His right hand slid upward along my ribs, following the line of the bra's side panel, his thumb tracing the edge of the lace. His left hand moved to my hip, fingers hooking gently under the waistband of my underwear, not pulling, just resting there.

"Even better than when you were doing cheerleading." He saw me raise an eyebrow in the mirror and added. "It's the truth."

I felt the warmth climb up my cheeks and into my ears. I knew that he wanted something. But did it really matter if I wanted it to?

His mouth was at my neck, and his hands were steering me backward, out of the bathroom and into our bedroom. He turned me around and kissed me. I kissed him back because my body wanted to and because the warmth from the compliment was still there.

The bra came off, the straps slid down my arms, my breasts settling into their natural weight. I had got the implants done as much for him as for myself. I knew he appreciated the effort. His hands found them, cupped them, his thumbs passing over the nipples, squeezing. They hardened under his touch and I let out a soft sigh.

He eased me onto the bed, the duvet cool against my back. His hand moved between my thighs; two fingers, pressing through the fabric of my underwear first, then pushing it aside and entering me. He knew exactly where to press, exactly how to rub me; and my body responded, the wetness gathering, my hips tilting towards his hand involuntarily.

Then he was inside, driving into me urgently. I clenched and met his thrusts with my own. He braced himself on his forearms, his face close to mine, eyes closed, turned inward toward his own sensation. I wrapped one leg around his hip and for a moment it seemed like it might have gone somewhere if he had stayed with it.

He didn't.

His rhythm accelerated and he finished with a series of grunts, his body going rigid and then heavy against mine. He rolled to his side. His hand found my hip, squeezed once, and then his breathing began to slow. I lay on my back. The wetness between my thighs cooled and dried in the air-conditioned dark, and the arousal that had been building toward something slowly receded.

There was a part of me which was thrilled that I had even been touched by a man, that I had been given the chance to experience being taken vaginally. But the real owner of this body was always circling in the background and she wasn't quite so satisfied.

After about five minutes, I reached for the phone on the nightstand. The Mandarin app opened where I had left it.

New lesson: measure words. 一杯, yì bēi, a cup of. 一条, yì tiáo, a strip of, a road, a fish. 一件, yí jiàn, a piece of clothing, a matter. They came easily. Too easily. I moved through thirty cards and my accuracy did not drop below ninety percent. The app recommended that I switch to a more advanced setting.

The proficiency was not mine. Or rather it was, from my other life, distant and irrelevant.

I set the phone on the nightstand and turned on to my side, away from Michael. His breathing continued, steady and oblivious. The house was quiet, and the children were dreaming their own uncomplicated dreams down the hall.

Chapter 6: A Day and Night to Remember

It was 3am in the morning, and the fridge seemed wrong.

It was that phantom moment just before the "false" memories engaged and became fully mine.

The shelves were clean, not just emptied but wiped down. The bag of prawn crackers: gone. The three packets of Indomie stacked in my larder: gone. The row of chocolate digestives in the fridge: gone. In their place, a single carton of oat milk, some cheese and eggs, two packs of salad, some Australian Wagyu, and four pieces of chicken breast.

I checked my phone before the memories solidified. A reservation confirmation was in my inbox. A seafood restaurant in Joo Chiat, the one I had mentioned to Tang Xue. Two people at 7:30 PM. At the bottom, in the special requests field: chilli crab (1), steamed sea bass, Kang Kong.

I poured a glass of cold water from a bottle in the fridge, stifling my rising anxiety. By the time I finished the glass, the tension had receded; because everything was exactly where I had put it, and everything had been perfectly planned.

The restaurant was narrow and loud: round tables packed close, red plastic stools, a fish tank by the entrance where two groupers drifted. Tang Xue was already seated when I arrived, a half-finished Hoegaarden in front of her.

"Wah, looking good man," she said.

For some reason, I had chosen a muscle tee and tight jeans. I sat. The chilli crab arrived ten minutes later flecked with egg ribbons and sliced chilli. Two pairs of polythene gloves appeared beside it and a bowl of lime water just in case we still messed up.

Tang Xue pulled her gloves on and started cracking the crab claws and peeling off the shards, while I waited for the mantous to arrive. She dipped the meat into the sauce and placed it on my plate.

She noticed my surprise.

"You said you were paying," she said, slightly embarrassed.

"Thanks," I said.

"You planned the whole menu," she said, gesturing at the steamed sea bass and the sambal kangkong. "Were you afraid I would order lotus root?"

