Kaoru Suzuki could scarcely believe the mess she'd gotten herself into.
Her first day at her new school had been nothing short of disastrous, a conga line of mixups and humiliations that just kept getting worse. She'd always been something of a clumsy girl, not to mention disorganized and worst of all, unlucky. Today it seemed all three flaws had come together to create the perfect storm of misfortune.
Her family had only moved into town yesterday, and her parents had wanted to take a week to get settled before she started school, Kaoru had insisted on starting as soon as she could. The klutzy girl had been determined her senior year at a new school going to be a fresh start for her, a chance to shed the awkward old Kaoru and reinvent herself as a mature, graceful young woman. She'd even taken the initiative to try and organize everything on her own—yet, in her typical graceless fashion, she'd made blunder after blunder in her haste.
She knew she wouldn't have time to go shopping for a uniform, so she'd purchased a secondhand set weeks before the move. She'd been sure to double and triple check everything: the size, the price, the mailing address, everything... except if the uniform she'd been buying was a girls uniform. As it turned out, it wasn't.
Still, she had been determined not to admit defeat—giving up after one setback was something the old Kaoru would have done, but the new, mature Kaoru wasn't about to let herself be beaten. She'd resolved to simply wear the uniform until she could arrange a replacement. Of course, she hadn't anticipated the effect her looks would have.
Kaoru wasn't exactly the blossoming beauty most of her peers were developing into—she had a pretty enough face, but her body was lithe, with slender hips and slim legs. Despite her clumsiness she loved athletics and sports, so her hair was cut short to keep it out of her eyes, and her boyish body was surprisingly toned. Where other girls her age had started to show their womanhood, Kaoru was as flat as a board, a source of constant frustration to her and no doubt a source of her desire to prove her maturity. Dressed in her old school uniform none of these had been more than an irritation to the clumsy schoolgirl, but dressed in a boy's uniform, she was just androgynous enough to be mistaken for one.
None of this might have been a problem, had she been on time for roll call—but of course, it turned out she'd written part of her school's address backward, a mistake which had cost her twenty minutes and six blocks of sprinting to rectify. By the time she'd knocked on the classroom door, sweating and panting from the exertion, she'd been too embarrassed to correct the teacher when he'd addressed her as 'Mister Suzuki'.
Her fellow students had ignored her for the most part, dismissing her as an odd, quiet boy, and she hadn't exactly been in a hurry to draw attention to the mistake by correcting anyone. After several periods of being mistaken for a boy, she thought she'd endured all the humiliations the day had in store for her. Little did she know the worst was yet to come. As it turned out, her final period for the day was swim class, and, of course, the only bathing suit she had was a pair of boys trunks. To further complicate matters, she'd gotten lost looking for the pool, so as usual, she was running late. She'd tried to explain the situation to her instructor, a stern-looking teacher with an intolerant attitude, but he'd simply yelled that she was late and pointed her to the changing rooms, snapping at her to hurry up and get changed, or she'd be staying behind after class.
"What am I gonna do?" Kaoru muttered to herself, glancing back and forth between the boys and girls changing rooms anxiously.
She couldn't exactly simply walk into the girl's changing rooms: she was still dressed as a boy, and the last thing she wanted was to cause a stir. On the other hand, she couldn't use the boy's changing room either... or could she?
A nervous thrill ran through Kaoru's body at the mere thought of what she was considering. It was a crazy idea—yet the more she considered it, the more sense it made. She'd been mistaken for a boy all day already, what was one more period?
Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Kaoru pushed open the door to the boy's changing room and walked inside.
From the moment she crossed the threshold, her heart was pounding in her chest like a drum. The locker room was packed with boys, some of them in their trunks, others still in various states of undress. They chatted excitedly amongst themselves as they changed, some pushing and jostling one another playfully. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as she tiptoed into the room, searching for a quiet corner to change in. For their part, the boys seemed to disregard her, thinking her one of their own.
Hoping against hope nobody had noticed the blush spreading across her cheeks, Kaoru found a corner and, heart aflutter, began to strip out of the boys uniform she wore. Her fingers trembled as one by one, she undid the buttons on her shirt, before shrugging her arms from it and stuffing it into her bag.
She stood bare-chested in the boy's changing room now. She wasn't wearing a bra, obviously—her chest was so flat she'd never needed one, the slight swell of her budding breasts was so imperceptible it was easy to overlook. Her puffy, swollen nipples were stiff with discomfort, though, but there was little she could to about that but take a deep breath and try to calm the butterflies in her stomach. Next came the pants.
She nervously tugged at the waistband of her shorts, glancing left and right to make sure nobody was looking. She'd need to strip them and her underwear off before putting her swimming trunks on, all while hiding her obvious anatomical differences from the nearby boys.
"Hey, it's Kaoru, right dude?" a voice cut in sharply, almost causing the embarrassed girl to gasp in shock.
Desperately trying to stay calm, she looked over her shoulder to see the boy next to her, one she recognized from her other lessons that day, looking right at her. He wore a friendly smile, seemingly oblivious to her discomfort.
"Uh... yeah..." Kaoru stuttered, fighting the urge to cover her chest. The boy didn't seem suspicious, so as long as she kept her cool, maybe he wouldn't notice anything.
"Nice to meet ya', bro!" the boy laughed, stripping out of his own pants as he spoke. "I'm Haru. Looks like we're in all the same classes, together!"
Kaoru averted her gaze, trying not to blush as Haru nonchalantly dropped his underwear, shamelessly standing naked as he rummaged in his bag. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute, but she knew she had to stay calm. If anyone found her out now... no, she didn't even want to think about it.
"What's up? Aren't you gonna hurry up and get changed?" Haru asked innocently, already tugging his own swimming trunks on. He seemed completely unaware Kaoru was anything but the timid boy she seemed to be.
"R-right, of course..." Kaoru stammered, turning away from him. She knew what she had to do. She glanced left and right, hoping nobody else had taken notice of her, and saw none of the other boys were even glancing in her direction. It was now or never.
Taking a deep breath, and trying to ignore the paranoia of being watched, Kaoru hooked her fingers through the waistband of her shorts and underwear, and began sliding them down.