John's first and last Portuguese class

“Meu deus, isso é tão estranho, o que vou fazer?” John muttered to himself, still in awe that he could understand what he was saying, but even more so at the sight of the woman looking back at him from the mirror. 

He had decided to start learning Portuguese last week as a spur of the moment decision to get out of the house and possibly meet some women after seeing a sign up sheet for classes in the lobby of his apartment building. He had no idea at the time just how  much that decision would change his life. The role exchanger had struck just a few minutes into his first in-person lesson, a group conversation class led by a Brazilian teacher. The bright, blue light flashed through at the end of the introductions, right as he had finished struggling through telling the group his name and age in stilted, broken Portuguese.

The first change had been the most obvious, a gasp rippling through the group at the sight of the breasts erupting onto his rapidly shrinking body and pressing tightly against his t-shirt as the Role Exchanger swapped his gender with Maria, another newcomer who had started the class to be able to speak some Portuguese during her girls trip to São Paulo coming up in a few weeks. John looked down in shock, pulling his shirt back to see the deep, pale cleavage beginning to push out from his formerly flat chest, shocked at the discomforting, yet erotic feeling circulating through him as the rest of his body quickly caught up to match his new feminine equipment. 

By the time the second change started affecting him, the rest of the group was too preoccupied with their own bodies to even notice his skin tanning a light brown and his hair twisting itself up into loose coils as his still unfamiliar facial features changed further, spurred on by a trade in ethnicity with Lucas, another student who had signed up for the class to better communicate with his cousins back in Rio.

And suddenly, like a train switching tracks, his panicked train of thought switched from English to Portuguese as the conjugations and contexts of thousands of words flooding through his mind as his knowledge of English was sapped away from him in return, courtesy of the class instructor, João. He cautiously tested a few sentences out, transfixed as the chaos settled around him and the light finally dissipated. First in Portuguese, words he had never spoken before in his life flowing out of his mouth like second nature. His heart racing, he switched to English, his mind instantly slowing as he worked to translate sentences he had known just fine moments ago. They came out slowly and thickly accented. Passable, just like his teacher’s had been, but clearly relegated to a second language learned later in life.

Just as quickly as it had arrived, the light of the Role Exchanger dissipated, leaving John at a loss for words as he looked around at the chaos slowly calming down around him. A few hours later, he had been allowed to return back to his apartment, anxious to inspect his new body in the privacy of his own bedroom. As he stripped down in front of the mirror, his mind racing from all the unfamiliar sensations now barraging his body, John couldn’t help but realize he had been talking to himself for the past few minutes in perfect Portuguese.