"You told me you like fish," I said. Somehow I knew. "And sometimes they can run out. I'm beginning to like lotus root, you know."

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. "Since when?"

"Recently. I'm a changed man."

"Definitely." She pointed a crab claw at my altered physique.

The sea bass was fresh and delicate. Tang Xue used her chopsticks to lift a piece and set it directly on my plate without asking, then the kang kong.

"The fish needs more plum," I said.

"It does not. It's perfect," she said. "You want it more sour, I'll bring you to a Teochew restaurant next time."

I placed a deep fried mantou on her plate. She took it, dipped it in the crab sauce, and bit into it. Her eyes closed briefly, a small private moment of pleasure she did not bother to hide. I watched her chew and then lick her fingers. She really was quite delightful.

"Is there something on my face?" she asked.

I shook my head and brought a sauce-soaked mantou to my own lips, and…

… I was Akari again.

The room was small, a studio in Geylang. Below, there was the clatter of the noodle shop opening, the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I wore an oversized T-shirt that fell to mid-thigh, loose cotton shorts beneath it. I stood and the shirt settled against my body and I felt it. The rightness.

I brushed my teeth. Then the pills. A blister pack from the bathroom shelf, beside the moisturizer and the contact lens solution. 2.5mg of estradiol. I lifted my chin. The neck was smooth. The tracheal shave had been two years ago and the scar had faded to a thin line that was barely visible. My hands were slim, the knuckles slightly prominent but still feminine; the nails filed and clean. I was lucky in that respect. My skin was clear, the cheekbones had always been good, a gift from my mother's side.

I got dressed for the day.

My phone showed three messages from Mark, sent between midnight and six AM, which meant he had been lying awake or drinking or both. I scrolled through them without opening the thread: I keep thinking about what you said... I meant every word, Akari... You deserve someone who...

At nine-fifteen, I did a video call with my mother.

The phone rang four times before she picked up.

"Akari-chan. You're calling early."

"I woke up early," I said. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, fine. My knee is better. The new exercises from the physiotherapist are helping."

We talked for twelve minutes. She asked about work and I told her about the warranty claims, the new product line, the colleague who brought homemade onigiri on Fridays. She asked whether I was eating enough. I said yes. She asked whether I had made any friends in Singapore.

"A few," I said. "From work, mostly."

"Good," she said. "You work too hard."

I told her that I would try to send her more money this month, which made her angry for some reason. She told me in her usual gruff way that I shouldn't send more than I usually did. I already knew that I would ignore the advice. I did not describe my evenings. I did not mention Mark or the hotel rooms. Whether she guessed that the only way I could afford the operations and her monthly allowance was by doing extras on the side was hard to say. I doubted it.

We said goodbye, and I held the phone against my chest for a moment after she hung up.

Mark's condo was in River Valley; a two-bedroom affair on the nineteenth floor, rented furnished,

He opened the door in a white T-shirt and loose trousers, a glass of whisky already in his hand.

"Akari," he said. "You look beautiful." He always said it first.

We sat on the sofa and his hand found mine.

"You didn't reply to my messages," he said.

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry. I needed to think."

He nodded slowly.

"It's my wife and children, isn't it," he said. He took a large swallow of whisky. "You feel that it would be a betrayal if I left them. And why would you want to be with a man who has already betrayed his family."

He was wrong. Or not entirely wrong, there was still the matter of my independence. I opened my mouth to correct him but he raised his hand.

"I've been thinking," he said. "About what you actually need. Not what I want." He set his glass down. "Your surgery. The one in Thailand. I looked into it. A good surgeon is around twenty thousand US. Maybe a bit more with recovery and travel."

"If you have something saved," he said, "I can make up the rest of it. No strings. Even if…" He paused, swallowed. "Even if you don't want to see me after. Even if this ends. I want you to have it."

His face was steady but I could see what it cost him. "Is there something about me which… No, don't answer that."

"Mark," I said.

"You don't have to answer now," he said quickly. "Just… think about it. That's all I'm asking."

I looked at his face and I felt something. Gratefulness? Affection? Love? I never had the luxury of love up to this point in my life.

"I'll think about it," I said.

I was in bed.

The sheets were warm and tangled at my waist and Tang Xue's arm was draped across my chest, her breasts pressing soft and warm against my ribs. My own hand stroking her back gently.

My body knew what had happened before the memories asserted themselves: the cool moisture in my groin, the faint pleasurable soreness.

