At night, in a small town in the Virginia countryside, Chloe lay on her side, hugging her pillow in the dark of her bedroom.
The thin light from the streetlamp pierced through the curtain and scratched the carpet, while her lit cell phone was the only source of light in there.
Among all the notifications on her phone, every time a message popped up in her friends' group, an ache came up in Chloe's chest.
'Am I really wrong?' she asked herself as her chest ached remembering the fight they'd had today.
She opened Blink just to let her brain wander on its own, watching repeated videos, dances of people imitating Idols, cuts from Idols series that she didn't know, and then her thumb slid across the screen until it accidentally stopped on a different video.
The video showed a simple room with a boy in a sweatshirt holding a guitar on his lap, he had slightly messy black hair and an open notebook next to him as if he were focused on something.
The boy's appearance was what made her stop to watch the video out of curiosity, but this scene aroused her curiosity to understand what was going on.
'Is he an aspiring Idol?' She asked herself a little skeptically, tired of seeing videos of aspiring Idols who thought that just because they had Seeds they could become Idols with their bad songs.
In the video, the boy took a breath, glanced down at his notebook and asked himself quietly:
["Instrumental"]
"What if the song... was a conversation with myself?"
Thinking about her situation, Chloe's pillow sank further under her arms as she thought deprecatingly. 'A conversation with who? The stupid girl who always gives in?
In the video the boy strummed his guitar slowly, letting out a raw voice.
"Swore you'd change, kept playing the part... but where's the proof... where did you start?"
Her jaw dropped a little, surprised to realize that the song wasn't as bad as she'd thought, and most importantly, seemed to be talking to her!
In the video, he stopped the verse in the middle, scribbled two words, shook his head as if he'd thought of something good and went back to singing:
"I'm not here to make you feel small, but I won't keep taking the fall..."
The lump in her throat tightened, feeling as if this was really for her.'Every time, I become the nag... whenever someone has a problem, I stay up all night listening to them vent, I give them my best advice, but when it's me... no one cares.'
Feeling that this song was getting more interesting, Chloe watched the boy continue to sing:
"I gave you your time to shine... now the spotlight's finally mine..."
Hearing that, a fine shiver ran down her arm. 'Is he right?
His foot tapped the beat of the music and Chloe was caught up in the video as the turn came in, not noticing the various cuts on the screen that kept her even more entertained by the video.
"What's success? It's not a car, a chain, or a check..."
Chloe bit the corner of her lip, thinking of the few validations her friends gave her from time to time that made her so happy, but which now seemed like crumbs.
Then the scene changed to the boy singing on a beautiful stage with hundreds of people in the audience, and Chleo felt the skin on her forearm crawl!
"It's showing up when there's NOTHING LEFT!"
The lights bursting in the background, him holding the microphone as he sang that line with such force and conviction... she didn't even realize she was smiling.
The silence after the end of the video left her a little lost and pensive, not even seeing the text on the screen saying the name of the song.
When she realized that the video had already started again, she listened to the song even more carefully this time.
Now that she knew the song was good, Chleo began to pay more attention to the boy singing and noticed that although his voice couldn't take singing like that, sounding like it was hurting him, the feeling he was feeling in the song was so real that that pain made the song even better!
It was only at the end of the second time she heard it that she became curious to know who this boy was.
@TheoBlack.
The @ led to a profile labeled "Divine Idol".
She scrolled down the bio quickly, saw the song link on Lyra with only three thousand views and didn't think twice about adding it to her playlist.
Chloe tapped next and watched the video one more time until she worked up the courage to make a comment. She tried writing ("thank you for...") and deleted it, deciding to just leave a heart and saved the video in her collection before watching it again.
After listening to the song a few more times, even listening to the full version, she made up her mind.
"I'm not going to accept being everyone's second choice anymore, if someone wants my care and attention, let them work as hard as I do to get it!" Chloe spoke to herself happily, without noticing a small white light floating from her chest to the sky.
After a few minutes, the cell phone screen went off by itself and the streetlight scratched the carpet in the same way, but for a moment, Chloe felt more welcomed, happy to know that there was someone else who also felt what she was feeling.
