My Roommate’s Feminization Disease Is Beyond Cure

Gender swap + urban daily life + mutual devotion + slow burn + pure romance

At twenty-one, Lin Chen was a college senior who had grown up in an orphanage and worked his way through school. He was about to start his internship. What he was most grateful for was having Su Hang, his “landlord best friend.” They'd been classmates in high school and roommates in college, and after Lin Chen started his internship, Su Hang even invited him to live in one of his rental properties. It saved him rent, and he got to see the tall, 183-centimeter guy wearing a key ring and flip-flops every day as he played building games. Life was simple and peaceful.

Then, without warning, something strange began to happen. In the shower, Lin Chen couldn't feel his familiar Adam's apple. His recorded voice sounded softer and softer, and the diagnosis on his medical report, “Acquired Genetic Sex Reversal Syndrome,” struck like a bolt of lightning. Commonly known as “feminization disease,” it is a rare genetic condition that affects only one person in four million. It usually occurs between the ages of fourteen and thirty. It is neither contagious nor hereditary, but over two to eight weeks it causes a person's existing sexual characteristics to regress and their sexual function to be lost. Opposite-sex characteristics then slowly develop until sexual maturity. In male patients, the skeleton gradually shrinks into a female form. The entire process is irreversible and incurable.

The changes advanced day by day. His shaggy mullet grew long enough to tie into a little tuft, his fingers grew slender, and his height quietly dwindled. His chest began to swell, bit by bit, and the way he had once looked like one of the guys made him seem more and more like a tomboy. Clutching his medical report, Lin Chen lay awake all night. After countless frightened, disoriented stares at his reflection, he finally worked up the nerve to ask Su Hang one quiet evening, “If I become a girl, will you still treat me like one of the guys?”

With red-rimmed eyes, Su Hang pressed the newly made key to his apartment into Lin Chen's palm. “Who said I wanted to be one of the guys?”