Chapter 127: A Date with the Villainess [Part-5]

Neo led Nora out of the auction hall to stroll around the city, and they began to visit different places. The first place Neo chose to take her was the shopping district, as it was obvious from his knowledge of his past world that girls liked shopping the most.

He didn’t compare Nora to the same type of girl, but as he didn’t know what her tastes and likings were, he wanted to try everything to find out.

After they entered a large clothes store together, a lady who seemed to be the owner, who had been talking with a clerk, immediately noticed them. She hurried forward to meet them and bowed slightly, as she recognised him at once.

"It’s an honour to meet Young Master Neo and Young Lady Nora."

"Huh... You know me?"

"Ah, of course I know you. Actually, I am also the one who makes your clothes every time..."

Neo raised his eyebrows, as he hadn’t known that the clothes he wore were actually made by her. He nodded calmly as he looked around the place, trying to find anything which might attract his attention.

"May I ask if there is anything specific you are looking for today, Young Master?"

The shop was spacious and bright, with long racks of clothes arranged by colour along the walls, and rolls of silk and velvet stacked neatly on wooden shelves near the counter. A few noble ladies browsing at the far end glanced at them and then hurriedly looked away, whispering to each other behind their fans. Neo pretended not to notice them as he turned his head and pointed at the girl standing beside him, who still had the two red horns sitting on top of her violet hair.

"Can you show some beautiful dresses for her?"

The owner’s eyes brightened immediately, and she clasped her hands together in delight, as if she had been waiting for years for someone to ask her that question. She turned to Nora and bowed her head slightly with a warm smile.

"Of course, of course. Lady Nora, may I ask what kind of dress you prefer? Do you like something simple and elegant, or something with more decoration? We also have several new designs which arrived from the capital this season."

But Nora did not answer. She didn’t even look at the owner, as her eyes were solely fixed on Neo’s face, studying him carefully, as if she were trying to find some hidden intention behind his expression. Her gaze moved from his eyes to the corner of his lips, then to his eyebrows, and then back to his eyes again, with the focus of a detective examining a suspect.

Neo felt a faint chill run down his back, but he kept his face as calm and innocent as possible, giving her only a casual, harmless smile. ’Don’t look at me like that. There is nothing hidden, I just want to see you in different clothes. That’s all.’

Of course, he could never say that out loud.

After a few seconds of silent examination, Nora finally seemed to give up on finding anything, and she let out a very small breath through her nose, turning her eyes away from him. The owner, who had been standing awkwardly with her hands clasped, coughed softly and smiled again.

"Well then, please follow me, Young Lady. I will bring out a few of our best pieces."

She led them to a large fitting area at the back of the store, separated from the main hall by thick curtains of deep blue velvet. There was a small seating area with a soft couch and a tea table, where Neo was invited to sit while a maid brought him a cup of warm tea, and a few of the shop assistants began rushing back and forth, carrying armfuls of dresses in every colour imaginable.

Nora was taken behind the curtain, and Neo leaned back on the couch, holding the cup with both hands, trying to look as relaxed as possible, though his fingers kept tapping lightly against the porcelain.

After a few minutes, the curtain was pulled aside.

Nora stepped out wearing a soft white dress with a long, flowing skirt, the sleeves trimmed with tiny pearls and a thin blue ribbon tied around her waist. Her violet hair, which had been loosely braided, was now let down over her shoulders, and the devil horns had been removed, leaving her face clear and bright under the lamplight. She stood there with her usual blank expression, as if she were wearing a plain sack, but the sight of her made Neo forget to breathe for a moment.

"It is a design from the capital," the owner said proudly. "White always suits a young lady with such fair skin, don’t you think so, Young Master?"

"Y-yes... It looks good."

Nora looked at him for a moment, then turned around and walked back behind the curtain without saying a word.

The second dress was a deep red one, with a fitted bodice and a long skirt that swayed with every step, and thin golden embroidery crawling along the hem like flames. The colour made her violet hair look darker and her skin even paler, and her violet eyes seemed sharper, almost dangerous, like a rose with thorns hidden beneath its petals. Neo swallowed hard, his cup halting halfway to his lips.

"It’s... also good."

"Young Master, you said that about the last one as well," the owner said, with a mischievous smile that she was trying very hard to hide.

Neo coughed and looked away, hoping that his ears were not as red as they felt.

The third dress was a light green one that looked like the first leaves of spring, simple and gentle, with short sleeves and a ribbon of the same colour in her hair. The fourth was a deep blue one, the colour of the night sky, scattered with tiny silver beads that glittered like stars every time she moved. The fifth was a pale pink one with lace sleeves, which made Nora look like a doll, and Neo had to bite the inside of his cheek when he saw that she was standing so stiffly in it that she looked as if she was about to be sent to battle.

Every time the curtain opened, Nora stepped out with the same calm face, stood for a few seconds in front of him without saying anything, and then went back in to change again, as if she were a soldier obediently following orders. She didn’t comment on any of the dresses, and she didn’t ask for his opinion, though Neo noticed that every time she came out, her eyes flicked towards him for a brief moment, just long enough to see his reaction, before returning to their usual blankness.

