Chapter 127 Time Is Up
Sakura City, Tokyo Animation Studios
The sun was setting.
The afterglow of the setting sun shone brightly on the horizon.
The sky was painted with different colors, accompanied by a light autumn breeze that blew upon the mirrored exterior of the Tokyo Studios' building.
Inside it, 906 people were fighting against the time to finish the task on their hands before time ended.
At 6 pm sharp, the Umbrella's employees moved to the working rooms where the candidates were working.
"Time is up! Please, gather your papers and hand them over to one of our employees! If there are any of you that don't hand it over in one minute, this person will be eliminated!" All candidates heard a loud voice saying that.
The candidates all hurried to gather their drawings and deliver them to the employees.
They did not want to be eliminated because they delayed handing over the drawings.
It would ridiculous to get eliminated because of that after working so hard all day.
When the one minute passed, all candidates had handed over their work.
"The results will be out in one hour! You can wait in the auditorium!"
"If you guys are hungry, you can go eat in the cafeteria there is by the auditorium!" A man said loudly.
They all nodded and started walking out of the working stations.
Meanwhile, the candidates were going to wait in the auditorium or going to eat something.
In the room where Theo and Ryoko were, an employee opened the door carrying a stack of papers.
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After all, there were 906 candidates, and each one of them draw 12 papers.
That's a total of 10872 pages!
For some studios, it would be needed teams of people to finish the evaluation of so many pages.
But Theo was different, he had an eidetic memory and a genius brain.
He could finish this in no time.
Theo thanked the employees that brought the papers and started working on the evaluation.
Ryoko helped him too, but her pace was much slower.
He only needed a glance to memorize all characteristics of the drawings.
And that was an amazing feat!
After all, there were 906 pages with the same drawing!
And the next 906 pages had another drawing repeating itself.
That happened until page 10872.
Theo had to memorize the tiny and distinct characteristics of each one of 906 pages.
But with his eidetic memory, he was able to finish memorizing all pages after 30 minutes of passing each page at a fast speed.
Now, memorizing was the easy part.
The difficulty at hand was to judge each candidate.
His memory could only store the information.
But he needed to use his judgment to verify all candidates.
He needed to see if the candidates passed the exam if there were any talented ones, or even if there subpar candidates.
But it was at that moment that his enhanced intelligence was put to work.
An enhanced intelligence was much more than an eidetic memory, it was about having the ability to think faster and with efficiency.
And obviously, judging the situations better.
Theo closed his eyes after memorizing all pages and started overdriving his brain.
In his head, multiple thoughts were rolling and he quickly judged all 906 candidates.
And after doing this for 15 minutes, he was able to get a definite answer for all candidates.
That was a spectacular feat!
Theo was able to do alone something that would take lots of people and in a bigger interval of time!
And it was in 45 minutes!
"I finished judging all of them! I will tell you my preliminary decision to you and we can discuss it." Theo said as he opened his eyes.
Ryoko lifted her head from the paper she was looking at and looked at Theo with a bewildered face.
"What?!" Ryoko managed to say.
"I finished judging all candidates. Wait a minute that I will input my evaluation in the system." Theo said gently as he took an iPad and started typing the information about his evaluation.
Ryoko kept staring at his profile, she could not believe what he did.
'Is he even human?' She thought as she observed his concentration as he typed quickly the information.
Five minutes later, Theo finished typing and projected the results on the big screen.
"You are amazing, boss!" Ryoko exclaimed as she looked at the detailed information about each candidate on the screen.
She saw that Theo managed to see that a few of them were talented.
And he even was able to notice the subpar work.
"What do you think about these candidates?" Theo asked as they looked at the subpar candidates.
"Hmm, they seem to have developed bad habits when drawing…" Ryoko started explaining her point of view.
The two of them started discussing the candidates' works as they looked at the screen.
Meanwhile, at the cafeteria by the side of the auditorium.
25 people were seated at one long table as they devoured the food In front of them.
Theo took advantage of his studio and placed a BlueCloud Shop in the cafeteria.
These candidates who came from Sakura City were shocked by the quality of this shop.
It had so many delicious things!
Theo gave Haruto (the BlueCloud manager) multiple recipes, and he was releasing them slowly.
There were pies, sweet buns, cheese bread, and juices being served now at the shop.
And it was as popular as ever throughout Elffire City.
"Did you guys manage to finish the drawings?" One of them asked.
"Yes! Thank goodness! When there were only 5 minutes left, I managed to finish." A girl replied.
"Lucky you! I only finished at the last minute!" A guy exclaimed.
"Is there any of us who didn't finish?" One of them asked.
They all looked at each other and seeing that no one said anything, they heaved a sigh of relief.
"Thank god! At least no one of us will be eliminated because he/she didn't finish the drawing." A girl said with relief.
"Did you guys hear? They said that the results would be out in no more than one hour! How is that possible?" A guy asked suddenly.
Actually, this same question was going through the mind of all candidates.
"I know, right? That's an insane speed!"
"Think about it. There are more than 900 people here. And each one did 12 drawings. That's almost 10 pages!"
"I think they must have a team with hundreds of people to judge our works."
"Yeah, I think that's the only possibility."
"Do you think that Ryoko-chan is also a part of the team that judges us?"
"Well, that silver-haired guy said that she's the Head Director. So, logically, she should be part of the team."
"That's crazy by the way! She's the Head Director of this enormous studio!"
"Did you guys look at the decorations and equipment here? Everything is brand new! I bet it cost a fortune!"
"Obviously! There must be a really rich person investing in this studio."
They continued chatting until everyone in the cafeteria was warned to go back to the auditorium.
In a few moments, the results would be shown!
The candidates felt their hearts beating faster as they heard that.
The moment of truth was arriving!