This Gender Reversed World Ain't for Me (4) - An Important Lesson in Entrepreneurial Spirit

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"What's gotten to him?"

It wasn't just that he had stripped in the middle of their living room, though that in and of itself was enough to give the family a collective heart attack.

It was the way he did it.

Damien, with his usually careful and restrained behavior, with his eyes ever-so-slightly cast downward. He always carefully took himself away from social interaction.

Their Damien wouldn't have removed his shirt casually like that. His actions lacked any shred of delicacy or discretion.

He didn't care what they would think of it. Didn't even try to conceal himself as he did it. The amount of brazenness the move displayed, the shamelessness, could only come from either a self-aware, playful streak of exhibitionism, or a clueless innocence that could never know shame in the first place.

And none of those things could belong to their Damien. At least, that's what they were thinking.

'Fuck...'

This was, perhaps, the first time ever a boy his age and with his genes did something like that. There had been instances when young boys did some pretty embarrassing stuff, some others slightly inappropriate, but none of that could be even remotely related to this sort of... brazen and out-of-nowhere act of striptease.

And the worst part of it was that Willow couldn't help but like it.

At least, somewhat.

She felt like some scoundrel, hiding inside her pristine and morally uptight exterior. 

But what woman wouldn't find herself in a rather enticing, dream-like and dangerously captivating position, just by witnessing their baby boy stripping as easily and with as much ease and nonchalance as putting on his shoes, like that.

"Willow, your hands are trembling." Freya spoke with an air of mocking chastisement. "Should we check him up again, or—"

Willow shook her head, hiding her fists. "No, let him be. That nightmare or whatever he had, must've caused some stress, or even a bad image or trauma to his mind. We shouldn't pry; we might exacerbate the condition further."

Of course. This was the standard rationale her family had fallen upon to justify their ignorance. A mental and emotional collapse. Surely there could be nothing more complex than that in their world. 

Men themselves were quite complex creatures, delicate, sensitive things, with the way they would sometimes come up with intricate webs of lies and half-truths for reasons one could only speculate.

But trauma? Maybe. An emotional breakdown? Unlikely.

Willow looked toward her son's room upstairs, frowning.

'Should I go talk to him...?'

It would be easy to. As a mother and the head of the household, it's easy enough for her to just say, 'get downstairs, dammit. We need to talk and reassess the situation'. 

Except that the last thing Willow needed was to rush him, or any male of any age for that matter. It was perhaps the only sound piece of advice her own mother gave her—rushing a man when they didn't want something, tended to make the whole damn thing useless.

With another sigh of consternation, she settled for waiting until dinner tonight to see if Damien was back to his usual, quiet self. She certainly didn't mind his little experiment downstairs, although she couldn't help but feel anxious over his motivations—was he, perhaps, falling into that phase?

Willow paused, trying to recall if the Internet mentioned any type of phase a man like Damien would have in their late teenage years, with no luck. All she could remember, for her part, was something about hormones.

"Hormones..." She sighed, deciding that even if she couldn't recall the phase, it probably was hormones. It was safe to assume so, at least.

Freya eyed her, unsmiling. "Hormones... imagine if our little Damien suddenly discovered, overnight, the potential power his body held against us."

Willow cast her a severe sidelong glance, even as she thought, yes. Yes! What if?

"I have a conference call..." Freya remarked idly, coughing as she sauntered off, even though her conference call wasn't happening anytime soon.

Left alone, Willow glanced at the staircase, still lost in thought.

'Something strange, indeed.'

Just what was this aura Damien suddenly displayed, this sudden change in personality?

xXx

Damien's POV:

I didn't quite have the stomach to see anyone after my little scene, nor could I force myself back down there and, therefore, out of the.

I stayed in the room instead, absorbing as much information as I could and sorting what was new and not.

One day was nowhere enough to metabolize everything that was happening, but it was definitely enough to have a somewhat clear picture. And everything I saw and read afterwards just solidified it. I used to say I lived in a crazy world, but this one really took the cake.

Could I even go out without causing a city-wide riot?

There were news reports of riots, all right. Riots because a male celebrity had smiled at the crowd at an event. Riots because a male influencer had posted a selfie. A goddamn riot over a selfie.

The more I read, the more I wanted to go out there and test the limits. But I had to be smart about it. A shirtless stroll through the neighborhood might be fun, but it would also bring a world of trouble down on this household, and on me in particular. 

I wasn't ready to deal with the fallout from that just yet.

Besides, I didn't want to be known for flashing my chest. That would probably give me the same popularity as Mia Khalifa, or even worse. Ugh. 

One thing to note was that the security system in this world for 'men' was extremely strong. And generally speaking, beyond some obsessed-as-fuck woman who decided she would literally hunt her male down no matter the risk involved, people generally, and understandably, didn't try to violate the rules that kept them all safe.

The repercussions, even when such attempts were largely thwarted or discovered early, were incredibly severe.

I spun around in my computer chair, thinking.

'I'd like to further explore the dynamics of gender relations in this society.'

I searched Google and got back what basically amounted to 'this society is insane.' So not helpful.

I typed in a search term, 'Gender war in this society', and added some date filters, searching for information from at least fifteen years ago and more.

That was the first time there was any mention of a public male in a Western country being subject to a murder attempt. It was an incident that sparked off a wild series of events which led to a riveting global debate about a radical 'breeding program' for the male species, and an international surge in efforts to encourage higher numbers of pregnancies and births from each female, which effectively meant an increase in the population of women.

