[Sdiha Lunaasha]
I couldn't help but sigh as soon as I read the profile. There was a reason why Yves had tried to avoid them. The designer just had to be one of his many siblings. I was about to tell him that if it made him uncomfortable, I could choose another designer but Yves had already finished contacting them and was getting ready to head out.
"Shuraina. You don't have any clothes to go out in, right? The clothes you wore when you came over are in the washer right now."
Yves had a very light expression of guilt as he held Shuraina's hand and dragged her into a room. The room was filled with dressers full of clothes. They were all women's clothes. They were all incredibly small, all made to fit Shuraina's body. It seemed that Yves had organized it all–they were all color coded and organized by type.
"….do you like crossdressing?"
Yves' brows furrowed lightly at my words.
"These are all your clothes. I put all of the gifts that you refused from me in here."
"Ah….. Aha. You could've just returned it."
"I bought all of them thinking that they'd suit you. Just imagining someone else wearing it makes me sick."
"..."
I had refused every single gift from Yves except for the ones that seemed to be made with care and effort but for him to have collected everything here like this. I had thought that I had accepted quite a lot, but seeing this made me realize that I had refused more. I knew that Yves considered money to just be hunks of metal and paper, but he really spent a lot of it. Although I was more surprised by how little he spent on himself.
"There's another room. Do you want to go see? That's where I put all the shoes and accessories. Try them all."
"….whoa."
Shuraina was taken aback but tried to match Yves' excited energy and tried them all on.
But Shuraina found it cumbersome to take the clothes on and off constantly, so she decided to just layer on dozens of clothes and put on thirty or so accessories and stood in front of Yves.
Shuraina changed into pretty and neat clothes that Yves had picked for her as she held his hand and walked out into the street. On their way out, Yves was quite nice to Shuraina. If she glanced at a street food, he stopped and bought everything in the stall, and if there was something that Shuraina looked at, he bought that item for her.
Shuraina stared at the rose-scented soap set in her hands. She also found herself staring at a doll set that she had just stared at because of how beautiful the display had been.
"No. I was just staring at the vendor who was just eating a delicious looking sandwich near this, and that was where I was looking…."
"Oh. Do you want the sandwich too, then?"
"No, no. I have lamb kebabs, chicken skewers, and strawberry cheese cookies in my hands right now. Why are you so hellbent on buying things for me? It's enough. I don't need it."
"Whyyy. No matter how much you refuse, it's just going to go in the room."
"How much are you gonna rip off from me later..."
Shuraina held the items that she had received from Yves with shaking hands. Yves smiled his typical small smile and whispered quietly. You don't have to give me anything. Just keep taking.
But the more Shuraina received from him, the more she felt like she was being tied to him. Yves, who was steadfast in his give-and-take mentality, just kept giving and giving to her without anything else. That made her nervous. I mean, he could be giving to her because he felt like it, but humans intrinsically expected something in return when they gave something.
Mothers wanted high grades when they sent their children to expensive cram schools, friends wrote letters and exchanged gifts to become closer, and part-time managers gave meager wages in hopes of high-effort workers.
Shuraina sighed and bit into her lamb kebab. When she secretly paid for the things that Yves had bought for her and put the money in his pocket, the money was somehow back where she had first put it. Recently, Yves had become even more indulgent with her.
Yves rested his arm around her shoulders and clung close. He seemed okay recently, but he seemed anxious right now. It reminded her of when he had prepared for his revenge against the former leader. Shuraina frowned as she tried to figure out why this was happening.
She thought about it, but Yves always seemed to be okay all the time but sometimes kept his distance from others and seemed anxious. Maybe it was that he was always anxious but she hadn't figured it out because she hadn't looked closely enough? The more she thought about it, maybe it was because she had kept her distance from Yves while she had dated Eric–he had gotten more touchy after. Maybe that was it? No, it was too long ago to bring that back up. She had had to meet with Swan after a long time, so she had stopped by a clothing store once and had bumped into Yves there. Maybe he had gotten more anxious after that.
She had known Yves for years now, but she still couldn't read his inner thoughts and the workings of his brain. She tried to rack her brain.
While Shuraina was busy overloading her brain, Yves was purely enjoying the moment.
He watched as Shuraina seemed to ponder the inner workings of the universe with her hands filled with food and smiled.
"Shushu. What are you think about? We're here."
Yves wrapped his arm around her round shoulders and headed into a building.
