Chương 41: Super Model

June followed in the king's footsteps and also passed out in the bath. He woke up lying awkwardly on his makeshift bed of chairs. After his routine full-body stretch, he accidentally tipped one of the chairs over. Now, June was lying on the floor with his legs tangled over the still-standing chairs. The sudden fall felt more jarring than being hit, though it didn't actually hurt. June looked at the analog clock for an embarrassing amount of time before figuring out that it was 1: 53AM.

He groaned and checked his pocket for his phone, and picked up the SIM card he salvaged from it.

'Shit…' June crawled over the front desk, clumsily faceplanting over the other side. Even though the clothes fit him better than Mortimer's spares, they were still a little too large. He readjusted his sunglasses. Instead of the gold-trimmed sunglasses June was using in the nightrealm, this pair was trimmed with silver, and the tint was a bluish silver. They were pretty similar to the ones the boss wore, maybe that's why he picked them.

Even though June was able to see properly, his body ached all over; he couldn't tell if it was because of Mortimer's beating or because the chairs he slept on were uncomfortable. Luckily, June had the business card still, which had some numbers on them. June grabbed an archaic landline and dialed one of the numbers.

A short delay before the phone started making a dialing sound, then another phone in the seat over for a second, the receptionist began to ring, June put the phone he was holding on the table and picked up the other one.

"Hello?"

"Hello?" June called the phone right beside him.

After a couple of hours, June was lying down on his makeshift bed, reading magazines that were left on the end table. He had, in fact, read these magazines several times in his time waiting. Funnily enough, taunting him in the corner where he had found the magazines, a lone novel stood, a novel on worm ovulation.

'Is that a fad or something? Why is it everywhere when it comes to the nightrealm? Eventually, at 4AM, someone began to open the door. June didn't even bother to lift his head; whoever was coming probably already knew he was there.

'Why are they taking so long?' June heard the keys jingling and the lock being played with, but the door hadn't opened yet.

'Wait, the doors already opened.' June waited for another fifteen seconds before getting up to peer through the glass screen door. He was probably obscured by the darkness since a frail, shriveled old man didn't notice him yet. June looked at the old man holding a key ring that looked closer to a tambourine than anything; there were hundreds of keys on it.

June didn't want to give the old man a heart attack, so he turned the lights on before walking to the door to open it, this old man was nothing like Mortimer he was truly ancient, his face was more wrinkles than face, his eyes looked perpetually closed, his moves were sluggish and his hands were shaky, he even was shorter than June, which wasn't a sight he saw often. The four-foot gremlin of an old man shakily put his key ring back onto his belt after June opened the door.

"Hi, I'm June. Mortimer sent me here for a modelling gig."

'Good First Impression, Good First Impression, Good First Impression' June repeated those three words in his head and waited for the old sloth to respond. The old man didn't say anything; he was simply trying to find the right spot on his tool belt to put his key ring away. During that time, June silently and patiently waited with a friendly look.

The old man looked to be a custodian for the place, and just the quiet outside and the fact that there was a custodian reminded him of fond times when his mother used to bring him to work during her night shifts. He remembered having access to computers there and getting scared at a mockumentary that was called 'Real Life Mermaids'.

The old man finally hooked his key ring and slowly turned around to the blue van he parked and opened the back doors to pick up his toolkit, the frail old man looked like he would crumble to dust if any slight damage were to occur to him so June ended up picking up the heavier things and letting the old man carry the lighter things or individual tools that were left behind in the truck, June didn't mind helping anyway, he knew he wouldn't be paid for this work, but he didn't really care much, he simply helped the old man out of principle and because he had nothing better to do in the mean time.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. After he helped the old man carry everything in the van, the old man went back to his truck and came back with a small cooler that had ice cream and drinks in it. June wasn't very keen to drink alcohol, but most of those drinks were soft drinks. The old man hadn't said a single word since they met, but June knew his name from his name tag.

'Percy' Three hours had passed since Percy arrived. June knew he wasn't being paid to help Percy do his custodial duties, but he helped anyway. The place was squeaky clean. The old man didn't seem to be an Aspirant or a Dreamer, but he did his job with supernatural efficiency; his eyes were seemingly closed the entire time.

