He texts Maki and Mukuro.

Shuichi arrived by bus at Kokai park roughly twenty minutes later, where he was relieved to find that his convertible was still there waiting for him, unharmed, unticketed, and untowed. He wasn’t as lucky with the bags he left by the bench, however, but he suspected that would be the case.

He then drove back to his apartment and immediately began charging his phone, which turned on and revealed that Maki and Mukuro had both sent him text messages earlier that morning.

“Hey, Shuichi,” Maki’s read. “How are you doing? Did your friend, Ruruka, ever come by?” When Shuichi didn’t respond, Maki sent another message two hours later. “I’m sorry, Shuichi. If you need time to yourself, I’ll understand. But I'll be here for you if you’re ready to talk.”

Mukuro’s message was much simpler and to the point; “Good morning, Shuichi. Please, text me when you get the chance.”

“Ah, dammit… I guess I did kind of leave them hanging last night, didn’t I?” Shuichi said to himself. “That… was pretty shitty of me, huh?”

“Hello, Maki,” Shuichi typed into his phone, deciding to start with the ex-assassin first. “I’m doing alright, actually; in fact, Ruruka actually did show up eventually.”

“She did?” Maki texted back after only a few seconds. “That’s a relief to hear. I almost thought that… I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

“No, it’s fine; I’m sorry that I worried you like that,” Shuichi replied. “Things didn’t actually turn out that great, but… I’d rather talk about that in person if that’s okay with you.”

“Oh.” There was a long pause before the next message. “Okay, if that’s you’d like. Are we still going to see a movie with Mukuro in an hour?”

“Of course,” Shuichi replied. “I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

“Alright; I’ll see you at the theater then.” With that, Maki put her phone down in her apartment and got up from her bed to walk to her closet as Shuichi began texting Mukuro on the other side of town. “Now… what should I wear?”

Maki looked through the wide variety of dresses that she had stuffed into her tiny closet. Maki wished she could say that she was spoiled for choice here, but most of the outfits were either for work and showed off way too much skin, or were leftovers from her old job, and she didn’t want to bring that kind of baggage to the date.

“Wait… is this really another date?” Maki wondered to herself. “I mean, we never really called it one, but… I can’t imagine how it’d be any different if it was.” Maki shook her head. “Ah, it doesn’t matter what I call it. I just need to finish getting ready.”

In the end, Maki decided to go with a light brown skirt with pink highlights, a pink belt that has rows of small star design with a bow on it, pantyhose, and a red dress shirt with a unique strap design along with a pocket over her left breast. She thought it was a good mixture of formal and casual that made her look good without attracting too much attention to herself. She then went to her bathroom and began doing her hair, braiding it into a bun and then using silver rose pins to hold it in place. She couldn’t remember the last time she wore hair like this before, but she was relieved to see it still suited her.

She then went to her bedroom and slipped a small pearl bracelet over her right wrist and looked at herself in the mirror. She had used this same mirror to check her appearance countless times before, but it still felt strange for her to do it without Johns in mind.

“This… is actually pretty nice,” Maki whispered earnestly. “Sigh… well, I guess I better get going then. There’s no point in waiting around here, after all.”

With that, Maki left her apartment and headed to the nearest bus station, her hands playing with the strap on her purse as she silently wondered exactly what would be waiting for her at the theater.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Mukuro was also in her bedroom, but she didn’t notice Shuichi’s text messages when they first came. She was too busy shining a long, European knight sword with brown cloth and rubbing ****. She usually only did this once per week, but she had been careless this morning and accidentally spilled some coffee on it, and she didn't want to risk a stain setting in. It was clear by the way its edge shimmered that it had never been used before, in combat or otherwise.

“There; good as new.” Mukuro placed the sword back into its pedestal next to her bed, which was wrapped in grey bed sheets. Mukuro was happy to finally have the sword back in its proper spot; she’d always been very meticulous in keeping her room organized and clean. All her clothes were folded perfectly in her wooden drawers, her white walls didn’t have a spot of chipped paint, her plants were kept at just the perfect spots on her window sill, and her closet was packed full of weapons and ammunition that she did an inventory on every night.

She also had a small black wooden desk a few feet away from her bed as well, where she kept her phone and charger, some of her novels, a photograph of her standing alongside a group of heavily armed soldiers, and a drawer full of documents. Most of the documents were just business documents for the Wilted Rose, but she also kept a few other things hidden among them as ‘insurance’ in case she ever needed to ‘request’ a favor from someone in power.