- Theo POV -
Even though Theo was sweaty and stinking, Liam didn't care and ran over to Theo to show him the video.
The first thing Theo saw was the number of views: 38k!
For a profile with 10k followers, it had already reached almost 4x the number of his current followers, which was great!
Refreshing the page out of curiosity, the views had risen from 38k to 39k!
Then he looked at the likes and was surprised by the more than 4k likes on the video, a rate of more than 10%!
Curious about the comments, Theo opened the tab and saw that there were already over 200 comments.
[I just wanted to end my night watching memes of kitten stories, now I'm here crying and thinking how shitty I am... thank you very much].
[Bro was just thinking to himself and little did he know he was cooking a banger!]
[What's the name of the song?! I have to hear the full version!]
---- [Are you stupid? The name of the song appeared at the end of the video and in the video description...]
[I've spent the last few months doing nothing productive, this song of yours has motivated me to go back to school and look for a job, thanks bro]
[This song isn't so bad...]
[I think I've discovered that I'm in a toxic relationship, what do I do?!]
Reading the comments, Theo was very happy.
'Wow... the feeling of having so many people liking my music is incredible!' Theo thought excitedly.
Looking at the data on his profile, he noticed that he had gained another 190 followers in just the last few hours, which was incredible!
But there was something even more surprising.
Now that he had kept Hope inside him and was no longer spending Flare, Theo realized that he was slowly gaining more Flare!
The amount was very low, probably because of the distance he was from the people who heard the music and felt touched by it, but still, knowing that he could earn more Flare even without doing concerts was very useful.
"So, that's good, huh Theo?!" Liam asked excitedly, looking at Theo with shining eyes.
Seeing his little brother looking at him like that made Theo feel even better, so he smiled back and replied. "That's great, it's even better than I thought it would be in those first few hours!"
With Theo's confirmation, Liam got so excited that he started jumping up and down while he took his cell phone back to read the comments on the video.
This caused something to stir in Theo's chest and an idea came to him. "Liam, how about we celebrate today with pizza?!"
"Pizza?!" Liam stopped on the spot and looked at Theo in surprise. "YEAH!"
Ruffling Liam's hair, Theo said. "I'm just going to take a shower and I'll call you to order the pizza."
After saying that, he went to take a shower, but when he came out of the bathroom, he was confused to realize that Liam's excitement was gone.
"Hey Buddy, did you give up on the pizza?" Theo asked worriedly.
Liam looked at Theo hesitantly. "I don't think I want any more pizza..."
"Why?" Theo asked.
Liam hesitated a little longer, until he sighed and handed Theo his cell phone.
On the screen was a video of someone Theo knew, Miguel.
Miguel was much more popular than Theo, with more than 200,000 followers. If it hadn't been for the huge difference in the quality of the music and the performance on the show, Theo wouldn't have had a chance of winning the battle.
And this popularity was reflected in the video he was watching.
A video posted only fifteen minutes ago but which already had over 70,000 views and 5.6k likes, a sensational metric for a profile of this size.
The problem was the text in the video's description.
"Theo Black is a liar!"
This made Theo frown and click Play to see what Miguel was talking about.
Wearing a white shirt and a pitiful expression, Miguel spoke with 'sadness'.
"Hi guys... this is Miguel Burt. First of all, apologies to anyone who cheered for me on Divine Idol. I made a mistake in the elimination battle, I wrote my song, I rehearsed it on time, I delivered it according to the rules... and I lost. I lost to someone who..." *"changed the song at the last minute." He said while pretending to feel wronged.
With a pitying look at the camera, he continued:
"I tried to keep quiet, but my conscience wouldn't let me. Everyone in the cast knows that there's a submission deadline. We send the song, arrangement, lyrics... and that's it. Then, out of the blue, Theo changes everything on the day of the performance. Seriously... why would he do that?"
