Chapter 2: Song Xuan

At last, the summer vacation she had longed for day and night had arrived, and Song Xuan was overflowing with joy. This time it was the vacation that came after finishing junior high, so the whole break would be just like the one she had after elementary school, even longer than usual by another month, and there would be no annoying holiday homework.

Even though she still could not take off the lady suit she had worn for nine years, during winter and summer vacations the suit's discipline intensity would drop to its lowest level, giving her a chance to enjoy a period of almost complete physical freedom.

In the month before summer vacation, because her aunt He Ziying and her mother Song Mozhu were both busy with the group business, they had absolutely no spare time to look after her. On top of that, her uncle Ai Beihai was simply not on Earth at all, so the poor girl had to endure a stay of 43 days, the longest record in her life for remaining at Lady Academy.

When Ziying came to take her away from Lady Academy, she even forgot to bring the guardian control bracelet, so she could not control the lady suit's mimicry function. In the end, Song Xuan had no choice but to leave Lady Academy wearing the default pink lady suit.

That point was really Song Mozhu's fault too. Everyone else's lady suits allowed their wearers to take control of part of the suit's functions on their own after leaving Lady Academy, but Song Xuan's access rights were locked down so tightly by her mother that at any time, whether inside or outside Lady Academy, she could only have her lady suit adjusted through the control bracelet.

Fortunately, because the lady suit's mask mimicry and voice functions were tied to life-safety concerns, they could still be applied for and activated immediately even without control privileges, and the request would be recorded afterward. Otherwise, in some possible emergency situation, having the mouth plug inside the mask block a woman's mouth so she could not call for help or save herself would create a real safety hazard for the wearer.

Luckily the lady suit had that setting; otherwise the dinner she had arranged a week earlier through the suit's built-in phone with her aunt and mother, as compensation for their neglect because of work, would have fallen through. Ziying had promised to take her to her favorite restaurant for a huge meal.

What Song Xuan did not realize was that this compensatory feast, the one meant to make up for her month and a half of near-total lack of freedom, would completely change the course of both their lives.

Lady Academy's rules required every student to wear only a lady suit while on campus, whether resting or in class.

So in the dorms, in the classrooms, or out on the sports field, every woman you could see was dressed head to toe in a latex lady suit, and every body curve stood out elegantly beneath that seamless shell.

The off-white ones were the younger juniors still in elementary school; the pink ones were classmates in junior high like herself - no, after summer vacation she would be entering high school. The black ones were the senior girls in high school. As for the teachers, they wore cyan lady suits as their uniform.

But all of that happened only inside Lady Academy. After all, everyone inside the academy was female, and every one of them existed in that solitary state of being wrapped in a lady suit with no seam or gap anywhere.

But once you left Lady Academy, it was a different matter entirely. Just as everyone inside a bathhouse naturally agreed that skirts and clothes could be taken off, everything before that had been part of the natural agreement inside Lady Academy.

Outside Lady Academy, everything changed. It was just like the way Song Xuan absolutely could not accept being naked anywhere except in the bathroom.

At a glance, just looking at the color of the tight suit on each woman was enough to tell whether she was an elementary school student, a junior high student, a high school student, or a teacher.

If you wanted to split the grades more finely, you had to judge by the height of the heels under each person's feet.

The lady suit's heels were an inseparable whole with the rest of the outfit, fused seamlessly to the suit itself, so there was no concept of taking them off at all.

Of course, after leaving Lady Academy, the girls could choose to transform the lady suit's heels into a latex stocking-like state, which would let them wear other shoes. In fact, that kind of transformation happened automatically every night at 22:00 after the girls went to bed.

Before fourth grade, all the younger girls had flat, heel-less shoes. Starting in fifth grade, the heels would grow by one centimeter per year. By seventh grade, meaning the first year of junior high, they would reach two centimeters. By tenth grade, meaning the first year of high school, they would reach five centimeters - and after the semester started, the heels under Song Xuan's feet would automatically grow from four centimeters to five. Finally, by the time they reached twelfth grade, meaning senior year of high school, they would grow to seven centimeters.

