Chapter 86 - Undeniably a Fresh Design (1/2)

The day of the Huang Corporation's annual event finally arrived. Under Chen Mu and Lin Que's attentive and protective supervision, the girls and Susu's product arrived safely to the event. They made sure to not let anyone else touch the product and would have at least one person guarding the changing room just in case of any mysterious accidents.

Karen got there right on time with her model as she planned a surprised for the audience and judges. Upon entering the event hall, she spotted Chen Mu standing by an empty table with his arms crossed. He seemed to be waiting for someone.

She looked around and didn't see Susu anywhere. When she saw this as an opportunity to talk to him, she smiled and smoothed out the wrinkles to her deep V collar dress with mini circle patterns all over it. The model followed closely behind her and struggled to keep up in the five-inch heels that Karen forced her to wear.

”Well, hello, Chen Mu. It's a coincidence to see you here.” Karen stopped a few steps away from him. He continued looking at his watch and ignored her existence. If his behavior wasn't obvious enough, his attitude sure gave her a straight up rejection.

She awkwardly stood there with her lips twitching, ”How could you people be so rude? It was just a simple greeting.” Her loud voice alarmed many other people who were getting their models ready for the event.

Chen Mu smiled and walked past her, ”You're finally here. I was getting worried for a second.”

Hearing his gentle voice, people's eyes followed him and saw that the previous mute acted sweetly in front of Susu. People started to nod after understanding what was going on and resumed their preparations. Others were distracted by Karen's ugly expression, but continued peeking from where they were standing because they thought she looked like a joke.

Karen pointed at Susu and walked towards her. Before she could reach Susu, Chen Mu blocked her with his body, ”you can speak from a reasonable distance. Get any closer and you can say goodbye to the design industry.”

Karen bit her lips as she retracted her arm, ”Why the hell are you here?”

”And why the hell can't I be here? Hmm?” Susu waved the invitation card in Karen's face.

”You... Just you wait for your vulgar design to lose to mine. Nobody can beat my design today.” Karen folded her arms and smirked at Susu as she showed off her model.

”Oh, that's nice. We'll see about that. Now, excuse me. We don't have time to watch your little entertainment. The show is about to begin.” She ignored Karen's provocative words and walked off to her own table.

Lily whispered, ”Why did you let her off so easily? I would have drowned her with my spit!”

”Because her happy times are not going to last any longer once the contest begins. Let her feel the joy now, so she can watch it all crush down later.” Susu replied and started doing touch ups to Lily's makeup.

The lights dimmed and stage lights focused to the center of the stage as Zhi Hei made the opening speech, ”Welcome to Huang Corporation's Annual Designing Event! I am the CEO of the company, Huang Zhi Hei. Firstly, I would like to thank all the judges and contestants for joining us here tonight. And secondly, I would like to say that for all of you who are standing here today, whether you end up receiving any of the top three places or not, you should be very proud of yourself. With this said, good luck and let's begin.”

Since pamphlets were distributed to contestants and the judges were all well-known, the judges requested to skip introductions and get straight up to the designs.

The lights brightened up like the excited chatters that echoed all over the room. Judges began to walk around the room and each contestant had two to three minutes to describe their work to them.

Being a professional, each judge knew what they were looking for in each design; uniqueness. The theme of this contest is Nature. As easy as this theme sounded, it was actually one of the most difficult because many people would end up creating something similar.

The judges shook their head many times as they scanned around the room; failing to find one that extinguishes itself from the crowd. The challenge with the nature theme is the overrated designs such as reusing flowers, animals, and whatever ideas that people have already seen in the past. This was why the design industry needed more creativity.

One of the judges grew impatient as he heard the twentieth contestant talk about plants and whatever. He grunted in major disappointment and gave a harsh critique, ”The design industry lacks originality. What makes your product differ from all the others, hmm? If we are choosing someone as the winner tonight, that person will never be a copy cat.”

In fact, this contestant had mashed up a few designs together, and the judge caught plagiarism by first sight. The contestant felt pale after seeing her name getting crossed out on the scoring list. When other judges took a closer look, they followed and crossed her name out.

After an hour of giving low scores to designs, only a few were barely passable by mark.

Only Susu and Karen were left, and the judges didn't hold high hopes for them. Between these two girls, the judges wanted to look at Susu's design first, but was stopped by Professor Luo Xia.

”I heard that Yin, Karen was a student at Paris Institute of Design where I teach. Shall we take a look at her design first? Let's see how impressive her final product is.”