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Bigger Than He Bargained For

By Shalion

Chapter Four

Terry managed to pull his father away from the bakery long enough to set up a bank account for himself. It was not as hard as he thought it might be, especially considering the looks he occasionally got while wearing the muumuu. The bank manager, at least, was pleasant as she took Frank's information and used it to open a joint account for Terry. The young fox had gathered all of his minute savings, all of $500 and some change. Just as he was handing the cash over to the bank manager, Terry's father surprised him, handing over a fresh, new $100 bill to join the small stack of bills.

"Dad?" Terry asked questioningly, his spare-tire double chin wobbling slightly.

The older fox only smiled softly. "Just a little something to help you get started. Managing your own money is a big step forward in becoming a man, Terry."

"Th-thanks, Dad." Said the teenager, honestly at a loss of more to say. Before he could think of something cool to say, though, Terry was being presented with a shiny, newly-printed debit card, still warm. The young fox signed the back of it and then turned it around to look at the letters of his name raised from the smooth plastic surface. He ran his fingers over the letters, wondering vaguely why he had never actually bothered to open up a student bank account when he had been at the university instead of lying about having done so to his parents.

Terry's father clapped him across his broad shoulders, rippling his son's soft body, yet, the movement seemed natural now; he didn't flinch or shy away from physical contact. Terry put the card away in his pocket and followed his father back out of the bank, back home.

Finding suitable clothing for himself on the internet wasn't as easy as Terry first imagined, though. He supposed he could have started looking before he actually got a bank card, but he hadn't spent any time looking at all... Cursing, Terry cruised long hours through forums where other obese people talked about various problems, such as finding clothes before finding one or two websites that did not seem too sketchy or whose listed sizes were actually a lot smaller than the number of "X's" would indicate. It was not as if Terry had a lot of cash to blow on clothing that wouldn't fit him, and most of the shirts and pants he was looking at were four or five times as expensive and sometime similar at a department store in a smaller size. Terry just decided to buy a pair of shirts and slacks several sizes larger than he thought he needed, a 14XL for the shirts and 72" pants, as ridiculous as those sizes sounded. Now all he needed to do was wait... and wait.

Only problem was, two weeks after his mother had gotten him a set of ridiculous muumuus, they were already getting too tight on him.

Terry stared down at the fabric bunching against his soft, flabby chest where it jutted out in front of him. Reaching into the mass of floral print cloth, he picked up the trailing edge of the cloth with his fingers and gingerly pulled it down his torso, shimmying slightly, the motion causing his lower belly to slide around on his thick thighs. There was increasing resistance as Terry pulled the straining fabric towards his waist, and he had to reach all around himself to pull the hem down evenly lest the fabric catch on one fat roll or another; and he had several lining his back. Terry was acutely aware of his enlarged circumference as he moved his hands around his body. Terry was becoming numb to the extra "padding" around himself in a lot of ways as well as adjusting himself mentally to how much space he actually took up, yet there were times like these where he really did feel huge, like an inflated blimp. Looking down at his boobs and his upper belly expanding behind them, he felt abnormally large, especially as he was trying to squeeze into the muumuu his mother had purchased despite having gone up a size again already.

The young fox drew in a breath, sucking in his gut for what little it was worth as he pulled the fabric out ahead of him. The hem went down with some effort, sealing in the white furred fat as tightly as a sausage casing. Now that it was over his widest part, he just had to carefully ease the rest down and...

rrriiiiiiiiiipppp...

Terry sighed raggedly as his claw accidentally tore into the fabric, just a little, but it caused a cascading split that whipped across the surface of the taut dress. The fox's pudge poured out of the frayed ends where the muumuu split. Now Terry only had four wearable muumuus left, having done the exact same thing the previous morning.

Beel apparently decided that the shame Terry was feeling as he tossed the now-useless muumuu aside was not enough because he chose that moment to interrupt the fox's anxious thoughts. "You know, some people would pay good money to see a young man like you busting out of clothes like that. You should set up your phone to record yourself this time!"

Terry pressed his lips tightly together, cheeks burning with embarrassment. "Well, I guess that'd just be great wouldn't it, if I had literally anything else to wear!" Terry padded over to his mirror, his belly shaking extra gelatinously on top of his thighs this morning. With his junk pulled out of the crevasse between his pressed-together thighs, only the very bottom of his purse sack was visible any longer from under the monstrous belly apron strapped to his front. He aggressively grabbed the side of his hanging belly which was a slab of meat so thick that it was almost too wide to grasp with his palm any longer.

