Do You Expect Me to Watch You Eat?

"So... what exactly did you mean by that...?"

About twenty minutes later, Archer's voice was filled with incomprehension, disbelief, and bewilderment—a complete collection of things that were hard to understand.

In fact, she really should have looked confused.

Because they were standing in a clothing store...

In the roughly sixty-square-meter room, countless clothes hung from racks, filling the entire space. It was the kind of small clothing shop one could find anywhere.

Could it be that in China, desserts were sold in clothing stores instead of dessert shops?

How could that be possible?! Socialist China might indeed differ from capitalist Japan, but surely it was not bizarre to that extent!!

Of course they had not come to a clothing store to eat dessert!

After having Archer take Spirit Form, Tsukahara Meiji had dragged her into this place and enthusiastically started picking out clothes for her, as though his earlier nervousness had all been an act.

At the moment, he held a simple white tracksuit in his hands. Its plain gold trim added a touch of fashion, and he was holding it up against Archer's body.

"Huh? You don't like sportswear? Then... how about trying this?"

A puzzled expression appeared beneath Tsukahara Meiji's black hair. He casually put the tracksuit back and selected a light green dress from the rack...

Archer felt that the wrinkles on her face, symbols of her confusion, must have deepened even further.

What exactly was her Master thinking?

First, he trusted that person named Carl far too easily. Then he suddenly agreed with her suggestion to eat dessert, only to drag her into a place like this. Just what had he understood?!

Faced with her Master's strangely intense enthusiasm for picking clothes for a girl, Archer gave a helpless laugh. "That's not what I meant..."

Archer felt her dissatisfaction growing stronger.

She struggled to suppress it, stared at Tsukahara Meiji's face, carefully chose her words several times, and finally asked, "Master, what exactly are you thinking? What did you understand?"

"Hmm, is it that hard to understand? Well, if you're in Spirit Form, you can't eat, right? I can't exactly make you watch me eat by myself, can I?"

A faint blush spread across Tsukahara Meiji's face...

"Huh? You care about something like that?!"

Archer felt her eyebrows twitching nonstop.

But for a well-featured girl, any expression she made would look cute in a boy's eyes.

Come to think of it, whether Archer admitted it or not, she was quite a beautiful girl. Tsukahara Meiji could not simply ignore such a cute girl and stuff himself with dessert alone.

That would be far too awkward.

It was already a little embarrassing for a grown man to eat dessert by himself. And now there would be a woman standing beside him—a particularly beautiful woman, at that—and a woman nobody except him could see... That more than doubled the awkwardness!

He had clearly felt that awkwardness earlier when he watched Carl eat. Now it was going to be doubled?! Of course he did not want to go through that again!

That was why he had thought of this. Wouldn't it solve everything if Archer took physical form?

Besides, honestly, compared to communicating with a spirit body, Tsukahara Meiji felt more at ease speaking with Archer when she had a physical body. He could show more natural expressions that way.

And helping a girl change clothes... an opportunity like something straight out of a dating sim did not come along every day! As a healthy man with no girlfriend who particularly loved manga and games, he naturally could not let such a perfect opportunity pass him by—this might be the only chance in his life to dress such a cute girl!

In the shop owner's eyes, though, he saw more of a business opportunity than the complicated relationship between the two.

Robin Hood's hooded cloak outfit had looked strange when she entered, but the owner was a worldly man. The moment he saw the two of them, he immediately understood the situation.

(Chuunibyou, huh? Poor thing.)

It was a phase that nearly everyone went through.

During that phase, boys imitated the heroes in their hearts, while girls imagined themselves as princesses. In his own youth, the owner had once tied a bedsheet around his back as a cape and wielded a table leg as a sword. He had ended up getting the bedsheet covered in dirt and receiving a vicious beating for it.

This little girl was probably the same, right?

(What was it called again?)

(Cosplay? Yeah, that was probably it.)

That was why he had not proactively approached them to make a sale. Chuunibyou might not seem like a problem to the person suffering from it, but the foreigner beside her, who was obviously much more normal, was probably her guardian. If he went over, he would probably embarrass him.

The kindhearted owner chose to quietly watch over them, silently cheering Tsukahara Meiji on—though the truth was completely different from what he imagined.

"Well, Archer's so cute. Wouldn't it be a waste not to dress you up properly?"

