I’m a Middle-Aged Man on the Inside
I’M a middle-aged man. My name is Haruka Yamagishi. Even my siblings’ children can’t believe I’m in the same generation as their parents. I’m that over the hill.
As I approach my mid-forties, I work in middle management. I’m a tired, worn-out middle-aged man with otaku tendencies. I’ve been chugging along on the ordinary rails of life, busy with work. And I’ve arrived at this age without ever having a real romantic relationship, much less getting married.
The younger generation has never respected me, and the bigwigs at my company have always reprimanded me for not showing enough drive. Still, every day, I’ve done my part as a cog in society, and before I knew it, I was in my forties. A middle-aged man, older than my years, and decidedly past my prime.
There’s a reason I keep emphasizing the “middle-aged man” part. Normally, no one would need to point out such a sad and obvious truth, but I’m bound by unavoidable circumstances. Because every time I look down, my eyes catch on the bountiful breasts emerging from my chest, and I have to convince myself that I am, in fact, a middle-aged man (on the inside) by repeating it over and over again.
But even though clearly this has happened to me, I haven’t the foggiest idea what actually happened.
I need to calm down and think things through properly.
✦ ✦ ✦
LET’S rewind to this morning.
I should have been rubbing my sleepy eyes as I slowly stirred my aching body awake in my cramped apartment. For some reason, though, the pain I’d been prepared for never came, and I sat up in bed without any trouble. I remembered feeling this ease in my teens after a good night’s sleep. But that memory was from eons ago, a sensation this rusty body should never have been able to experience again.
I didn’t have time to think deeply about it. I was too busy being assaulted by a fierce sense of wrongness in my body. Just trying to move the slightest amount made me realize my balance was way off. The gut I’d developed recently from a lack of exercise was gone, and the area around my chest felt strangely heavy.
I stood up slowly, then I carefully, tentatively looked down. Only to discover I couldn’t see my feet past the ample swell of my chest. It wasn’t like I didn’t know the various names for this specific part of a woman’s body. I just hesitated to say any of them in my head, about my own body, so I stood there slack jawed, just staring blankly.
As a distraction, I decided to look around at my surroundings instead, and this was definitely not my cramped-but-comfortable home. For a while now, I’d been listening to the sounds of birds that didn’t chirp, caw, or hoot in any way I was familiar with. I’d initially assumed something was wrong with my hearing, but it turned out my ears were just fine.
Taking deep breaths of the cool, clean forest air around me helped calm my mind for a moment, but the rustling from thickets and unfamiliar floral scents tickling my nose left me more agitated than before. No matter how many gulps of fresh air I took, my emotions refused to settle down.
Even as my heart pounded, though, I remembered one more thing I had to check. I looked down again, over the obstruction of my chest, and stretched open the waist of my baggy trackpants. I could tell even without a close inspection. What should have been there was decidedly not.
This was now officially an emergency. Maybe it was time to figure out how to assemble a search party around here.