[Pepper POV]
'I'm worried.'
As I drove Edward to the recording studio, I saw that he was taking a nap as he had woken up so early today.
'He's been pushing himself lately.'
Putting a jacket on the young teen's body to cover him up from the cold, I drove a bit slower than usual to let him sleep a little bit longer. I couldn't help but to notice that he put a huge burden on himself. It was as if… he feared that the moment he stopped working, he would lose all of his value.
"(sigh) The curse of a genius. But I guess that's my role in his story. I need to prevent him from crumbling." I muttered underneath my breath as I glanced at him.
Suddenly, I got a call from a close friend. I pushed the button on my bluetooth earphone to answer it and spoke in a slightly toned down volume lest I interrupt Edward's sleep.
"Pepper, we're already here. Where are you?" Mitchell asked me. I guessed he had already arrived at the studio.
"Patience my boy. A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to," I replied.
"The ring is already in Sauron's hand. The fire of Mordor has already spread throughout the lands, Gondor has Fallen and the men of the Riddermark are now slaves to the dark one's will." Cam interjected, in which I assumed he had snatched the phone from Mitchell.
Cam had recently been complaining about how he was the only one that had been left behind while Mitch and I enjoyed watching Edward's performance by ourselves without thinking about him. That was why I called him over today, just to rub his nose in the fact that no matter how much he pestered me , he would never get to see the magical moment once more. And also to finally shut him up.
"Don't be so dramatic. I'll be there in another 10 minutes. Besides, I gave you guys the wrong time anyway, so no one else is there yet."
"What? Why?!" Cam asked in frustration. I giggled and said, "Why indeed."
[Mitch and Cam's commentary]
Mitchell tried to explain, "Okay. A little while back, Cam gave Pepper the wrong time for a party."
"A LITTLE WHILE?!" Cam was offended by Mitchell's effort to downplay the pettiness. He said, "It was 7 years ago! I didn't even remember it. But he held a grudge for 7 whole YEARS!"
Mitchell waited for Cam to calm down before saying, "So yeah. He played us. But he already showed "mercy" and toned down the retribution because we have a baby."
"Otherwise he would have left us stranded in the middle of the desert for a day." Cam added with fear in his eyes.
"He wouldn't do that." Mitchell said smilingly. Cam turned to him and asked, "Wouldn't he Mitchell?.... wouldn't he?? Of course He would."
Mitchell looked at the camera with a frozen expression as he thought about the possibility of that actually happening.
[Commentary ends]
We arrived at the recording studio at noon. As I saw the studio, I couldn't help but let out a disappointed sigh.
"If only mother trusted me."
I had a talk with my mother– a rich widow that inherited almost all of my oil magnate father's wealth for a chance to relocate the studio somewhere nearby a few days ago at her annual dinner party, but she wouldn't let me do that as she thought I was currently being tricked by an incubus that would siphon away all of her wealth.
"Pepper!" Mitchell called out to me in excitement after I parked the car. Ed was still sleeping so I held a finger on my lips and hushed Mitchell quickly. He took a look at my driver's seat and nodded in understanding before we moved a bit further from Ed to have a talk.
"So. How did it go? Do you have more money yet?" Cam asked snarkily as he joined Mitchell and I while holding Lily in his arms.
"Are you crazy, bringing a baby here? She could burst an eardrum!" I said in horror as I saw the asian baby in Cam's eyes.
"Don't be dramatic. It's a studio. And see, I brought headphones for her." Cam said excitedly. He dressed her up like a panda, probably because of her heritage. That made me wonder, 'Is she Chinese? I remember she's from a different country.'
Mitchell noticed my confusion and said in defense, "She grabbed the clothes today and wouldn't let go. So we dressed her up in the clothes she picked." He brought his palms together before saying, "Back to the original topic. Are you sure you can launch the album without more funding?
"If only she would listen to me. And come to meet Ed. I know she wouldn't be able to withstand his charms." I said in disappointment. "To answer your question… No. But we can release his singles in a few days…. Mother threw me a check for being her favorite son. Although I am her only son… and only child."
