For a moment, my eyes welled up with tears. You guys really are my good bros… My party members…

“Huh? It was a joke?!” Saber’s face was the perfect picture of the word ‘unexpected,’ a priceless expression of pure, dumbfounded shock. “I already took off his pants… I mean, I had already figured out how to make the first cut, and now you’re telling me it was a joke??”

Yep. Even as Saber, Big Bro was still the biggest, most unrepentant animal in our dorm.

With a sigh of what sounded like genuine disappointment, Exusiai vaulted from my bed back to her adjacent one, while Saber, dejected, swung like a great ape from my ladder back to hers. Yukino, who was already on the floor, began rummaging through the drawers of her desk with a quiet dignity that seemed out of place in our chaotic room.

I had just managed to pull my violently removed shorts back on when I heard that voice, as soft and cold as fresh snow, gasp in surprise.

“Ah? Even the information on my student ID has changed?”

I quickly scrambled out of bed, leaning over to look, my newly acquired smooth black hair spilling over my neck. I saw that on the student ID Yukino was holding up for us, her name had become [Yukinoshita Yukino], the photo was a perfect headshot of her new, elegant face, and the gender was listed as ‘Female.’

“Doesn’t that mean ours have too…”

I hurriedly clambered down the ladder and fished my own student ID out of my drawer. Sure enough, the photo had been replaced with one of the elegant, long-haired Kiriko. The name written on it was [Kiriko], and the gender… was also ‘Female’??

“Why is my gender female?! I’m still a guy! This is false advertising!”

Exusiai, also holding her student ID, gave me a helpless look, her expression a mix of pity and amusement. “If your gender was still male, how could you be living with us in a girls’ dorm? The system wouldn’t allow it. Think of it as a necessary patch to avoid a reality-breaking bug.”

“Oh, right…” She had a good point. I was speechless.

But that raised a new, terrifying problem. What was I going to do about showering? Our school’s dorms didn’t have private bathrooms, only public bathhouses. If I took my WMD—my Weapon of Male Destruction—into the girls’ bathhouse, wouldn’t that be treating every girl in the school like she was blind? But I couldn’t go to the men’s bathhouse either, because my student ID said I was female. And even if the ID wasn’t an issue, with my current delicate, almost fragile looks, if I went into the men’s bathhouse… I probably wouldn’t be able to sit down in a chair for the next month. It would be a one-way trip to a very bad end.

The pain! The logistical nightmare!

Turning into an anime character seemed wonderful on paper, but in reality, it came with all sorts of practical, soul-crushing problems. For example, Exusiai, who had always been particular about her appearance even before the transformation, was muttering, “Now that I look like this, I probably can’t wear most of my old clothes. Oh, right, I also need to buy a bra…”

The word “bra” made me and the stoic-on-the-outside, turbulent-on-the-inside Saber blush. Such things were still a bit too advanced for us; our skill trees hadn’t unlocked that branch yet.

A troubled expression crossed Exusiai’s handsome face. She pulled open her locker… and then froze. She peered inside the metal cabinet, looking carefully, before exclaiming, “Why have all my clothes turned into women’s clothes?!”

“Huh?” System-Hime is surprisingly thorough, I thought. This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. “Even our clothes have changed?”

The rest of us immediately crowded around the metal locker. This sort of thing was common before our transformation. Mornings were rushed, and we all had to grab clothes and toiletries from our lockers, so bumping into each other was normal.

But now, the smelly men crammed around me had been replaced by the refined Saber, the handsome Exusiai, and the elegant Yukino. And they were all very… lightly dressed. Some were even at the point where they couldn’t possibly be any more lightly dressed. The soft feeling, the delicate touch of their skin against mine as we jostled for a view… this might sound a little crude again…

I quickly slipped out from between the three unreserved beauties, worried that my uncontrollable reaction would earn me another death sentence. Standing on my tiptoes behind them, I saw that, sure enough, the open lockers no longer contained men’s clothing. Instead, they were filled primarily with various skirts, supplemented by a few androgynous outfits.

Thank goodness for the androgynous clothes. If we had all been forced to wear skirts on the first day, we rough-and-tumble guys might have… gotten a little too excited, perhaps? The mental damage would have been immense.

“Phew… now we don’t have to worry about clothes.” Exusiai reached her slender, white arm into the cabinet and pulled out a light-colored lace bra that made me blush so hard I felt light-headed.

I took the opportunity to raise a question. “What should we call each other from now on? None of us can remember our original names.”

“Hmm…” Yukino, who was usually the most mature and our designated strategist, thought for a moment, her thumb on her chin like a detective piecing together a case. “Judging from the dorm matron’s reaction, the memories of those around us have probably been altered too. I imagine it’s not just us; no one remembers our original names. They probably think we’ve always been called Kiriko, Artoria, Exusiai, and Yukinoshita Yukino, just like on our student IDs.”

“So, you’re saying,” I began, finding it hard to grasp the sheer scale of this reality rewrite, “that everyone around us will think, just like our student IDs say, that we were born looking like this, with this gender? Then… for example… uh, Yukino, your girlfriend… if she thinks you were a girl from the start, how did you two even start dating?”

Since we couldn’t remember our own or each other’s original names, we had to resort to using the character names. It felt weird, like we were all roleplaying.

Miss Yukinoshita, with her waterfall of black hair, spread her hands and shrugged, a gesture of calm resignation. “How should I know? Maybe my girlfriend fell in love with me even though I was a girl… wait, then what about the baby in her belly???”

Everyone in our dorm knew that before her transformation, Yukino and her girlfriend had an accident and created a little bundle of love. The matter had stressed her out so much she’d been losing hair over it for days. They were both students with no financial means to raise a child. But the thought of an abortion was hard on her girlfriend’s body, and if their families found out, it would be a huge mess.

Now, things were better. She had become a girl, and reality had been altered to make it so she had always been a girl. Two girls can’t have a baby. Her girlfriend was probably no longer pregnant. For her, this seemed to be the only silver lining in this insane situation.

But one person’s joy is another’s sorrow. Exusiai pushed back her bangs, looking at me with both of her bright red eyes, a glint of mischief in them. “Kiriko, I remember you said you were going to confess to the girl you like today?”

Her words were like a critical hit, uncovering the deep, festering wound I had been trying to ignore.

“…Yeah,” I said, my shoulders slumping in dejection. “I had already arranged to meet her. But now I look like this. Well, even though I’m technically still a guy, my student ID says I’m a girl, and I live in the girls’ dorm. I have a feeling my love life is over before it even began. My romance route has been permanently locked.”