Ring 4.2: Some Half-truths

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Ring 4.2:

Some Half-truths

Aki went off, walking through the residential streets at random. She kept mental track of about where she was in relation to the neighborhoods she knew best, and tried to get a little more familiar with navigation of the ones she didn't know so well. Eventually she wound up in a very ritzy-looking community: Big houses, well-kept yards, with the biggest surprise that this area wasn't gated in. And somewhere in this bunch of streets she caught sight of a very tall guy..in fact, a very familiar tall guy.

Liam seemed like a fun guy to hang around with, right? But of course he wasn't going to recognize her, and it was pretty important to keep it that way. Her feet were already carrying her toward him, so not talking to him wasn't looking like an option. But hey, he was the only person out on the sidewalk right now.

He waited until she was a yard or two away before waving at her. “Hey. You don't look familiar.”

“Well, maybe I'm not familiar,” she said in retort. Man, seeing his face way up there made her feel tiny; even the 'growth spurt' had left her noticeably shorter than Akio, and Liam was, of course, tall. “How's the weather up there?”
He looked for a second or two like he was going to get offended and refused to answer, but then stopped himself. “..Humid. Down there?”

“Cold. Heehee.” She wasn't exactly sure what made her giggle.

“It can't be cold, it's near summer,” he said.

“But hot air rises,” Aki countered.

“..Got me there. I guess that outfit proves you were feelin' cold sometime, at least.”

“I wasn't really paying that much attention to the weather, I just thought it'd look cute.”

“Eh..you do pull it off pretty well,” he said, nodding.

“Heehee, thanks!” Aki became aware of a mostly unfamiliar, yet pleasant, feeling between her legs, and the heat of a slight blush in her cheeks. “You don't look too bad yourself. I mean, as much as I can see without craning my head so far up I fall over.” The feelings calmed down, but her chest was still thumping a little more than usual. “What's it like being so tall, anyway?”

“Harder than it looks. Some doors ain't too friendly. And everyone's always askin' how the weather is.”

“Well, I couldn't resist that time. Promise I won't do it again!”

“If you say so. Whatterya doin' here, anyway?”

“Exploring. I thought I should get to know the area a little better. You?”

“Nothin' big, just waitin' on a friend. Usually he'd be here a lot earlier, but he had some stuff to take care of first. You new around here?”
“Yep. Well, new this month anyway, it's not like I moved in yesterday or anything.”

“And you're just gettin' 'round to this neighborhood, I guess?”
“Uh-huh. Guess I have good timing, to meet you here.”

“If ya say so,” he said. She though she could see a tiny bit of red in his face...

“I don't think I caught your name.”

“Oh, sorry. It's Aki.”

Liam was certain of the familiarity, but couldn't quite pin it down until she gave him a name. Last time, of course, there had been all of them, and this time there were a few differences, the kind that would normally tell one person from another. The differences were too few for siblings and too many for identical twins..which obviously wouldn't be the case anyway, with two different sexes involved. “Hm. You might be int'rested in meetin' my friend, then.”

“..How come?”
“Weellll, he told me just last night he had some kinda dream of bein' at an arcade and meetin' some people, one of 'em sharin' your name.”

“Huh. That's weird.”
“Nah, not that weird. Just means you were meant to meet up. And I ain't gonna foul up fate.”

“Yep, I hear fate can be really mean when people defy it and stuff. Is that him?” Aki pointed off toward the end of the street, and Liam put a hand over his eyes to look.

“Whatayaknow, it is. Huh, thought I'd spot him first, height advantage and all.”

“Well, you know, it's 'cause of your hair.”
“My hair?”

“Yeah. It's short, so it doesn't block the glare of the sun as well.”

“That sounds like horsehockey to me.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, probably.”

Liam grinned and waved. “Yo, Kev! What's up?”

“Um..hello.” Kevin had expected to find Liam alone, and to be able to talk to him about the whole dream thing a little more, but it looked like that was going to have to wait. She didn't exactly recognize the girl who was with him..she looked familiar, but the connection to the memory Kevin knew her from wasn't quite there. “..Who's this?”
“This here's Aki. Didn't you say you met a girl by that name in your dream last night?”
“Oh! Um, yes, I did. Uh, she looked..a lot like you, I think. But kind of..umm..shorter?” She didn't want to say what else was bigger.

