for day 11: (Kanae) fashion
An imaginary color that can be seen temporarily by looking steadily at a strong color for a while until some of the cone cells become fatigued, temporarily changing their color sensitivities, and then looking at a markedly different color. / Kanae and fashion choices. Kanae/Ryuuken, background Ishida family politics. (Title and synopsis from the Wikipedia article "Impossible_color#Chimerical_colors".)
Kanae is hardly aware of her surroundings. Everything is white, white.
White, and the faint girly-pink of the bridal boutique's wallpaper. Apparently, it's not done for a high-society bride to make her own wedding dress.
If she's to marry into nobility, no matter that the Ishida are fallen nobility, then she needs to look the part.
Well, it is true that she wouldn't be able to make anything anywhere near as complicated as the lace-and-silk confections being (politely, insistently) shoved at you. Kanae's sewing skills are geared toward the necessarily-practical: letting out shirts, taking down hems, patching torn fabric. She could make a dress, given time and practice, but it's simpler and more practical to just buy one.
At least, she'd thought so. The boutique's staff have shown her so many dresses just in the last few minutes. Kanae isn't even entirely used to having the freedom to pick out the clothes she wears. She's always been assigned uniforms: for work, and for school, and for Ryuuken-sama's protection. One for each of her duties, with a change of clothes each. It wasn't until junior high school that she realized it wasn't breaking any important rules, to go out and buy more socks and underwear.
She does appreciate knowing how to sew in pockets, though. Perhaps just a few pairs of trousers would be all right? She can't imagine Ryuuken minding, as he's so in favor of anything and everything practical.
She's jolted out of her imaginings by the prick of a pin. This latest dress is all sheer lace over a sweetheart neckline, short cap sleeves and a many-layered skirt. She can hardly move in this, and the woman doing the fitting wants it tighter?
Kanae reaches around, unzips the dress, and steps out of it. Worried that she's about to get cornered into going along with the next bit of frippery to be shoved in her face, she pulls her skirt and blouse back on and flees the fitting room.
Every single dress here costs more than she'd ever made in her life. Legally, she had been hired on at age 13, after which point the Ishida family had to pay out a wage and assign her time off. It wasn't as though it mattered – where could any of the house-servants have gone? The Ishida were the only remaining Echt among the exiled Quincy, save of course for Kurosaki-san. To leave the family's service would be a sin.
Kanae is painfully aware that she has served Ryuuken-sama first and foremost, for all these years. Even now, were he to undergo a complete turnaround in all of his views on filial duty and strike out on his own, she would follow him without hesitation.
This is all in theory, of course.
Kanae has been told that she is now allowed to request for the house servants to make her a wedding garment, or at least go out and buy it for her, but...
She's a slip of fate, herself, from still being the servant tasked to work until she dies. She hadn't minded, really – she was happy enough – but all the same, she won't ask this of her cousins and kin.
Kanae slips into the back of the shop. Here are yards of expensive fabric, handmade lace, imported silks – white and white and white-on-white; with the odd slice of color meant for an accent, or else a bridesmaid's dress. Western wedding dresses, for Christian weddings.
Close enough for a (former) maidservant, marrying up.
Kanae had once been plucked out of a handful of similar servant-children, like picking a piece of fruit off the tree as it ripened. Kurosaki-san had been Ryuuken-sama's intended.
Kanae knows how she looks, for all she's never much cared: the slimness of her frame, thin shoulders and thin hips and thin skin to go with it. All these frills and flounces and fluff, they don't do anything for Kanae. She looks like a fool, or a little girl playing dress-up.
These dresses would suit Kurosaki-san, she thinks idly. Kurosaki-san has always had the uncanny ability to take up most of the space in a room simply by existing, even to the point of occupying one's thoughts.
Kanae, for herself, is too quiet for such things.
She turns back and politely requests assistance. She asks for simpler dresses; preferably, close-fitted at the waist only. Flowing skirts, draping sleeves. White on white, classic. No frills, no lace.
In the end, she sticks with a high-necked, long-sleeved dress. It gathers in at her waist, with a narrow silver-filigreed belt; the skirt's layers float around her calves when she walks, exposing matching silver-on-white shoes.
Everything is still in too-soft fabric. There are petticoats, plural. It's like wearing a cloud.
There are ribbons, and then there are pins.
Finally, she sees the accompanying veil. It falls to her waist, and it comes attached to a tiny silver tiara-shaped hairpin – or perhaps it's a hairpin with a tiara attached? Silver, with blue stones.
The hairpin alone – never mind the veil, never mind the dress – it costs more than she would have earned with her entire lifetime of service. Kanae promises herself she's leaving it to her children.
She puts in the order. After this, she'll fill her closet with real color.