In addition, inside the girls' cunts, back passages, and urethras, three small plugs would quietly grow in those private places where no one could see them. The back plug and urethral lock had been there since the day the girls first put the suit on, and would continue to develop as the girls' bodies developed in the future. Throughout the process they would remain tightly fitted to the walls of the back passage and urethra, and they would also grow a little thicker and larger to maintain a certain pressure. The vaginal plug, like the heels, would begin growing gradually from the time the girls reached fourth grade, pushing out from the cradle of the chastity belt in the lady suit and heading deeper into the girl's inner garden. Only when the girls grew up and advanced to senior year of high school would the vaginal plug stop growing; by then it would be sixteen centimeters long. Of course, when necessary, it could also stiffen and become thicker and longer.

Although there had been a period from sixth grade to the first year of junior high when she had felt especially averse to wearing the lady suit, and although after nine years Song Xuan had already grown used to life in Lady Academy while wearing it, she still always hoped that once summer vacation began and she left Lady Academy, she would be able to switch the lady suit into mimic mode, escape the academy's strict rules and behavior standards, and enjoy whatever limited relaxation she could on her own terms.

Being locked inside Lady Academy for a month and a half had nearly driven her to the edge. Even though there were plenty of close girlfriends there, and the school offered a great many activities, classes, and interest salons that made it impossible for the girls to get bored, under the academy's absurdly strict rules and the lady suit's constant supervision, every girl had to watch her words and actions all the time, carefully avoiding any violation of the school's rules or conduct standards.

If she made one careless mistake and her deportment score dropped below 80 that day, she would fail. Not only would she be locked in a small dark room to write a self-criticism, but the time she would have to spend in lady deportment training the following week would also be extended, leaving her already limited free time even smaller. On top of that, long runs, standing punishment, kneeling punishment, and the lady suit's simulated electric-ruler punishment to the hands and butt would all be waiting for her.

Lady deportment training was a compulsory class every morning from 6:30 to 8:00. Even during vacation, if the girls were not taken home and instead stayed at school, they still had to undergo deportment training, and the ending time would be extended from 8:00 all the way to 10:30, while the start time remained unchanged.

In the afternoon there were also extracurricular activities: painting, piano, go, sudoku, gymnastics, martial arts, calligraphy, and more, from 14:00 to 17:00.

If on any given day a girl's deportment score fell below 80 and she failed, Lady Academy would seize her afternoon hours from 18:00 to 21:00 for the next week as extra deportment training. Only when a girl's deportment score stayed above 80 for the full week would the academy end the extra training. If any day within that week again dipped below 80, then the seven-day countdown would start all over from that day.

When Song Xuan first entered the first year, she strongly resisted all of this. But after several months of harsh discipline, after suffering enough from the lady suit and the academy, she finally gave up any thought of resistance.

From 12:00 noon to 14:00 in the afternoon, and from 18:00 until lights-out at 22:00, the girls were free to arrange their own time. As long as they were not being punished, Lady Academy would assign them no tasks, though they still had to remain mindful of their behavior.

That was because the lady suit could automatically evaluate the deportment of the girl wearing it.

Beneath the suit's smooth, integrated exterior lay a complex locking structure. Around key parts of the body - the neck, chest, arms, wrists, waist, hips, upper thighs, and ankles - there were locks for the collar, chastity bra, arm rings, bracelets, chastity belt, thigh rings, and anklets. These locks were part of the lady suit itself; they were not hidden under the latex material of the bodysuit, but formed part of the suit, where the latex hardened gradually into a ceramic-like shell at those points.

These locks did more than reinforce and secure the lady suit, making it even less likely to be taken off. More importantly, they constantly tracked the girls' movements, uploaded them all to the Lady House lady suit management server, generated evaluations through gait analysis, then sent the results back to the lady suit and Lady Academy servers in real time. In the end, Lady Academy used these AI-generated deportment scores to decide whether each student needed extra deportment training.

