I Married the President

Claire: Teacher Hartwell, something seems to be wrong at Taylor Palace Restaurant. Would you be able to send someone undercover to take a look? I get the feeling there’s more to that place than meets the eye.

She thought Teacher Hartwell would be asleep by now and was surprised when he replied: "Taylor Palace Restaurant, huh? I’ll go myself. The Taylor Family has a powerful background. Sending one of the junior guys would be a bad idea; they wouldn’t be able to handle it."

Claire: You’re going to go yourself?

Reporter Henry Hartwell: Mmm-hmm. For now, just string him along. Stall him and buy me some time.

Claire: Okay, I know what to do.

Claire Sinclair switched back to her chat with Taylor’s Highway and sent a reply: "Mr. Taylor, my apologies. I’ve been quite busy lately and I’m afraid I won’t have time to address your matter. Would you be able to wait a few days? We can meet to discuss it then."

Taylor’s Highway: Okay!

Then he added another message: "It’s so late. Why aren’t you asleep yet?"

Claire Sinclair smiled. ’Sorry, but I’m not here for small talk.’ She put her phone down and went to sleep.

–

The next day, the contestants were busy practicing the theme song, which meant there wasn’t much for the celebrity mentors to do. However, Claire Sinclair had a heavy workload. She had to observe the contestants’ words and actions during their daily practices.

Moreover, the production team had secretly arranged a special test for the contestants. Claire’s job was to evaluate their on-the-spot reactions and give them their final score for professional ethics.

The test was simple. A staff member would deliberately place a cell phone in the middle of a path, and then they would observe the contestants’ every move to see how they reacted.

Claire Sinclair sat in the observation room, watching the first contestant approach.

The contestant looked at the phone on the ground with a puzzled expression. He turned to the cameraman and said, "Hey, there’s a phone over there. It must belong to one of the crew. All of our phones were confiscated."

After saying this, the contestant walked over and picked up the phone.

To his surprise, the phone wasn’t password-protected. The contestant turned to the cameraman. "Should I try to find out who the owner is so I can return it?"

The cameraman shook his head but said nothing.

The contestant thought for a moment before saying, "On second thought, no. What if there’s private information on it? That would be an invasion of privacy. I’ll just give it to the director."

That was the first contestant’s reaction.

Claire Sinclair gave him a 99, docking one point just to keep him from getting arrogant.

Of the contestants that followed, some picked up the phone and looked through its contents. They found an intimate photo of Mimi Fisher and Cecily Taylor, which made their faces turn pale with fright before they scrambled to hand the phone over to the production team.

Other contestants secretly used the phone to call their families.

Some even played a game on the phone before finally handing it over to the production team.

Even worse, some contestants actually used the phone to go online and post inappropriate comments...

Then there were those who simply stepped over the phone and ignored it completely.

Out of the 100 contestants, fewer than 20 picked up the phone and either tried to find the owner by asking staff members or handed it in directly to the production team.

After watching all one hundred contestants, Claire Sinclair assigned one hundred scores. For now, however, the scores couldn’t be revealed. The contestants couldn’t even know that this part of the competition had happened.

According to the competition’s rules, there would be five tests for professional ethics in total, and this was only the first. The final combined score from all five tests would be multiplied by 10,000 and added to each contestant’s final vote total.

In other words, the professional ethics score was a critical way for contestants to earn bonus points.