The head tailor took one look at Park and went very still from his proportions.

"Sir," the man said carefully, circling him once. "Have you been professionally fitted before?"

"No."

Emmeline answered at the same moment. "Badly."

The measuring started at his shoulders, chest, waist, arms, neck, inseam, posture, balance—every angle he possessed apparently now somebody’s professional business. The tailor measured his shoulders twice, then his waist, then examined the numbers as though Park had personally falsified them.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, sir."

"You looked offended."

"Your proportions are unusually balanced."

Park glanced at Emmeline. "I think he just called me built godly in tailor language."

"He did."

"Beautiful."

They ordered suits, dinner jackets, formal trousers, long coats, lighter coats, tuxedos, shirts, and several pieces Park did not fully understand but accepted because Emmeline kept nodding before they tried the already finished pieces.

The first suit was dark charcoal and painfully formal. Park stepped onto the platform and looked at himself while Emmeline stared for several long seconds.

"No."

The tailor blinked. "Lady Bennett?"

"He looks thirty-five."

Park adjusted a cuff. "I look like I’m about to buy a newspaper company."

Jessie raised her phone. "A hot newspaper CEO. If that helps"

"No," Emmeline repeated.

The second was lighter and softer and made Park look clean enough to apologize after kissing somebody, so he rejected it himself; he wont be kissing and then apologizing for it.

"I look trustworthy."

"That’s bad?" Jessie asked.

"Terrible. People might lend me money."

The third one landed was midnight blue, nearly black under ordinary light, cut cleanly through his shoulders and chest without stiffening him anywhere. The jacket drew in at the waist, the trousers fell exactly where trousers were supposed to fall, and the shirt underneath was worn without a tie, the top buttons left open just far enough to keep him nineteen.

Park stepped out, and the room went quiet.

’This is becoming a pattern.’

Park studied himself in the mirror, and the young man staring back did not look like a failed actor who had finally scraped one tiny role.

He looked like somebody who would arrive at a premiere and accidentally become the story.

"Damn," he said quietly.

They commissioned the midnight suit for the wrap party, Park had been personally invited by the assistant director and Emmeline had absolutely no intention of standing beside him in something bought off a public rack. She needed a dress too—not a fresh dress from a rail, a freshly tailored one.

Jessie joined her, which turned the fitting into a strategic summit involving fabrics, naked silhouettes only he was permitted to see (was he?), shoes, hair, jewellery, and whether Emmeline wished to appear elegant, dangerous, effortless, or some horrifying combination of all three.

Emmeline eventually settled on something to be built specifically for the wrap party, youthful and sharp without looking like a deliberate attempt to steal attention from the cast—though given who she was, that would probably happen regardless.

The ninety-fifth floor was watches and jewellery, and Park had expected it to be quick.

It was not.

The watch boutiques felt like small museums, every piece resting inside glass under controlled light with discreet notes on materials and movement and rarity and the number of years somebody had spent hand-finishing a wheel no human being would ever see.

Park examined one.

Emmeline looked over. "Do you like it?"

"I liked it before I knew it had a ransom."

She bought it, naturally.

They chose one clean everyday watch, one formal piece, and something darker for events. Park rejected anything loud—he had no interest in diamonds screaming off his wrist while he was playing a poor actor online. Simple was safer, and simple, he discovered, could still cost more than a house.

If it was any other day and not reborn as a rich scion, he would’ve accepted gold and diamonds watched to sell them later or adorn them when he got a gig or maybe just to show off, but right now, despite being in this life for a day at most, maybe even less, he did not feel the desire for acting cheap and flash.

He liked subtle thing, naturally, so he’d go with that!

Jewellery followed, a subtle chain, a bracelet, cufflinks, rings he insisted he would never wear and then spent ten minutes examining, and several pieces for Emmeline and Jessie.

Then the attendant presented cufflinks bearing the Bennett family crest, and the mood shifted quietly Emmeline had ordered for him and then her father too.

She loved her father enough to be thoughtful enough to buy him a gift, or maybe it was a shield she’ll use if he called to scold her for what she’d done or she was about to ask him something he wouldn’t agree on on normal days.

Whatever her reason was.

They were beautiful. Dark metal, fine gold detail, the crest small enough to avoid vulgarity. Park’s hand paused above the case, because he could not wear them anywhere.

Not publicly.

Emmeline noticed the hesitation and closed the case herself. "Not those."

Park looked at her.

She smiled, softer than usual. "Later."

One word, and that was all of it:

Later, when he no longer had to pretend. Later, when belonging to this family was not something kept behind private gates and locked lifts.

Park leaned back and rescued the moment before it could turn serious. "Yeah, I prefer to rely on my peerless talent and war-starting face."

Emmeline snorted. "You’ve relied on that enough."

"And yet it continues delivering."

The ninety-sixth floor was where Park’s dignity was temporarily confiscated and stored somewhere outside the grooming studio.

The place offered hair, skincare, facials, nails, massage, and enough scented product to suggest the beauty industry had formally declared war on the natural human smell.

He stopped at the entrance. "No."

Emmeline kept walking: "You need a haircut."

"My hair is fine."

"Your hair is surviving. That isn’t the same thing."

"My face carries the team."

"Your face deserves better teammates."

Thirty minutes later Park sat in front of an enormous mirror while several people moved around him touching his hair, discussing texture, examining his skin, and applying products with names that sounded like rare tropical diseases.

He looked at Emmeline in the mirror. "This feels like a very expensive kidnapping."

"You’re safe."

"There are six strangers applying things to my face like gangsters trying to disguise me."

"Your face didn’t need help. You did."

One stylist attempted to explain the purpose of a serum. Park listened for roughly twelve seconds:

"So it’s wet."

The woman blinked with a laugh: "It hydrates and protects the skin barrier."

"Luxury wet I see."

Jessie laughed hard enough to nearly drop her phone.

They did not change him dramatically, because Emmeline refused anything that made him look polished or artificial. His hair was trimmed and shaped and styled so the dark waves fell across his forehead with deliberate carelessness, his brows were cleaned very slightly finally skin was treated and hydrated and given enough attention to deeply offend the old Park on behalf of every cheap face wash he had ever trusted.

When the stylist finished, Park looked into the mirror and found himself still recognisably himself, only sharper and cleaner and considerably more camera-ready—which was dangerous, because Marvelous Halo had apparently been waiting all this time for professional assistance.

One stylist stared at him and whispered, "How is that fair?"

Park heard her, obviously.

He smiled at the mirror. "It isn’t."

The woman flushed to her hairline, and Emmeline threw a towel at him.

The ninety-seventh floor was less shopping than stepping backstage at the fashion industry itself.

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