Granted to Wear Fine Linen (3)
"Yes. Then let's have you look around first, and try a few on."
Orihara Aoi guided the two of them farther into the shop.
White dresses hung in numbers from mannequins and racks alike, and Han Seoyeon took in the sight with open admiration.
"Succubus..."
"Still dwelling on that?"
Hitomi was murmuring as if she had yet to climb out of the shock, and the sight pulled an involuntary chuckle from Seoyeon. Hitomi, hearing it, shot her a sharp glare—though there wasn't a trace of venom in it. Seoyeon simply drew her in by the shoulder and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
"...Ehe."
That alone was enough to melt Hitomi's face into a dopey grin. Being slapped, out of nowhere, with a rating of succubus-class had certainly thrown her, but when she actually thought about it, it wasn't unpleasant. If anything, she could take it as a compliment.
Once, they had been nothing but an inconvenience—lumps of fat whose only talent was dragging other people's eyes. These days, though... ever since she had started streaming, and since she had met Han Seoyeon, that thinking had shifted. When viewers gushed over her chest on the community boards—during a broadcast itself, almost no one dared mention it, too afraid of a ban—she felt embarrassed, and yet a strange pride as well. More than anything, they were a woman's weapon more overwhelming than anyone else's, and one she could use to appeal to her lover.
The one small disappointment was that Seoyeon's tastes ran, if anything, more toward the lower body than the upper. Only comparatively, of course. In bed, she was always all over them regardless.
"Sh-Shion, which of the dresses do you like?"
Afraid she might be caught reminiscing about something indecent, Hitomi cleared her throat and hurried to change the subject. Strictly speaking, it was less a change of subject than a return to the conversation they were meant to be having.
At the question, Seoyeon considered for a moment before she spoke.
"I can't claim any particular eye for these things, so I hesitate to speak carelessly... but those two over there are out, at the very least."
"Those? ...Ah."
Hitomi followed the gesture, and color rose at once in her cheeks. The dresses Seoyeon had indicated were cut with enormous openings over the chest.
Hitomi's size already constrained what she could wear. Unless a piece was made to order, she often ended up either in something cut very loose, or in styles that bared the upper chest and asked less of the measurements. Even she, somewhat accustomed to that, thought these went too far. They weren't merely an off-the-shoulder line carried a little lower. Someone had simply punched a hole straight through the middle—a heart shape far too blatant to pass off as a designer's aesthetic flourish. Only then did she remember what sort of anomaly these garments had been made for.
"Mm. At least the rest are normal designs. That's a relief..."
She said it while doing her best to scrub the dresses she had just seen from her memory. A wedding, and they wore that? Her estimation of succubi—a species she had never so much as met—plummeted on the spot.
"E-even among our succubus clients, only a tiny minority wear something like that. And of those, about half don't buy them for the ceremony at all. They wear them only in the bedroom, in front of their spouse."
"Ah... I see."
Orihara may have said it in defense of succubi and their honor, but the faint contempt lingering in Hitomi's eyes did not entirely fade. If the dresses were displayed as ready-to-wear rather than made to order, the shop itself had already judged there was some demand. And if half of them had been bought by wealthy demons purely for play, then the other half really did wear things like that at the venue. Once that existed in any meaningful proportion, they were quite beyond saving. That the words never made it past her throat was due entirely to Hitomi's own good nature.
"Then, is there anything you like among the rest? Going purely on instinct is perfectly fine."
"Mm... then how about this one?"
After the briefest consideration, Han Seoyeon chose a dress hanging on a mannequin. The time spent thinking was short, but the choice was not a careless one. With Seoyeon's eye, poring over every detail would not have told her which was better anyway. Better, just as Hitomi had said, to go entirely on instinct—to pick whichever one tugged at her a little more the instant she saw it.
"All right. Then... could I try this one on?"
"Of course. —Take this, and help our guest get dressed!"
A member of the staff arrived at once to assist and led Hitomi off to the fitting room. Watching her go, Han Seoyeon spoke.
"Now that I think about it, a dress like that can't be easy to put on."
"It isn't. So unless you've already arranged someone else, on the wedding day of any guest who buys or rents a dress from us, one of our staff will go and help them dress."
"That is certainly a relief."
No struggling to squeeze into the gown on the day of the wedding itself, then. Seoyeon nodded, turning the thought over privately, and looked around while she waited for Hitomi to change.
"There are more kinds of dresses than you might expect, aren't there?"
Watching Seoyeon take in the gowns arranged here and there, Orihara smiled and addressed her. Han Seoyeon nodded once more as she answered.
"Yes. The designs are surprisingly varied. I've never really paid them any attention before."
To begin with, the number of weddings Seoyeon had attended even as a guest converged on zero, and even in those vanishingly rare cases she had never examined the finer points of a wedding dress. Seen like this, though—lace set here, the fall of a pleat there—each one gave off a feeling all its own.
"While the bride is getting into the dress, please feel free to look at the others. I'll bring tea."
"Ah... how long does it usually take to put one on?"
"Most guests manage four or five in an hour. A single dress takes about ten to fifteen minutes."
Four dresses to an hour. At those words, Han Seoyeon's eyes opened a fraction wider. Meeting that gaze, Orihara's shoulders twitched for an instant, but she did her best not to show it and went on.
"Most people set aside a day and look through two to four shops that way. We even offer a benefit if you make the rounds first and then come back to choose your dress here the same day."
"...Is it all right for you to tell me that others visit other shops as well?"
