My Spring Has Come

I wasn’t stupid (mostly). I knew what it was like to look in a mirror. But, in that moment, the sudden influx of new sensations, every one of them foreign, was like a flashbang to every faculty I had. Far from a sleek, modern solitary hole, I found myself in a bright room with natural sunlight, furnished with genuine antiques. A bedroom? Rather than a comfortable office chair, I sat on a small padded bench. Something dreadfully uncomfortable squeezed my midsection, and my chest felt weirdly swollen.

As soon as the enchanting model in the mirror opened her mouth, I realized. That model was me.

I frantically whipped my head around, my lovely new locks flying as I turned.

“My, my, Miss Elisabeth! Please, calm down!” The maid behind me cried.

Wait, Elisabeth?

“I understand you’ve second thoughts about the meeting with the duke and his son, but you know you must find a suitor soon.”

I was lost. Duke? Who’s that? And a suitor? Twenty seconds ago, I was about to start playing video games for thousands of people on the internet. Now, I had to find someone to marry?

“Now please, face the mirror once more so I may finish the back of your hair.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Alone with the maid, and seeing no other options, I obeyed and turned back around to get a better look at my reflection. I was truly gorgeous. My skin, peach pink, shone with a healthy glow, supple and moisturized. My eyelashes were heavy and long, and I batted them to feel their weight. Perfectly manicured brows crowned the top of my face, and gentle lips sat beneath my rosy cheeks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Recognition stirred within me.

I had designed this face.

Well, a version of it, I suppose. This face was much, much, prettier, but it was undeniably the face of my VTuber character, Elisabeth. That was how she was known online. But now that was me.

I stared deep into my own face. My eyes, a striking purple, shouldn’t have been humanly possible. But there they were, a genetic impossibility serving as my window to the world. Odd-colored eyes and hair cropped up often in anime and VTubing, but to see them for myself was altogether different.

As the maid fussed about with the back of my hair, I came to another realization. I braced myself to face something I wasn’t sure I was ready for. I turned my attention downwards.

Breasts.

This is the chance of a lifetime. I had never even touched someone else’s before, to tell you the truth, though I’d always wanted to. So to see my own cleavage filled me with… Hold on. Happiness?

I had to know how they felt. I brought my hands up to my chest and did what you might expect: cupping them, squishing them, feeling them. They felt amazing.

I had expected it to feel wrong, seeing breasts as a part of my own body. Instead, the only way I could describe how it felt was elation. A confused joy. While the sensation I got while feeling them was new, it wasn’t necessarily wrong. Strange in the way new clothes feel, but not uncomfortable in the slightest — that award went to the corset around my waist.

My fascination and wonder-driven fondling were interrupted by a gasp.

“Elisabeth! You mustn’t do that in the presence of others! Put your hands down!”

“Ah, I’m sorry… um… Miss…”

Melodic and clear, my voice filled the room with singsong-y tones. I was taken aback for a brief moment, unprepared as I had been for such a sound to emanate from my own mouth.

“Something is off with you today, hmm? You always just call me by name.” Sure, but what is it? I began to panic. I obviously should know this woman. But I didn’t.

“As it ought to be, too. I won’t have you addressing your head maid as ‘Miss Marie’ now!” Oh thank god, she said her name.

“Oh, right. Silly me. My apologies, Marie,” I said as I took my hands off my chest. Perhaps an investigation best saved for a private moment. I had somewhere else to check later as well, though from what I could feel through the undergarments below my dress, I wouldn’t need to do a thorough inspection to know how else my body had changed.

It was odd. You’d think losing something so crucial to defining manhood (for many) would be melancholic, perhaps even traumatizing. But much like the situation up top, thinking about how that place was different at the moment filled me with inexplicable content — a happiness unlike any I had ever felt before in my entire life.

I sat patiently and shifted my gaze towards my surroundings. The vanity I was stationed at might have been the most expensive antique there. Sunlight streamed in from floor-to-ceiling windows adorned with dark red curtains. Right next to that, the same curtains surrounded the biggest bed I had ever seen. Okay, that might be pricier. My nostrils were filled with the scent of spruce. A gentle breeze flowed in from one of the windows, keeping the air inside cool and fresh. There were no electric lights. No sleek metal desks with computers on top. No strange snacks from foreign countries waiting to be eaten.

What about the stream? I thought. What happened to my body? That world? What had even actually happened in the first place? Pressing as they were, these questions came and went, as I knew I wasn’t going to get any answers from the mirror. Perhaps that guy, Duke, will give me some clues.

“Alright, all finished, Miss Elisabeth.” My train of thought shifted as Marie, was it? finished setting my hair with a nice green bow.

“Thank you,” I replied. From what I could see, it did look wonderful.

Marie was about as tall as me, with silver hair that stopped just before her shoulders. And not silver in the way that your coworker promises is a new dye job and not just age, it was an inhuman, shining silver. Like from an anime. I guess if I could have purple eyes, silver hair wasn’t that strange either. It seemed well-cared for. She looked to be a few years older than me — maybe her mid twenties?

The thing that really puzzled me was that, while I had created Elisabeth and loosely defined her setting as “royal magic fantasy,” I had not created anything else to go along with it. I sincerely had no idea who this maid was. If I had made more characters in my VTuber lore, would they have become real, too? I wondered.

With my styling finished, I got up to walk around a bit. I noticed I was in heels. Not good. Slowly and steadily, placing one foot carefully after the other, I shuffled towards the window. Marie gave me a strange look. I guess I shouldn’t be stumbling in heels if I’m a princess.

That gentle breeze pushed my hair back as I made it to the windowsill and leaned onto it with both hands. I got a good long look at the world outside. My extravagant room, full of dark, carved wood, deep, elegant fabric, and ornate furniture, contrasted starkly with the outdoors. A vibrant rainbow of natural color filled my field of view. Must be spring. Same as back… home.

Pastel blossoms dotted the front garden of the palace, perfectly green bushes and hedges lined the pathways, and the stonewrought gate at the edge was topped with lovely planter boxes of even more carefully-pruned flowers. The dirt path — I suppose it was a road, for carriages maybe? — wound out and away across healthy grass fields, over towards the edge of the forest where it disappeared into a tunnel of lush trees and undergrowth. Punctuated by the sun, the clear blue sky was almost too bright to look at.

I took a deep breath. The fresh spring air filled my lungs with warmth and my mind with peace. The pleasant scent of flowers in bloom imbued the air with life. A host of songbirds sang at one another, while the sound of the wind whooshing through the trees served as background. Whatever had happened to me, it might not be so bad, if I could live in a place like this. Being a princess had its perks. I couldn’t have created a more picturesque view if I tried.

Marie suddenly appeared beside me at the windowsill, joining me in basking in the glow of spring. We stood there together, simply appreciating it all.

A sudden jump snapped me out of my dazed wonder.

“Oh! Miss Elisabeth! There!” Marie reached her arm out, pointing at the tree line.

“Huh? …Oh! What on earth?” I exclaimed.

Emerging from that verdant tunnel came a train of a few carriages. Each was a dark, burnt orange, accented with red and brown. A few small carriages preceded a larger, more extravagant one pulled by armored horses of pure black.

“Miss Elisabeth, it seems the duke and his son have arrived!”