Mukuro began walking past the table to go to the bathroom but stopped when she noticed the light in its corner was blinking green; she’d gotten a message.

“Hey, Mukuro,” Shuichi’s text read as she sat down at the desk to look at her phone. “I got the chance to text you, so… here I am.” There was a few-minute pause before the next text. “Look, I’m sorry if I worried you last night when I stayed to wait for my friend. That was stupid and reckless of me and… I promise I won’t do anything like that again.”

“It’s okay, Shuichi” she promptly reassured him. “I understand that was something you needed to do. I am sorry that your friend never showed up, however.”

“Actually she did, but…” There was another pause. “We can talk about that later. We’re still on to see that movie together soon, right?”

“Of course,” Mukuro responded. “Plans haven’t changed, have they?”

“No, of course not,” Shuichi responded. Mukuro could almost hear the adorable panic in his voice. “I just thought it would be rude not to ask. I’ll see you at the theater then.”

“See you then, Shuichi.” Mukuro put down her phone and walked to her closet, opening it to reveal a small room lined with a dozen weapon’s racks. “Oh, right… I got rid of most of my formal wear to make room for this. Sigh… I can’t believe I forgot about that.”

Mukuro closed the doors again and went to her dresser, where she pulled open the top drawer and began looking through the clothes. There were white dress shirts, black skirts, combat pants, work gloves, a bullet-proof vest, and other pieces of very practical pieces of clothing. Mukuro was never one for dressing up like her sister was, and even during sex work she tended to keep her dress conservative and informal. She knew that she had kept at least one dress in there, however, and she wouldn’t stop digging until she found it.

“Aha! There it is.” Mukuro smiled as he pulled out a black dress and brought it over to a nearby mirror to see how it would look on her. It wasn’t until she got to the mirror, however, that she realized that the dress was at least three sizes too small for her. “... I haven’t worn this since I was in grade school, have I?”

Mukuro sighed again and tossed the dress into her clothe’s bin and headed out of her door.

“Oh! Hello there!” Mukuro's sister Ryoko said from her bedroom next door, which was cluttered in pictures, books, some shopping bags from the high-end shopping district, and pieces of paper that she had written on. The red-haired girl was laying on her stomach looking through her memory notebook, which was a common hobby of hers; with how quickly her memories went away, she could spend hours reading and rereading the things that she supposedly had done but had nothing but her notebook as proof. “It’s good to see you again, uh…” She flipped to the front of her notebook. “Mukuro! What are you doing?”

“Just getting ready to leave,” the soldier answered. “I’ll be gone for the next few hours, if not the entire night. Is there anything that you’d like me to do while I’m out?”

“Hmm…” Ryoko flipped through her entire notebook. To most people, it would have seen that Ryoko was only pretending to look at the notebook, but Mukuro knew that she was more than capable of reading the whole thing in that period of time. “No, I don’t think so. Have fun while you’re gone, though!”

“Thank you, sis.” Mukuro nodded and headed downstairs, where she found Junko manning the counter alongside the store’s one official employee; Jessica Sims. She was an African American woman with very dark skin who immigrated to the area a few years ago and who took a liking to Junko the instant they met, describing her as the ‘sister she never had’. She dressed almost identically to her sister, with a black dress shirt, black and white tie with matching bear hair clips, short red skirt, and black boots with red laces. The only place where she differed from the real Junko was with her hair, which had been dyed blonde like Junko’s was but still had its natural curls to it, so her pigtails formed big bushy mini-afros that rested on her shoulders.

“Thanks again for stopping by!” Jessica giggled, her tone matching Junko’s so perfectly that Mukuro couldn’t help but shiver. “Be sure to stop by again, okay? You can only keep those clothes for too long until they get stale~” She then handed a plastic bag to a dark-haired sex worker, who thanked Jessica and left the store. “So, how was I, Junko? Did I do a good job?”

“Hmm… you were pretty good, but you need to be a little bit more condescending when you talk to people, and especially customers,” Junko replied from the other cash register, putting her glasses on and switching into ‘teacher mode’. “You need to make sure that they don’t feel pretty enough when they leave so they’ll want to come back and buy even more.”

“Ah, I know, but it’s so hard sometimes,” Jessica whined. “There’s no way I could ever do it as well as you could!”

“Yeah… that is true.” Junko smiled and finally noticed her sister coming down the stairs. “Oh! Why, hello there, Mukuro. What brings you to our neck of the woods?”

