160 Doing the Right Thing

"So I guess we'll start with this one," Irina said into the microphone while holding it close to her and staring at the monitor as the music started playing from the loudspeakers.

Surrounding the stage around us were the general public of Palisia who all had their phones out as they took pictures or recorded. It was quite loud as well with chants of support from Irina's diehard fans, and I know that it might be somewhat rude for me to think this way, but I am seriously annoyed by them.

Anyways, after she had chosen the song, I simply stared at the monitor in a momentary shock as I had never heard of the song before. It would appear that Irina had caught me with my mouth gaping open slightly and eyes widened as well.

"This is one of my more popular singles," she informed me.

"Well..." I said in a quite awkward and nervous manner as I quickly glanced around at the crowd to make sure that the security was secure before I continued. "I've actually never heard any of your songs before..."

"R-really?" Irina exclaimed and appeared quite taken off guard by my sudden confession. "..."

She appeared somewhat disappointed, a bit down even, that I had not heard of any of her music. However, you can't really blame me. I'm not the type of person who would actively go out in search of new music to listen to. The music I have on my music playing app only has those that I had added to my playlist in the past. On the occasion that I would use the Recommended playlist that recommended me music based off of my listening history, I had never come across any of her songs as well as there was a huge pool of music that could be randomly selected.

Irina frowned and pouted somewhat, but no matter what, nothing can change the fact that I will have to go in blind. Well, maybe it should be go in deaf. But that doesn't matter. What does though is the fact that we have just wasted one of our tries on this one song that I had never heard of before.

When Irina began singing the first part, I felt a somewhat nostalgic feeling. It would appear that I actually recognize the lyrics, and once the lyrics stimulated my memory, I recalled that I've actually heard this song before. It wasn't that long ago, yet it feels so so distant. It was a memory of a much simpler time, a time that was blander in color where nothing of much excitement occurred. Well, maybe not entirely peaceful times as it was a few days after I had the Socialization app installed on my phone. I remember this song now. Mura had sung it at the karaoke place we went to. So Irina was the person she was talking about back then.

Once Irina finished with her part, my mouth started moving automatically as I tried to transfer my memory of Mura singing the song into my own body. I was actually surprised by how well it went, and apparently, Irina was as well. Initially, there was shock on her face. However, that expression soon disappeared as a content smile replaced it.

The singing and such ended on a pretty good note as the crowd seemed to have got into it in the climax portions of it. Some even sang along to the chorus and such. However, that wasn't much of my concern as I was more worried about the scoring by the machine. In the end, it turns out that we succeeded.

After obtaining our first Holiday Orb, we started immediately to our next destination. Since we were on the mainland now, there were way more challenge locations nearby to us. And since the other groups were mostly behind us on Palim, we were able to quickly obtain even more Holiday Orbs without any distractions.

Everything went pretty smooth for us, aside from some difficult challenges that we were unable to complete. An hour and a half into the live stream, we were notified of multiple groups that were eliminated. Lucky for Irina and I, we never encountered a Hunter and had maintained a solid viewer count.

Since we still had a bit more to go in the live stream session, Irina and I decided to take a quick break at a nearby cafe in Nocsinis. With the help of security, we were able to be kept free from Irina's many fans and was able to rest peacefully while gazing out the third-floor windows and at the streets of Nocsinis below.

"I hope you don't have to deal with that on a regular basis," I commented as I took a sip from my cup of hot chocolate.

"Usually," Irina answered, "I don't face as much of a problem since going out by myself wouldn't draw so much of attention as compared to going out with a cameraman and film crew. Everybody's just so busy that even when someone thinks they recognize me, they would simply think that I'm just someone who just so happens to look like Irina and ignore me."

"I can see that," I nodded and thus ending our conversation on that topic there.

I glanced over to my right and at the cameraman who has his camera pointed at us as the stream continued on. I was quite impressed by the man's professionality as he was able to keep the camera quite steady despite carrying such heavy equipment around with him while mobilizing with us for up to almost two hours now.

"Alevian," I heard Irina's voice softly whisper from the seat to my left.

Looking over, I saw that she was smiling in an apologetic manner as she held a fork in hand and a small slice of strawberry cake before her.

"It's kinda difficult for me to eat using my left hand," she said with an embarrassed tone. "Would you mind...helping me out?"