He laughed awkwardly and continued:
"I'm not accusing anyone, okay? Just... asking. If it were me, I'm sure they'd stop it. With us, the rules apply, but with him... it seems you can 'adjust' on stage and that's fine. And now he's posting videos on Blink staging the creative process, as if it had always been the plan. That's so convenient, isn't it?"
"I respect you, I respect art. I accept losing when it's fair play, but changing the song at short notice... I'm sorry, that smells weird. The only thing I ask for is transparency."
Putting his hands together in front of his chest, Miguel pretended to be praying as he spoke.
"Don't spread hate, just ask for justice. Comment there, tag the production, ask about the deadlines, use #CleanGame in the next vote, do the right thing: let the Idols who follow the rules continue. The rest... you know."
Then he sighed, looked away for a few seconds, then back at the camera.
"I have nothing against Theo, I swear. I was even rooting for him at first when I saw he was an underdog, but after yesterday... I can't pretend I didn't see it. Thanks for listening."
Looking at the screen, Theo felt the heart in his chest accelerate.
Opening his profile, Theo saw that the views of his video had skyrocketed.
From 39k the last time he looked, the video was now at 100k, the problem was that among the good comments he had read a few minutes ago, now hundreds of comments cursing him had also appeared.
[You piece of shit, do you think it's fair to use a song that isn't yours in the competition?!]
[I thought this song was too good to be true... I'm disappointed].
[And I thought you were a promising Idol, looks like you're just a cheat!]
[I'm going to hope that you get eliminated in the next round of the show!]
[Guys, are you sure he cheated? That song sounds pretty sincere to me...]
[Let's send a message to Divine Idol production to kick this cheater out!]
Although there were some good comments from sensible people defending him, Theo felt bad when he saw that most of the new comments were swearing.
'Jeez, I've just come from a world where everyone hated me for something I didn't do, only to find myself in a situation where people are hating me for something else I didn't do?' Theo thought disappointedly.
Feeling that his career in this world could be derailing just as it had in his previous world, Theo felt a great sense of helplessness.
But suddenly, a hand touched his shoulder. "Bro, don't be sad, I know you wrote that song... you just have to prove Miguel wrong."
Looking at Liam trusting him, Theo remembered the other world, where everyone disbelieved him and only Liam stood firm, trusting and encouraging him, only for him to be a coward and not go to the boy's wedding...
'No Theo, you can't let that happen here again. He thought resolutely. 'Whoever is attacking me now is just a jealous Idol, not a major controller of the entertainment industry, I still have a chance to turn this around!'
Looking at Liam, Theo nodded at him and showed a confident expression. "Thanks Liam, I'll show them they're wrong."
Seeing that Theo had become more animated, Liam also smiled and asked. "So we can still have pizza?"
"Yeah." Theo laughed as he confirmed.
Every 30 minutes Theo took out his cell phone and looked at these videos.
Even though the publicity was negative, Miguel's video didn't only bring bad things.
With Theo's video reaching 120k views, he had already received more than 1k new followers on his profile.
Sure, some of those followers came just to hate on him, but Theo didn't care, as long as he could build an audience and keep posting interesting videos, he was confident of converting those haters into fans.
And the first step was to attract as large an audience as possible.
Knowing the power of internet fights to attract an audience, Theo knew that if he came forward to answer this now, the fight would be over in a day or two and the publicity he would receive from it would be minimal.
He even had a plan of videos to post during the week to attract more attention to his profile, but with this video of Miguel, Theo saw an even better opportunity.
Even more so after looking at Lyra and seeing that the views on his song were skyrocketing!
But he knew that just keeping quiet and letting Miguel control public opinion would be dumb, so Theo took a photo of himself, dressed in the badboy style he wore on stage at Divine Idol with the caption "The answer will come on stage."
And that single post was enough to make the fight escalate even further, people who didn't know about the show became curious about it, and those who liked Theo's music felt more confident about the possibility that he was right, after seeing his confidence to post it.
With that, the public's expectations for the next episode of Divine Idol were higher than ever!
///NunuNote///
Thank you for read the novel till here, I hope you liked it, vote with your powers stones and comment to give me motivation!