The shop was located not far from The Morpheus. Once inside , the girls was happily admiring the fabrics shown by the friendly shopkeeper went by name Martha. While the extravagant Lily was perusing through heaps of drapes and lace for gowns intended to be used by the girls at the brothel, Bertha and Gwen, on the other hand, was determined to get Charlotte something different from her usual uniform.
"Let's try something new. A green coloured dress perhaps?" Said the cheerful barmaid
" No. I think I'm fine with this gray ones. It looks like one of my uniform" Charlotte gazed lovingly at the gray coloured dress. Of course it looks more beautiful than her basic maid uniform, but it was the closest one to her uniform out of all dresses on the ready-made rack.
"It's no fun. We want to see you wearing something different" Bertha sounded almost whining trying to persuade her to change her mind.
"No. I like this one" Once she got her mind on something, Charlotte would not let that one thing to escape from her clutch. Wait a minute, why did she sound so malicious here?
Knowing that the petty argument about her choice of fashion with her new friends would not cease anytime soon, Charlotte hurriedly handed the dress to the shopkeeper.
"Miss, I'll buy this one"
Ignoring Bertha and Gwen's complaints, Charlotte happily turned her head toward Lily.
"Have you found what you want Lily?"
The stunning Lily huffed and puffed in unsatisfactory. She had annoyance written all over her face.
"No. The girls at the house already have this laces and drapes. I need something more current, something more updated...." The exasperated girl fiddled with the abundance of fabrics that laid scattered in front of her.
"You would not find current fabrics in this store. What's inside this store is two or three months later than the ones sold to the upper class ladies." Gwen - who was working as a tailor- whispered quietly to both of them.
"Do you know where to get the latest fabric in this area?" Lily whispered back at the young tailor.
"I know of a place. It just around the corner but just a bit isolated"
" I heard that" The shopkeeper who was wrapping Charlotte's new dress interjected .
All four of them went silent as they were caught talking about going to other boutique in a dress shop.
The shopkeeper handed Charlotte's purchased to her before reprimand all of them.
"I know young girls like the lots of you loved to explored new places, but be careful. We had new cases of missing children in the area and it was terrible"
"We are not kids. I am already sixteen" Bertha responded impertinently. She sounded almost offended to be treated like kids by Martha.
"Sixteen or not, all of you are young , unmarried girls. It's dangerous to go to any place that you are not familiar with" the shopkeeper scowled at Gwen.
"May I know about these missing kids? Why haven't I heard anything about them?" Charlotte's curiosity piques when she first heard of the shopkeeper mentioning about these missing kids.
" Well, there were several cases of missing kids around this area since two weeks ago. A lot of orphan kids on the streets went missing from the slum. But it doesn't get any attention from the authority even when the numbers spiked to almost twenty of them." the shopkeeper spouted the words with apparent disgust.
"Why did the authority turned a blind eye on these missing kids cases?"
"Because they were just orphan who lived in the slum! No one cares about them and it was much more convenient for the authority to dismiss the missing orphans case as runaways" The shopkeeper seemed to be carried away with her own emotion while telling them the story.
"So,there's no action is taken to search for the children?"
"Not until last night. This time, it was the daughter of a butcher who went missing. Now , the authority was on the move to search for all these missing kids. But I guess it was too late for some of them"
"Why?"
"Because it had been two weeks! No kidnapper wanted to take care of these orphans for two weeks"
"Why, you are so confident that they were kidnapped. These kids might as well really run away to some other place" Bertha try to argue with the shopkeeper.
"And furthermore, who in their right mind wanted to kidnap these orphans, they would not get anything by doing so" the chatty Bertha continued voicing out her thoughts without realizing that the shopkeeper was fuming with anger at her thoughtless words.
Realizing that this may turned into an unwanted altercation, Gwen and Lily hurriedly pushed Bertha out of the shop to while she was still making remarks about the shopkeeper's kidnapper theory.
Meanwhile, Charlotte was paying for her dress when the shopkeeper suddenly stuck her face close to hers.
"I warned you, do not go to obscured place that you are not familiar with" the close proximity between both of them made Charlotte felt uncomfortable. She nodded her head vigorously before flying out of the shop.
"What's taking so long to pay for the dress?"
"Ahahahah nothing" Charlotte did not want to prolonged her uneasiness about being alone with the shopkeeper.
"Where are we going after this" She tried to steer the conversation.
"Ahhh…because Lily insisted to buy new and updated fabrics. We decided to go to the dress shop that I mentioned earlier" Gwen chimed in.
"isn't that place was quite isolated?"
"It's ok. We are not kids and they are four of us. We would not go missing!" Linking her arms around Charlotte's , Bertha excitedly drag the hesitating Charlotte to follow them to the new boutique.