When Caige walked on the stage his heart pounded with emotions. Fear, anxiety, and distress.

Being an actor meant putting on a mask despite the emptiness inside.

It was something he feared and admired when he saw it. The way people would shed tears when a good man died despite him not actually dying.

Actors were meant to pull something from within themselves and showcase it to others in the hopes of them believing them, no, the characters. Sometimes the audience would be deceived and show outrage, other times they would laugh with joy.

He too wanted to pull out his emotions, and display characters of all kinds. He didn’t know why he wanted to be an actor so bad. It was a vague feeling even he himself couldn’t understand, it just suddenly came to him after watching a very emotional movie. He couldn’t understand it.

The judges below the stage looked at him curiously, most of them looked bored to death, some even had their eyes closed.

He could hear his heart beat in his ears.

Their eyes were like small needles that injected his skin and reached inside of him to corrode his mind.

His face burned and his back had cold sweats, when he began to introduce himself he felt he wasn’t actually talking. His voice was outside of him.

He almost didn’t dare to look at the judges.

This role was extremely important and weighed on his shoulders. 

Could he do this?

He shook his head firmly.

He couldn’t achieve that dream of his with his poor acting. No one would feel emotion from a wooden puppet. He needed to breathe life into his acting to accomplish his dream, and to do that he had to use the system and his efforts to its fullest.

His eyes softened and his rigid body became more relaxed, he had to do this. The feelings he had hidden away slowly unraveling.

Another actor had entered the stage, he looked a little worn out because of the previous people but he still had a fire in his eyes.

Caige was handed a handful of small fluffy balls.

They couldn’t use real marbles because that could injure the actors if they were to actually slip on them.

The stage was set.

It was a plain wooden floored stage, the other actor pretended to run down the stairs and run past the room that Caige hid in.

Caige, who was behind an imaginary door frame, giggled and threw out the small balls, watching as the actor ‘slipped’ with a thud.

His giggles soon ceased though and he ran out of the room in terror. The ghost, who was imaginary, came bursting out alarming the other actor of the hidden ghost.

They both ran side by side down a set of stairs, until they reached the bottom and ran into a room to hide together. When they had waited for a solid ten minutes, they realized the ghost had wandered elsewhere.

They both let out a breath of relief at the same time then turned toward each other in surprise, both forgetting they had hid together.

They each almost screamed in terror. Then they both ran away from each other.

“Stop!”

A young woman’s voice rang in the auditorium.

Both the actor and Caige stopped and turned toward the bottom of the stage. Caige could feel his heart pounding. He didn’t even realize he had zoned out while acting, everything flew past him like a movie in fast motion. Did he make a mistake?

“That’ll be all for today. We’ll send out a confirmation text if you’ve got the job.”

The woman then stood up with her phone in her hands and walked out. Many of the judges had a dissatisfied look on their faces, clearly not expecting the women to just walk out.

The woman had been paying attention to her phone for most of the duration of the audition. Whispers spread in the room, unhappy with her lack of effort.

“She may be the writer but who said she could decide when to end the auditions?”

“Her work has been outstanding lately and even on the news, but that doesn’t mean she’s running this whole thing.”

“I agree.”

“She was supposed to be looking for the perfect actor for this character but she doesn’t even want to.”

“Well, She didn’t really sign up for all of the director's shenanigans. The director did say having a diamond in the rough would attract the movie more attention though. What was his example again? Ah! A chicken among peacocks.”

“Haha, the actor is bound to be the carp jumping over the dragon's gate.”

Caige listened for a few minutes and decided to leave soon after. He will get his answer in the next couple of days, he wouldn’t fret. There would surely be more opportunities in the future even if he didn’t succeed this time around.

****

The apartment was cold and empty, except for a small television screen playing a random channel it was exceptionally lonely.

The outside world had grown dark and was encompassed in shadows of various shades of gray. Save for the lights that flickered from stores.

He sat on his soft sofa comfortably and watched the channel with boredom.

He stood up soon after and had a small microwave meal, the taste was tasteless and he barely finished the food with the little appetite he had.

He laid on the couch on his back, and after minutes of hesitation he decided he had to do it.

“System.”