"I knew this was going to happen!" He grumbled at his reflection, "I told you that we ought to pause at least long enough for my new clothes to get here. But thanks to you, I've put on another fifteen pounds!" He threw the right side of his belly back down, and his gut was so big that the left side was largely unaffected save by wobbling vigorously.

"It's no good staying in place over some lousy duds," said Beel, his tone reasonable for once. The lack of sarcasm itself had a surprisingly soothing effect on the young fox. "You need to realize that getting to a significant size, and especially fulfilling your promise to Belphegor, is the most important things you could be doing right now."

That was surprisingly straightforward of Beel, but Terry still felt embarrassed and angry; this considering that his new clothes had apparently not even shipped yet! "Yeah, well, if you actually told me how getting to be an even huger fatass was supposed to help with my demonology, maybe I'd care more about stuffing my face all the time," he said petulantly, and stood with his fists on his love handles mostly because it was getting too hard to cross his arms now.

"All in time, young padawan..." said Beel in a mock-grizzled voice.

Initially shocked, Terry fumbled, "Was... was that a Star Wars reference?" He grimaced, embarrassed for the both of them.

"Hmm... Maybe...?" Beel equivocated mysteriously. But while Terry waited for the demon to say more, he did recall Beel mentioning that he had once been alive.

"If that's the case, then I guess he must have been alive sometime within the past 50 years or so..." thought Terry, though that only narrowed things down a little. To the young fox, the 1970's seemed about as far away as the 1870's; ancient history. Nothing else for it, Terry proceeded to carefully shim and squirm his way into one of the remaining muumuus. However, since this one was just as tight as the last ones, Terry knew that it was probably not long for this world either.

Observing the way the tight fabric packed in and obscured the naturally chubby rolls at the side of his body in the mirror, he chuckled. "Hopefully, Dad won't have me bending down to reach into any ovens today." It was getting harder to bend his torso in general because of the thick fat padding, but he knew he would rip the dress at either his ass or sides the minute he tried to reach for anything lower than his navel (which was sitting at about groin level right about now).

Terry was just talking to himself, but Beel surprisingly responded. "Don't they have, like, a tailor in this town?"

"A tailor?" Terry scoffed, initially thinking of an old timey village which included such things as boot makers, blacksmiths and candlemakers. However, he was living in bakery after all, wasn't he? He thought again about it, vaguely recalling a time when his father had required adjustments for a suit he wore to a wedding. "Well... I guess there must be one here somewhere," he added, scratching his chin. Terry was not sure if asking a tailor to all but double the size of a garment counted as an "adjustment" or not, but given his options, he was willing to ask regardless of the embarrassment he felt at just walking in the door at his enormous size. Remembering Beel's words, however, Terry steeled his heart. He wasn't getting any smaller so the tailor was just going to have to accept him or he'd find someone else who would. Tailors had to learn their trade somewhere, right? Maybe they had classes at the university or failing that, the community college. Someone young and desperate such as himself might be willing to work with him

The nearest tailor, who lived only three blocks away as it turned out, proved to be a bust, but not in the way that Terry expected. The tall man in the shop did not immediately throw Terry out on his ear at the sight of him. In fact, he recognized Terry right away as someone in desperate need for a tailor and wasn't shy about saying as much. However, he patiently explained to Terry that he could not "let out" the dress he was wearing. Apparently only clothing specifically designed with spare cloth, usually stitched up in the back, could be let out like that.

"But, I was hoping that maybe you could just sew in a panel in the back using some extra cloth. I don't really care what it looks like..." said Terry, reaching across his girthy chest to rub at his opposite forearm.

The tailor took a long look at Terry then, really seeing him. The man's gaze was a little disconcerting actually. Since Terry had begun putting on a lot of weight, he was more used to people avoiding the sight of him, at least where they thought he could see them.

"You're Fred's boy, right?" He said at length, "From down at the bakery?"

Terry nodded, his thick neck wobbling where it was beginning to gather at the base of his throat into a third chin.

He tilted his head a little, the tips of his ears waggling above the cut of his fur as he took in the teenager's bulk which was roughly four times his own, despite their different in height.

