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It wasn't Kirin's usual place to shop. Despite the way he dressed, he was far from sharing the typical teenage girl's obsession with shopping. His policy was usually 'would it reveal his true gender? no? buy it, try it on later, return it if it doesn't fit'. For some reason today was different. Not that he'd been struck with an urge to shop, but he'd been walking past a store he'd never even noticed before and suddenly couldn't look away from a skirt in the window. It was old. Full of lacy ruffles. It was a paisley-patterned pink. It would look damn hot over his most torn-up jeans.

So he'd entered the store, which was larger on the inside than Kirin would have thought. He noted the lack of sales assistants and immediately approved (since the whole reason he didn't try anything on in stores anymore was due to pushy sales assistants thinking it would be fine to walk in on the changing Kirin, since it was 'nothing they hadn't seen before'). The downside was that he was left to work out how things were stored on his own, but it was a price he was willing to pay.

And so he walked up and down, inspecting the fabrics (kind of wishing he knew someone who sewed) and second-hand antique clothing. Spying similar fabric to what had caught his eye in the window, Kirin stared up at it mournfully. Of course it was on the top shelf. He frowned. The basket that so far only contained a lacy choker was placed on the floor. Golden eyes narrowed in on the pale pink fabric and he leapt for it. Fingers grasped but slipped off the material. Growling, Kirin jumped again. He grabbed hold, with a triumphant "Ha!", and yanked as gravity pulled him down. Gravity was a b***h. Kirin toppled backwards as he landed, bumping into someone behind him. The skirt was left half pulled out from the pile back on the top shelf.

"s**t!" Kirin cursed, righting himself and checking nothing had fallen over the shelves. He turned to the girl he'd bumped, noting her dark hair, red eyes, and clothes that matched the sort on sale in this store. He gave her a small frown, his eyes flicking over her for any injury. "You alright?" he asked. Soul of concern, this one.

(( My bad >.< I'll go back and edit! ))

"I'm fine," Kirin said. Grumpy at still not having his skirt, but uninjured save for his pride.

Before he could make any kind of response to her offer of help, the dark-haired girl was off to retrieve a stool. Kirin supposed he was glad there was one at all, even if it meant someone (taller) other than himself having to (rescue) assist him. Dammit. Self-independence was great in theory, less so in real life when you were the shortest person over the age of twelve you knew and people liked stacking things your own height again above your head.

The girl came back with the stool and promptly decided to get his skirt for him. "Thank you," Kirin said, automatic but without much feeling. At least this girl wasn't an Amazon, he supposed. She'd also needed the stool. It would have been much more humiliating if it had been someone tall enough to reach the shelf on their own.

Kirin looked away as the dark-haired girl climbed up and retrieved the skirt. It was how he noticed a wood-and-silver hairpin stuck in one of the dresses on the opposite shelf to his skirt. Kirin plucked it out and examined it. It was pretty, one of those Asian-inspired things, he thought, that were so popular these days.

When he looked back up at the girl, he noticed she was wearing one in her hair. Only one, though, and it looked very similar to the one now in his hands.

"I think I found a victim of our collision," he said, holding it up. He'd swap it for the skirt when she came back down. The girl didn't seem the type for pink, with her black and red colouring. But neither did Kirin with his sunset orange hair. He could still manage to pull it off as long as it wasn't a shirt or jacket up next to his hair, so he was holding onto the hair accessory as potential blackmail until he had his skirt.

Kirin almost smiled as they traded the items in their possession. He quickly held the skirt up to his waist to check it wasn't going to be another 'only stock size 0 - 2' type of store. The smile emerged for real this time as the skirt easily reached either side of his waist. It disappeared just as quickly as he looked up at the dark-haired girl.

"I was beginning to think this was another place that only dressed supermodels and anorexics," he said to the girl, wondering if she'd had the same problem. Her waist looked smaller than his, but he kind of expected that given her Asian heritage and actual female-ness. In exchange, he did get slimmer hips.

Kirin raised an eyebrow at the mention of a pink top. "You don't think it will clash with the hair?" he asked. It could be worth checking, but in his experience pink up top never went as well as pink below the waist. Maybe he'd trust her, though. The outfit she was wearing was pretty cool.

"Lolita?" he repeated with a frown. "Isn't that maids and stuff? I can honestly say I've never tried it before." It was likely an incredibly inflammatory statement to a proper lolita or loligoth, and Kirin wasn't even trying to be rude this time.

