Chapter 170 - Studious But Not Really Pt I: (I Really Want To Hate You...)
Theodore uploaded another batch of videos, enough content to skip the stream for today.
He had already agreed to go out for dinner with Kayden, Jenna, and Gen, so he couldn't possibly stream since he normally did so around 8 PM.
In retrospect, as a college student who went out with his friends every once in a while, that timing didn't seem great.
But there wasn't a better time either, so Theo just let it be.
These videos included his own covers for two separate songs with a compilation with the piano, the guitar, and the drums.
One of the songs had been recommended by Gen while the other by Jenna.
That being said, Gen agreed to sing the lyrics for the song she had recommended, being one that she had long memorized as the opening to one of her favorite animes.
The kind that she never skipped when she watched by herself and the kind that she would never let others skip if she was watching with others.
As for Jenna, she rejected singing it and so the video was uploaded with just the instrumental compilation.
Theo still had a few other edited videos for the songs that Kayden, Jenna, and Gen had insisted he did, but since he couldn't go to the nearby recording studio every day, he was planning to upload those another day.
As for the last two videos he uploaded for today, those were of the new game that TD Games had just come out with.
TD Games being the name of the company that created Mobba.
Emilin, Yanyan, and his own company.
The three of them being the only shareholders as their Big brother had rejected any shares back when the company was first created.
Yanyan had 30% of the shares while Emilin and Theodore had 51% and 19% respectively.
Back then, Theodore didn't even know what shares were, Emilin just gave them to him and he had been unable to reject them.
Nathen knew better and directly rejected, even insisting that Emilin keep at least 51% to herself.
As for Theodore, though he did nothing, he still received a continuous stream of money from those shares, easily making him a multimillionaire.
Though he never acted like one.
He easily forgot that he had that money as it was hard for him to see money as a thing. Living comfortably and rather normally was still more of his thing.
Though of course, if one paid special attention, they would still be able to tell that Theo came from money just by the fact that he didn't care about it, though they probably wouldn't have thought that that money was in fact from his sister rather than his parents.
Then again, if he had to, he also wouldn't have too much trouble earning his own cash.
There was no need to mention Yanyan and Emilin.
The three of them hadn't even had to sell any of these shares as Emilin was able to inject a continuous stream whenever an investment was needed.
Other than that, Yanyan did almost all the other work while Theodore, who did nothing, could just sit there and earn money.
Though of course, the others wouldn't know that he was a shareholder.
When he had decided to become a streamer and content creator and started playing games afterward, he thought, shouldn't he at least advertise his own company's products?
Otherwise, it would really be too shameless to say that he had done anything for the company to earn so much money every year.
Emilin thought otherwise as the first and main game that TD Games had developed, Mobba, would have never existed without him.
Anyways, that was that.
At least Theodore had found a way to help the company in his own way, even if it was quite insignificant to Yanyan and Emilin's contributions.
One supported the company when it came to great labor and the other supported with money, which made the whole world go around.
There really wasn't much for him to do anyways.
"If you're done, then come here and help me do this question!"
Jenna, the third placer in Master Sungcha's test, used her pencil to signal Theodore who had finished uploading his videos.
Both she and Kayden knew that Theodore was an aspiring celebrity or something like that and though at first Jenna really thought that that was a great waste of Theodore's talent in everything else, she shut up when she watched his videos.
She had to admit that the videos were well made.
Not to mention it was none of her business what the man wanted to be in the future.
Since he wanted to pursue this route, they, as his friends who wanted to catch up to him when it came to academics, fully supported him!
As for Jenna, she just wanted to curse Theodore for having the time to play games all day, make videos, sleep in class, sleep at night, hit the gym before going for a swim, and still do better than her on tests.
She had specifically asked Kayden to confirm with him that Theodore was really sleeping at night rather than studying.
Truth be told, however, after knowing the answer, she was only more devastated.
Damn, the guy slept all the way through the night unless he was playing more games.
