Work Text:
The sun shone down on a lone brown-haired girl, who couldn't be happier with herself on this great day. Her name was Maddy, and she had just been down to her favorite bookstore. As luck would have it, they were selling new books on the cheap, much cheaper than she had ever seen them at! She couldn't herself, spending as much money as she had on her to try and make sure that she got everything she could ever want. Sure, she bought a few things that seemed trashy, but maybe they'd make for fun reads regardless. She was that kind of girl, the one that always just read whatever she got her hands on.
"Okaaaaay." She mused to herself as she stepped into her cozy little apartment, giggling a little as she put the bags full of books onto the floor. "Gotta do a few dishes, then I can grab some popcorn and start reading. Buuuuut before thaaaaat..." The young woman trailed off as she started digging the various books out of the bags, wondering what she might've actually bought. She didn't really pay attention when she grabbed them off the shelves, preferring to just buy in bulk to take advantage of the sale.
She grimaced just a little as she realized the contents of the books that she had bought. To her dismay, she had bought a ton of non-fiction! No wonder it was all so cheap if that was all they had on sale. School season was just about to start too, so it made too much sense. "Great, I knew it had to be too good to be true. Just my luck, I got scammed out of my money..." The brunette seemed outright dejected, practically pulverized by the revelation...
Thankfully, she had still managed to grab some books that seemed like they would be interesting reads. A lot of fantasy novels, some crimes here and there, the usual stuff she licked to pour her eyes through... But there was one little thing that stood out.
"Eh? When did this get here?" Maddy asked herself as she pulled a thin-looking manga out of her bag, scratching her hand through her hair. "I didn't put this in here... Maybe the cashier decided to throw in a bonus?" She tried to work out the logical course of events... only to shrug her shoulders. "Oh well! Guess I'll try and read one of those fancy-schmancy mangas, just to see what it's like!"
Once she had stacked all the books, as well as the single manga, into a nice pile on her living room table, the young woman went ahead and got everything else squared away. Whether it was vacuuming the carpet, doing a few dishes or making sure that she had enough snacks for the evening, she was going to make sure that she wasn't going to be interrupted for any reason.
After doublechecking everything, the gal took a seat on her couch before she looking at the pile with wide eyes. "Yeesh, maybe I should've looked before I bought. There's so much here, how am I going to get through it all? Last time I had a pile this big, it took around a month before I was done, and I don't think I got through everything..."
That's when Maddy's eyes started gravitating back towards the Manga that was stuck between the thicker books. "Hmmm... Weeellll... It is the smallest of the books, so maybe if I just give it a look, I'll know if it's trash or not." The girl muttered to herself as she carefully pulled the eastern story out from the gap between the books, making sure to avoid tipping the entire stack over in the process.
Once she had the thing in her hands, it was easy for her to just leaf through it. She breezed past a few pages... and then it was over. it was the size of a small magazine, so it wasn't surprising that she was done this quickly. "T-That's it?" She asked aloud, feeling a little ripped off again. "Come on, arent' these things super popular? Why's it so small? What was even going on? Some weird characters were yelling about something important, and then it ended!"
The eager reader fell back into her couch, sighing as she put the manga down by her side as she rubbed her cheeks. "I don't get it..." She continued to mutter in confusion as she reached towards one of the other books, one that was thinner and definitely wasn't just an atlas of the world or something boring like that, just so that she could try and compare the two. Maybe there was some sort of appeal that she had missed. There had to be!
Strangely though, as she started running her fingers through the more traditional book, something about it felt... Off. Like she should be paying more attention, but there was nothing that really gripped her. Normally, she could be seen pushing her face into a book to make sure that she was reading the sentences as clearly as she possibly could interpret them, and yet here she was, not really getting as engrossed as she normally did. Things felt so weird!
"What is happening to me? Did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something? I don't get it!" The frustrated young woman cried out as she tossed the book onto the table, lightly jolting the pile next to it. "Fine! I'll try and read this dumb Manga again, maybe I'll get it this time!" She wasn't one to quit, and she absolutely wasn't one to admit defeat. She'd get to the bottom of this for sure, even if it was going to take hours upon hours!
Maddy picked up the manga again, this time with a fire burning in her eyes. She flipped to the first page, digging her face as close to the parchment as she possibly could. She was going to make sure that she was getting every little detail of the artwork burnt into her brain, that way she could appreciate it as much as possible. And then she would actually understand what made everyone rave about their popularity.
