String of Fate

Chapter Ninety Nine

I had not expected this to be so easy. My parents should have been harder to convince that this would be a good idea. I mean, I was skipping school for a week, going to a different country, and meeting up with a bunch of strangers. Then again, they probably thought that it was going to be all right because they were going to be with me. The fact that it was an all-expenses paid trip probably sweetened the deal, even if my parents had no idea what it was about other than the fact that it was for an online game. Still, they would get the hang of it eventually, which would probably be on the last day of the tournament.

Now, flying to America with them was not the highlight of the trip, and I doubted that it would be the low point, but they didn't complain when I got my gaming laptop out and tried playing a bit of the local version of the game while on the flight. They tried to convince me not to pull the whole thing out for the flight, but I just reminded them that we wouldn't be going on this trip if it wasn't for my gaming career.

I say career, I just regularly uploaded videos online under the username 'Josi_x' and I sometimes did livestreams to go alongside them. Over the last few months, it had grown in popularity and I have gotten quite a few followers. I also liked to think that I had actually become good at the game. We'd find out over the next week who was good at the game.

I was just glad that, once the competition was over on Friday, my parents and I would get to stay for the rest of the weekend to celebrate my birthday. It would be great to have my sixteenth birthday in another country. It would be an experience.

We got to the hotel from the airport, which was in a central part of the city, and right around the corner from the arena where the competition was taking place. It was great that the competition was an evening thing as it meant that we had the day to wander around and get to know the place. I couldn't wait to explore the city during the days.

My parents were in the room next to mine and we decided that we'd have a bit of time to unpack and get used to the hotel. I put my case down on the ottoman at the bottom of the bed and walked over to the window to see the view first. I looked out and saw a fountain in front of a mall. I guessed that we were probably going to be spending a bit of time in that mall with my mother. I just hoped that we were going to go into the Hot Topic so I could buy some things that I actually wanted. My mother would drag us around the clothes stores while she could.

Once I had taken in the view, I headed back over to the bed and opened my suitcase. I pulled out all of my rolled up clothes and folded them on the table so they were going to look a bit better. Then, I checked what was left in the case and decided that they could stay in there. I moved the suitcase to underneath the table and then started on my backpack, which had acted as my hand luggage for the flight.

The first thing I did was put my laptop on charge and loaded it up to get on with my work. I also pulled out my diary which had my progress for the channel, including the videos that I had recently edited that were to go out this week while I was here in the competition. It was probably a bad idea to upload them over the hotel Wi-Fi but they needed to be done and I hadn't had the time to upload them at home. Then, I pulled out the camera that I used for recording video diaries and as a face camera in my live streams. I had thought it would make good content to record the whole competition for a video next week since I didn't have time to record the first video next week.

I quickly loaded up the camera, checked my hair, and then started recording. I did a quick into to the video you and flashed a quick show of the room. That would be enough for the beginning of the video. I didn't want to make it too long just in case it bored people. I wanted most of the video to focus on the competition, anyway.

Since my laptop had now loaded up, I connected it to the hotel Wi-Fi and started to upload the two videos I had stored on my external hard drive. Just as the first upload started, and I knew that it was going to take a while, as there was a knock on my door. I quickly got up to answer it and saw my mother standing there. "Hey, Darling, let's go and find something to eat."