Mitch and Cam nodded in acknowledgement of my misery before I continued, "The revenue from that will be reinvested into his album production. Right now, I only have money for his music video production. I can't even host brunch this week. I'm like you, I tell you. POOR. POOR!"
"If you need help, I can talk to my dad. He might not seem like it, but he's Edward's hardcore fan. Manny said he listened to the song 7 years everyday, and even sang the song in the shower."
"Really? Is your father rich?" I asked Mitchell in excitement.
"Have you seen his wife?" Cam interjected.
"Maybe I did. But I don't remember." I replied.
"Believe me. You would remember." Cam said with a slight nodding. Mitchell nodded too, but I still didn't understand why they were doing that at the moment.
We walked to the front door, but before I could press the keypad to enter the password, a hippie opened the door from the inside and excited the studio.
"Oh. You guys are not pizza delivery men ." The music engineer Leo muttered while being completely high from the marijuana he was smoking. "Or…are you the pizza store owners? I'm starving. Where's the pizza?"
I gazed contemptuously at Leo and said, "You're so high that you can't even recognize your boss?"
"No. My boss is a sassy little man. Not a sassy little pizza store owner, a wimpy ginger, and a large red balloon."
"Hey! No one calls my husband a balloon." Mitchell said defensively. Cam patted Mitchell's shoulder and said to him, "Mitchell, there's a red balloon floating right behind me. But it's good to know what you are thinking about."
Mitchell realized he had fucked up, and he turned toward Leo in contempt. "You know what? You're fired!"
"You're not my boss?!" Leo said in puzzlement.
"Yeah. I'm his boss." I said to Mitchell before turning to Leo. "Also, you are fired. Please leave the premise now. Or I will call the cops on you."
"Try me. The boss will come and bail me out." Leo said in confidence.
I became frustrated and I yelled at him, "I. AM. YOUR. BOSS!"
…
[Edward POV]
"Ugh. How long did I sleep?"
Finally waking up from my nap, I checked my watch and found out it was almost 12 o'clock. I was woken up by the commotion that was happening in front of the studio, and walked right toward it after exiting the car.
Pepper was yelling at the sound engineer that was as high as a kite while Cam was keeping Lily far away from the conflict despite his instinct telling him to stay there.
Leo saw me and ran slightly towards me before saying, "Boss. These people want to fire me for ordering pizza."
"Uhh… Oooook can someone please explain this to me?"
"You're the sassy little man? I thought….definitely… that he meant Pepper." Mitchell said in embarrassment. Pepper was still angry and I was put between a rock and a hard place with this whole situation.
But through some convincing and sweet talk, I managed to convince Pepper to let go of his resentment towards Leo. It couldn't be helped that he didn't recognize the owner as we were only here 2 times before.
As I didn't have a lot of free time, I worked diligently to complete 2 songs before lunch. Together with the songs I had previously recorded, I had 7 songs registered for my album. The two songs I did were Amnesia and Photograph, and I completely took over Leo's job for sound synthesizing and editing, but he was still needed as he was the only one who understood the equipment other than me.
"See. Even if I did fire him, it wouldn't have made a difference." Pepper said in annoyance as we had Subway sandwiches for lunch today. I noticed that Pepper was struggling financially the minute he brought the food into the recording studio. There was no way that Pepper would eat anything from a fast food franchise if he had other options.
"Yeah. But we're paying him an average salary straight from the 70s. So it doesn't matter much."
I turned to Leo who was eating his pizza sloppily at the next table. He smiled innocently at me and I returned the smile before turning back to Pepper.
"Enough about him. This topic only stressed me out. I finally found a director for the music video. He'll come here together with the Twilight producers." Pepper said.
The Temple Hill Entertainment Maverick Production wanted to settle the song agreement earlier for "Two is Better than One", and for "It will Rain". All of the production cost for these music videos would be completely covered by them as they wanted to release the song as soon as possible in order to help the marketing campaign for the next Twilight movie.
From costume to staging, all of it would be handled by their production company, so I would just have to be there on time to film it. The music video would include scenes from the movie, therefore I didn't have to do much unlike for my other songs where I would need to play my role as the singer and within the "story".
"Sure. I'll try to finish a few more songs before that." I muttered in a casual tone.