I reached for my phone by the bedside. It has been about two hours since the restaurant and inside that two hours, I had lived an entire day: morning to night, kaya toast to wine; the full arc of Akari's weekend rendered in perfect sensory detail.

The offer. Twenty thousand dollars and completion. But could I take it? There would be consequences. The demands he would make on me despite what he had just told me. Perhaps his wife finding me years later and insisting that I return the money; a lawsuit perhaps.

I lay in the dark, breathing. My body was my body again but it wasn't the one I really wanted.

Chapter 7: A Perfect Life

The receptionist said my name before I reached the counter. "Morning, Peter." The turnstile clicked and I was through.

I changed quickly and walked out onto the floor. The gym was half-full. It was early enough for the serious crowd, late enough that the dawn warriors had already showered and left. I started with the cable machine, counting reps.

Then I saw him.

In the free weights section, near the far mirror. Tall, broad-shouldered, in a grey performance shirt; one hand braced against the mirror, the other holding his phone to his ear.

My husband. No, Elizabeth's husband. Michael.

I let go of the cable handle.

My heart was racing; the fragile boundary between dream and reality was barely holding up. I had lain beside this man in the dark and listened to him breathing. I had felt his hand at the small of my back, knew the smell of his skin after a shower, what it felt like to have his weight on top of me; the sound he made when he came in me.

I knew the college version of him too. Younger, a soccer player of all things; less polished, almost nerdish but the charm already developing. The version Elizabeth had fallen in love with, the version I had chosen, before the children and the distance. If I could just find the right angle, the right version of myself to offer, I could still fix it.

He ended the call and returned to the weights. He positioned himself beneath it, settled the bar across his shoulders, and began a series of squats. I watched him. He was not unreachable. I had it in me to make him turn and see the woman beside him.

Then Michael glanced up.

His eyes found mine in the mirror; the briefest moment and then a nod.

I nodded back.

The shower was already running.

I lay still for a moment. The sheets were cool where his body had been. I was in her body again. I rubbed my legs together just to feel the sensation of the soft skin of my inner thighs against each other. I turned away from the faint light coming from the bathroom and my breasts settled against the mattress. The tight left hip that needed stretching; the slight flabbiness in the lower abdomen that two pregnancies had left.

I picked up my phone.

Seven-twelve. I had forty-three minutes.

Sophie was in the bathroom when I found her, standing on the step stool at the mirror, a brush trapped halfway down her hair where a knot had defeated her.

"Let me," I said, reaching for the brush.

"No." She pulled away, the brush still tangled. "I can do it myself."

"You're going to be late, Soph."

"I said I can do it."

I stood in the doorway and watched her work the knot free, strand by strand, her face a picture of concentration. Her school uniform was on but the collar was folded wrong. I waited. She freed the brush. Ran it through twice, assessed the result in the mirror. She was nearly seven and already learning to judge what she saw. Was it from the school or was it partly my fault?

I fixed the collar when she wasn't looking.

Callum was on the hallway floor, one shoe on, one shoe off, the missing one nowhere to be seen. He looked up at me, mildly dismayed.

"Shoe," he said.

I had an inkling where it was. I knelt and reached under the console table. My fingers closed on the small shoe wedged against the wall, pulled it free and slid it onto his foot.

"Thank you, Mummy."

"You're welcome, baby."

His bag was by the door. Sophie's was already on her back. Water bottles filled, fruit boxes packed, lunchboxes in the side pockets. I had done all of this before they woke with the help of Agnes, our helper.

It was time to go. Michael had already left in his Porsche. I reversed out of the driveway.

I felt a surge of resentment. Not at them. Eighteen months to return to baseline after Callum; the episiotomy. The career. What career? The senior marketing role I had left when Sophie was born, with the understanding that it would be temporary. The narrowing. My life had narrowed to fit everyone else's shape. Summa cum laude; all my girlfriends told me that he was lucky to have me. And I was the one stuck at home.

The part of me that was still Peter managed to push it down. But Peter had only been in this life three times. Maybe more, I couldn't tell for sure any more. Who was I to judge what family and children took away from all the possibilities in a woman's life.

The children were quiet in the back; Sophie reading, Callum humming tunelessly. They were so well behaved.

The international school appeared behind its green fence. I pulled into the drop-off lane and the car doors opened. Sophie was out first, already looking for a friend. She did not turn around. Callum unbuckled, slid down, and then stopped at the gate. He turned. Waved once and then waved again when he noticed my blank stare. I raised my hand through the windshield and waved back.

