The day after Maya’s birthday started relatively late. It was a very special day and an even more exciting night for the couple. That had tired them out a bit. Once they took another bath and ate something, the two were finally fully awake just before noon.

“You sure bought some interesting stuff, Maya…” The two were in their living room, and the tiger started a chat while she was working on her fluffy hair with a new prototype of her straightening iron. It was the latest prototype that had some improvements from the beauty store applied to it.

“It also was really embarrassing to visit that store alone… You’re coming with me next time!”

“Seriously?!” The blonde didn’t like the sound of that. “T-There’s no way!”

“They have even more interesting stuff, though. Don’t you want to know what I mean with that~?”

“I hate you.”

“Really? You had me fooled yesterday, then. Especially during the night~.” The cat-girl naturally didn’t buy it.

“S-Shut up…”

“I love you, too~.” She responded with a chuckle. “Not curious at all about what else that shop has to offer?”

“Urgh…” Sophia squirmed around for a moment. “Of course, I am!” Even before becoming a cat, she already was the curious type, after all. “Last night was fun! I want more of that!”

“Ehehe.” Maya smiled at her. “I know that you liked it. I heard it, too. Good thing that Fenny and Aura left the house for us.”

“Uuhh…” The tiger squirmed even more. “N-No need to say that out loud…”

“Heh.” Maya looked quite smug.

“Especially because even stopping time wouldn’t have masked the noises you were making.”

“A-Ah…” The smugness immediately disappeared from her face again. “F-Forget I said anything.”

“Gladly~.”

Once this topic was taken care of, Sophia focused on taming her hair again while Maya styled hers into the new low twintails she was trying out. She also used a set of the new ribbons she got as a gift from Ari and Anna to tie them together.

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Once they were done with that and also got fully dressed, the couple left their mansion to visit the castle. As it was November by now, which came with a drastic change of the weather, the two also adjusted their wardrobe a bit. They haven’t had the time to go on a full shopping spree yet, but the couple started wearing the tights they had gotten the other day beneath their clothes for now. This took care of their legs. Sophia had also gotten a dark-green jacket to warm the upper part of her body. Maya, on the other hand, had settled on a light-gray sweater jacket for the time being.

Arriving at the castle and going to Anna’s room, as usual, the couple was then greeted by Ari and the princess inside.

“Happy late birthday!” The duo smiled at the cat-girl.

“Thank you! I’m sorry that I wasn’t at home when you came over to visit. The cake was delicious, though, and the ribbons are super cute! I even started wearing them already.” While saying so, she pointed at her twintails resting on her chest, which were tied together with two red ribbons just above her collarbones.

“I’m happy you like them.” Ari answered her. “I’m also glad I could explain to Anna that those ribbons are more than enough as a present for friends. You don’t even want to know what she initially wanted to get you…”

“Ahaha…” The couple could only laugh as this very topic came up during their chat yesterday.

“Hey!” Anna got loud. “I liked my idea…”

“There’s no need to feel down!” Maya really didn’t want to know her idea. “I love those ribbons! It was the perfect gift. Again, thank you!”

“Ehehe…” The princess was quite easy to cheer up. “You have to thank Ari for the cake, though… I mostly helped with some preparations and a bit of taste-testing…”

“Ahh…” The couple looked at each other again.

“Well, I’m glad you liked it~. Anyway,” The jaguar changed the topic. “It sure is getting cold fast, huh?” She looked at the couple, who were way more dressed than usual.

“Yes!” Maya and the blonde reacted with a big nod.

“Stupid weather…” Sophia sounded grumbly for a moment. “Did I somehow miss fall, or did we skip it?”

“Fall’s kinda weird around here… It comes fast and goes even faster. There’ll be some nice days left this month every now and then, it’ll probably be an up and down like every year, but then starting next month… brr…” Anna actually shivered towards the end of her explanation.

“I hate this place...”

