The warehouse slled like synthetic cherry blossoms.
Chuck Martinez pressed his face against the latest arrival, a limited edition Sakura-chan body pillow with "ultra-realistic skin texture", and wondered how his life had beco a series of professional cuddles with fictional won.
The fabric was softer than usual, he’d give it that. The print quality showed no pixelation even up close. But the stuffing had that cheap, lumpy feel that would flatten within a month of regular use.
Not that Chuck would know from personal experience. That would cross the line from pathetic to rock bottom.
He pulled back and scribbled notes on his clipboard:
[Exterior: 8/10. Print quality: 9/10. Filling density: 6/10. Overall tactile experience: 7/10.]
The words felt hollow as he wrote them. Every review he’d written over the past two years read like a suicide note disguised as consur advice.
"Yo, Chuck! How’s the girlfriend treating you today?"
The voice belonged to Marcus, one of the warehouse guys who found Chuck’s job endlessly entertaining. Chuck didn’t look up from his clipboard. He’d learned that acknowledging the mockery only encouraged it.
"She’s the strong, silent type," Chuck muttered, jotting down more notes about fabric composition.
"Must be your dream girl then. Finally found soone who won’t talk back."
The other guys laughed. Chuck felt heat creep up his neck, spreading across his pale, doughy cheeks. He was sitting in his underwear, a company policy for "skin-to-fabric contact assessnt", which made every interaction feel like a fresh humiliation.
His belly folded over itself as he leaned forward, rolls of flesh that no amount of wishful thinking could transform into muscle. Dark hair sprouted from his shoulders and back, as if his body couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be human or gorilla.
"At least I’m getting paid to do what you losers do for free," Chuck said, imdiately regretting the coback. It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t even true. Marcus probably had an actual girlfriend, maybe even a wife.
Chuck only had a collection of professional opinions about ani pillows and a credit card bill that proved it.
"Haha!" Marcus’s laughter followed him as Chuck gathered up Sakura-chan and moved to the next station.
The testing room was a sterile white cube with fluorescent lighting that made his skin look corpse-pale. There were caras, of course—quality assurance, they called it.
Chuck suspected the footage ended up on so insurance investigator’s desk as evidence of the lowest point human employnt could reach.
He arranged Sakura-chan on the testing mat and assud the cuddling position. This was the part of the job that required thod acting. He had to simulate actual affection, actual longing, to properly assess how the pillow would perform for its intended audience.
The irony wasn’t lost on him that he was the perfect demographic for the product—a lonely, overweight virgin who’d given up on real human connection.
The pillow’s ani girl face stared up at Chuck with painted eyes full of artificial devotion. Her expression never changed, never judged, never asked why a twenty-year-old man was pressing his hairy chest against a drawing of a fictional teenager.
Chuck closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it would feel like if she were real. If any of them were real.
In his mind, Sakura-chan wasn’t just a pillow. She was warm, breathing, choosing to be with him despite everything wrong with his body and his life.
She didn’t care about his weight or his job or the fact that he lived in a studio apartnt that slled like microwaved dinners. She loved him because in the fantasy, love was simple and unconditional and didn’t require him to be anything other than what he was.
The tir on his phone buzzed. Fifteen minutes of mandatory cuddling complete.
Chuck sat up and filled out the rest of his report.
[Comfort during extended contact: 8/10. Emotional satisfaction simulation: 7/10. Likelihood of repeat custor purchase: 9/10.]
He was good at his job because he understood the product’s appeal better than anyone wanted to admit. Every pillow that passed through his hands represented soone else’s loneliness, soone else’s surrender to the sa fantasy that kept him employed.
By five o’clock, he’d tested six different pillows and written reviews that would help other desperate n make inford decisions about their synthetic companionship.
Chuck pulled his clothes back on, jeans that pinched his waist, a t-shirt that rode up over his fat belly, and clocked out without saying goodbye to anyone.
The walk ho took him through downtown, past restaurants where couples shared als and laughed at each other’s jokes. Past bus stops where college kids flirted while waiting for rides to parties Chuck would never be invited to. Past shop windows displaying clothes in sizes that assud custors had so basic level of self-respect.
Chuck’s reflection in those windows told the story of a man who’d given up. His shoulders slouched forward as if trying to hide his bulk. His eyes avoided contact with his own image. Even his walk was apologetic, like he was sorry for taking up space in a world designed for people who mattered.
But in his mind, he was sowhere else entirely. He was thinking about Sakura-chan’s painted smile, about the way the pillow had felt warm against his skin in the testing room.
He imagined coming ho to an apartnt where soone waited for him, where soone cared whether he’d had a good day or a bad one.
The fantasy was so vivid he could almost hear her voice calling his na, could almost sll dinner cooking instead of the ran packets that actually waited for him.
The daydream was so complete that he didn’t notice the crosswalk signal. Didn’t hear the horn honking. Didn’t see the delivery truck bearing down on him until the last possible second.
In that final mont, as ti seed to slow and the truck’s grille filled his vision, Chuck’s last coherent thought wasn’t about death or regret or all the things he’d never accomplished.
It was about Sakura-chan’s face, about the way she’d looked at him with those painted eyes full of impossible love. He thought about how nice it would be if soone, anyone, really looked at him that way. Just once before it all ended.
BANG!!
The impact felt like the world exploding inward.
Then nothing.
___
Then sothing.
A distant sound—tal striking tal, rhythmic and sharp. Chuck’s consciousness floated toward it like a moth drawn to fla. The sound grew clearer: swords clashing, armor ringing, the unmistakable sound of battle.
His eyes opened.
The world ca into focus slowly. Stone walls. Rough wooden ceiling beams. Fla torches dancing across unfamiliar surfaces. And his hand: small, pudgy, impossibly tiny, reaching toward his face.
Chuck tried to rember where he was, how he’d gotten here, what had happened to the truck and the crosswalk and his pathetic life reviewing body pillows.
The mories were there, just out of reach, like trying to recall a dream after waking. He could feel them slipping away, dissolving like sugar in water.
His previous life: Chuck Martinez, twenty years old, professional failure, virgin by circumstance rather than choice; all of it was fading.
The warehouse, the pillows, the mockery, the loneliness. Even his na was becoming foreign to him, a word that belonged to soone else’s story.
He stared at his tiny hand, at fingers that had never touched a pillow or felt the steering wheel of a car. This body was new, unmarked by disappointnt or sha. It was a clean slate in a world where the sound of distant battle promised adventure instead of tedium.
From the depths of his dissolving mories, one last fragnt surfaced; a single word that encapsulated everything he was leaving behind and everything he might beco.
"A baby?!" he cooed, his voice unclear and unfamiliar.
And then Chuck Martinez was gone forever, replaced by sothing new.
***
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