The lipstick had made her look sharper and more mature, almost deliberately intimidating. Without it, the fullness of her lips stood out in a completely different way—less polished, perhaps, but somehow much softer.
Evelyn noticed the brief daze in my expression but, for once, chose not to comment on it.
“There. Finished.”
I lightly touched my lower lip with one finger, more out of curiosity than anything else. The neatly manicured nail at its tip was painted a deep sapphire blue, almost the same shade as the eyes staring back at me from the mirror.
It felt ridiculously soft.
I lowered my hand before she could make another joke.
“Your makeup really does make you look older.”
“That is the point.”
She discarded the stained cotton pad and began putting everything back where she had found it.
“Unfortunately, looking young is not particularly helpful when half the people sitting across the table from you have been running their companies longer than you’ve been alive.”
There was no bitterness in her voice this time, only the kind of resignation that made me suspect she had repeated such things to herself many times before.
“Come on. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
I stood from the chair while Evelyn gathered the things we had used and returned them to their places on the dresser.
Watching her calmly put everything away, I found it difficult to connect the girl in front of me with the same person who had been declared missing across every news channel in the city only a few hours earlier.
Yet somehow, despite everything that had happened, the room felt strangely peaceful.
That peace lasted far less than I had expected.
A notification sounded from my phone, which Evelyn had left in the living room.
“That should be her.”
“Her?”
“My assistant. I told her to pick us up once the situation outside had settled enough for her to move without attracting unnecessary attention.”
Of course she had.
While I had been busy struggling with dresses, bathrooms, and makeup, Evelyn had apparently been organizing everything else in the background.
I followed her back into the living room, where she picked up my phone from the table and checked the message.
“Let’s move. She’s waiting outside.”
Evelyn put the phone into her pocket and returned to my room to retrieve her dress. A few minutes later, she came back with my backpack slung over her shoulder, having packed the dress inside. She had also put on the jacket I had been wearing outside when I met her, while a hooded dark bomber jacket rested in her arms.
“Don’t forget your bag.”
She pointed toward the dark-blue handbag with luxurious golden accents.
“Wait, I told you I wouldn’t go outside in these clothes.”
I spoke exasperatedly, feeling somewhat betrayed.
“Just put on the jacket. It’s unlikely we’ll run into anyone at this hour. I also asked my assistant to bring you a pair of comfortable shoes.”
Hearing her flat response, I put on the jacket she handed me and headed toward the handbag lying on the table.
The moment I slipped my arms through the sleeves, I was reminded once again of just how much smaller I had become. The bomber jacket had always fit my original body well, yet now the sleeves extended almost to my fingertips while the hem fell much farther down my hips than I remembered.
Still, I couldn’t complain. The warm lining immediately trapped heat around my body, shielding most of my exposed skin from the chill once I left home. More importantly, after I zipped it halfway up, the loose jacket did a surprisingly good job of hiding the way the tank top had been stretched across my chest.
I rolled my shoulders experimentally.
It felt strange to wear something so familiar and have it feel completely different at the same time.
I picked up the handbag from the table and slipped its strap over my shoulder.
Evelyn looked me over once before giving a satisfied nod.
“That will do.”
“I certainly look a lot less suspicious than I did an hour ago.”
I reached up and pulled the hood over my platinum-blonde hair, tucking the more troublesome strands inside as best as I could.
At least now, unless someone came close enough to stare directly at my face, I probably wouldn’t resemble the missing heiress being shown across every news channel in the city.
I adjusted the handbag on my shoulder and followed Evelyn toward the entrance.
I put on the heels that had tormented me on the way home, thankful that I would be able to change shoes once I met this so-called assistant.
The apartment suddenly felt much quieter as I looked back at it. Less than an hour ago, getting home had felt like the end of everything that had gone wrong today. Now I was leaving again, still trapped in someone else’s body and following that same person toward whatever came next.
Evelyn opened the door and turned toward me.
“Ready?”
“Not particularly.”
“You don’t have to worry. I took care of everything.”
I stepped into the hallway after her and pulled the door shut behind me.
“So, what kind of person is that assistant of yours?”
I asked, unable to contain my curiosity once we were inside the elevator.
Evelyn answered with a thoughtful look on her face.
“Sera... she may appear cold and distant, but she has a warmer heart than you can imagine.”
She paused for a brief moment.
“After all, she’s like an older sister who cared for me after my mother passed.”
I decided to stay quiet, since I wasn’t quite sure what to say.
The moment the doors slid open, cold night air rushed beneath the loose edges of my jacket. I instinctively pulled it tighter around myself.
Even with the jacket, this body seemed considerably less tolerant of the cold than mine had been.
A black luxury sedan was waiting along the curb beneath the dim streetlights, its windows tinted dark enough that I couldn’t see inside.
Standing beside it was a woman.
She appeared to be somewhere in her early thirties and stood perhaps five-foot-eight in her heels. Considering how much shorter I had become after becoming Evelyn, even with her gala heels I was somewhere around five-foot-five, so she still had a few inches on me.
Her most distinctive feature was her hair. It was silver with a faint icy-blue tint, cut into long, slightly wild layers that framed her face before falling loosely around her shoulders. Combined with her unusually pale gray eyes, she reminded me of a sheathed sword.
A fitted black business suit followed the lines of her figure closely, the pencil skirt ending around her knees with a slit along one side that gave her considerably more freedom of movement than its formal appearance suggested. Beneath the jacket, the top buttons of her blouse had been left undone, revealing an amount of cleavage that seemed almost at odds with the otherwise immaculate professionalism of her appearance.