♚♚♚
ROCK closed up shop earlier than usual the next day. Naturally, she sent Phoebe home early too.
“What’s the big idea trying to get me out of the building at this time? You really are bringing home a man, aren’t you?” Phoebe was deeply suspicious of her, but Rock brushed off the question with a vague answer.
“A well-paying customer is coming. They reserved the place for the evening is all.”
“A trustworthy customer, I hope?”
“Obviously. Phoebe, I’m not a child anymore.”
After managing to send Phoebe home at the end of their heated dispute, Rock hung the “Closed for a Private Fitting” sign on the shop door.
Ebel arrived in the evening as a young man with burnt sienna hair. “Forgive me for being late. Before we start, take the money owed to you.”
He paid her with interest as he had promised. Rock accepted the leather pouch stuffed with gold coins, counted each coin within, and gleefully thanked him. “Thank you very much, Your Excellency!”
“…This is the first time I have seen you smile, Rock,” Ebel noted with an enigmatic grin, but to Rock, money was the only thing you could really trust in this world. Receiving payment, not just promises, finally made her willing to trust him. “Should I pay for my tailor-made order today as well?”
Apparently, His Excellency was a generous spender as long as he had his wallet. Thrilled to get her hands on a good customer, Rock ecstatically informed him, “I will give you the estimate once I measure you. Follow me, Your Excellency.” She showed him into the fitting room in the back and began taking some basic measurements. “Let’s design it so it readily comes off when your body grows bigger.”
Ebel looked doubtful as Rock held the measuring tape up to his body. “Is that possible?”
“Using hooks instead of buttons will make it easier to slip on and off.”
She planned to alter the shirt and vest to close with hooks. Trousers posed the biggest challenge, but tailoring them to the bigger size of his werewolf body and making the waistline adjustable with a sash belt should make it easy for him to strip off when the time came.
“You have a knack for finding yourself in brawls with drunks, after all,” Rock said with a laugh, amused. Ebel smiled along with her, although his smile came across as tentative and lonely.
“That was a lie, Rock.”
“The part about drunkards picking on you was a lie?”
“Yes. I was actually patrolling this area.”
Rock lowered her hand with the cloth measuring tape and blinked at the word patrolling.
Ebel softly recounted the past. “My father—he’s no longer with us, but he used to speak of his love for this neighborhood.”
That had to be the previous Count Mateus—Ebel’s father, who was renowned for his love of antiques.
“He used to look forward to slipping out of the house during his breaks from work to shop in this district. He told me how he even enjoyed the disorder here, despite the ill-bred scoundrels inhabiting it.” Ebel lowered his golden eyes. “The werewolf power is the greatest fortune Father left me. I am making use of it to patrol this area. I plan to forever protect this part of the city Father so dearly loved.” The corners of his lips lifted into a bashful smile. “With a great shop like this around, I think I’ll come to love it here too.”
Curiously enough, Rock sympathized with him at that moment. Perhaps because neither of them had fathers. Or perhaps it was because they both actively made use of the inheritance left to them by their fathers. Ebel didn’t seem ashamed or disgusted by his werewolf side. That, too, mirrored Rock’s own feelings about pretending to be a man.
This was the third year since she set up shop in the slums. She always thought she was proud of her work, but this was the first time anyone called her business “a great shop.”
The warmth spreading through her chest might’ve been caused by those three words. Before she knew it, Rock found herself captivated by the handsome man standing before her. And Ebel, with butterflies in his stomach from her strong gaze, bashfully brought her attention back to the task at hand.
“Are you done taking measurements, Rock?”
“Ah! …I am done measuring your human form, Your Excellency. Your werewolf form is all that’s left.”
“All right. Wait just a moment, then,” Ebel said as he pulled off his shirt, exposing his muscular upper body in a matter of seconds. His hand went to his trouser buckle next—
“P-Please stop right there, Your Excellency!” Rock rushed to stop him. “Why are you undressing?!”
“Why? Naturally, because my clothes will rip if I become a werewolf while dressed.”
“Th-Then give me a chance to leave first!” Rock bolted from the fitting room like a panicked deer from a wolf, and she shut the curtain with her hand behind her back.
