"A... few years... might be... pushing it..."  The saleslady is trying hard to hold back laughter, or rather, allowing herself to appear as doing such.  "I expect it will last you through becoming better-acquainted with this country and learning the fashions in more detail."

"Ugh. Fine. I will buy that for five platinum because I still need school supplies and it's been all morning." She fishes out five platinum. She asks how to work the chroma-shift and if the saleslady happens to know where she could learn the spell for the gloves herself.

The saleslady looks a little puzzled.  "Chromashift works via intent reading, of course.  Just focus your will and intention, the same as with any other enchantment that responds to intent.  As for the spell, I expect any Skill merchant for tailors would have the corresponding booklet, though you will of course need the prerequisite Skills for 『Light Magic』 and 『Earth Magic』 and some prerequisite experience with fabric."

"Actually, could you just write down the incantation?" Haroun says.  "Yes, I know that's not enough to acquire the Skill, but I can get a better idea via inspection of what it would take to cast."

The saleslady writes down the incantation.

And then there's the issue of will and intent.  Does that work for Bella?  Haroun isn't sufficiently familiar with intent enchantments, or Bella's Skill, to have a very solid guess.  He does have an idea, though.

"Is this incantation compatible with the enchantments?" Haroun says.  "I mean, what would happen if somebody used the incantation to try to shift chroma, instead of the intent enchantment?"

The saleslady gives Haroun an even more puzzled look, but tests out the incantation on one of her boots, which obligingly shifts color.  "Seems so," she says.  She's not going to question the bizarre request if it leads to the sale getting done.

"Thank you." She glances at the incantation before pocketing it. (This does all have pockets, right? It had better have pockets.)

Platinum-tier adventurer outfits run more towards having unobtrusive patches of slightly-differently-colored material to which correspondingly enchanted items may be attached for rapid access (magical Velcro).

Still, there are four visible external flap-guarded pockets on the pants - thighs and shins - which give the outfit a more military air to an Earther's eye.  These pockets are hard for casual pickpockets to undo quickly, but you shouldn't keep gold in there; they will not resist serious Thief skills.  Or she could wear the skirt, which will cover the top set of pockets, and then it will be slightly harder for a Thief to reach up under her skirt without her noticing.  Still far from impossible, though.

The money is staying in her backpack with its bewildering zippers and in her shoes (she moved it when she changed into the boots). She will wear the skirt out anyway.

"You said something about us still needing to shop for school supplies?  You already seem to have a notebook, and a quite interesting pen that I suspect is superior to the local kind."

"The pen won't last forever. Neither, obviously, will the notebook, and I like having separate ones for all my classes, which does mean I have several in here but they have math notes and stuff in them. Plus I don't know if I'll need anything else. You have textbooks."

"...huh.  Your pen seemed so obviously, uh, enchanted, that I forgot it might not have self-repair or a self-refilling ink supply.  Textbooks we'll know about when we know which classes you want to take, and meanwhile I'd expect any Professor to have a spare on hand for you to borrow.  We can go grab some additional notebooks, though."

"The pen is cheap. I bought a box of like fifty of them for what I'd translate as about a copper based on the loaf of bread benchmark. You use it till it's out of ink or dried out and chuck it and get the next one. I have three and don't remember how long I've been using them, and two pencils."

Off to what Haroun hopes will be the last leg of shopping!

School-supply stores in Elhom IV don't currently offer spiral-bound notebooks, but the notebooks they do have open easily and close easily.  Bella can find a nib pen that writes fairly easily, doesn't spill easily, and has infinite ink and self-repair, for three gold.  Pencils don't seem to exist yet.

After Bella explains why pencils, Haroun asks somebody at a school supply store to "just write down the incantations" for spells for erasing, highlighting, bookmarking, and, why not, that spell for searching inside notebooks he's been drooling over since forever.  Searching inside a notebook would take more mana than Bella currently can cast with safely, but erasing and highlighting and bookmarking look easy enough.

Ooh, that's neat. The nib will take getting used to but there's probably a skill for it.

Haroun just looks a bit at the notebook from which Bella has casually erased text, in the out-of-the-way corner where they stepped to try it.  It's Bella's second time doing it, which means that this time she just used Eval.  For Haroun it's going to be more like a year before he can do that - less if he focused purely on getting that one Skill and nothing else.  Pretty soon she'll be able to search inside books too, at her present rate of mana-capacity growth.

"No offense and I don't mean to make light of your overall situation, but some days I envy you and wonder what it would take to get shanghaied for my own cross-country trip."

"It's convenient. I didn't start out knowing how convenient it ought to be, of course, you'd probably enjoy it more than I do."

Off to the main Cowcorn academic campus!

"So how do I enroll in things?"

"We've got several options here.  We could have you go into the main office and purchase an undiscounted buffet pass, and then you could talk to a student advisor about classes that suit you, though I worry that conversation might be a bit odd.  Uh, the alternatives are that you talk to Magister Sting or Professor Nightstar and tell them honestly about your actual situation, in which case I'd expect they could recommend substantially better classes and what order to take them in, if they didn't just seize you and tutor you."

"Metaphorically?"

"...mostly metaphorically.  Well, Magister Sting would respect your free will but make some strong arguments, unless of course she decided that it was better for your development and fitting-in if you attended regular classes, which sounds very much like something she might do.  Professor Nightstar would... successfully persuade you, if he decided that's what you ought to be doing."

"This is taking into account the thing where some social skills don't work on me?"

"That's a fascinating point.  And yet even so, I am inclined to say yes.  To all appearances Professor Nightstar argues using only points that are relentlessly logical and reasonable; it is just that the inevitable conclusion of Reason always happens to be whatever it is that Professor Nightstar wants you to believe."

"Can I have an example?"

"I was going to spec myself as a teaching professor like my grandfather.  Professor Nightstar thought I should be a research professor.  This is of course the correct conclusion, since my talents do in fact suit me to make a greater contribution to the world's welfare by pushing the frontiers of knowledge first and foremost, and focusing on helping my students second."