• Side: Toru Nakamura 

The next day, I was dragged to the boutique that was under my property by my childhood friend and best friend — Akio Shin and Eiji Haru. What a drag.

The latter were as excited as kids out on their first day, chattering how I would look if I was properly dressed up. I looked like a kid tagging along with his parents.

Now, I was wearing a sweater and baggy jeans, looking as gloomy as usual. They arrived at the shop, and told the staff to leave the place first, they happily obeyed, three VIPs in the shop resulted in too much tension.

Now that the latter have the whole shop to themselves, they started rummaging through the clothes, fitting hats and shoes on themselves, completely ignoring my existence.

“Ah, Shizuka-Chan!!!”

Akio waves at a girl walking in front of the shop. She was wearing a mask and a pair of sunglasses, but Akio recognised her silver-white hair immediately.

“Nakamura-san, Akio-kun and Haru-san, good morning.”

She nodded her head and greeted us, walking away the minute later. But Akio stopped her just in time.

“You’re going to the banquet as well, right? You were on the list, how about we pick clothes together?”

“...I’ll be fine.”

“Come in, come in.”

Shizuka tried stepping to her left and Akio blocked her. Right, blocked. Backwards, blocked as well.

“Akio Shin, do you want me to slap you?”

“It’s free, Shizuka, free!”

Akio grasps Shizuka’s weak point immediately. Despite being richer than your average family, Shizuka is a very frugal person. She would scout several markets just to look for the cheapest eggs. Expectedly, she gave in.

“...fine.”

She walked into the boutique, which was now messy with clothes lying everywhere. She sighed and looked at me. As if saying ‘you just let these idiots run free in your shop?’. 

I shrugged and sat on a sofa. Shizuka went toward the men section.

“Huh?”

I stared at her as she handed some clothes to me.

“Try these, it might suit you.”

“...”

Eiji went over to us and stared at the clothes in Shizuka’s stretched out hands, nodding his head in agreement. Akio looked over at our direction and smiled. 

It seemed that I had nowhere to escape. I reluctantly took the clothes from her and disappeared into the curtains of the changing room. I heard some ruffling sound next door as Eiji was dressing up himself.

After a while.

“Toru, are you done yet?”

“...just a little.”

“Me and Akio finished changing our clothes, hurry up!”

“Ugh…”

I walked out of the curtains to find Shizuka, who was in an elegant navy floor length dress, with matching silver earrings. Again, the sight of my beautiful ex-girlfriend awakened many thoughts inside me that was best not to be said.

I stretched my hand in order to touch her silver-white hair. She shrinked at the last moment, and I retracted my hand when I found out what I was doing.

“What?”

She asked.

“Um, you’re beautiful.”

“...T-Thank you.”

Her face quickly flushed red, but quickly regained her posture. She then grabbed me by the tie of my black suit, took a comb out of her purse and started combing my hair.

“Don’t move.”

She warned in a serious tone, causing me to flinch.

“Yes ma’am.”

Ten minutes later…

“Done!”

I closed my eyes as instructed as she started combing my hair back. I looked at the mirror and was surprised as well. My hair was combed back into a short ponytail, which made me look mature and fitted my navy blue hair perfectly. There were no makeup on me, but she did my lips with a lipstick and brushed me with a kind of strange powder.

“How do I look?”

I turned towards Shizuka and gave her my best dashing smile. She blushed and turned her head the other way, but I could see that her ears were beet red.

“H-Handsome.”

“...Thank you.”

I’d never thought she would describe me as that. For some reason, I felt satisfied and relieved when she was complimenting me, as if the thoughts of other people won’t matter anymore as long as she praised me.

But I quickly shook the feeling off.

 

“Toru!!! You look great!!!!”

Eiji came into the changing room and gave me a thumbs up, I wondered if he was watching us the whole time. Behind him was Akio, who gave the same thumbs up.

Eiji was wearing an orange suit and a yellow cummerbund. Instead of a tie, he had a ribbon latched around his neck. The attire looked flashy overall, but it suited Eiji the best.

Akio wore an elegant white suit, and he looked like a prince in shiny armour, if you would describe what he looked like in a female's eyes. 

“Why are we dressing up like this?”

“The banquet today invites many people from different nations, we can’t embarrass our parents.”

I could understand it well. All our parents were influential and famous people both the Entertainment and Social Circle, so it wasn’t rare for us to dress up like this, in order not to embarrass our parents.

Akio hushed us into the limo that was waiting for us outside the shop, Shizuka entered as well, as her driver was ill today.

“Don’t let either of our parents know of our relationship.”

“Yes, I know. I will never let them know that we’re a couple in the past.”

“So we know each other.”

She nodded her head in satisfaction and faced the window, looking at the scenery as we passed by. 

Author’s notes:

A bit short, I hope I can write more in the next chapter.