Rina takes Momo merch to Mirror Market and beats a rival vendor by making the product demo a tiny dungeon encounte...
The counterfeit Momo towels appeared at Mirror Market with fangs.
Rina found them stacked beside a perfume stall, thirty pink blobs printed on cheap cloth, each one baring little triangle teeth that Momo did not have and would have found personally upsetting. A vendor in a feathered hat shook one towel open toward the morning crowd.
"Official slime curse cloth!" he shouted. "As seen in the canceled idol's haunted punishment dungeon!"
Momo, hidden inside Rina's sample box, made a wounded bubble noise.
Rina set the box on her own folding table and locked the legs with her knee. Her table was too small, her sign was hand-painted, and her entire starting inventory fit in one basket: twelve towel blanks, six copper each after material cost, plus one cracked stamp tray. She had spent the rest of yesterday's profit on a used scry lens wrapped in brown paper.
The vendor spotted her and grinned. "Ah, the talent arrived. Want to buy wholesale?"
"Those teeth are off-brand," Rina said.
"Scary sells."
"Momo sells."
He leaned over his table. "Your name sells, little scandal star. Until people get bored."
A few shoppers slowed. Some recognized Rina and pretended to inspect fruit. Two girls wearing old Solmates ribbons stood near the fountain, whispering with the tense posture of fans deciding whether loyalty was embarrassing.
Rina lifted her sample towel. The real pink stamp shimmered softly, bow-shaped and toothless. "Live stamp demonstration. One copper if you bring cloth, three if you need ours. No curse. No fake fangs. No boot slime."
The vendor laughed loudly. "She even makes scandal boring."
Rina wanted the old comeback smile, the one bright enough to slice. Instead she tapped the side of the sample box twice. "Momo, consent?"
"Market scary," Momo whispered.
"Yes. We can pack up."
The box lid lifted a sliver. Momo peered at the counterfeit towels. Their little body tightened. "Those are ugly."
"Deeply."
"I bow once."
Rina's chest squeezed. "One bow, then break."
She placed the yellow line ribbon on the cobblestones. It looked ridiculous until she set two lantern mirrors behind it, angling sunlight toward the stamp tray. Stage business did not require a stage. It required the crowd knowing where to look.
"Official stamp line starts here," she called. "If the slime crosses the ribbon, refunds. If the towel bites you, you bought from him."
The first laugh came from one of the Solmates girls. The second came from a butcher with a wrapped lunch. The counterfeit vendor's smile thinned.
Momo rose from the box like a nervous dumpling, wobbled to the mark, and bowed into the stamp tray. When they pressed onto the first towel, the slime mark shimmered into a tiny bowing silhouette. Rina dusted the edge with starch powder and touched the used scry lens to the corner.
The mark flashed with a tiny Hearthbeat Gate outline.
Rina had not known whether the anti-counterfeit stamp would work. Her relief stayed behind her teeth where customers could not see it.
"Mana mark," said the butcher. "My niece will want one."
"Three copper with cloth," Rina said. "Two if you tell her Momo takes breaks."
The counterfeit vendor slapped one of his towels on Rina's table. "She is selling dungeon residue in public. Where is your market permit?"
Before Rina could answer, one of the Solmates girls stepped forward. She was older than Rina had first thought, maybe twenty, with a fan ribbon tied around a tool pouch instead of her wrist.
"Where is yours?" the girl asked the vendor.
He scoffed. "Who are you?"
"Nixie Vale. Audio repair, fan events, and the person who still has receipts from every official merch drop Rina Sol ever did." Nixie picked up the fake towel by two fingers. "This printer uses theater-poster ink. It runs in rain. Also, the old fan club never approved fangs."
Rina stared at her. Nixie Vale had moderated three thousand screaming fans during Rina's last birthday stream. She had also posted nothing after the scandal. Silence had hurt almost more than insults.
"Nixie," Rina said carefully.
"Do not make that face. I am still angry."
"At me?"
"At the clip. At you for disappearing. At myself for not knowing which was which." Nixie tossed the fake towel back onto the vendor's pile. "Stamp my scarf."
The market shifted. That was the only word for it. Not forgiveness. Not victory. A shift. The two girls with ribbons came closer. The butcher bought two towels. Someone muttered that the fake fangs looked cheap.
The vendor grabbed Rina's wrist when she reached for another blank. "You think a few old fans save you?"
Brakka's voice rumbled behind him. "Let go."
Rina had not asked Brakka to follow her. The minotaur stood with a paper cone of fried mushrooms in one hand and the expression of a locked gate.
The vendor released her.
Rina kept her voice level for the crowd. "Counterfeit towels are half price if you trade them in here. We cut them into cleaning rags and you get one real stamp on your own cloth."
"That loses money," Nixie said.
"So does letting ugly teeth define my mascot."
Momo bowed again, a little bigger this time.
By noon, Rina had sold every blank, stamped two dozen customer scarves, and collected a humiliating mountain of fake towels for rags. Her fingers smelled like starch and slime. Momo slept in the sample box under a handwritten BREAK sign that three children guarded like royal law.
Nixie waited until the crowd thinned before sliding a small tuning fork across the table.
"I listened to the scandal clip again," she said. "The breath under your voice is wrong."
Rina's hand froze over the coin stack.
"Wrong how?"
"Layered. Professional. Someone built a second mouth under yours." Nixie looked toward the brown-wrapped scry lens. "If that used lens came from Crown salvage, it may still recognize production marks."
Rina unwrapped the lens. Its brass rim was scratched, but when she held it over the real Momo stamp, the Hearthbeat outline glowed. When she held it over the counterfeit towel, nothing happened.
Then Nixie tapped the tuning fork against the lens and whispered the first three notes of Rina's debut song.
A silver crown flickered across the glass.
Under it, smaller and colder, appeared the mark of Voss Veln's production booth.
Rina closed the lens before her hands could start shaking.
Across the market, the counterfeit vendor was already gone.
His fake towels remained, fanged and grinning, like someone had left bait behind.