CHAPTER 206: LET’S DO SOME HOMEWORK (2)

"Hmmmm hmmm hmmm hmmmm traffic really sucks."

Rachel hummed happily as she looked at the custom photo that she had gotten after participating in Ari’s Angels’ protest toward the production team.

Her grades might have dropped, her homework maybe undone, and her tablet may have repeatedly overheated, but she had shared links and typed up messages and hashtags until her fingers hurt, had voted not only with her phone, but with her entire family’s phone for Ari, and had constantly reported the woman claiming to be Ari’s foster family each time she made a video complaining about her life and how Ari did her wrong.

As for the posts talking badly about Ari, that was a never-ending battle, so for today, she would just enjoy the win of seeing him back on the Pop Star Academy.

Seeing him thank the angels in the cheeky video with the villainous sound posted by Pop Star Academy was the highlight of her day, and made her feel like all of her effort was worth it.

Her baby was back!

And he knew of her existence and was thankful!

What was even nicer was the photo rewards she had received from the Ari’s Angel community moderator, including the special edition photo that was the final reward once it was verified that Ari wouldn’t be kicked out.

That photo was currently being used as her phone background, laptop screen saver, and was soon to be printed out and stuffed into her favorite photo card holder and her wallet.

She stared once more at the photo of Jamie hugging Ari and holding him in the air while Ari’s beautiful green eyes stared at her with a disgruntled expression.

Each time she saw them together, she was reminded of a cartoon featuring a lasagna-loving cat that was always grumpy and a fun-loving dog who always came back to hang out with the cat, no matter what happened.

Whoever the lead moderator of the Ari’s Angels committee was, she wanted to kiss them for capturing such a good photo, but was also insanely jealous because it should have been her who got to meet Ari and take this photo.

But!

At least she had met Grace, whose family owned the restaurant that Ari worked at, and she would soon work up the courage to go see him in real life, introduce herself, possibly give him a gift, and take her very own photo.

At the thought of that cheeky smile being directed towards her, Rachel smiled happily while looking through the Pop Star Academy accounts as she habitually did.

When she noticed a new alert.

[Pop Star Academy Self PR Live Stream]

[Who: Popstar Academy Contestants]

[When: Today, From 4 - 6 PM PST]

[Where: LiveTwitch]

[Come watch and chat with your favorite contestant as they do their best to entertain you.]

[The more gifts and views you give your favorite contestants, the longer they can live stream.]

[Join us.]

Rachel immediately grabbed her laptop for the bigger screen and opened the link to find a custom page on LiveTwitch. The page featured 50 black video squares that slowly displayed the contestants, all of whom were live streaming and doing different things.

She first clicked on Jamie’s image, watching as he expertly tuned a bright blue, sparkly guitar while humming softly.

"Howdy y’all, let’s make a song together."

His blue eyes sparkled almost as brightly as the guitar and matching blue cowboy hat, and Rachel smiled happily.

Cutie Cowboy.

So handsome.

Immediately screenshotting him because he was so cute, Rachel kept his video open on one tab before heading back to the main page and clicking through the other contestants.

Benjamin’s stream looked like a club with flashing disco lights as he was free styling into a bright pink microphone, several contestants were dancing to random music, somebody was telling bad jokes from a joke book, someone else was making drinks with a strange device, while another person was braiding their hair into different styles, someone else was juggling, and someone was spinning on their head.

Honestly, it was very chaotic and quite funny seeing the contestants act silly in different ways.

She felt like she could see their personalities come out.

After spending a few seconds in each stream, Rachel turned her head to the one square that she had been avoiding.

Her eyes immediately focused on the beautiful, slightly pale face of a boy with jet black, straight brows, full pink lips, and sea green cat-shaped eyes framed by thick black lashes.

The black curly hair that usually fell over his face was pushed back by a cute, fluffy brown headband with a cute animal face on it, exposing his smooth, rarely seen forehead.

"Ari!"

Rachel couldn’t help but say his name as she saw him dancing while he stacked papers before holding them up toward the camera.

Rachel became curious to see what he was going to do.

Is he going to read a script?

Or a poem?

Or tell jokes?

[Hmmm? Is this thing on?]

Gasp! Cough cough!

Rachel choked as Ari shoved his face close to the camera while speaking in a slightly low voice.

How was his skin so clear? There were no pores at all!

[Uhm, they said I have to talk for 20 minutes on here, so I thought long and hard about what to do to introduce myself.]

[And then I realized that at this point, a lot of my life has already been shared online, and I’m not particularly entertaining, so-]

"No, Ari! You’re entertaining! Who told you that you weren’t!" Rachel screamed, but he couldn’t hear her.

Ari’s figure that she was watching through the screen held up a thick stack of papers while he gave her a mischievous smile.

[Rather than waste time on things you probably don’t care about, let’s do our homework together. I’ll start with my AP Physics and AP French homework before moving on to AP Calculus. I’ve noticed that my French is getting bad, so I’ll be speaking in both English and French. If you find it boring, feel free to treat it as white noise and take a nap, or consider supporting the other contestants. If you would like me to solve a homework problem, feel free to put it into the chat. Thank you!]

"Homework? You’re doing homework? For self-PR? Why????"

