Time to make for a shopping experience that no one will ever forget.
—
Field testing is always more interesting in places where nothing interesting is supposed to happen.
That’s why I chose a supermarket.
Bright lights, neutral colors, quiet music engineered to be forgotten. Rows of ordinary people pushing carts full of ordinary problems. No magic circles, no arcane ruins or dramatic fights. Just discount vegetables and a suspiciously long line at the bakery.
It was the perfect baseline environment.
I walked in looking exactly like I always did, being the gorgeous girl with far too much confidence that I am in a lab coat that absolutely did not belong in aisle three. A few people glanced at me already, but that was just statistical noise. I always get glanced at. Comes with the whole godly fusion being package.
I reached into my pocket and felt the small glass vial between my fingers.
The New formula. A new combination that was personally recommended to me. This should turn me from a sciency goddess to one hell of a god if all goes well. And honestly, when do things ever not go well for me?
I stopped between the cereal and the cleaning supplies, popped the cork, and took a casual sip, like I was drinking water from a bottle, trying to make it seem as unsuspicious as possible.
It was just me, standing in a supermarket, swallowing a potion that was about to rewrite my entire presentation to reality. What else could a mischievous goddess ask for?
Hehehe~
I smiled to myself and grabbed a shopping basket.
“Alright,” I murmured, already feeling something subtle shift inside me, “let’s see what kind of man science this potion thinks I should be.”
At first, I thought I was imagining it.
There was this strange, warm pressure in my chest and throat, like my body was gently being nudged into a new configuration. It was so subtle, not even I could fully tell if I was changing yet or not. There was nothing shoving or forcing about my body yet. Just… a little bit of encouragement.
I cleared my throat.
My voice came out a little lower than expected.
“…Oh?”
I blinked, then laughed softly. Okay, that was new.
As I walked down the aisle, I felt my posture shift on its own, shoulders pulling back slightly, spine straightening like it had suddenly remembered better manners. My reflection in the glass of a freezer door made me pause.
My face was still mine, but… sharper. Jawline a little more defined. Cheekbones subtly rearranging themselves like they were being optimized by an extremely opinionated artist.
Heh.Science has taste.
That’s when I noticed the first stares.
Not the usual kind. Not the casual “oh, she’s pretty” glances I was used to. These were longer. Confused. Double-takes. A woman pushing a cart actually slowed down while looking at me, frowned slightly, then looked again like her brain was trying to catch up with her eyes.
I walked past her, pretending very hard not to notice.
But inside?
Oh, I noticed.
Something was definitely happening, and judging by the way the air around me felt just a little bit charged, this potion wasn’t planning on being subtle about it for long.
Which turns out I was right, because by the time I reached the drinks section, subtlety had officially given up.
My clothes started fitting… differently. Not in a bad way… just in a “reality quietly renegotiating proportions” kind of way. My shoulders felt broader, my arms a little heavier, like there was more weight behind every casual movement.
I picked up a pack of bottled water.
It felt ridiculously light.
“…Wow,” I muttered. “Did I get stronger, or did the universe just lower the difficulty setting?”
I glanced at my reflection again, this time in a polished metal shelf. The changes were impossible to ignore now. My figure was stretching upward, my waist narrowing, everything shifting into a silhouette that was very clearly no longer girl… but not fully guy yet either.
And then there were my hips.
They… did not get the memo.
Instead of slimming down like the rest of me, they were doing the exact opposite, flaring outward, round and dramatic, like they were determined to stay the star of the show no matter what gender I ended up as.
“…Okay,” I said slowly, eyeing myself. “Those guys will follow me through thick and thin, won’t they?”
Someone nearby dropped a bottle.
Not because I bumped into them, but because they were staring at me and completely missed the shelf.
I smiled sweetly, picked up my water, gave her my best wink and continued walking as if I wasn’t becoming a walking paradox in the middle of aisle seven.
What can I say? Public testing environments were way more fun than the lab.
By the time I reached the front of the store, the transformation had clearly decided it was done warming up.
My body finished settling into itself with a quiet, satisfying finality. Taller now. Broader. My face had fully crossed the line into ridiculously handsome… the kind of symmetrical, sharp-jawed, effortless attractiveness that looked less like genetics and more like a character creator with all the sliders maxed out.
My voice, when I spoke to myself, was smooth and deep and absolutely not subtle.
“…Oh no,” I murmured. “It made me hot.”
But of course, it didn’t stop there.
Because while the rest of me had streamlined into this perfectly sculpted, charismatic god-man form… my hips and now even my ass had gone even further beyond. They were wide and big. Dramatically wide and big. Completely unapologetic about it. A heroic upper body paired with a lower half that belonged in a different genre entirely.
But I couldn’t argue with the result, as I now was a dazzlingly handsome man with a silhouette no one could possibly ignore.
People weren’t even pretending anymore.
Heads turned. Conversations trailed off mid-sentence. A guy in line ahead of me forgot to move when the line advanced and just stood there, staring into space like his brain had temporarily left the building.
I stepped up to the cashier.
She looked at me.
Then she blinked.
Then she looked at me again.
“H-Hi,” she said, voice cracking just a little. “Did you… find everything you were looking for?”
I smiled.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic.
Her brain visibly blue-screened.
“Yep,” I said casually, placing my items on the counter. “Just running a few… tests.”
She nodded. Then paused. Then nodded again. Then stared at my hips. Then at my face. Then back at my hips. Her hands hovered over the scanner like she’d forgotten how objects worked.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “You’re… like… unfair.”
I leaned on the counter, entirely too aware of my own presence now.
“Heh,” I said. “Yeah. I get that a lot. Recently.”
She nearly missed scanning the water.
Honestly, I was starting to feel bad.
Almost.
—
I walked out of the supermarket to the soft sound of automatic doors and several people still not entirely sure what had just happened to their afternoon.
Through the glass behind me, I could see a few heads still turned in my direction. One person actually bumped into another because they were looking past the exit, trying to get one last glimpse of me like I was some kind of limited-time event.
I stepped outside, stretched a little, and finally let myself laugh.
A satisfied, smug, “wow, that worked way better than expected” kind of laugh.
“Hehehe~”
I glanced down at myself, at this absurdly handsome new form, at the heroic upper body and the completely scandalous hips that absolutely refused to obey normal design principles.
“…Okay,” I admitted to myself, “that combination is definitely going in the permanent notes.”
I noted it down as a successful handsomification potion with a slight oversized cake problem.
…if one would even want to call it a problem. Honestly, I wouldn’t.
Anyhow, I tucked my hands into my pockets and started walking down the street, feeling entirely too pleased with my own existence.
Because for me, that potion combo didn’t just work.
It was a masterpiece.