Luciel's Luxury Boutique — Hit Product No. 5: The Sexy Bra
Whoa, hold on.
When the coachman outside reined the horses to a halt, that was my cue; I moved up to the front of the shop. Erina took her place beside me, her face wound tight with nerves.
The horses snorted out hot breath, and the carriage wheels creaked to a stop on the dirt road. Then the carriage door swung open outside, and the joints of armor clattered and clinked as men climbed down. It was a commotion with no business in a sleepy country village like this—least of all in the dead hours before dawn.
Moments later, a sturdy man's voice rang out from beyond the door.
"My lady, it is a cold night. Please do not take off your coat."
"No, thank you. I'll have to undress in there anyway if I'm to find things that fit me."
For a little while there came the sound of several people shuffling by the door, clearing their throats into the quiet. Most of them, men.
Was this it? No.
Nobles had their own procedures, and those procedures were uselessly slow and cumbersome. But that very cumbersome discomfort was a line they had drawn between themselves and the commons, all on their own. Sure enough, a short while later, a deep, thick voice boomed out before the door.
"Make way! It is Lady Frill, third daughter of House Mane of the Golden Circle! Master of the general store, open your door!"
"C-C-C-C-COUNT?!"
At the sound of a noble rank, Erina's already white face turned the color of fresh paper. I had given her a rough explanation earlier that day, true, but I had never told her that the daughter of a count would be calling in person—only that a cute young customer of noble blood would be visiting, and that her part in it would matter. Had I warned her in advance, she'd likely have trembled all day long and remembered nothing of what I taught her.
Swish!
Timing it just right, I flung the shop door wide open. Good thing I hadn't opened it early—this was how a business kept its dignity among its peers.
"Welcome, my lady. We've been expecting you."
"Hello, Master. It feels like it's been simply ages."
When the door swung open, there she was—hair of a dazzling white silver, and porcelain skin pale enough to match. It couldn't hold a candle to Erina, of course, what with the elf blood in her veins, but the fresh, clear charm of her young years and that sheer cuteness were more than enough to captivate every gaze in reach, men and women alike.
Her adorable pink dress, cut to bare her small, delicate shoulders, was strewn all over with white lace and pink ribbons, heaping yet more cuteness onto a young lady who hardly needed it. On either side of her silk-glossy hair—combed so primly that not one stray strand could be found—sat a pair of enormous ribbons. The sexy-concept maid outfit I'd dressed Erina in carried its share of ribbons and lace too, but this bordered on excess, the wearer's tastes stamped across every inch of it. Fashion that declared, with no subtlety whatsoever: Aren't I just adorable?
"My lady, one moment, please! We must first inspect the premises for anything that might do you harm."
One of the escort knights, seemingly their captain, tried to clank his way into the shop in gleaming full plate, but the young lady stopped him short.
"No, Sir Knight. This is a shop I frequent. There isn't the faintest whiff of danger to me here."
"This is a district of extremely poor public order, my lady. Nowhere your ladyship sets foot here is safe."
"If even a shop I trust enough to visit again and again is not safe, then tell me, Sir—where in the world would be safe for you? Shall I expect you barging into my bedchamber next?"
The mountain of a knight and his strapping men all shrank back a step at that single sentence from the tiny young lady. Truly—what staggering charisma, and at her age.
"Still..."
"I would like everyone to wait outside until I finish my shopping. If the night air is too cold for you, you may as well sit inside my carriage."
"We could not possibly! Who are we to set foot in your ladyship's carriage!"
And so the shop door closed once more—shut this time by the young lady's own small, fine hand.
Whew. What a relief.
It wasn't that I looked down on knights as a class. But our shop was packed tight with displayed wares, glass bottles and fragile goods everywhere you looked, and let a man in full plate go stomping about carelessly, and a heel or the tip of a scabbard was bound to clip a bottle or two and shatter it. When that happened, compensation aside, relations between customer and shopkeeper turned monumentally awkward. Lady Frill was a regular of our little general store, and she understood this perfectly.
"Ahh, now I can finally breathe! My escort knights get a bit overzealous, don't they? I'll apologize in their stead. Lately Father has heard that bands of bandits keep showing up around this area, so he's loaded me down with a whole crowd of guards. No matter how I explained that Greenhill is a quiet, peaceful little place, this was the one point he wouldn't yield on."
I flinched.
Mm... a count really is a count. From a castle dozens of miles away, he keeps perfect tabs on the goings-on of a backwater like this. In a world with neither internet nor smartphones, just who carries news like this around, and how? I'd been living here upwards of three years, and it was still a mystery to me.
The instant the word bandits left her mouth, I heard Erina swallow dryly beside me. Whether the lady caught that sound or not, her gaze drifted naturally over to Erina.
"It seems you've hired a new clerk since my last visit. Wow, she's so pretty!"
"I-It is an honor to meet you, my lady. I am called Erina Seraphina."
"I'm Frill, Count Mane's youngest daughter. Please, treat me just like a little sister."
