Chương 360: 156.Inseparable Trio 1

The moment we stepped outside, Jess dropped into some kind of hyperactive navigation mode. It felt exactly like someone who'd finally been handed a legal permit — official license to drag two people along and do the kind of thing that would look deeply suspicious if she tried it alone. She walked point, steps light and fast, like she'd already mapped today's route into something approaching urban-legend status, glancing back every few seconds to hurry us along.

"Come on, you two, why are you walking so slow?" she called.

"Wait any longer and all the good stuff's going to get picked over." I walked along wondering whether "good stuff" meant clothes, or something better left unexplained in broad daylight.

"Let's get one thing straight," I said, arms crossed, doing my best to sound like I still had control of the situation.

"If you drag me somewhere weird today, I will bury you on the spot."

"Shimo, you need a little faith in your friends."

"The absolute maximum faith I have in you is total certainty that you will derail this."

"That's not derailing," Jess said, wounded to her core.

"That's called having taste." I was about to tell her that her taste had better not become my problem, when Maki, walking beside me, let out a quiet laugh.... She actually laughed. I couldn't help glancing over. Maki was seriously off-spec today. Not broken off-spec. Just — too much like the private, off-duty version of herself. She didn't have that usual pressure trailing her outside, the one that made the air itself feel like it was reporting to the System.

Her hair wasn't pulled back with the usual zero-tolerance precision either — just tied up loose. She was walking next to us, easy about it, and every time Jess said something ridiculous, the corner of her mouth twitched. That was dangerous. Because when Maki Kushima is just cold, just hard, just the one whose word is final, I know exactly how to needle her back. But the second she starts showing a little wicked streak of her own, my instincts start filing incident reports.

Ten minutes later, my instincts proved themselves annoyingly right, same as always. Jess stopped in front of a storefront, turned, and spread her arms like she was unveiling the ruins of a great civilization.

"Here we are." I looked up. I'll skip the store's name — the lettering alone had the kind of energy that demanded a normal person hesitate three full seconds before going in. The window display didn't help. Black, wine red, deep purple. Lace, straps, sheer panels, and a few designs that made me want to call the authorities on sight. I stood there. Silent for two seconds. Silent for two more. Then I turned to Jess.

"This is your idea of a good store?"

"Yeah. It's a lingerie shop."

"You've got the nerve to sum that up with 'lingerie'?"

"What else would you call it?" Jess blinked, all innocence.

"Structurally speaking, it still qualifies." I nearly choked to death on that logic.

"This isn't lingerie. This is—" I searched for a word civilized enough. Failed to find one. Maki stepped up beside me and followed my line of sight to the window. She didn't say let's find somewhere else. She didn't even frown.

"Let's go in and look." I whipped around.

"... You're serious?" Maki looked at me, calm as if she'd just suggested we duck into a convenience store for water.

"We're already here." We're already here. Maki. Do you understand how much you sound like an accomplice right now? Jess lit up instantly, like a black-market dealer who'd just gotten imperial sign-off.

"Exactly!" She grabbed my wrist and hauled me toward the door.

"Shimo, don't be so uptight. This is part of expanding your understanding of the world."

"Keep your understanding of the world far away from me!" Protest noted. Protest denied. One second later, I was inside anyway. The smell in the shop was a hazard. Not bad. Not cheap perfume. The kind of scent that makes you feel, on some animal level, like you shouldn't stand here too long. The lighting ran warm — deliberately warm, like every bulb had been aimed specifically to flatter fabric that would rather not be examined too closely. This text was taken from Royal Road.

Help the author by reading the original version there. The stock on the racks was organized with a neatness bordering on sinister. Sorted by category, full color runs, even the price tags seemed to whisper: Welcome. The deep end of adulthood starts right here. Three steps past the door, I hit a state where my brain was screaming for evacuation and my body refused to move, because I was not about to lose that badly in public. Get it together, Hoshino Shimo. You survived the Yukikaze.

You've seen vacuum, explosions, comms blackouts, live combat, a temporal displacement event. You are not folding here.... Though I'll admit, the pressure in this room was not meaningfully lower than certain enemy bridges I've been on. Jess had already slipped back into her natural habitat, weaving through the racks like a fish returned to water, narrating her way through the merchandise.

"This one's too mature — doesn't suit your freshly updated status."

"This one's nice, but I'm worried you'd combust from sheer embarrassment on the spot."

"Ooh, this color's tricky. Wear it wrong and you look like a villain's love interest." I wanted to correct her on three points. One: I was not planning to wear any of it. Two: even if I were, she was never going to see it. Three: why was she talking like a fitting room was already a scheduled part of today's itinerary? I was still calculating my odds of bolting for the door when Maki reached into a nearby rack and pulled something out. I caught it in my peripheral vision and nearly died where I stood.

You couldn't exactly call it short on fabric. It was more that the fabric itself seemed to have some genuine confusion about its job description. Black lace, thin straps, and an ambition that had no business anywhere near daily civilian life. Maki held it up with both hands, turned, and looked at me. Completely serious.

"What about this one?" My brain went offline for a full second.

"... What?"

"Do you think it's nice?" I stared at her. Then at the thing in her hands. Then back at her.

"Maki. Do you know what you're holding right now?"

"Yes." Her voice was calm to the point of being offensive.

"That's why I'm asking." Beside us, Jess was biting down on the back of her own hand with everything she had, her whole face broadcasting I am dying but I refuse to miss one second of this. I took a slow breath.

