Urban System in America
Chapter 243 - 242: He is Genius

Chapter 243: Chapter 242: He is Genius

But then—he took a breath.

What if rejecting him now really did kill the only shot he had left?

So he buried the fire. He forced his expression blank. And he leaned in—reluctantly, cautiously, every muscle resisting—just to hear what Rex had to say.

"Okay," he said flatly. "Go on."

Rex didn’t hesitate. He tapped the second act of the script. "This part here... the tension dips too fast. You’ve got a great build-up in the first half—the creaking floors, the unexplained shadows, the sense that something’s watching—but then you dump all the scares too early. You give the audience release before the real climax. That’s not how you do found footage horror."

Aren blinked. That was... actually not wrong. freew\ebno\vel..(c)om

"And this scene," Rex continued, his finger tapping a night-vision hallway sequence, "you have the camera jolt as the door slams shut—fine, but where’s the sound layering? Add the faint whisper in the background right before. Something that viewers will only notice on the second watch. A subconscious hook."

Aren blinked. That... that was good. It wasn’t just cosmetic. It was surgical.

"And here," Rex said, flipping to a part near the climax, "this is your big scare, right? But the way it’s written, it’s too polished. Too... clean. That’s the problem. We want raw. Found-footage doesn’t thrive on Hollywood polish—it lives in imperfection. Shake the camera. Make the audio distort. Make the viewer feel like they shouldn’t be watching this at all."

"And here," Rex continued, flipping forward, "the boyfriend reacts too logically. Too composed. People don’t behave like that when the walls are bleeding or they hear whispers under their bed at 3 a.m. They freak. They spiral. You want realism, right? That’s what made Paranormal Activity work—it felt like this could happen to anyone."

Aren didn’t say anything. But his eyes narrowed slightly. His breathing slowed.

Rex was still going. "Also, the attic scene—it’s too bright. Light kills tension. This isn’t a cheap horror movie with cinematography. This needs to feel raw. Cramped. Like something you’re not supposed to be watching."

Aren said nothing, but something had shifted. His pulse had slowed. That boiling heat in his gut was fading, being replaced by... curiosity. Intrigue.

Because... damn it.

Rex wasn’t wrong.

The points he was making weren’t guesses. They weren’t vague notes. They were precise, observant, and—worse—they were the kind of things Aren himself had thought about in passing but never quite solved. And Rex was solving them. Casually. As if he’d done this a hundred times before.

The more he listened, the more his skepticism began to wither. Because as the creator, he knew all the weak spots in the script—he just hadn’t known how to fix them. But Rex had spotted them all, even the subtle pacing issues and missed emotional cues he hadn’t even been aware of.

It was like watching a master editor work.

For a moment, Aren caught himself wondering—how could someone this young be so precise? So instinctive? It was almost unnatural.

He shook the thought. Geniuses came in all ages.

But the more he listened, the more he couldn’t deny it.

There was something uncanny about the way Rex read the script. He wasn’t just skimming or pretending to understand like so many fake producers or bored execs who only cared about marketability. Rex wasn’t using jargon or throwing out buzzwords. He was cutting straight into the bone of the story—dissecting it like a surgeon, with unsettling precision.

He would pause, mid-sentence, frown at a line, and mutter things like, "This doesn’t match the rhythm you established on page twelve. You had a perfect pulse going there—tick, tick, tick—and this line? It throws the whole pacing off." Then, he’d offer a revision that didn’t just fix the issue—it elevated the moment, made it cleaner, sharper, scarier.

And the attic scene? Aren had wrestled with that damn scene for months. He had rewritten it over a dozen times. Too dark, too bright, too fast, too slow. He had tried different angles, different approaches—nothing worked. It had always felt hollow. Like a climax without a heartbeat.

But Rex? He saw through it instantly. "This isn’t where the fear peaks," he said, eyes skimming the page. "It should feel like the house itself is holding its breath. You need to draw out the silence longer. Cut the music. Let the shadows do the talking."

And just like that—Aren saw it.

He saw the version that had eluded him.

He felt it: the tension, the dread, the unbearable stillness just before the horror hits. He’d tried so hard to manufacture fear, and here was Rex, pulling it out with a single suggestion like it had been obvious all along.

Aren’s hands went still on his lap.

He blinked slowly.

His jaw clenched—not out of anger now, but in quiet disbelief. View the correct content at fr\eewe.bn(o)v\el.c(o)m

This guy wasn’t guessing.

He wasn’t lucky.

He saw structure the way architects saw buildings. He felt pacing like a composer felt rhythm. He understood character psychology, audience manipulation, emotional tension, and screen language—and not in a way you learned from books or some overpriced USC class.

He just seemed to know.

It was instinctive. Innate. Effortless.

And that was what made it infuriating.

And exhilarating.

Aren’s stomach twisted again, but not with bitterness now. It was awe. A raw, reluctant awe that scraped against his pride and made his skin prickle. He didn’t want to admit it—but the truth was unavoidable.

Rex was a genius.

A maddening, arrogant, unpolished, probably insane genius.

And Aren had spent years dragging this script through his soul, thinking no one could possibly understand it the way he did—only to watch this stranger, in less than an hour, cut through the noise and find the signal that even he hadn’t fully grasped.

That realization didn’t feel like defeat.

It felt like... possibility.

A Hope.

A strange, dangerous kind of hope.

Because maybe—just maybe—with Rex’s money and his unexpectedly sharp instincts... this could work.

Maybe he’d come to find the only person insane enough, brilliant enough, reckless enough to actually help him finish what he started.

Maybe this wasn’t just a deal with the devil.

(End of Chapter)