Becky Hayes had saved her work address in her Maps app on her phone, and even if she hadn’t done that, I found it in an email. The email even included the floor number.

She worked in an office building.

Hot damn.

Fortunately, she also didn’t own a car, and instead took the bus to work. I know how to drive, I just haven’t driven a car since I was 19. Today was not the day for me to get back into that saddle. Her Maps app also told me what public transportation options to take to get to her office quickest, so I didn’t really have to think about it. Except that I did, constantly.

Her closet was full of pencil skirts and heels, which: why. Pencil skirts are meant to make girls with no hips look like they have hips. Girly here had Pixar Mom hips. And heels? No. I have no sense of balance.

I found a fitted blazer and put that over a weird shirt-knot-neck-tie shirt thingy. I don’t work in offices. I don’t know office clothes. I refused to try to get the pencil skirts over these hips, so I put on a pair of jeans and some flats and hoped for the best. It was going to be nearly 11 AM by the time I arrived. The blue jeans were the least of my problems.

Once I was safely on the bus, settled against a window, I stared at my reflection. Becky’s reflection. I hadn’t showered, and I think I looked like it. I had put my hair into a ponytail. I could see my new nose, a giant beak straight out of Buckingham Palace. My own nose, my real nose, hadn’t been anything to write home about, but it had been my nose. My nose. My mother had the same nose, my grandmother had the same nose. Thankfully I hadn’t inherited my dad’s weird pig nose. But I knew that nose. When I smiled, I knew my teeth, with the extra-white mark on my right front tooth that my dentist assured me was perfectly normal.

Becky Hayes had a slight, crooked gap between her front teeth.

What if Ria Vanderberg wasn’t real? What if Becky Hayes was having a dissociative episode? Now that was something, wasn’t it? I had readily accepted that this was transmigration. Characters in webtoons wake up in different bodies all the time. But they woke up in a different body and a different place and a different time. Today was Tuesday, not Saturday, but I had only gone back in time four days. And this was my city, too. I recognized a city park as we drove by it. I had helped put on a performance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest there a few years back.

On Tuesday, Ria Vanderberg had worked a closing shift at the coffee shop. Closing shifts were quiet, and mostly the customers were regulars. She had tried – no, I had tried – to make peppermint-flavored whipped cream, which turned out disgusting. What had she (me, I) been doing at 10:15? She was probably awake right now, maybe squinting at the dark roots of her hair and sighing.

She wouldn’t be doing any of that if this was just Becky Hayes having a dissociative episode. I pulled out my phone and opened the Instagram app. This time, I searched for Ria Vanderberg’s profiles.

There she was. Two profiles popped up. One was my public profile, full of my random drawings and attempts at artistic photography. And there was my private account, which was full of my face and my friends’ faces. I clicked on my private account, but I couldn’t see anything. It was locked, because Becky Hayes was not friends with Ria Vanderberg.

I pressed the button for a Friends request.

I waited.

I didn’t remember receiving a Friends request from anyone on my Private account this week. But I still waited. If Ria Vanderberg accepted my friends request, then maybe I really was Becky Hayes, and I really was going through a dissociative episode.

The bus arrived at my stop, and I got off the bus.

Becky Hayes worked on the third floor of this most generic-looking office building. The downstairs lobby was like any psychiatrist office building I had seen. It was just a single hallway full of elevators. The floors were marble, the florescent lights were wan against the sunlight pouring in. The walls were textured wallpaper. There were four identical plants around the bank of elevators, and it was hard to tell if they were real or not. Touching them did not edify me.

I was not the only person who got onto the elevator. A man and a woman also got on with me.

She had strawberry blonde hair (the red really stuck out in the florescent light) and overly large eyes. She wore a pink office shirt and a pencil skirt. She was pink and generic.

He was taller than either of us, but not much taller than average. He had dark brown hair brushed to one side, and was wearing a black suit with a black tie. Despite the black clothes, he did not look like a Goth. Disappointing. In fact, his square jaw with soft features and a shaved chin made me think of Ivy League and Privilege money. His face was entirely neutral. He radiated low emotional intelligence.

I stood in the corner, per elevator etiquette.

They stood next to each other.

Fine. Maybe they were traveling together. As long as they stayed in their corner, it was fine.

The doors took forever to close. I pressed the Close button, and they still took their sweet time. I reminded myself that I was already super late and just a few extra minutes in the elevator would not change that. What excuse was I going to give? Would they accept “I thought it was Saturday”? Was Becky the sort of person to forget entire days of the week?

The doors finally closed.

The woman giggled.

I glanced at them. She was glaring at Mr. Disappointing, and he was smirking.

“What level?” I said.

The pink woman looked at me. The man did not.

“Four,” said the woman.

I pressed 4 once, and then poked and pushed all my might into 3. That’s not how elevators work. But Mr. Disappointing was going to start disappointing Pinkie here in this elevator and I desperately did not want to be present for it.

The elevator clunked to life.

Almost immediately, Pinkie gasped. I looked desperately at my phone, although I didn’t press any apps or anything.

Pinkie muttered, “Stop,” at Mr. Disappointing.

I pursed my lips together. I looked up at the floor indicator above the doors. It changed from L to 2. This was taking forever. Was this my impatience, or was this elevator old? This was certainly not a new elevator.

“Just don’t make any sounds,” murmured Mr. Disappointing.

I rubbed my forehead. I was not looking at them. I tried to think of an excuse to give to Becky’s bosses about my lateness. Maybe I had had an appointment and I forgot to mention it to them. A dentist appointment? No, I had forgotten to brush my teeth. They wouldn’t buy that.

“We’re at work,” said Pinkie.

The 2 finally clicked over to 3. I shuffled to stand in front of the door. Maybe Becky had had to drop her car off in the morning and it took longer than expected. No. Maybe she had to drop off one of her roommates at work? How many roommates did Becky have? What if Ash was Becky’s only roommate? Ash clearly worked overnights.

The doors finally opened. They were barely open wide enough, and I ran out that elevator.