I looked down and saw that our hands were indeed clasping onto the others in order to prevent the paper wristband from breaking. I realized that since we had been holding onto the other's hand for such a long time now I've gotten used to it.

"O-of course," I said as I accepted the fork from her.

Slowly, I broke off a piece of the cake using the fork and looked over at Irina. She had her mouth opened slightly as she closed her eyes and waited for the food to be delivered to her. I was quite hesitant to feed her since there's that camera right behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I was able to see the camera lenses being trained right on me, and I could feel the hatredful glares from all the Irina fans out there in the world.

With a sigh, I delivered the cake into Irina's mouth and she closed it and started chewing right after. Her face was slightly red from that embarrassing moment, but she seemed oddly happy for some reason. Maybe it's that false sense of love she has for me that's actually admiration and gratitude instead playing its tricks on her mind again. If so, there's nothing I can do about it at the moment.

I soon finished feeding Irina the last few pieces of the cake and just when we were about to go pay for our brief snack, we received notifications from our phone about the completion of this round of the game. Apparently, all the other orbs has been collected while we were resting up. It wasn't much of a surprise to me as the timestamp on the live stream has surpassed two hours already. Therefore, all that we have left is the final competition.

Once outside the cafe, we were led to a special vehicle that the production crew had prepared for us by one of the assistant directors responsible for our group. It would appear that this young lady had been following us nearby with a small production crew in one of those black vans in order to broadcast the footage captured by the cameraman.

Anyways, we were quickly taken to the ending location which was at the port in Nocsinis near the mouth of the Helliger River. The ones that were still in the game and not elimiated were Henvle's group, Lindsy's group, Shol's group, and Boro's group. The others simply waved to us on the decks of a double deck tour boat.

"So the final mission will take place on the boat," the director said. "And even though you have all made it this far, there will still be consequences for the two groups with the fewest Holiday Orbs. The two groups with the fewest Holiday Orbs are Irina's group and Henvle's group."

"Aw..." Henvle groaned for effects while Irina simply smiled and acted quite distraught.

"For the two of you, your partners will no longer be able to join us for the rest of the session," the director announced.

"What?" Irina appeared quite shocked as she immediately looked over at me with a look of disbelief on her face.

"Please break your wristbands and hand them over please," the director said.

"I guess this is it," Henvle said it to his friend who had come for the live stream. Then, he tore the paper wristband off the two's wrist and allowing them each to gain freedom.

I redirected my gaze from them and back onto Irina who was standing before me. She appeared quite reluctant to do anything as she simply stood there motionlessly with a sad expression on her face. Upon seeing this, I quickly took a small step closer to her in order to block the cameras from capturing this countenance.

"Irina," I whispered. "This is it. It's time for us to break up."

"..."

Seeing her reluctance to do anything, I brought my right hand to the paper wristband.

"Remember," I whispered into her ear. "Hide that look on your face. You're on your own now."

I then broke the wristband with a quick movement of my right hand, allowing the material connection between us to fall onto the black cement ground. However, she did not allow this connection to break as she held on tightly to my hand.

"Irina..." I whispered to her. Then, I quickly glanced around. The others had initially been talking to cover up for us and allow us to separate while they keep the cameras trained on themselves. They're starting to run out of things to talk about to keep the audience entertained and grab the attention of the cameras so I really don't have much time left.

I then looked down at Irina's hand which was grabbing tightly onto mine and then I looked at her face. It was covered by her bangs as she had her head hanging low so I was unable to see what countenance was on her face. However, now was not the time for me to even be curious about that. The time the others have been desperatly trying to buy for us is running out, and I must not allow the camera to capture her holding onto my hand. I don't care if I become the victim of her fans, but I do not want her popularity and career to be ruined because of me.

I quickly made a decision on my next course of action. Even though it might hurt Irina, it will at least protect her reputation. It will keep her current status as a celebrity and a star as well as that innocent girl of many boys' and men's dreams alive. It will protect her career.

With my freehand, I pried my hand from her fingers and quickly departed without looking back over my shoulders at her. I've done all I could for her already. I've protected her career which is the most important thing to her. Therefore, I shouldn't be feeling any guilt. Yet... for some reason, there's this uneasy feeling that keeps weighing down on my conscience as I walked away. I did not understand why this feeling was here, for had I not done the right thing?