Chapter 2: The Collarbone Embroidery

"Miss Su, I'd advise you to keep those scraps of yours tucked away where no one can see them."

Lu Manman strided in on twelve-centimeter heels, her shrill voice cutting through the brief quiet in the living room. A sheaf of printed pages clutched in her hand, her face drained of color with fury, but her eyes burned with venom. She shouldered through the crowd of onlookers, her finger nearly raking across Su Jingnian's nose as she pressed in, her voice cold and sharp as a blade of ice.

"Plagiarism. That's the Lu Family's greatest scandal. Madam Lu, open your eyes and look at these cutting lines—they're ninety-eight percent identical to the concept sketches I published in Vogue Style last week."

The words hit the floor and the air in the living room went still. The servants who'd been whispering among themselves went dead silent in an instant, breathing shallow and careful, as if any slip might set off the storm already gathering.

In the livestream, the river of hyperactive chat froze mid-sentence, then flooded back with venom. The mood flipped hard—question marks gave way to exclamation points, followed by a wall of accusations thick as snowfall.

"I told you so. She's cheating."

"Editor-in-chief Lu Manman herself stepped in. Su Jingnian's done for."

"No amount of spin saves her. Plagiarist, get out of the Lu mansion."

The paid troll accounts hammered the screen in lockstep, shredding the fragile trust Su Jingnian had just started to build. Cursed-out messages in red snowed down the feed, burying the cool, composed figure at the front of the camera.

Su Jingnian didn't flinch. She lowered her gaze, slipping out from under Lu Manman's suffocating stare, and stared instead at the old, threadbare garment in her hands. The fabric was rough, scarred by years of wear—but the moment her fingertips brushed it, the world went quiet. The noise around her sealed itself behind some invisible membrane, leaving only the faint whisper of skin against thread.

[Loom Soul Weave · Holographic Body Measurement] activated, silent as a whisper.

Pale blue points of light drifted through the air like fireflies, quickly sketching the outline of a human skeleton. Streams of data wove through the void, rendering a pattern blueprint accurate to the millimeter. The glow wrapped around Su Jingnian softly, and in that instant, the fog of uncertainty and smallness drained from her eyes, replaced by something colder and steadier—the certainty of a craftsman.

"Sister Manman, you really do think the world revolves around you."

Su Jingnian raised her head. Her voice was flat—no ripple in it—and yet it cut through the dead silence like a bell. She didn't raise her volume, but every word landed with precision, punching through the chaos of the room.

"Fabric talks. Stitches don't lie. What you're calling 'similarity' is, to me, just the rhythm of a breath."

Lu Manman let out a sharp, mocking laugh, the corner of her mouth curling into a sneer. She crossed her arms and looked down at Su Jingnian from above, as though she were a joke told by someone