The sky was dark right before they headed into the building. The clouds seemed heavy as it seemed to heave with future rain. It started to drizzle, but the drizzle soon turned into a downpour.
Sdiha Lunaasha, as introduced by Yves, had gold teeth that glinted whenever he smiled. With ash-colored hair and silver hair, he looked normal at a single glance but looked charming–it seemed like the guild leader's good looks were solid.
He wasn't young, based on the age written on the resume, but he looked like a boy in real life.
"Yooo, Yveeees. You only call me when you need me, and you called me when you needed, huh?"
Sdiha sat comfortably on a sofa dyed here and there with various colors of paint. He had a cigarette in his mouth and took out a finger-sized lighter from his sleeve and lit his cigarette. He puffed a few times and smiled playfully. His gold teeth shined. His eyes seemed out of it, as if he was high on drugs. Like Shuraina, his eyes were half-lidded.
He shoved his hand in his pocket and stood up and walked in a figure-eight. A crescent moon tattoo peeked through his clothes whenever he walked, and scars littered his skin above it.
Sdiha walked towards the young-looking girl and realized that she was younger than he had thought. He raised a single brow.
Sdiha stopped right in front of Shuraina and inhaled a bunch of smoke, and soon.
Hooooooo.
He blew the smoke into Shuraina's face. Yves took out something in his pocket before the smoke his Shuraina's face and wiped the smoke away.
When Yves seemed to be kind to the girl next to him, Sdiha tilted his head in confusion before smiling.
"This small kid is Shunivalen? Wow. I didn't even imagine it. Is this one rich and talented?"
"I'm a non-smoker, so tobacco smoke is kind of gross. Please be respectful. Mr. Sdiha."
Shuraina said, unable to hold it in anymore. She gave him a cold look and snatched the cigarette from his mouth. It was rude, but so was he so she decided to just go for it. There was a glass with a bit of alcohol left in it, so she grabbed the cigarette and threw it in there to snuff the light out. Chiiiiik. The heat cooled and smoke bloomed from the cup.
"Hehe. Young lady, you're pretty easy to anger, aren't you? But how do you know my name? Oh. Our youngest leader, Yvneeees Lunaasha told you?"
His words were drawled out and slow. He seemed to speak bitterly about Yves in particular, though.
"Just as I thought, our local degenerate still keeps his old habits, huh? Haha. That's what I thought. He was pretending to be kind and upright these days, too. Peeeeeople. Don't chaaange. Kek."
Sdiha muttered as he trudged back to his spot. Then, he smiled bitterly and tousled his hair and slumped over his desk. The desk still had undried patches of paint. His face and body was covered with paint but Sdiha didn't seem to care. He just raised a single hand and wagged his finger towards Shuraina.
Shuraina got what he wanted and took out some documents from her bag and left it in front of him. It was a list of items she wanted to have designed by him. Sdiha received a thick packet of documents and began to skim through it.
Sdiha read through the pieces and let out a noise of awe.
"These were things that I could only dream of when I was a kid. You can really make all of these? Wooow."
Sdiha seemed intrigued by the devices as he flipped through it and began reading it from the start again.
"The world develops so fast~ I left the estate and chucked myself in here, so I don't even know how the world works anymoreee."
Brief compliment aside, he placed the documents on the side of his desk. He sat back and rested his legs on the messy desk. He received the contract from Shuraina, read through the conditions, and took out another cigarette and lit it.
He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. He stared at the smoke blooming from his mouth and rising towards the ceiling.
Sdiha always pitied the people that Yves brought along. He pitied the girl named Shunivalen. He felt bad for the nobel woman from a while back, and the rich daughter of that one family, and now this magician girl. He pitied everyone who had been roped in by Yves. He pitied himself, too, for having lost his way.
"Heugh. Hold on, I'm gonna go take a piss."
Sdiha had been wordlessly smoking his cigarette. He stood up from his seat, waistband in his hands. Chiiiik. He extinguished his cigarette with his own hand and teetered towards the bathroom behind the wall.
Shuraina stared at Sdiha's retreating back. Seeing how he wasn't signing the document right away and was hesitating–did he need some time to think about it? She respected his skills over his horrible personality, so she decided to accept his weird actions without much fuss.
Sdiha, who was supposed to have gone to the restroom, soon peeked out from behind the wall. It seemed like he was laying on the floor–his face was near the bottom of the wall. He had laid down to put himself in a position that would only make him visible to Shuraina.