“Well, I did have a bit of a growth spurt these last two weeks,” said Aki. “Um, no offense, but you don't look exactly like a Kevin to me.” She knew, sure, about Kevin's weird body changes lately..but it had just now occurred to her how girly he looked, and besides, a stranger like Aki shouldn't be privvy to something like that, right?

“Oh, well, um. That's because..uh, lately..” Kevin wasn't sure how much she should say, and looked at

Liam.

He crossed his arms. “Go on and tell her, you'll have to explain it to a lot more people pretty soon.”

She nodded. “R-right. Well, the last few weeks my body's been having some, umm..weird changes, the doctor said a hormone imbalance among other things..and um, today those changes kind of, started to make a lot more sense because, well, I sort of..went to bed last night a guy, and then when I woke up this morning I found out I was a girl..” Kevin's face was flushed by the end of the explanation.

Aki blinked a couple of times, taking this in. “Wow. That's pretty crazy. And..the dream you had last night, do you know who else you met?”
“Umm...well, some other people at school, I just told one of them about it before coming here..and two other girls I haven't seen s-since, ahm, Flora and..Jenn, I think?”
“Jenna! Those are two of my friends. And we were at the arcade a couple of Fridays ago.”

“Did..was there someone there named Kell?”
“Yeah! Red hair, tall, with a great figure..”

Kevin's face had started to get its natural color back, but more red came in now. “Um..that was who I was, sort of, in the dream.”

“So you're turning into her now?”

Kevin shrugged. “I g-guess so.”

Liam nodded, grinning. “Yeah, Kev told me about all that this morning.”

Akio—or Aki, either way—had a way of occasionally saying or doing things without thinking them through. He (or she in this case) liked to think this spontaneity was an advantage over people who over-thought stuff, like Cole. Kevin's embarrassed face was kind of cute, she thought, and she wanted to see it again, and that was really the only thing running through her head. “So if you're a girl now, does that mean you're attracted to guys?”

“Umm...”

“Like, do you think Liam is cute?”

“Uh..” Beet-red, as predicted. And every bit as cute as before. It wasn't the kind of cute Aki would call someone she was attracted to; it was a special kind of cute that she wasn't sure she would have appreciated quite as much as a boy.

Liam thought Kevin needed to get used to the idea, not in spite of but in support of their earlier agreement..but for the moment decided to rescue the poor girl. “Who's Liam?”
“Huh?” said Kevin.

“What do you mean? That's you, isn't it?” asked Aki.

“I don't think I ever told you my name,” he said.

“Well..I just think you look like a Liam, is all.”

“Come on, you think I'm gonna believe that?”

“I can't think of a more believable explanation; can you?”
“Hmm, not unless you're someone I already met, and you somehow turned yourself into a girl.”

“But that's even less believable. I mean, it assumes I have some way to completely change my whole anatomy and genes and stuff.”

“Mmmnah, I think it's pretty believable if you know about magic. Right, Kev?”
“Um..yeah. Her name sounds a lot like 'Akio', too.”

“How d'ya explain that, huh?”

“Hey, coincidences hap..wait, did you say magic?”

Liam looked at Kevin for a few seconds, letting Aki hang for a second or two before laughing. “Hah! Heh, heh. Oh man, that was fun. I wish I could do that more often.”

“No, seriously, what do you know about magic? Because I'm pretty unfamiliar with it myself.”

“Well, I don't know all that much about magic. But I am magic, and I do know that you feel a whole lot like Akio does to my extra senses.”

“Okay..but what does that mean, that you're magic?”

“It means one or more of my ancestors were magic—really both my parents, if you gotta know—and I inherited bein' magic from one a them. Now--

“That doesn't really explain anything..” Aki muttered.

“Now, don't go spreadin' that to your friends just yet. They can know, but I gotta be the one to tell 'em.”
“Sure, but..uh, why?”
“'Cause I'm picky about what people call me, an' if you explain it wrong they'll have the wrong term in their heads from the start.”

“So I'm guessing you already know he's magic?” she asked Kevin, who nodded. “Wait..if Kevin's slowly turning into another person, can't you, like, do something about that?”
Liam shrugged. “Maybe, but Kevin's made it pretty clear he's okay with this. New experiences an' all. Besides, she's still the same person, just a little more confident.”
Kevin nodded. “L-like I always wanted to be.”

“So you think there's some kind of weird wish-granting thing going on with someone we don't know about?”
“Maybe,” said Liam. “But let's drop it for now. I ain't gonna ask you how you turned into a chick.”

