Aiden was sitting next to a red-haired guy who was smiling to himself. He recognised him as Rake, a singer who was doing quite good these days.
He had not gotten a chance to meet him before.
They were sitting quite close in one of the corners, so a conversation couldn't help but start.
"Hello, I have heard your music before. It's quite good."
Rake said, looking at Aiden, who nodded.
"Thanks, I have heard yours too. I heard your latest single was in the top 10 of the Melody charts."
"Yeah, it was. It's quite an honour, to be honest. I'm trying to aim for the top spot in a couple of months with my next single that I'm working day and night on. Have you ever touched the Top 10 in Melody charts? You will understand my feelings better if you have."
"Yeah, one of my songs hit the top position once on the Global Top 50 singles."
"What?"
Rake's smiling expression fell completely upon hearing that. Had Aiden topped the charts before? That was something that he didn't know because he had never followed his music before.
He had heard a couple of songs, but that was it. He didn't know a lot about him aside from that, as Rake had the mentality of only caring about the singers ruling the entertainment industry for years.
He wanted to dethrone them.
But right now, he felt humiliated. His manager had certainly not given this information to Rake.
He had thought that he would start a conversation and try to make Aiden know that he was a senior and that he should be respectful, but it backfired badly.
Licking his dry lips, he quickly thought of another topic and opened his mouth.
"This game show looked like only educated guys would be able to do something. I'm pretty sure most of these have not gotten a good degree."
At that, Aiden responded.
"Yeah, but I don't think they need it either. They are doing good in their respective fields. The field of arts is a dead land, but you could still stumble upon gold here, and these people are doing pretty great if they are here."
Rake took time to collect his thoughts before speaking again.
"Your thoughts are very interesting. By the way, which college are you from? I'm from Stanford University. You obviously know it."
"Oh, I'm just from a college in India. Nothing major, and I dropped out early on to learn more about acting. So, you could say that I'm just a high school graduate."
"Ah, anyway, good luck."
Rake didn't say anything after that, but he secretly despised Aiden in his mind.
'He's just a high school graduate. I was silly thinking that he would do better than me.'
As a proud person, Rake wanted to go for the million-dollar amount as he felt like he had vast knowledge of a lot of things in the world and he would be able to surpass every expectation.
At this point, he didn't know that being educated doesn't mean being smart. Stupidity is something prevalent in both educated and uneducated people.
***
The show started with Nicolas beginning the qualification round in which the contestant had to organise four answers in a specific sequence stated within the question (earliest to latest).
It was typically something that was played more than once in an episode.
It was won by Liz, an actress that Aiden knew of as she was a big star in a hit British television series. Rake frowned when he lost the qualification round on the first try as he was only a second later than her.
But other people relaxed.
It was better for someone to face the main game first before them. Aiden also kept looking at her, and he had to say that she was pretty good. She talked about how her dad was a researcher, and that generally helped her be better at knowing lots of stuff.
She also played well as she was able to reach the first milestone of 5k dollars without wasting any lifelines. But after that, as the questions got tougher, she lost a few lifelines and was barely able to cross past the 50k dollar milestone.
There were no more milestones after that, so she needed to tread carefully. Unfortunately for her, just after crossing 100k, she gave a wrong answer, and in the end, she was left with 50k dollars as the winning prize, which was still pretty good.
Most contestants would also end up at this amount.
"She did pretty well."
"I know right. I don't even know if I will be able to cross 50k. I'm already scared."
"Pretty sure the program team is going to put on a lot of her scenes. She earned only 50k, but she has fun conversations which are going to work in her favour."
Whispers about her performance were rampant among the contestants as Liz came back to her seat. After that, another qualification round began and this time again, Aiden lost.
'I really need to do better.'
He said, looking at the timing at which he had given his answer. He was in the third position. He decided that if he couldn't win the next time, he would use the Lucky coupon.
Till then, he needed to see Rake, who finally won the round, move to the main game.
'Let's see how good you are.'
Aiden thought in his mind as he closely observed him, wondering how he would do when he was so confident.
Rake started out pretty much the same as Liz with a strong start, but he lost a lifeline while reaching the first milestone.
His journey was smoother till the second one as he played much better, only losing one more lifeline. Having crossed both lifelines, Rake entered the final part of the game where he could earn the big bucks.
He seemed pretty excited as he talked about how he was sleeping with general knowledge books after getting an invitation to the show.
To that, Nicolas sarcastically commented, "You must have a lonely life to be sleeping with books. Who said that being famous gets you laid?"
It was a funny joke, but Rake's face was something to be seen. He was trying to gather all the acting he had in him to keep smiling, but he clearly looked baffled by the joke.
Aiden saw the cameraman zooming on Rake's face as he struggled to smile and immediately guessed that it was going to be on the final edit.
After that, the show moved as Rake quickly wasted too many lifelines, and by the time he had reached 250k, he didn't know the answer, but he was very stubborn as an individual.
If he had just walked away, he would have gotten 100k as the prize money, but in the end, he played and just made a wild guess, hoping that it would hit the mark.
But that didn't happen.
He lost out on 250k and went straight to 50k. When he returned to his seat, he was constantly frowning, feeling angry at himself for not being able to achieve what he wanted to.
"This game is too hard. I bet the other contestants also won't be able to get more than 50k."
His words were clearly heard by Aiden, who just shook his head.
"We have two exciting contestants already who did pretty well. Now, let's start the qualification round again and see who gets to sit with me to fight his way to a million dollars."
Nicolas said and started the qualification round again. This time, Aiden was pretty fast as he quickly arranged the answer in the correct sequence. The question was to arrange rivers in order of shortest to longest.
Thankfully, he knew about it as he had read it.
After a while, the results were out and taking his time, Nicolas revealed it.
"Now, let's see who the winner is."
On the big screen, the names started to come up from the celebrity who had done the worst to the best. Aiden's name came up only after a while, and it was at the top this time.
'I got it the fastest.'
He thought and looked at Nicolas, who also looked back at him and clapped his hand.
"So, this time, the contestant we are going to be playing with is Aiden Silvereye, someone who is talented in a lot of fields and has shown signs of a great and illustrious career going forward."
Nicolas shook hands with Aiden as he gestured to him to walk towards the seat. In the crowd, he could see Wade smiling while Tom looked a lot excited and at the same time, he was almost regretting that he couldn't take pics from his phone.
As Aiden sat down on the seat, Nicolas introduced him to the rules of the game.
There were going to be 12 questions, and the difficulty was going to increase with each level. He would also have 4 lifelines, all of them very different from each other in nature, and he could use them whenever he wanted to.
Till he reached the second milestone, there was going to be a timer of 60 seconds, and if he failed to answer in that time, he would lose.
"Now that the rules are clear let's begin the game."
Nicolas said, and taking a deep breath, Aiden nodded.
The first question appeared on the screen, and seeing it, Aiden smiled. It was something that he knew.
….