Rachel asked incredulously as she clicked back, glancing at the other contestants who were break dancing, singing, telling jokes, and juggling before focusing back on Ari, who was diligently twirling a pen in his hand and moving a tablet around like he was really about to do his homework.

As always, it seemed his brain worked in unique ways.

It seemed that she would be watching her favorite idol contestant work on his physics homework.

[Ah, if you have anything to say, feel free to leave a comment, and it will come to the tablet here.]

Seeing that there were fewer than 10 people watching, Rachel quickly sent the link to the different group chats she was in before she began screen recording.

Then, seeing that she had 10 free comments before she had to sign up for LiveTwitch, she made a quick username and typed a message, looking forward to Ari reading it out loud.

As Rachel watched, Ari squinted, his long curly lashes casting a faint shadow as he moved closer to the camera before saying the question in slightly accented English.

[Rachel16 is asking why I’m taking AP French when I already speak French? Because an easy A is the best A and I know that I’ll do well on that AP exam, which means free 200 dollars from my school, hehe.]

After holding up a peace sign, Ari blinked slowly as he read another question.

[ILoveJustine asks if I am really the valedictorian of my school? Ah, I forgot that article went out. Unfortunately, yes, I am. I’m supposed to write a speech, but I think I’m just going to wing it or see if I can skip it.]

[ILoveJustine asks if they can come to my graduation? I appreciate the thought, but why would you want to come to my graduation? I don’t even want to attend my own graduation.] Ari scrunched his face in confusion, and Rachel took another screenshot.

He was just too cute.

Her fingers went to work, immediately typing up another question.

[Rachel16 is asking why I am so cute and smart.]

"Rachel,"

Rachel couldn’t help but choke as Ari said her name instead of her username.

Forcibly holding back a cough, she opened her ears wide so she could hear every word that he said.

Ari stared at the camera with an extremely firm expression without even blinking, [Rachel, I will happily accept the cute compliment, and I understand that you’re being nice, but please don’t insult actual smart people by lumping me in with them. I’m not smart at all. I am just good at studying.]

Rachel could only look at him incredulously.

What do you mean you’re not smart?

You’re literally the valedictorian of your school?

Are you trying to say the rest of us are bad at studying?

[ILoveJustine is asking for my study tips? Hmmm, I recommend asking the teacher for their teaching plan at the beginning of the school year, and memorizing the textbook sections ahead of time. That way, the rest of the school year is pretty easy. If that’s too hard, then memorize it by quarters. If you can’t do that, then just solve the problems at least once because most teachers are actually la...hmmm, overworked, and just recycle those questions. If you do that, school is quite easy.]

Memorize the textbook at the beginning of the year for 7 different classes?

Or memorize all the information by quarters?

Or answer all the textbook questions at least once and memorize them?

Seeing Ari’s earnest expression as if he were giving a really good tip, Rachel wanted to cry.

Because truly, this was worse advice.

It would actually be easier to study a little bit every day, like her teachers said.

It was actually very, very useless advice to her, who wanted to cry each time she had to do her homework.

[Okay, let’s get started with physics homework. The first problem asks us to derive the internal energy of a gas from a fundamental physics principle. It sounds complex, but I promise it’s not. First, we list out every constant that we need, like M, A, V0, Patm. We might need other constants like temperature and gravity, so write those down and the numeric equivalent.]

Ari scribbled something on his paper before holding it up to the camera, and Rachel marveled at how pretty and neat his handwriting was because she couldn’t understand a single thing that he was saying.

It was much better than hers, looking as if the cursive words had been typed from a computer.

[So once we write everything we need out, making an assumption that it’s an ideal gas that we’re deriving....]

Rachel watched in awe as Ari slowly and clearly explained each step of what he was doing, first in English, then in French or vice versa.

Unlike when she would be fast asleep in class, she found herself entranced and cherished every single word from him as if it were gold.

Each time his eyes flickered downward or he chewed on the back of the pen before twirling it between his slender fingers, she found herself pressing the screenshot button repeatedly.

Thank god he took off that criminally offensive face paint.

Because he’s so hot!

It made her wish that he were her teacher because she couldn’t believe that he was doing it without referencing a textbook or looking up the answers.

[And there’s our solution. That wasn’t too bad, right? Did anyone look up the answer to see if I was correct? Oh, TheAmazingGrace says that I got the answer right. Nice! Let’s move on to the next problem.]

Rachel continued watching Ari explain what he was doing before noticing that he was writing with his left hand.

As someone who had watched every scene that contained him until she could quote it, she knew that he usually wrote or pointed to people with his right hand and did other menial tasks like drinking water with his left hand.

So it was weird seeing him write with his left hand.

In fact, he hadn’t used his right hand at all throughout the entire video, usually keeping it out of sight.

After double-checking that the video wasn’t mirrored by waiting for him to hold his answer up, she quickly typed in the chat, using up another of her free comments.

[Ah, Rachel is asking why I am not using my right hand? I got injured today when shaking William’s hand, so I’m using my left. Thankfully, I’m ambidextrous, so it’s not a big deal." Ari held up his hand, exposing the skin coloured bandage tightly wrapped around his fingers up to his wrist.

What?

He was shaking Williams’ hand and got injured?

What kind of brute strength handshaking was going on?

As Rachel was about to type a clarification question, Ari seemed to freeze as he tapped his chest, glanced over to the side, and began moving his mouth, but no words came out.