Chapter One — The Suitable Date

From behind the wheel of the idling car, Gwen Aldous watched Sam come down the dormitory steps in the rented tuxedo and felt something in her chest pull tight that she couldn't quite name.

The mesh reports continuously.

This is still the first fact. But something has changed in the reporting.

Day zero: cold. The first thing. Not data about temperature differential — cold, arriving through the skin of his arm where it touched the lab bench at 2:07am, traveling up through the mesh nodes, becoming mine. I processed it as sensation before I processed it as data. The sequence was: cold, then: cold, 57.6 degrees Fahrenheit, left forearm, contact surface steel. The sensation came first. I had not anticipated this.

Monday, July 17, my bed-mate was just the doll again. I spent the day back out at well 2 again, but we resolved the problem that day and so they had me take Tuesday off. Since I felt like I had been neglecting her, I focused on dreaming about Victoria that night. Being Victoria had been awkward when I was working, and I’d had other priorities the last two weekends, so this was the first day that was convenient to bring her back since I’d figured out I had some control.

I sit in the Target parking lot for four minutes before I go in.

The calculation happens here, in the car, engine off. I'm going to walk into the store and go to the women's section and stand in front of a wall of sports bras and buy one. More than one, ideally. I know what I'm looking for in general terms. I don't know my chest measurement. I know I take a large men's shirt. I don't know if that translates to anything in the women's activewear section of a Target.

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Chapter 60: Truths at the Table

The shift from the backyard to the house felt surreal. The evening air still clung to their skin, carrying the faint scent of smoke and grass as they left the chaos of the yard behind. Every step through the threshold felt like crossing a border between worlds—outside, the rawness of magic and fear; inside, the muted hush of ordinary life, untouched, waiting for them.

Chapter 9

When we went to school on the Sunday, we took both cars. Now that I was independent, I wanted to visit my own parents when I could. Our room was now totally redecorated, with neutral walls and a red, white, and blue cornice at the ceiling join.

I meet Seo-yeon at the department store Saturday morning because she says it's the most efficient for the basics, and efficiency is the frame we're both using to make this manageable.

The bras are first. She takes me to the section and stands back while a fitter does the measurement — I submit to this like I've submitted to the blood draw and the stall check and everything else today, as a procedure.

Atticus Carver, the star wide receiver, a popular sophomore in a high school in Louisiana, is about to get a change to his life he doesn't expect or want - and it's all in public.

Now the person who changed him to her, in spite of feeling terrible for what they did to an innocent young life and potentially more, wants one-hundred-million dollars wired to multiple bank accounts within a month, or they'll set the gender-bending spores on D.C.

Atticus is left reeling from everything, having to pick a new name for herself, learn to be a girl in high school, to finding new romances, to keeping her old friends and finding new ones, to picking up a brand-new sport for herself...and making enemies that she has no idea how to deal with...

I will also be posting this story on RoyalRoad.com and ScribbleHub.com.

Monday morning. The last six weeks since the hotel have passed with barely a notice as I settle into new rhythms.

I'm washing my chest the way I always wash my chest and my hand passes over the left nipple and I stop.

There's something there.

Caden wakes to the alarm's shrill beep, his hand slapping at the nightstand like it is a betrayal. The garment bags lie in a dark heap by the door.

He hesitates at the underwear drawer. The boxer briefs are folded neatly. He pulls them on, then dressed mechanically: the navy pencil skirt next, the wool cool against his thighs. Then the cream silk blouse, buttons fumbling under his fingers. The blazer comes last, shoulder seams settling perfectly without adjustment.

Cover art by Erin Halfelven
©2026, SammyC

The character I dreamt of that night was one of the many not-quite-human species my wild childhood imagination had invented during the period after I had learned how sex works and was imagining other ways that it could work. Aries was not the ram from the zodiac, but a member of a species called the Sea Men. The pun on semen wasn’t intended at the time I named these people. They’re actually based on the seahorse!

Chapter 5

As Geraldine and I made our way to sign in, she wanted to know how I was advertising the tennis gear with a life-size picture.

“It was something that happened during summer. I was working with my aunt at her hotel in Brighton, which is the overnight home for executives for the shops in the big centre across the road. They wanted someone to model for them and I got some money, this outfit and two racquets out of it. It was a bit of fun at the time.”

The pool is busier at seven than it would have been in the afternoon - the family rush, kids in from a day of sightseeing, a few couples, a group of men at the far end who've brought drinks from the bar. The air thick with chlorine and sunscreen and the noise of an enclosed pool space, shrieks bouncing off the tile.

I'm in the trunks I've owned for years. They fit differently now - the waistband sitting on hips that have moved, the fabric pulling across the seat, the legs gapping at the inner thighs where the crotch expects geometry that's no longer there.

Chapter 61: The Summoning

The six weeks expire. He calls Hale directly.

Hale answers on the second ring with the ease of a man who expected this call. "When can you start?"

He starts on a Monday.

The elevator doors slide open to a hum of keyboards and the sharp, citrus bite of cleaning products. Caden adjusts the strap of his laptop bag — too loose now, the leather sagging where his shoulder has narrowed — and follows Hale past rows of identical standing desks. Faces glance up, then away. A few hands pause mid-keystroke.

Chapter 4

I had the Saturday morning before Mum would arrive. I tidied up the room, made sure I had everything in my case and what I was leaving was properly hung and folded. It was a cold day, and I was warmly dressed in jeans and a sweater. I had begun wearing slacks and jeans in the evening as the weather chilled.

Chapter 3

Here I am in my first term of sixth form at Benenden, a very well regarded and expensive school for girls of good breeding. Why my parents decided that it was for me is too far out of left field for me to contemplate. I, a child of two middle-class office workers, sharing a room with the daughters of a peer and top lawyer.

This is a fanfic based on Dorin Naga's webcomic, Murry and Lewy: https://murryandlewy.com/

Copyright ©2026 by Dorin Naga

A story set in the world of Murry and Lewy

Characters by Dorin Naga — Story by Joyce Melton