To Her It Was Granted to Wear Fine Linen (4)
"I... this really is too much, isn't it? I don't think it suits me at all..."
Han Seoyeon muttered it in a rare show of hesitation, turning her head for a glance at the shoulder and back left wholly bare. The moment skin she usually kept covered met the air, a shiver prickled through her. The exposure was considerable enough on its own, and the skirt besides spilled and trailed as though it belonged on a princess out of a fairy tale.
For all the resistance she had shown, Han Seoyeon had ended up in a wedding dress after all. Given the difference in physical ability, she could have refused if she had truly meant to resist... but Hitomi had wanted this, and that left her no choice. Turning down something the other woman genuinely desired was, by Seoyeon's way of thinking, an act she simply could not accept.
She stood there in an awkward half-pose, cheeks flushed an uncharacteristic pink, and Hitomi stared at her in a daze—lips parted, as if her soul had slipped a little loose.
"...Shion."
Only after that awkward air had hung between them for a long while did Hitomi speak.
"I—I'm really sorry to say this, but..."
"Yes. I'm well aware it doesn't suit me."
She had opened with an apology, as though she meant to point out how poorly the outfit suited her, and Seoyeon nodded in what looked like complete agreement.
"No. That's not it... Would it be all right if I licked your back? Just once?"
"...Pardon?"
She had been nodding along, of course—right up until the words that followed froze her where she stood. Hitomi wiped a thread of saliva from the corner of her mouth and let another note of pure wonder slip free.
"Wow... your back muscles are seriously incredible, though..."
Eyes locked entirely on that back, Hitomi closed the distance step by step. It wasn't muscle built into something bulky and crude. Set against smooth skin, the taut spring of it was obvious even to the eye alone.
"Even so, this is someone else's establishment. Licking is out of the question."
Whatever she had taken Hitomi's approach to mean, Seoyeon said it with her brow drawn tight, plainly at a loss.
"At the very least, not unless we've gone home first..."
"No, I mean, that was a joke."
As if to insist there was no way she would actually do such a thing here, Hitomi puffed out her cheeks. It had only been a way of saying Seoyeon was attractive enough that the words had escaped on their own.
"Was it?"
Only then did Seoyeon let out a breath, plainly relieved, and Hitomi's expression grew all the more sulky for it. Would she really let desire sweep her off and do something like that with other people watching? And yet a worried reaction meant Seoyeon had taken her for exactly that sort of person, didn't it?
"If that's how it is, then I'm glad... hngh?!"
As if to give that grievance an outlet, Hitomi swept her fingers up the offending bride-to-be's back without warning. The fingertips riding the line of her spine delivered precisely the pleasant feel she had expected. From the one on the receiving end, of course, that wholly unanticipated sensation drew out a rather adorable little cry.
"H-Hitomi?!"
"You're the bad one, Shion. You looked at me like I was some kind of pervert, so what else was I supposed to do?"
Even after tracing up the groove of her spine, Hitomi didn't take her fingers away. She shifted them toward the shoulder blades and stroked slow circles there, and the oddly ticklish sensation made Seoyeon's shoulders draw in just a little.
"I saw a saying like that on the Korean internet once, you know? If someone dislikes you for no reason, give them a reason to dislike you. It's basically the same thing."
If Shion was going to look at her with eyes like that, then she had no choice but to act this way. Hitomi said it with a bright, easy smile.
"Ah."
"Hitomi."
A moment later Seoyeon leveled a slight glare her way, then turned sharply and caught both of Hitomi's wrists in a firm grip.
Had it been any ordinary person, that alone might have thrown them into a panic. Hitomi, though, knew perfectly well that Seoyeon would never harm her, and so she went right on grinning. If one had to say, she was even wiggling the fingers that still held the lingering sensation, looking faintly put out about having to stop.
Seoyeon had no intention of doing anything Hitomi would dislike, either. Leaving things as they were, however, struck her as considerably insolent, so she bent a little at the waist, brought her face to Hitomi's ear, and whispered.
"Once we're home... we'll settle this tonight."
At that strange threat tickling her ear, a sweet breath slipped out from between Hitomi's lips.
A moment later, at that close range, their eyes met. It was the look of someone who didn't know what to do with herself—frightened, anxious about what lay ahead—and yet it was easy to see that a faint anticipation had settled in those eyes as well.
Then Hitomi leaned forward and nestled fully into Seoyeon's arms, setting her fingers against Seoyeon's side and drawing slow circles there. Unlike the deliberate, mischievous tickling from a moment ago, this was closer to a little cat that had finished being scolded, pressing close to offer a light bit of affection.
"Come to think of it, haven't you seen my back any number of times already?"
