Chapter 3: The Preparation
The scent was the first thing that greeted her when she pushed open her bedroom door. Not just lavender from the walls, but the deeper, more complicated fragrance that clung to her sheets—Mirajane’s perfume, musky and sweet, and underneath it, something else.Something metallic and faintly sour.Him. It had transferred when Mirajane had sprawled across her bed yesterday morning, laughing about a nightshift screw-up, her robe falling open. The ghost of their encounter lingered here, in Lisanna’s most private space.She closed the door and leaned against it, the wood solid against her spine. Her closet stood open, a yawn of shadows and color. She approached it slowly, as if the clothes might judge her.
Mirajane’s wardrobe was a declaration: bold silks, sharp-cut leather, plunging necklines that commanded attention. Lisanna’s was a whisper: soft cottons, practical knits, pleasant blues and grays for a woman who wanted to be seen as competent, kind, harmless.She pushed the hangers aside, the metal scraping a dull rhythm.
The burgundy dress was buried at the back, a purchase from a moment of misguided boldness last year.She’d never worn it. The fabric was a heavy viscose, a shade of crushed wine that looked black in the shadows. It was simple—sleeveless, with a high neckline that fastened at the throat with a small button, a skirt that would fall just above her knees.But the cut was deceptive.It clung. It would hug the small curve of her breasts, the narrowness of her waist, the swell of her hips in a way her usual clothes never did.
She pulled it out and held it against her body, turning to the full-length mirror nailed to the back of her door.
The girl in the reflection was pale, her short hair a shock of white against the dark fabric.Her eyes looked huge. She saw the echo of Mirajane in the bone structure, the set of the chin, but it was a diluted version. A sketch where her sister was a finished painting.
“You’re not trying to be her,” she whispered to the glass, her voice raspy from disuse. “You’re trying to be near her.”
She laid the dress on the bed, smoothing invisible wrinkles.Her hands were steady now, clinical. She undressed, folding her sweats and t-shirt with neat, precise folds. The afternoon light was fading, bleeding from gold to a muted gray that softened the edges of the room. She stepped into the dress and shimmied it up her body. The material sighed over her skin, cool and weighty.She fastened the button at her throat.It felt like a collar.
Turning back to the mirror, she inhaled.The transformation was subtle but absolute.The sweet nurse was gone. In her place was someone older, someone with secrets.The dress didn’t reveal; it suggested. It painted her petite frame with a dark, serious gravity.She looked like a darker, quieter alternative. A variation on a theme.She practiced a smile.The first one was too wide, too eager. The second was better—a slow, closed-lipp-ed curve that didn’t quite reach her eyes.She tilted her head, imagining a line of sight from across a dinner table. What would he see?Not the voyeur in the hallway shadow.A participant.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.Lisanna froze, her breath catching. Mirajane’s muffled voice drifted through the door, humming a tuneless song. The sound of the fridge opening, the clatter of a pot being taken from a cabinet.The domestic rhythm of the evening beginning.
The normalcy of it was jarring. While Lisanna stood here in a costume of desperation, her sister was simply making stew.Casual.Carefree.A sharp, acidic jealousy cut through her planning. It wasn’t just about Zeref.It was about the ease. Mirajane would shower, throw on comfortable clothes, cook a meal for a man whose touch still marked her skin, and think nothing of the tectonic plates shifting in the room next door.
Lisanna unbuttoned the high neck, once, twice.The skin beneath was pale, vulnerable.Better.More approachable. She ran her fingers through her hair, mussing it from its neatness.A strand fell across her eye. She left it.The room was almost dark now.She didn’t turn on the light. She stood in the gathering gloom, watching the reflection become a stranger, a silhouette of wanting. The fever of her decision had passed, burned down to a cold, hard coal in her stomach. It was no longer an impulse.It was a plan.The dress was her armor.The smile was her weapon. The stolen scent on her sheets was her flag.
From the kitchen, the rich, spicy aroma of searing meat and onions began to seep under the door. Mirajane was building the foundation of the meal, of the evening.Lisanna closed her eyes, breathing it in. She was building something, too.A moment.A collision.She would step into that fragrant, warm kitchen. She would say something casual, maybe about the rain threatening outside. She would let her hand brush his in the hallway when he arrived, under the pretense of taking his long, black coat. She would hold his gaze when he looked at her, and she wouldn’t look away first.
The shadows in the room deepened, swallowing the edges of the furniture, the reflection in the mirror. Only the shape of the dress, a deeper black against the black, remained visible. Lisanna finally moved, walking to her bedroom door. She placed her palm flat against the wood, feeling the vibration of Mirajane’s movement, the low hum of the stove. On the other side was the rest of her life.On this side, the last seconds of the person she had been.She turned the knob. The light from the hallway cut across the dark room, across the burgundy dress, across her determined, practiced face. She didn’t look back.