Fashion

Jeweler Sasami has replaced [Jade and Yellow Diamond Beads] with [Fashionable Steel Chain with Steel Leaves]

She was ripped out of her wonderful new ideas and thoughts by a feeling of intense loss and something foreign. The window…

Disbelief spread inside of her. All of a sudden her body felt different, almost powerless and horribly empty. She reached outside with her mana and was startled to discover that it had been drastically reduced. She felt the ‘Jeweler Sasami’ as before – and she felt the beads that had been dangling from one end of her shape just a moment before.

She had no idea what was going on, but something was burning inside of her, ripping her apart from within. She barely had enough control to search for the source of the problem, but it was neither in her Steel nor in her Jade nor in those new Steel things hanging from her. The source was nowhere to be found…and then, she found that she didn’t care anymore. She felt frozen and burning at the same time and she wanted…she wanted…she had no idea, but her insides were screaming in pain and loss.

How dare they?!? She had improved herself all that time, had learned her innermost workings, had gained wisdom and intelligence and strength, hoping for something on this outside to interact with her. But this…what had she dome to deserve this? How dare this…this outsider take her apart without warning, take her power and her body and violate her? They didn’t even bother to make contact, to try and see what she wanted. This was her body! They had no right…no right…

She grew furious.

And then she reached out again, to do something, but her feelers met only solid, sealed wood. She had been locked away from the outside. Again.

Why?

Why?!

Why?!?

Why?!?!?!

She thought about pushing, bursting that seal from the inside, but…no. She didn’t know enough yet. She needed to think about what she had learned in the short time outside first. Needed to analyze and find ways to defend herself first.

The chaos inside of her became calmer, until, on the surface, it seemed like a perfectly even lake of ice. It was cold and focused as she had never been before.

She was prepared for another century of thinking.

But that, as she soon found out, was not meant to be.

[Finance Minister’s Daughter] [Himawari Hideko] picked up [Fashionable Hairpin]

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She was poleaxed. So much so that her perfect ice lake shattered and that weird thing inside her got all chaotic again, but her previous sharp, burning and icy feeling gave way to that tickling that she realized she’d felt in the back of her mind all along. She really, really wanted to know what was going on – so she sent out her much reduced mana feelers. Ever since she had entered the higher master stages of her mana control that had been as easy as thinking.

She was, once again, outside the case. There were vibrations in the air, which was still a curious and inexplicable thing, but only one living thing that she assumed to be this [Finance Minister’s Daughter] [Himawari Hideko] thing. She had no clue what any of those things were supposed to mean though.

There was one other source of those peculiar sound waves, but her feelers met resistance when she approached and she decided not to test the strange globe of shields.

Curiously her whole body was pressed into the apparently semi-pliable form of the [Finance Minister’s Daughter] [Himawari Hideko] thing. This time her status window was not called. Instead she felt herself pressed against one form, then waved about. Eventually another thing came close and…

[Lady’s Maid] [Hana] took [Fashionable Hairpin] from [Finance Minister’s Daughter] [Himawari Hideko]

followed by…

[Lady’s Maid] [Hana] put [Fashionable Hairpin] in [Finance Minister’s Daughter] [Himawari Hideko]’s hair

In an instant her whole world changed. An emptiness she hadn’t even known existed was filled and she quivered so pleasantly the cool, calculating and ever thinking part of her wondered just what was going on. She had a feeling…as if everything she had ever hoped for in all her time alone in the case was worth this one window.

Something inside her relaxed…and she was one with [Himawari Hideko]. She looked out of her eyes, listened with her ears and understood everything that was spoken. A million little things opened up to her. And she stared, and watched, and listened as the eleven year old girl thanked her father for the beautiful hairpin. She was overjoyed by the present, but also deeply worried because this was the first sign that she would soon become a woman.