"I don't suppose you've considered... the obvious solution." Terry fought to keep his face neutral as the tailor sighed audibly, "But then, I suppose you're already getting an earful of that at home..." Terry's heart lifted a little at just that small measure of understanding from the slim, tall stoat. The tailor waved his hand down at Terry's brimming midsection where already the cloth looked much older than it really was due to wearing and stretching. "I'll... I'll ask my niece if she can do something for you." When Terry lifted his black-tipped ears, he added, "She's still learning, but she seems to like... odd projects." He flashed Terry a crooked grin. Seeing as the next closest tailor was actually in the next town over, Terry figured that he had nothing to lose. It's not like he was looking for a professional anyways, just anyone willing to take pity on him.

"I guess I won't have to buy that sewing machine myself..." thought Terry with great relief. He had already watched a few instructive YouTube videos on sewing and patching as a way to prepare himself for what seemed inevitable; even after learning more than he honestly expected, he was not at all envious at the potential work involved.

Terry waited patiently in the shop while the tailor secreted into a side room apparently to fetch his niece. Fortunately for the rotund fox, there was a row of armless chairs by the front window, and he was happy enough to plant his wide bottom into three of them, not embarrassed in the slightest to be taking up that much space. It would have been far more embarrassing to try sitting in two of them and break a chair by accident; naturally if Terry had tried to sit in one, it probably would have collapsed under his bulk right away. It took half an hour before the tailor returned, and Terry wondered if it took that long just to get his niece prepared to handle the sight of his bloated form.

"She's in the back," said the taller man with a small half-grin. "I already explained to her what you're looking for, but she might want to do things her own way..." He gave a shrug as if to say there was no helping the matter. Terry thought that it was an odd way to treat a customer, but then clearly the tailor already knew his family at least as acquaintances, and he supposed that beggars couldn't be choosers either.

Terry squeezed through the back door in the Tailor's shop; he was so wide now that his sides brushed uncomfortably when he tried to walk through doors, and he had to turn sideways to scoot past nowadays.

The backroom was an exhibit of functional chaos with the walls barely visible for racks of clothing and several garments or bolts of cloth strewn about the tables, most with tags on or chalk markings on sleeves or pant legs. Terry was immediately anxious about the number of free standing pins and needles stuck into the clothing around him at odd angles likely to poke into his soft blubber. He heard an audible gasp as he walked into the center of the workshop and turned his head.

He was greeted with the sight of another stoat, this one younger and even slighter of frame than the man out front. She was shorter and almost painfully skinny with her long, lean torso which was oddly flexible beneath her elongated blouse. Her fur was white and her eyes a bright pink. She looked like she was close to his age.

"Um, hi." Terry tried, lifting a plump arm which was only slightly less thick around than the girl's trim waist; the young stoat's paws were still hiding her mouth as she looked at him with enormous eyes.

"Oh my god, even after the preparation, she can't believe how fat I am!" Terry thought, his cheeks burning under his fur. If he didn't need adjustments to his clothing so badly, he would have turned around and walked straight out of the front door.

He wound up scratching the back of his head nervously with his raised arm. "I, uh, heard you could help me with some..." The young woman across from him continued to stare at him with wide eyes, drying up the words in Terry's throat. He could only pluck helplessly at the collar of his too-tight muumuu.

"Oh, oh!" said the stoat, finally moving, "Ohmygosh! I mean..." She finally moved her hands away from her snout, and Terry saw that her nose was bright pink as well. In fact, her fur was so fair, he thought he could see a hint of color beneath the white fuzz on her cheeks. "...O-of course I can help you with your..." She seemed lost for words upon seeing what Terry was actually wearing.

"...Muumuu." he supplied, albeit reluctantly. Then Terry's ears swiveled on top of his head as the stoat released a nervous giggle before immediately covering up her snout again with her paws.

"I... I didn't mean... er..." she stammered through clenched teeth as Terry's head sank slightly into his small collar of surrounding neck fat. "Here," she gestured to a chair in the corner of the workspace. "Have a seat."

Terry began to amble over. He was fine on his feet for the most part, but he was well aware of the 65 pounds he had gained since his original deal with Belphegor which he felt as a tangible weight on his knees and lower back as well as the pads of his feet.

He was about to open up his mouth to point out that he'd need another chair for his wide frame, but the young girl surprised him by saying, "Of course, you'll need another one. Here, lemme get it." She dashed off at speed, bending her lanky frame around the corner like a noodle.

