Kawaii princess's Arc

Chapter 23 of 54

Kawaii Princess returned to the storehouse one last time and forced herself to look at what was left. A tall cabinet stood against the back wall, its glass doors fogged with cold. Inside, the hangers swung empty over a thin drift of snow that had blown in through a cracked seam. No gown, no ribbon, no scrap. The emptiness was the costume now, and she could not walk on stage wearing nothing. She dragged a patchwork leather bag down from the top shelf. It held only what she had stitched together from cast-offs over the months — frost-stiff yarn, mismatched fabric squares, a few buckles. She tipped it out on the floor and counted. Enough to cover her, if she was clever. Not enough to dazzle. She knotted the squares into a short cape and wound the yarn around her wrists like cuffs. Then she walked out past the broadcast lots to a small curved stone shelter at the field's edge, abandoned since the last round. She swept the ice floor clean with her sleeve. She set the bag inside the arched doorway and stepped into the dark mouth of it. From here, framed by stone, only her shoulders and face would show on the broadcast feed. The patchwork would read as armor, not as lack. When the signal lit, she stepped into the arch and sang one bare note from her cracked throat. The crowd outside hushed. The shelter caught her voice and pushed it forward, clean. She had arrived with nothing, and the nothing had become her frame. The judges leaned in — but a scout was already moving toward the shelter, marking its stones, and she knew this hiding place would not be hers for long.