“Why are you flustered? Are we not both men?”
Rock was about to argue with the dubious voice coming from inside the fitting room, but the uncanny sound of bone crackling and flesh tearing grew louder behind the curtain, cutting off her response. Large, triangle-shaped ears cast a shadow on the curtain, and then came the sound of the stealthy shuffle of a large beast’s feet.
“…I’m finished, Rock. Please continue with this form.” Ebel’s deeper voice beckoned Rock back into the fitting room.
What in the world was the story with his body? A young man with an average physique had transformed into a werewolf in less than a minute.
In all her years making a living as a tailor, this was Rock’s first time measuring a customer more urban legend than human.
“You are truly giving me an experience few people will ever come by, Your Excellency.” Rock held each end of the measuring tape with her fingers and took down werewolf Ebel’s measurements.
Thicker fur covered the scruff of his neck, his chest and shoulders curved with strong muscles, and his long legs and arms were thick and solid like logs. Ebel silently looked down and watched as Rock’s slender fingertips slowly followed the outline of his form. His golden eyes flashed meaningfully every time the measuring tape pressed against his body and whenever her fingers brushed along his fur.
“There’s one thing that has been on my mind,” Ebel brought up once Rock finished measuring his werewolf form.
“What is that?” Rock asked, the measuring tape hanging around her neck. Suddenly, the werewolf’s ponderous hand seized Rock’s wrist. He held on tight enough that she couldn’t shake him off, while being careful not to let his black claws touch her delicate skin.
“What is the meaning of this, Your Excellency?” Rock raised her voice in protest.
The penetrating gaze of the werewolf’s golden eyes probed her. “You smell like a woman.” As his big mouth moved, it revealed all of his sharp fangs.
Rock freaked out internally. Driven by the uneasiness of her slender wrist—unhidden by her male disguise—being on display, she countered him in the calmest voice she could muster. “Isn’t that a…misconception on your part, Your Excellency? I’m a man, I’m afraid.”
“I’m confident in my nose. I know this is a woman’s scent.” Ebel twitched his wetly shimmering black nose.
Did he figure it out because of his sharper senses as a supernatural being?
Rock picked her words carefully as she tried to mislead him. “Female customers often frequent my shop, and one of my shop assistants is a woman. Is it not them you smell?”
“Are you in an intimate relationship with that woman?” A hint of jealousy flared in the wolf’s eyes. “The smell is ingrained in your very body. I take it you are physically involved with a woman, then?”
He has a keen eye—or rather, a keen nose.
Ebel was in the midst of seeing right through to Rock’s true identity. His fixation was obvious from the way he didn’t let go of her wrist during the whole conversation, and Rock sensed she was in danger. It was exactly because customers like this were a dime a dozen in the slums that she had donned a male guise until now. Learning that Count Mateus, who seemed like a gentleman at first, was the same breed of man as the rest was positively disappointing.
“Your Excellency, do you make a habit of hitting on men?” Rock asked in a blunt refusal of his advances.
Ebel gasped as if snapped out of a dream. The ardent flame ablaze in his eyes sputtered, and he slowly let go of Rock’s wrist. “…I’m sorry. That was rude of me.” He slumped with his triangular ears pressed flat back against his head and his tail curled between his legs. “I know it sounds strange, but I just had to know— Nay, whatever my reasoning, it was still impolite. I sincerely feel sorry for my actions.”
If Ebel was telling the truth, then what just happened was nothing more than a temporary lapse in judgment.
It’d be unfortunate if he, of all people, desired a poor young woman who disguised herself as a man. Rock tried to laugh it off, but her nerves stiffened her face, hindering any attempts at a smile. She would’ve had an easier time rejecting him if he were vulgar like the rest of her customers from the slums.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Your Excellency. I’m not bothered by it.” Rock schooled her features and managed to shake her head.
Thoroughly crestfallen like a puppy in the rain, Ebel let out a short sigh. “Thank you for saying so.”
After that, Rock calculated the invoice as if nothing had happened, and Ebel paid a sum several times larger than her asking price.
However, nothing could be done about the uncomfortable mood between them, and the wrist that Ebel had grabbed burned with an indescribable heat for a long time afterward.