"You're...what? But you're a girl!"

Even as those words slipped out of Jacob's mouth, they felt off. As though there was something Jacob was ignoring. Something Jacob had been ignoring for a long time.

Scowling at the younger version of herself, the woman spat, "Yeah, and so are you!"

"W-what? Look at me, I'm not a girl!" Jacob's voice sounded petulant, something cracking as she realized this was the end of her ability to deny the truth.

Fixing Jacob with an unamused look, her future self started counting things off on her fingers. "One, you hate looking at yourself in the mirror. Two, you wear baggy clothes that cover up your figure. Three, you have searched online about bottom surgery like...five times or something. Guys do not spend so much time thinking of what they'd look like as a girl!"

Looking at the floor of the room, Jacob rubbed the spot on her face where she'd been punched. "Why'd you hit me?"

She shrugged. "Ask any person in their thirties what they'd do if they saw they 20's self. Most people are gonna want to throw at least one punch." The woman put her hands in the pockets of her baby blue cardigan and offered Jacob a hand up, which she took. "By the way, name's Patricia."

"You changed it?" Jacob asked.

Patricia rolled her eyes. "I'm not exactly eager to keep going by 'Jacob' when I look like this, and neither will you." Her eyes brightened, and she snapped her fingers. "Speaking of! The reason I'm here. You're like...21, 22 or something?"

That was an...odd question. "I'm...20, actually. How can you not know how old I am?"

"Early 20's are a fucking blur. Just a haze of college and dysphoria. But guess what? I can help you with that." Patricia paused. "...the dysphoria part, not the college part. You're stuck grinding away on that by yourself, my dudette." Really knowing that this was her future self, Jacob was not only amazed how...feminine Patricia looked, but how feminine she sounded. There was no way a person on the street would know she was trans. "Thing is, I didn't start hormones until I was 26. Clearly, they've done an awesome job, but it would've been better if, say, a hot girl had shown up to me at 20 and told me to start then instead."

A strange fluttery feeling went through Jacob's chest. Occasionally, very occasionally, she would let herself dream of dressing like a woman, trying to be one, but it felt like an impossible goal, an unreachable fantasy. But...here was evidence against that. This was a woman, a womanly woman, that was also Jacob, or had been her.

"If I remember correctly the campus free clinic can prescribe HRT, you just gotta tell them you're a girl and you're golden. Any other questions?"