Chapter 317 - 242: The Gradually Changing Audience (Part 2)

Chapter 317: Chapter 242: The Gradually Changing Audience (Part 2)

After answering, he even went to shake hands with Sir, then pulled the classic "fake hand" prank.

His farewell was just as unconventional.

The Tiefling waved at Sir in his wheelchair. "Don’t get up to see me out."

The sudden comment left the whole audience wanting to laugh but not daring to. They worried that laughing out loud might be a bit too dark, bordering on disrespectful to a sick man.

So every single person was struggling to keep a straight face.

"How are these two main characters supposed to meet?"

Someone in the audience whispered, confused.

"I told you the beginning would be a kidnapping."

"Are you stupid? What kind of kidnapping victim cooperates with their captor to put on a show for the Guard Corps?"

"Well, if the plot was that easy for you to guess, wouldn’t that just mean the writer is terrible?"

In the eyes of most of the audience, the Tiefling’s interview was surely a failure.

There was no reason for it to succeed.

He had no experience, nor any noble-sounding motivations.

He looked like a hoodlum and acted like one, just like the Tieflings in most people’s minds.

They couldn’t even be high-level villains; the great villain, the Devil, always loomed over them.

They could only ever be the type of character who wasn’t truly evil, but was just bad enough to be detestable.

"Sir will choose him,"

Peter muttered.

He saw a shadow of himself in the Tiefling, though his own situation was still slightly better.

Their similarity, however, was that both had formed a connection with someone from a social class far above their own.

’Perhaps their stories would end the same way, too—with them going their separate ways.’

Grace clearly had no idea what Peter was thinking. She was now completely engrossed in the plot of the Magic Shadow Drama.

"Why?"

She didn’t understand either.

’If it were her father, he would never hire a Tiefling like that. He probably wouldn’t even allow one near the manor.’

"Because he respects Sir."

"Every interviewee respected Sir."

In Grace’s eyes, the Tiefling was actually the most disrespectful of them all.

Trying to shake hands with a man who couldn’t lift his arm, scaring him with a fake hand, and then making that joke about not getting up as he left.

’How could he rub salt in the wound?’

’It was just too offensive.’

"He treated Sir like a normal person—like an equal—not a patient in need of sympathy,"

Peter replied.

’In a way, when he was with Grace, he was a "patient" too.’

’His sickness was poverty.’

Compared to people with harder lives, his family’s situation wasn’t bad, but that kind of comparison all depends on your frame of reference.

If Grace was the frame of reference, then his family was barely any different from the poorest ones.

The gap was so small that on the vertical axis of Grace’s life, where the scale was immense, they were basically indistinguishable.

’Poverty was perhaps more pitiable than some physical ailments.’

’People will sympathize with physical problems, even if the sufferers themselves might not want that sympathy.’

’But poverty? In today’s society, people just find fault with you.’

’Are you not working hard enough?’

’Are you not taking your job seriously?’

Grace, beside him, also noticed the dip in Peter’s mood.

’She realized then that she was just like the earlier interviewees in the Magic Shadow Drama.’

’Treating Peter as a disadvantaged person, sympathizing with him out of self-righteousness.’

’She’d put on commoner’s clothes—even though they were custom-made by a top tailor from expensive materials, merely designed in a commoner’s style.’

’They’d ride bicycles together, but her bike was far from an ordinary, factory-produced model.’

’And then she’d been moved by her own actions.’

’She was such an "understanding" good girl.’

’She hadn’t realized that this concern, tinged with a bit of performance, could also be emotionally hurtful.’

’She wanted to tell Peter that he was being too sensitive, that she didn’t mean it like that, that she just wanted to make things a little easier for him.’

’But she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She thought of the other interviewees; they also just wanted to make things easier for the patient.’

’Their starting point was always themselves.’

The Magic Shadow Drama then showed the Tiefling’s life: a messy little room, hanging out with a group of like-minded ne’er-do-well friends, with no real work to do.

He had a family, too, but his younger brother looked like a gang member in the making. He’d probably follow the career path exclusive to so many Tieflings.

Joining a gang, committing crimes, pissing off the wrong people, or just getting unlucky one day and ending up in prison. Then getting out, going right back to that life, and finally dying a violent death on the streets.

’So why not find a proper job?’

The Tiefling on screen provided the answer: he had tried, but he couldn’t find one.

Almost every interviewer rejected him the moment they saw his race.

Even though he had no criminal record.

It was a cost-effective approach: since some snakes are venomous and some aren’t, and it’s hard to tell the difference, it’s easier to just avoid all snakes.

’In that case, the Zog Group is actually doing a good thing.’

’Peter suddenly realized he had completely misunderstood the Zog Group’s motives.’

They weren’t trying to whitewash the Tiefling race. They were simultaneously putting bounties on the unrepentant hardliners, offering job opportunities only to those who could change.

The Zog Group was trying to change an entire race.

’And yet, he and his friends had been relentlessly attacking the Zog Group online.’

’How despicable of us.’

The Magic Shadow Drama continued. The Tiefling protagonist spent the night on the streets with his hoodlum friends, finally dragging his exhausted body to the grand manor at dawn.

Just as Peter had predicted, Sir chose the Tiefling whose interview performance had been so... "outstanding."

He was given a huge private bedroom. Just the night before, he had been homeless, with nowhere to sleep.