Re:life with Karmic Gacha (Modern Family)-Chapter 337 - : Murder! (Southern Accent)

[Edward POV]

Two days have passed since New Year's Eve. Today's a Sunday, the last day of the holidays. I promised my friends I would hang out with them before they all went back to school.

However, an hour after I arrived at Jenna's house, I was suddenly shot. Clutching my stomach, I fell to my knees as Jacob ran toward me.

"EDWARD!!! STAY WITH ME!!!" Jacob begged, tears in his eyes, clutching my increasingly cold body as I lay on the floor next to Jenna's pool.

I coughed twice and held his face, whispering my last words, "I'm sorry, partner... I can't be here to meet your son..." Then, I coughed violently.

With a shaky voice, I added, "Make sure to bring our team to the Super Bowl with me." My hand went limp, and my eyes rolled back as I took my last breath.

"EDWARDDDD!!!!" Jacob yelled to the sky, tears flowing freely down his cheeks.

Elsa sighed and looked at us with disdain. "Calm down. It's just a fake death."

"Don't kill the mood, Elsa," Enid scolded her, wiping her teary eyes as she watched my dying performance. I propped my head up and muttered helplessly, "I can't believe I got murdered. I thought I was going to survive till the end."

It seemed that despite all my genius, I still couldn't escape the mind of a dedicated 14-year-old fantasy addict and fell into a trap that led to my demise.

"There's a label on the big red button that says 'Don't Press,' but you still pressed it. You can't blame others for your death," Elsa said with a disdainful expression.

"Now you have to lay there for an hour until the perp is caught. I'm really jealous of you," Alex scowled enviously, wearing a transparent veil on her head.

The game is called Belles, Bourbon, and Bullets, a murder mystery game from the South. Everyone needed to speak in a southern accent while playing. Well, that was how it started. Then, Enid wrote a new script and planned the whole thing. She also made us draw lots for our roles.

I promised everyone I would do something with them before I went on my world tour, and Enid picked this game.

"At the very least, you can die normally. We found my corpse dead from being sodomized by a horse!" Finneas shouted angrily as he lay on a floating mattress in the pool.

"More accurately, a centaur," I smirked, which made him even angrier.

I wasn't the first one to die in the game. Finneas picked the victim role that started the whole thing. Next was Jenna, who was hung on a chair like a dirty rag. She too had died a violent death after being seduced by an incubus.

Only Alex, Elsa, Enid, and Jacob were left in the game. Among them was the perp who had killed us all. I already knew who they were, but I didn't want to spoil the game for everyone else.

Wearing a top hat and a metal tobacco pipe in her mouth, Enid muttered with a poor southern accent, "I do declare~ The third victim is quite handsome, even in his death. Should we resurrect him as a vampire familiar and make him serve us for eternity?"

"There are no vampires! You promised there would be no vampires!" Jenna propped her head up, scolding Enid before falling limply again.

Jacob pushed his fedora up and said, "We should see if there are any clues around the scene of his death. I swore to my best friend that I would get justice for his unjust death."

"Again, he brought it on himself," Alex shook her head, wearing a fake mustache and pretending to be a skeptical old man. It was the perfect casting choice for all of Enid's game characters today.

They found a clue that led them to the kitchen, leaving only us 'corpses' outside by the pool. Jenna suddenly whispered to me, "Psst– Psstt–"

"You can just speak normally, you know? Us dead people can converse with each other. We just can't speak to the mortals," I said with a smirk. Jenna giggled and asked, "Have you ever watched Inuyasha? Do you want to watch that with me later on?"

I looked at her in confusion. "I thought we were going to watch One Piece: Strong World?"

"We can watch both," Jenna said with a mischievous smile. Finneas floated right next to me after he paddled the floating mat with his hand and joined the conversation. "How long will it take? I want to go jam with Ed."

"You guys can have your jam session tomorrow," Jenna scolded Finneas. "He's not around tomorrow!" he argued back.

I received a text while Finneas and Jenna were arguing.

[Haley: Mom suddenly called me. I think she'll finally try to talk to me about the whole thing.]

I replied back.

[Seriously? She waited for 3 whole days before talking to you?]

[Haley: I think Dad stopped her before. Now she's finally going to do it.]

[Edward: Should I fess up?]

[Haley: No. I want to see if she's going to take my side or your side. If she takes your side, we're over. Done-zo! No more cuddling! No more (censored emoji).]

I chuckled slightly at her response before joining my friends' arguments. "Jen, I think we should table Inuyasha for later. It has quite a lot of episodes."

Jenna became deflated and pouted slightly after hearing my rejection. "There's no more later~" she whined, which made me smile wryly.

