TMRW Chapter 14: Newbie Trainer

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Bright wakes up on the familiar green bed made of iron. He stares blankly at the wooden house without a ceiling for 10 minutes before reaching the conclusion that he had fainted. Like he promised last time, he makes a doghouse for Latiao. He checks his backpack before heading out with a hoe and machete.

He doesn’t know when his real world body will be woken up, so he did not hunt for zombies out in the wild, and did work about the wooden house. He cleared pebbles and tree stumps, plows the ground and builds fences. Then he plants wheat and pumpkin seeds in it.

The game system does sell automatic sprinklers. Though neither his level nor his money is enough. Many products in the shop are grayed out and cannot be bought. He can only water manually.

After watering and going back to the wooden house, he builds many building materials and furniture at once. A set of stairs, pieces of flooring and walls, and turns the single-storey building into a two-storey building. He feels the second floor would be safer and has a better view, so he opens windows up there and moved the bed upstairs.

It would be too empty to just have a bed, so he builds a nightstand next to it and put a lamp on top. The lamp doesn’t use electricity and lights up automatically when the sky darkens.

Though the furniture looks mundane, and this didn’t even count as interior decoration, Bright still feels accomplished.

His mind being heavy as it was was why Bright finished all the housekeeping work he had delayed until now. And now he has nothing else to do.

As he is feeling bored, the fear and hostility from being tortured gushes forward, washing onto the coast higher and higher like tidal waves.

“Can’t be helped,” he says with a downcast face to Blackback, “Latiao, cook skewers with me.”

There’s nothing you can’t improve with a good barbeque. Make it two if there were any.

Bright eats until he’s so full he doesn’t want to move anymore.

The satisfaction and heat coming from his stomach makes his whole body warm up. His nerves are finally relaxing. He talks incessantly at Blackback.

“Latiao, when the wheat is done, dad is going to brew beer! I can already see the formula being sold in the shop hehehe…”

“And recipes. After I’ve learned fried chicken, I’ll make a full Golden Arch meal for you.”

“We’ve already finished two floors, when can we build a roof!”

Even though he doesn’t want to sleep, not wanting to return to the cruel world, he closes his eyes as the world shakes violently.

Someone is shaking his body.

“Hey——Wake up! Are you squeezed dry?”

Bright opens his eyes. It was his roommate. He looks around him, and he has already been sent back to the contestant dormitories in the show. His body was cleaned and he is wearing a new set of clothes.

His roommate did not go to the function, so he is very curious, “I’ve heard! Your achievement at the party! Say, you sure hid your talents well! Did you meet any bigshot afterwards?”

While Bright is irritated, with his one day long mental adjustment in the game, his emotional state is now much calmer. Even if this shameful, frightening thing is brought up again, he just replies coldly.

“You’re noisy.”

Before his roommate blows up again, he asks, “what’s up?” That was worth his roommate waking him up specifically. There are still a few days until the next competition.

As Bright does his morning routine, his roommate leans on the doorway, crosses his arms, and tells him the latest announcement from the show.

“Before the competition for 100 down to 50, there will be a pre-show. Every contestant has to join, and perform on top of a stage. The show has hired a special trainer to direct the shows and raise the appeal of the contestants. After the competition, the show will set up individual websites for each contestant, and put up eye-catching content up there, including this performance on stage. So to enter top 50, just physical prowess is not enough, and you needed to have talents.”

Talent? This rotten show needs us to have talent?!

Bright looks at his roommate with his toothbrush in his mouth. The latter, looking at his mouth frothing with white bubbles, stops for a moment, and when Bright keeps staring, he moves his eyes away as if dodging.

“There’s only two days for preparation. I heard Grizzlybear Andy wanted to play Rock. Number 56 chose to dance. The Dwarf and the Giant pair will be singing a romantic duet…”

Bright is speechless, “…” A bunch of murderers, criminals, and lunatics will be participating in a talent show. Forgive him for not having the ability to picture it.

“We’ve made a group for putting out a play. We still need one more, you wanna join?”

“What play?”

“‘Prometheus Bound.'” His roommate’s eyes are glittering, excitedly talking about a field he is interested in.

This is a classic play from ancient Greece. It mainly paints the glorious image of Prometheus loving man and not succumbing to violence. Never taking him for a theatre kid, Bright’s image of his roommate improves slightly.

