A Teacher’s Grace🐶
Hello!
My name is Ellie, and I work at Oberon Dress Shop, run by Madam Oblonsky.
I love clothes, I love cosmetics, I love hats and gloves and pretty socks… Anyway, if it has to do with dressing up, I love it!
With the ambition of opening my own dress shop before I turn thirty, I’m working hard again today.
Though there are many things I never imagined before actually working at a dress shop—awful customers, awful customers, and awful customers—so it isn’t easy, the older girls I work with are wonderful, so it’s bearable.
Among them, the person I like best is Seraphina!
She’s my senior, having started about two years before me, and she helped me a lot.
On my first day here, I was incredibly nervous. So nervous my hands were trembling.
I was wiping my sweaty palms on my skirt while listening to Seraphina explain how to write order forms behind the counter…
When suddenly, some man thrust his face right in front of us and shouted.
“Miss! Where’s the measuring tape!”
“Pardon?!”
“Measuring tape! Measuring tape!”
“Uh! You can’t come in here!”
Our dress shop keeps measuring tapes out so maids sent on errands or customers buying ready-made clothes can measure garment lengths themselves. There was even a bundle on the counter.
“Where! Here?!”
“Sir! You can’t put your hand in the cash drawer!”
There was measuring tape right in front of his nose, and another one next to his elbow, so why on earth was he doing that?!
Isn’t that the same as going to a restaurant and sticking your hand into the kitchen because you want a fork?!
That was when Seraphina stepped in.
With the file she’d been showing me, she propped up the hand of the man rummaging through the coin drawer.
“The measuring tape is right here, sir.”
Then she handed him her own measuring tape and sent him off.
The man took the measuring tape, turned around without even saying thank you, and left, and I felt a little awkward.
I was sure I’d hear something like, “Even so, you shouldn’t shout at a customer like that,” or, “You should have made sure he absolutely couldn’t put his hand in there, what were you doing?”
I was gauging her mood.
But Seraphina just shrugged and said,
“Are we that pretty?”
“What?”
“I mean, look. Measuring tape here, measuring tape there. There’s even one sitting right between us and that man. Are we so pretty that he couldn’t see the measuring tapes much closer to him and could only see our faces?”
Pretty enough to steal his gaze?
“I don’t think we’re quite that pretty.”
Seraphina pretended to check her face in the mirror hanging on the wall, then winked at me.
“It’s tiring being pretty, isn’t it?”
“Pfft!”
It wasn’t even anything special, but for some reason it was so funny back then.
Before I knew it, all my tension had melted away. The sudden situation on my first day that had made my temper flare had cooled right down.
She’s always like that.
She likes joking around. She likes teasing. Even when she’s furious because of an awful customer, she never forgets to joke.
“Ah, Seraphina, seriously!”
“Ugh, unbelievable!”
“Ha ha ha.”
The person who can make me laugh even when I’m angry enough for steam to come out of my head. My favorite senior.
But today.
“This expensive thing, you’re the one who recommended it and made me buy it! I wasn’t planning to buy it! Then you should be responsible for refunding it too!”
That makes no sense, does it?
She bought a corsage made of fresh flowers! Fresh flowers! And that was seven hours ago!
That’s the same as buying milk from the grocery store’s cold room in the morning and asking for a refund in the evening!
How would we know where she’d kept it in the meantime!
For all we know, she could’ve left it in the blazing sun until it spoiled and brought it back asking for a refund!
I’m sure she took all the photos she needed, didn’t need it anymore, and came back to return it!
“She has no conscience. Earlier she grabbed Seraphina when she was about to go on break and made her do this and that until she couldn’t even rest.”
If it were me, I’d be too ashamed to do that. Hazel whispered beside me.
Before I knew it, the other customers in the dress shop were also watching Seraphina and the elderly customer argue.
“I’m going to report all of you! My daughter was a teacher!”
Honestly, if I’d been the one to run into that old woman earlier, I would’ve done only exactly what I had to do and pretended not to know anything beyond that.
If I went out of my way to help more, I could end up taking the blame like this.
I wasn’t like that at first either, but after going through this and that, I changed. I became as defensive as possible. As passive as possible.
But Seraphina isn’t like that. Within what she can do, she tries to help as much as she can.
“Just as one person to another. Think of it as helping someone in trouble.”
That’s something Seraphina says often.
Not helping because she’s an employee, but simply as one person to another. Like helping someone having trouble on the street, she says it’s an act of goodwill.
But this is what she gets in return?