"It's the bare minimum of business ethics. Hiding information from a customer just to squeeze out a little more profit would be wrong."
She shrugged at Seoyeon's question as if it were obvious.
"And because I'm confident that even if you go elsewhere, you'll choose our dresses in the end."
"You really are someone worthy of Miss Yuri's recommendation."
"You flatter me."
Yes. It is flattery. Orihara muttered as much inwardly. In truth, the claim that they would come back even after going elsewhere was pure bluster. There was no right or wrong in aesthetic sense, and choosing a dress came down, in the end, to the customer's own taste. Still, she did possess a certain arrogance(?)—the sort that went, even so, when it comes to designing dresses, aren't I just a tiny bit better than those other people?—and so she decided to let it pass.
"Um... Shion."
They had been passing the time in conversation when Hitomi's voice came from behind her.
"Hitomi."
"Ah, don't turn around yet! I want to show you the whole thing all at once, the first time you see it."
"Yes. That was my intention, so you may rest easy."
The moment Seoyeon answered, Hitomi startled and caught her face in both hands, locking it straight ahead. She had meant to present herself with a proper ta-da, and if Seoyeon whipped her head around and looked too soon, how deflating would that be? Seoyeon understood perfectly well, and so she offered no resistance; she simply sat still and upright. Had she meant to see the sight at once even against Hitomi's will, she would have done so the moment the scent of her approach reached her.
She held her gaze steady and waited, and then—
"S-so...? How is it? I don't look strange, do I?"
For all her talk of revealing herself in a single stroke, the woman who came shuffling shyly forward rather undercut her own words. Wrapped from head to toe in pure white, Hitomi fidgeted with her fingers and looked at Seoyeon through a flushed face.
She might dress loosely in everyday life because of her figure, but that was only a matter of the upper body. Like most people these days, she almost never went about in a skirt this voluminous—voluminous to the point of being a little inconvenient. The unfamiliar attire only made her stand out more. It wasn't that she lacked charm to begin with, but a look unlike her usual one brought out an appeal of an entirely different kind.
"What? No—what are you even saying..."
"Ah. Forgive me. The words slipped out."
Her mouth had simply moved on its own. Hearing it, Hitomi grew shy enough to wind a lock of hair around her finger and twirl it. For all the grumble in her voice, the little twitch at the corner of her mouth suggested she thought it a rather fine compliment.
"Look me over properly."
Hitomi laughed softly, then turned in a slow circle so Seoyeon could see all of her. The hem lifted lightly with the spin, then settled again.
"Um, Shion? Your staring is a little frightening, you know. Do you like it that much?"
"If I could see something like this, even two weddings might be worth having... that is the thought that occurs to me."
"I'm saying you're making far too much of a fuss."
Before Seoyeon quite noticed, Hitomi had come right up to where she sat on the sofa and tapped her shoulder as if in rebuke. It was a light touch, closer to a pout than a scolding.
"And what does Hitomi think of it?"
"My chest is definitely a bit squeezed..."
There was a mirror in the fitting room, but it was smaller than the one out here. After turning this way and that to study her reflection, Hitomi looked down at the flesh that seemed ready to spill free at any moment. It wasn't conspicuous enough to be obvious, but the pressure across her chest was rather severe. Because Seoyeon liked it, she wasn't letting that show—but it was quietly uncomfortable.
"It takes quite a while, so we should just take a photo and move straight on to the next dress."
"Ah—as for a photo... no. Once you've chosen the next one, just let me know."
In principle, the shop forbade photographs of any dress currently being tried on. Orihara, however, had decided that as of today that rule did not exist. These were customers who could buy the entire shop if they felt like it; what was the point of fussing over a thing like this? More than that, she didn't have the courage to say so.
"Oh, this one's pretty. I think it would suit Shion, too... though the size might be a problem."
Drawing closer to a dress on a mannequin and looking it over, Hitomi murmured as much. These were pieces set aside in measurements close to her own, so even with the most aggressive alterations they would likely sit awkwardly on Han Seoyeon. Taking the size down somehow was possible, but reduce it that far and the balance of the design would fall apart.
"I'll ask whether they have a similar design among the ones for humans."
Simply giving up and moving on felt like a waste, and so that was what she said. Hearing it, though, Han Seoyeon stared at her blankly.
"Why are you looking for a dress that would suit me?"
"Huh? No. You have to wear a dress too, Shion."
"I beg your pardon?"
A brief silence. Their gazes crossed in the empty air and missed each other.
"No, I was planning to find a tuxedo somewhere and wear that..."
"That's basically the same as the suits you wear every day, isn't it? Since it's a special day anyway, wouldn't it be better to wear a wedding dress?"
Even at that, Han Seoyeon only looked troubled.
"To begin with, clothes that flutter about like this don't suit me very well."
Clothes suited some people and not others. That was why it mattered to consider each person's features, and to choose a fashion that brought out their strengths or offset their weaknesses.
"...Right. I've changed my mind. I'll drop the plan of putting this one on you, Shion."
At those words Hitomi nodded, as though she had been persuaded.
"Yes. I'm glad you've thought it thr—"
"I understand perfectly."
"...Hitomi?"
No—something about the reaction was wrong. An Apostle's instinct took it upon itself to walk Seoyeon one step backward.
"Shion. Just now, you said the one thing you must never say when someone is choosing clothes."
Hitomi lifted her head and met her eyes. Interest bright enough to make her pupils sparkle mingled, in a single gaze, with the look of someone thoroughly offended.
A moment later, hundreds of bats began pouring from every inch of Hitomi's body.