A report, written at that time, stated, 'It's only by chance that we're still having male babies.'

Yeah, really reassuring.

Not that all of this shit affected me in any capacity whatsoever, except in the way that maybe someone would barge my bedroom door and force me to be a sperm machine and produce tiny perfect human beings who were destined to experience a lot of disappointment later in life.

'Should I look for a job?'

Independency had a big significance, even in this fucked-up universe. The desire for self-determination was just an imperative to be satisfied. Especially for a guy who had just discovered the beauty and the bitterness of the world of feminism.

"Yeah, sure... jobs... "

Looking through Damien's bank account, there were enough zeros at the end to make it all pointless. What kind of life would I lead without even having to lift a finger? I always thought that a man without purpose was bound to turn into a man without respect.

'So, you just want to use those amazing genes of yours and be lazy? In an environment where that's almost entirely unnecessary anyway... you still want to use all of that unfair advantage, and do nothing...?'

My inner monologue almost sounded judgemental at that. Maybe because, deep down, it was judgemental.

My current environment was pretty much perfect. The Winters' family obviously wouldn't protest—it would be a travesty to the notion of manhood in general if a male actively pursued manual work of any kind. It'd look downright heretical.

Being the child that they adored and coddled, especially with the recent series of events, I had no doubt that the Winters' household, if they could manage it, would see to my every comfort and desire.

I stood up, headed for my closet, and sifted through the drawers for a decent-looking shirt. A black tee, something decent enough to give off a first good impression and make it a nice 10 if I don't mess up. Khaki pants, with the bottom hems rolled up slightly for that chill and lazy kind of appeal.

Not that I needed all this effort, but it was still my subconscious going through my old habits, as if I wasn't already hot shit in this universe and women didn't basically line up in an aisle for a mere glance from someone who possessed the XY genes.

I opened the door, halfway expecting a silent rush of armed guards and military to spring the lock, only to be greeted by a wide-open and empty hallway. No sign of the three sisters I'd seen earlier. I made my way down the stairs and came upon the dining room and, finally, the living room.

Still, no one around. 

The silence was so noticeable that I didn't have the stomach to look at the clock, lest I disturb the deafening nothingness. I didn't even know if I was allowed to go out, but decided to find the fuck out for myself.

I headed straight to the front door. I tentatively unlocked it.

And it slid open, just a touch, when I tugged on the handle, and no alarms were set off, no giant manhole cover dropped down on the floor from the ceiling, trapping my legs.

There was, for all intents and purposes, absolutely nothing standing between me and the outside.

'So... we got permission then. That's a good enough start, I guess. Also means I don't need a chauffeur driving me anywhere.'

I closed the door behind me and strode down the street. It was nowhere as busy as early that morning, and while there was the occasional car that drove by, I did manage to get to the main street in less than 10 minutes and head towards downtown.

A walk. A proper walk for some air. I looked over my shoulder once, half-expecting someone to catch up and try to take me back home or whatever. Again, no one showed. With how they freaked out earlier, it was a valid assumption.

As I delved deeper into the bowels of the urban jungle, the bustling traffic grew so heavy, I wasn't the only thing on the roads and pavements anymore. 'There are women everywhere...' The sight was even more staggering this time.

Perhaps I had missed a good portion of them this morning. This time, the city streets were alight with a sea of faces. Tall ones, short ones, plump and slender.

It wasn't even close to my estimation. I'd hoped to see ten women to a single male, at best, and yet, even after walking for no more than ten minutes, and reaching what I supposed was the heart of the commercial district, there were one or two men for every twenty or thirty women.

That online statistic wasn't some internet myth, after all.

Still, they didn't seem to be the cause of much of a fuss. People walked past them, women walking past them, not outright stopping, but quite outright staring. A few more bold ones even smiled, maybe waved, or offered a friendly hello.

It was like watching people at a zoo. And the men in the enclosures were the penguins. Everyone gawked, but the unspoken rule was not to tap on the glass.

As I marveled at the sight, the women marveled at me. A few heads turned, a few conversations died down mid-sentence. Even all those other rare males were ignored in lieu of a new shiny thing on the market.

No surprise here. With my face and body, and with the current odds of this society, women must've already been assuming they'd seen it all before. And just their luck, the jackpot chose to drop by on a sunny Sunday afternoon, strolling around.

But damn, it was real.

What the fuck, indeed.

I hastened my pace a bit, veering to the right and barging quite unceremoniously inside a café. I wasn't the type to get uncomfortable when more than a pair of eyes focused on me, but there were levels to this shit, apparently—having over a dozen of females openly stare at your direction, right in the fucking face, was certainly one of these levels.

Enough to make even the thickest-skinned man have to avoid their eyes.

"H-H-H-Hello..."

The girl at the counter had the whole sun-burnt tomato effect going on, her gaze darting from side to side as though her manager would pop out of a wall to tell her the obvious—this person was way too pretty for someone who was going to be on the serving side.

Her voice wavered. She wiped a single nervous palm across the apron she wore, not quite sure what she was supposed to do next.

I tugged at my collar a little, and waved back casually. "Good morning." I smiled; the girl was kind of cute, after all.

"Ah..."

She blinked once. Twice. Three times. And it was pretty much a surprise that she didn't do some huge dramatic anime scene, maybe passing out and getting dragged away while I watched helplessly.

Thump.

Oh no, wait. She just did...

"......"

A/N: To be rev~