Then he was through the gate and gone, absorbed into the noisy current of his classmates.

The clinic was on the fourth floor of a mall complex near Novena.

The receptionist handed me a clipboard. The form asked about cycle regularity, my last menstrual period, the presence of any vaginal discharge or bleeding, and the date of my last examination. I filled it up quickly and sat with the clipboard on my lap and waited.

My name was called.

The changing room was a curtained alcove. I changed, then sat on the examination couch in a hospital gown made of thin cotton. The paper sheet crinkled beneath me.

The gynaecologist entered with a knock. Dr. Rachel Tan, mid-fifties and already greying,

"Hi Elizabeth," she said. "We just need to do the follow-up on your last pap smear after the treatment for the fungal infection. And I have the results of your Health and STD screen as well. It's all negative." She nodded affirmatively.

Her clinic assistant helped me lie back and set my legs wide.

"You'll feel some pressure," she said. "Cold at first, I'm only using water for lubrication. Let me know if it's uncomfortable. Try to relax your legs."

The speculum was cold.

The doctor narrated: "Feeling okay. Good. I can see everything clearly. I can't see any discharge. Now the swab. Done."

"Everything looks fine," she said, stripping the gloves. "We'll have the results in a week? Any new problems since we last met?"

I shook my head.

She left, and I swung my legs off the table and stood behind the curtain and dressed.

I walked out of the clinic and through the connecting corridor into the mall.

The shops were mostly empty at this time of day. I needed a new dress for an upcoming function. Something that would work with the jade earrings. The boutique had a rack of occasion dresses near the entrance. I pulled two; the salesgirl trailed me expectantly.

The first dress was emerald green, high-waisted. I pulled it on and the waist sat two inches above my natural line, making my torso look truncated and my hips look wide. I turned sideways. No.

As I changed out, I noticed the slightest gap in the door which hadn't closed properly. Through it, a woman pivoted to her right and left in the corridor mirror. She was much younger, half my age and half a size smaller, wearing something that fell straight from shoulder to hem. Hardly any makeup on her face. The last time I was able to do that was in my early twenties. Or younger.

The second dress was a Jasmine Maraya mini dress with floral appliques and tulle fabric underlay.

A knock.

"Is everything okay in there?" a voice asked. "Would you like to try anything else?"

I drew back the curtain. It was the sales assistant: young, Malay, with the professional warmth of someone on commission. Her eyes lit up when she saw me.

"You can definitely wear that," she said. "You look great in it. Really."

A few words of affirmation from a stranger, even one with a conflict of interest. That was all it took. My mood lifted, just slightly, just enough. Completely disproportionate but I didn't care. I bought the dress and something else.

Only the "ang mos" sat outside at Dempsey Hill, and Lian Wei had chosen al fresco seating knowing my preferences. She was wearing a linen blouse in pale sage and had already ordered some sparkling water.

"You look good," she said, standing to kiss my cheek. "Is that new?"

I was wearing a simple tank mini dress from the shop.

"Just picked it up," I said.

"It's gorgeous on you. Really flattering."

The conversation moved through its familiar circuit: the children's school concert, Sophie said she preferred the violin to piano; a new restaurant in Keong Saik, Thai fusion, apparently excellent; a friend moving back to London because her husband's posting had ended.

"She seemed relieved, honestly," Lian Wei said, tearing a piece of sourdough. "I think she was ready. Too many distractions. Of the wrong kind."

"Some people aren't built for this," I said.

Lian Wei nodded.

Our food arrived. I had ordered a salad with grilled chicken, Lian Wei had got some trout.

"I saw Michael last Tuesday," she said, quite carefully, between bites. "Near his office. Having coffee. With a woman I didn't recognise."

"Young," Lian Wei added. "Very animated. Laughed a lot." She looked up from her fish. "It was probably nothing. We both know how Michael is with clients. But I thought I should tell you."

"Of course," I said. "He's always got people around him."

Lian Wei gazed was still on me. "We've talked about this before," she said. "You don't need him

You're smart, you're beautiful. You've still got your whole life ahead of you."

And I'm forty with two children I added inwardly. I took a sip of water.

"Fuck men," Lian Wei said under her breath.

The thing about Lian Wei was that she would never say more. She wouldn't probe further unless I said something first. In three minutes she would suggest we try the Thai place next Wednesday.

