She removed it from its hanger and hesitantly pulled it on. It matched the dress nicely. The fit was close, and she sported a distinctly feminine silhouette. She tried not to be embarrassed about that as she opened the door.
Akane beamed at her. That gave Yumi a surge of confidence, like a flower rising high into the sky. One of the attendants had stayed, and this woman nodded thoughtfully and seemed approving as well.
Behind the two of them, Painter stood up straight, gawking at her. He probably thought she looked silly, as he knew the type of clothing she should be wearing.
“That is wonderful,” Akane said. “We’re getting that one for sure. But here, try on the others! You have to see this pink one…”
Akane stepped in and dug through the dresses to find a specific choice. Yumi raised her chin and met Painter’s eyes. He was still staring at her. Well, for once she didn’t care if she looked improper. The spirits had demanded a lot of her these last few days.
It was blasphemous, but she had decided it was time for her to demand something in return. She wanted possessions for the first time in her life. So it was that an hour later, she trotted out of the store wearing the blue dress and clutching a package containing two other outfits of slightly different styles. Hers. Actually hers. Granted, she wouldn’t be able to bring them back to her land, where her life—once this was over—would go back to the way it always was.
For now, she got to live a dream. That almost made all of this chaos worth it. And as she walked home with Akane, she noticed something else. No one was staring at her anymore.
Painter had been right, she realized with amazement. No one here knew what she was. No one here cared. Now that she wasn’t dressed in such ridiculous clothing, now that she fit in, she was just…normal.
It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her.
“All right,” Akane said, stopping outside the apartment building. “I need to get ready for work. The foreman throws a fit if I go painting in a miniskirt. You have food? Upstairs?”
“Um…” Yumi said. “Technically it counts as food.”
“Uh-huh. Come back to the lobby in ten minutes. I’m meeting friends for lunch before shift at a noodle shop nearby. You’ll join us.”
“I’m being too much of a burden,” Yumi said, lowering her head.
“You? A burden?” Akane laughed. “Please, Yumi. You’re not going to deny me the chance to show off my fashion pupil to my friends, are you?”
Nearby, Painter was shaking his head urgently. That, mixed with her growling stomach, was the decider.
“Of course I’ll go with you,” Yumi said. “Let me go drop these things off at my brother’s room.”
“What’s a noodle shop?” Yumi asked, arranging her new outfits on the floor.
“Place where you can pay,” Painter explained, “and people bring you food.” He lingered in the doorway, watching her. It was surreal how a simple outfit change made her seem like she belonged. All of a sudden he could picture her here, in his life.
“People bring you food,” she said. “You don’t have to make it yourself?”
“No.”
“Do they…feed you?”
Why did she sound hopeful? “No,” he said. “You need to do that part on your own.”
“Well, as long as I don’t have to make it,” she said, hands on her hips as she surveyed the clothing she’d laid out.
“You’re just going to leave it there?” he asked.
She hesitated, then glanced at him. “Is there…another place where it should go?” She looked at the heaps of clothing.
“Closet,” he said, gesturing, “has hangers and a rod.”
“Oh!” She walked over. “How clever! Your people think of so many interesting things.”
“I…suspect your people have closets, Yumi,” he said.
She cocked her head. “I guess maybe they do. I’ve never been inside another person’s home.” She began hanging the clothes. “Is there money here somewhere I can use at the noodle shop?”
“In the can on the counter,” he said. “But Yumi, I don’t think you should go. So far we’ve been lucky. Akane hasn’t asked too many questions, and hasn’t noticed the oddities about you. But the longer you spend around people, the more dangerous it gets.”
“Dangerous?” she said. “Getting clothing? Eating dinner?”
“Someone’s bound to ask questions you can’t answer,” he said. “They might start poking around, getting suspicious. Eventually someone will find out I don’t have a sister. Then things start getting awkward.”
“This is why lies are bad,” she said, shutting the closet doors. “We should have told them the truth at the start.”
“Oh? And how did it go telling Liyun the truth? And telling the foreman about the nightmare? How well did that work?”
“These mistakes are due to our inadequacy,” she said. “We should try again, presenting Liyun with the truth in a more convincing way.”
“No,” he said. “She’ll just think we’ve decided to make her life terrible for some reason.”
Yumi averted her eyes.
“It could be even worse here, if you tell the truth,” he said. “They’ll demand proof you can’t provide. What if they think you’re insane? Or that you’ve killed me?”
She looked at her feet. “I thought…maybe the other painters could help me. Figure out what I’m supposed to do. It sounded…nice to talk to them.”
“That group?” Painter snorted. “They’re too exclusive for people like us, Yumi. You might be a novelty to them now, but they’ll drop you as soon as something more interesting comes along. Trust me.”
“Akane is nice. You said she was nice to you.”
“She was. At first.” He turned away, not wanting to think about those times.
Yumi was quiet for a moment, then retrieved the money and brushed past him, heading toward the stairs. “I want to do it anyway.”
A second later, he was yanked after her. That aspect of this was extremely unfair. How was it that he got bullied by her when he was physical, but then he ended up being pulled along like a dog on a leash when she was the one with the body?
They met Akane below, now in a simpler outfit of slacks and a blouse. Not exactly what he’d call painting gear, but it was as dressed down as she got. Akane led Yumi around the corner to the Noodle Pupil, and Painter followed sullenly. He couldn’t have said what made him want to avoid this place. Perhaps it was the way that Akane had adopted Yumi so easily. Reminded him of how easily he’d been dropped.
Not that he could, in all honesty, blame them.
He felt better though when they stepped into the restaurant. The place was familiar, and even without a body he could smell the warm scents of broth and green onions. In here, the clatter of bowls and utensils felt somehow softer than it did in other restaurants.
Akane hung her oversized painter’s bag on the arm of the statue in the front of the shop, the one that （in case you’ve forgotten） contained the body of an exceedingly bored storyteller. At least the eggs were gone by that point.