It was too harsh on the ego when you had a friend like this, especially when you came to this university being a genius, just to realize you were really quite average, if not worse.
Ah, but Jenna couldn't give up, so she just had to continue by working harder.
Theodore patiently explained the question to Jenna, who had long stopped being polite with the other party.
It was fine since they were both friends and disciples together under Master Sungcha.
Theodore preferred how straightforward Jenna was and he didn't mind helping with the material she was having trouble with.
He didn't have anything better to do anyway.
And there was a part of him that enjoyed their sufferings as he too had suffered when he learned this material.
"God damn, I really want to hate you, but how can I when your explanations are 10 times easier to understand than that of the professor?" Jenna sighed as she prepared to do 2 more similar questions to internalize her learnings.
"How did you learn these things anyway?" Kayden asked offhandedly as he did his own questions, but unlike Jenna, he had to ask fewer questions and once he got the question correctly, there was no need for him to do more practice questions.
This was because he could easily correlate the problem to a real-life application after understanding it, making it easier for him to do it the following times.
The only problem was that he still found it hard to go that extra step, so although his grades in the class were at the top of the batch without the same amount of effort that Jenna put in, he still couldn't surpass the lowest mark for an A by much.
They ranged from around 60% to 80% depending on the class, meaning his grades were all around a B, B+, or even an A.
But unlike Theodore, he got an A because he could only get that A, while Theodore got that A because there was no higher grade.
It was similar to how a great student could get 99 marks on a test because they were only worth that 99% on that specific test, while the godly student got 100 marks on the test because there were only 100 marks on that test.
Even if it were only 1 mark, the difference was still as deep as a chasm.
Kayden didn't mind too much, but as a human and a man who had a monster as his roommate, it was inevitable that he would compare himself with his good friend, which only motivated him to do better.
Both he and Jenna had no qualms about asking for help from the person they wanted to surpass.
Either way, what had to be done, had to be done.
At least they had it better than their other classmates as they could easily pester Theodore into tutoring them when they didn't know the material.
Theodore thought back to when he first learned this material.
When was that again?
Ah, yes!
Back when he was about to get glasses because he was on the computer too much.
Was that 6th or 7th grade?
Theodore couldn't even recall how old he was back then.
"I think it was around 8th grade? I was on the computer too much, and I was getting a little nearsighted and so my little sister convinced me that I should learn more without the computer and more on paperback."
Theodore thought back.
Ah, those were the times.
Those were the dreaded times.
They were terrible when he was living them, but looking back, nope, they were still equally as bad.
Emilin had told him that he wouldn't be able to hack and code properly, or at least not at a higher level without a higher level of education.
Then, she taught himself as well as Nathen everything.
From things related to coding to those that had nothing to do with anything.
Damn, looking back, he had been so easily tricked… so damn naïve.
Though of course, Theo still knew that most of that stuff would probably come to use, maybe even save his life one of these days.
Of course, at some point, he and his eldest brother's path diverted as he pursued a path to learn more about the future of their technology while his eldest brother started getting even more into various sports.
At that time, he had even gotten into some extreme sports but he had to drop them due to unforeseen circumstances.
Many things were happening at that time, so in the end, Theodore hadn't found out why it was that Nathaniel had gotten into and out of those extreme sports so quickly.
I believe it was something about his young age despite his great physique.
But Theo couldn't be sure.
Anyways, was a known fact that the things learned in the course of the 4 high school years could be learned in a single year, and for someone as smart as Theodore, of course, it took a much shorter amount of time.
The only option left was college classes, only what Theodore didn't tell the other two was that he didn't only learn the courses for one single department.
"We had already finished the high school courses during the course of the year, so the only option left was the college courses for the summer," Theodore said exasperatedly.
It was clear that that summer vacation he spoke of left a sour taste in his mouth.
After all, it was a whole summer vacation without going on the computer for longer than the 30 min that it took to look for the right files.
Sad times.
But what could he do?