"Ed. What happened to your game? Why is your name blowing up on the internet right now?" Cam suddenly walked into the breakroom while holding Lily in his arms. The moment Lily saw me, she automatically reached her tiny arms out to ask me to pick her up.
"Hmmm." Cam let out a sad whimper as he noticed that Lily still liked me more than him.
"I don't know. Let me call Alex. She's the only one with access to my computer." I said as I took out my phone. The call rang just for 2 seconds before Alex picked up the phone.
"HELLO! IT'S C-CRAZY!! SOMETHING REALLY CRAZY HAPPENED!" Alex shouted with intense excitement the second she picked up the phone. I put her on a loud speaker and Mitchell ran lightly to the breakroom to listen too.
"What happened?" I asked her in confusion. Since I was totally in the dark of the whole situation as I had to keep all of my focus on recording. "Did the game fail?"
Cam gave me a side eye, but then he realized that I was asking the question seriously. He said hurriedly, " Ed. Believe in yourself more. Your game is TRENDING!"
"I'm sorry…What?"
…
[3rd Person POV]
-Audience Reaction-
Lily, the president of Edward Newgate's official fan club, had made sure that all other members of the club downloaded the game at the time of the launch to show support for the artist. Her curly blonde hair was hidden by the hood from the hooded sweater she was wearing, and her rectangular glasses framed her face perfectly.
"How are the downloads looking?" Lily asked using her headset as she sat on her computer table while monitoring the Apps store.
"10,000 Android, 20.000 Apple." A manly voice responded to her from the other line.
"In an hour? It's okay, but we still need to pump the number up! Hear that rookie?" Lily asked.
"Wait, Taylor just uploaded a video?" A child-like voice called back to her and sent the video link to their group text.
Lily clicked on the link, and her browser was redirected to Taylor's official Facebook page.
The video started with Taylor stealthily recording herself outside a waiting room.
"Wanna see something cool?" She talked to the audience. Then, she barged into the waiting room, revealing Selena Gomez, and a lot of other Disney label artists were playing the Flappy Bird game obsessively. They were startled by her presence, but they didn't stop playing the game – nor did they even look up from their phone.
Taylor neared her camera to Selena and asked giddily, "What'chu doing?"
Selena raised her head with a cute, frustrated expression. "Thinking about cooking a bird today."
The video went viral when Taylor mentioned about the new game, Flappy Bird.
"I knew it! They're a couple!" 'Rookie' spoke in excitement. "There's no way Taylor would do this if they weren't dating!"
"Or…They could just be best friends. I don't know. I still think we shouldn't put labels on it if they aren't revealing their relationship." The manly voice said.
Lily ignored both of them and muttered, "Wait- Disney allowed them to post this?... Why?"
"I think that's because she didn't advertise the game directly. It also helped in maintaining their star's innocent image, so I think Disney won't cause any trouble." 'Rookie' hypothesized.
"Or, they made a deal with Edward. We don't know what is happening in the background. But one thing's for sure, the game will blow up really quickly."
Despite her efforts, Lily didn't actually believe that Edward could make a good game, especially after she watched the trailer. It was just a bird jumping around passing hurdles in her opinion.
But after playing the game, her first impression was proven wrong. The game was just so addictive for her she couldn't stop playing, and she was sure that most people would feel the same way as her.
"The best part is the bird's taunts. I passed 10 hurdles, and it said, [Is that all you can do? And here I thought I was the one with the bird brain.] I want to roast that bird. Deep fry it. Hot wing sauce it-"
"Shut up Rookie." The manly voice screamed. "The premium version is better. You can unlock a certain perk after passing 10 hurdles. I'm already at 50 points now. Wait- why can't I play it anymore?"
"Huh. What happened?" Lily asked in concern. "Is the game broken?"
"No. The bird is telling me to rest. He's holding a protest banner and has bandages all over his body. I can get back to the game after 20 minutes. Ohhh, I guess it's because I have been playing for 2 hours straight."
"Ahh…Really? He stopped people from playing? Won't it be bad for him?" Rookie asked.