Apparently, to a customer, a lowly employee doesn’t even have the right to “dare” show kindness.
* * *
“Corsages made of fresh flowers and shoes that have been worn cannot be refunded. We told you that several times when you purchased them…”
“I’ve already heard that, so stop saying it. What I’m asking is.”
The woman cut Seraphina off and folded her arms.
Meanwhile, the little girl the woman had brought with her was kneading a lace interior decoration with her hands. Finger marks stained the pure white lace.
No one stopped her.
“Is it actually right that they can’t be refunded in the first place? Why not?”
“It’s a product made with fresh flowers. The moment it’s purchased and taken out…”
“I told you to stop saying the same thing. What—I—am—asking is whether you have a legal basis for refusing a refund. It can’t be refunded because we took it out and brought it back? It’s not as though we came back a week later; we had it for a short while and brought it right back. Is that legally correct?”
I used to teach law at a proper school, you know? The woman lifted her chin.
“It’s stated in commercial law that a customer can receive a refund simply due to a change of mind. Can you take legal responsibility for this situation?”
Even at the woman’s attitude of dragging out her words and treating her like an idiot who couldn’t understand, Seraphina’s expression did not change.
Seraphina went behind the counter and took out the consent form the woman’s mother had filled out when she made the purchase.
Because there were so many people asking to refund shoes they had worn or corsages made with fresh flowers, it was a consent form customers were made to fill out at purchase, stating that refunds would be difficult.
“If you look at the bottom of the consent form, the basis is written there, ma’am.”
“What basis? There’s a legal clause saying you have to give a refund.”
“An exception clause to the article you mentioned, ma’am.”
“What?”
“Refunds due to a customer’s change of mind are only possible if the value of the product has not been damaged. Easily spoiled items such as food or flowers do not apply.”
“……”
“Even apart from that, you already filled out the consent form, so a refund is difficult.”
That’s right! Ellie swung her fist inwardly.
The other customers, who had become absorbed in watching at some point, giggled as well. The customer who had been discussing the true identity of the Magic Saintess with her friend earlier whispered,
“Exactly. How could they refund that? The value of the product has already dropped.”
“That’s what I’m saying. People like that would foam at the mouth if they were told to buy something someone else had returned.”
“How many awful customers must they get to even require a consent form?”
“Ah, that felt good.”
‘Exactly!’
Ellie jumped up and down inside, agreeing with them.
But what neither the customers nor Ellie had thought of was that, from the beginning, this was a fight a clerk could never win.
“Hah.”
The woman gave a disbelieving laugh. Unable to win by logic, the final weapon she drew was:
“By the way.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is your tone always that unfriendly, miss?”
“……”
After that, it was an uninterrupted stream of the woman attacking her one-sidedly.
“I used to be a teacher, so if anyone knows the law better, it’s me. What would a mere dress shop employee know, talking about the law…”
“You do understand the clause you brought up, right?”
“And then people like you will say customers make scenes and make your jobs hard.”
Another customer, unable to watch any longer, intervened.
“Madam, aren’t you going too far? Your daughter could grow up and work in a dress shop someday too. Would you like it if your daughter were treated this way by someone else?”
At that, the woman snorted as if she had heard something ridiculous and replied,
“My child will never work in a place like this in her life.”
All the while, the old woman who had caused this entire mess made no attempt to stop her daughter. She ate the refreshments set out for tasting and, together with her granddaughter, touched dresses with greasy hands.
“Why, are you upset? If you’re upset, you should’ve studied hard in school and gotten a good job.”
After driving one last dagger into Seraphina, the woman left with her daughter and her mother.
Her steps were light, as though she had fully vented her anger over not getting a refund.
The dress shop they left behind became as quiet as a dead mouse.
“Miss, are you all right?”
“What kind of people are they…”
The kindhearted customers offered a few words.
Her coworkers, the customers.
Everyone looked at Seraphina, who stood completely still. With a precarious feeling.
Ellie thought Seraphina would start crying at any moment, or throw whatever she was holding in anger, or at the very least go to the back for a while to calm down.
But the senior Ellie liked most lowered her eyes.
She tucked a bit of hair that had fallen loose behind her ear.
Then lifted her head.
It was then that Ellie noticed the handsome junior of hers who seemed to have just entered the dress shop—a blond man said to be an imperial knight.
The man’s eyes met hers.
Seraphina smiled.
And said,
In her usual teasing tone.
“Arden.”
“……”
“I’m having a bit of a hard time. Will you run away with me?”
Seraphina, the Magic Saintess