"Anyway," Lian Wei said. "Are you coming to Sarah's farewell on Saturday?"

"Wouldn't miss it," I said.

I parked outside the school gates at 2:53 PM. Twenty-two minutes before the bell.

The phone was still linked to the EV's display: the Mandarin app was open and the lesson concerned some recent colloquialisms from the news, this one based on a song from a young Chinese singer.

如何呢，又能怎 [Rúhé ne, yòu néng zěn] "So what" "What can you do"

I got through three cards before the frustration arrived. The younger woman preening in the corridor. The new, unwanted information. The perfume on Michael's collar when he came home late. The steady, years-long narrowing that served everyone and satisfied no one.

The bell rang. I wiped my face. Checked the mirror.

Sophie arrived first, her bag bouncing against her back.

"…and then she said I couldn't be Elsa because I was Elsa last time, but that's not even a rule, Mum, there's no rule about that…"

"Seatbelt, Soph."

"Mrs. Patterson said we could choose, and she said…"

Callum appeared behind her. Slower, his bag dragging slightly. In his hand, a piece of paper. He got in and handed it to me, his face expectant.

"Mummy. Look."

A drawing, done in coloured pencil and crayons. A house, with a triangle roof and a garden in front of it. Four figures standing in a row, smiley faces, labeled: Mummy. Daddy. Sophie. Me. It was surprisingly well done, with shading on the faces and even perspective.

"It's wonderful, baby," I said.

He took it back, smiling.

"Hey," I said. "Wasn't that for me?"

He thought for a moment, and handed it back to me.

"Thank you, baby."

Home.

The kitchen was mine at this hour. I had told Agnes that I would be cooking. I filled a pot with water. Set it to boil. Took the pasta from the cupboard and the sauce I'd made on Sunday, defrosting it in the microwave while I grated some Parmigiano Reggiano.

My phone buzzed at 6:47. I knew before I looked.

Late tonight, don't wait.

I set the table for three.

The children ate quickly, itching to get back to a cartoon I had allowed them to watch since they had finished their homework. Sophie knocked over her glass and I caught it just in time to save the tablecloth.

"Sorry, Mum."

I stroked her head and she didn't shake me off this time. I was still full from lunch, so I simply watched them eat. Michael's absence left a space that the children filled. I joined them for the cartoon. I had developed a taste for anime in the last few months.

Then baths. Teeth.

I read to Callum in his room. The book was about a boy who discovers a door in a garden wall, a door that leads somewhere else, somewhere blue and endless. Callum lay against my side, his head on my arm, the stuffed wombat wedged under his chin.

I read two pages before he started nodding off.

The house was quiet. Agnes had washed the dishes. Michael wasn't home yet. Sophie was asleep in her own room. The drawing showing the four of us was pinned with a magnet to the fridge.

Chapter 8: The Choice

The sun was setting and sky was the color of an overripe mango.

I was walking home when she appeared from around the bend near the old petrol station. Mid-twenties, Chinese, in a long white dress, dark hair loose, carrying a small Nikon, a knapsack on her back. She was lean and her skin gleamed with sweat

I slowed, caught her eye for a moment. I tried to summon it. The pull, the concentrated attention that had preceded the woman at the concert hall, and Elizabeth, and Carol-Akari.

Nothing.

She walked past me without a second glance. I stood on the footpath and watched her vanish behind a corner.

It had happened three times now in the past two weeks. The young office worker I had noticed in Westgate, drinking a coconut shake, her expression dreamy and unguarded. The woman on the MRT whose bra sat perfectly beneath a white blouse-I had admired how she wore it and felt the familiar curiosity flare, and then nothing. Nothing had caught. The mechanism, whatever it was, had decided it only wanted Elizabeth or Akari.

I walked on.

Monday night I closed my eyes at eleven-fifteen and opened them inside Elizabeth's kitchen at 7:02 AM.

The smell of toast and the sound of Sophie arguing with the toaster. Two full days inside her life.

Both days were mine and the children's alone. Michael wasn't home for either night, creeping in between the sheets at two in the morning, freshly showered but not in our bathroom. The resignation no longer registered as pain. It was just how it was.

When he started snoring, I retrieved my phone from the charger. LinkedIn. Job boards. The senior marketing role I'd left when Sophie was born had mutated in my absence. But I still had over ten years experiences in the best American firms and new language skills.

The resentment seemed almost churlish. I had experienced giving birth-it was as real to me as if had gone through it myself. I had two wonderful children; two children who I remembered breastfeeding. I was a woman. Just that last thing should have been enough. It was enough.

