The Fitting Room Fiasco

“You… where did you start watching from?”

Clinging to a final, desperate thread of hope, I managed to voice the question to the two young women lingering by the door.

The answer, however, proved infinitely more brutal than anything I had braced myself for.

“Oh… you’re asking where we started watching from…” Serena, her brow furrowed in thought, tapped her chin with a finger before finally replying, “I believe it was right around the time you were sensuously swaying and twisting in front of the mirror, clad in that red dress.”

‘My heavens, didn’t that imply they had witnessed the entire mortifying spectacle?’

That red dress was etched into my memory. It was the sole vibrant garment among the entire heap of skirts. Had its trailing hem not constantly threatened to trip me, I would have been quite fond of it, perhaps even splurging to purchase it if the price had been right.

…Hold on,

‘What in the world was I doing? Snap out of it, Lin Yan! This was hardly the appropriate moment for such trivial musings!’

The soft bursts of Serena’s suppressed laughter from the doorway jolted me back to reality, and my cheeks began to flush a vivid crimson, visibly darkening with each passing second.

With a sudden, forceful motion, I hurled the Lolita dress I was holding onto the ground.

“Who in their right mind would ever like such a humiliating dress? It’s utterly childish! I refuse to wear it!”

Having declared this, my gaze began to sweep accusingly around Serena and Chen Si Yi.

‘Indeed, my act of tossing the dress was twofold: partly to assert my masculinity, and partly because I was genuinely seething with anger!’

‘Blast it all! Before I even stepped into the changing room, I had painstakingly, repeatedly, instructed the sales assistant to keep a vigilant eye on it, ensuring no one would intrude.’

‘Yet what was the outcome? Not only had my younger sister witnessed my profoundly shameful moment, but even the sales assistant, who had nodded and guaranteed my privacy, had vanished without a trace?’

‘Confound it! She was undeniably attractive, with slender, long legs, and though her chest was perhaps a slight disappointment, I had nevertheless placed my trust in her promise. How could she! Truly, girls with smaller chests are not to be easily trusted! I swear, I’m going to file a complaint against this damned store for its outrageous customer service, you bastards!’

Just as I was consumed by bitter regret for being so gullibly deceived by my own pure-heartedness, I, still with my head bowed, suddenly became aware of another gaze, distinct from Chen Si Yi’s and Serena’s—a third pair of eyes fixed on the hem of my skirt.

“Excuse me, sales assistant, what exactly are you… doing?”

My brow furrowed, I glanced towards Chen Si Yi’s feet, and in that instant, I was utterly bewildered.

Near Chen Si Yi’s left ankle, a pair of bright, unsettlingly large eyes glinted with a peculiar light. Earlier, completely consumed by the shock of being caught by my sister in women’s clothing, my sheer panic had caused me to utterly miss this shadowed gaze.

“Tsk… so I was found out, after all.”

At the sound of my startled cry, the sales assistant, who had been sprawled prostrate on the floor, slowly rose to her feet. After nonchalantly dusting a few specks from her stockings, she offered her explanation with an utterly straight face.

“Well, you see, it’s like this: to prevent any unforeseen incidents while children are trying on clothes, which could potentially tarnish our store’s reputation, whenever a young loli… ahem, a little girl under the age of fourteen changes in our fitting rooms, we sales assistants are required to provide full accompaniment and observation throughout the entire process.”

‘You’re spouting utter nonsense! Do you take me for a three-year-old child, delivering such blatant lies with a perfectly straight face?!’

‘Trying on clothes is hardly a perilous activity like riding a roller coaster; there’s absolutely no need for constant supervision, is there? Moreover, even if accompaniment were truly warranted, why exclusively for little girls? This is a children’s clothing store, isn’t it? Little boys deserve attention too, you know! As a former tough guy, I am the first to vehemently oppose your discriminatory regulations!’

‘Phew, now I finally understood why Chen Si Yi and Serena had managed to enter even after I’d locked the door. It turned out there was a traitor within this very clothing store—you were the one who let the enemy in, weren’t you!’

‘And furthermore, sales assistant, what in the world were you doing groveling on the floor like that? What exactly were you trying to see? Chen Si Yi and Serena might be mere peeping Toms, but it seems you are the true grand pervert!’

“Cough, cough, naturally, many customers don’t quite grasp this particular rule.” Noticing my persistent skepticism, the sales assistant hesitated before continuing, “However, our store offers a compensatory measure. If a customer is willing to provide a photo, all items in the store will be discounted by thirty percent. What do you say?”

‘Why the sudden shift to formal address? How utterly tenacious are you, you scoundrel, still angling for my photo? You must be dreaming!’

‘If I were genuinely a cute little loli, then perhaps a photo wouldn’t matter. But I am a bona fide, pure-blooded man! To leave you a picture would be to brand myself with an indelible mark of shame, wouldn’t it? Furthermore, your thirty percent discount on all items holds absolutely no allure for me!’

“No, absolutely not, under no circumstances will I ever leave a photo!” I declared, waving my hand in a firm refusal. Snatching the black Gothic dress from the chair, I hastily bolted out the door and into the adjacent fitting room.

‘What kind of preposterous joke was this? Did they truly mistake me for some perfectly sculpted, adorable little loli?’

As I donned the familiar dress and bent to pull on the black knee-high cotton socks, my heart swelled with an extreme sense of injustice. ‘Damn this crooked establishment! They could forget about me ever spending another penny here!’

Lost in these thoughts, I swiftly finished dressing and stepped into the main hall, intending to make my swift exit. However, the scene before me in the hall instantly froze me in my tracks.

“Just these two, how much will that be?” Standing at the front desk was my younger sister, Chen Si Yi, clutching two dresses. One was a simple, casual white dress, and the other was the very Lolita dress I had yet to even try on.

I intended to interject, to stop her, but it was already too late. Chen Si Yi had already handed her bank card to the attendant at the front desk, and with a crisp ‘beep’ as the card was swiped, my face slowly morphed into the color of a bitter gourd.

Because, my eyes widening in sudden realization, the green bank card resting on the POS machine appeared strikingly, unsettlingly familiar…