At 22:00, the academy's mandatory lights-out time, the lights in both the teacher apartments and the student dorms would shut off uncontrollably. Everyone had to get into a special sleep pod. The pod replaced the bed and had a human-shaped recess inside it. After 22:00, once a student or teacher lay down inside, magnetic locks corresponding to the collar, chastity bra, arm rings, bracelets, chastity belt, thigh rings, and anklets would engage, and would not unlock until 6:00 the next morning.

When a girl lay into the sleep pod, the lid would lower first, then sedative gas would be released to help her fall asleep quickly, until the next morning when she would be awakened by the soothing music played through the earplugs in the lady suit.

For night owl girls who did not want to enter the sleep pod on time, first a large number of deportment points would be deducted. After that, the lady suit would use many secret methods hidden inside the girl's body to force her to obey the school rules and go to sleep at the designated time.

The sleep pod could assist the lady suit's medical healing function. No matter how exhausted a girl's body became during the day, after a night of sleep and recovery she would be lively and full of energy again the next morning.

One of the biggest freedoms Song Xuan gained after going home was no longer having to live by the schedule set by Lady Academy's rules. She could stay up until 0:30, and only go to sleep when she was too tired to keep going, or she could sleep until the sun was high and get up at 10:00.

Her mother and aunt would not interfere. After all, this was one of the few opportunities she had to распоряжаться her own time.

Once she was home, she liked to have either her mother or her aunt use the guardian bracelet to activate the lady suit's mimicry invisibility function on her body. Invisibility did not just mean becoming transparent; even the refractive index would change to match the surrounding air. Aside from being able to feel it by hand, it was completely impossible to see from any angle.

The mask would also remain in mimic mode. Mimic mode meant that, on top of invisibility, all of the complex structures would transform. Three-dimensional structures like the mouth plug and heels would unfold and eventually change into a thin film covering the surface of the skin or the inner mucous membranes.

After turning on full-body invisibility and mask mimicry, Song Xuan was not actually taking the lady suit off, but at the very least there would be no trace of the suit left at all.

Once it had been handled that way, and after a careful round of dressing up, no one could tell from her appearance alone that she was a Lady Academy student wearing a lady suit.

So when, a few days later, her aunt was walking with her by the lake, Ye Wuyou thought she had already taken off the mask and gloves.

Years later, when the two of them talked about that incident, both of them could not help sighing that if she had not gone to that restaurant for dinner, if he had not taken a summer job, and if He Ziying had not forgotten to bring the guardian bracelet and failed to activate the invisibility and mimicry functions when Song Xuan left Lady Academy, perhaps the story between them would never have happened.

For a whole month, Song Xuan had already been paying attention to that young man sitting on the bench under the ginkgo tree, pretending to read a large book.

At just one glance she recognized him as the front desk attendant she had met on the very day she first got her summer break a few days earlier, the same man who had quietly watched her for the entire half hour while she and her aunt slowly savored their meal.

The moment his eyes landed on her, she could feel it. At first she thought his attention must have been drawn by her pink gloves and heels, and she even felt a trace of annoyance toward her aunt. But not long afterward, she gradually began to enjoy the feeling of being watched.

It was the first time in her life that anyone had paid such prolonged attention to her. She deliberately started eating very slowly, stretched out the legs she had been holding with her knees bent and pressed together under the table, made a pointedly lazy stretch, and flexed and curled the feet inside her pink heels.

She had originally thought everything would disappear the moment she left that restaurant. She never expected the other party to be bold enough to follow her all the way to her doorstep, which only deepened her curiosity.

Through the telescope on the villa balcony, she discovered that every evening at 18:00 he would sit on the bench beneath the ginkgo tree by Tianxin Lake and pretend to read a book. At that time she would deliberately say she was going out for a walk, then head in the direction of the lake.