“Well..what are you gonna do, then?”
“Hmm..I dunno. Kevin and I were gonna go play some games or somethin' over at my house, if you wanna join us.”

“Sure! I mean, if that's okay with you,” she said, looking to Kevin.
“Yeah, no problem,” she answered.

It turned out that DDR was among the games the two of them had planned on playing. Aki wasn't nearly as good as the two of them, but she did manage to keep up on lower difficulty. When Kevin stopped deliberately bunching up her clothes, as she must have been doing at school to hide her body a little better, they shook out and showed just how girly her body had become. The shirt hung over small bulges on her chest, and it would wave around her very slim, flat stomach; the pants rode a bit strangely on her hips, and the front side was much flatter than looked right because they were, after all, made for a guy.

During a break, Kevin walked over toward the bathroom. “Remember to sit!” said Aki, and she blushed that cute blush again.
“D-don't worry, I know,” she said, and went on ahead. When she came back a while later, Aki could swear her breasts were a little bigger...

At some point, Aki asked Liam, “So..you said you could sense somehow who I was? How does that work?”
“Well, it's that everyone has magic, ya see,” he explained, “and folk who are magic, at least the way I am, can sense other people's magic. It's a real unique kinda signature..or, scent I guess I could say. Super hard to disguise.”

“But, then..can you sense magic being worked on a person?”
He shrugged. “Little bit, sometimes.”
“What I'm getting at is, was there some point where..or can you, like, now..sense whatever is changing Kevin?”
“Hmm..nah, not really. I figured it out by watchin' the changes with my eyes, see. It's probably low-key 'cause it's so slow-actin'. If I looked at it real hard I mighta seen a little somethin', but not near enough to figure out what was goin' on.”

A little later, she said, “Can you actually do any kind of magic? I mean, besides the sensing magic thing?”
“Mmh, I know a few spells. Not much safe to use indoors, though.”
“You've got to show me those some time.”
“Eh, if you insist. Maybe borrow a firin' range some day or other. You wanna come, Kev?”

“Um..maybe. It would be interesting to see..”

“Great. I'll arrange it. Might not be 'till summer, though.”
“That's fine,” said Aki.

When she was playing DDR, and smiling and laughing and having fun, Aki felt like she could actually see Kevin as Kell. Once, when they were left panting on the floor sitting across from each other, she said, “Man, you really are turning into Kell. I'm gonna have to start calling you Kellvin.”

“If you do, you have to let me call you..um..Akiko? Er, something like that..”

Aki giggled, and got Kevin laughing as well, somehow.

When they had both calmed down, she said, “But, um..when I do finally..finish..changing, I think I am gonna call myself Kell. It sounds like..well, it's a nice name, i-isn't it?”

“Yeah. I think it's a cute name. Especially if you're gonna be a tomboy like the girl I met at the arcade.”

When Aki had finally left to go home, Liam and Kevin were left alone in front of the former's house. “Um..why didn't you just tell her everything?” said Kevin.
“Eh, I wanna wait and tell all three of 'em. Maybe by the time arcade night comes around we'll get 'em all in one private place at a time. Meanwhile..ancients help me, Kev, I think the two of us were flirtin' before you showed up.”

“F-flirting? Y-you mean, um..”
“Yeah, even though she knew darn well who I was, and I suspected her..confirmed when she told me her name. No worries, though, it ain't major, especially now the air's clear. An' if somethin' does come of it..we'll figure it out, I'm sure.”

“Um..”

“What? What is it?” Kevin was blushing.

“I-I don't, um..well, when you said that, for a second there I sort of had a though cross my mind that, umm..y-you two would be a cute couple,” she said nervously.

“Hahah! Ya think so? Well, we'll see, anyway.”

---

I would like to thank everyone for commenting. It really does make me feel better; I was a little worried I'd seem annoyingly needy or something asking for that.

In case you were wondering (and mostly because someone made a comment about it), Aki(o) got the purse to appear in the last one simply by thinking of Aki as wearing that particular set of clothes, including the purse as a piece of clothing. Changes to what clothes one is wearing are minor enough that they tend to happen without even asking (like what happened with Jenna and Flora's clothes the week before), unless one specifically tries to be in the same clothes as last time; this means that directing those changes is super easy, much easier than altering the body shape or personality of the disguise. There hasn't really been an appropriate in-story moment to fully explain those mechanics yet, but I don't feel doing so is at all any kind of spoiler.