As the minutes passed by, she hadn't flipped to the second page. In fact, she was still admiring the artwork. The brilliantly inked and intricately drawn artwork that made her heart skip a few beats. Every time she noticed another quality that the artist had snuck in there, she felt her smile reaching further. By the time she finally moved on from the first page, she had actually started to understand why these things were so popular...
Little by little, as the young woman continued to read through the manga as obsessively as she possibly could, the things around her started to change. She couldn't possibly notice due to the way that she was practically glued to the pages themselves, but the world around her was shifting just a little. Not so much that it was unrecognizable, just different enough that it would fit her newfound interest in all things Manga.
The pile of books that was made up of a mixture of generic novels that didn't matter as well as the non-fiction books that she had no intent on reading quickly dissolved into much more compact Tankõbon releases of her new favorite series. In fact, everything in her living room was being turned into some sort of place she could store her manga. Whether it was a shelf that was compact enough to fit several dozen titles on or a cupboard for the special editions that she had to take good care of. All of it would fit with her new mindset.
Speaking of a new mindset, her body had to shift just the same. Maddy's physique wasn't the worst, that much was fairly obvious. But given that she now looked to live in an apartment belonging to a nerd who loved manga and everything about it, she needed to look the part herself. Her clothes, fairly casual for a girl her age, were swapped out for something a bit more comfortable in the form of a dark green sweater that was straining due to her fat bosom and her equally fat belly, both of which were trying to push out against the fabric. Her skirt and her pants were replaced with a big pair of jogging pants, ones that she'd have no trouble fitting in if not for the massive slabs of meat she called thighs. Thankfully the waistband was stretchy, otherwise, she'd have no chance of getting or out of those things ever again.
To cap things off, her hair was quickly growing down to her thighs, while looking quite dirty due to her personal lack of hygiene. She didn't really want to shower often, so she only got in there when it was of utmost importance. This meant that she had pretty dirty hair, not that anybody would ever look at a chubby nerd like her at all. Especially not with those massive glasses that were covering up most of her face, nobody would take her seriously with those on, and she needed them to make sure that she could read! It sucked, but that was how a nerd lived so she had to deal with it.
Maddy let out a lovely sigh as she put down the manga, giggling a little to herself. "Oh gosh, it's just as good as I thought it would be. All those cool fight scenes, the romance, the comedy, it really is the best new manga on the block..." The newly made nerd sighed as if she was in a dream, while she tried to get up from her poor couch... only to notice that she was actually sitting on a beanbag, her couch having been replaced with something a bit simpler to fit her nerdy aesthetic. "Hmph! Quit hugging my butt so bad, it's mine! You don't get to touch it if you're not a cute boy or something!" The silly nerd pulled at her table, trying to tug herself free...
Only to practically tumble straight back onto the floor after she finally yanked her ass free from the wonderful seat, causing her to sweat all over. Actually, just moving a little made her sweat that much. "G-God, I need... I..." The dirty-haired nerd muttered to herself as her mind tried to push back out, the parts of her original self that hadn't submitted to her transformation doing their best to keep resisting the influx of nerdy behavior. "W-What was I... Doing..?" She muttered aloud, her eyes flickering between complacent and confused...
The two halves of her mind eventually agreed as her eyes fell upon the pile of manga that she still had to read through. She didn't even notice that she had started drooling at the sight of the pile, her giggles leaving her lips in quick succession. "Yeah... Yeah, that's what I was doing! A manga marathon!" The nerdy girl fell right back down into her beanbag chair, refusing to get up this time as the big pile of Japanese stories fell all over her, covering her in so many great stories that she hardly knew where to begin.
So she just picked one out, feeling a bit of grease rub off her figure as she picked it up. "Huh. Guess I better be careful with these." The bespectacled nerd muttered as she licked her finger, before flipping open the book so that she could get started on her reading session.
Maddy quickly fell down into a practical trance as she just kept on getting engrossed with every single manga that dotted her body. It didn't matter how long or how big the thing was, she just worked her way through it until it was completely done. And she'd spend the rest of her life doing just that, not knowing that the manga that she had originally read just turned her into a lazy manga-obsessed nerd. if she had picked up on it, maybe she could manage to reverse it... But at this point, it was too late. Frankly, she didn't care either way. She kinda liked being chubby and a big nerd, if it meant that she could read more manga.
Now, if only she had a few nerdy friends to share her love with...