He wipes the water off his face, not rejecting the proposal outright.

“Be careful about the ginger from Outside. I heard he actually isn’t from there, and is actually a beggar in the sewer area since he was six. He’s certainly slept with hundreds, if not thousands.”

Bright puts that in his mind, and asks about where his roommate is rehearsing. He agrees to go take a look when he’s free.

“Reply soon, we need time to rehearse.”

Bright’s life is simple and orderly. Doing habitual activities makes him calm, not having to think so hard.

Like always, he gets his nutrient mixture, and finishes his daily training in the public training room. When he comes out, he hears people talking near the doorway. Two people are walking towards him, chatting as they do.

“… the show’s too boring; the contestants lack creativity.”

They spot Bright at this time, stopping their conversation. Bright recognises one of them.

It’s the stranger at the celebration before. That teenager as gorgeous as fairies, as prideful as geese, as keen as leopards.

“Hopkin.” Bright greets him.

Hopkin looks Bright over a bit.

He’s slightly surprised, but he’s more dissatisfied.

The slave appears to be completely unaffected by the torture last night. You have to know he observed the full length of his torture, and slept really late at night, so he’s slightly sleepy now. Yet what about this guy who’s shocked time and time again until he no longer had the energy to be angry? He even came to train… is he venting out by training?

No! It shouldn’t be like that! Violent magma is bursting out in Hopkin’s mind, making him desperately wanting to destroy something.

The Bright in his expectations should be irritable and anxious, hateful and angry, full of malice, or he can be depressed and misanthropic after enduring the inhumane torture, but he should not be calm.

It makes him feel as his he is hitting a pile of cotton.

The opponent originally made Hopkin feel as if he is a piece of rock. It might be a fine decoration once you’ve spent time chiselling it. Now he feels he is a raw piece of ore, concealing its precious, beautiful inner-self deeply, along with the dark emotions that would be gourmet food for him. Like an oyster with a pearl sucking up all his negative emotions to paint an ever more vibrant colour.

Bright asks, “are you the trainer?”

Hopkin’s eyelids shuddered slightly. The slave has clearly misunderstood something from what he said just before. He’s happy with this misunderstanding, thinking it will make this game more interesting, so he accepts it.

“Yes.”

Hopkin sends the vice director away, and walks with Bright.

“Have you prepared a show?”

Bright feels his head aching every time it’s mentioned, “not yet, so I was hoping to ask you.”

Hopkin raises his eyebrows, a slight sneer flashes through his dark, deep-set eyes, “what are your thoughts?”

“How about a poem recital?”

The creativity is ruthlessly rejected by the trainer. Bright can only try his luck at his roommate’s.

“Zeus, I… ah… I will never yield…”

“Hephaestus, thank you for sparing me. All I can repay you with, is this broken body.”

“Stop, Zeus and Heracles! I can’t just stand here watching a father and a son fighting over me!”

Even if he guessed the script would be modified greatly, Bright doesn’t want to believe that the All x Prometheus story before him is that Greek classic.

What he remembers from the electives he chose to catch up on z’s at university wasn’t like this!

The Titan Prometheus stole fire to give it to humans, angering Zeus. Zeus had the gods of strength and force to compel the god of fire to chain Prometheus on Mount Caucasus, to be exposed to the rain, the snow, the wind, the hail, and the burning sun, to be tortured every day as a warning. Apparently there were two sequels with Zeus sending his son to release Prometheus and him becoming a god loved by humanity.

“Did you write this script?”

“I wish I did. It’s one of the amazing plays I followed when I was young. The crew were truly great, their tools realistic, their actors professional, the sex authentic. A scene in the play is a bloodthirsty bald eagle eating Prometheus’ liver. I heard the actor was sent into ER eleven times to act that part out, and he was almost lost!”

When faced with the enthusiastic invitation from his roommate, Bright refused to play the role of Zeus.

His roommate is disappointed, “you would have been an amazing king of the gods.”

“…” I don’t want to fight with my son over my lover, nor do I want to become an eagle that consumes people’s livers, thank you very much!

Author’s notes:
Bright: Can I recite ‘My Master’ for my poem?
Hopkin: Without clothes on?

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Buy me a coffee?

TL’s notes: Bright, who is usually ‘sexually inept,’ but absolutely monstrous when need be, as the king of gods? Hera would be overjoyed.