Chloe paused on purpose, a sly and icy grin slowly creeping onto her face. She stared directly into Keira's eyes, her cool voice slowly but powerfully echoing,
"You sure you wanna pick a fight with me on this one?"
Keira felt her anxiety bubbling up. She tried to look away from Chloe's gaze, but Chloe's eyes were like a bottomless vortex, pulling her in no matter how much she struggled.
Finally, Chloe broke the stare. Keira breathed a sigh of relief, her tension visible to everyone around.
"I was just wondering, since both works were made during the competition..." Keira said.
"Enough already!"
A fluent and angry voice cut through the room, followed by the slam of a fist on a table. Allan rose from the judges' table.
Everyone watched him in shock. Ever since smelling Chloe's non-competing work, he had been serious and stern. They all thought that Chloe had somehow offended him, but he had given her full marks with a poker face that only seemed to get more serious.
However, no one was paying attention to Allan, as they were all distracted by the journalists.
Nobody expected Allan to blow up now.
Keira recoiled at his sudden outburst, her eyes wide with fear, as she looked at the clearly enraged man on stage.
Allan, with a dark face, pointed at Keira and said in fluent foreign language,
"Shut up already! You're making a fool of yourself! If it wasn't against the rules to change scores, I wouldn't even give you a 0.1! You have the audacity to name it 'Enchanted Devotion', you're mocking the term and the work! Shameless!"
With that, Allan angrily pulled his chair, turned around, and stormed off!
The translator paused, feeling extremely awkward. After a moment of thought, she decided not to translate that. After all, it was a harsh rebuke, no, it was more like an insult.
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