The Sunday before the school trip — today — Reona and Riona had dragged me out to the shopping mall.
“Hey, are there really that many things you need for the trip?”
“Yeah, girls need a lot.”
“You’d understand if you tried being a girl for a day.”
“You can’t change your sex by trying.”
Current technology doesn’t permit a complete physical transformation. And if it did, I would not want to be a girl. Apparently loner girl is even harder.
While I was thinking that, Reona apparently had an idea, and she and Riona started whispering to each other. Dread incoming.
“Ryouya-kun should try being a girl for a day.”
“Like I said, that’s physically impossible.”
“That’s why Nee-chan said try the experience.”
”…You’re not about to ask me to crossdress, are you?”
“That’s exactly the ask.”
Reona smiled at me. Please not crossdressing. And — who benefits from me crossdressing?
“Ryouya was making girl noises in the bath the other day — clearly he wanted to be one.”
“I wasn’t making noises, those were being extracted from me.”
“So this is the famous ‘mouth says one thing, body says another.’ Settled, then — Ryouya-kun agrees. First step: wigs. Cosplay shop, this way.”
There was no version of this I could win. I was going to get processed at Reona-and-Riona’s pleasure. Did the line “mouth says one thing, body says another” really just leave Reona’s mouth out loud?
Reona’s deployment of that phrase in particular was advanced. I do not have that fetish, but anyone who did would be delighted.
“Hmm, which suits Ryouya-kun?”
“Black is safe.”
The two of them had dragged me into the cosplay shop, sat me down, and started browsing wigs together with genuine excitement.
We were supposed to be shopping for the school trip — how had this happened? Right, because I’d said the wrong thing. As I was lamenting, the two of them came back with wigs.
“Try this on.”
“You’ll look good.”
”…Veto rights?”
“Take a guess.”
Confirmed: none. I reluctantly put on the black wig Reona handed me. They lit up.
“Better than I’d imagined.”
“Yeah, as I predicted.”
“How does this look, actually…?”
“Mirror.”
Reona handed me a mirror. Black-hair medium-length-bob me in the reflection — bears a resemblance to Mio and my mom, weirdly. Also more like-able than I’d expected. Not awakening to that genre however.
“Next wig.”
“Then this one.”
“How many am I trying on?”
The two of them already had a stack of additional wigs ready. They’d said the next step after wigs was clothes, so I really wanted them to wrap at some point.
“Until Riona and I are satisfied, obviously.”
“This is partly the punishment for ignoring me and Nee-chan during the trip homeroom while you played your game.”
“So get ready to model.”
I had been assuming they’d forgotten about the punishment. They had not.