Her Name | pjm

December .C h a p t e r T h i r t y.

"Kieran, are you ready?" Yu-jun called me from outside my room. Dan wrote us that the party will begin at 6PM in one of the towns casinos. He specifically instructed me that this years topic was red, so I had to find an according outfit. They couldn't have picked black, huh? I put on a sweater, grabbed my coat and went out. "Yes, let's go." I checked my watch. "12AM. We still have about five hours before we need to leave to the party. But I really don't know how I'll manage to choose a full outfit in such short time." I complained to Yu-jun while we walked to the car. Ye-jun was already waiting next to the jeep, and as soon as I walked closer, he opened the doors for me.

I was a bit disappointed, because I really wanted Jimin to come too, but he had planned trainings with Five, and I didn't want to abuse my power on him. If I'd take him away from the business too much, others might get annoyed with him, maybe even let their feelings out on Jimin. But as in the old days, the twins were more than happy to take me shopping.

" I actually googled some nicer places that have formal wear, so hopefully, we can get this done quicker."  Ye-jun informed us, and I felt incredibly thankful. "Damn it Ye-jun, I didn't even think about that. You're the best!" I exclaimed, and Yu-jun cleared his throat quite dramatically. "You both are the best!" I quickly fixed my statement and the twins smirked. Red. How the hell was I supposed to choose a red dress? You really had to be quite bold and confident to pull such a colour. Why couldn't they have picked black?? I kept biting the inside of my cheek, and tried to focus on the twins bickering to keep myself from worrying too much. Right now the topic of the argument was about tomatoes. Ye-jun managed to convince Yu-jun that a tomato was in fact a fruit, and now was trying to prove how that makes ketchup a smoothie. Since I noticed that Yu-jun was a bit tense in the past days, I decided to move him a bit and joined Ye-juns side in the argument.

After about an hour of drilling that tomato being a fruit equals ketchup being a smoothie, we ended up in the towns centre. Yu-jun was looking as he was about to pop a vein so Ye-jun and I decided to back off for a while. We went to a few of Ye-juns googled shops, but none of them had red dresses. Finally, at the fourth one the store lady told us that she had some in the back, stating that they were too expensive to stand in the front. When she disclosed us information about the back she looked a bit worried, and I really couldn't blame her. Our trio definitely didn't scream elegance and money. The twins still looked like they were filming an action movie, and I went to sleep at 4AM. As if you look better when you go to sleep earlier, dumbass. We managed to convince her to show us the dresses and as soon as she took us to the back I saw the dress that I wanted to wear.

It was a sleeveless, strapless red gown, that was falling effortlessly from the mannequin. The main fabric seemed to be transparent, but the front side of the upper part had an additional fibre of soft fabric, decorated with various spirals of black lines. They overlapped and intertwined, but they were so slim that it was barely noticeable. The back of the dress was naked, and fell in a soft widening form from the waist down. The beautiful fonts of black embroidery were intertwined throughout the skirt of the dress as well. I couldn't help but stare at it in awe, the dress was absolutely stunning, and I started to doubt if I'd be able to pull it off. The store worker mistook my expression for the lack of funds and suggested that we'd see dresses that are less expensive. "She will try this one."  Yu-jun instructed, and she didn't dare to argue. The lady took the dress and both of us walked to the dressing room, leaving the twins to wait outside.

While she was helping me put on the dress, I noticed her hands shaking a bit. This was not the first time such incidents had happened. Every time I'd go to any public place with the twins, people would feel intimidated. I never felt that, but then again, I never saw them as strangers. To me they were always my family, but to other people they really looked like bad news. " Please don't worry. They might sound a bit mean, but they are actually great kids." I tried to calm the lady down and she gave me a soft smile. "And trust me, we do have the funds. There is nothing to worry about." I added and winked at her, to which she lowered her eyes. It seemed as if she were a bit embarrassed for jumping to conclusions about out financial state. She zipped up the dress on the side and took a step back to look at the view. "What's your feet size, dear? The dress will not have a full view until you put on high heels." I told her my size and she came back with a pair of shoes. As soon as I put them on she nodded. "Aha, yes. Now that is the look. With a bit of fix on your hair and face you'll look incredible." I smiled at her again, not really sure what to say and she opened the doors to the twins.