For She Was Granted to Wear Fine Linen (2)
Orihara Aoi was the sort of woman who considered herself to be living a reasonably successful life.
She had carried a fashion designer's dream out of childhood and into university, and after graduation she was still doing work that matched her major. Young as she was — only just stepped into her late twenties — she had already set up a proper shop of her own and was running the business with a handful of employees under her. Sales came in well enough. At her age, this was more than sufficient to say she had found her footing. She couldn't speak to how it looked from the outside, but she herself, at least, was satisfied.
Of course, if it were possible, she would rather have been more famous and made more money. There were people who said they were fine without money. There was surely no one who said they disliked it.
Only—
"Boss?! They're saying the second son of the Hyakurenno Group is coming to our shop?!"
"......Huh?"
—she had never, ever wanted things to take off quite like this.
"Back then, I really thought my heart was going to stop and I'd drop dead."
Orihara wore a triumphant smile and laid it on thick.
She could laugh about it now. At the time she had been in sheer panic. First she had wondered whether she'd committed some crime. Then she had wondered whether they were angling for a merger or a buyout. It had never once occurred to her that they might truly have come to have a wedding dress made.
Which was only natural. These days the shop's fame had shot sky-high as the dress shop the Hyakurennos used, but back then she had been nothing more than a lone proprietor who had only just set foot in the market.
"So why on earth did someone like that come?"
"Well... our shop's whole concept is dresses optimized for the bodies of anomalies, right? You need something that's yours alone if you're going to set yourself apart in the market."
An employee who hadn't even been there at the time had asked, and Orihara answered with a smile.
"Where was it again? Anyway, a little interview of mine ran in a magazine once. They said they came after seeing that."
"Ah... now that you mention it, was that person's wife an anomaly? I think I saw it on the news."
There had been a stretch when all of Japan was in an uproar, because one of the heirs of a house of long lineage — a first-rate conglomerate, no less — had taken an anomaly for a wife, and a Westerner at that. It was only because it was the Hyakurenno family that the match was accepted at all. Had it been any other house of the peerage, it would not have been strange if he had been driven out on the spot.
"...But in the end, didn't he divorce her? Right before he died in the act?"
"......Yeah. A rich house like that, he must have grown up gulping elixirs and eating his fill of everything, and even then he couldn't hold out."
Naturally, that had been the bigger scandal. It was the moment the second son of the Hyakurenno family — a man so flawless that people found him, if anything, hard to warm to — acquired his very first ridiculous anecdote.
Anyway, all of that was in the past now. She had suffered through it once, and in return she had gained both fame and a thriving trade: the sort of chance others might covet and never catch—
"Boss?! They're saying Apostle Han Seoyeon is coming?!"
"What."
A sharp clatter. The mug in her hand hit the floor.
"Aagh! Sorry, wipe that up for me! ...What did you just say?! Explain, right now!"
Orihara shot up from her seat with a scream. Making someone else clean up what she herself had spilled was a little much, but this was not a situation with the leisure to consider anything so minor. She stomped toward the employee who had just come running in, eyes flaring wide as she glared.
"What? Why is she coming?! No — before that, she's getting married?!"
"Y-yes. I don't think it's someone posing as her, probably..."
"Of course it isn't! What kind of crazy bitch impersonates an Apostle?! Aagh...! I thought this sort of thing ended with last time......"
Merely impersonating an Apostle's name could invite sorcerous consequences. Even setting that aside, there were not many idiots willing to do something that amounted to throwing down a challenge at the face of the Church.
Orihara Aoi raked her hair into a wild mess, then gnawed at her nails.
"Damn it... Clean, first of all! Until the floor shines! We don't have any other reservations coming in, do we?! We're not taking other customers today. Everyone, stick close! Have two or three dresses ready so she can try them on the moment she needs to!"
What was there even to look at, that a human being on the level of an Apostle would come to a shop like this? Orihara gave the orders even as she trembled. Even so, one could hardly afford to displease a monster like that.
Amid the sudden bustle, the employee wiping coffee off the floor in her boss's place watched the scene and muttered.
"...Isn't it because she handles them so well that they keep getting referred here?"
"Wow... It's incredibly clean. Just what you'd expect from a shop Miss Yuri recommended."
"It is remarkably tidy, yes."
Ninomae Hitomi, stepping into the shop, let her eyes shine with admiration. Han Seoyeon nodded and answered her.
"Wedding dresses are white as a rule, so they soil easily. Truly managing that would be too much to ask, but in spirit, at least, we keep the place clean with the thought that not a single speck of dust will be allowed to cling."
The neatly dressed woman who had come out to greet them explained it with a bright smile.
...Seoyeon could smell the faintest trace of cleaning chemicals, mostly covered over by air freshener. They had clearly scrubbed the place today. She decided not to remark on it. Even accounting for that, it could never have reached this state unless it had already been kept in decent order.
"I am Orihara Aoi, owner and chief designer of this shop."
"I have heard the name. We'll be in your care."
"Y-you've heard of me...?"
"Yes. We were searching for a shop in a hurry, and Miss Hyakurenno Yuri passed your name along. She said that when her older brother was married, he used this dress shop, and that it was very well regarded."
"A-ah, s-so that was the route......"
She had been wondering where on earth the cause of this direct blow to her composure had come from. It seemed the introduction had reached Han Seoyeon through precisely that chain.
"......Hold on. 'In a hurry'?"