“Well, I was getting ready for my date with Shuichi, but I realized that I don’t have anything appropriate to wear,” Mukuro replied. “Do you think that you could help me with that?”

“Oh.” The emotion in Junko’s face and voice seemed to evaporate in an instant. “So you’re still spending time with him, huh? That’s cool.”

“Of course I am; he is my responsibility, after all,” Mukuro reminded her sister. “Besides, I like spending time with Shuichi; he’s a good man.”

“Naturally. Why wouldn’t you want to hang out with a guy you like so much,” Junko replied, her affect still flat. “You’d also probably want to impress him with a really nice dress, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I mean…” Mukuro’s face lit up behind her freckles. “I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t.”

“Very well then; let’s get you fixed up.” Despite her apparent lack of enthusiasm, Junko wasted no time in pulling her sister toward the building’s changing rooms. Once inside, she began to effortlessly remove Mukuro’s clothes with one hand while she searched through a clothes rack just outside the dressing room with the other. “Let’s see… you’ll need something dashing, not too glittery… fancy but not too expensive… makes you look beautiful but doesn’t hide your natural charms either…”

After sifting through over a dozen dresses, Junko eventually decided on a strapless black dress with a white trim, black high-heeled shoes, and a fake edelweiss in her right ear.

“Alright, I believe this should be enough,” Junko said as she showed her sister a mirror.

“Oh my! This is… very nice.”Mukuro gleamed at the outfit as she turned around and made sure she looked good from behind as well. “You didn’t hold yourself back.”

“It was no problem; in fact, for the Ultimate Fashionista, this was easier than breathing,” Junko replied, yawning as if she were about to fall asleep. “Now, you go have fun with… Shuichi or whatever his name was, okay?”

“... is something wrong, Junko?” Mukuro asked. “I mean, I’m used to having you act strangely and all, but this seems… different somehow.”

“Tch!” Junko’s eyes twitched in annoyance. “Please! You know me, don’t you? I’m a hopelessly perfect human being, so there can’t be anything wrong with me! Understand?”

“Alright; sorry I asked,” Mukuro apologized, moving to leave the store.

“Hang on Muku, I’m not done with the finishing touch. Come here, let me do your hair for you.” Junko sets Mukuro to a seat and pulls out a hair iron. “Your hair is a lot shorter than mine and Ryoko’s, but that doesn’t mean it can’t look pretty as well. With a little elbow grease, I’m sure you’ll knock Shuichi socks off once he sees you for your date.”

Several minutes later, Junko finished styling Mukuro’s hair, making it curl in just the right places to give a cute, approachable look to her face. She then added some powder and lipgloss to her face as well, which almost seemed to make her face glow.

“There; now you’re fuckin’ finished!” Junko declared, tongue hanging out of her mouth as she put the cosmetics away. “I mean, not that it matters anyway since it’ll probably wind up a mess when your boyfriend fucks you into a coma tonight, but whatevs, it’ll make getting there easier!”

“Thank you, but you don’t know that’s how the date will end,” Mukuro countered. “And I told you before, he isn’t my boyfriend.”

“So you say, so you say…” Junko said under her breath.

“What was that?” Mukuro asked.

“Nothing, sis!” Junko smiled, becoming bright and peppy once again. “Now, you get out there and have some fun, okay! And be sure not to do anything that I wouldn’t do if a cop was watching me!” Before Mukuro could even reply Junko pushed her sister out the front door of the store and shut it behind her. “Finally… god fucking dammit. What’s wrong with me, acting all nice and supportive. That’s not me at all. What’s got me off my game?”

Junko placed her hand to her chin to try and think the question over, but the only thing she could think of when she tried to find the source of the problem was… Shuichi.

“Gah! Stop it, you!” Junko slapped herself on the forehead. “Augh, I should just find something to take my mind off this… I know! Ryoko! Are you still up there?”

“Uh, yes, sis!” Ryoko answered as she came down the stairs, checking her notebook as she went. “Did you need something?”

“Yes, I do; how would you feel about helping me model some outfits for me? You know, standing still while I make sure everything fits in all the right places,” Junko explained.

“Modeling? Sure! That sounds like it’ll be lots of fun!” Ryoko smiled brightly as her sister led her into a back room.

“Oh, don’t worry, you always enjoy doing this,” Junko said before looking back over her shoulder. “You can head home early if you want, Jessica; we probably won’t be getting any more customers today anyway!”

“Aww, but I like it here so much!’ Jessica whined. “Alright, I’ll close up then. See you tomorrow, boss!”