“Close your eyes and raise your head a little.”
After that, Gabriel closed her eyes and raised her arms as Jennie and Rubica requested. There was so much going on that she didn’t even notice when Khanna arrived. The designer then took out a dress, which Rubica had ordered in advance, from a huge box.
Gabriel held her breath the moment she heard the sound of her taking the dress out. She knew she was about to be suffocated with a corset, and just thinking about it was horrible enough.
-Beauty is always uncomfortable.
Christopher, the designer who she worshipped with her soul before Madam Khanna appeared, had said that to her sometimes when she suffered from the corset.
He would tell her so many stories about how the pretty girls who currently ruled society had gone through so much pain to be like that. That made Gabriel believe she also had to endure all kinds of pain and uncomfortableness to be pretty.
“I am ready.”
“Good, shall we start?”
Gabriel thought Khanna was about to have her hold a pillar and bring in a few sturdy maids to mercilessly tighten her waist.
However, Khanna didn’t call any maids. She just pulled the straps of Gabriel’s corset once or twice, just enough to make her dress look good.
“But will this much be enough?”
“Yes, that will do.”
“But I have a…”
She almost said ‘thick waist’, but she stopped there. She promised herself to not criticize herself in front of the others ever again. Khanna could see what the girl was afraid of and smiled kindly.
“This is a dress Madam Berry and I specially designed to fit your body shape.”
Then, she showed her the dress she brought. It was white and had huge flowers and a peacock embroidered in green on it. The bottom of the skirt had been done with peacock’s feathers covered by buprestid wings. Its color changed as the dress moved. And, unlike ordinary long dresses, its skirt was short, so it looked more like a jacket.
‘It’s a little… new.’
Gabriel’s eyes shook nervously as she looked at the dress’s short upper part. However, how was the dress Rubica wore for the first time at her tea meeting? It had been an innovative design, but it had been welcomed.
Actually, the growing distrust in her heart was actually aimed at herself. To be honest, the dress was beautiful, but she was hesitating because she wasn’t sure she deserved it.
‘But these ladies are experts, and I’ve decided to believe in them. I cannot back off now.’
Gabriel found the courage and started to follow Khanna’s instructions to wear the dress. In the meantime, Rubica chose something for the girl’s hair from her accessory box.
Nowadays, it was fashionable to wear a flat hat that covered about half of the head when going outside, but what Rubica chose was a headdress that was a little bigger than that.
It had a thick lump of lace that resembled a cobweb and was decorated with a daisy-shaped green ribbon that was bigger than a man’s fist.
Rubica put it on Gabriel’s head, made a few huge green ribbons in no time, and added it to her hair using pins.
“Well, what do you think?”
“Oh, I am always impressed by your work.”
Rubica smiled at the compliment. However, what delighted her the most was Gabriel’s change.
“Yes, you look so pretty now.”
It made the girl’s heart tickle. She felt like standing up and jumping up and down like crazy. Before, when someone called her pretty, she thought it was to mock her or to be polite.
But today, she accepted Rubica’s compliment as a true compliment, without any kind of distortion.
‘I didn’t know being called pretty could feel this good.’
Finally, Gabriel ripped apart the invisible cocoon that had been encasing her and came out. She smiled widely to Rubica, not caring about how it would look like.
She no longer cared about whether she was going to get attention in society or not. She didn’t care about what others thought of her.
The duchess she liked and admired was saying she was pretty. What more did she need? She didn’t care about bee-like men who went after this flower and then the next one.
The girl who had been ashamed of herself found her confidence again and stretched out her wings. It was marvelous.
Rubica, Jennie, and Khanna all stopped for a while, astonished by her smile.
“I should bring a big mirror so that she will be able to see it herself.”
Jennie woke up first and shouted. The mirror arrived while Rubica was doing the final touch on the girl’s hair. For a moment, Gabriel just stared at herself in the mirror.
-Pink lips are for delicate and lovely girls. They’re not for an ugly girl like me.
However, the girl in the mirror was wearing a clear pink rouge, but it suited her much more than the thick red rouge she had been using for years.
-My eyelashes are short, my eyes are small, and as if that wasn’t enough, my eyebrows have to be so thin.
That was why she usually painted her eyebrows with a thick, black eyebrow paint. But now, the brown eyebrows that had been painted so lightly matched her hair color so well and highlighted her brown eyes even more.
-Why is my hair so curly? And it is so red and always drags attention.
Every morning, she would comb her hair and braid it as tightly as possible. However, Rubica had made her hair curly to make it look thick but also added ribbons to it so that the thickness of it wouldn’t be so highlighted.
Contrary to what Gabriel had thought, that hairstyle made her round face and freckled skin look even cuter.
Also, the over dress that had lots of pleats where the upper part ended made her waist look thin enough without tightening the corset.
When Gabriel said nothing at seeing herself in the mirror, Rubica anxiously asked, “Do you like it?”
“I’m… surprised.”
Gabriel spoke after a slightly long silence. She sounded shocked, but thankfully she didn’t seem to be disappointed. She still couldn’t take her eyes off the mirror.
“From the bottom to the top, you’ve changed me into a style that I always considered wrong for me.”
She had always worn thick makeup to cover her freckles as she was ashamed of them.
However, Jennie had used light makeup that showed her freckles but also her good skins.
Before, she would have been horrified by the idea of showing her freckles, but after determining to not hate herself too much, she didn’t hate her freckles.
She even thought it was a unique charm that others didn’t have.
“But… this suits me better.”
Gabriel could now see Rubica hadn’t made the request just to make her regain confidence. If she hadn’t done the training of calling herself beautiful in front of the mirror, she would have been looking for flaws now instead of seeing how beautiful she had become.
Sometimes, the wall inside your heart is powerful enough to stop you from seeing the truth right in front of your eyes.
“I’m glad you like it!”
“Yes, I wonder what kind of cosmetics your maid just used on me. It feels so comfortable.”
To her surprise, Jennie gave her names of a few cosmetic shops that sold not-so-expensive goods which even commoners often used. Apart from what she had used today, she also told the girl about some makeup products that would suit her well.
“You are young. Your mother’s expensive creams have too many nutrients, so they can’t be good for your skin.”
Gabriel even wrote down everything Jennie said. She thought she had been right at finding the courage and ask for the duchess’s help. She was sure she had gained much more than her newfound beauty.
“Oh, my!”
Ann, who had just finished talking to Carl, knocked on the door and came in. Then, she asked in surprise at seeing Gabriel, “Who is this beautiful lady?”
“This is Lady Tangt.”
“What?”
Ann’s eyes became so wide that they almost came out. She circled around the girl and exclaimed like a sailor who encountered a mermaid out in the ocean.
It embarrassed Gabriel a lot, but she endured it, thinking it was nothing compared to how her family would react when she got home.
“You look so pretty! Why on earth have you been hiding your beauty?”
“Heh heh.”
Gabriel smiled widely. She wanted to become elegant and proud like Elise and Tatiana if she ever got to be pretty. She had even practiced that look in secret.
However, after she decided to be herself instead of someone else, she could smile naturally. She now knew it suited her best, no matter what the others said.