Tsukahara Meiji spoke with complete conviction as he continued taking down clothes one after another, comparing their styles and sizes against Archer. Archer, meanwhile, wore the impatient expression of a playful child forced into hard labor.

"Who cares about that? Taking physical form puts a burden on my magical energy, and having a body means enemies might spot me. No matter how you look at it, I should remain in Spirit Form."

Besides... her appearance was very beautiful. That meant if she maintained physical form, she would attract a great deal of attention...

Wait?

Looking at it the other way around...

If she used her appearance, she could easily draw the enemy's attention away from Tsukahara Meiji and onto herself, right? Combined with her special skills, enemies would not be able to discover her easily...

That was an option too.

Archer silently approved of Tsukahara Meiji's proposal.

Fragments of Archer's words reached the shop owner's ears—things like "magic energy" and "physical form." This only made him more convinced that this was a story of a normal older brother traveling with his chuunibyou younger sister and trying hard to correct her condition. The encouraging smile at the corners of his mouth became even more pronounced.

(Hang in there, kid. Ah, this is youth.)

The owner had clearly been reminded of his own past again, of those days when he wore bedsheets as capes and imagined himself a great hero. Running a shop was terribly boring. If he did not find little amusements like this from time to time, he would have gone crazy long ago.

"Fine! I get it... The tracksuit will do!"

The furrow between Archer's brows suddenly eased. It was as though she had figured something out, or perhaps simply given up and shaken her head. She snatched the white tracksuit from the beginning out of Tsukahara Meiji's hands and rushed into the changing room.

Sportswear was simple clothing, yet not many people wore it on the streets. China was a country that cared deeply about appearances. More than whether clothing was comfortable or personally appealing, people cared about whether others liked how it looked.

Girls in particular liked to emphasize their airy beauty with long skirts. If she did the opposite and wore a white tracksuit, it would be easier to draw people's attention toward herself.

Since she knew she could not avoid it, Archer decided to calmly accept the choice of taking physical form and make the greatest possible use of it. Besides, sportswear would not interfere with normal movement. It was obvious—why else would the word "sports" be in the name "sportswear"?

Less than half a minute later, with a rustle, the curtain of the changing room was pulled aside, and Archer had already changed.

This clearly did not match the mistaken notion men had that women always took ages to dress up. In truth, Robin Hood did not consider herself a woman, but a warrior. Had anyone ever seen a warrior put on eyeliner, draw her brows, change clothes, and spray perfume before heading onto the battlefield to risk her life?

To her, this was merely a troublesome and meaningless task.

If an enemy really attacked, an Heroic Spirit's Mystic Code was formed from magical energy. She would need less than half a second to arm herself again, so she did not need to worry about the tracksuit affecting her combat ability.

The white tracksuit fit Archer's slender figure perfectly. Beneath the slightly loose fabric, the graceful lines of her body were vaguely visible, half-hidden and half-revealed. Those loose folds instead emphasized the slim elegance of her form.

She had casually put on a pair of white shorts below, exposing her long legs to the air. Her skin shone so brightly that it created the illusion that it was even whiter than her clothes. Though Archer was not particularly tall, the outfit gave her a clean, elongated look. Together with her brows, now calm after accepting her fate, and her clear eyes, freed of their resentment, it further highlighted her dignified aura.

"Well, Master?"

She asked stiffly, without the slightest expectation. As she spoke, she pulled the tracksuit zipper all the way up and raised the collar, hiding the lower half of her face within it as though she were sulking. Yet she confidently turned halfway around, making it seem as though she was not sulking at all. The covered half of her face instead gave her a hazy, half-concealed beauty that made her even more attractive.

"Y-You're so beautiful!"

"I will not be happy just because you complimented me."

Archer casually snorted. Unlike the tsundere girls in anime, it was obvious from her tone that she truly was not pleased. To her, beauty was merely a tool. And her beauty was undeniable—otherwise, how could she serve as Robin Hood's eyes and ears?

"Ahahaha, sorry, sorry. Then let's go!"

Tsukahara Meiji happily ran over to pay. With clumsy English and hand gestures, he eventually figured out the price. As for their British pounds, they had exchanged them for yuan as soon as they arrived in China, so there was no need to worry about currency.

This time, there was no need to say it. Her Master's destination was definitely a dessert shop.

Watching him perk up again with such enthusiasm, Archer could only sigh. Men were foolish. They were always happy or sad because of women, and her Master was clearly a typical man...

Should she call that... fortunate?