Chapter 196 Not an Assistant at All
Chapter 196 Not an Assistant at All
Sophia's POV
The venue erupted in a wave of groans.
Four hours of frantic work, and most designers had cut every corner imaginable, no serged edges, no proper finishing, just a few pins and rough stitches holding everything together. That kind of half-finished piece could pass on a plastic mannequin, but the moment a real person put it on and started moving, one wrong step meant seams bursting and a very public wardrobe disaster.
And that was before you even got to the fit problem.
Lisa stared at the pale white gown hanging on the rack, cut for a 5'9" model, and started pacing in circles. At barely 5'3", if she tried to squeeze into that floor-length dress with its trailing hem, she wouldn't look elegant. She'd look like a kid raiding her mom's closet.
"Sophia…" Lisa bit her lip, like she'd just talked herself into something, and grabbed the hem of my jacket. Her eyes were red. "You were the one who did the embroidery and reworked the pattern, you're the real designer here. I can't pull this off, not with my height. Please." Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. "Please wear it and walk for me."
I frowned slightly. I'd never liked putting myself out there at events like this, and right now, my badge said assistant.
"Sophia, please!" Lisa pressed her palms together, eyes full of desperation. "If we can't even get through the presentation, everything we just did was for nothing!"
Watching Lisa on the verge of tears, then taking a quick look at the chaos unraveling around the venue, I let out a quiet, internal sigh.
"Get the dress." My voice came out flat and cool. I took the pale white gown from her hands and headed toward the temporary dressing room backstage.
Lisa looked like she'd just been granted a pardon. She snatched up her makeup bag and scrambled after me.
The runway segment started soon after.
What had been a glamorous stage now felt like a very public execution.
The first designer walked out in her own elaborate ballgown, made it to center stage, struck a pose, and then came a sharp, unmistakable ripping sound. The back zipper had blown clean open, fabric gaping wide. The crowd gasped. The designer covered her face and fled.
The next few weren't much better. One had the proportions so off that she waddled down the runway looking like she'd been wrapped in a burlap sack. Another had stacked so much structure into her design that the whole thing toppled, sending her crashing to the floor in front of everyone.
At the judges' table, the panel looked grim. The elimination lights flashed without mercy.
"Fashion isn't just sketches on paper," one notoriously harsh judge said, voice cutting through the silence. "If you don't understand basic wearability and how a body actually moves, you have no business being here. Eliminated."
Lisa stood in the waiting area watching the elimination count climb on the big screen, swallowing hard, fingers knotted together.
"Next group, Area D, Number 7."
The lights dropped the moment the host announced us, leaving a single cool spotlight aimed at the far end of the stage. Every eye in the room followed it.
I stepped out of the shadows.
The entire venue went silent.
I had traded my black work jacket, the one that hid everything, for the pale white trailing gown. Over it sat a layer of sheer, barely-there green chiffon that drifted like smoke as I moved.
The real statement was the slit. With each unhurried step, a clean, pale leg appeared and disappeared in the folds of the skirt. The double-sided embroidered green willow branches that wound upward along the slit seemed almost alive, swaying with my movement, delicate and sharp at the same time, full of a kind of energy that was both fashionable and effortless.
To match the dress, I'd let my hair down from its high ponytail and twisted it into a loose, low knot, the kind that looks careless but lands right. No heavy makeup. Just a hint of soft color on my lips. My face, bare of almost everything, was striking enough on its own, something cool and untouchable about it, like it belonged somewhere far above all of this.
I didn't bother with model poses. I just walked. But there was something in the way I carried myself, an ease, a quiet authority that sat deep in the bones, that turned the dial on that dress up by ten.
The word that probably crossed everyone's mind at the same moment: commanding.
After a brief stunned pause, the live stream chat exploded, thousands of comments flooding the screen all at once, everyone asking where this person had come from, saying the presence and the looks were international runway level.
I reached the front of the stage, paused for two seconds, let my gaze pass coolly over the judges' table, then turned and walked away, leaving the room with a view of the dress trailing behind me.
The applause didn't come until I was already off the stage. Then it hit like thunder.
Lisa was teary-eyed, rushing over to drape my jacket back over my shoulders. But when she glanced toward the judges' table, her stomach dropped.
The judges had their heads together, talking in low, animated voices, and nobody had touched the scoring button.
"Sophia…" The relief Lisa had felt seconds ago evaporated. She chewed her lip. "Why aren't they scoring? Do you think our design was too understated? Too quiet for a commercial competition? We're done if we don't score high enough, we'll get knocked out in the first round…"
I wasn't worried.
I pulled my jacket around me with one hand and, almost as an afterthought, straightened my cuff, smoothing the fabric back over the strip of gauze that had started to show a faint bloom of red.
"Relax," I said, voice even, not even glancing up. "We wait for the result."
--
Joseph's POV
Behind the judges' table, the energy was something the contestants couldn't have imagined.
The panel wasn't picking the design apart. They were floored.
"That tailoring, that embroidery technique…" Richard, one of the most respected figures in international fashion, was half out of his seat, both hands pressed flat on the table, eyes wide behind his reading glasses, staring at the spot where Sophia had disappeared. His voice was unsteady. "That way of fusing clean, minimal lines with that level of handcraft, that specific combination, I'd know it anywhere."
I was leaning back in my chair when I caught Richard's reaction.
I turned toward him, watching the old man's face flush with something close to awe, and asked quietly, "Mr. Richard, what is it? What do you see?"
Richard drew a slow, deep breath and turned to look straight at me. His voice was barely above a whisper, but the weight behind it was unmistakable.
"Mr. Spencer, you didn't recognize her?" He shook his head, still disbelieving. "That woman on the stage just now… she is no assistant."