At first Song Mozhu would have Ziying accompany her, but then she suddenly realized that after such a seemingly chance encounter repeated several times, even the most dim-witted woman would notice something was wrong, let alone Ziying, who was so sharp and perceptive.

From childhood onward, her mother Song Mozhu had always done everything she could to prevent her from contacting strangers. Her stance was ironclad, with no room for discussion. Anyone who suddenly appeared out of nowhere in life was someone Song Mozhu absolutely forbade her daughter to contact.

As for where her mother's excessive rejection and near-fearful distrust of strangers came from, Song Mozhu never offered any explanation. Her aunt He Ziying and uncle Ai Beihai seemed to know something about it, but whenever Song Xuan asked, they would always refuse to say a word.

So from the third time on, Song Xuan said she did not need anyone to accompany her, using the excuse that she just wanted to go out and walk alone, and continued that silent encounter.

Song Xuan had grown up studying in Lady Academy, and after returning home she mostly had her mother Song Mozhu and her aunt He Ziying with her, so she had not seen many men in her life. Her uncle Ai Beihai counted as one, and so did Ai Ke, her cousin from her aunt and uncle's side whom she had played with since childhood. But he had gone to study abroad in the Ocean Nation after entering high school, and she had not seen him for half a year.

Even counting her uncle and cousin, the number of men who had ever spoken to Song Xuan could be counted on two hands.

Who was this young man who had unexpectedly broken into her life?

What did he want to do?

For Song Xuan, those questions were like honey to a baby tasting sweetness for the first time. From the images she could currently get through the viewing telescope on her family's balcony, this young man was pretty handsome.

It was not until some day later that Song Xuan even began to feel a faint liking for the way he sat under the ginkgo tree reading.

Over that month, every evening at 18:00, once the boy had settled under the ginkgo tree and opened the book he was pretending to read, Song Xuan would straighten her clothes and get ready to go out and pretend to take a walk.

Although she repeatedly said she wanted to walk quietly by herself by the lake, her mother Song Mozhu still felt it was too unsafe to let her daughter go out alone. Even when her aunt He Ziying helped speak up for her, even when Song Xuan swore that she absolutely would not step outside the gate of Tianxin Estate, just as she never stepped outside Lady Academy's gate in ordinary times, and even though Tianxin Estate was the most high-end residential community in all of Zhuzhou, with no possibility of any criminal lurking there, with more than fifty professional security guards on standby at all times and even divers hidden in Tianxin Lake in case someone fell in.

Song Mozhu still would not relax. For no reason at all, in the end she sent one of the household's guard-type synthetic maids to follow Song Xuan from far behind. Song Mozhu could share the maid's field of vision through her mechanical eyes. Although it was for protection rather than surveillance, it still created a huge obstacle to Song Xuan's plans.

Song Xuan, Song Mozhu, Ziying, Ai Beihai, and Ai Ke all lived in this villa, and in addition there were thirty-nine synthetic maids responsible for guarding, housework, cooking, and shopping. Aside from the six guard-type synths, the other thirty-three synths were all engraved with the Three Laws of Robotics.

Most of the homeowners in Tianxin Estate used synths as servants and rarely hired real people, because real people were always more prone to making mistakes, might even steal things, and cost more as well.

Still, many people believed that receiving service from real human beings made them seem more distinguished, so they required the maids to wear a tight-fitting outfit called a maid suit while working.

That was a service-type bodysuit developed by Lady House. It was a flawless white, fully enclosing latex suit that wrapped completely from the tip of the nose to the toes. Like Lady House's other products, the entire outfit had no seams or joints anywhere, and once worn it fit the skin one hundred percent.

As equipment specifically developed by Lady House for the service industry, it had long been favored by every newly rich upstart. After more than a decade of promotion by Lady House, it had already been widely adopted throughout the service sector.

