Mountain Onsen

 

Not very NSFW, marked as mature just in case.

Picture sauce: https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/604624

I actually wanted to make a caption for this artwork at the same time that I wrote "Mythical Onsen," but I couldn't think of anything to do with it until now. That one is more goofy and fun, while this one is more contemplative like my usual style. Written earlier, but I'm posting during the winter months for maximum immersion. This can be my winter-themed caption for this year.

Maybe "she" will be an early adopter of the internet and hang out in online chatrooms while pretending to be a guy. Then she secretly enjoys going to meetups and surprising everyone. :)

Full text:

On an obscure online forum that Aki frequented, there were rumors of spots that possessed body-changing magic when certain conditions were met. One such place was an onsen that would let you travel back in time, supposedly by possessing the body of someone who had bathed in the pool. If only it was real, he thought, then maybe he could see what things were like before all the busyness and attention-seeking of modern life. He’d been feeling directionless and alone lately, as though he had been born in the wrong generation. But the only "trip reports" he could find said that it was fake.

It was a small, old place in the northern mountains, well kept, but it had clearly not been renovated in a long time. Other people had written that it was nothing special, but to Aki, the quaint and historic vibe just felt magical. The water was just right – not too hot. His mind wandered, and he thought about his birth parents, who had passed away in an accident before he could even remember. Their lives had to have been very different from his now. But he barely even knew anything about them, especially his mother, who seemingly had no one who even knew about her. The only thing he had inherited from her was her blue hair. Maybe, if this worked, then he could even find out something about her.

He suddenly awoke to the feeling of hair on his face. He was completely alone in the pool now. A light dusting of snow covered the hillside around him, making it white. Everything seemed to be slightly bigger. The wood of the building was clean and nicely finished. He felt something in the water, and looked down. There he could see a pair of boobs on his chest, as well as a pair of thin arms in front of his body. He simply sat there for a while, mesmerized, watching the motion of his own arms and legs as he moved them in the water. He really was in the body of a young woman, living in the past.

As “she” exited – now fully dressed with a coat and a knee-length skirt – she saw the sign which said “Women” on the curtain over the entranceway – the one that she had just come from. She realized that the male and female sides must have been switched at some point. As she looked around outside, a nice-looking man waved at her. Not really caring about awkwardness, she boldly walked up to the man, who suddenly put his arm around her shoulders, leaning his head in against hers. Surprised, she lifted it off. He was looking intently at her face, and it was kind of intimidating.

“Nothing better to do but to try to pick up girls over here? Just go away, dude.” She didn’t know why she had said something so rude. The man laughed a bit, but then made an annoyed breath, got in his car, and drove off.

Suddenly, Aki felt some sort of ripple come through the mountain air, and a vague feeling of wrongness arose in the pit of his stomach. The breeze suddenly felt chilly on his still-slightly-wet (and cleanly shaven) skin. He was alone and vulnerable, just a young woman standing in front of a parking lot, who didn’t even know what year it was. He felt scared, but he forced himself to go back inside and take another dip in the onsen that he had just been in.

The staff eventually helped the lady get her purse out of the lockers, which contained her ID and a few other documents. What Aki could salvage from his mother’s life was very basic and didn’t tell him anything interesting, but it felt like it didn’t matter anymore. He never would be able to go back, the timeline with his own birth having been cut off forever.