Chapter 5: Guest List

Time sure flies away when you are busy and have things to do. It is officially a day before Noah's 14th birthday. In a sense, it was his first awake birthday, and it would mark two weeks since his memories came back.

Noah was happy he was making good progress with his skills and felt satisfied with his life.

Noah felt that in this life, he had what mattered the most. He had a goal, a purpose, a system that provided guidance, a loving family, and no worldly problems.

Not being picking, it also felt nice being young again and reliving a childhood, although going to school felt like a big waste of time.

Still, it acted as a backup plan in his mind. Getting a school and a college degree would help him if he somehow failed to become a top artist.

It is not that he had low self-esteem. Still, he remembered watching one of those wealthy and successful people's motivation videos. It explained how he never gave up his dream, but if he failed, he always had a fail-safe plan.

Then again, from another perspective, you would feel Noah was overthinking things. His family was affluent, and he probably couldn't spend that money in his lifetime.

Not to mention, one of his identities was being one of YouTube's founders. He would make more money from that alone than those people in that motivational videos.

Anyways let's focus on the topic at hand. Noah's Birthday.

One would assume that as Noah's father was wealthy, it would be celebrated lavishly. With thousands of guests from different works of life. Oh, wait, that sounds more like a prince of England birthday party.

Let's change that a bit. You might think at least there would be a hundred members at this party. Unfortunately, all of the above guesses were wrong.

Noah sat at a table with his mother and looked at a list of guests invited.

Noah - "Mother, are you sure there is no problem with this list?".

Emily - "Of course, honey. Why would you ask."

Noah - "Well, the list looks quite long this year."

Emily - "Noah, you know it's your party. It's up to you if you want more or fewer people."

Noah - "I know, mother, but I just didn't realize that after taking our family friends, my classmates, and my friends. It would be so many people".

Emily - "Oh my, is my Noah so shy that he's afraid of just 25 people at his party".

Noah - "No, no, I am not afraid I just was surprised that it increased from last year's 16 to 25".

Emily - "Look, Noah, if this is too many people for you, we can reduce some."

Noah - " No, it's still manageable, not like my eleventh birthday."

Emily - "Look, honey, we didn't know it was taking a toll on you; otherwise, we wouldn't have invited two hundred people that day."

Noah - "I know, I know it, just I still remember that night vividly. I was so tired that I passed out when I touched my bed."

Emily - "I know, and then we couldn't wake you up until the night on the next day."

Emily rubbed Noah's head and said, "Let's put this topic aside. Tell me what you want as a gift?".

Noah - "You already gave me the best gift I could have asked for."

Emily laughed out of joy and pinched Noah's cute face. Emily - "Okay fine, in that case, I have already given you your present."

As Noah and Emily were talking, a maid appeared and informed Emily of an important call. Which left Noah sitting alone at the table.

Noah recalled a series of events in the absence of company and severely scolded the system.

#Flashback#

At first, when Noah was called to make a guest list, he thought of inviting the whole school and making it a grand event to earn reputation points.

The system then, as usual, dropped a bomb on Noah, blowing his plan into bits and pieces.

System - "It seems the host is trying to cheese the system but unluckily for the host, there are fixes for everything."

System - "System is activating anti-cheat update."

Noah - "What cheating? I ain't cheating no one."

System - "You didn't really think that reputation points could be so easy to earn, did you?."

Noah - "Why, what's wrong?."

System - "Reputation points earned by non-musical endeavors such as birthday parties now have solid restrictions."

Noah - "Wait, does this mean my whole YouTube plan is also affected."

System - "No, YouTube is essentially a company, and the name you earn is from media channels."

Noah interrupted the system - "So what, you want me to hire someone from the media to report on my party? That can be arranged."

System - "Let me finish. For non-musical events, the host must leave a certain impression on each guest to earn points."

Noah - "Now that's just unfair. You are cheating me with this update."

System - "Who said it easy to get my system points? You could have easily broken the system by live streaming the event.

Noah - "What live stream I was inviting people."

System - "Essentially, the system solved a major flow such as if you live streamed this event through advertising, you could have got millions of points."

Noah - "Damn, I didn't even think of that."

This system update forced Noah to calm his ambitions and keep the list of guests limited to a certain number of people he could personally greet.

#Flashback Ends#

A short period passed, and Noah's mother, Emily, returned to the table with a gloomy and sad face.

Noah - "What happened, mother? Who called?."

Emily - "It was your father. He said he won't be able to attend tomorrow's birthday party."

Noah - "What dad won't come to my party?."

Emily - "No, sadly, he is stuck to some important business meeting."

Noah - "If his business meeting is so important, tell him to adopt it as his son."

Noah then ran up to his room and shut the door with anger. Emily let out a shout, "Noah."

Noah, who stood behind the closed and locked door, had tears flowing from his face. His emotional state left him confused.

Noah - "Why am I suddenly so emotional that I am crying and getting angry over nothing?."

System - "From your current body analysis, it looks like you might have a mature concise but are unable to fully control your body's behavior."

Noah - "Why is it so!?."

System - "Even if you are emotionally smarter, at the end of the day, your body is still a kid physically ."