Wearing Jane Doe

The box sat on my bed, innocuous yet so full of possibility. I gulped as I looked it over, the relatively nondescript brown cardboard doing little to give away its contents. It was only the sticker with my address and some strange Chinese characters stamped on in red that revealed anything.

My heart beat quickly in my chest as I took my slicer along the tape. I didn’t know what to expect, not really, but I couldn’t help getting so excited. The website I’d ordered this from seemed too good to be true, but I’d seen stuff on forums and in chat-rooms that made me believe it was real. The cardboard doors split in two, as light revealed the contents, bagged up in opaque plastic. I peeled it open even faster than I’d opened the box, anticipation getting to me.

Inside was a sight as macabre as it was captivating. Pooled within the bag, was what appeared to be the deflated skin of a woman. It wasn’t really a person’s skin, with gore and blood or anything similar and horrifying. But it was as though a person’s skin and only their skin had been created, without any bones or organs or anything like that. It wasn’t just any woman either; it was actually the skin of a particular fictional character I’d grown to be a little obsessed with.

I lifted it into the light, marveling at how soft, smooth and silky it felt as its features were revealed. In my hands, appeared to be the skin of Jane Doe from Zenless Zone Zero. I turned her around, fascinated by such a strange sight.

“Gosh… she feels so real…”

I lay her down on the bed, running my hands over her. Even though I knew she wasn’t made out of real skin, she certainly felt like she could be. Soft and supple, though cool to the touch. A face that was pretty even deflated, while her body was so explicitly feminine. It was a little hard to believe how fast things had escalated, now they were to the point I’d ordered something like this. I thought back to how this had all began, some part of me hoping maybe in my memories I could justify the path I’d taken to get here. I hadn’t even been a gacha player or anything, but something about Zenless Zone Zero had just drawn me in.

Was it the stylish trailers, bursting with life and captivating animation? The retro futuristic aesthetics that were like crack to anyone who loved that late 90s, early 2000s street vibe? Or the charming characters, each one so carefully designed to be irresistible? It was all of these factors and more, really.

It was too hard to choose a favorite character from the game, but something about Jane just stayed stuck in my head. The first time I saw her interrogation trailer, I couldn’t believe the audacity of it all. A POV interrogation that was equal parts seductive and dangerous, all given that scintillatingly sensual ASMR treatment? How had the character designers been given the prompt “Rat girl”, and created the most overtly “sexy” character in a game full of waifu-bait?

I couldn’t help but love her instantly. She was so confident and bold, with a teasing, sinister edge that gave me goosebumps. She had a more tender, sincere side too, trying to do the right thing even as she plays a villainous gang member undercover. It seemed she was the perfect mix of traits and features to hit me in the heart and keep me engaged. Before I knew it, my social media feed was full of her, the algorithms zeroing in on my interest with their typical frightening efficiency.

Seeing so many far arts and edits, it really stoked my affection for her. She was just so cool! I would have loved to spend time with her, even if I was the one getting interrogated. Sometimes, unbidden, ideas would swim into my head of getting noodles with her on sixth street, or shopping in Lumina square with her, or whatever. Sitting by the river at night, taking in the pretty lights of the city, while the real beauty sat beside me.

I really have been getting lonely, huh?

Internally, I laughed at my own expense. I was an adult, working a boring office job, and single too. I knew that fantasizing about a gacha character was pretty sad, but I was torn. After all, shouldn’t one take whatever kind of comfort they can get in this cruel world?

It wasn’t just the fan art that was keeping me interested in this character. Alongside it came dozens of cosplay pictures, beautiful girls having fun showing off their recreations of the character. Dancing at conventions, making funny skits in cosplay, taking sexy pictures. It was all so exciting! Of course, they were hot, so I appreciated seeing them anytime they appeared on my feed or for you page.

But… there was something else I felt looking at them too. A weird tug in my heart, something that would cause my brow to furrow a little, and my lips to purse. Was it jealousy? I knew it was kinda weird for a guy to see beautiful female cosplayers and get jealous, but I couldn’t help it. It just looked so fun!

I thought about everything Jane was too, all the traits she embodied. Confidence, charisma, skill. Seductive traits that just oozed swagger, backed up with self-assuredness. She was like the ultimate expression of feminine power. It was all so alluring, so who wouldn’t want to be like her?

But, I was a guy. I wasn’t a particularly feminine one either. My shoulders were broad, my jaw wide, and my body shape really was all wrong. I wasn’t bad looking or anything, but I didn’t have any pretty features that might allow me to step into Jane’s shoes. Cosplaying as her, hoping to experience some of the traits of the character I admired so much, wanting to be her for a day; all of these hopes were nothing more than idle daydreams, tinged with the melancholy acceptance they could never be real.

That was… until I’d found the website.

It looked so shady at first. A website that promised character skinsuits that could almost magically allow the wearer to really “become the character”. Way too good to be true. It was a little known site, with its user interface being outdated. It seemed like I’d stumbled onto it almost by accident too, hearing about it on some obscure forums and then following the thread to its conclusion.

I knew they were inventing new technology in China all the time, and every day it seemed like there was some new breakthrough. But creating this kind of technology, and then using it for gacha cosplay anyone could order? It was expensive, but not too much for me, so ultimately a steal for what they were promising. I must have been sadder than even I expected, as I didn’t hesitate to risk my payment information buying a suit of Jane.

But now, with a perfect skinsuit of her laid out on my bed, it seemed the site wasn’t lying. I fumbled in the packaging, pulling out an instruction manual and hastily reading. I didn’t want to run into some strange problem like getting permanently stuck in the suit, and having to live the rest of my life as a hot rat thiren girl, especially since this was the real world and thirens weren’t typically real. I’d read too many stories with a similar setup to this where that had happened, and I wasn’t about to take my chances.

Scanning the pages, the instructions seemed simple enough. The skinsuit used nano-technology to achieve its seemingly magical results, and gained all the power it needed from the user’s body heat. Once worn, the suit would feel like your own skin, and you’d have all the same capacity to feel sensations as normal. It would be like you weren’t wearing a skinsuit at all. It could be worn indefinitely, and would link up physical processes so that you never needed to leave the suit. I wondered if that meant I could still use the toilet wearing it, and how that would even work.

Glancing at the deflated rat girl on my bed, she very clearly had a pussy. I tried not to think about what that would mean for me if this suit really lived up to its claims, even as my subconsciousness roiled in my head with barely suppressed excitement and a certain lewd curiosity over the possibilities.

I kept reading, attempting and mainly failing to stifle the thoughts that were leading to my boner straining against my jeans. The skinsuit could be entered though any orifice, and would stretch, or you could peel a part of it open, for example the back, and get in that way. The nanotechnology would reseal seemingly without much effort or consequence, and within seconds any hole I’d torn wouldn’t leave any trace. Once the suit was fully on, and perhaps even while it was partially on, I’d begin to feel some perhaps intense sensations, but when it was over I would have “become the character.”

The part where it described the feeling of the transformation wasn’t the most clear, and I wondered if it hadn’t been translated from Chinese that well.