"Yes. I hear one is ordinarily meant to start looking at dress shops two or three months ahead, but there isn't much time left... For now, we've fixed the ceremony for this date."
Orihara had murmured it blankly, having caught something in the remark just before. At Seoyeon's answer, she gave a small nod.
"Ah, I don't think you need to worry too much about that part. Starting from the first step with a custom order does take a while... but that is only time budgeted generously, so that we can consult with our clients often during production and take their wishes fully into account. If we truly make it quickly, we can have it finished within two weeks."
And so, she added, there was no need to worry on that score.
"Of course, that is strictly what happens when we focus on nothing but speed. Adjusting along the way to match our clients' opinions becomes difficult. So in a case like this, I personally recommend choosing a dress that is already finished. ...Miss Yoshino, would you bring me a catalog?"
She carried the explanation on, then asked the employee standing nearby to fetch the thick volume.
Where money was concerned, a custom order naturally earned far more. Shorten the deadline past the usual span, and they would pile that much extra on top. But this was a production window possible only if one clung to the work through overtime. She had done it once before. Frankly, she would pass on a second time. And so Orihara resolved to steer them, somehow, away from commissioning anything.
She could simply have refused. But wouldn't that waste such a rare and precious pair of customers? The fear that they were too exalted a clientele — too much of a burden — had only applied before they walked through the door. Once she had already begun receiving them, it no longer meant a thing.
"Wedding dresses do run expensive, so many people choose to rent rather than commission or buy. Once the ceremony is over, one hardly has occasion to wear one again... You might worry that, since it isn't made to order for you personally, it won't suit you, but in practice that isn't the case at all. Our shop keeps dresses in a truly wide variety of designs."
Compared with a custom piece, which was difficult to change midway, there was even a chance they would find something that suited them better — if they didn't like one, they could simply change into another. Saying so, Orihara opened the catalog and showed them several sample photographs.
"Besides the price, another advantage of choosing something already finished is the time you save. You said time was quite short, so I recommend this route. Once you settle on a dress you like, we only go through a fitting... that is, the procedure of adjusting it to the client's figure, so the time required is shor—"
Orihara lifted her eyes from the catalog and raised her head again. She meant to meet the customer's gaze, offer a smile, and go on to say that this, therefore, was what she recommended.
"...Mm."
But in the course of raising her gaze, an extraordinary mass called gravity into being and dragged her eyes along with it. Before she knew it, Orihara's eyeballs were rolling of their own accord.
...Is this a figure one can do anything about with mere alterations?
A cold sweat slid down the nape of her neck. No — a custom order on this timeline really would mean days of overtime.
They could fit dresses perfectly well even for brides with a little more flesh on them, the sort ordinarily called plus-size. There were several dresses designed from the start, for exactly those clients, in cuts that could conceal a heavier build. But the thought that flashed through her first was that even altering a dress aimed at plus-size customers might not be enough. This was not a matter of alterations. This was the level of splitting the bodice open and piecing in new cloth, and if that were to come out cleanly, it might fall short of a full custom order and still cost considerable labor. And once it had been remade that way, if this customer ended in a rental rather than a purchase, the dress would have to be put back to fit an ordinary figure afterward.
"U-uhm. Miss Yoshino, would you pull a few of the 'Be'-type dresses?"
"Yes, I'll go get them ready."
After a moment's fretting, Orihara managed to think of one way through. She gave the instruction to the employee who had brought the catalog, then showed them a certain page.
"Yes. How about this? At this size, I believe letting the bust out just a little would make it fit."
"Wow, they even have sizes like this."
"Yes. Of course. We keep as wide a range of dresses as we can, so that we're able to cover clients of every sort of figure."
Hitomi's eyes went wide at the sample photographs, and she marveled. Because of this large chest of hers, even buying ordinary clothes was a considerable ordeal. The sizes she could actually wear were so loose they made her look heavy, and when it came to underwear, until she found a shop she could be a regular at, she had to order nearly all of it from overseas. And yet — not even custom-made, but off the rack — there were this many sizes she might actually be able to get into?
"And the designs are all pretty, too."
It really was a shop worthy of that Yuri's recommendation. Hadn't the motto been dresses for as many different kinds of anomalies as possible? It was certainly a motto they could put forward with pride.
"...But why do you keep your hand over that part?"
"Ah — ah, yes. That's — no, it's nothing."
Then she caught Orihara with her hand planted, in a plainly awkward posture, over a corner of the page, and her head tilted. The motion looked exactly like someone trying to hide something.
"Is there something there that would be awkward if I saw it?"
She could feel that Orihara did not particularly want to show it to her. But that only made it more puzzling. If that were the case, couldn't they simply have left it out of a catalog meant to be shown to customers in the first place?
"Um, that's... uh, yes. No. It isn't awkward. ...Probably."
As Hitomi's puzzled gaze went on, Orihara at last said as much, with extreme caution. Then, slowly, she lifted her palm from the place she had been covering.
"......"
"......"
"...Mmm."
for Succubus
Brides-to-be worried about their figures can rest easy, too♡
...It was, certainly, copy a little uncomfortable to show the woman herself.
"More to the point, did you not say a moment ago that the bust would need to be let out?"
"Ah, yes, well... I do think it would need a little of that......"
"...So Hitomi has won, after all."
"What are you saying, Shion?! Won against whom?!"
"Ah. Must I spell it out?"
"Nnh...! Would you be quiet!"