"No. I think he made this to stop people from getting addicted." Lily replied with a bright smile on her face. "He's a brilliant man." She mumbled while flashing a fanatical glint in her eyes.
"Oh. But I can play a minigame in between." The manly voice said.
"A minigame?" Lily asked.
"There's a few options to choose from. A baby bird flight test- which is a bit sadistic cause I need to throw the bird from its nest and prevent it from falling to their death, a word guessing game, and a bird feeding game." Rookie explained.
The game would soon break the record for the fastest game to reach 100 thousand downloads, and would reach 1 million downloads in just 3 days.
"Hey, will he stop singing…you know, if he becomes rich from the game?" Rookie asked, his voice turned a bit lower from the depressing thought.
"Nah. He's a bonafide musician. He won't stop singing." The manly voice replied. "Lily, are you there?"
"Y-yeah. I'm still here. Okay, I also think he won't stop singing. Wait, did you guys check the credit section of the game?" Lily said as she opened the game on her Iphone.
"All of this…is basically his solo work!" Lily said in excitement. "Our sailor is a genius!"
…
[Edward POV]
"80,000 downloads? Seriously?" I asked while being flabbergasted as I heard Alex's report.
"That's only in the Apple store. You're at 75,000 downloads in the Android store. It's a bit slower there, but the numbers are starting to increase at the same rate as the Apple store." Alex said in excitement.
"O-Okay." I replied with a stutter as the game debut had passed through all of my expectations. A few articles had come out about an artist who also moonlighted as a programmer– some criticism about my decision, and some clickbait articles about me and Taylor that contributed to the virality of the game.
"In my previous life, the game developer used "I will delete the game soon," marketing scheme to make people download the game as fast as they could, but I guess I don't have to follow him on that." I mumbled to myself after hanging up the call with Alex.
Only 5 hours after the game was uploaded into the stores, I had received more than 45,000 dollars in net profit after subtracting the platform tax and the server fee for the game. The ads, especially the ads revenue was pouring into my account. My decision to include the option to watch 30 second ads to decrease the waiting time for 5 minutes was correct.
"Pepper, we can upgrade the quality of the music video!" I said in excitement to Pepper as I jogged lightly towards him. Now that funds had been injected into my accounts, I could decrease the burden on Pepper's shoulders– However, he was adamant about rejecting my help.
"I'm the CEO. I need to handle this problem on my own. Also, you don't have to worry. My mom is an avid Twilight fan. When the music video is released, she won't have a choice but to open up her wallet."
"But Pepper. Accepting my help now will make the music video better since we would be able to use higher quality props and effects. That way, we can get a bigger profit."
After some relentless badgering, Pepper finally said in defeat, "FINE. But you're taking a bigger cut after this."
"What- NO!"
"No debates. Oh boy, you're making me have a headache. I need to sit down far away from you." Pepper said as he ran away from continuing the discussion.
The film producers arrived at 4 pm, and after I performed the song "It Will Rain" to them, the producers loved it so much that some of them even tried to hug me afterward. Of course, my Pepper shield wouldn't let them do that.
Cam didn't mind the Pepper shield and hugged me tightly after hearing the song. Mitchell asked, "This is one of the songs you wrote at the very beginning right?"
"Yeah. I wrote it 2 years ago." I replied casually despite Mitchell and Cam's over exaggerated reactions. They gasped and tried to cover their mouth in a dramatic way, but I ignored them and went to play with Lily instead.
"Did you like it, Lily?" I asked as I leaned into her face. She was still sitting in her car seat at the moment, and kept sucking on a pacifier.
"Bah..Bahh…" Lily smacked my cheeks lightly after spitting out the fake nipple and gripped my clothes tightly. "Bah..Buh…Bed…"
"Bed?" I opened my eyes wide when I heard that. Mitch and Cam were frozen, and Pepper was shocked by the baby's first word.
"Bed…BED…" Lily called out to me many times as she thought she had finally managed to call my name.
Cam cried immediately and said, "She's never even called us "DADA" before… Why is he so special??!" Cam leaned his head on his partner's shoulder before Mitchell hugged him and patted his back.
"Yeah. Let it all out."
(A/N: The lyrics and reactions will be written during his music video release.)