I could make this work.

Wednesday night I fell into Akari without warning.

The Japanese electronics office, warranty claims. A local retailer who had three rice cookers returned in the space of one week. I spoke to her calmly in English, getting the details and serial numbers; then corresponded with the technical department via email. I logged the ticket and drank my coffee.

The call to my mother was brief. Ten minutes, deliberately cheerful. Her knee was better. She was dreading the winter and I told her that she could come visit me in December, I had found something cheap on Scoot. She immediately scolded me for wasting money. I told her work was fine, that I was eating well. I did not tell her about Mark's offer.

Then, the same night, Mark's rented apartment.

"I'll accept it as a loan," I said. "I'll pay you back. I promise."

I could see his disappointment.

"Of course," he said. "Whatever makes you comfortable."

He took a few sips from his glass of whisky. I could see that he was fighting back tears. "Why is it so difficult for you to see that I love you?"

I kissed him then. "I believe you," I said.

I woke on a Tuesday morning drained by the weight of two lives.

I had gone to sleep on Wednesday night. Six days gone. A faint headache sat behind my eyes.

I lay still and waited. Five minutes. The memories clicked into place, a sudden mounting of everything at once.

Thursday: dinner with Tang Xue at the new Thai place in Keong Saik. We had shared a Beef Phanaeng and a Southern Crab Yellow Curry, and she had stolen the last grilled banana cake from my plate with her fork. I had grabbed her wrist playfully and she had laughed, divided the cake in two and fed me one.

Saturday: a run together at Macritchie to make up for the excesses during the week, her pace slightly faster than mine, her competitive streak showing. She had slept over at my place. I remembered her small, delightfully formed breasts in my palms, her wantonness in bed, the weight of her as she rode me.

And underneath that, a trip to Sumba Island, booked for next month. Three days, a small resort with thatched roofs and an infinity pool, horses on the beach. I had made the reservation. Or the other version of me had. The version who texted with ease and laughed easily and ran 5K routes and bought gym memberships and made dinner reservations at seafood restaurants without agonizing for three days.

The version Tang Xue was falling in love with.

Another Sunday.

A cup of coffee sat between my hands, still warm, though I had no memory of boiling the kettle.

The math was simple. I was spending more nights inside Elizabeth and Akari than inside myself. The lost hours had become lost days. And each time, the version of me that took over was more fluent, more alive than the version sitting here now with a mild headache and the emotional residue of two women's complicated lives.

I did not feel the urge to find Elizabeth in Binjai Park, and I did not feel the urge to find Akari's studio in Geylang. Whatever was happening, it did not require my participation. It did not require my consent.

That was clear now.

What I felt instead was the faint pressure of a choice being made that was not entirely mine to make.

On a Friday evening, during the crush that Raffles Place tends to produce between six and seven, a person who may have been Peter Huang boarded the North South Line.

The carriage was full: office workers with loosened collars; women in sensible heels holding tote bags against their chests with one arm, phones glowing in the other; a group of teenagers with earbuds in, their bodies swaying like kelp in a current.

The person stood near the doors, one hand gripping the overhead rail, a messenger bag across their chest. In the dark window opposite, the reflection that looked back was familiar: the slightly unruly hair, the upper body definition sculpted through hours in the gym.

Then it wasn't.

For a moment, Akari's face gazed back from the glass, reserved and composed. Then that face dissolved too, and Elizabeth appeared; polished and somewhat impatient. Then Peter again. The reflection cycled without settling, slightly out of sync with the carriage's movement.

The person did not reach up to touch their face. They watched the reflection the way you watch the final minutes of a film whose conclusion was evident from the very beginning.

The stations passed. Somerset, Newton, Botanic Gardens. The carriage thinned. The reflection in the glass became clearer as the carriage emptied. Finally, King Albert Park. The doors opened. The air outside was warm and muggy, carrying the smell of rain that had fallen an hour ago. The route was largely residential, low-rise shophouses and condominiums. A small glass-fronted office block sat on the corner where the road curved.

The person slowed.

In the glass, a silhouette looked back. Slighter than Peter's frame. The shoulders narrow, the hair longer. The messenger bag was gone and her posture was upright.

A phone buzzed. The sound was coming from inside her handbag, a black Gucci with a bamboo handle. She opened the bag without breaking her stride. A WeChat notification. Sophie's Chinese Teacher, Mrs. Liu. The message read: 请问你几点来接Sophie下课？

Her fingers moved across the glass with the ease of someone who had been typing in Mandarin for years rather than months: 我快就到了。[I'll be right there.]

