Chapter 6 Two Weeks In
Tasha stood in front of the mirror, giving her reflection a quick scan.
Two weeks had flown by, and she’d been adding two points to her “beauty score” every day. Thirty points later, it was time to check the damage.
She leaned in close, eyes narrowing. Honestly? Not much had changed.
Her memory was sharp as a tack now, so she could picture her old face clear as day. Spotting the changes wasn’t exactly brain surgery.
Her eyes were a bit bigger, her messy brows a little neater. Her nose had a slight bump now, instead of being flat as a pancake.
Tasha’s nose used to be a total no-show—just a smooth stretch of nothing. This tiny ridge wasn’t much, but it had her grinning like she’d hit the jackpot.
Tasha had a slight underbite. She hadn’t tossed enough points into fixing it, so it barely budged.
The acne scars were mostly gone, just some flaky skin hanging on. Tasha figured those would sort themselves out.
Her skin tone? Yeah, still a problem.
She’d told the system to skip her complexion when tweaking her looks. So, her skin stayed that dull.
With her lackluster glow, the small changes to her face just got lost in the shuffle. Two weeks in, and nobody at the film studios had noticed squat.
Only when she stared hard in the mirror could Tasha see it: each tweak was subtle, but together, her face was starting to look… not half bad.
The System said, “Most folks sit between 50 and 60 for beauty. Hit 60, you’re easy on the eyes. Over 70, you’re cute. Past 80? Total babe.”
“So, what’s my 30 get me?” Tasha asked, smirking.
“Background extra. Like, you’re invisible unless someone stares, and then they’re like, ‘Yikes, rough.'”
Tasha snorted. “Gee, thanks for the pep talk.”
It wasn’t just her looks getting a glow-up—her brain was in on the action too.
In two weeks, she’d blasted through twenty-plus books—mostly classic lit. Sure, that’s nothing to bookworms, but for someone who used to zone out at the sight of a page, it was huge.
Plus, she’d started a new daily grind: handwriting practice.
Because, man, her handwriting was awful. Brains could level up, reading could speed up, but good penmanship? That was a slog.
On day three at the bookstore, she’d covered for Polly, who couldn’t see well enough to handle the ledger. One scribble, and Tasha’s writing looked like a chicken had a tantrum—wobbly lines like drunk worms, the whole thing screaming “first-grader.”
Tasha gawked at her handwriting—same sloppy mess as her old life—and clammed up. No progress.
Polly glanced at Tasha’s ledger and went stone-cold silent.
After an eternity, Polly popped on her reading glasses and redid the whole thing herself.
Tasha was floored.
From then on, Tasha stormed the wholesale market like a woman possessed, snagging a heap of cheap pencils and a mountain of scratch paper. Polly’s bookstore was stacked with calligraphy books—fancy ones from pros, basic ones for kids. Tasha could grab any to practice. She dove in, grinding an hour a day.
The System figured she’d cut back on reading to focus on writing. Nope. Tasha went full throttle, pushing bedtime back an hour.
The System was stunned silent.
Tasha was trashing her body. Her stats were climbing—strength, brains, everything—except health, which was in freefall. The System couldn’t force her to chill, so it nudged her to trade for health points. Tasha’s reply? “Thanks, maybe next time, bud.”
The System had no words for that.
Thanks to the System’s forced sleep and hormone tweaks, even when her body was screaming, her brain tricked her into feeling a weird, sickly calm.
Her routine—days as an extra, reading, nights buried in books and handwriting—dragged on.
To bulk up, Tasha didn’t just eat set food or Polly’s cooking. She went wild on cheap knockoff chocolate and chugged sugary sodas like they were going out of style.
Ironwood studios lit up at night, alive with energy. If Tasha had a spare second post-shoot, she’d hit the food stalls.
Fried, grilled, boiled, or roasted—bring it on. Chicken wings, corn dogs, mozzarella sticks, or pretzels—if it was cheap and filling, she was scarfing it down.
To gain weight fast, Tasha was a carb-and-fat hoover.
But this crazy, no-holds-barred eating was killing her insides.
Sure, the System converted extra weight to other stats, but her stomach was toast, and that was permanent.
Life as an extra sucked. Short and plain, Tasha got stuck with the worst gigs.
Crowd scenes? She was a faceless maid, standing like a mannequin for hours, not even a blurry shot of her face.
In a thriller, she played a morgue corpse. In brutal heat, her face was caked with makeup, suffocating her to look dead.
August scorcher, and she’s in heavy burlap, playing a sick villager running from soldiers. Dust choked the air as hooves pounded, and Tasha ran, drenched in sweat.
