Aera went back to South Korea the next week, in a fugue state. I helped her pack her things, and said my goodbyes, extremely heartbroken that this person I had poured my everything into had become someone terrifying to me. I had begun to regret my decision to send her away, but the witch, who had since told me her name was Silaqui, told me not to shed too many tears on the situation. As I dropped her off at the airport, she seemed to gain a bit of lucidity as she began to cry when I said goodbye; I tried to rip the Band-Aid off as fast as I could, and before too long, I was in my apartment alone. I skipped classes that week, and pulled double shifts at work to earn back some of the money lost from Aera, all the while my mind focused on the date Silaqui had set for the ritual to be held, where my transformation would take place. It wouldn’t be for a month, as Silaqui had to get the necessary resources and preparations in place, and so life trickled back to some semblance of normalcy for me.

  I started making friends in classes again, and with no Aera to restrict me, I could actually speak to them with no fear of recourse. We met outside of classes for study dates, and they even came to visit me at the coffee shop I worked at. I called my grandfather more often too; I let him know about Aera, and how things hadn’t worked out. He was sad to hear about it, but I think he could tell I was feeling healthier, because he seemed more talkative with me too: he told me about the movies he watched, and I started making a list so I could watch them too and have more to talk to him about. That month was one of rest and relaxation; the calm before the storm.

  Before long, the day finally arrived; February 14th, 2015. Why Silaqui chose Valentine’s Day, she explained, was for me; she wanted this day to signify the clean break in my heart, from the past with Aera to the future version of me. I personally thought the reason was shit, and that she just wanted to pick a funny day, but she insisted, and I didn’t mind too much, so I relented. I did miss Aera, like a phantom appendage, but lately the memories of her had caused me to flinch physically when they occurred. Perhaps my body was trying to tell me that my deal struck was truly for the best.

  But even though I was surrounded by new friends and had the company of Silaqui, I couldn’t help but feel truly isolated from the world, as if my only lifeline had been taken from me. Aera had known all of me, the darkest parts of my heart, and claimed me as her own anyways. These new people knew absolutely nothing about me, except for the formulaic nonsense I told them. I remembered the falsehoods and half-truths I fed my high school peers, and the isolation I felt then, and suddenly this feeling felt all too familiar. I felt foolish for feeling happy that I had been making “friends” when I had only been putting on faces, and luring people close to steal their warmth when I had none. Maybe I am not the right one for this ritual, I thought as I entered that apothecary that fateful day.

  The front of the place looked much the same, but as I stepped into the storeroom, I saw sigils and glyphs written across all the walls, floor, and ceiling. The lone furniture was a single pad in the center of the room, just big enough to lay on, and adorned in flora and the bones of what I believed to be small birds. Silaqui was dressed in a fuschia robe with golden inlay, her hood up and hiding her face, her orange serpentine eyes glowing from within.

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  “Welcome! Now, strip,” commanded Silaqui; I shut the door behind me, and uncomfortably acquiesced to her request. When I stopped at my underwear, she walked closer to me and said, “I’m not going to do anything that touches you, I promise. But I need you to be naked, because materials from this world can interfere with the spell. I need you to trust me.” Her glowing eyes exuded sincerity, and so, for the first time around a woman except Aera, I undressed fully. She handed me a wooden basket full of water mixed with some herbs, and told me to wash myself. After that, I laid down on the soft cushion in the center of the room, and she turned her back to me to ruffle through some loose pages she had with her.

  “Will this hurt?” I had the sense to ask, finally, at the point of no return.

  “Yes,” she responded, “it will hurt a lot. That is why I needed someone strong. Their physical body needed to be able to take it, and their will needed to be great enough to endure the pain. I believe you have both. I’m sorry, there is nothing I can do to numb this, and it will take at least a few minutes.”

  “It’s okay,” I responded calmly, though panic began to beat in my chest. “Nothing worthwhile is pain-free.”

  She sat beside me, arranging her papers like a musician arranging a score they were about to play. “I’ve tried to recruit people for this before… Most of them were afraid of changing. Of pain. Of being different. You are the only one who seems excited at the opportunity. I wanted to respect your privacy, but… Is it okay if I ask why?”

  I looked up at the ceiling for a while. I had never told anyone this before, but this person had the potential to change my body, to make me look different than this thing I loathed so deeply; maybe, in this moment, admitting it was okay.

  “All my life, I have been ashamed of my body,” I began, my eyes locked on one rune on the ceiling that looked like the Korean character ?. “I’ve been ashamed that I was born male, and that I grew up male, and that I have this male body that has this male appendage that does male things. It’s not me. I don’t know what I am, I have no idea, but when I see myself, I feel disgust. The idea of being different at all, for the price of less than an hour of pain, is worth it to me; for the chance that maybe, I can look in the mirror and see someone that I recognize as myself, and that can be in a relationship and feel love and know that the love is being sent to the right address, instead of some ill-fitting house that doesn’t belong to you.”

  Silaqui sat in silence for a while, before she took out a pen, and began scribbling on her loose leaf pages. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Making some final calibrations,” she replied, before capping her pen, and saying, “well, are we ready to begin?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I responded, my fists tightened into white knuckles.

  “It’ll be alright,” Silaqui assured. “Now, here we go.”