The biology lab had never been where Ethan imagined he’d spend his semester. He wasn’t part of the genetics team—he was there for extra credit, organizing samples, logging data, and helping professors with whatever mundane work needed doing. It was quiet, predictable, and a nice break from crowded lecture halls.  
The accident was so small neither person realized it had happened.  
Someone hurried around a corner carrying a tray of equipment. Ethan stepped back from his laptop at the same moment. They collided, apologized, and spent a minute picking up scattered papers and supplies before going their separate ways. If anyone had noticed the tiny puncture on Ethan’s forearm, they assumed it came from the cluttered workbench.  
He certainly didn’t think twice about it.  
Nothing happened that afternoon. Nothing happened during dinner. Even as he got ready for bed, there wasn’t so much as a headache to suggest anything was wrong.  
It started while he slept.  
The next morning he woke feeling strangely sore, like he’d finished an intense workout. His clothes fit differently. His face looked…off. Not dramatically, but enough that he stared at the bathroom mirror longer than usual.  
Over the following days, the changes accelerated.  
His shoulders narrowed. His voice steadily climbed higher. Muscle melted away while softer curves slowly took its place. His beard stopped growing. His height slipped away inch by inch. By the end of the second week, strangers hesitated before recognizing him. By the fourth, there was nothing left of the young man who had walked into the lab that afternoon.  
Now, over a month later, the mirror reflected a young woman with long hair, softer features, and a body that matched an XX chromosome down to the last detail. The researchers had confirmed what had happened after retracing every second of the accident. Their experimental serum had somehow found its way into the wrong arm.  
She still caught herself remembering what it had felt like to look different, to sound different, to move through the world differently.  
It was surreal.  
Yet as bizarre as her life had become, one thought always made her laugh.  
“If it had to happen to someone in our class…”  
Her eyes lingered on her reflection.  
“If this had happened to anyone else in my class…”  
She let out a quiet sigh.  
“…I don’t know how they’d have handled it.”  
She pictured her friends. Some were already stressed enough by exams and internships. Others hated even small changes to their routines. Waking up to find their bodies transforming day after day would have shattered them.  
“Guess it was best me if anyone.”   
She’d always been the calm one. who could adapt when plans fell apart, who found solutions instead of dwelling on problems. Some of her classmates would have been devastated beyond words. Others probably would’ve dropped out entirely.  
She wouldn’t pretend it had been easy. The first month had been confusing, exhausting, and overwhelming.  
But she’d made it through.  
Her reflection smiled back.  
The accident had changed every cell in her body, every document in her wallet, and every expectation she’d had for her future. It wasn’t the life she’d planned.  
It was simply the life she had now. And, somehow, she’d learned how to keep moving forward.

“Why me?” I huffed at my reflection. I’d spent weeks earning extra credit in the campus labs, where researchers were testing a serum that flipped XY chromosomes to XX. Someone bumped into me with a syringe while I was bent over my laptop. Neither of us noticed.