Aaron was nineteen but looked like he’d already lived through three divorces.
Premature gray hair. A bald spot that showed up under bright restaurant lights like it had its own spotlight. A face that never seemed to land on the “right” expression—too eager, too nervous, too much.
Michelle didn’t even pretend to be kind.
She scrolled her phone while Aaron tried to ask real questions—favorite movies, music, anything that could turn two strangers into people.
She cut him off with a smirk.
“You’re… brave,” she said.
Aaron blinked. “Brave?”
“Yeah,” Michelle said, eyes flicking up and down like he was a thrift-store outfit. “Brave for showing up looking like that.”
Aaron’s cheeks burned. He laughed too loudly because silence felt worse.
The waiter arrived, and Michelle ordered the most expensive thing on the menu without looking at Aaron once.
When the bill came, she didn’t reach for her purse.
Aaron did. Of course he did.
Michelle leaned back, finally giving him her full attention—like the punchline deserved focus.
“Honestly,” she said, loud enough for the nearby table to hear, “you’re kind of… fugly.”
Aaron felt the word hit his chest like a brick.
Michelle stood up, grabbed her coat, and left him sitting there with the bill, the shame, and the awful realization that everyone had heard it.
On the walk home, Aaron stared into dark store windows and hated the reflection that stared back.
It wasn’t just that he felt ugly.
It was that he felt unwanted, like his face had already decided his future.
When he got to his apartment, his best friend Ricky was on the couch eating chips.
Ricky took one look at Aaron’s face and said, “Bad date?”
Aaron’s laugh came out broken. “Bad… everything.”
Ricky tried to joke—because that’s what friends do when they don’t know how to hold pain.
Aaron didn’t laugh.
He just whispered, “If I was hot, none of this would happen.”
And for the first time, Ricky didn’t have a comeback.
PART II
The shop was wedged between a laundromat and a pawn store, like it was hiding on purpose.
A hand-painted sign in the window read:
TRUE BEAUTY. GUARANTEED.
Aaron should’ve walked past it.
Instead, he walked inside.
The air smelled like incense and old paper. Shelves were lined with jars that held things you couldn’t name. Behind the counter sat a woman who looked like she belonged in a myth and a warning at the same time.
She studied Aaron like she’d been expecting him.
“You want beauty,” she said.
Aaron flinched. “I want… to stop being treated like a joke.”
The woman nodded slowly, as if that was the real request.
She produced a small bottle filled with shimmering liquid. It looked ridiculous. Like something from a prank show.
“This will give you what you desire,” she said. “But remember—true beauty comes from within.”
Aaron laughed bitterly. “People don’t date ‘within.’ They date faces.”
The woman didn’t argue. She only said, “Then drink.”
Aaron paid with money he couldn’t afford to spend and walked home like the bottle might explode in his pocket.
In his bathroom, he stared at himself one last time—gray hair, bald spot, tired eyes.
“Please,” he whispered, not to the potion, but to the universe.
Then he drank.
The change happened fast.
His skin tightened. His posture straightened. His jawline sharpened. His hair filled in like reality had decided to be generous. His face became… easy to look at.
Aaron stared at the mirror, shocked.
He didn’t just look different.
He looked like the kind of guy people automatically listened to.
Ricky walked in mid-transformation and dropped his chips.
“WHO ARE YOU?” Ricky yelled.
Aaron turned slowly, smiling.
“It’s me,” he said. “It worked.”
Ricky stared like he was watching a horror movie. “No. No—this is… illegal. This is science fiction. This is—”
“This is finally fair,” Aaron cut in.
Within a week, the world proved it.
Strangers smiled at him first. Cashiers laughed at his jokes. Women who would’ve ignored him before suddenly touched his arm like it was normal.
Aaron felt intoxicated—not by the attention, but by the relief.
He told himself: See? I wasn’t crazy. It really was my face.
But then something else happened.
Aaron started acting like the old Aaron didn’t deserve empathy anymore.
He started treating rejection as insult.
He started confusing attention with love.
And beneath the new face, the same insecurity was still alive—just better dressed.
PART III
Aaron met Jamie at a party.
She laughed at his stories. Took selfies with him. Told him he was “so different.”
Aaron floated.
This was what he’d wanted.
But the moment Jamie’s attention drifted to someone else, Aaron felt the old fear rise—cold, familiar.
She’s going to leave. She’s going to see the real me. She’s going to choose someone better.
Aaron cornered her in the kitchen, smiling too hard.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Jamie blinked. “Uh… just grabbing a drink.”
Aaron’s voice tightened. “You were laughing with that guy.”
Jamie frowned. “So?”
Aaron’s smile cracked. “So what am I to you?”
Jamie stared, uncomfortable now. “Dude, we just met.”
Aaron felt heat surge up his neck.
“You’re just like everyone else,” he snapped, too loud.
Jamie stepped back. “Okay—wow. You’re weird.”
That word—weird—hit Aaron like “fugly” did, because it didn’t matter what face he wore.
Rejection still found him.
Jamie grabbed her bag, shaking her head. “You’re not as attractive as you think you are.”
She left.
And Aaron stood there in a room full of people, suddenly realizing the truth he didn’t want:
His looks had changed.
His pain hadn’t.
The next day, guilt came like a hangover. Not because he’d lost Jamie—because he’d become someone he hated.
He went to the police station anyway, frantic and ashamed, trying to confess to something—the potion, the fraud, the fact that he wasn’t who he looked like.
The officer barely glanced up.
“Sir,” the officer said, bored, “what are you confessing to?”
Aaron stammered. “I… I’m not the person you think I am.”
The officer shrugged. “Okay. Have a nice day.”
Aaron walked out into daylight and realized the final cruelty:
Even his honesty didn’t matter when people only saw what they wanted to see.
That night, he stared at the mirror again.
Same attractive face.
Same haunted eyes.
He whispered, “Looks aren’t everything.”
Then—quietly, like someone admitting the hardest truth—
“I just wish they weren’t nothing, either.”
And that’s where the story leaves you:
Not with a neat moral.
With an uncomfortable one.
Because the potion didn’t turn Aaron into a villain.
It turned his unresolved insecurity into something louder.
And until he learned to build real worth—friendship, therapy, accountability, self-respect—he would keep chasing beauty like a cure…
…and keep bleeding from the same place underneath.
