It was kind of ironic, looking inside the styrofoam takeout container at the sushi rolls inside. They were the inside out type, where the rice was on the exterior rather than inside the sushi, still coloured a deep blue tone. They were dragon rolls, Avocado, cucumber, and some nice tempora contained inside. Each one was poorly built, clearly thrown together with the least ammount of effort possible by the cooks. She couldn’t really blame them, every time an order came in they had to put their mops down and get to cooking no matter how far behind it put them. The rice was also bottom of the pot stuff with random flecks being browned and crispified. The tempora was overdone and the cucumber was at that point in its life where Eliza would still eat it but many would scoff at it and call it rotten even though it was perfectly fine. They were a mess and matched her sweaty and diachevelled appearance perfectly.
She found it incredibly humorous. The very sushi she had ordered earlier that day, the very sushi that had made her into the person she was now was sitting before her. Eight sloppy rolls falling apart and wafting the scent of sushi rice and deep fryers at her nose.
“And what would you do to me?” She asked, enjoying the sound of new light accent bouncing off her tongue, “Would I turn into a child? Will I become male? Can you even affect me or is there a limit?”
Of course the sushi didn’t respond and Eliza just shook her head and laughed. She could easily toss it in the fridge or garbage, pack a lunch the next day and give her notice. Get a new job, start a new life, get married, or maybe just enjoy the youth that was stripped from her. But there was also something enticing about the bizarre randomness of the sushi. Something fun, exciting, and kind of cool. Plus it hadnt exactly steered her wrong yet, so she shrugged and picked up a piece of sushi sloppily between her fingers.
“Bottoms up, let’s hope I don’t get pregnant,” she announced to no one in particular before the sushi entered her mouth and she began to chew on it. Flavours of fish, over cooked rice, and really mediocre sushi hit her taste buds and she lay back and swallowed the food trying to get comfortable on her chair. It took a few seconds but eventually she felt an itch crawl over her skin, deep discomfort created by her work kimono. She tried to ignore it at first but it eventually became too much and she cracked her almond shaped eyes open and rose to her feet. She walked to her bedroom and stripped off the kimono seemingly perfect and hanging the uniform up even though it was technically her first time wearing it. She stripped her bra and panties off before pulling a nightgown out of her closet, one that didn’t fit her anymore, built for her nearly fifty year old Caucasian self. She just slung it on and called it good, slipped a comfortable pair of panties on and walking back to the living room. She was drowsy so she decided it was high time she went to bed. Her phone was pulled from her purse and plugged in while everything else was put away. The remaining Sushi went to the fridge and Eliza crawled into bed soon after not even wanting to think about what had happened to her that day. She’d de-aged twenty nine years and become an ethnic minority. If she didn’t need sleep after that no one did.
She slumped in the covers and passed out pretty quickly. Her book fallen on her flatter chest and her lamp still on. She didn’t sleep very soundly. Her body tossed back and forth and she kept moving all her limbs as she slept. Back and forth, back and forth until she realized it was the movement keeping her up. Then like a bullet she sat up with bouts of hunger wracking her stomach like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. She groaned and stumbled to her feet, the novel slipping to the ground with a thud while she walked blurry eyed to the kitchen and turned the light on casting everything in deep and stark shadows. Her hands went straight for the cupboards and she pulled out a breakfast granola bar with yogurt on the bottom and devoured it. It was gone in three bites but the hunger didn’t stop. She reached up again and soon she had a garbage can full of wrappers and was breaking the box down.
Next she tried to satisfy the hunger with toast but it just didn’t work. She ate slice after slice like she was some kind of extreme omnivore. Nothing popped up in her guts. It was almost like the food hit her belly and turned into smoke. She must have eaten her body weight in eggs, bread, oatmeal, cereals, and other items before her hands grabbed that styrofoam container and she began to hungrily eat the terrible sushi inside. Unlike all that food prior this stuff seemed to hit her stomach and finally the hunger vanished. Eliza dumped the container in the garbage and turned blurry eyed towards her bedroom. She got to the edge of her bed before promptly collapsing in it completely unconscious with light breathing emerging from her mouth.
It wasn’t until her alarm went off that Eliza opened her groggy eyes. She blinked awake and stretched before rising upwards feeling fabric press against her body. She scratched her back before giving a large stretch and rising to her feet off the bed. She shuffled towards the bathroom sliding her bedroom door to the side and walking down the hall to her bathroom door which was slid to the side with the same ease. She then stepped into the bright room and stretched before the mirror again. Her hands undid the sash of her kimono and she let it slide to the ground before her underwear was removed with it. She then stepped into the shower and washed her body down with shampoos and soaps while steam wafted around her. By the time she stepped out she was refreshed though feeling like something was off. Everything just seemed different, unusual, as if her senses were taking things in differently.
She brushed her hair after this and did her day’s makeup before walking to her room and pulling clothes from her closet. Dozens of dresses and kimonos lines her closet. She pulled down a navy blue one with white detailing. It pinched wonderfully at her waist and felt extremely roomy and pleasant. She the. Walked to her kitchen and poured herself a glass of orange juice and put two pieces of bread down in the toaster. She sipped her juice as she waited before something dawned on her. She had eaten all the toast the night before hadn’t she?
Eliza paused and blinked. Suddenly she felt wide awake. Her eyes began farting around the room and recalling oddities from that morning. Doors that slid to the side, a kimono worn to bed, the dress she had on. She yelled in surprise as suddenly she noticed her entire apartment had changed. Her cactus that had been dying near the window was now a lush and well kept bonsai tree, her living room now spotted a second table that was incredibly low to the ground with cushions surrounding it, and strangest off all was her own brain. Everything felt weird, everything seemed weird not because she was taking it in differently but because her thoughts were no longer in English, they were in Japanese. She was thinking in Japanese. She could still speak English but it was now a second language.
“On my,” she muttered before covering her mouth, her thin accent had been replaced by a very heavy Japanese one. She took her hand off her mouth and suddenly the toast popped. She slathered jam over it and sat at the normal sized table in the kitchen while staring at the short one like it had fallen from the sky. She couldn’t believe it. She was now even more Japanese than the day before. Her own brain wasn’t thinking in English, she knew a language she hadn’t understood the day before better than her native tongue now.
Everything had changed, her wardrobe was filled with foreign fashion, her books had been replaced by Japanese Novels written in symbols rather than letters, and her fridge was filled with strange foods from cultural markets that she somehow knew how to prepare into a very tasty lunch, her body simply on autopilot at that point. She was in awe and shock all morning but curious as soon as noon passed. She tried on every article of clothing in her wardrobe on, watched a movie in complete Japanese, and got engrossed in a book that set her imagination alight in the exact same way an English book would. Then an alarm went off and her body just clicked into autopilot. She dressed in a kimono, filled her purse with items, walked right past her car, and caught the bus. She rode between a burly black man and a feeble old lady to the wharf and minutes later she was in the sushi restaraunt putting her jacket and purse near the back door and greeting the cooks she’d been working with the night before.
Did they even know she was a literal millionaire? That car in the garage was still hers, she had the keys for it, and yet she hadn’t taken it, instead she’d ridden the bus. It was extremely weird and Eliza wanted nothing more than to ask questions. But instead she just took an order and dropped it off watching as two men in suits transformed into a couple of teenage girls with spiked up hair coloured brightly writing down song lyrics while sipping iced tea at their table and occasionally mentioning boys they’d had sex with. Eliza just smiled a little and looked at the clock pursing her lips while she looked. She did in fact get a staff meal, which could only mean more changes...