For some reason, after Jacob's inevitable death, the plot went astray. Enid exploded an antimatter bomb, killing all the inhabitants of Fantasia, and ended the story after it was revealed that she was behind it all.

Extremely dissatisfied with the conclusion, Alex shot a barrage of questions at Enid. "Why did 'The Widow' want to destroy the world? What could she possibly gain from that? Where did she even get that antimatter bomb?! None of this makes sense!"

Enid's eyes darted around in confusion before she replied, "How should I know!?"

"You WROTE HER!" Alex grimaced in frustration. I laughed a bit before teasing Alex, "What do you think her motivation was?"

Alex was taken aback and guessed randomly, "I don't know. She's a widow, so maybe she wanted revenge on the world for killing her husband?"

Enid nodded subconsciously and muttered, "Oh yeah, that makes sense."

"Who knows? Maybe she just likes to see everything burn down. Not everyone has a reason behind their actions. Some people just suck," Elsa argued pessimistically.

"You have a very depressing way of viewing the world," Jacob teased his girlfriend. Elsa smiled in disbelief and said, "I'm not depressed. I'm just rational."

Jenna thought for a bit before she added, "She might be throwing a tantrum after not getting what she wanted. I know I would." Jacob and Elsa stepped away from Jenna after she said that.

"Do you really think a person could commit such an atrocity just because of a tantrum?" Alex looked at Jenna with disbelief. Jenna shrugged and said, "People are complicated. Maybe."

Enid cackled mischievously and said, "Why are you guys trying to get an in-depth look at her character?"

Finneas smirked and said, "I think this is because of what we learn in English class. Trying to get something out of nothing. 'Oh no, the door is red. The author is trying to convey anger.' Well, sometimes the door is just red Mrs Johnson! That's why he's said it's red!"

Alex looked at Finneas with disbelief and said, "You really need to let that go. That happened in class a month ago."

"I'm not wrong!" Finneas whined.

Confused, I began to ask them, "Is this really a conversation a group of 8th and 9th graders usually have these days?"

I was shocked by the flow of conversation among them. A few months ago, it was hard to get them to open up and share their opinions. Nowadays, they just throw their thoughts around whether people want it or not.

All of them turned to me simultaneously with angry expressions, shouting, "Whose fault do you think this is!?"

Wearing a disdainful expression, Alex rebuked me. "If you didn't start talking about random things all the time, we wouldn't be this way."

I guess they had been trained by me. It made me feel quite proud. It was lonely being the only one talking passionately about something.

Jenna joined in the scolding. "Yeah. I used to talk about high school gossip, who screwed with who. Look at me now! I'm an anime geek! Are you proud of yourself for turning me into this!? HUH!? Answer me, Eddy!"

Baffled by Jenna's sudden accusation, I tried to defuse the situation. "But you know, whenever you called me to discuss your thoughts on the show, you became really attractive in my eyes."

Jenna was taken aback, and a huge smile bloomed on her face. "Eh? Really?" It started with just watching anime to have something to talk about with me, but now, Jenna had truly grown to love the genre. She even thought about cosplaying the characters.

"Stop! He's trying to manipulate you to ensure your full transformation into a geek!" Alex tried to warn Jenna, but it was too late. By the look in her eyes, I knew she had fallen deep.

"When you meet Oda-sensei, can I get a signature? I want him to draw Ace for me! Please!" Jenna hugged my arm and begged.

Well, episode 483 hadn't arrived yet, so Jenna only knew that Ace was captured in Impel Down. She had faith in Luffy trying to save his brother. Right now, the episode where Luffy meets Bon Clay in Impel Down had just been released, so Jenna didn't know the full storyline. Even in the manga, it hadn't reached the Marineford War.

'When the time comes, I wonder if she'll beat me up because I made her watch the show,' I thought secretly as I agreed to her request. "Yeah, sure. I'll try to get the autograph for you."

Finneas asked with a skeptical look, "Edward, can you even meet with him? Won't he be really busy working—as you should be?"

I looked at him with disbelief as I replied, "I can spare a few hours. I'm not going to work 24/7." Then, I smiled and continued, "I wrote to him before. A heartfelt letter. He already agreed to meet with me. Also, since I want Netflix to get the rights to broadcast One Piece, he definitely needs to meet with me."

"So blackmail, huh?" Alex muttered in understanding. Jacob snickered and said, "As expected of Edward."

"I'm not blackmailing anyone!" I defended myself, but everyone looked at me with suspicion in their eyes.

We entered the house and watched the One Piece: Strong World movie together. After finishing the movie and discussing it afterward, Jenna asked, "Is your studio going to make animation after this?"

