In a town with one good tailor and several bad ones, there was an old man named Faustino who measured every customer the same exact way, rich or poor, and who taught his trade to a long line of apprentices over the years.
His final apprentice was a quiet boy named Win, who came to the shop in clothes that were clean but clearly borrowed, hand-me-downs from an older cousin, sleeves a little long, shoulders a little wrong.
On Win's first day, Faustino didn't hand him a needle. He stood him in front of the tall mirror at the back of the shop and said, "Before I teach you to make clothes fit other people, I need to teach you something about how you stand in your own."
"My clothes don't fit," Win said, embarrassed. "There's nothing to be done about it. They're not mine."
"That's not what I asked you to fix," said Faustino. "Look at your shoulders. They're apologizing for the sleeves. Pull them back."
Win straightened, awkwardly at first, the way anyone does when asked to occupy more space than they're used to claiming.
"Better," Faustino said. "Now — the cloth doesn't know whether it's expensive or borrowed. It only knows how it's worn. A king in a sack looks like a beggar if he stands like one apologizes for the sack. A beggar in the same sack, standing like he owns the room, looks like he's merely between fortunes."
Win practiced this every day after that, alongside learning to thread a needle and cut a true line, and Faustino never once mentioned it again, trusting that the lesson, once given properly, didn't need repeating.
Years later, long after Faustino had retired and Win had taken over the shop, a boy came in wearing his older brother's coat, sleeves too long, shoulders all wrong, asking timidly whether the tailor could maybe take it in a little, if it wasn't too much trouble, if there was time.
Win didn't reach for a needle either. He walked the boy to the same tall mirror at the back of the shop, the glass a little more spotted with age now, and said, "Before we fix the coat, let's fix how you're standing in it." And the boy straightened, slowly, the way Win once had, and for a moment looked exactly like someone who simply hadn't gotten the news yet that he was supposed to feel small.
