QLU INU is the name of the company I am working on. Living in the heart of Tokyo, it had the best standard for fashion designing and cosmetic chemistry with the art of aesthetics and sciences in terms of body regulations fitting for the physical comfort is their planned motto through their methods of alma mater. None of it would bring this company to bankruptcy as the consumers surveyed about this brand with great satisfaction, continuously rising.
As a fashion designer and part-time tailoress named Mirai Shizuku, it is my responsibility to fit the wanted customers to be confident and attractive to my unique kinds of dresses I made to innovate their refining personality. My charm is my acknowledgment to gain my hopeful pride without worries to struggle in front of my beautiful face.
It does not mean that I merely make them look good, but I accumulate it with the best adequate ingredients. Once again, the fabrics planned with a cozy touch that can slide over their skin without dehydrating themselves by the surrounding heat. With this, I should satisfy them beyond their expectations.
The room was a cozy-looking mess with multiple desks of the set, and where I am right now is on the large table that can fill many fabric sheets to place — despite how it scattered around. Scissors, blades, rulers, and most essential tools I kept into my precious translucent bag. No matter what I do, these things should organize these things rather than fabric sheets, obviously to tell where it is.
So...
I slowly sweat out as I keep the concentration to its maximum level.
I slowly slid the cutter starting from the edges to the center of the fabric sheets.
I slowly widened my eyes with my thin pupils.
And it goes perfectly as it is.
This is just part of the first step, although a slight curve of its cut-line causes the minuscule of my failure. But I hope it can be useful since I won’t make it just straight as it is. Rubbing my forehead to strip off my sweat and continuing the procedures takes a lot to proceed. My slight frizzy hair bothered from my disarrayed face. Sighing heavily, I immediately look at the picture when my colleagues and I celebrated the victory when we were winning the first place of a certain fashion designing contest.
My pride as a part of QLU INU is still inside my heart ever since my parents died from a car accident, and my dilemma isolated me wholly since my childhood era.
The doctor from a certain hospital told me about the incident, and he summed up to it diagnosed me of brain damage. Upon reaching to my house which the doctor escorted me to a certain address where I originally lived — the detective gave me something to help him and me to restore the memory, checking the family pics within the display was the only thing to prove me I really spent time with them despite my forgotten memorable experiences.
Unfortunately, my parents were both single children with most of my grandparents on both sides already passed away. Contacts between my relatives haven’t identified to my concerns. However and whenever I already thought of it, I never wanted to end up just by begging for money, food, water, and clothes, so my decision was to sell my dead parents’ clothes respectfully since I had no choice but to survive. Despite the smaller sizes of my clothes when my age and body continuously grew up, I conserved it by disassembling the fabric fibers into pieces and renovating them into my ideal clothes. With that, I reformed it with sewing tools I got like a pair of scissors, some colored sets of yarn for threads, needles, thimble, tweezers, and everything I got in a sewing kit. Although my first attempt resulted in a rubbish dress, the repetition was my particular opportunity to survive this determining process.
After such desperate yet progressive experiences, my masterpiece had finally dissolved with the element of the “never give up” mindset since it was my only way to stay alive. And somehow, it acknowledged by a smaller number of people. With that, a certain agent who worked for a high-class university gave me a free scholarship exclusive for fashion design and tailoring. He told me he wanted to refine my skills with tangibly and aesthetically. Therefore, I accepted his humble offer by hugging him with joyous tears mixed with grief and solitude that I spent throughout an entire decade of selling my homemade clothes.
After years of another journey in a certain university, I graduated with honors and passion with my hope and strength that I already finished with. With that, another journey set me once again when QLU INU, somehow a middle-class company I considered before, drafted me with a contract of 2 years with extension. They named it, “Our Only Hope”.
So I accepted it with gratitude. When I entered their office for once, they all somehow stood up as if they clapped their hands even though I hadn’t known them well yet. It puzzled me with just a smile and a wink. Later for a year, I carried over the designs I crafted dramatically with the immense rising of the company’s stocks. The stockholders were happy to negotiate with QLU INU, so instead, the company forced me to recognize in front of them. With that, I became famous when the media chased me while I was running away anonymously because I felt irritated to recognize heavily in a public matter.
Because of my growing popularity and attractiveness, most male colleagues sometimes asked me for a date, and I recklessly accepted their request and went to the bar like an escort. Instead, they used me like a slut, and somehow, they took my virginity with their friends for additional gang-banging experience. It was bitter, even though I accepted their favor as a naïve and foolish woman. The next day, the media released the article about the headline I slept with a group of men, but thanks to the QLU INU’s silence, the company reprimanded the media they had nothing to do with my personal matter and ignore it as they solely cared about business in clothing. My problematic stress level was gratefully minimal since I had no families or relatives alleging me for my carelessness.
Our relationships with them seemed in disarray, but when a fashion designing contest came up, it somehow restored back to normal. That’s why the picture I was looking at seems to be a casual yet meaningful smile. I learned that being human stays at its finest and never accept night out’s request from men ever again — no matter how gentle they are.
That concludes my backstory
“.... I’m done recalling it,” I muttered with a sigh of relief.
I keep continuing my design until it did. When I think back about it, I feel motivated as my adrenaline has filled passionately.
Later, one of my junior colleagues enters my room as he is calling me for an interview with the marketing director.
“Mirai-senpai! It’s time for an interview,” he waves at me.
“I’m coming in shortly! The design will complete soon!” I reply nervously.
What will be his purpose for me to have a business chat with him?
What will be his suggestion when working on my next project?
What will be his reactions when the company markets suddenly skyrockets?
My thoughts suddenly come into my mind as it tries to create its foreshadowing questions.
No, I do not want to know what his concerns will look like. This will take less than 20 minutes.
