The studio was quiet, lit only by flickering candlelight that cast soft amber hues on canvas and skin alike. In the dream, Yusuke stood in front of a blank canvas, brush in hand, but… her fingers were slimmer now, more delicate. She felt it even in the way she moved, the way her breath caught against her chest—shaped differently than before.
She was still herself. But not.
She looked down at her new body with a mix of detached awe and embarrassment. The smoothness of her hips beneath the silk robe. The slight swell of her breasts rising with each breath. The quiet ache that had begun to build between her thighs without any clear cause, pulsing gently like the echo of a new heartbeat.
It was unsettling. It was beautiful.
"I am a painting unfinished," she murmured aloud, brush hovering above the canvas.
From behind her, the studio door opened. Footsteps. Not hurried. Confident. She turned, and there stood Ren—half-shadow, half-man, with that same deep aura she'd seen in the others' expressions of late. The leader of their group. The man now changing everything.
"I saw you," Ren said softly, stepping into the light. "Even before."
"Before I became this?" Yusuke asked, voice steadier than she expected.
Ren's eyes didn't wander. Instead, he stepped closer, lifting his hand—not to grope or dominate, but to touch her cheek with a reverence Yusuke had never known. "No. Before you ever doubted that beauty could be found in change."
That struck something in her. Yusuke blinked, and her throat tightened. The world of forms and lines and perfect strokes fell away. All that was left was feeling. Ren's fingertips trailing down her jaw, his breath warm near her ear. A gasp escaped her lips—not from surprise, but need. Confused, budding, raw.
She didn't move as he stepped behind her, arms lightly encircling her waist. Their reflections glowed in the full-length mirror—a man and a woman, both once boys in masks, now something else entirely.
"I feel like clay being reshaped," Yusuke whispered, her voice laced with wonder and fear. "I don't know who I am anymore."
Ren leaned in, his lips grazing her neck. "Then let's find out. Together."
Yusuke closed her eyes, surrendering not to lust, but intimacy. The paintbrush dropped from her fingers, forgotten as heat curled in her core—gentle, insistent, inevitable.
The candlelight flickered higher.