Chương 37: Act 1, Chapter 37: Killers at work

It was 9: 05 PM when I stepped out of the cab and approached the villa where Shiroi had asked to meet me. Wealthy enough to sit outside the city, with trimmed hedges and warm lights glowing behind tall windows. I carried the suit in a duffel bag alongside the materials I'd prepared. There was no point hiding it anymore. By tomorrow, he would know I was the enemy either way. Whether he recognized the design tonight or saw me wearing it later, the truth was coming. But I still needed his help.

"Hello, Alexandra," he said as he opened the door.

"I'm glad you came."

"Why wouldn't I? I was the one who asked."

"I wasn't sure how serious you were. These things fall apart more often than not."

"I don't have time to waste," I replied.

"I need a crash course." I added earning his node in response. He led me through the house and into a workshop in the back. Fabric samples hung from the walls beside tools and thread racks. The air smelled faintly of cedar and machine oil.

"I brought the project," I said, lifting the bag.

"Figured we could work while you explain."

"Good. Let's see it." I unpacked the suit onto the worktable. The base layer was sleek silver stretch fabric, fitted close to the body. Around it sat stacks of prepared vinyl panels, foam sheets, paints and reinforcement webbing. Shiroi ran a hand across the material, studying it in silence.

"Solid foundation," he said at last.

"What's the idea?"

"A mobility suit designed to look like lightweight armor. It has to move naturally."

"Convention piece?"

"Something like that." He nodded once.

"Alright. Put it on the form." We stretched the suit over a dress form and immediately fell into work.

"You'll need stronger reinforcement at the shoulders," he said, marking the seams with chalk.

"Too much stress there."

"I was thinking triple stitching." I replied basing my knowledge on the tutorials I'd watched.

"Double's enough if your tension's correct. Don't kill the elasticity." He replied and that sort of back and forth was how the night unfolded. He handled structure; I handled silhouette. We marked armor lines across the chest, shoulders and thighs, clipping vinyl panels carefully into place before stitching them down. Whenever the stretch fabric slipped against the machine bed, he adjusted the settings without interrupting the flow of conversation.

"Use the walking foot for the hips," he said after watching me wrestle with a layered section.

"Too much drag otherwise." I swapped the attachment and tried again.

"Better." We settled into rhythm after that. The room filled with the steady hum of sewing machines, the snap of clips, the whisper of shears through fabric. Sometimes he explained techniques. Sometimes we worked in silence for twenty minutes at a time.

"The corners will curl when you move," he said at one point, reinforcing a seam with hidden stretch webbing.

"You need flexibility underneath the structure."

"Same for the knees?"

"And lower back." The suit slowly transformed under our hands. Flat fabric became layered shapes that caught the light like brushed metal. The chest panels overlapped with clean geometric precision; the thigh pieces tapered naturally along the body instead of bulking outward. When I finished the first leg, I stepped back to test it. The vinyl flexed with the fabric instead of fighting it.

"Looks right," Shiroi said.

"Still breathable too."

"Good. Finish the second side before detailing." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. By midnight the suit finally looked less like a cosplay clothing and more like equipment.

"That's the easy part," Shiroi said.

"Shape alone isn't enough. You need depth." He laid foam strips beneath several panels, raising the surface just enough to create subtle shadows between seams. On other sections we stitched narrow quilted lines into the vinyl to imitate venting and internal padding. Small changes, but they transformed the silhouette. Then came solely my part. I opened my case of textile pigments and brushes while Shiroi watched from the other side of the table.

"You paint too?" he asked, this time earning my nod. I started dry-brushing silver and gunmetal across the raised edges, letting the texture catch naturally. In the recessed seams I blended darker tones to fake depth and wear. A few shadows in the right places convinced the eye there were layers beneath the surface. I added faint cyan gradients across the chest and shoulders, subtle enough to suggest hidden LEDs without actually installing any.

On the gloves I pressed a hex-pattern stencil into graphite ink, breaking up the smooth surfaces with texture.