Epilogue

I stood in line, not far from the inner doors of the concert hall, waiting for our turn to exit.

The Prabal Gurung was heavier than it looked. The tasselled skirt moved in a slow cascade each time I shifted, the individual threads brushing my knees like fingertips trailing across skin.

It had been only two weeks since I had become Elizabeth; and it was the only way I could think about myself now. The other life was still there, buzzing in the background faintly, but the idea of once being a man seemed almost absurd. If I concentrated hard enough, I could recall vivid fragments of my entire life: my life as a girl; my marriage; how it felt as a young woman working while pregnant; the children.

As I shuffled forward, I scanned the crowd without really knowing what I was looking for. My gaze moved across faces the way it had always moved, but now with less envy. Life and fate had given me what I had always wanted.

I was a woman.

Thirty feet away, coming down the steps from the Circle section. A man in a dark blue linen blazer, well built, his hair a little unruly. Beside him, a woman in a fitted dress, her hand resting on the inside of his elbow. Tang Xue. She was looking up at him, smiling. Laughing.

He turned, and our eyes met for a second. Then he winked and looked away; and he was swallowed by the crowd and the life he had always wanted.

My hands tightened on my clutch.

I was still moving forward through the packed crowd.

Peter's memories were still there. I could feel them: the morning commutes; the rich inner life that had always felt more real than his actual circumstances; the awful Americanos; Tang Xue's voice. All of it was still present but the edges were softening, the details losing their crispness the way text fades when left too long in sunlight. In six months, maybe a year, what remained would be impressions rather than memories.

But not all of it would go, not if I held tightly to those things. I knew that with a strange quiet certainty. The Mandarin; that was mine now, permanently, the tonal precision and the grammatical intuition woven into whatever I was becoming. Peter's coding skills; those remained. I had requisitioned Michael's dusty gaming computer with its 5090 and told him to get his own machine for his sporadic MMO use.

A hand settled at the small of my back.

Michael. I knew the pressure of his palm before I turned. He offered his hand to me near the steps because of the heels I was wearing.

"Ready?"

The Porsche's leather was cool against the backs of my thighs, the gown's skirt too thin to insulate against the seat's air-conditioned chill. Michael pulled out of the Esplanade's underground car park with one hand on the wheel.

"Good show tonight," he said. "The Ravel was outstanding."

"It was," I said. "The pianist was exceptional."

He nodded, satisfied, as though the evening's quality reflected well on him.

"So," he said, his voice shifting register. "I've been waiting for the right moment to tell you this."

He glanced at me fleetingly and then back at the road.

"The board confirmed it last week. Asian Chief. They want me in Hong Kong by the end of next month."

"The timing works," he continued, he had obviously thought it through. "I'll go ahead, get the office set up, find us a place. You and the children can follow at the end of the school year. I've already spoken to the relocation team. They'll handle shipping, visas, all of that."

He paused, but it wasn't an invitation to respond; not yet.

"We'll rent first. Then buy once we know the market."

"That's not a bad idea," I said. "The market in Hong Kong has come down a bit since 2021 but it's moving up again."

He smiled. Michael had never underestimated my knowledge or intelligence.

"You'll manage the renovation, obviously. And there are a few good international schools, I'll leave that up to you. I've asked Janet to send you the enrolment materials. New helper as well, we can't take Agnes, her work permit won't transfer."

"We need to take care of her," I said. "She's helped so much with Callum and Sophie."

"Of course, of course."

The list continued in detail. School enrolment. Property agents. How he wanted the renovation done and in what style. Each item placed on my side of the ledger with the certainty of a man who had never questioned the division of labor.

I kept my hands still in my lap, the clutch balanced across my knees. It was pointless to fight over this.

"It's wonderful news," I said.

"It's a big move," he said. "But it's the right one. For all of us."

The traffic light at the junction near Bukit Timah Plaza turned red, and the Taycan eased to a stop.

Michael turned. His hand left the wheel and found the side of my face, his thumb traced the line of my jaw, and he kissed me. Not the quick, performative display I expected, but slowly, deliberately. I kissed him back. I still loved him, still wanted to keep him. The memories of our early years together were still there.

His hand moved to my thigh, finding the curve of it through the gown's fabric, and squeezed; firmly, lovingly, seeking the soft skin of my inner thigh; the grip of a man reclaiming territory he had briefly abandoned.