“How do you like the tights, Sophia?” Ari looked at her legs, or rather the black tights the tiger was wearing beneath her usual shorts.

“They’re amazing!” Her face lit up again. “They’re so warm and fluffy! They feel sooo great on my legs. I love them already.” She apparently was a big fan.

“Great!” The jaguar looked slightly proud for some reason.

“Thank you so much for recommending them!”

“I think so, too!” Maya joined in. She, too, was wearing her new white tights below her usual white and red skirt. “I agree with everything Sophia said. They are extremely comfortable to wear.”

“Happy to hear that.” Ari gave her own legs a small pat while saying so. “They really are great.”

“Yep!” Even Anna joined in on the praise while she glanced at her own legs as she was wearing the same white tights as Maya right now.

“Speaking of…” Sophia looked at the duo. “Why are the two of you in your school uniform again, and why does it look kinda different…?” She noticed that the colors of their skirts had slightly changed. The white parts of the tartan-style checker pattern were a little less now, and the black stripes were thicker instead. The most significant change was the black blazer with a white outline and a few accents the two were wearing over their dress shirt now. “Also, I love your twintails, princess!” The blonde focused on Anna’s hair that had changed a lot since she saw her yesterday. Instead of her usual ponytail, she had it tied into two big, highly fluffy-looking twintails behind her ears.

“Ahh…” Anna awkwardly scratched her cheek. “The fluff was too much to handle for my poor ponytail… The attempt to straighten them yesterday was a complete failure, too… They need to up the power a ton for me…”

“Your bangs look fine, though.”

“Yeah, as you had guessed it already, it only works on them right now…” The princess looked down.

“You should think about getting your hair thinned out a bit, maybe…”

“That actually makes it worse for some reason…”

“How?! And or why?!”

“Nobody knows…”

“Seriously?!” Sophia hadn’t expected their hair to be this stoic. “It might be worth giving it another try, though. Maybe it behaves differently when you apply heat afterward.”

“That’s true…” She didn’t sound overly hopeful, though.

“Anyway,” The jaguar tried to get back to the topic. “That’s the winter uniform of the academy. Anna got her new one earlier today, and I wanted to make sure that mine from last year still fits.”

“Oh, I see.” The blonde nodded. “It looks really good. I like the blazer.”

“That’s very good to hear.” Ari suddenly started smiling and walked over to Anna’s bed. “Here’s one of my spares. I washed and ironed it earlier, and it’s ready for you to try on.”

“A-Ah…” Sophia paused for a moment. “I splendidly walked right into that one, huh…?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I promised...”

“Wow, that was easy.” The black-haired girl had expected a bit more struggling.

“I’m still in a good mood after yesterday~.”

“I see. Did you and Maya have fun on her birthday?”

“…” The blonde paused for another moment. “Y-Yes.”

“Okay?” She could only tilt her head because she had no idea why her face suddenly seemed slightly flushed.

“Anyway,” Sophia got the topic back on the uniform. “I only try it on if Maya does the same, though!”

“Sure.” Anna also walked over to her bed. “This one here is my old one from last year. It should fit her quite well.”

“Thanks!” The cat-girl didn’t mind the uniform at all. Her usual clothes weren’t that different from it, after all.

“You can use my dressing room there.” The princess pointed at a door left from her.

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The couple grabbed the uniforms the other two had prepared for them and disappeared into Anna’s changing room. Roughly 20 minutes passed before they came back while wearing said uniforms. Both still had their tights on, but everything else had changed. The two were now wearing the same tartan-style skirt as the princess and Ari, combined with a white dress shirt, a black and white blazer, and a ribbon in the same pattern as the skirt.

“Urgh…” Sophia seemed a little fidgety as she was playing with the hem of her skirt. “I’m not sure how I feel about this… It’s way too short…”

“It’s quite easy to move in, though, is it not?” Maya naturally had no problem with it and did a little twirl on the spot to get her point across.

