“No, this isn’t right.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“She’s just being nice.”

“It doesn’t matter what she may think, deep within, you are a gross, perverted piece of shit.”

It wasn’t long before Devin’s mind started to turn dark after the initial serenity of the moment faded. He had been standing there on the porch to his house for minutes on end, contemplating what had just happened.

“She kissed me. Why can’t you just focus on that?”

“Be realistic for once.”

Devin couldn’t keep track of all the thoughts that were going through his mind. Eventually, he went back into the house and fell onto one of the couches in the living room.

“She doesn’t hate me. She didn’t dump me.”

“Don’t you think it’s only a matter of time?”

It was as if a war was happening in his mind. No matter how hard Devin tried, those dark thoughts continued to force their way into his head. And they seemed to be winning the battle. Fighting them was a useless endeavor.

“It’s funny isn’t it? No matter what happens, we always end up back here.”

It seemed Devin would never escape the depths of despair and self hatred. Not even Elise’s approval, which for a long time he thought would fix everything, could change that. Was this what he was doomed to be for his entire life? Just some eternally miserable and self deprecating wreck?

“Surely not”, he thought.

He stood up from the couch and walked toward one of the full body length mirrors in the house. He stared at what he saw in the reflection. He hadn’t really looked at himself without an overly baggy sweatshirt on, and he had to admit, he was kind of cute.

He pulled out his phone and looked at a picture of himself 8 months earlier, before the DIY hormone treatments. Seeing it side by side with what he looked like now made the differences all the more prominent. He didn’t know how he could stand his appearance before. His face looked so rough and harsh, as did his skin. Intellectually, he knew that he was probably exaggerating his masculine features, but how could that matter when his feelings about his body had improved so much?

He reached out his hand and touched the mirror. Looking at it, he could confidently say that the reflection in the mirror belonged to a girl… it belonged to him.

Internally, he felt a calmness wash over him as for a moment the dark thoughts left his mind again.

Sierra smiled. She hadn’t seen herself smile much before. A real shame too, because her smile was cute. Looking in the mirror, she saw a rather cute girl with a pixie cut. A girl that was her.

She seemed to be put in a trance, not thinking of anything except her reflection. She lost control of herself and accidentally started making noise.

Devin immediately widened his eyes and shut his mouth upon hearing his voice. His low, masculine voice.

When he looked into the mirror, he no longer saw that cute girl he had always dreamed of being. He saw a guy playing out some kind of perverted fantasy. No matter how hard he tried to change his body, there would always be a giveaway to what he was. Whether it be his voice, ID, past friends or family, or his record, people would come upon it and immediately associate him with a man living as a woman, rather than just a woman.

That thought brought a few tears to his eyes. Some part of his mind was a bit happy that it was easier for him to cry now than before the hormones, but that was greatly overshadowed by the despair he felt.

“It’s funny isn’t it? No matter what happens, we always end up back here.”

All of the dark thoughts came rushing back to Devin like a freight train. It seemed it was true. Devin could not escape the depths of his own misery. No matter what happened, he would always end up wallowing in his own self hatred.

At first he thought the hormones would solve everything, just like Elise’s approval. That all of his issues would simply disappear after using them. And he wasn’t going to say that the hormones weren’t effective. They solved a lot. He was definitely a much bigger mess before them, and a lot of his hatred for his body had significantly lessened. But a lot of mental health issues were still there, albeit to a lesser extent. The hormones weren’t a miracle cure.

He wiped a few of the tears off his face. Elise was probably just being nice to him. There was no way she could truly love him with him being the absolute wreck that he was. He was crying over his fucking voice. He wasn’t just a pervert, he was a pathetic loser. Elise would have to take time to comfort him every day, just to calm him down. It would be an awful, toxic relationship.

Devin sniffed, his face still wet with tears. He fell back down on the coach and stayed there for a long time. Eventually he calmed himself down and stood back up. He took a few long, deep breaths.

It had been a long day. He had way too much on his mind. He really needed to wind down with something. Get his mind off his current situation.

He went to the kitchen and decided to make something for him to eat. Spaghetti seemed simple enough. It’s not like he could fuck that up.

As he got out the pots and pasta noodles and sauce, he felt a bit calmer. He was actually enjoying cooking. Maybe this was the part of the TG story where he would become a submissive housewife. He laughed at the thought. No, it was just good that his mind was now occupied with something else.

He cooked the pasta and sauce separately, as he always did. It was better that way. There was probably some legitimate culinary explanation as to why it’s better to cook pasta and sauce separately, but he didn’t know what it was.

After he was finished and turned off the stove, he got a plate, put some food on it, and sat down at the table.

As he was eating, he couldn’t help but go over in his mind all the times in the day when he had thought about a TG story.

A TG story.

There really was no going back, was there?

It hadn’t fully sunk in before but it did now. Elise knew about this side of him. She knew about the hormones, the breasts, the name (“her name”, that dissenting part of his mind went), and even the damn TG stories. Not even his parents knew about that stuff yet.

Whether or not their relationship would be able to continue, it was clear that there was no going back. Elise knew and that couldn’t be undone. He was reminded again of all that time he believed Elise’s approval would fix everything. Obviously it didn’t, just like the hormones didn’t solve everything, but he really had to think: did Elise even approve? It seemed like she did, but how could he be completely sure?

It was probably too early to say ‘yes’, so Devin decided to give her more time. Just to be sure that she’s okay to trust.

But at the same time, did he really want her to approve? Did he want her to be okay with this? Sierra still isn’t him. She’s that disgusting part of his mind that’s forcing him to do all this to himself.

Shaking his head, Devin got up to get a second plate while another thought crossed his mind. The site Elise saw, out of all the gender bending fiction sites out there, was TG Storytime. That wouldn’t have really mattered compared to if she saw any of the other ones, if it weren’t for the event that happened a year ago. The event that really damaged the site’s reputation, and the one that he could just never get out of his mind when thinking of the site.

***

1 Year Earlier

After what seemed like forever, with countless calls for liuzixuan to be permanently banned, the moderator has finally responded.

They’re not going to ban them.

Apparently banning users who are bigoted will damage freedom of speech or something.

Many of the site’s users are furious at the decision, and every time they bring this up with the moderator, they say the same thing, that it would be against the principles of the site to ban a user who spews hate speech.

A lot of the users seem to be leaving the site for good because of this hate speech policy, and Devin was pretty pissed off too. He had invested a lot of time into the site, had a lot of fond memories with it, and it turns out they won’t ban hate speech.

It’s insulting, really.