Chapter 3: The Sharp-Tongued Buyer's Test

The Lagos night was as thick as ink, so viscous it seemed water could be wrung from it. The clamor of the Rag Mountain (Balogun Market) gradually became clear beneath Amina's feet. It was a unique smell mixed with diesel exhaust, stale spices, and the body heat of countless people.

Her palm clutched that silver button engraved with binary code, her fingertips white from the force, a chill spreading up her arm to the bottom of her heart, forming an eerie counterpoint to the swelter of the tropical night. The wind passed through the mountains of piled old clothes with a hollow wail, as if warning her that the road ahead was full of thorns.

Amina quickened her pace through the narrow, crowded alleys, both sides piled with cheap textiles returned from Europe, her gaze piercing the mist and locking onto that familiar silhouette ahead.

Tina was standing under a dim yellow streetlamp, the halo softening the edges of her refined outline, a folding fan swaying in her hand, her posture lofty and aloof. The hawking cries of the surrounding vendors automatically formed a vacuum zone around her. Amina drew near, her heart pounding like a drum, that button growing faintly warm in her pocket, as if foreshadowing the arrival of a storm.

She took a deep breath, pressed down the surging unease inside her, and prepared to face this international buyer's sharp-tongued yet crucial scrutiny.

Tina turned around, a mocking arc curling at the corner of her mouth, her gaze slicing like a knife across Amina's rough work clothes. She did not speak at once, but lightly flicked with her fingertip at dust that did not exist in the air, her posture so elegant it was suffocating. Amina lowered her eyelids and silently endured this wordless judgment.

The air around them seemed to freeze, and the gazes of the other vendors grew curious and critical. Tina finally spoke, her voice cold as ice: "Amina, your craftsmanship truly has an 'earthy smell.' A pity that haute couture requires the lightness of the clouds."

That sentence was like a fine needle, piercing the psychological line of defense Amina had just built, but the muscles of her face remained taut, maintaining absolute calm. Amina raised her head and met Tina's sharp eyes directly, her voice steady without a single ripple. She did not want to argue, because argument appears pale and powerless before absolute strength.

She simply waited quietly, waiting for the other party to throw out that challenge that would make her erupt at her limit. Tina looked at the stubbornness in Amina's eyes, and the contempt in her own eyes gradually turned into a playful probing. She seemed to see through to the core beneath Amina's skin, tough as kente fibers, a quality extremely rare among Lagos's emerging designers.

Tina put away her folding fan, pinching between her fingertips a neatly folded garment. That was the touchstone she had carefully prepared.

Tina tossed the garment in her hands toward Amina, her movement as casual as throwing away a rag. It was a burgundy haute couture gown, its velvet covered in stains, its shoulder line broken, the embroidery at the hem in disorder, like waste that had been roughly taken apart and washed. Tina crossed her hands, lifted her chin slightly, and set the rule: "Within one hour, reconstruct it.

"I want to see it become no longer trash, but a work of art. Remember, time is the only currency."

Amina caught the gown. Her fingertips touched the cold velvet and instantly sensed the breaks and filth inside the fibers. Without the slightest hesitation, she sat down at once in a corner of a roadside stall and began to take apart this heavy work. The surrounding whispers surged in like a tide, laughter mixed with doubts about Amina's overestimation of herself.

People pointed at that ruined gown and asserted she could absolutely not possibly restore a masterpiece in so short a time. Amina turned a deaf ear. Her world shrank to the space between her fingertips and the fabric. The Sewing Spirit Eye fully activated at this moment; the instant her gaze locked onto the velvet, the optimal tailoring structure diagram automatically formed in her mind.

Those broken fibers and invisible creases became clearly visible under the Spirit Eye's X-ray vision. Complex geometric lines surfaced in her mind, and the originally rigid pattern rearranged and recombined in her eyes, forming a dynamic balance.

Amina's technique flowed like moving clouds and running water, scissors and needle dancing at her fingertips with a faint sound of metal friction. She was not simply mending, but carrying out a deep reconstruction. Taking apart, cleaning, reassembling, every movement precise to the extreme. Tina watched from the side, her originally casual gaze gradually focusing.

She discovered in surprise that Amina was adjusting the curve of the shoulder line, making the originally stiff outline soft yet full of tension. This extreme adaptability to the body surpassed the limits of traditional molds. The contempt in Tina's eyes vanished completely, replaced by scrutiny and expectation. She realized the woman before her commanded some technique beyond the conventional.

Amina's fingertips lightly stroked the heavily stained hem, and her material sense function activated accordingly. She could clearly "see" the predicted paths of fiber density and dye reaction. Those stubborn oil stains were not attached to the surface, but had penetrated deep into the fibers. Amina frowned slightly, rapidly calculating in her mind the optimal ratio and temperature for a neutral detergent.

She did not use a powerful stain remover, but used the fabric's own properties, letting the stains separate naturally through a specific rubbing technique. As she worked, the originally dull velvet gradually regained its luster, even deeper and more captivating than in its factory state. Light and shadow flowed over the fabric, as if granting the textile new life.

Time slipped away minute by minute, the air taut as a fully drawn bowstring. When the last stitch fell, the countdown stopped abruptly at exactly zero. Amina stood up, the gown renewed in her hands. The damaged places were perfectly invisible, and the originally flat hem presented a unique three-dimensional sculptural quality, the burgundy velvet flickering with a warm luster under the light.

