Work Text:
Susato wasn’t able to help being a bit awed when Iris had unveiled the outfits she’d made for herself and Naruhodou-san.
Susato was familiar with some sewing herself, but only in the capacity of mending small tears or making minor adjustments. Iris, on the other hand, could make entire articles of clothing, and with neat, straight stitches too, not the clumsy work expected from a child’s hands. The girl never ceased to amaze her, even when Susato was well aware of her impressive skillset and intelligence.
Maybe it was an odd sentiment about a girl so young, but at times, Susato thoroughly admired her. Perhaps this was part of what had drove her to ask Iris to teach her what she knew.
“I make most of my own patterns, you know,” Iris was saying as they brought their haul from the sewing shop to her room. “I’ll have to show you them sometime, but for a beginner, I think that skirt you picked out is perfect!”
“Thank you, Iris. I worry it might be too simple, but…”
Susato paused a few steps in from the doorway, taking in Iris’s room. It was not overly neat to the point of being sterile, rather, it felt comfortable and lived-in, distinctly the room of a happy young girl, but it was clear that everything had its proper place and was kept there to the best of the owner’s ability - from the stuffed animals arranged deliberately into families on the bed, to the bookshelf where novels about fantastical adventures were kept in a separate section from theses on engineering, or the large desk spanning one of the walls where even Iris’s unfinished experiments were left with the tools organized and easy to find again.
In the middle of setting their fabrics down on that desk, Iris turned around to look at her. “Is something the matter, Susie?”
“Oh! No,” Susato raised a hand to her mouth with a gentle laugh. “I’m just… appreciating how neat it is in here compared to Mr Naruhodou or Mr Holmes’s workspaces.”
“Oh, I know! Boys…” Iris continued as she moved parts of her chemistry set into cabinets below the desk to clear space. “Still, there’s not much you can do, is there? I mean, if you try to put Sherly’s stuff where it ‘actually’ belongs, he’ll get mad because he can’t find it! It works for him, though, so I really can’t complain. Alright, step one is cutting the pattern out!”
After Susato laid the rest of their purchases on the desk, they got to work on the project. Pinning the fabric and cutting it properly might have been tedious work by herself, but chatting and making jokes with Iris made it a fairly pleasant experience.
Iris’s personal sewing machine was obviously custom, not just because of the parts, functions, and modifications that Susato had never seen on any sewing machine before, but because of the less practical customizations too: it was painted in the same whites and pinks as much of the girl’s living spaces, and adorned with colorful hearts and animal faces. Iris showed her how to operate it, and the right place to put the fabric.
“It’s helpful to keep the pins in so everything stays in place,” Iris explained, “but you’ve got to remember to take them out before the needle gets there, or it’ll break and cause a disaster!”
“I’ll be careful, then… You know a lot about this, Iris. Have you been sewing long?”
“Hmm…” Susato kept her focus on guiding the fabric through the machine, but out of the corner of her eye she could see Iris put a finger to her temple. “About half my life, I guess! Sherly taught me. He makes a bunch of his own clothes, you know.”
It was hard to imagine Mr Holmes having the patience to do half of the work they’d done so far, but the man was full of surprises. Susato smiled thinking about him teaching young Iris, and remembered her own childhood.
“My grandmother is the one who taught me what little I know about sewing. My father helped, too. I suppose we made it a family affair. In fact, we even tried to teach Kazuma-sama, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Not because it was women’s work, you understand, but because-“ She took her foot off the pedal, pausing the motion of the machine to reminisce. “Because he couldn’t seem to do it without poking himself! I always found it funny, how he could be so graceful with a katana and so completely bested by a needle.”
Iris laughed. “That does sound funny!” She paused for a moment before continuing, carefully, “Kazuma, he was you and Runo’s friend… You really care about him, huh?”
Susato nodded. “I knew Kazuma-sama since I was seven years old. I even became a judicial assistant because of him. I hoped I could be of help to him in some way.”
“You do a lot of things for others, don’t you, Susie?”
“Yes, it seems that I do…”
“But I don’t think it’s too much! You have to do things just for yourself sometimes, and you do! Like this,” she said, gesturing to their sewing project.
“Just for myself…” Susato smiled, looking at the fabric she’d picked out. “We should probably get back to it, shouldn’t we?”
“Right! Now, this piece is next…”
Altogether, it took several days for the skirt to be finished. When she tried it on, she felt the same urge that had made her put on a new kimono from her grandmother and spin around for her father when she was a little girl, so she went to the sitting room to show it off. Mr Holmes seemed impressed, inspecting the hem and then excitedly saying that she should make one for him, too. Naruhodou-san was also impressed, although… moreso with Susato’s ability to use the sewing machine and not get hurt. He seemed to think of it as some sort of temperamental wild horse.
Looking at her new skirt, Susato felt pride. It was a simple design, not anything fancy, but she had made it with her own hands. And she loved the fabrics she’d chosen - most of it was a solid, deep purple, but there were two stripes near the bottom, one blue with a pattern of stars, and one pink with a pattern of hearts.
Iris went to bed early that night, but she gave Susato a box full of patterns to look over and pick out her next project, and said she was excited to see what she’d come up with.
An outside observer - a random passerby, maybe - might be confused to hear it said that Susato and Iris were similar. At a glance, Iris’s bubbly, outgoing behavior would give a drastically different impression than her own reserved politeness. But Susato could see it clear as day. She was curious, endlessly curious, driven by a desire to learn and know and understand; to take things apart and see how they tick, sometimes literally. Iris was much the same, full of questions about the world around her and hungry for ever more knowledge to fill her mind with. Who would’ve thought she could find such a kindred spirit, by pure coincidence, in a little girl from halfway around the world?
She imagined that with Iris’s wealth of knowledge, there were many more things she could learn from her. And, of course, there were many things Susato would enjoy teaching Iris about.
Although, it would likely be a few years before any ‘Iris Toss’ could be enacted.