The man by the lakeside didn’t look like much, just another stranger skipping stones across the water. When one of them struck the surface near me, the world folded inward. For a blink everything blurred; then I was sitting in shallow water that wasn’t cold, surrounded by bubbles that didn’t belong in any lake. My reflection showed my same face but on a body that wasn’t mine — fuller, softer, shoulders sun-warmed and brown. Across the ripples, the woman who’d been bathing in the hot spring now wore my frame, shouting in disbelief.

The stranger’s laughter echoed and faded with the breeze, leaving us both stuck in a trade neither of us had chosen. I tried to stand, the weight and balance of the borrowed body throwing me off, water glinting where it rolled down unfamiliar curves. She screamed my name through my old mouth, demanding I fix it, but the man and his magic were gone. Only the quiet rush of the spring answered, reminding me that the life I knew had just been rewritten by a single careless ripple.