The Outsider (Outsider #1) ✔️

Chapter 72 : Budget Shopping

Dusk sat through part of the presentation on the VR Engine. She got the gist and understood that the quality of work was not inferior to the HRT. She knew her subordinates will be able to decide on this and she need not sit there any longer.

Catherine was happy to see Dusk get up. She was feeling neglected and bored. The discussion was too technical for her to understand. She was getting a headache thinking of threads, multi-tasking, memory spaces and all other things that were being thrown around. She vaguely remembered having heard some of those terms before.

Dusk excused herself and left with Catherine. Catherine decided that they had to go shopping and also show her the main tourist sites of the city. According to her, it was a disaster if someone was in the city for 3 days and not see anything. Shopping, on the other hand, was necessary because dusk had no clothes left to wear.

Dusk refused to go to Central Mall. She had no intention going to a shop that sold $2,000 dresses. Unfortunately, only shops Catherine knew were of that type. So, she called Susco.

"Where did you buy clothes first time you came to Regis. I need some because I have to be here for another day."

"Have you seen Ambrosia Square? If you go on the western side, there is a Pop-Mart. And next to it is Bazaar Square. That has many smaller shops that sell pretty nice clothes. But I think Pop-Mart is better if you are buying just one or two things." Susco replied.

"Can we have burgers or Frankie's at Ambrosia?" was the first question Catherine asked but a scalding look from Dusk shut her up.

Catherine had never been to Pop-Mart. The security officer accompanying them was also a little apprehensive. The biggest problem being that they could not clear up the entire place for the two girls to shop...

After a lot of argument, the officer agreed. 10 female security guards from Imperial Security were called to Ambrosia to accompany them. The officer himself went to the security room of Pop-Mart and sat looking at various video feeds from the shop to look for problems. He cursed his luck to have been on duty when the Princess and her companion decided to go to a common place.

While he could, to some extent, browbeat the Princess by threatening to report to the Crown Prince, Dusk Hale was a different story. She was on the "Priority Z" List, same as that provided to the Crown Prince and the Important Ministers. And she was a business owner, not someone he could order around.

Dusk asked one of the security guards to get Catherine a peaked cap and a hoodie. With the cap and hoodie, people were unlikely to realise who she was. The dark glasses of the Wearable Communicator added another layer of disguise.

With that in place, they spent 2 hours at the store, looking for clothes. Dusk picked up 3 pairs of jeans and 6 tops, socks and some undergarments she needed. Catherine was in raptures with the wide range of colours, products, brands she had never heard of and the varied, unconventional designs. All these were new and fascinating to her. She picked up a dozen T-Shirts of various types and 4 wrap-around skirts that she didn't know were even available.

Mimicking Dusk, she read the labels and found out that there was price written on the labels. She did not know that because she never checked prices before. She was surprised that a T-Shirt Top could cost only $10 each. Some were even less. All her previous clothes were priced in 3 digits and sometimes 4 digits. She secretly admired Dusk for finding a place that sold things so low. She could wear a new set of clothes before breakfast, change to a new one to sit in the sun, wear another for lunch, and different one for the evening for a full year and her monthly allowance would not get over.

When they came to the billing counter (which also she did not know even existed), she turned around to look for her attendants to give them the clothes to pack and take home. When the Imperial Security Guard took the clothes from her, she remembered in embarrassment that her attendants were not with her. She took the clothes back and stood behind Dusk in the line.