“Y-yeah, whatever you say,” Eric replied, a bit unnerved by the salesman’s hypnotic yet completely accurate words. His eyes wandered over the packages in front of him, scanning the words and designs on each one.
“Hmph… What’s this jibberish, anyway?” Eric replied gruffly as he plucked up one of the wrapped outfits. “Some kinda Asian?”
“Not ‘Asian’, my friend. It’s Japanese,” Jim said with a smile. “A cute little schoolboy uniform for a handsome and well-behaved young man.”
“Well, that ain’t for me. I was a little firebrand when I was a kiddo,” Eric laughed. “And I wasn’t too ‘handsome’ either, after a few too many smacks to the face.”
Chuckling to himself, he tried to set the outfit back down on the counter, but for some reason his fingers wouldn’t let go.
“H-hey, what the-” Eric growled, his hand still clutching the packaged uniform tightly. “T-this ain’t funny-”
But Jim wasn’t laughing at all, merely smiling kindly and knowingly as Eric desperately tried to drop his chosen outfit.
“Well, well, well… Perhaps you’ll learn what the words on that outfit say after all?” the salesman said cheerfully. “And I wouldn’t worry too much about what you used to be like… after all, you came here for something new, didn’t you? No fun in becoming a kid again only to do the same things as the first time, eh? A different face, a different identity… why, you’ll even have a different language and country! How exciting!”
Eric’s eyes went wide as the package of clothing in his hand slowly opened, its plastic wrapping slipping away as the clothes inside floated in front of his eyes. A simple starched polo shirt with a school emblem stitched on the breast pocket. A pair of black shorts and a shiny plastic belt. And a matching black tie, knee-high socks, and a little pair of black-framed glasses. Even a boyish pair of white brief underpants. And last but not least, a small card covered in Japanese writing and emblazoned with the photo of a young boy smiling awkwardly.
Eric’s face went bright red as it finally sunk in what Jim truly meant. He was going to become someone new… The boy who this uniform was meant to belong to.
“I don’t-”
“Ah, ah, ah. A good schoolboy doesn’t talk back to adults,” Jim said sternly, and Eric’s mouth immediately clamped shut. “And he always wears his uniform properly.”
Jim absentmindedly snapped his fingers, and Eric felt his clothes begin to unravel, the threads pulling themselves apart before falling to his feet in a tangle of fabric. A breeze swept past him, gathering up the old cloth and sweeping it away to the back of the store to be reused at a later date in the construction of new clothes.
With Eric’s body now bare, the pieces of the uniform began to float toward him, tugging themselves up his legs or around his shoulders. The band of his new underwear snapped into place, squeezing his slightly chubby midsection down into a slim and slightly undeveloped shape. The tight briefs seemed to compress his bottom and crotch ever so slightly, giving him the scrawny frame of a boy just on the verge of puberty. The shorts came next, squeezing his legs thinner and thinner as they slowly slid up his wrinkled old legs. But with each passing moment, the wrinkles seemed to be pulled taut, leaving his skin smoother and without even a single blemish. The belt that came with the uniform slipped around Eric’s waist and pulled itself almost painfully tight, squeezing Eric’s stomach down, only for the pain to subside and leave Eric with the flat tummy of a scrappy youngster.
Eric wanted to open his mouth, to protest whatever it was that was happening to him, but he just couldn’t. He could only watch as each piece of clothing pulled its way onto his body and smoothed the years away from him; Eric’s tall and stocky frame pulled itself inward, joints popping quietly and bones cracking as they shortened and slimmed down. In a few mere moments, Eric stood a few inches short of 5 feet tall, a fairly average stature for a young boy of 12 years old.
“J-Jim, sir…” Eric finally managed to find his voice, only to cringe as he heard the bright, youthful tenor coming from his mouth. “D-d-don’t you think this has gone on far enough?”
“Hmm? Oh, no, not at all. You still aren’t finished, my boy,” the salesman replied in a calm and affectionate tone. “You remember, don’t you? This is a uniform for a Japanese student, not an American. Besides, you haven’t finished putting everything on yet!”
Smiling, Jim plucked the pair of glasses up and held them up to the light before gently placing them on Eric’s face. Immediately, Eric felt a tingle in his head that radiated outward, touching his cheeks, his scalp, his nose, and every single spot it could possible reach. He clamped his eyes shut, not noticing as the corners of each eye turned up ever so slightly, growing subtly slanted in a distinctly Asian way. His face slimmed down, cheekbones rising up, while a slight golden tone began to appear on his face and slowly spread outward. It moved down his cheeks, across his neck and shoulders, his skinny chest and finally down his thin and boyish legs, coloring his entire body the color of pale honey.
All that remained of his old 67-year-old appearance now was the grey-specked hair atop his head, and of course that would need to be changed too. The tight curls of his hair slowly relaxed themselves, becoming straight and smooth, while the grey color began to be overtaken by a new shade. Not the straw-blond that Eric remembered from his youth, but instead a deep, jet-black more appropriate for the Japanese youth he was slowly becoming. The tips of each hair were snipped away, as if by invisible scissors, resting just above his eyes in a ruler-straight line that went all around his head, styling (though perhaps ‘style’ is too generous a term) his hair into a properly childish bowl-cut.
Feeling the tingle beginning to subside, Eric finally opened his eyes (now a deep, dark brown) and gasped upon seeing his reflection in the mirror. A young boy, clearly Japanese from his hair to the tips of his toes, dressed in an impeccable schoolboy uniform, stared back at him from behind glasses that gently magnified his eyes. Eric frantically pulled the glasses off his face, only to feel dizziness as everything around him blurred.
“You won’t be able to see the blackboard without those, young man,” Jim’s said with a chuckle as Eric bashfully returned his new eyewear to their proper place. “Ah, speaking of school…”
Jim took the small card that had been included with the uniform and held it out for Eric to take. Now, all the writing and symbols on the card made sense; it was, of course, a Student ID card, and the picture printed on it was the spitting image of the boy that Eric had now become. The Japanese writing was as clear as day to Eric as his big brown eyes read each line…
Name: Eisuke Ueno
Age: 12
Class 5-B
Eric (or perhaps it was now ‘Eisuke’?) looked up from the card, stunned at what had become of him in just a few moments. Glancing frantically around the clothing store, he realized...