’She is checking my face every time... Does she really want to know what I think?’

The sixth dress was a pale lavender one with a soft, layered skirt, like the petals of a flower opening in the morning. The seventh was an elegant black one with a high collar and thin silver patterns along the sleeves, which gave her a quiet, mature look. The eighth was a sky-blue one with a wide ribbon at the back, the ninth was a gentle cream one with embroidered flowers, and the tenth was a violet one so close to the colour of her eyes that it looked as if it had been made specifically for her.

Neo had stopped pretending to drink his tea some time ago. He sat there with the cup resting forgotten on his knee, watching the girl standing in front of him, and he found that no matter which dress she wore, he couldn’t look away. It was not just that the clothes were beautiful. It was the way that each one revealed a different side of her, as if she were a book with a hundred different covers, and he wanted to see every single one of them.

He remembered, suddenly, the conversations he used to hear from his friends in his past life, when they sat around a table complaining after a weekend. They used to say that going shopping with girls was the most tiring thing in the world, as girls took far too much time to choose, tried on dozens of clothes, and then bought nothing at the end. They used to sigh and shake their heads, saying that it was a form of torture which no man should be forced to endure.

But now, sitting here on a soft couch with a cup of tea going cold in his hand, Neo couldn’t understand what they had been talking about. He did not feel tired at all. If anything, he felt that the time was passing too quickly, and he would have been glad to sit here for the whole afternoon, watching her change from one dress into another.

’Maybe it is because they didn’t have a beautiful girl like her as their girlfriend to go on a date with...’

The thought slipped through his mind so naturally that he didn’t notice it until it was already finished, and then he nearly choked on the tea that he had been about to swallow.

’Ahem! Wait, what am I even thinking? It’s not like Nora is my girlfriend. We are just friends, enjoying a stroll. A simple stroll. That’s all it is.’

He took a hurried sip from the cup, only to find that it was already empty, and he put it down on the table with an awkward clatter, pretending to examine the pattern on the tablecloth, while the owner, who was standing nearby with a tray in her hands, looked at the ceiling with great interest, her shoulders trembling slightly.

The curtain was pulled aside once more, and Nora stepped out for the last time.

It was the first dress that she had put on with a slightly different expression, though no one else would have noticed it. It was a simple gown of pale silver, soft like moonlight, with a fitted waist and a skirt that fell in gentle layers to the floor, the sleeves ending in thin, translucent lace. There was no decoration other than a faint, delicate pattern of petals stitched along the hem, glittering faintly like frost. It was the same colour as the silver ribbons she had looked at in the market, and the colour of Neo’s own hair.

Nora stood in front of him, her hands folded loosely before her, and for the first time that afternoon, she did not look at the mirror, and she did not look at the owner. Her violet eyes looked straight at Neo, calm and steady, waiting.

Neo’s mind went completely blank. The words that he had been repeating all afternoon, good, it looks good, died on his tongue, because none of them seemed enough to describe what he was seeing.

"It’s..." He stopped, cleared his throat, and tried again. "It’s really beautiful, Nora. It suits you more than anything else you have tried on."

Nora kept looking at him for a few more seconds, searching his face as she had done at the start. Then she gave a very small nod, so small that it could easily have been mistaken for a trick of the lamplight, and she turned to the owner.

"This one."

The owner clasped her hands together with a radiant smile. "An excellent choice, Young Lady! Would you like me to wrap it, or will you wear it out?"

Nora looked down at the dress, then back at the owner, and then she glanced at Neo, who understood immediately what she wanted to ask.

"We will take it. And she will wear it out," Neo said, standing up and walking to the counter with a small smile that he didn’t try to hide. "Please wrap her old clothes separately, and send the bill for this one to the Draven mansion. Also, add the other dresses that she tried on, all of them."

"All of them, Young Master?" the owner asked, her eyes widening.

"All of them. You can deliver them to the mansion together."

Nora’s head turned sharply towards him, and her eyes narrowed slightly with a look which seemed to say that it was a waste of money, but Neo only smiled and waved his hand lightly.

"Since I am rich enough to buy a whole auction, a few dresses won’t hurt. Consider it a gift."

Nora stared at him for a moment longer, and then she turned her face away. The owner bowed deeply as she accepted the advance payment, her face glowing with satisfaction, and a few of the shop assistants lined up near the door to bow as they walked out, murmuring that they hoped to see the Young Master and Young Lady again soon.

Outside, the afternoon sun was turning gentler and more golden, and the streets of the shopping district were filled with the soft chatter of people returning from their errands. Neo pulled the hood of his cloak over his hair and glanced at the girl walking beside him, the hem of her dress swaying lightly with each step, and the faint shimmer of the petals catching the sunlight.

His hand brushed against the inner pocket of his cloak, where the Twilight Petal Bracelet rested quietly, and he smiled to himself.

’There is still one more thing left to give... Let’s wait for the right time.’