"It's not nice."

"No?" Maki lifted the thing a fraction, her eyes moving once between me and the fabric, and then, very slowly, delivered the finishing blow.

"I think it would suit you. Right now." I nearly left my body.

"How would that possibly suit me?!"

"The silhouette," she said. I froze. This time she didn't laugh, and she didn't soften her voice. She just looked at me like it was a matter of plain fact, her eyes clean enough — clear enough — that I couldn't fully write it off as a joke. Which meant she wasn't just talking. She was actually looking. She already knew, with total precision, that this body wasn't the one she'd known before. Hey. No. Couldn't she have the decency to play dumb for five minutes?

"Kushima," Jess finally broke, laughing hard enough to fold in half.

"That's brutal. Shimo's CPU is about to melt down."

"It already has," I said flatly.

"And it's a joint operation, courtesy of the two of you." Jess threw up both hands, showing zero remorse.

"Fine, fine. I just think, since we're here, you should broaden your horizons a little."

"My horizons do not need broadening in this direction."

"You can't live in the past forever," Jess intoned, deeply philosophical.

"That sentence has zero credibility coming from the woman who dragged me into a fetish shop." Maki reached for a second piece. Wine red this time, and the cut was worse than the first — past the question of everyday-wearable, straight into high-tier trap equipment. She studied it. Then me.

"This color's good." I didn't even want to argue anymore. I just wanted out the door.

"Are you two running a coordinated attempt to kill me today?"

"No," Jess said instantly.

"We're helping you build aesthetic standards."

"Bullshit."

"Shimo." Maki's voice dropped, low, like she meant it just for me.

"Your ears are red." My whole body locked up. My hand moved toward my ear on pure reflex. Halfway there, I caught myself — Walked right into it.

"Ma. Ki. Ku. Shi. Ma." She finally laughed. Not the barely-there twitch from before. Short. Light. Real. It loosened at the corners of her eyes, made her look years younger, and just a little — Wicked. I was done for. This was worse than when she's just being serious. Call it a foul. Jess had already collapsed against a display rack, wheezing.

"I can't — I'm dying —" she gasped, holding herself up.

"Shimo, you're too good. I knew today would pay off."

"Keep laughing and I'll bury you under this entire lace section."

"Honestly, I'd die happy."

"Your life goals are pathetic." A clerk, finally registering the disturbance at our corner, came over with a professionally trained smile to ask if we needed help. That was my breaking point.

"No thank you. We're in the wrong store." I said it with the finality of signing a withdrawal order. Jess opened her mouth to argue. Maki got there first — hanging both terrifying pieces back on the rack and giving one calm nod.

"Right. That's enough." I turned and glared at her. You admit it. You're actually admitting you were doing that on purpose. Maki met my eyes. Her expression stayed mild, but the amusement still sitting unhidden in her gaze was as good as a signed confession.

"Let's go," she said.

"Buy something you can actually wear." That, finally, sounded like human language. I let out a long breath, feeling like I'd just been dragged into an ambush with zero prep, zero tactics, and zero dignity — a full pincer movement, no less. Jess patted my shoulder with the face of a revolutionary comrade visiting the wounded.

"Rough one, Shimo."

"Shut up."

"But you really are fun to mess with."

"That's not a compliment."

"It is to me." I didn't bother arguing and just turned for the door. Maki fell in half a step behind, and as she passed, the back of her hand brushed my wrist — barely there, then gone, like an accident. Somehow that one touch was more aggravating than all the lace put together. Because I knew she was laughing at me. And I knew she'd been watching the whole time. We stepped back into ordinary daylight.

Standing under the arcade, I looked up at the sky and felt like I'd just crawled out of some kind of adults-only labyrinth alive.

"Next place," I announced, dead serious.

"If it's anything like that again, I'm cutting ties with both of you. Permanently."

"Relax," Jess said, raising a hand like she was under oath.

"Next one's a real store."

"You said this one was a good store, too."

"It is a good store. Just not the good store you needed." I sincerely hope the Federation never lets Jess anywhere near a job involving classification or recommendations. She'd get people killed. Maki, for once, took the lead without ceremony.

"I'll show the way." Those three words, and I felt half a breath of relief leave my body on pure reflex. There it was. She could spend ten minutes teaming up with Jess to fry me down to nothing, and then, with one sentence, pull the whole rhythm back onto normal rails — and I'd feel, spinelessly, grateful for it. Okay. Fine. Back to something normal now. People like that are hard not to be furious at, and also — Never mind. Doesn't matter.

I fell in step behind them, hands in my jacket pockets, doing my best to project the expression of someone who had absolutely not just had her ears go red over a rack of lace. Naturally, Jess had no intention of dropping it.

"Shimo."

"What."

"Want to be honest and admit there were one or two pieces back there you took a second look at?"

"Jess McCallow."

"Fine, fine, shutting up." She said it. Her grin didn't move an inch.

"Though I'm officially reserving my advisory rights for the next store."

"Your advisory rights were permanently revoked at the last one."

"That's unfair."

"That's called public backlash." Ahead of us, Maki actually laughed out loud this time. Quiet. Short. But I heard it. And I thought, against my better judgment, that maybe that entire social death back there hadn't been a total loss. At least — At least she'd smiled more today than usual.... Damn it. Thinking about it that way just made the last ten minutes of psychological damage feel like an even worse trade.