Although the price of a maid suit was much lower than that of a lady suit, chastity suit, or lady's attire, that was only relative. Its absolute price was still above 100,000 republic credits, while a normal office worker's annual salary was only 30,000 republic credits. So the employers who could afford maid-suit expenses were never ordinary people.

Many upscale venues almost required employees to wear maid suits while working. Numerous airlines, large hospitals, luxury hotels, wealthy families, high-end restaurants, and housekeeping companies all clearly stated in their recruiting requirements that staff had to wear maid suits during work, with the unlocking password held by the company. Some special industries and luxury establishments even required service staff to wear maid suits for long periods, and maids in some wealthy families often went for years, even more than a decade, without ever taking off the maid suits they had worn when they started the job.

Although before Song Xuan was born, Song Mozhu had already set down several house rules that were strictly enforced from beginning to end by her aunt, her uncle, the synthetic maids, and the synthetic guards, as long as those iron rules were not violated, Song Mozhu was still indulgent to her daughter to the point of being completely accommodating.

In a sense, Song Mozhu’s love for her daughter went even beyond doting. She was the only mark the world would ever let her leave behind; the fruit that had ripened in the secret hell her daughter’s father had carefully built for her over more than twenty years of entanglement, where all the hate, revulsion, love, longing, and even more complicated emotions had intertwined and been transformed into endless maternal love and protection for her daughter.

But there was nothing to be done about it. When it came to rules, a mother was always the most unreasonable of all, no matter whether it made sense or not. Contact with unfamiliar men was especially treated as the most forbidden taboo in the house rules.

Song Xuan had wanted to go one step further and try walking straight past the front of the bench where that mysterious young man was sitting, but the tagalong trailing far behind her would definitely notice something off. These robots, with guard routines and surveillance routines burned into their mechanical minds, were utterly loyal to their master. They handled both housework and protection with meticulous care, and under their watch Song Xuan had no good way to act. She had to think of a way to break the deadlock.

About her mother, Song Xuan had plenty she could not understand. Every time she asked about her mother’s past, the whole house would grow tense. Neither her aunt nor her uncle would say much, and the synthetic beings had no record of any of it at all. In the end, Song Mozhu simply declared it a forbidden topic in the house rules and forbade Song Xuan from asking again, or she’d be punished with a shock from the lady’s outfit.

Song Mozhu almost never left her villa in daily life, as if she had never possessed a sense of security. And year-round, at least while Song Xuan was home, she wore only one set of translucent latex from head to toe, except for her mask, forearms, calves, and the areas around her crotch and breasts.

Even stranger, on her back, stomach, and buttocks, where the translucent latex gave her skin a dark sheen, there were often faint whip marks and bruises that looked like they were just about to heal.

Her slender hands, covered in black gloves, were linked by a thin chain to the waistband of her black bikini panties, and a matching chain less than thirty centimeters long always locked her feet together.

She was always followed by four female synthetic guards. Even when she occasionally stepped outside, she only walked in the woods, gardens, and landscaped grounds belonging solely to the estate, though the villa’s gardens and green spaces covered nearly thirty mu, more than enough for Song Mozhu’s daily walks.

Yet these synthetic women seemed to be more than simple guards. Song Mozhu never actually gave them orders, and every time she was about to step outside, the synthetics never forgot to diligently tighten the connecting strap between her ankle shackles and then lock her hands behind her back before allowing her to leave the courtyard.

During summer vacation alone, Song Xuan would often silently accompany her aunt or uncle as they walked with her mother through the deep, shadowy woods, watching her stride forward with practiced ease under the restraints of handcuffs and leg irons, never tripped by the less-than-thirty-centimeter chain at her feet, nor losing her balance because her arms were tightly locked behind her back and she was forced to walk in slim heels more than ten centimeters high.

And with the scars that often appeared on her mother’s body, along with the jailer-like side the female synthetic guards occasionally displayed, Song Xuan found herself wrapping yet another layer of mystery around them.