The girls finished the re-styling of their hair, Maya changed to low twintails. Anna managed to straighten out her bangs with the help of Sophia’s invention. The princess also is about the change to twintails, while Ari now had similar braids as the blonde after the cat-girl had developed a slight preference for braided hair.

Sophia still wasn’t entirely pleased with her new straightening iron, though, and so she decided to visit the beauty and care store again to present her idea. After all, they’re all hair experts there, and they’ll most likely know what to do to perfect the invention. Once she had used it to straighten out her hair as a presentation, the couple went to the store together.

“Welco- Eh?” The brown-haired dog-girl clerk from the day before greeted the two, but her eyes immediately grew wide once she saw Sophia, or rather, the tiger's hair. “What…? How…? Why…? What?”

“Ahaha…” The blonde scratched her cheek. “Ta-dah~, I guess…?” She lifted a few strands of her hair while saying so.

“D-Don’t tell me the experimental shampoos and the conditioner worked on you?!” She seemed highly shocked.

“Not really, no. I’m sorry. Well, the conditioner’s able to make it feel ever so slightly smoother, but other than that…”

“Then… Were you able to adjust the recipe? So fast?! That can’t be!”

“No, again, sorry.” Sophia shook her head. “I have no idea how to mix a shampoo.”

“B-But your hair? It’s smooth and fairly straight!” The clerk circled around the tiger while saying so. “Would it be alright if I touch it?”

“Sure. Feel free to satisfy your curiosity.” It wasn’t hard to guess what the clerk’s intention was, judging by the sparkle in her eyes. “Also, we need another word for straight hair… That’s not compatible with me~.”

“Thank you very mu- Oh!” The dog-girl ignored her and didn’t waste even a second. “It’s remarkable… It’s still no reference when it comes to smooth or straight hair. There’s still some volume and waviness to it, but compared to how you… every tiger should look like right now… Well, actually, I saw you yesterday, and you looked very different. No, I don’t mean you having turned to a super light blonde. That, too, is remarkable, especially because the hue is that light, but no… What’s up with you?!”

“Story of my life lately.” Maya felt herself agreeing with the odd way the clerk had worded her sentence.

“Hey!” The blonde glared at her cat for a moment before ignoring her. “I like to play around and experiment with stuff. I’ve found a way to straighten hair in a physical way.”

“Something like that’s possible…?”

“Well,” Sophia pointed with both hands at her head. “It might be.”

“Sarah!” The dog-girl suddenly yelled through the entire store. “Something important came up! We need you here!”

“Sure~.” A cat-girl with medium-long, wavy, and pitch-black hair in her late twenties, roughly around the same age as the dog, cheerfully replied while she made her way over to the group. She was also wearing similar clothes, a shirt and a red skirt, though she had a light-gray shirt instead of a black one. Just as the dog-girl, she only seemed to have ears and a tail as her main animal feature, but she also had her whole body covered in a thin layer of fur. Almost all of it was white together with a few stripes of black for contrast.

“She’s the daughter of the store owner and is basically running the store by now.” The brown-haired clerk explained to the group what was going on.

“Oh my,” The black-haired cat glanced at Sophia once she joined the girls. “The tiger-family’s annual winter fur… err, hair is always an event~. Of course, the irregular blondie tops it all again. I love the light color you’re turning to~. It looks amaz- Wait!” She only now noticed it. “Where’s the super fluff?! Your hair is almost normal!”

“Looks good, huh?” Sophia played a bit with her hair. “I quite like what I did with it. I’m a fan of the slight volume and waviness I managed to pull off.”

“Yes, it looks great.” The girl called Sarah agreed with a hearty nod. “The question is why, though? Why do you look like this?”

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With a slight smile on her lips, the blonde asked for a more private room to talk. Once everyone went to the back area of the store, Sophia briefly explained her concept without going into detail.

“You can straighten hair with heat…?” The black-haired cat-girl tilted her head. “I know that you can add volume, make it wavier, and even form curls with hot air… But straighten it? That’s the complete opposite of how hot air works.”

“Did I mention air at some point?” Sophia looked at the two. “My technique works in a different way.”

“How?!” Both girls from the store got excited.

“Hmm…” The tiger paused for a moment.

“You want to sell the idea, don’t you?” The owner cat-girl made a wild guess.

“Is there an interest in buying it?”

“If you’ve found a way to straighten even the hair of tigers such as yours.”

“And Princess Anna.”

“It works on her, too?!” The dog-girl got loud. “The princess who looks like a fellow Pomeranian type of dog-girl during the winter months?”

“Pfft!” Sophia couldn’t hold back a laugh. “M-Maya… am I a bad person if I want to write off my invention as a failure and destroy it…?”