In the span of a breath or so that she was absent, Terry heard guttural rumble that did not originate from his own stomach. He would have asked what Beel was trying to say, but there wasn't enough time. The stoat came back, slamming down a mismatched chair next to the first one in the corner. Then she flowed towards Terry, her delicate fingers hovering just over his burgeoning form as if she wanted to move him into place, but was afraid that touching him would singe the fur off of her paws. It was... cute, how she was acting, Terry thought, even though it seemed plain to him that she was too disgusted to even consider touching his round body.

"Um, thanks..." said Terry, becoming nervous himself. He awkwardly moved his body forward because the young stoat was actually in the way of the seat she had just brought, and there was not a whole lot of space to move around in the workshop with a large table taking up most of the space in the middle of the room. He took a step forward and one side of his belly briefly brushed against her body; already she was less than half as wide as he was, the one lobe of his gut was wider across than her whole torso. She was surprisingly slow to step back, Terry thought, as he twisted his body to get by her and plant his ass down where he'd be less in the way.

Despite being all but pushed out of the way by Terry's rampant gut, the white stoat didn't show any signs of distress or disgust. In fact, the way she leaned forward over the seated, quarter-ton fox seemed to suggest she was worried she had offended him.

"Um, s-so... what can I do for you exactly?" She said as Terry's muumuu creaked alarmingly where his belly was pushing forward across his thighs after sitting. "I mean, clothes, yeah, but, um... maybe I could make you something..." Her eyes moved to where Terry's sleeves were cutting into his sagging armflesh making his elbow resemble something like a brimming muffin.

Terry wasn't sure what she meant, surely she didn't mean making him a whole new set of clothes, did she? From what little he knew, making clothing from raw cloth was a lot more complicated than hemming a pant leg or what he had in mind for his muumuus. Deciding to stick with the plan, he reached into the small bag hanging from his shoulder, just a sack really with some drawstrings, and withdrew one of the ruined muumuus.

"Actually, this... thing I'm wearing is just really tight on me. I was wondering if you could use some cloth from this one to make it bigger... like..." he waved his free paw in the arm, shaking the loose flesh on his forearm and at his elbow in the process, "...maybe add a panel in the back or something?" He was sure it was bound to be more complicated than that, but then, the muumuu was about as simple in design as it was possible for an article of clothing to be.

The young stoat girl took the overflowing fabric from Terry's paw, and it was absolutely enormous in her slight hands. Truly, it was as much fabric as she would have needed for a tent for herself. But again, she seemed oddly at ease other than a tension that still hung in the air between them that Terry could not begin to describe.

"Oh, um..." she said, biting her lower lip, "I, I can do that, yeah." She shook out the folded muumuu then, letting the fabric fall down to her toes as she stretched it as wide as she could with her arms, there was still too much there for her to view all at once, and she was hidden from sight for a moment.

"What's your name?" Terry found himself saying suddenly with no conscious thought at all between brain and tongue.

The fabric separating them dropped like a lead curtain, and when Terry looked, again there was that blush barely visible on the stoat's cheeks behind the pale fur. "It's... it's Zima actually."

"Well, thank you for helping me, Zima," said Terry, starting to get over the awkwardness of the situation; it helped that he was sitting down, so he was no longer in danger of knocking anything over with either gut or butt. Of course, though he was sitting, it was not as though he looked any less fat. If anything, with his belly spilling over his chunky thighs underneath the straining muumuu, he looked even more obese than when he was standing. Zima didn't comment on his appearance though as she spread the ripped garment over the table, clearing space for it with a careless sweep of her arm. She seemed so slender and graceful in her movement with the odd bending of her torso to account for the lack of length in her arms. Both of his parents would have seemed chunky in comparison to her noodle-like girth.

Terry spent so long watching the young stoat girl work in disassembling the muumuu with deft movements of her half-foot long scissors that he barely noticed when she spoke to him.

"I'm... I'm sorry, what did you say?" He asked, leaning his head forward as far as possible, which was not more than a foot or so.

"I asked you if you worked in that bakery just a few blocks from here." She lifted her eyes from her work. The enormous garment had already been reduced to several large panels of heavy cloth, the torn portions snipped cleanly away.

"I do!" said Terry too loudly, then embarrassedly coughed into his black-furred fist, "I mean, I do. It's my parent's shop, actually."

"That sounds right," Zima said finishing her work in breaking down the muumuu, "Every shop on Main Street here seems to be family run, maybe it's even in the town charter or something..."

Terry nodded, wobbling his extensive second chin so that it bounced where it met the surface of his chest. "Yeah, everything here seems like a throwback to the 1950's or something..."