It was no longer a repaired item, but a reshaped classic. The surrounding laughter stopped abruptly, replaced by the sound of sharp intakes of breath. Amina gently unfolded the gown, her gaze calm and confident, waiting for the final evaluation.

Tina stepped closer, her fingertips lightly tracing that fluid shoulder line, a flash of barely concealable shock in her eyes. She was silent for a moment, the surrounding clamor seeming shut out. At last, she drew a gold-embossed business card from her handbag and handed it to Amina.

Tina's voice was no longer cold, but carried the gentleness that follows recognition: "Light of Africa. A good name. From now on, your works will be handled by me for commercial operations in the global market."

Amina took the business card, her fingertips touching that thick paper and feeling the heavy weight of an international vision formally connecting. A firm belief surged inside her: the door to brand globalization had at this moment finally been pushed open by a crack. Tina adjusted her collar and turned to leave, yet stopped again at the door.

She turned her head back, gazed deeply at Amina, and threw out the final hook: "The municipal Chamber of Commerce is preparing the annual high-end design contest, and President Kofi himself sits on the judging panel. This is the only channel into the mainstream market, and it is also your stage to prove yourself. Do not disappoint me."

Amina gripped the business card tightly and looked toward the depths of the Rag Mountain, realizing that the shadows of Kofi and Mbala were intertwining. But at this moment, her eyes held only that resolve to tear open the dawn. Since the storm had arrived, she would use her strength to carve her own mark onto the fashion map of Lagos.

Tina's figure disappeared around the corner, the sound of her high heels striking the ground fading into the distance, yet the lingering echo stabbed at Amina's eardrums like a needle. Municipal Chamber of Commerce, President Kofi: these two terms were like a cold steel cable, tightly strangling her throat. Amina lowered her head, her gaze falling again onto the gold-embossed business card in her hand.

The gold ink reflected a cold light in the dim workshop, as if silently warning her: the hunters of opportunity had entered the field, and the top of the food chain never welcomes the weak.

She turned slowly, her back to that door leading to the outside world, her gaze cast toward the mountains of secondhand goods piled behind her. Those discarded laces, ruined silks, and worn leathers were no longer waste in her eyes at this moment, but embryos awaiting rebirth. Tina's words were a double-edged sword. They cut away her former stability, but also split open a bloody path.

To enter the mainstream, she had to mount that stage, and Kofi as a judge was both the greatest obstacle and the greatest opportunity.

Kofi had once publicly declared that he would "clean out the wild, unorthodox paths in Lagos's design circle," and Mbala, as his confidant, was lurking on the Rag Mountain like a shark that had smelled blood, ready at any moment to bite Amina's newly launched little boat to pieces.

Amina took a deep breath. The air was filled with the sour smell of old fabric fermenting, the peculiar smell of the slum, and also the soil in which she had grown up. She hesitated no longer and pulled a roll of unfinished coarse burlap from the depths of a wooden box. That fabric was so coarse it scraped her hands, exactly like her mood at this moment: taut, anxious, yet full of resilience.

She needed a work, a work enough to command the room before Kofi, a work that could let Tina's business card exert its true value.

The clock ticked. More than half of the deadline Tina had hinted at had already passed. Amina's fingers began to move, the needle tip shuttling through the coarse burlap with faint, hurried sounds. In her mind, that structure diagram that had once helped her restore the gown surfaced again, but this time the blueprint was more complex, more wild.

She forcibly grafted traditional African weaving techniques with Western haute tailoring, using metal coils in place of traditional seams, giving the fabric a liquid-metal quality full of tension. Sweat slid down her temple, dripped onto the cloth, and was instantly absorbed, leaving dark marks one after another, like ancient totems.

The workshop door was suddenly pushed open violently, crashing into the piles of secondhand goods behind it with a booming crash. Mbala stood there, a mocking arc at the corner of his mouth, two thugs in black suits behind him.

His gaze swept over the half-finished piece in Amina's hands, his pupils contracting slightly, and he then let out a contemptuous scoff: "That madwoman Tina praised you to the heavens, and you really think you can fly into the clouds? Lord Kofi does not like this kind of... earthiness."

Amina did not stop the movement of her hands, the needle tip still steadily passing through the weave of the cloth. She raised her head and met Mbala's provocation with a calm gaze: "Whether I can fly is decided by wings, not by the tongues of bystanders. Move aside. Do not dirty my stitches."

Mbala's face darkened, and he waved to signal the thugs behind him to step forward. At the very instant the shadows were about to swallow Amina, a burst of hurried, heavy footsteps suddenly came from outside the workshop, accompanied by a low engine roar.

The thin Lagos air was torn apart. A black stretch limousine slowly stopped at the mouth of the alley. The car door opened, and the man who stepped out was not Kofi, but a powerfully built man Amina had never seen before, with eyes as sharp as a falcon's.

He walked straight toward the workshop, ignoring Mbala's obstruction, his gaze locked dead onto that half-finished piece of Amina's, his voice dry as rock grinding on rock: "Give me three hours. I want to see how you turn this rag into something Kofi dares not look at directly."

Amina gripped the needle in her hand tightly, its tip drawing a streak of cold light under the lamp. The storm had truly arrived.