ZERO VEIL: Gravity Error

SCENE 1: The Polished Silver

A decaying theater in New York. The ventilation was dead. The air was saturated with oxidized cheap hairspray and the greasy smell of scorched self-consciousness.

An open audition for new models. The final round, with several luxury fashion houses taking part. Hundreds of self-proclaimed diamonds in the rough wore plastic number tags on their chests, mass-producing industrial smiles for the judges.

The king of fashion, Maestro, narrowed his eyes behind his sunglasses and stifled a yawn. So far, nothing but an accumulation of ordinary meat.

They all wore the same makeup, as though stamped in a mold called fashion. They offered calculated flattery down to the angles of their bodies. All equally tedious. Maestro rapidly sorted the herd of meat before him into a folder marked REJECT. Not worth looking at. The distortions in their minds emerge as noise in their muscles, killing the lines of the clothes.

The audition had already been running for 6 hours. The king of fashion pressed his fingers to his temples, brooding over the suffocating scene before him. Armored in fashionable dresses, the women had the bloodshot eyes of starving feral dogs. Let the woman beside me fall. Let her heel snap. Viscous curses kept warping the space like gravity.

“Next. Entry number 326.” Another woman approached at the perfunctory announcement. Maestro did not even lower his eyes to the papers before him. His verdict was immediate, merciless. Rejected. A walk brimming with desires that killed the clothes was nothing but an impurity in his design.

“A break. Air this place out.” Maestro had just spoken in a low growl when a small ripple stirred in a corner of the hall. Someone tripped a candidate, sending her sprawling. A stiletto rolled across the floor with a dry clatter. The models around her let their relief at one rival’s elimination spill out as filthy, mocking laughter.

But a single sound cut through that hostile stagnation.

“Excuse me. Are you all right?” A sound so clear it seemed out of place. Like a wind instrument fashioned from precious metal. Entry number 327. The girl in the front row hurried over without hesitation.

Platinum-blond, as though moonlight had been spun into thread and laid strand upon strand. If she let down the hair gathered at the back, it would probably reach her upper hips. Her bangs parted just off-center. The inward-curving sides framed her in geometric curves, tracing graceful arcs at her shoulders. Her skin suggested West Asian ancestry: a very light, warm champagne gold. Against her hair, the thin skin itself seemed faintly luminous. Not the slightest distortion in her features. The very ideal a god drew when designing the human form. Even “sculptural beauty” was too feeble a phrase. A high, sharp bridge to her nose. Eyes of liquid mercury that reflected every base desire. Her thin, finely shaped lips held a glossy softness and a hint of sweetness.

She wore no expensive dress. Only a simple white cotton dress, the kind found hanging in a chain store. Yet the space at her coordinates alone was utterly clear.

She knelt on the floor and picked up the fallen heel. Taking out her own handkerchief, she gently wiped away the dirt, as though tending a wounded bird. There was no artifice in the movement. No self-absorption. Only sadness that something beautiful had been dirtied. Someone needed help, so she lent a hand as naturally as obeying gravity. It was so natural. Too fluid.

Maestro’s hand... stopped. Behind the sunglasses, his eyes widened like those of a scientist who had found an impossible value in the experimental data. She looks like a country girl, but moves like the princess of a fallen kingdom. The fingers wiping the heel. The curve of her spine. Even the tips of her feet, confined as they must be by her bent knees. Not the slightest fluctuation anywhere. Such fluidity. As though gravity had been rewritten only in the space around her. A bug planted by a god in the laws of physics.

“Next. Number 327.” At the call, she handed the heel back to its owner and drifted toward the judges. The strong spotlight drew the color of her hair from pale gold toward translucent silver. The instant she stopped, the stagnant air in the hall was forcibly replaced. She looked at the king of fashion and smiled gently. No shallow confidence. No appeasement. No arrogance. Her smile was filled with pure respect and affection for everyone in the room. The fresh warmth of a spring morning.

Send her home... This is a slaughterhouse in hell, where flesh is sold by the cut. A girl with an innocent soul must not wander in here. She is far too white. Looks unbearably fragile. One drop of ink, and she would be stained beyond repair.

But.

The compulsion of a designer tightened around Maestro’s reason. His heart kept tolling like a bell. He could not look away from her. This girl holds a singular beauty.

“...Try this dress on for me. By chance, it’s your size.” He handed her the asymmetric dress hanging at the end of the judges’ table. An expensive ready-to-wear piece of heavy velvet and specialized construction, closer to a restraint than a dress. A problematic creation: prêt-à-porter meant for production in quantity, yet as uncompromising as haute couture made for one person alone.

“Yes.” A short, crystalline reply. No surprise. Without waiting to be directed to a changing room, she shed the white cotton dress where she stood and began putting on his.

The hall forgot to breathe. The instant she wore the dress, the dead fabric changed its nature. It clung to her skin. The bewildering construction rebuilt itself around her bones, converging on the golden ratio.

She began to walk. Not... a sound.

The velvet armor is free of gravity, as though made of smoke. Even the sound of heels striking the floor is absent. This is not walking technique. She has known from the beginning how to answer the clothes. Gravity. Air resistance. The shifting of cloth. She synchronizes with all of it in an instant, outputs the most beautiful solution. A phenomenon now. Or a bug planted by a god in the physics engine.

With every step, the hem sends out graceful ripples. Black velvet drinks the light and shines with an uncanny luster. A goddess’s dance beyond the limits of human attainment. Everyone in the silent hall released a heated sigh. Even the jealous models stared in a daze. Some had tears in their eyes.

She had only walked. And rewritten everyone there into believers of a kind.

The girl came back. A faint flush on her cheeks, she stood before Maestro. “...It’s strange. This dress feels as though it’s protecting me.”

The king of fashion analyzed the sight through his sunglasses. The joy of a designer confronted with the perfect answer. Fierce possessiveness. And a faint sense of guilt. I’ve found it. The ideal I’ve pursued. But this is the beginning of a tragedy. The moment the world discovers her, it will begin consuming this 18-year-old’s innocent radiance. The immense millstones of capitalism and desire will grind her bones and her heart to powder.

I have to protect her.

He knew he should let her escape this place. Yet he could not release that radiance.

I want the clothes I make to shine forever on her.

I want her to shine forever in the clothes I make.

“...You pass. I’ll hire you.” At 29, the young king’s declaration carried absolute authority. His pen engraved a signature on the papers. Immediate employment. An exclusive contract. She would close the haute couture show in its starring role: the last look. A devil’s contract, inviting her into the most dazzling hell. “Your name?”

“Fletta Argent.”

“A fine name. ...Silver, then.” Maestro gently laid a palm on her narrow shoulder, as though handling something breakable. “Fletta. Promise me.”

“Yes.”

“Never forget the way you walk. Whatever anyone says, walk as yourself. I’ll clear your path. Trust me.”

“Yes. I trust you, Maestro.”

Maestro. She had recognized him as her guide from the very beginning. Before that pure trust, a sense of purpose blazed deep in the young king’s chest.

But for this moment alone.

He wanted only to burn this girl into his retinas. This moment, while no one had yet stained her...

The road through hell begins.