The squealing only made Felicia pause to look at Elisabet with a bewildered squint of her eyes. If what she was doing was pushing any kind of boundary, she was apparently unaware of it. Girls undressed in communal lockers before Combative Training and the showers were pretty similar, row after row of cubicles that afforded a person only moderate privacy. “For fucks sakes, Elisabet, cut it with the sound effects; I’m not going to fucking rape you. See, underwear, everyone wears it, it is not a big deal at all, could you please shut...”
Her voice trailed off into oblivion when Elisabet shocked her further by thrusting her blankets over her chest. “I’m not stripping! Hyne, Elisabet, it’s a bra. Everyone wears them, unless they don’t have to bother or they’re too young for them. This isn’t the beginning of an awkward seduction, you weirdo, there are people who club with their shirts open exactly like this. Between girls,” Felicia indicated Elisabet with a widening of her eyes, then reached out to grab the blanket and lower it, “it’s really not that big of a fucking deal. Is it your parents, Elisabet?” Felicia’s imagination was sparked. She scanned Elisabet over thoroughly, then around her book shelf of assorted poetic nonsense that had always seemed strange to her. “Are they the sort of people that tell you that nudity’s ugly and the female body is full of sin?” Felicia wasn’t being serious, but there was definitely a curiosity to why her room-mate acted as if she’d just broken some kind of law. She pulled on the top of her bra-cup, not crudely, but indicatively. Perhaps if she was a curvier girl, she’d have been more self-conscious, but Felicia found that particular area of her body too unexceptional to care much. “They’re only clothes and when they’re pretty, you feel pretty. And I like to think of it as being a house, you know. If you’re a nice house, you’re not going to have a fucked up foundation, are you? No. That’s why you don’t wear ratty two-year-old cotton sports bras under a three hundred gil dress. It’s an insult.”
Leaning over the edge of the bed, her knees cradling the corners of the cardboard box, Felicia began to dig her arms into the box, searching the different layers with telling effortlessness. An attached pair of black underwear with pink detailing came out with one hand, which she held on her thigh as her other took out the smoky pink dress. “See, these are both nice, Elisabet. You’d look like a girl in them instead of a transvestite.” Felicia threw her a shrewd side-ways glare. “I know you’re not ugly, you just like to pretend to be with your hair and your clothes. That’s alright though, you know? I told you, I’ll fix it.” While Elisabet was still sitting down, Felicia set out the bra and panties on her stomach, then overlaid it with the dress, organizing the outfit with or without her input.
“You know what my favorite game was when I was little, Elisabet?” she asked quietly as she began probing through the shoes. “Dress-up. Even with my dolls, I wasn’t so much into the ‘making them talk to each other’ thing, I thought that was pretty stupid, but I liked to dress them. Even when you feel like complete shit, you know, wearing different things can make you feel great.” A pair of light brown flats were retrieved, placed on the dress’ skirt neatly. Then, finally, Felicia began to redo her shirt buttons as she knelt down on the floor to open her bag – and take out a decent-sized paper bag. The tip of a hamburger was unwrapped and bitten into.
“So, like,” Felicia said, as she tried to chew her large mouthful, hiding her mouth behind the hamburger itself for courtesy’s sake. “Get dressed.”