Once upon a time, there was a frog.
It was just a normal frog, nothing more, nothing less.
- - -
One day, it caught a fly and was going to eat it when it shouted:
"Don’t eat me!! I’m a magical fly. I’ll give you some of my magic!"
The frog couldn’t understand what magic does.
It was contented with just eating and surviving and reproducing, it didn’t need magic.
And so it ate the magical fly.
The next morning, when he woke up, he felt taller than usual.
When he saw his reflection in the pond, he stumbled backwards in shock.
He turned into a human!
After awhile, he realized that the magical fly caused this.
He wandered around aimlessly and stumbled upon a playground.
A human boy much smaller than him was reading a book with a picture of a frog on its cover.
Not knowing about human politeness, he snatched it.
He flipped through the pages and tore out the page of a female frog kissing a human man.
If he is a male-frog-turned-human, then he must kiss a female frog?
That’s what he must do.
He rushed back to the pond and realized he couuldn’t tell the genders of the frogs there.
Frantically, he kissed every frog he could catch.
After a moment of silence, nothing happened.
Confused, he went back to look at the picture again.
Maybe he should try kissing a female human instead?
With that thought in mind, he set out to look for female humans to kiss.
Unfortunately, every one of them pushed him away, and one even hurt his face with her hand.
Even more confused than before, he sat slumped against a tree.
He sat there the whole day, watching people who walked past him.
He didn’t realize this before, but humans have their own set of social rules.
He had to practise these rules before he could get close to a human and go back to his simple frog life again.
A month later, the frog-man managed to assimilate himself into human society.
He worked odd jobs and managed to befriend a man who is a university french lecturer he met at a cafe.
In fact, the frog-man was the one who approached him after learning about the term “french kiss”.
It has to be called that because only french people kiss, right?
Through him, he could probably find a french female and return to being a frog!
The frog-man found himself closely attached to the french man.
They would often eat, drink and talk till late at night.
They even had some impromptu ballroom dancing together when both were very drunk.
The frog-man had a lot of fun with him.
He thought, “this is what ‘friendship’ must be.”
One night, the frog-man was invited to the french man’s house for dinner.
It was a candlelight dinner, which was supposedly odd for two men, but the frog-man wasn’t familiar enough with human society to realize this.
After dinner, the french man switched on some jazz music and slowly approached him.
His eyes were locked on the frog-man and the frog-man started to feel odd.
The french man started tilting his head towards him.
The frog-man was shocked and recognized this gesture.
He was trying to kiss him!
For some reason, the frog-man’s heart started pounding loudly.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
He knew that this was wrong.
How could two males have such feelings for each other?
How will they reproduce and continue the human race?
"This is wrong! This is wrong! This is wrong!" He shouted in his head.
But for some reason, he couldn’t turn away.
Because it felt right.
Before he knew it, their lips collided, and when he opened his eyes, he was smaller than before.
He was a frog again.
Bewildered, he quickly clambered and hopped out of his house and hid in a nearby pond.
"It’s finally over. I’m a frog again." He sighed in relief.
He was happy again, to be back in his simple days as a frog.
He has to be happy, even if he’s not.
He has to be happy.
But he’s not.
Because there was no way he could turn into a human again.
He often found himself risking his life just to check on how the french man is doing.
Whenever the french man looked sad, he himself felt sad.
Back at his pond home, the female frogs didn’t interest him.
He couldn’t think about being with a female sexually again.
The male frog was shamed by the other frogs for refusing to help in carrying on the frog line.
Eventually, after spending an eternity alone, he found a way to do it by himself.
- - -
Once upon a time, there was a frog.
It was just a frog that went through love and loss, and in the midst of that, found its calling.
It was just a normal, asexual frog.