"You're adding detail no one will consciously notice," Shiroi observed.

"They are important to me." My sense of verisimilitude required that the armor should look exactly as close to the actual thing it represented as possible for my magic to took hold. He studied the suit for a moment longer before nodding. By the time we finished the outer detailing, it was nearly three in the morning.

"Try it on," he said. I carried the suit into the bathroom and stepped into it carefully. The zipper sealed smoothly up my spine and for a moment I simply stood there, staring at my reflection. Silver and black panels wrapped tightly around my body, streamlined and sharp without becoming bulky. The painted shadows and raised seams gave the illusion of layered armor plating. Under the fluorescent light, the cyan accents almost looked alive. But appearance meant nothing if it failed under movement.

I rolled my shoulders first, feeling no restriction. I followed with a low squat and felt a slight pull at the hips. Kicked twice in controlled manner—the groin gusset held perfectly. When I returned to the workshop, Shiroi immediately noticed the issue.

"Calves are binding," he said.

"Yeah." We stripped the lower seams apart and re-tapered them with quicker movements this time, already understanding the logic of the suit. After another fitting, the movement felt smooth. I crouched low on top of a chair, balancing forward and everything bent correctly.

"No cracking," I said.

"The foam's holding too." We reinforced a few final anchor points in near silence after that. Thread moving beneath machine needles. Fabric sliding beneath practiced hands. Hours disappeared. By the time we stopped, pale morning light had begun creeping through the workshop windows. I finally understood how he reached the focus necessary to manifest his Domain. Shiroi was built for obsession. He was precise, tireless and completely immersed in material and form.

And the uncomfortable truth was that I worked the same way.

"It's getting early," I said, pulling my jacket tighter around myself.

"Honestly, this was one of the best dates I've ever been on." He looked up from the worktable.

"Was it a date?"

"I think so." I replied, seeing a faint smile appear on his face.

"Would you like to meet for a more intimate one in the future?"

"Oh, we'll definitely meet again." When I finally left, he didn't insist on driving me home or calling a cab. I told him I wanted to walk first and he accepted it without hesitation. I appreciated that, but I wasn't there for romance. Once I was far enough from the villa, I asked the world to move and the next I stood inside my Domain. The suit came out of the bag immediately. It was finished structurally, but now came the most important part—making it mine.

I spread it across the worktable and studied it carefully. The design already looked futuristic, sleek enough to belong in some corporate military prototype. I needed to make it look just a little more real. I started with the shoulders, painting jagged matte-black streaks across the silver panels like claw marks. Then I moved to the chest, where using matte black vinyl, I cut and stitched a stylized rabbit emblem over the heart. Usagi. The symbol appealed to me.

Rabbits survived through speed, intelligence and unpredictability, not brute force and that felt closer to me than any predator ever could. I added hidden utility slits along the hips for tools and folded notes. On the forearm, I embroidered thin black circuit-like lines beneath one of the armor panels, barely visible unless someone looked closely. Finally, I sealed the painted surfaces with a flexible coating and pressed the seams flat.

Then I turned my attention to the shoes—their simple form suddenly looked wrong beside the suit. I reinforced the heels with thermoplastic inserts to sharpen the silhouette, then layered silver fabric panels across the outer surfaces in smooth segmented arcs. Matte black trim gave them the appearance of lightweight armored joints. At the toes, I stitched overlapping foam plates to imitate reinforced segments. Along the sides I embroidered faint white accents that curved backward like stylized motion lines.

When I slipped them on and stood, the transformation felt complete. Not because they contained hidden technology and not because they made me stronger by themselves, but because I had taken ordinary materials and shaped them into something that could be an expression of an identity I created in my mind.. My intention, expressed through art. I stood before the mirror one final time. The silver-black suit moved like fabric but looked like engineered armor.

It was sharp, athletic and looked mechanically alive with layered detail and deliberate asymmetry. The rabbit emblem rested over my heart—my private joke. This was no longer a costume, it was a new persona. The feet of Usagi touched the floor softly and they were ready to run.