Finishing my partial design, I immediately keep the tools and grab my black coat while handing myself a handkerchief to break off my sweat that surfaces on my forehead. I don’t want my pale face to be ashamed in front of the marketing director. It might have caught me red-handed because of the informal taboo. My anxiety still continues about making my first move.
“Oh my! I really don’t want my ego to ruin the daily routine of my work,” mutter myself.
It turns out that I was always workaholic with designing gowns and some casual sets that will use for runaway events. Such high-class and fashion-obsessive people will usually test first before the customers will decide if it fits their mood or not. The strategy itself becomes marketing the dresses industry-by-industry, but sometimes, the schedule overdid my career to its drugged heaven — or is it base?
I cannot take a single rest despite the excessive stress intake because of the number of demands in producing more designs. Otherwise, I might suffer from acute stress disorders. The company forces me to illustrate the dresses with unique characteristics that fit my client to ensure their proportion and compatibility when wearing it.
The marketing director keeps in charge of taking care of each department to check and inform the feedback of the consumer through quantitative and qualitative data that is used to reconsider their project proposal. Whenever something comes up, he always finishes things up.
Gladly, he is not the person who usually bosses around as he wants, and he is the right figure for me to criticize and suggest whatever he wants. Overall, he is not the right guy for him to underestimate from head to toe.
“My tea for him has almost fallen around his carpet. I should make sure I’ll keep up my right stance,” I mutter.
With no hesitation and nervous blow, I knock on the door before I hand the lever and push it down to open the door with my casual gaze and smile.
Swaying the base, I glimpse him toying with his pen while viewing outside through a vast translucent window with the city lights prepared to brighten around its dusk.
“Ichigo-sensei, is there any matter regarding me?” I address him with my first question.
“Ko ko ko… the beauty of stock spikes and glamorous designs has enormously filled their crystallized eyes, calling for elegance and artistic perception. Your hard work,” he pauses while turning his head and bending his spine to amaze me “..... or rather your smart work has reached beyond the satisfaction of our Chairman and customers themselves. O my Dress Diva, please preach with me for the destiny of QLU INU!”
He bows like a prince welcoming his Cinderella for a waltz.
“Yeah….. I’ll surely be pleased with you,” I sweat out with my awkward smile.
His welcoming cliches are the first thing that he exhibits to every guest inside his desk. Judging by his personality, he glamorizes himself as he possesses his beauty that amazed everyone; however, it bothers me when things may go wrong, when a particular cause can make him unstable. He is the edgiest person I have met inside this corporation.
“Mirai-san… if you would like to have some tea with me, that would be glamorous for you to relax.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but I don’t need tea for a moment. I just want to accomplish something else.”
“Accomplish what? The offers of the company have satisfied with a lot of demands that rule over Japan, and the entire world, but our surplus within the company has reached its minimal range. Even Jessica Turner, the most-renowned Hollywood actress, would detach herself from her boring taste of clothes and gowns.”
(Well, it’s because she is an exhibitionist, to begin with. Her career originated from the popular Playboy centerfold cover that welcomes her to international recognition and acknowledgment.)
I am also a big fan of her fashion magazines. Her slender body with her massive G-cup-sized breast and wider hips suit its perfection with her long-straight blond hair and seductiveness. She even wears my designs like bikinis, gowns, casual dresses, and leather suits are only from QLU INU itself. When I see her wearing that all the time, it brings up my motivation to keep adding fresh ideas.
Jessica Turner is a Japanese-American beauty born since her Japanese mother passed away because of labor incapability while her abusive father subsequently died because of his excessive alcohol intake and lung cancer. Jessica found herself isolated when she was around 13 years old, which she had vulnerably taken from a certain human trafficking organization.
However, the government spies could retrieve her with enormous obliteration which most mankind considered their actions relentlessly. Although it was 5 years later from the beginning of her tormenting journey, Jessica left herself with no financial obligations. For her to survive, Jessica kept searching for jobs until Playboy found her to sign a contract with her. With that, she accepted humbly, even if it meant to surrender her chastity and sacrifice her body. It was her fortune, yet miserable to live with contentment. Years after years, Jessica adapted deeply to exhibitionism.
(That was pretty much what I heard from her interview.)
Her story feels so weird, yet lucky enough for her to reach the sky. But does she feel comfortable about it? I wonder what my guts will tell more about her.
My nerves tingle as I describe her story with a horrific sense of misery. Sometimes, I also think differently when my womanhood demands me to canoodle something desirably. From despair to hope, it sounds intriguing. Thus, my embodiment generated with radiant heat — flowing through my veins.
Somehow, I space out a little, which makes Ichigo suddenly snap his finger in front of my dead-wandering eyes. I do not understand what he was talking about until it splashes me.
“Mirai-san! You look like you’re having a work-sick!” Ichigo touches my neck to check my body temperature.
“Yeah…. But… I’m… fine,” I hardly breathe as if I sweat out excessively.
(Wait? What do I feel again?)
I cannot hear a damn thing when Ichigo tries to wake me up mentally.
I cannot see the surroundings as my vision blurs everywhere.
I cannot speak when I try to.
I cannot feel anything that he tries to touch me strongly.
What the hell is wrong with me?
It feels like my body will fall for just a second.
My vision slowly blackens out and fading from around the focus. My throat chokes out as it blocks the air to pass through where it supposed to lead at. The numb around my arms shiver with convulsive pain that racks me in a twist. My eyes moistened with salt, a fierce liquid which I could tell that it is my blood that has gradually gushed out from the bottom of my lids. My jaw feels clasping from around my cheeks until it forces it to squeeze until wreck..... and...
And
And
And
(I feel like my stress-overloading causes my death.)
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