Seoyeon asked, as if the question had suddenly occurred to her. Even considering only the times they were intimate, they were naked more often than not. And even aside from that, Hitomi must have seen her back plenty of times while they were changing.
"No, that's completely different. Being bare because you're not wearing a top at all, versus having just your back emphasized like this!"
"Is it different?"
"Mm... about as different as being fully naked versus underboob fashion."
"Even if you put it that way..."
"Then it's about as different as bare feet versus open-toe stockings."
"That one is certainly different."
"Why did you get it from the stocking comparison and not the chest one?"
She had offered the comparison thinking this, at least, would make her understand—and the fact that it actually had left her feeling strangely off. So she poked Seoyeon's side two or three times before finally slipping out of her arms.
"Anyway, let's change into the next one. It's rude to keep the staff waiting any longer."
"Wouldn't it be all right if I changed back into what I had on?"
"Do you think it would?"
"...I'll look around for what to try on next."
And with that, the two of them began choosing the next dress to try.
"......"
Orihara Aoi had been watching all of it from a short distance away.
"Boss."
"What."
"You're thinking two women in wedding dresses getting handsy is secretly a pretty good scene, aren't you."
"How'd you know? You an anomaly?"
"I've been watching you for years. What you're thinking is obvious."
"Little snide, isn't that? ...Whatever. Go help them pick a dress."
It is a common enough thing, in shopping, to find one piece you like and still look through the rest, telling yourself there might be something that suits you even better. And coming back, after all that rummaging, to the very first choice as your final decision is probably just as common.
So Orihara Aoi paid their decision little mind. The shop had made something of a name for itself since the Hyakuren incident, and the customers she had watched come through since then were hardly one or two. They had paid a fitting fee to begin with, on the condition of trying on a set number of dresses within a set amount of time. So long as they didn't go past that limit, it was the customer's right.
And yet... even a professional like Orihara could not hold back her astonishment in this particular moment. She looked down at her own hands.
What they held was a measuring tape—one of the few the shop kept on hand, spares included. Not an industrial tape of metal, of course, but a thin, soft one meant for sewing. It existed to take a customer's measurements, and she was using it for exactly that even now. The procedure was long familiar to both eye and hand.
Even so...
"...I-I've never seen this number before."
Where the tape had come full circle and crossed itself, the figure written beneath the mark felt badly short of real.
"At least, never on an actual human being."
"Mmm... I do hear now and then that it's a size you'd only find in a manga."
The subject of the measurement—Hitomi, that is—flushed a little with embarrassment, but she still chimed in with the mutter. She was used to being told her size was unrealistic, if nothing else.
"No. Not manga. More the game side of things..."
"Yes?"
"Flames of— no, never mind. Don't worry about it. Anyway, you're the first among humans."
Orihara had started to say something and then taken it back. She scratched at her cheek.
"You mean there have been some among anomalies? A succubus, then."
"No. I'm only speaking of the bust measurement by itself. There was an oni, once, who came out around this size."
Of course, that number had only held because the body in question was large overall. In bra terms, both the top bust and the underbust had been substantial, so the final cup size hadn't been all that large... that sort of customer.
So if I simply convert it into cup sizes...
A, B, C, D... Orihara balled both hands into fists, and only then realized the counting might come off as rude to the customer, so she stopped. She cleared her throat, loosened the tape she had drawn snug, took up the pen set beside her, and copied the measurement onto the clipboard.
"Boss, I'm finished measuring over here."
"Ah, yeah. Right. Leave it there. Mark the name clearly in the corner so they don't get mixed up."
In the meantime, the employee who had been taking Han Seoyeon's measurements came over, a sheet of paper fluttering in hand. Orihara wrote the name Ninomae Hitomi on her own notes as well. This particular size could have been picked out at a glance even if it got mixed in with the other customers', but writing down a name was hardly any trouble, and there was no particular reason not to.
"I'll continue with the measurements, then."
"U-um. The thing is, I'm not human either, actually. So I don't think I'm the largest among the humans you've measured... I don't think that's right."
"Ah, is that so?"
Hitomi said it all at once, as if that earlier remark had still been sitting with her. A succubus, Orihara could have understood, but she didn't think becoming a vampire came with symptoms like breast enlargement, so it hardly seemed to make a difference.
No—do vampires come with some separate bonus in that department, too?
Then she remembered, abruptly, that the bride the Second Prince had brought into the shop had also been a vampire, and her expression turned complicated. Perhaps she simply didn't know, and vampires these days all had their sexual attributes enhanced.
Well, this one's partner was an Apostle, so there was no need to worry about that. Orihara soon cut the stray thought loose and decided to focus on measuring the rest.
...The possibility that the woman before her was someone who had died in the middle of sex was a thought she could not have reached, no matter how she tried.