Chapter 168: Chapter 168 – Lovers’ Spat?

Wednesday, April 30th.

Early in the morning, Max rose from his hotel bed and did his morning routine. The black lining was clear around his eyes, indicating he lacked sleep.

"Ugh, I shouldn't have continued grinding." He groaned in pain as he felt pain rushing into his head, "That was a bad idea. I should be satisfied just by getting to Tier 3."

He looked at his reflection in the mirror and squinted his eyes. His complexion looked bad. There was nothing he could do but hide them with makeup later in the livestream.

Slapping his cheeks to wake himself up fully, he went to the main room and changed his clothes to a work-out one.

'Let's exercise for now.'

***

New Eden City was filled with skyscrapers and buildings often used for a company's main office in the real world.

Only a company of a certain size could build an IRL office, while a small company usually only worked at home and in the VR world because they had cheaper operational costs. Naturally, factories were still built in the real world with human interference.

Thanks to that, even with many skyscrapers, there were still places to build sports parks, complete with exercise equipment. While the equipment wasn't as good as a gym, it was still enough for a light morning exercise.

Running around the park filled with people who cared about their health like him. Sweat poured down his forehead. He sat on the bench and drank a sports drink he bought from the vending machine.

"Aah, that hit the spot. This sports drink is the best." He looked at the can in his hand and sipped another mouthful of liquid.

People in the park were focusing on their exercise. Some of them were streaming. It was apparent from the drone and camera following them closely.

'I wonder how many viewers they got.' He thought as he watched them.

He didn't look down on them, but he was purely curious. A sports section in Punch had more than 800K viewers in this early morning.

Max was pleasantly surprised with the content after checking it.

'This is something...' He thought.

Most streamers were gyms, but there were individuals who taught yoga, how to run, martial arts, basketball, and even tag games.

The content was mostly various, and the most popular streamer seemed to be YogaLady, whose thumbnail showed a beautiful girl in a bike spat and sports bra doing yoga in a beautiful mountain tree house.

Flexy turned to his secretary and winked.

"There you have it, Lisa. We will just joke around with the host. Announcing something in such a place isn't perfectly a good idea. I will charm them with my personality!"

Lisa looked back at her boss slash boyfriend with a disgusted expression, "Your trash personality that can only yap loudly without any meaning behind it? Do you think the viewers will be interested in that? No, will anyone be interested in that?"

"At least I know one person who is interested in me." He said with a sweet voice, leaning forward.

"Don't try something." The secretary said, pushing Flexy's face with her hand.

"Come on, there is no one here."

"Cough cough cough."

Unable to witness such a flirty sight of his friend and his girlfriend, Max coughed loudly and stared at them.

"Excuse me, mister. But I am trying to eat here. Will you flirt in your own room?"

"Good idea."

Flexy, being the man he is, smiled at Max and stood up.

"Let's go to the room, Honey."

"..."

Lisa sat silently; her expression worsened. She even stared at Max hard with a death stare, silently complaining at him for giving Flexy an idea.

However, Max didn't flinch. He ignored it and enjoyed his food. The atmosphere was calm and silent, save for the fact his friend began to scream because the secretary couldn't handle embarrassment and began to pull his ear.

While they were still doing their lovers' spat, Max returned to his room to take a shower and change his clothes. Then, he met up with Flexy and Lisa, who got along again for some reason and went to Biozone Entertainment HQ for tonight's preparation.

He noticed a slight redness around Lisa's ear when he met up with them. Also, her strict expression was broken with a small smile that disappeared immediately when she saw him.

At that moment, he realized.

'Ah, Flexy bribed her with something.'