Chapter 608 - 616: Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

In order not to interfere with each other, the program crew arranged for each group to have their own empty room for rehearsing the planned shows. After dinner, Jane Sampson and Benjamin Worthington wasted no time and quickly headed over.

Jane and Benjamin first tried on their clothes. Wherever they didn’t fit, Jane quickly altered with needle and thread. After the alterations, she set the clothing aside and took the lines handwritten by Benjamin.

Jane glanced at them and almost choked to death on a mouthful of boiled water.

"Benjamin Worthington, I’ve suddenly realized, you truly are a literary genius," Jane said, barely holding back tears as she observed the lines capable of inducing both laughter and cringes. "I think the actors will cringe to death, but the audience will die laughing."

"That’s exactly the effect I’m going for," Benjamin replied. "Come on, let’s rehearse quickly. We absolutely must not break character and laugh, because if we do, this show is ruined."

Jane nodded and adjusted her mindset.

However, once the rehearsal started, Jane truly understood that, even as a professional actor, facing a script with such lines, it was extremely difficult not to break character and laugh.

Not to mention, Benjamin, the screenwriter himself, broke character and laughed several times.

Over at the guard team base, every evening after training, all the team members grew restless.

"I heard our sister-in-law is going to perform a show for us tonight," Team Member A said. "I wonder what kind of performance sister-in-law will put on."

"Playing the piano?" Team Member B suggested.

"Where would our guard team get a piano from?" Team Member C shook his head. "I think sister-in-law might dance."

"Dance?" Peter Gingery emerged from behind the group and sneered, "With Jane Sampson’s clumsiness, if she knows how to dance, I’ll take her surname."

"Specialization is important. Our sister-in-law is already amazing for being great at the piano," Team Member A defended his goddess.

Peter shrugged. He was completely uninterested in whatever Jane would perform that evening, but he was very interested in what gift Jane was preparing for him.

Seeing Liam Woody coming his way, Peter called out to him, "Blackie, aren’t you curious about what gift Jane Sampson might have prepared for you tonight?"

Liam utterly rejected the nickname Peter had given him, but no matter how much he wanted to beat Peter up, it wouldn’t make Peter take it back.

"I think, based on my understanding of Jane Sampson, you’d better not have too high expectations for the gift she’s prepared for you," Peter said with a broad smile. "That little lass is quite sly, always pulling off things that leave you not knowing whether to laugh or cry."

After thinking it over, Liam figured there might be some truth to Peter’s words, yet he couldn’t help but feel curious and look forward to the evening’s surprises.

After dinner, at half-past seven, the lights were bright in the guard team’s grand auditorium.

Upon her arrival, Jane got the program schedule and found out that tonight’s entertainment wasn’t just the four shows organized by their group of eight but also included four additional performances put on by members of the guard team.

A duet, a tenor solo, a guitar quartet, and one show featuring a street dance performance.

It could be said that the eight items scheduled for the evening were quite spectacular indeed.

Seeing the schedule, Jane wasn’t surprised to find that her and Benjamin’s performance was set as the second to last act, followed by the guard team’s grand choir.

The eight shows, a mix of artist and guard team performances, alternated one after another—an artist’s show followed by a guard team’s, in such a rotation.