"Yes. Definitely. But it's a little tough to start. There aren't a lot of experienced animators available for hire, so I have to create the entire studio from scratch—including training the animators. It'll be one or two years before we can get results," I replied casually.

"What's your first show going to be?" Alex asked, sounding a little bit interested.

I replied as I ate popcorn, "It's based on the League of Legends game I own. The show will be called 'Arcane.' I've already completed the storyline for the first season, so I just need it to be finished now. I wish I could do it faster, though."

Alex narrowed her eyes at me and quipped, "You realize that your company's growth is tremendously fast. But you want it to be faster? Are you insane?"

"Not insane. Ambitious. And I don't want to create a culture where fans have to wait 3 or 4 years for a new season of a show they love," I said with a weary sigh.

Everyone was confused, as there wasn't any real precedent for that yet, so they didn't know what I was talking about.

"I wish there were a machine that could just connect my brain to the computer. It would make my work so much easier than physically working on it. Like VR, but instead of games, it brings me into an alternate space where my imagination builds the world instead," Enid suddenly said.

"So you want to be God?" I looked at her and chuckled.

Enid blushed slightly and said, "Nothing too blasphemous. I just want to create an alternate reality where vampires, werewolves, and all sorts of mythical creatures exist."

"Just go and watch Twilight again," Jacob teased. Enid rolled her eyes and said, "I'm already bored. I'm watching Vampire Diaries these days."

Finneas accidentally blurted out, "Nina Dobrev is hot."

"Excuse me?" Alex asked with a scowl. Flustered, Finneas stammered, "No—Wait, Alex. You're definitely hotter than her."

"That's a blatant lie. Don't grovel that much," Jenna teased. Alex glared at Jenna, but her lips curled into a smile. "That's fine! I know I'm not hotter than Nina Dobrev!" Alex sulked.

"Oooh, a lover's spat. Nice work, Enid," Jacob said, sniping at Enid, which made her flabbergasted. "What—Oh! This is not my fault, okay!"

"It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't brought up Vampire Diaries," Elsa joined in the teasing, which made Enid's cheeks turn slightly red. I laughed out loud and said, "Finneas is the one who got the hots for Nina Dobrev. And I agree with him. She's really hot. Even Jacob told me he thinks Miss Dobrev is sexy before."

"I NEVER—" Jacob was taken aback and immediately defended himself, but his frustration made him look guilty in Elsa's eyes.

"What's this? Are you jealous of our relationship that you had to drive a wedge between us?" Elsa sniped at me, her tone laced with mockery. "I heard your confession got rejected at the New Year's Eve party. Is this why you're acting out?"

"Uuuuu!" Everyone exclaimed excitedly, turning their heads toward me.

I smiled and said, "If that's all it took to drive a wedge between you guys, then maybe your relationship isn't as strong as you think it is."

"At the very least, we have a relationship," Elsa added with a smug expression.

"Touché," I relented, which made Enid, Alex, and Elsa jump up and celebrate in excitement.

"HE LOST!" Enid muttered as she high-fived Elsa and Alex. Alex added, "He's speechless! We finally won for the very first time!"

Elsa gleamed with excitement. "Finally. It feels like all of the frustrations are going away."

"But you'll have to face my revenge next," I interjected, making the girls freeze. Elsa blinked quickly and asked, "Excuse me?"

"You didn't think that winning would come without a cost? You now have my animosity. I'll have to do something to make sure we're even." I said casually, though my words were full of threat.

Elsa gulped and asked slowly, "What are you going to do?"

I just went silent and didn't answer, which made her even more anxious.

"Even if he couldn't get Alex's sister, he's still doing well with the girls. I mean, he had that brunette at his house the next day," Finneas reminded everyone with a mischievous smile on his face.

"He really won't have a problem getting a girlfriend if he wants. Just say the words, Edward! I will be your girl—" Enid jumped on my arm, but I casually pushed her face away before she could finish.

"Don't try to take advantage of my heartbreak. I'm not ready for a relationship," I softly rejected Enid, which made her whimper sadly.

Alex suddenly asked Jacob, "Is Annie the only girl you saw in his house?"

"No. I saw Maggie. Vanessa... Um, then when I was disoriented, I think I saw another girl in a bright yellow dress. But I can't remember who she was," Jacob replied after mulling over his memory.

Startled, I immediately interjected, "But you remembered Annie because she's hot, right?"

"Yeah. Annie's pretty hot," Jacob replied subconsciously. Then, he felt a cold stare coming from his side. His girlfriend was glaring at him, muttering, "Strike two!"