“T-That’s true…” The blonde also moved around a bit. “It really is comfy, and the fabric feels nice, but still…”

“Well…” The cat-girl got closer to her tiger and lifted her skirt in a way the other two weren’t able to see under it.

“H-Hey!” She got loud. “Stop that!” With a blush on her cheeks, Sophia instantly pushed down her skirt again while bonking the cat-girl with her tail.

“It’s all black down there. Nothing to worry~.” She flashed her a cheeky smile. “And I know that your underwear isn’t even black today. It’s perfectly safe.”

“I’m not going to thank you…” Sophia started pouting instead. “G-Good to know, though…”

“Ehehe…” The cat-girl had to chuckle. “And if you are bothered about someone else’s imagination going wild, you just have to behave a little more when wearing a skirt. Not sure why that would even bother you, though. You’d need to be bothered by absolutely everything, no matter what clothes you wear, then.”

“That’s true… Also, if someone tries to get a peek, I can just punch them to another dimension.”

“Resident cat-girls aside, right?” Maya pointed at herself.

“Idiot…” Pouting some more but not denying it, Sophia continued to walk around in the room. “If it really is safe, though… It actually does feel nice…” It seemed like she was already warming up to her new wardrobe.

“It’s also nice to look at~.” Maya, too, was warming up to seeing her tiger in a skirt. Rather, she was a little hot and bothered about it, judging by her gaze.

“It looks great, you two.” Ari decided to ignore their bantering that could only be described as flirting by everyone present.

“Yep.” Anna agreed. “Well, my uniform on Maya might be a tiny bit too big, but it’s still fine.”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” The cat-girl nodded. “I think I can improve the fit a little more if I put some more time into it, and we’re golden.”

“Sophia, though…” While the princess said so, everyone focused their attention on the blonde tiger. “You have to stop wearing your baggy shirts! Ari’s uniform fits you perfectly! Your curves are even more defined than I thought they were. More importantly…” Anna stopped for a moment while she glanced at a very particular part of her. “Your chest is a good bit bigger than I thought it would be.”

“True…” Ari looked at her princess for a moment with a complicated expression before agreeing with her. “It seemed like our figure was more or less the same, but I was under the impression that my breasts were a little bigger. Turns out I was wrong, huh? Good for you, it looks great. We have to go shopping together! With our figures so closely together, getting something to fit right will be super easy because we’ll have exactly the same sizes in them!”

“Ahaha…” Sophia awkwardly scratched her cheek. “I, uhh… like baggy shirts because they’re so comfy, but I might have to think about some alternatives…”

“Definitely!” The duo reacted with a big nod.

“I like the shopping idea… I’ll rely on you there…”

“Great!” Ari showed her a big smile. She, too, was looking forward to it. “Let’s everyone go shopping together soon again!”

“Yes!” The other three girls agreed.

“Say…” Maya leaned over to her tiger and started whispering in a way only Sophia could understand.

“Y-Yes…?” She seemed a bit evasive for some reason.

“You’ve grown up so much since this morning when we got dressed~. Did we perhaps use some kind of magic when you tried on Ari’s uniform?” She started grinning. “I also saw you grabbing a different bra from your storage when we were changing earlier~.”

“T-The uniform was a bit loose, okay?!” Sophia’s face turned red.

“Ahaha… Great! I love it!” Maya liked the blonde’s improvements on her body. “It fits you really well. I mean, I also loved what you did last night, but this here is basically perfect. You should think about keeping it like that.”

“I will…” She pondered about it for a moment while glancing at the mirror in Anna’s room. “I do look a bit more mature… It’s winter, too, so the focus on mobility isn’t as important anymore… I might try to stay like this.”

“Yay!” The cat-girl looked really happy.

“I’m spoiling you a lot lately, aren’t I?” Sophia reacted with a smile.

“Ehehe~.”

Once the two finished their secret discussion, they focused on the other two again. The group then kept chatting about their looks, uniforms, and the idea of going shopping together soon.