This is the fiftg chapter of Near-Infrared, a series which will focus on various post-TF adjustments after a sudden off-screen lion transformation.

This (short) chapter makes for a sort of transition from day-to-day to long-term story, stretching more and more in time until the second half of the story.

Story also below :

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Tuesday morning. It had been 72 hours total spent as a lion, and I was losing hope of ever changing back.

After I woke up, I went looking by the window. In the morning light (which had a green hue from my perspective), people were walking around, entering buildings, going to their jobs. I could see some people at their desks from my viewpoint, so I made sure the curtains were hiding me for the most part.

The shower was still easy for me to use, I rinsed myself for some time under the hot water, wondering if my new form was some kind of cosmic punishment. With all that fur on me, I was soon soaking wet. I stepped out and shook my body and mane to dry off, and tried to finish the job with towels. The first technique was clearly more efficient than then second.

Technically, I was naked. Even if it didn't exactly feel like that, I decided to try to put something on to reclaim some of my humanity. But it was a lost cause. Pants were almost impossible to put on, and my legs were too different anyway. Underwear was hard to put on as well, and the tail got in the way. Anything else from my wardrobe would not fit on my bigger upper body. I would have to remain in the nude for now.

I ate one whole chicken for lunch. I bothered to bring a plastic plate from the cupboard this time. As I grabbed the raw chicken to put it in the plate, I realized with some amount of embarrassment I that I was drooling a lot, so much in fact that it was dribbling down my lips onto the floor. I growled, annoyed by that fact, then dropped the chicken on the plate and started eating.

Boredom was settling in. I was napping a lot. When I was awake, there was nothing interesting on the TV, so I ended up just browsing around the internet. I also tried to play some Minecraft to kill the time, but I was pretty bad at it with paws now.

Wednesday came and with it the realisation that I had to do something about the job situation. My best move for now was to take a vacation. By no doubt would it annoy the HR department to use my vacation days on such short notice, but they would probably approve it still. Two weeks would do, I didn't have enough days for three. I was glad there was no need to contact anyone directly, I could just use their internal tool for that. I closed my laptop, went by my window and looked at a train passing by near my apartment building.

Now I had some time on my hands.