The two teenagers shared a semi-awkward moment of silence, yet for some reason, Terry felt unusually comfortable. He told himself it was just because Zima was close to the same age as he was. After all, he hadn't forgotten the way she had stared at him earlier or refused to touch him like his skin would burn her.

Zima rested the scissors down on the work table and then the palms of her graceful hands. She looked over at the bulbous fox, "So, um yeah... Did you... Did you want me to expand that one that you're wearing?"

Terry's cheeks suddenly flushed at the thought of himself standing naked in this room while the stoat girl sewed an extra panel onto the back of his fat-dress due to his utter lack of undergarments; not that there was anything bad to see of him now other than his enormous ass. "N-no!" Terry cried, half laughing despite himself. "Uh, I've got some other ones in this duffel you can tailor."

Zima looked down towards Terry's feet and let out a tiny, nearly inaudible sigh; was it his imagination, or did she look disappointed somehow? "Oh, alright. I can work on those." Before Terry could begin to move his elephantine self, she had curved around the table to pick up the duffel bag he had brought in with him. She grunted softly with the weight of the fabric inside. As she pulled out the first bundle of cloth, she glanced back up at the obese fox. "Are you going to sit there while I work?"

Terry looked around startled, "No, I mean, I didn't really have anything else planned..." he looked down at his feet, only to realize that he couldn't see his feet past the mound his gut made in the muumuu in front of him, "But I can help you if there's anything..."

At this, Zima let out a charming giggle, "No, no, Silly. I don't want you to do anything." she arranged the huge dress flat on the table and began cutting straight up its back. "You just sit there. This'll only take me half an hour or so..."

So, Terry sat in place and watched Zima work. She was certainly quick with both the scissors and the sewing machine. She was able to stitch the length of an entire panel up the back of one of the dresses in one smooth movement of her delicate paws, feeding the fabric into the churning needle of the device. And every so often, she would look up and grin at him over her work. That look she gave him gave Terry the oddest sensation deep down in his belly. "Just stupid teenage hormones." he told himself, though the thought didn't quiet the feeling at all.

At one point, Zima idly spoke as she was working, asking, "So, I guess you must get a lot to eat at your bakery, huh?"

The fluttery feeling Terry had been feeling earlier vanished entirely, replaced by a hot, familiar embarrassment. "I..."

Zima's ears flattened back against her skull, her cheeks turning pink again, probably embarrassed for his own sake as well.

"Well, I guess there's no hiding that, now is there?" he said after a long moment, trying to laugh in spite of the feeling inside that made him want to shuffle into the crowd of hanging coats and shirts and disappear entirely.

Zima grimaced, showing her small fangs nervously before looking back down at her work. They both quickly forgot that the question had been asked, but not really.

When Zima was done, it was very obvious that the backs of the muumuus had been stitched, but they just showed up as a crease along the back of each dress. That and the mismatching pattern in the back were the only obvious defects in the garments. The young stoat seemed to fuss over this detail, but Terry couldn't have cared less.

"If I'd had more to work with I probably could have gotten the print to match..." she said, frowning as she smoothed the massively wide dress over the table with her paws.

"No, it's perfect!" Terry said, chairs creaking loudly under him as he shifted forward onto his paws. He pushed forward, belly sliding against the table in the narrow space he had to move around. He felt the expertly made stitch in the back of the muumuu on the table. "It's a lot better than I was expecting, honestly."

Maybe he was letting too much of his relief show, but Zima reacted as if he had dropped down on his knees and called her a saint. She bashfully clutched her hands together in front of her and lifted a heel as her foot twisted on the floor; hell, her tail even curled around one of her legs!

"It isn't anything really, just an emergency fix. I'd much rather make a set of clothes for you." She stiffened after she said this, but Terry hardly noticed.

"You can make, like, shirts and pants that would fit me?" Terry asked, grinning so widely that his tongue was in danger of falling out the side of his snout. Unable to stop his bushy tail from brushing either side of his plump rear, he added, "I mean... if you're willing to. I can pay you, of course."

The shorter, slender stoat looked up at him. "I'd l--" she started, but caught her tongue. "I mean, sure! That's definitely something I can do..." her eyes lowered to take in Terry's vast width which filled the aisle they were standing in so that part of his bulk pushed into the clothes hanging from one side of the walls. "I'd have to get some measurements first of course."

"Uh, I think I already took a few of those at home. I think I can get th--" Terry started, but Zima raise a paw to stop him.

