"Darkish blue! Let's match your eyes, then. You need 100% cotton specifically, right? Or can silks and satins and wools work okay, too?"

“Oh, for my backlash? Well, uh. I don’t know! I’ve never really worn silk other than ties, which don’t touch the skin. I… think it might be okay? I could try touching some backlashed a bit to see.”

"... They literally never gave you silk to test with??!?? That's some epic incompetence right there, holy shit. Sorry, not relevant to our mission of clothing you in three hours, just personally offensive. Cotton only it is, experimenting with different fabrics can come later." Tap tap tap why don't more places let you search things by fabric type??? Whatever, one of her sites does let her do so, she'll stick with that.

"Preference for black shirt type? Button up, turtleneck, v neck, or something else?" she asks, absently, as she narrows down search results.

They didn't, no, but how often do you really wear silk in a day-to-day context? It's not like it came up very often back in the compound in Russia. He knew his cottons and his polyesters and that coarse wools were the devil's own hair-shirts, and that was generally good enough! "What is, um... fashionable, here? I mean, I guess a button up seems safe, though I don't think Ha Si-yeon would wear one if he could help it...."

"Mmm... with the jacket look I am going for, the shirt would be a bit more close fitting, to balance it out? And otherwise it's a personal preference thing. I guess it matters if you want to accessorize with a necklace, there are I think different necklaces that work with different shirt styles. If you were wearing a shirt without a jacket, oversized is usually the fashion, I think? But I'm not very into the fashion scene, sorry."

“Well, I have my baptismal cross, and a gold cross my mother got me when she went to Ireland when I was like, seven, but given how concerned he was that I might be religious, maybe that’s not a great choice. I’ll have to get a different one.”

"Ehhhhh we're on enough of a time crunch I'm just not going to worry about it," she shrugs. She doubts Si-yeon is going to care, and it's kind of clear who his not-date date is with.

Does that mean yes-necklace or no-necklace? Well, he’d feel bad asking at this point, after she said not to worry about it. However, that does leave him with… remarkably little to follow up with. He stands politely, waiting for further commentary from the person doing the searches.

"Got a button down shirt that says it's black and 100% Egyptian cotton," pronounces Minseo, after a silence. "Confirm that it's the color it says it is for me, please? Then we'll delve into the weeds of trying to match your eye color."

It is indeed black, just as the description says.

“Thankfully, ‘black’ is a pretty hard thing to be too wrong about, I guess. It looks nice. I have cufflinks, even.”

"Cool. The pants and jacket will need to properly match - actually I should probably go for an actual suit, that'd be easier to find matching in cotton..."

This last part is said to herself, as she goes back to typing. There's a long pause, then a smug little "Ha!" upon her apparent success.

"Okay, got a place! But the descriptions on this site are kinda garbage, so I will just need you to pick something out that looks about the right color."

This time, the prices are right below the suit selection, and, to put it lightly: these are some expensive suits.

“Oh these look lovely! You did a great job!” Unfortunately, Dasol is used to ruble prices, so it takes until well after he’s picked a color for him to look up a conversion rate and— “wait, sunbae, those were—did you see the prices?” His gasp was probably loud enough to be heard down the hall. “That’s—all my clothes put together!”

"Yeah? Your clothing situation is pretty tragic," she says, as she wrangles the complicated same day pickup options to get these both to him in the next hour. Suits aren't conventionally washable, so it'd just be the shirt that needs it, then. "This is all buyable in like, two hours of professional guiding for an S-rank sensor in a confluence, you're good."

“You haven’t even seen my wardrobe.”

 Is that insensitive? Probably a little. Probably a lot, actually! But so is blindly snarking about clothes she’d neither seen nor touched, and she seems to prefer a snappier dynamic like Sasha rather than deference like Yulya. Very well. He can work with both, when prompted.

"Well, if they're all worth less than two hours worth of guiding, I'm not missing much."

Hmmm, okay, so she needs to rent a personal drone delivery for this one, the suit place doesn't do delivery. She might need to make some kind of phone call to tell them to please put the suit in a box and hand it to the drone, but hopefully not. Phone calls are, after all, barbaric (and she doesn't have Ji-woo to do it for her).

The shirt doesn't have this problem, and is accordingly in transit.

"How would you even do a delivery on a suit? Don't they have to do tailoring and adjustments and everything?" Certainly at that price point they do, goodness. They could afford a small flotilla of tailors shipped straight from Spain, probably. "I don't know Seoul well. Is the shop close by? I could run out—" he cuts himself off. What is he saying? He can't run out when he's supposed to be here, guiding. "I mean. I could always, get adjustments later by returning the shop, I am sure. Today should be fine."

"So it won't be properly tailored? You'd have a standing credit to go get it properly tailored later, as part of the package, but the fashion look I'm going for is open jacket anyway? So it's not a huge deal if things are a little off in the jacket department. If the pants are too far off we might have a problem, but belts also exist, so. They might be able to do same day tailoring at, uh, like five o clock, but it's the end of the workday and I'd feel bad asking that of them, even with esper money."

Tap tap at the window, drone delivery is here.

"That'll be the shirt, could you open the window and bring in the box, please? I've managed it on my own while backlashed before but Ji-woo-unnie yelled at me for letting my fingers too close to spinning blades while blind."

Dasol’s leg thunks with a dull, meaty noise against the side table where he had covertly gone to get another bite of morkovcha, and he curses under his breath. He felt like a zoo animal for a moment, with one of those signs advising against tapping the glass lest you unnecessarily stress him. “Yes, sunbae, right away.”

Korean delivery drones a weirdly cute! This one has little rounded kitten-ear protrusions and a smiley face. He accepts the package and thanks the machine out of an abundance of caution before closing the window. “Oh, you got me a set of them! That was thoughtful. I’ll have plenty for reporting to work in.”

"It seemed dumb to get you just one when I don't expect you have a lot of shirts? And there was a sale. They're all black though, sorry, I didn't know if their colors would be terrible or not. You okay?"

“Okay?” Does he not seem okay? Surely he is doing a perfect impression of okay-itude. “Yes, I’m fine. Do I not seem fine? I guess I’m a little nervous about preparing for dinner on short notice, but that’s really my fault for procrastinating.”

Mostly she meant about how he bumped into some furniture in a way she could hear, but emotional okayness is also pretty reasonable to report on.

"Legit," she says sagely. "Don't worry. We got this."

He sighs loudly and sits heavily on the bed, tearing at the packaging in his hands. “Yeah. Everything is under control. Thank you, sunbae. I would really be in a snowdrift without a compass without all this help.” He pets the fabric with the back of his hand, feeling how it prickles along his skin. “Yep, that’s pure cotton. Well, starchy cotton. But you can’t do better in a button-down really! I guess I should check it for fit. Can I use your bathroom? For the mirror?”

"Yep! Actually that's where the washer dryer is, you should have time to put them through the wash if you want. Uh, detergent is in the cabinet above it."

That’s a great idea! He hums happily as he sets a nice cold cycle going. It won’t require much to get them in wearable shape. “Alright, we’re all set for the moment! Sorry for the delay. We can return to guiding now, if you like.”

 He really is sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully the relief in his voice at having this dealt with won’t totally undermine that.

"It's cool. Shit happens, glad I could help you out. Got the suit delivery squared away, too, it'll be here in a bit. Medical cuddles until you need to bounce works fine for me."