BXBX NOVEL Chapter 95 95. Debut, Part VII
Editor: Aelryinth
Julietta had a proud face as she looked at the kitchen set on the wall toward the terrace. The glass cabinet was furnished with a tea set and various kinds of tea leaves, and right next to it was a magic furnace for heating the tea and a small sink for washing the teacup.
"It’s an incomparably good environment compared to the theater prop room!" Amelie replied, taking up the work she had laid off in the presence of Julietta.
"Is that the corset I asked you to make?"
"Yes. This is a corset pressing to the chest, and you will feel pressured, and I wonder if you will be able to breathe," Amelie said, putting the animal bones for the corset between the delicate silks.
As the fabric came in soon, the white undergarment was almost complete. Before making a formal dress, Julietta, who needed a special corset to press her chest flatter, approached Amelie to see if it was made as she had asked.
When Amelie finished the corset she had made at Julietta’s request, she stuck it out with another corset she had completed yesterday.
"Put it on. I finished it quickly. To take your measurements, you’ll have to wear a corset."
Sophie followed her to help as Julietta took a white and black corset and walked into the back of the cubicle in the corner.
"But I’m glad I don’t have to tighten it up, as my waist is so slim. If I tighten up to my waist, I might end up suffocating!"
Through a mirror placed in the inner space of the partition, Julietta saw herself. Unlike its white, innocent-looking color, the corset, which pressed the chest and hugged the waist tightly, looked rather indecent.
Thanks to the ruthless corset, her bust seemed to have shrunk by an inch or two, but her cleavage, which was under heavy pressure, was soaring up to form a deep valley. Looking back and forth awkwardly, Julietta tried on the dress she had taken off.
"How do you feel? Does your chest look smaller?"
Still, the chest area seemed to be a little more relaxed. Sophie nodded too, looking over Julietta’s front and back.
"It certainly looks smaller. You just press your chest in, but it’s amazing how the overall atmosphere looks different."
Sophie’s words brought in Amelie, who was outside.
Even in decent, neat clothes, she always looked glitzy and mature without realizing it, but relatively pure and gentle, just because the breast area was flattened. Julietta looked around, satisfied with her reflection in the mirror, and took off her clothes again.
"I think you can measure it this way."
While measuring the details for the dress as required by Julietta, Sophie was upset and tearful.
"I thought you’d finally take off that boring wig and find yourself, but now you have to put pressure on your chest. When will you be free to live in your original form?"
Julietta smiled as she looked back at the upset Sophie. "There’s not much left. I’m really free now after this."
"However, you have to live as a faceless designer even after this job is over. You have to cover up everything when you go out."
At Amelie’s words, Julietta paused for a moment. Even if she escaped from her status as a princess, she should still not be exposed to the world.
A sigh crept out. She thought this was a life where she shouldn’t show her face for her lifetime. All she had to do was hide her face. She shrugged as she put the fabric she had picked out for the dress down on the workbench.
"I’ll have to hide my true self, but I won’t have to read others’ countenances." Julieta recalled the time when she had been in jail and shivered without knowing why. "I’m going to make a lot of money. I’d rather not be swayed by anyone else in my life."
If her status in the social class system was insignificant, she thought she should have enough money for others to grovel before her. If she had something in her favor, it was being different from other people’s memories and experiences.
Julietta now looked around the interior of the splendid building that would serve as the foundation for her new life.
’It starts here. This is the first dressing shop for Madame Chartreu.’
When she thought about the name Chartreu, which she had actually picked in a hurry without thinking about anything, seeming pretty cool, she laughed.
"Now that you’ve taken my measurements, shall we go and pick the fabric? Is there any other fabric in the warehouse other than the ones here?"
Julietta took off her chest-pressing corset and left the studio with a gallant spirit.
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"Do you want me to make it as it is?"
Julietta picked out the fabric for the dress and left the dressing shop for the blacksmith’s.
After the war, a blacksmith’s shop in a peaceful continent turned into a place not for making swords, shields, and war weapons, but a place for making real-life tools, such as interior decoration props and glasses.
"Yes. Please make a model of a woman’s figure, a mannequin."
To make a mannequin with neck to hips, Julietta showed him a detailed drawing she had prepared.
"Where the hell are you going to use this ugly thing?"
There were many people with strange hobbies, but no one openly demanded a cut-off body figure, like the drawing the girl had shown.
The blacksmith looked carefully up and down at the maid who had stiff brick-red hair and ugly glasses. He thought it might be a hobby of the maid, even though he thought it might be an errand for a pervert, because it didn’t seem like a thing to handle.
Julietta smiled at the suspicious smith. "My master will use it for decoration in her dressing shop. She is going to put a dress on top of this and put it on display in the hall."
Upon hearing Julietta’s explanation, the blacksmith looked down at the painting once again. He just thought it was some kind of hideous thing, but it seemed plausible to him if she would dress it up.
"Is it dressing up top?" The blacksmith nodded as if he had understood then.
"Yes. Make a cross frame so it can stand, and make the support long enough to the floor. Can you make it not too heavy by being tall?"
"It’s not hard, but it’s a little problem to make this upper body shape. But it’s not impossible at all, so I’ll try."
Julietta gave another picture to the ruminating owner. "Is it possible to make a small, thin square plate the size of a hand?"
She opened her palm and said, "I’d like to make it very thin, with the store name and address on it."
It was an inquiry about making a VIP card for the shop’s regular customers. Since discrimination based on class and birth status was strictly enforced, she was going to create a membership card according to the appropriate grade. In addition, a special metal business card was to be made and sent with the invitation.
Julietta tried as hard as she could to explain modern business cards as she could. Considering the various conditions, she had opened a store outside the main street, so she wanted to put a metal business card with an address on the invitation in order to make it easier to tell where the dressing shop was located.
"It’s going to be this thin. It’s going to be hard, but... do you mean I should print characters on top of this?"
"Yes. I’d like to make it by type of metal. I’d like to have black letters engraved on a silver plate, if possible?" Julietta asked the master gently, counting the money in her hand inwardly. "Is it expensive?"
"It depends on how many. It’s not hard to make a plate, but it’s not easy to engrave them."
Julietta was very pleased with the blacksmith’s words. Unlike modern times, he did not have laser imprinting technology, so he had to carve it by hand. Feeling burdened by costs after being buoyant with expectations, Julietta asked him to make only twenty copies.
Julietta wanted to make a lot of business cards and give them to customers immediately, but changed her mind after the cost of the production. She decided that she would only put cards together with an invitation to those specifically chosen, to create scarcity.