A quick and simple way to tell if someone is a Dreamer is to look at their eyes; if it was stunningly beautiful to look at or if it was unnatural in some way, it was an easy way to tell if they were a Dreamer, Aspirants on the other hand didn't have the same magic in their eyes just yet, but they frequently emitted wisps of uncontrolled will, only Dreamers would be able to notice something so slight, but in June's case he was able to physically see invisible will.

It was now 7AM, and June and Percy sat beside one another eating ice cream sandwiches. The front door finally opened, and a tall man with a feathery coat, bare chest, long jeans, and a pompadour walked in.

"So it is true, pompadours are real." June grabbed an ice cream cone in the cooler and tossed it to the man, expecting him to catch it. The man was an Aspirant after all, he was superhuman, but to June's disappointment, the excessively dressed man dodged out of the way, making the ice cream cone fall down onto the floor.

'What a waste.'

"Sorry, Percy, I wasted one of your ice creams." The old man didn't say anything in response. The excessively dressed beanstalk walked over to June, each step making a clack as their designer shoes reached the ground. The man placed a goody bag next to June.

"You must be June? Right? There's a new phone, the newest just for you, sweetie. The photo room will be prepared in just a moment, so just sit there and keep looking pretty." The tall man's voice sounded a little salacious, a bit deeper in pitch than June expected, but regular; he was not a Dreamer after all, his body hadn't transformed yet, and hadn't imbued his vocal cords with power. The backhanded comment flew right over June's head, so he continued to sit with Percy and have a couple of drinks.

Just as he started to open his third can of cherry soda, the tall man called June in to start the photoshoot. June stood up, stretched, and then nodded to Percy before leaving; the old man, of course, betrayed any signs of life apart from his trembling hand lifting his drink to his lips. June, of course, grabbed the tote bag with the new phone and swiftly popped his SIM card in before starting it. It would take some time to set up, but that was something to do at a later time.

June walked over to a large green room, with the tall man standing behind a large camera. There was a stack of clothes that he had picked out that were on a rack to the side. June walked in front of the camera on a printed square in the green room. The hunched-over tall man spoke while looking at June through the camera.

"Ok, sweetie, the way this is going to work is I'm going to give you some clothes to wear, and you wear them and pose in that white square on the floor, m'kay. You can call me Mini, and I'll be your photographer for the day. I set some clothes aside for you on that rack. I want you to wear them from left to right, and we'll swap them from time to time." June gave a slow nod before grabbing the first outfit and going to the changing room.

He quickly changed into the new outfit, of course keeping his sunglasses on, and walked out and stood in the white box.

"Hm, good. This you're first time, sweetie?" June ignored Mini's tone and just assumed that's how they sounded. The room was really quiet, other than the occasional rustling of clothes as he changed poses. June simply nodded in response to their question. June continued taking photos with every outfit until the final outfit came along.

"M'kay, Sweetie, for this one you're going to have to take off your sunglasses." June was silent for a moment before responding firmly.

"I can't do that, I got permission from Mortimer too." The tall man's eyebrows began to furrow.

"Sweetie, he isn't here. I'm the one calling the shots right now." June looked at the door and contemplated just leaving. He didn't really want to argue with someone, especially since it came to a sensitive topic. He just decided to set boundaries in a firm tone instead.

"I'm a Dreamer, people look at my eyes weirdly, and in ways I have a hard time imagining as to why, I was offered the job for my transformed looks specifically, I'm alright wearing whatever outfit as long as my eyes are obscured." Mini looked at him, thought for a moment, and then opened their mouth.

"There's no way that an amateur photoshoot would be chosen over some of our staple models, so don't worry and take off your glasses." June considered Mini's words, and there was some truth to them. Why would an amateur be printed for magazines over the plenty of better-looking models the Snow Management company had in their roster? So he decided to trust Mini's words.

'It couldn't hurt.' June took off his sunglasses and stood in the white square. He looked at the camera directly and tried to smile while posing casually with his hands in his pockets. It took a while before Mini started taking photos. Normally, Mini would take a couple of hundred pictures in a rapid fire mode, but after June took his glasses off, the camera just kept going off, longer than the previous times, until Mini groaned.

"Damn storage. We're done for the day. You can take that outfit with you; you can expect a vehicle to pick you up in ten to fifteen minutes." And the mostly silent photoshoot was over.