Role Exchanger: Relearning his own language

“And that’s all for today’s lesson. Good work, you’re getting better!” Malcolm’s teacher smiled, waving bye to him through the video call. 

“Thank you, you are.. helping me much.” Malcom smiled back, slowly sounding out his words to make sure he was pronouncing them right. He cut off the call before breathing out a sigh of relief, leaning back in his chair as he examined his reflection in the dark screen of his laptop. Malcolm had a lot to be thankful for after a chance run-in with the Role Exchanger, but his weekly English lessons were definitely not one of them. He had been at an art museum when the Role Exchanger hit, the blue light turning his life upside down as it swapped a number of his traits with other visitors in the ensuing chaos. The most drastic changes hit first, exchanging his gender with a woman to his left. He felt petite breasts begin to push out from his chest as his body rapidly feminized, leaving him as an androgynously female version of his old self. He wouldn’t stay that way for long though, before he could even take stock of the fact that he now had breasts, they had begun growing faster, soft fat filling his frame as he took on the significantly larger cup size and curvy hips of another nearby woman. Shocked, Malcolm looked down at his body to realize another change had already started. His skin was quickly draining of color, settling on a pale, peachy tone as he swapped races with a white security guard. 

Seeing someone run past him yelling something about an emergency exit, Malcolm got moving, slowly getting used to his body’s new center of gravity as the fading light of the Role exchanger as it gifted him some of its final swaps. In an instant, he gained the long, blonde hair and sexual orientation from a middle aged woman running near him, quickly followed by the bright blue eyes of her husband. Reaching the exit, he let out a sigh in his new female body as the blue light finally faded, his relief only lasting for a moment before he noticed the Role Exchanger’s last surprise: On his run out, he had taken on the language skills of a Swedish tourist, his thoughts switching from English to Swedish almost mid-track as he began struggling to decipher the shouts he had understood perfectly just moments ago. It wasn’t until the chaos died down and the post-exchanger authorities arrived with a translator that he fully understood what had happened to him.

After he had been provided with new documentation for his female identity, Malcolm realized that staying in America with his limited English skills simply wasn’t feasible. If he wanted to live any semblance of a normal life, his choice was clear. Despite never having been to Sweden in his life, he was now uprooting his life to live there, at least until he managed to relearn English.

4 months later, he had settled into his new normal, living as a Swedish woman, working a Swedish job, and chatting with the other girls at work as if he’d grown up there his whole life. He had started going by the name Astrid when he moved, it was easier to just blend in than to explain his situation to everyone he met. In the meantime, he had taken to doing online English classes in his free time, struggling to form sentences in the language he had grown up speaking. He sighed. At least his teacher was cute.