"I—I could never presume to..."
Only then did Erina realize she hadn't offered the lady so much as a greeting; she hurriedly sank down and bowed her head in a flustered curtsy. But questions were already steaming up off the young lady's curious face, so I moved first.
"This one is still a trainee, learning under me. It's her first time in this region as well, so there's a great deal she doesn't yet know."
"Well, you did seem in want of a clerk anyway, so this works out nicely. Doesn't it?"
Lady Frill's eyes lingered for a moment on the pointed tips of Erina's slightly protruding ears, but she seemed to think of her as nothing more than a very beautiful woman—the idea that another race's blood ran in her apparently never crossed her mind. No, the lady's gaze had latched onto something she herself lacked. No—something she did not have at all. She was shooting envious glances at Erina's generous cleavage.
"Erina, your breasts are so big."
"Huh? Aha? M-my breasts? Um, yes..."
"The way they rise up all perky is so pretty. And best of all, they haven't drooped one bit!"
This topic... I'd known it had to come out of her mouth eventually, but to open with it right away? Erina hastily shielded her chest with her arms; when the lady simply kept gazing at her, she lowered them again at last. She seemed afraid that covering herself from the daughter of an exalted count's house might invite who-knew-what.
"What did you eat to grow like that?"
"Eat? Wh-what do you mean, eat?"
"Foods you loved as a child, or things you ate often?"
"W-well... haha... I suppose eggs? Mother kept a few chickens ever since I was little..."
"So it was eggs after all! So that's what made those grow so big!"
As though saving it to a mental memo, Frill's huge eyes sparkled as she looked back and forth between the two lumps of fat Erina carried. By now, fine beads of sweat had broken out across Erina's forehead.
I briefly considered tossing in a word for nervous Erina's sake, but it hardly seemed necessary for a man to insert himself into a discussion of female breast development.
For a good long while, the lady turned her head this way and that, subjecting Erina's chest to a meticulous inspection—front, sides, the underside. Had a male customer pulled this, I'd have had to step in on the spot. But a female customer—and a VIP like Lady Frill, no less—that, I was powerless against.
"I'm so jealous. Imagine it—breasts as big as yours."
I picked a moment that wouldn't count as rude and cut in.
"You are still growing, my lady. Like your elder sisters, your development will begin before long."
"I have no intention of turning into a sagging milk cow like my sisters. Size is one thing, but I want a chest like hers—firm and perky, without one bit of sag."
"You will have exactly that. I'll see to it."
"Do you truly think so? Frankly, I expect mine will go on just like this forever. Oh—right! More importantly, Master, I have some good news to share with you!"
"Good news?"
What could it be? A boyfriend, perhaps? Sounded like news with nothing to do with me.
"I—well, just recently, that day finally came for me! The day that comes to every woman worth the name!"
"So you've begun your first monthly. Congratulations."
Erina's eyes went round as she looked from me to Lady Frill and back again. In this world, a woman's monthly courses were, in truth, a kind of taboo—something women kept hidden above all else. A wife would never speak of it carelessly to her husband, much less to her father. That was how deep a regular Lady Frill was at our shop. And honestly, hadn't her life grown that much more comfortable thanks to everything she'd bought from us?
"So—have you been putting my little gift to good use?"
"The sanitary pads? Of course. I'm wearing one right now, in fact. Just as you said, I stick it onto the panties I bought here, and it's astonishingly comfortable."
A while back, I had gifted Lady Frill a couple of sanitary pads, one at a time. She harbored a peculiar competitive itch—whatever both her elder sisters had, she had to have too—and I had quietly played on exactly that. These 'sanitary pads' are something even your sisters know nothing about. Would you care to try one? That had been my line.
"You adapted quickly. Knowing you're using them well puts my mind at ease."
"Just as you said, my sisters know nothing about the pads either. So I've decided to keep them my own little secret and go right on using them. Fufu♡"
"All the more reason to share the good things, surely. It was your sisters, after all, who first introduced you to our shop."
"Anyway—that's beside the point! Those sanitary pads of yours. I've come to buy a whole pack!"
The young lady drew a coin from the adorable little red enameled handbag slung crosswise over her shoulder (purchased at our shop, naturally). And sure enough—how it gleamed. A single gold coin, struck with the profile of the first king of the Kingdom of Helion.
Ooooh…
Hey—Erina. Don't go losing yourself over one measly gold coin. Get a grip!
From the drawer tucked beneath the central display counter, I pulled out one block of sanitary pads, bundled five to a pack. Naturally, I'd bought these in bulk as well and portioned them into fives ahead of time. There was another block in reserve, but I left it where it was. Pads were no luxury item; I had to keep spare stock for the girls and married women of Greenhill who slipped in to buy a single pad on the sly when the need struck. Honestly, had I known Frill would take to them this well, I'd have laid in more.
"Regrettably, even our supply has its limits. I hope this much will satisfy you today. Next time you visit, I shall have a little more set aside just for you."
"Hmm. I suppose you have your own hardships, Master. I'll take that as a hint that you'd like me to visit more often."
