Chapter 657 - 628: Picking Out Clothes (Part 2)

To be honest, when Lille mentioned choosing clothes, he had a concern:

Although the mission was to impersonate the Perares couple, theoretically, no one would check whether their clothes were fakes or genuine, but Lille was still nervous about V wearing counterfeit clothes to the banquet. What if something went wrong?

Imagine this uncultured silly girl attending a banquet for the first time wearing a set of counterfeits, getting exposed or, even worse, the clothes unraveling and becoming a laughing stock for life... that would be quite the spectacle...

Even though it was for the mission, Lille didn’t want such an incident to happen.

Now that he understood Walker’s background, this worry could be put to rest—

Walker was a professional master of forgery. He used to be a technical expert working in a company, so his ten fingers, originally meant for handling company-level circuits, were not meant for tailoring, but for manipulating circuits.

For him to make counterfeit clothes, one could say it was seamless, to be precise, his craftsmanship was almost as good as that of a high-class clothing artisan, only he wasn’t a company employee.

"...Hehe, the ones in that pair of glasses were made using recycled waste materials. Ordinary people wouldn’t notice any issues, and there wouldn’t be any major problems wearing them. However, some sneaky ’trendsetters’ could detect issues using some advanced visual recognition systems, like microscopic zooming, spectrums, and stuff like that...

But these few sets are different; top-notch craftsmanship, purely handcrafted replicas, indistinguishable from brand new originals!"

Lille quickly glanced through, and indeed, the clothes displayed by this second pair of glasses had finer details and more data:

Except for not being licensed originals, these clothes bore no difference from the real deal...

Walker even included the same anti-counterfeiting tags found in the genuine articles, theoretically, anti-counterfeiting scanners would also give a "genuine" verdict, unless someone brought two identical sets of clothes to a luxury brand’s headquarters, and only after some investigation would the headquarters be able to advise which was the imitation.

But the problem was...

The styles were even more outrageous.

Featuring oil-finished surfaces with colorful super high slits, stunning silver reflective leather tight skirts, and sexy white transparent straps that revealed the cleavage...

And the various bizarre hairstyles suggested to match the outfits. After seeing such avant-garde aesthetics, V doubted whether she really was just incredibly uncool. No wonder the corporate dogs always said she was offbeat.

V spoke her mind once again, "That’s truly ugly. Do I really have to wear this? I won’t."

As for Lille, he had long known his own taste was ancient in this era. He just hadn’t expected V’s aesthetics, which seemed normal to him, to be considered non-mainstream...

As he thought, he glanced at V again: She was wearing the typical mercenary’s black bulletproof leather jacket, adorned with silver paint, with high collar lit by cheap LEDs, underneath a simple black crop top, and gray jeans with some red patterns on the lower half.

Is this non-mainstream?

If pressed, V’s previous half-shaved hairstyle and thick makeup did seem a bit beyond what Lille could accept, but after a while, she looked quite nice.

Now, this short hair was even more... normal.

Lille kept switching through different diagrams, with clothes and hairstyles rapidly changing on the mannequin—

V suddenly grew angry: She didn’t like these clothes, but why was he flipping through so quickly, did they look that bad on her!

"You motherfucker—" V grabbed Lille by the head, a cold sneer erupted, "Do I look that pathetic? Are you so dissatisfied with me that you have to flip through the clothes this fast?"

Lille broke into a cold sweat, "It’s not that, sis. Why are you getting worked up? Don’t you dislike them?!"

"So, I have to jump if I don’t like them?"

"No... I just felt that... well, how about this set?"

Lille casually switched, and a super revealing deep-V neckline outfit appeared. V was suddenly speechless.

But Lille paused for a moment: Although the mannequin had no face, the body data matched that of a perfect model proportion.

Those long legs looked pretty good... a natural clothes rack.

Lille estimated the mannequin’s body data were not too different from V’s.

"Well... you see, this doesn’t suit you, and you don’t like it, right?" Lille said slowly, "Besides, we’re now supposed to be the Deputy Mayor of Night City and his wife. Politicians can’t wear this kind of thing; even if they like it, they can’t wear it!"

V had originally thought he would just give it a try, but now he felt intimidated.

"Alright, alright," V released his firm grip and crossed his arms, looking displeased, "then you, pick—pick carefully. If you end up not satisfied, I’ll show you why the flower is so red..."

"Young man, don’t be too capricious," Lille spoke slowly, "we’re on a mission, not out to play."

As he spoke, he thought for a moment and looked at Walker: "These clothes don’t quite fit; I’d like something more classical."

"Classical?"

Walker stroked his chin: This request was quite rare.

Most of the people in the upper echelons of today’s world prefer to display their... physical beauty.

Body sculpting and micro-sculpting technology can be used to adjust the body to an ideal state, an opportunity to showcase wealth. The desire, means, and extent to which one displays are all part of aesthetics, which essentially must align with the current level to better integrate.

The so-called classical aesthetics, whatever they look like, the term ’classical’ indicates that it isn’t quite in line with the current mainstream aesthetic.

"This... isn’t impossible," Walker admitted, "to tell you the truth, I’m not a big fan of the current style of gowns either.

However, genuine classical gowns are rare these days, I’m not too clear on the details of these clothes, and the raw materials are expensive... It’s a bit embarrassing to say, but I can’t offer them for free, at most at cost price because I don’t have that much money on hand."

Materials for trendy gowns are easy to come by because of their bulk and commonality; with some effort, you can always get some.

But what Lille was asking for was different: silk, cashmere, lace, and even cotton—such natural materials were hard to get firsthand.

Lille thought for a bit and said, "I know, I’ll do the designing, you just need to play to your strengths. As for the materials, money is not an issue."

"You can design clothes?" V clapped Lille on the shoulder curiously, "Designing circuits is one thing, but clothes? You really don’t look like someone who would design clothes, you seem to know quite a bit, huh?"

"I don’t know, but I can ask someone who does..."

"A gown as well?"

"Another gown, a long one. I think I’ll go for a lososer style."

"Tsk, that’s torturous. But..." V exerted some force and squeezed Lille’s shoulder—

But as she squeezed, she suddenly froze.

She used to love pinching this spot; it felt good and made the person cry out. But now it’s different, now this place is made of a rather hard synthetic material...

It’s Prosthetics.

"Don’t worry," Lille responded to her unspoken threat, "you look good in anything, a natural clothes hanger."

V snapped back to reality and, without considering whether this spot was Prosthetics or not, unintentionally didn’t watch her strength—

"Stop!" Lille shouted in panic, "Sis, you’re about to short-circuit me!"

Slap!

V released her hand and patted Lille’s shoulder, touching her own nose, "So it turns out a bit more force will do. By the way, shouldn’t we get into character early and familiarize ourselves with the roles?"

"Oh right." Lille searched another world for high-end gown designs while flipping through data sent by Jefferson, "Their usual terms of endearment for each other... I will have to call you Elizabeth, and you will call me Jefferson."

"Oh," V was a little disappointed, "Old Jeff."

"It’s Jefferson..." Lille paused for a moment, "but... sometimes they also call each other ’dear,’ like when looking at clothes, let me see... um—

Dear, what do you think of this dress?"

V’s cheeks flushed with warmth all at once.