Chapter 96

While in my room, I was having a rest day from the busy schedule but even then my rest consisted of practicing a few lines from the script.

My mind was currently in a different state of mind. Having unlocked a special section in my brain after a system-induced coma, focusing and concentrating on things was one of my main strengths.

As such, combining the script reading with facial and body language techniques resulted in success for each attempted practice.

My sister was also in the drama club and liked acting and I asked her for some tips.

It's impressive how I could notice her instant change in focus when teaching me even through the video call.

Simple things to take note of were to learn the lines perfectly so that you can flow as a character. With the same level of importance, or rather even more important, is to know your character well.

My character will be a boy in a coma with occasional childish tendencies due to a lack of external stimulus and development, but will be a serious and quiet kid due to the hospital treatments he's gone through.

In essence, I just have to act like Abel. Serious and stoic but when you get to know him he shows his occasional pure and innocent side. [One of Charlie's real friends]

Finally satisfied with my progress, I took a sip from my bottled sports drink which I had been gifted after an advertisement video.

The reason why I was able to get so many jobs and advertisements early on was because the attention of my name at that time was at a good level and Knife Agency purposefully deflated prices to work with me.

If it was cheaper to work with me, and I was a popular figure, then the demand for me would increase quickly.

Around now should be another event though.

…

…

…

I was led into a very nice house after exiting the car inside the garage with cameras following me.

The content creator I was about to meet, I had never met in real life before but we had chatted before online.

I constantly talked to the camera following me, doing my job as an entertainer with the help of mental bullet points of stories to talk about if I had run out of things to say.

"Anyway, I don't know if you guys have seen bzoomster but that guy's hu— CLONK!"

My head suddenly rebounded back and I instantly felt a spike of pain near my forehead.

I looked at the culprit, the inner garage entry to the house which was suspiciously too short.

Sneaking a glance at my cameramen, I noticed him trying to hold back his laughter and stabilizing his shaking.

"You wanna die?"

Finally, he started bursting into laughter and zooming into my face as I stared with a deadpan face at him.

"The viewers don't know this, but I am holding Ken's anime body pillows hostage in my basement right now. Ken, you still wanna keep laughing?"

We laughed.

"Alright, you wanna warn me this time there's a really suspiciously short garage door in a huge house?"

"Careful Charlie, there's a suspiciously short garage door in this huge house."

"Thanks, Ken."

We walked in with smiles and finally met other content creators who would participate in today's challenge.

"Although it wasn't the garage door that was too short, it's just that you're too tall and growing again…"

"What was that I heard?"

"Please… not the body pillows."

"That's what I thought."

I was wearing white blocky shoes, black shorts, and a long-sleeve sweater.

I greeted each person one-on-one joking around with the ones I knew and introducing myself to the ones I did not know and without having to wait at all, the event was about to start.

"Alright, so you guys know what we're doing right?"

"Definitely not a cooking challenge…"

"Haha… yep. Definitely not a cooking challenge. Alright guys, separate into the teams we had assigned before. Your challenge is to impress our three mystery judge chefs with not just tasty points, but also appearance points!"

I was on team yellow along with two other streamers, Rykun and Juliamn— to my fortune because our filming chemistry was top-notch— and we would have to work together for 2 rounds to first make the best dish, and then to make the best drink.

There were 7 other teams and the series would be divided into two episodes.

The streamers all generally were big names and thus the collab certainly garnered a lot of attention, and the event was organized by a content creator who had recently moved into this house and wanted to make this event instead of a housewarming party.

Our ingredients would be randomized using AI and it would be up to our discretion to combine tasty ingredients, and find some other way to use incompatible ingredients as accessories or decoration.

Winners for taste would obviously probably have the best luck, but the winners for the best appearance would be the most creative and with the best capability for mental gymnastics.

Of course, I could cheat using my luck, but people are entertained by others failing miserably, especially when the people failing are creative and funny.

So I activated a star of luck for today and wished for ingredients that would cause a funny situation to be given to us.

With a hug of long-time friends, we chatted about dumb stuff to the camera while waiting for the camera to start.

Our chemistry was good because no one tried to take the spotlight, and we all were comfortable with each other.

"Guys, how was your way here?"

"Not that bad, but I can deduce whether Charlie's way here was terrible based on who drove."

"I am not a bad driver…"

"Using that tone of voice, I can calculate that he had three close crashes and one popped tire."

"Fake news, don't slander Charlie like that."

"Thanks, Juli—"

"The statistics were definitely more impressive. I can count at least one cat that was run over, three road swerves, and one hit curb."

"..."

"Don't forget to add the two red light runs."

"...You guys have never seen me drive?"

They both looked at each other and then at the camera. "See his lying skills? Terrible liar," then they looked at Ken, "What do you have to say for Charlie?"

I stared at him with death in my eyes, "Uh…"

"No pressure Ken, you can say the truth and we'll protect you from this road menace."

"Keep talking if you want to be the reason for why my driving license was unfortunately revoked."

"He didn't do any of that on the way here…"

I took the camera from Ken's hands and aimed it at him, zooming uncomfortably into his face.

He blinked SOS in Morse code while talking about my innocence.

"Alright, well. Now that my innocence has been proven, let's concentrate and get focused these last two minutes of wait."

"Did you guys bring the rat poison?"

"I brought cyanide instead, my bad."

"They'll love the food so much they'll die."

"Wasn't there an anime based on that?"

"Yeah, and it's peak."

"Haha, Ken definitely agrees with you."

We looked at the camera man who, behind the camera, was sporting a cultured gentleman's expression and we laughed.

"Alright everyone, we have your ingredients list ready." Finally the organizer walked in with his crew.

In front of him was a table. "You will all come to this table right here and pick up your ingredients. Be warned that to have access to your ingredients, you have to win a mini-game first!"

We all 'oh'ed in curiosity.

"You cannot grab your ingredients until you make a free throw!"

For dramatic effect, a crew of men popped out from behind the wall with a basketball hoop and one of his friends to his side popped out a basketball.

"Now, only one person from each team can come up! Choose your fighters!"

Rykun and Julian looked at me.

"Well, I am clearly a basketball shooting weapon," Rykun remarked.

Julian replied, "Weapon in the sense that all of your shots are dangerous to whoever is within a 10-meter radius from you."

I burst out laughing as Rykun glared at him.

"Alright well, we know Charlie is gonna have to impress everyone, right?"

"I mean he is tall, and tall definitely equates to basketball player."

"Heightism."

"Shut up and go shoot."

I walked up to the hoop along with 7 others.

"Alright," the organizer walked up to us, "You guys can vote who will be the last one to shoot."

Everyone pointed at me as I looked at them in despair.

The first shot bricked, and so did the next two.

The fourth one went in with an impressively terrible shooting form and the fifth and sixth went in.

The seventh bounced hard and almost hit a cameraman.

I grabbed the ball with both of my hands from the bottom like a bucket and just tossed it up with an underhanded form.

The legendary underhanded free throw.

The ball's parabola ended perfectly at the center of the hoop and made a crisp swish.

I laughed like a maniac and we quickly rushed to the table to get our ingredients.

Meanwhile, the other teams that had missed it the first time were despairing as no one could make a free throw shot and they kept bricking it.

We laughed, hearing Lily's voice yelling in frustrated wrath in the background.