Draconia Offline vol. 1

22.1. Diplomatic Negotiations - Part 1

Erik has to use force to get me out of my pyjamas.

"I'm not wearing that!" I'm struggling with him but he's much stronger than me. He was way stronger long before my body weakened after the transformation so now he's unstoppable for me.

"Come on, Ryuu, you'll look so cute in it," he tries to persuade me and throws my sleeping t-shirt away.

"It's a cosplay!" I retort.

"Are cosplays usually such high quality?" Erik points out and wants to get me out of my sleeping shorts. "It's professionally made and from the best fabric."

My phone starts ringing so we freeze for a moment and look at the screen. It's Liana.

"Don't pick it up!" I protest but Erik is quicker and puts the call on speaker.

"Good morning, sleepyheads, did you get my presents?" she asks right away.

"We did," Erik confirms and is petting my wings so that I won't run away. "Thanks for the suits, I love them. The problem is Ryuu, though."

"Expected as much," she sighs. "Make sure he wears it, we can't present him to the Prime Minister in a hoodie."

"Working on it," he smirks.

"Li, you can't be serious," I almost cry.

"I'm already wearing mine," she announces proudly. "Ingri designed clothes for all of us. I'm glad they arrived on time."

"B-but...!"

"Human clothes just don't suit us anymore," Liana's tone gets more serious. "You've been cold all the time lately and me too."

"It's a cosplay!" I repeat desperately.

"Not anymore," she says. "I've been working since seven and I feel really good wearing it. People stared in the beginning but they got used to it quickly. Anyway, I have work before our meeting, bye."

She ends the call so abruptly that I don't have any time to protest more.

"Ryuu, please, I want to see you in it," Erik pleads.

I sigh and look at the boxes. Do I have no choice? Even if I rebelled against Liana and kept wearing my hoodie, she would probably just send me back to change by force. And I would look even more stupid in a suit as I absolutely don't have the figure for it. If anything, a multi-layered robe can at least hide how skinny I am. I give in.

"I don't even know where to start," I'm lost when looking at all those layers. "God, there's even Celestial underwear. And are these thermo leggings?"

Everything has holes for my wings already and since kimono isn't something you pull over your head, I don't have to be afraid that it'll become useless when my wings get really big. Still, Erik has to help me to push my wings through the gaps because I'm not able to do it even after several attempts. I must learn how to manage myself with telekinesis. The sooner the better.

"Ingri is really good at designing clothes," Erik comments when he finds tiny buttons to close the gaps around my wings so that I'm not cold on my back.

Then we look up a photo of my ingame avatar and try to find out the order of layers. I never really paid attention to my clothes ingame. My avatar was dressed either by virtual maids in the palace or automatically by the system. No such luck here. Most importantly, we also have to look up how to tie it.

"Shouldn't a Japanese know that?" Erik teases me. I nudge him, annoyed.

Fortunately, it turns out the 'cosplay' is a bit simplified and Westernized so in the end it isn't that hard to tie. Then we proceed to another layer... and another... and finally to the last one that is embroidered. The last binding is quite tricky because it comes with a real Japanese 'obi' but the Internet helps us once again.