“N-No… Not really…” She, too, was trying her best to stay serious while failing horribly at it. “I-I really want to see that, too… She already looks fluffy, but that…”

“I-I do agree that it’s a sight to behold, but…” The black-haired cat wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’m just kidding.” The blonde waved her hand. “Okay, mostly kidding…” She slightly corrected herself. “She was so happy that I reduced her fluff that I couldn’t do that.”

“That’s good…” The two from the store sounded relieved.

“Okay… can I take advantage of my position as a tiger a bit here? I don’t want to deal with all the stuff around selling an invention, idea, whatever… It also still needs some tweaking. How about I show you what I did, and you’ll decide how much it’s worth to the store you’re running. I put my trust into you giving me an adequate reward if you’re interested in it.”

“We’d do that even without you being a tiger!” The black-haired cat raised her voice. “We regularly buy inspirations from others to perfect it before sharing the resulting product with everyone. We even hired Debby here because she’s a genius when it comes to styling hair. Also, her forming sprays are the best you’ll ever see.”

“Ehehe~.” The dog-girl’s tail started wagging while she was being praised.

“Dogs are kinda cute.” Sophia leaned over to Maya and started whispering. “It’s adorable how expressive their tails are.”

“…” The cat-girl wasn’t sure how to feel about this.

“Are you by any chance part dog?” The blonde stifled a laugh. “You’re the queen when it comes to having an expressive tail, after all.”

“First, shut up. Second, seriously, shut up. Third, have you really not noticed how expressive your tail is?” She looked at the tiger’s backside, where her blonde and black tail heavily twitched in response before plopping down on the ground.

“Urgh…” She obviously was aware of that. She just didn’t want to be, though.

“Okay…” The black-haired cat-girl smiled at the couple before continuing. “Would you mind showing us your invention now? I’m really interested in it.”

“Sure~.” Sophia smiled back at her.

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Afterward, Sophia took her hair iron out of the bag she was carrying to present it to them. Once she managed to explain why it looked like tongs out of all things, the tiger did a short explanation of how exactly it works.

“I see…” The dog-girl was playing around with Sophia’s invention in her hands. “While the hair is pressed between the two plates, the heat re-forms it and preserves the form while you glide through it from the roots to the tips?”

“Pretty much.” The blonde nodded.

“Is that why you bought the desert spray yesterday? To lower the chance to damage your hair from the heat.” The clerk tilted her head. “Now that I know what it’s for, I’m pretty sure we could improve the desert version to withstand even more heat. From what you’ve told me, that’s still an issue, right?”

“Yep.” Sophia agreed. “It works with the current heat, but you need multiple passes with each strand of hair to straighten it. It takes too much time to do it daily or every other day, at least.”

“It doesn’t survive a shower or a bath, does it?” The black-haired cat-girl continued. “Once it gets wet, the fluff or volume returns, right?”

“Yes. Well, it may not go completely back to normal, but most of the effect is gone. If I can increase the heat a bit more with a protective spray and combine it with the forming sprays I heard about earlier, it should effortlessly hold for an entire day, though. Even for us tigers.”

“I see!” The eyes of the dog-girl were sparkling. “Sarah, I want to play around with this thing!” She waved around with Sophia’s straightening iron she was still holding. “The concept is suuuper interesting, and I already have some ideas to improve it!”

“Of course~.” The black-haired cat smiled at the excited girl before looking at Sophia. “As you can see by the wagging tail of my cheery dog here, we are quite interested in your idea. We’d like to test it on some regulars of ours and make some tweaks to it. If it holds up to your promise of it even being able to tame the hair of tigers, we very much would like to either buy the idea or license to use of it.”

“Alright, sounds good to me.” Sophia nodded to the suggestion. “That comes with a condition, though.”

“What would that be?” Sarah, the cat-girl, tilted her head.

“I’ve styled the hair of Princess Anna yesterday, and I’m fairly sure Queen Kira knows about that by now. If she shows up at my place once we get home, I’ll immediately send her this way, and the two of you have to deal with her.”

“Wow… That’s quite the condition you have there…” The cat-girl needed a moment. “Our dear queen gets quite… complicated during the colder season when it comes to her hair… Well, alright, I’ll do it! That’ll have a slight effect on the licensing costs later on, though!”

“Ahaha, sure.”

The girls chatted for a bit longer while the blonde gave the store duo some more tips about the usage of her invention. Still, the couple eventually left the store again. On the way back to the mansion, the two went shopping for a few groceries, and once they were back home, two very familiar girls with striped hair were waiting for them at the gate.

“So… phia! Maya!” Ellie, holding the hand of Queen Kira, used her free one to wave at the couple once she saw them.

“Ahaha…” The couple could only react with a dry laugh while waving back to the little princess.