Frill was stubborn, but she never flung her station about to strong-arm her way through matters like this. The girl was shrewd enough to know precisely where her whims and her fussing were best spent.
I took out one of the paper shopping bags I kept ready and packed the pads inside. Even here, a paper bag lent a far classier air than a plastic one would have—this in a land where the material called plastic was not produced at all.
I had accepted a gold coin, but there was no need to give change yet. No—change wasn't even a consideration. Lady Frill did not touch silver. Silver coins were dirty in her eyes, blackened by the hand-grease of countless commoners, and worse, a lady needed a whole pocketful of them to match a single gold piece—heavy, unwieldy cargo for someone of her station. And copper? For all she knew, it might not even exist as currency.
And above all, Lady Frill's shopping was not yet over. As I always had, my task from here was simple: keep filling that shopping bag with everything she wanted until this one gold coin had been spent down to the last coin.
"Yes—that one!"
At last, the lady stretched out her hand toward the female mannequin displayed at the center of the shop. A sexy bra and panty set in sheer mesh, using far less fabric than ordinary underwear. That's right—I had stood that up there especially for you, today's star of the show. Your two elder sisters had bought theirs and worn them home from our shop long ago. Only you were left. Today, without fail, I would talk Lady Frill into a bra and panty set—and at a price worthy of that single gold coin, too.
"I've begun my monthly courses now, so it's time I started wearing these!"
"Indeed. I sensed the hour had come regardless, so I had this prepared in advance."
"As expected of you, Master!"
"I have prepared three models. Shall we take our time and choose?"
First, I set down the mannequin dressed in the lingerie. As the figure came into view—a torso alone, no head, no limbs—the young lady looked its body over with open admiration. The mannequin had a slim, petite frame shaped almost exactly like her own.
"I truly don't know where you find such things, Master—figures shaped like real people. You startled me a little, the first time. I thought it was a human corpse cut into pieces."
"Now, how could that possibly be?"
"In a shop like this one? You very well might stock something like that."
What a frightening thing to say! We do not sell human corpses! Frill had a good nature, but perhaps because she had no enemies around her and had been raised hopelessly spoiled, discourteous remarks flowed out of her as smoothly as water. I hustled straight on to the product introduction.
"The first piece I'd like to introduce is the black set here on the mannequin. It has proper bra cups, but the fabric is what we call see-through—worn sheer, it lets a person gaze right in at the flesh beneath."
"Oh my♡"
"The design is feminine and sexy—it gives off the air of a seductress."
"A seductress... why, you're right. Men demand perfect propriety from the woman they'll marry, yet in bed they want her to carry on like the loosest back-alley seductress in the world!"
Whether she took to my choice of word or not, the lady wore a sly, wicked little smile that sat strangely on her adorable face. Thank goodness the sales patter had landed. Truthfully, "seductress" had nearly failed to come to me, and I'd almost said "whore" instead—if that had slipped out, the mood might have frozen solid.
"But there is something I'm curious about."
"And that would be...?"
"Will this really suit me?"
A question I could have predicted with my eyes closed. I answered without so much as a blink.
"This is the most fundamental of all sexy lingerie designs. It flatters any woman, and it awakens a sense of the special in men."
"Mm... though to wear this prettily, one would need a certain amount of chest, I think."
The lady slipped the bra off the mannequin and held it up against her own chest. The product was utterly to her taste—something about herself just didn't sit right. I knew that expression. Here or back in my old world, it was the same: the goods were perfect; the person who had to wear them was the problem.
I had ordered the size specially cut to Lady Frill's measurements, so it couldn't feel small on her. No—in fact it was the smallest size I carried; if even this ran big on her, I'd be in real trouble. Then she could simply buy another colorway of the development lingerie for growing girls she'd already taken home... Just in case, I did have AAA-cup bras on hand. But most of those were a universe away from sexy, and there was no way the young lady—who couldn't stand being treated like a child—would love them. She dresses herself up to be the cutest thing in creation, then hates being handled like a kid. Honestly.
"Look at this, though! A style like this suits her figure so much better!"
"A-ah, no, it doesn't!"
"With a chest as big as yours, every eye would lock straight onto the center the moment you put it on. Mine are just too... lacking, I'm afraid."
"That isn't true at all, my lady!"
Frill pressed the see-through bra against Erina's chest, exactly as she had with the mannequin. And Erina, true to form, stood there floundering, the tiny bra cupped against her enormous breasts, with no idea what she was supposed to say.
"Once a woman is wearing lingerie like this, bust size stops meaning anything. The man will want nothing more than to lay his darling down on the bed at once."
"Hmm..."
Hold on—had she actually gotten a boyfriend? Nah, no way. She was buying this purely for her own satisfaction, miffed that her sisters were wearing them without her.
"Then let me show you something else. The next piece I'd like to present is..."
The mood seemed to be sinking little by little, so I promptly brought out something different. This time, it catered to Lady Frill's tastes out in the open.