He pulled back. The light turned green and he drove.

"Michael," I said. "I want to make this work. Hong Kong can be a new start for us."

The slightest frown crossed his face. A new start implied that the current state required one. He smoothed it over in less than a second.

"You've always been the one for me," he said. His eyes stayed on the road. "You know that. The guys at work keep telling me I would be mad, absolutely crazy, to cheat on someone like you."

But you did cheat.

The words formed but I held them back. Not on this night when he was offering something that might become what I needed.

"I've been thinking about working again," I said. "In Hong Kong. Something in marketing; there are multinationals there that need people with my experience. And I have friends and contacts."

"I was thinking just that," he said. I heard the slight surprise in his voice. "You need to get out of the house more." He nodded, pleased with himself for being supportive. "Though it might be difficult. A lot of the locals only speak Cantonese."

"I'm willing to learn," I said. "And a lot of the younger generation speak English and Mandarin as well. There are quite a few mainlanders in Hong Kong now."

I did not mention that my Mandarin was already far beyond what he imagined.

"That's true," he said. He reached across and patted my thigh again, fondly, the touch of a man who was, for this moment at least, choosing his wife.

Agnes was in the kitchen, preparing the ingredients for tomorrow's lunch.

"Children sleeping?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Both since eight-thirty."

"Thank you, Agnes. You should get to bed."

She nodded, put the vegetables and meat in the fridge, and disappeared toward her room at the back of the house.

I slipped off my heels and carried them in one hand as I moved through the hallway in bare feet. Sophie's door was first. I pushed it open an inch and stood in the gap. She was on her side, one arm thrown above her head, her mouth slightly open. The nightlight cast a pale blue glow across her face. I watched her for a moment. Then I pulled the door closed and crossed the hall.

Callum was curled on his side, the stuffed wombat in his arms. I bent down. My lips brushed his forehead. He stirred and turned away from me without waking.

The resentment was still there; I could feel it the way you feel a bruise that has mostly healed; but it was quieter now, as though the sharpest edges had departed. What remained was something stranger: a love which seemed irrational and yet completely real. Sophie's delivery, long and exhausting. Callum's, faster, the shock of his smallness when they placed him on my chest. I remembered breastfeeding at three in the morning, the particular tug of a small mouth. These were not borrowed memories. They were mine, as real and as permanent as any other part of me.

I lifted my hand from the mattress. Stood. Left his door slightly ajar the way he liked it.

The master bedroom was cool and dark. Michael still hadn't changed out and was scrolling through his phone on the couch. He looked up and smiled briefly when I entered, then returned to the phone. I closed the bathroom door behind me and sat at the vanity.

The makeup came off and I looked at what remained.

Fine lines at the corners of my eyes. The filler along my nasolabial folds was still holding. Some sun damage since my last laser treatment; I couldn't afford to get tanned. Across my forehead, the too-smooth stillness of the Botox; I would tell the Aesthetics doctor to ease back next time. Let the face be a face again.

This was what I had chosen.

The female body; the "membership" in this group. And it came with all of this. I had idealized it once; I had wanted it with an intensity that went beyond mere curiosity. But I knew it now, all of it.

And I never actually had a choice in the matter.

I opened the vanity's lower drawer. The lingerie was where I had placed it that morning, a matched set in black silk and lace. I lifted each piece out and laid them across the vanity's marble surface.

I slid my arms through the straps of the corseted camisole. The cups took the weight of my breasts and lifted them, the padding shaping them into a fuller silhouette than their natural resting position. I sat on the vanity stool and unrolled the first stocking; sheer black, impossibly fine. I pointed my right foot and slid the stocking over my toes, easing it up over my heel, smoothing it along my calf with both hands, then up my thigh to mid-point. Then the other leg, and the suspender belt tight around my waist. I stood and reached down, fastening each clip to the stocking tops. When I straightened, the elastic straps pulled taut against my thighs.

The thong needed to be last. Somehow I knew this, even though I had never done this before for him. It was Akari's hands, her professional knowledge. It had leaked through and it was mine now. I stepped into it and drew it up my legs, the silk cool against my inner thighs. I adjusted the lace waistband with my thumbs, settling the back panel into place. Then the heels. Black stilettos, about three inches.

I turned to the full-length mirror and checked myself.

Then I opened the bathroom door and walked out into the dim bedroom where Michael was waiting.