Mostly because it was annoying to keep thinking of the girl as 'the girl', he belatedly added, "I'm Kirin."

"White and purple sounds good." Kirin's opinion of Ume's taste rose higher. His senshi fuku did look pretty damn awesome against his hair, and it was mostly white and purple. Looking in the direction that Ume had waved, Kirin noted the lace she'd mentioned and quickly added it to his basket, along with the pink skirt. That wasn't a bad shopping trip - he'd now found even more than he'd expected to. Maybe it wasn't a bad idea to have someone who knew their way around assisting him, he thought, giving Ume an assessing glance.

"Nice to meet you," he said, automatic if a bit belated. He considered her offer before accepting. "Uh, sure, if you have the time I wouldn't mind seeing some more."

Innocent and Victorian? Sounded doable. Certainly there would be no risk of plunging necklines and too-short skirts, both of which he had to avoid for obvious reasons. He almost changed his mind when Ume found him a petticoat, but a second thought made him realised that without jeans or shorts on underneath, he could probably use some extra padding 'down there' to hide certain things...

"So how long have you been... lolita?" Kirin asked, feeling the silence while Ume searched to be a little awkward.

Kirin shifted. Without meaning to, he'd managed to step on the landmine of 'family issues' - something he hated to have brung up himself, though Ume seemed sort of okay, if a bit down, about it. "Sorry," he apologised roughly, looking away. Crossing his arms over his chest, he refused to consider spilling his own problems in return. Hey, at leats he felt bad about making her discuss hers - that was more than most people got.

And then he was being dragged to a dressing room and shoved inside and arms full of lacy bits and pieces. It was a small mercy that Ume wasn't planning to help 'her' change. She seemed forceful enough, in her current mood.

"Thank you," he said through the door. It was unknown if it was for the clothes, or for the lack of corset. Maybe both. Kirin was pretty sure he wasn't ready to sacrifice his ribcage just for a chance at getting a properly feminine waistline. Not to mention he had no idea how a corset, normally rather bust-enhancing, would work with falsies.

It took a bit of puzzling out, but eventually Kirin was dressed in a full lolita outfit - the petticoat, his ruffled pink paisley skirt falling to his knees, a mostly white top with pale pink patterning and lots of lace. The choker around his throat hid his adam's apple, and a strange lacy headband sort of thing had eventually settled nicely in front of his pigtails.

"What do you think?" he asked, emerging from the dressing room and striking a pose. His hands brushed against the skirt and he checked over his shoulder into the mirror. "Am I wearing it right?"

"Yeah, " Kirin agreed, thinking of evenings spent fighting the Negaverse for starseeds and limping home, or having to bandage himself up. "Some nights just suck. But mostly it's a good city. Do you remember living anywhere before this?"

Ah crap, his mouth was running off with him. Nerves? Hmm.

He gave Ume a tiny smile as she complimented him. Mostly her own work, of course, but at least Kirin didn't look like an idiot wearing it. "I'm not a fan of boob tubes and short shorts either," Kirin said. "Hell, I like jeans under even my long skirts half the time."

Kirin picked up a lock of hair, inspecting it and trying to imagine a curl there. "Huh," he said, not enthused but not dismissive, either. "I can't really picture it. Maybe." Mostly he had horrible visions of those porcelain dolls with French sausage curls - he hoped that wasn't what Ume meant, because he didn't think he could pull that off at all.

"Lightly curled could be nice." Kirin's voice was suddenly small and soft as he twisted the lock of hair he was still holding. His mother's hair had held faint curls, when she had let it down (which wasn't that often, working in a corporate office for her father's company and all). There would be nothing wrong with that, he thought. Just like there was nothing wrong with wearing the pigtails she'd put him in for 'dress ups' when he'd been so much younger.

Shaking his pensive mood off, he gave Ume a tiny smile. It was secretive, but more along the lines of them sharing a secret rather than keeping them from each other. "You'd better be careful," he warned, "or I'll start thinking you have impecable taste."

Finally a girl his age who wasn't all over showing off their a** to anyone and everyone who saw them. Kirin had been beginning to think they were a mythical creature.

"Did you plan to go to Japan one day?" he asked, curious. "I've seen pictures where entire streets are filled with people dressed like this. I bet they'd have some great shops for it."