"NO! I mean, she's conventionally attractive! But I'm not attracted to her at all!" Jacob tried to defend himself.

"OH! SO YOU DO THINK SHE'S ATTRACTIVE!?" Elsa asked in disbelief, which quickly escalated into a fight. I made a peace sign and stuck my tongue out, reveling in my success at disrupting their romantic atmosphere.

While I was enjoying the chaos, Alex fell into a deep thought.

[Alex's commentary]

"Oh... So that's how it is." She smirked knowingly. "So, they are going to hide it, huh? I think I can have some fun with this."

[Commentary ends]

After that, we left Jenna's place and headed back to mine. I had set up the garage with drums and amplifiers, making it an ideal spot for a jam session.

"What do you want to sing?" I asked Finneas, as it was his idea to have the jam session.

"What about pre-2000 rock?" Finneas replied after thinking for a while. I furrowed my eyebrows and asked, "With only the two of us?"

"That would be quite hard to do," Finneas agreed. "Alex, do you want to take the keyboard?" he asked his girlfriend.

"I've been practicing, but I don't think I can play it perfectly yet," Alex replied, crossing her arms to reject the offer. "Oohh—oohh! I can play drums," Jacob volunteered.

Not replying to Jacob, I turned to Alex and said, "Come on. It'll be fun. We're not taking it too seriously."

"What about me?!" Jacob whined. Finneas sighed heavily before saying, "Sure. You can take the drums. It's my own fault that I didn't bring Billie with me."

"Any requests? Finneas will sing," I said to the audience—Elsa, Jenna, Enid, and Alex.

"What's that song? Um... I don't remember," Enid muttered in confusion.

"Why don't you hum the tune?" Finneas asked her.

"Errr... Um... Like this? Wani nano ninu ninu..."

All of us almost burst into laughter at Enid's surprisingly clear depiction of the tune. Enid blushed and threatened to hit everyone who was laughing at her. I played it on my guitar before Finneas started to sing.

We sang "Sweet Child of Mine" by Guns N' Roses, followed by "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC. While singing the second song, our audience suddenly grew. My dad, Frankie, Phil, and Claire walked into the garage after hearing the music.

Speaking of parents, they made our couple's life a little challenging because they kept wanting to talk and be there for me. My dad spent the entire day with me yesterday, which meant I could only see Haley at night. I snuck into her room through the basement window and left before the sun came up. I regretted hiding the relationship—just a little bit.

Even Vader and Max joined in, watching the performance together, with Vader being held in Max's arms—almost suffocated in her fleshy air bags.

Suddenly, I stopped playing the guitar and walked to the garage door. Phil brightened up, thinking I was trying to greet him. "Edward—"

Before he could finish, I pulled the garage door closed and told them, "Sorry, I'm not entertaining people today. This is a closed jam session."

As I fully closed the door, everyone was stunned by my actions. Vader managed to escape from Max's embrace and darted into the garage before I could close it completely. She meowed loudly, demanding attention, but I mimicked her meowing sound with my guitar, which left her stunned.

Enid burst into laughter and started filming the entire thing. Vader didn't give up and tried again, but I mimicked her sounds yet again. On the fourth try, Vader looked at me with a deadpan expression and mumbled a meow of disbelief.

Then, she bit the guitar cable and pulled it out of the amplifier in protest. "Vader, no!" Enid shouted desperately, but it was too late. We all laughed at the petty revenge, and I finally picked up Vader into my arms. It took a while to placate her before she finally joined our jam session without making any noise.

"Edward, do you think you'll be fine after doing that to your dad?" Enid asked, a little worried for my well-being.

I replied casually, "I already told him not to disturb us. He did that anyway. So I don't regret it."

Alex joined in, "Yeah. No one wants to have a jam session with their parents around. Believe me, if my mom were still here, she'd try to police the songs we're singing. Anything she thinks is bad, she wouldn't let us do."

...

[General POV]

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"I told you this is a bad idea. They don't want us here," Frankie muttered, fully understanding the teenager's mindset.

"Are you sure it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Haley rejected him? He didn't even smile when he looked at me!" Phil said anxiously. "He must be hurting a lot," he added.

Claire rolled her eyes and replied, "No, Phil. I think it's because they just don't want any supervision."

"But I am his buddy!" Phil whined.

"What about me? Am I part of the parents' group?" Max kicked the garage door angrily and shouted, "Edward, you little brat! I'm not that old! Don't lump me in with them!"

"Hey! We're also not that old!" Phil said defensively.

"I think we should invite Edward for dinner at our place tonight." Claire said. "It's time for us to air everything out."