The sun rose bright and early, unlike Bai Chen who only awoke at 10am. The freedom of not working was both a blessing and a curse. Only getting up at eleven a.m. Bai Chen was ready to start her day.
After dressing in a maid's dress with the excuse of not wanting to be noticed in town, Bai Chen stepped out of the house with her maid. The previous night she asked the maid for her name but it seems the emotionless girl truly had none.
"Miss, to Ben's Tailoring first?" the maid lagging behind asked to which Bai Chen nodded with glee.
The clothing she was wearing right now wasn't bad but it still wasn't suitable for her body type. Too much chest space... She reassured herself that Lily was only what? Thirteen? Fourteen? It was fine.
If she could just find out more about this world's fashion industry and production it would be perfect to make her own clothes.
The two got in the carriage, something that Bai Chen loathed by now. It wad by no means like a car. Bai Chen looked back in weeping over how much advantage she took of smooth roads. Heck! If her last life's roads were like a baby's cheeks then this was her old acne!
"Miss, if you would like we can take a break."
Bai Chen could already see the town in the distance and reassured herself that she could at least make it that far.
Once they had arrived Bai Chen's face had already turned an ashy green colour from the ride. She regretted her determination previously and was fortunate to not have just drenched her clothes in vomit.
To be honest, riding the carriage previously on her way home was easy. It was like she teleported from town to town but the sun kept rising and falling. It was probably an in-game cut scene or something, but either way it was helpful. Unlike now, when the game had officially ended, now she had to suffer the experience of actually being in a carriage.
Knowing the heroine's previous privilege, Bai Chen couldn't help but just slightly mourn the end of the game, just a tiny bit. Now she couldn't zoom her way around. It was more than mildly disappointing. The only other experience she had of riding a carriage was into her own estate and it was a mortifying experience in a similar fashion. She had hoped this ride would be similar but that was all for naught.
Hobbling onto the ground and stabilizing herself, Bai Chen gripped her knees and keeled over. Fortunately nothing came out. Her pale face started to regain its previous radiance and she looked up at the store in front of her. It was prettily decorated with cream coloured bricks and with black accents here and there. The black door swung open in a timely manner as a man wearing a black suit and monocle walked out. He must have been at least in his sixties with bushy eyebrows and a mustache, one of which covering his eyes while the other covered his mouth.
The man who looked like a stereotypical butler raised a brow in curiosity, showing the slim glint of one of his eyes. It was bizarre seeing two maids leave a carriage, especially without the supervision of their master or mistress. The poised man left his surprise at the door, merely standing to the side of the door and leaving it open for the two girls.
Bai Chen went up the stairs and thanked the man in a wary but cheerful manner, trying to not show how sick she was. It was like her face was crinkled into a smirk. Bai Chen's eyebrows were so tense that it was like a pug's forehead, and the man looked away in distaste. She was wasting away her looks completely. She strode in as her perfunctory smile faded and her maid followed.
Inside the store were many dresses, mostly of British 50s style. Fortunately their colour range exceeded only pastels. There was one dress that Bai Chen eyed in particular. It was a strapless corset-like top with a white plaid skirt and black lining on the hem. Nothing other than that was particularly striking.
She walked up to the register and asked, "Excuse me, can I please talk to your designer?" Bai Chen considered getting that dress as a base then adding some colour through shoes and accessories.
The lady nodded and went to through the door leading to the back. As she thought Bai Chen was a maid there was no way she was going to let her into the store's designing studio. Bai Chen was left to wait for only five minutes before a man walked through the door. He held himself poorly with his clothes unironed, two buttons missing from his shirt and scraggly curly brown hair. It reminded Bai Chen of her dog from her previous life. She dearly missed Betsy. What a shame she could never see the dorky little brown water dog again...
However the similarities ended there. Beneath the man's untinted glasses were obvious eye bags and he smelled deeply of body odour. Simply enough, he stunk. Bai Chen tried to ignore the ghastly smell only to fail, in the end wincing as she spoke, "Hello. You are Ben I presume?" She asked.
"No." His short response was both quiet and unenthusiastic.
"Then what's your name?"
"ergvlgerlnodgLNO."
"Excuse me?" Bai Chen thought she heard incorrectly. All she could assume was that the game developer's had given up game wise and just smashed their heads onto the keyboard. She had no clue how to pronounce that name.
"My name is ergvlgerlnodgLNO. The LNO at the end are capital letters." He said almost proudly as he spoke up.
Bai Chen was flabbergasted. How was she supposed to say his name when she couldn't even hear it right? Moreover she didn't even realise there was L's in his name.
"...Okay... sir." In the end she gave up. "My name is Bai Chen and I was hoping for some custom outfits." She convinced her maid Bai Chen would be her code name on this mission.
"Of course. What type of clothing would you like?"
Pulling some sketches out of her back pack Bai Chen gave a handful of papers to ergvlgerlnodgLNO.