Fake rain poured—cold, nasty stuff. She played a flood victim, hugging a prop baby, wading through a filthy pool, fake-sobbing. The water was gross and freezing.
When the scene ended, she crawled out, soaked and shivering. No fancy changing rooms for extras. The packed dressing area was chaos, so Tasha stood in her wet clothes, baking in the sun.
A breeze hit—normally nice, but it made her teeth chatter. Too beat to care, she ate her lunch still dripping, planning to change after.
At night, Tasha caught a nasty cold.
After gorging on dinner, she stumbled back to the bookstore and wolfed down the meal Polly left.
The food was killer, but Tasha couldn’t taste jack. Her nose was stuffed up, and her tongue was like, “Is this cardboard?”
Polly eyed her pale face, all concerned. “Tasha, you coming down with something?”
“Nah,” Tasha said with a weak grin. “Just froze my butt off filming that water scene. A quick snooze, and I’m golden.”
Polly wasn’t sold. “You sure? You’re not yanking my chain?”
“Promise!” Tasha flashed her empty bowl. “Sick people don’t eat like they’re starving.”
Polly half-bought it but wasn’t thrilled. She dug through the shop, found some cold and flu medicines, and sweet-talked a street vendor into making a hot mug of cocoa.
Tasha wasn’t saying no to that. She downed it like it was her job.
Polly watched her finish, made sure Tasha was tucked in, and finally relaxed. She pulled down the shop’s shutter and headed out.
The System, thinking its host might finally catch eight hours of shut-eye, let out a digital sigh. But then Tasha, sneaky as hell, crept out of bed.
In the bookstore’s main room, she grabbed Gone with the Wind off the shelf and plopped into Polly’s chair to read.
The System nearly crashed. “What the…?”
“What’s your deal?” Tasha said, all chill.
The System floundered. “You already read Gone with the Wind!”
Tasha rubbed her pounding temples. “Gotta hit it five times to really get it.”
The System was dumbfounded. It didn’t get Tasha’s hardcore obsession. ‘Five times? With her brain, she probably have it memorized by round three.’
Tasha’s head was splitting, her mind was mush, and she was shivering like crazy.
She knew her body was waving a big red flag.
“System, what’s my health score?”she asked.
“25. You’re in ‘barely hanging on’ territory,”it answered.
“Eh, could be worse,” Tasha said, relieved. “Thought I was done for.”
The System was floored. “Could be worse?”
Tasha flipped a page. “Means I can still push through. ‘Barely hanging on’ ain’t ‘game over.'”
The System almost laughed at her twisted logic, though it wasn’t sure what laughing even was.
Tasha’s ears were ringing. She paused. “System, why’d you stop tweaking my hormones?”
The System went quiet for a beat. “When’d you figure that out?”
“Like, the second time you tried it.”
Tasha slapped her book over her face, taking a quick breather. “I was beat, like I’d been hauling bricks all day. Then—poof!—I’m all light and peppy, brain yelling, ‘We’re fine! We’re fine!’ That’s not science.”
The System didn’t make a sound.
Tasha kept going, “Only thing weirder than science around here is you. So, you’re my secret helper, right?”
The System thought, ‘Ugh, she’s getting too smart. And way too slick.’
“Do me a solid, finish what you started,” Tasha said, tossing the book aside. Her plain face had a sneaky glint in her eyes. “I know why you’re helping on the down-low.
“But, like, one tweak, a hundred tweaks—what’s the diff? Hook me up one more time, yeah?”
The System knew this was coming. It could already see the nightmare: Hey, System, a hundred tweaks, a million tweaks, who cares? One more, one more, one more…
A warm, cozy feeling seeped through Tasha, like sinking into a hot bath. Her killer headache faded to a faint buzz—basically nothing. She felt toasty, even if the vibe was a tad fake.
Tasha perked up like she’d downed a Red Bull. “You’re the GOAT,” she said, diving back into her book like a total nerd.
The System sighed to itself. “Don’t expect an encore,” it mumbled, not sure who it was even talking to.
Tasha burned through her reading till 2 a.m., then powered through an hour of handwriting practice, hands shaking like crazy.
When she finally crashed, she was too wiped to even ask the System to knock her out—she just passed out.
The System, ever the loyal sidekick, flipped off her lamp and put her in sleep mode. Then, on a whim, it burned five energy points to nudge her health back to 28.
The rulebook was clear: no dipping into its own stash for the host. It screwed with fairness and the mission’s whole deal. Five points was the max it could sneak without pinging the Main World’s radar.
Why’d it do it? No idea.
‘But with a host like Tasha? What else could I do?’ the System thought.