"Nope, I can't trust measurements you've taken yourself. I'll have to do it." As she said this, her pink eyes seemed amazingly bright in the otherwise dim room.

Well, if the girl was willing to, Terry didn't mind, especially not if it meant he could ditch the ridiculous dresses he had to wear. Naturally he didn't mind at all having a girl close enough to brush up against him... however soft his body had gotten since flunking out of college. Of course, she was going to have to measure him pretty often given the rate he was softening even further.

"W-whatever you like," he said somewhat clumsily. He cocked his head and added, "You have time now? I'm not doing anything else today."

Was it just him or did the fur on the back of Zima's neck raise a bit? She sniffed, and then said calmly, "I can do that. Just let me grab my..." she trailed off, grabbing a reel of measuring tape from the table and then glancing back at Terry, "...a couple measuring tapes first." She trotted off around a narrow corner piled high with what looked like hat boxes, calling back over her shoulder, "It'll only take a couple seconds, don't go anywhere, Terry!"

Terry only grinned to himself. Zima did seem a bit high strung and nervous, but she was nice when it came right down to it which was more than could be said about girls in high school who hadn't noticed Terry at all.

Despite Zima hinting somewhat furtively that he should take off his overly tight muumuu, Terry refused, failing to mention that he was naked under it, naturally. Even so, the stoat spread her arms as wide as she could with the measuring tape ticking a staccato in Terry's ear as it unreeled. Zima had the fox hold the tape in places as she went all the way around him first to measure his waist and then knelt as she measured both how long his legs were and how thick around. He tensed as he felt Zima's paws brush his inner thighs even though she was close to his knees where there was still a tiny amount of empty space left between the sagging inner thigh rolls. An unwanted erection came and Terry stifled the feelings stirring in his gut even though there was practically no way for Zima to tell what was happening without lifting up his huge paunch.

As much to distract himself, he asked Zima as she came back up, "Mind if I see what you've written down?"

Unexpectedly, Zima clutched the tiny notepad to her chest. "Umm..." she hummed, gnawing on the end of her pencil. "Nope!" She said in a cute way only a girl could get away with. "Tailor's secrets!"

"Tailor's secrets?" Terry asked, rolling his eyes as Zima looped the tape around the pillow thickness of his upper arm. "Is there such a thing?"

"There are!" Zima stated firmly, pulling the tape altogether too tightly around his arm fat so that the tape became practically invisible against his exposed fur. "I wouldn't ask you for any of your professional secrets, Baker-boy!"

Terry grimaced at the nickname, but figured there was far worse she could have called him. As well, there were at least a couple secret recipes his father maintained and was weirdly protective of even. "Fair enough," he sighed. He noted the way his plump flesh bounced back into shape as Zima released the tape. Surely she couldn't have gotten an accurate measurement that way? "Are you done torturing me yet?"

"Torturing you?" Zima laughed, "I haven't even gotten out my needles yet!"

At that, Terry shuddered, and shortly after felt a rumble from Beel against his abdominal wall, though whether it was sympathy from the demon or simply laughter was impossible to say.

"Remind me not to come back here when you're having a bad day." Terry laughed, starting to move towards his altered garments and his duffel. Just then, however, Zima reached out and caught his thick forearm, her claws sinking readily into the soft meat there. Terry turned.

"You'll come back right?" She asked, unexpectedly earnest.

"Well yeah." Said the fox, snout open and double chin bouncing. "I'll have to come back when the shirt and pants are ready."

"Right, right, the clothes. Of course." Said Zima, reaching up to brush the fur on her head and smooth her ears. She was blushing again, but Terry couldn't for the life of him have said why. Girls were just weird.

"Umm... here," Terry said, reaching to the side of him - he had to push his love handle and the side of his gut against the table in order to reach - for a stray pencil, "Here's my number."

"Your number." She said numbly.

"For when the clothes are ready." Said Terry with a small smile. He placed the slip of paper into equally numb fingers; where had that earlier grace gone all of a sudden? Shoving the muumuus into his sack, Terry stood still for a moment, Zima not saying anything and Terry still afraid to move around too much for fear of knocking something over. "I guess I'll see you later then, Zima." He said, trying to be friendly to the strange, pretty girl.

"Bye, Terry." She said her voice high and quiet.

Terry walked home, noting a slight discomfort in his knees for the amount of time he'd spent standing up and walking today. He tried asking Beel what he thought about the tailor shop girl, but the demon wouldn't stop laughing long enough to give him a straight answer.