Thug and Idol: 10X Rewards Second Identity System

Over the next several days, Nel found out why.

Tristan worked incredibly hard over their project, as if he had endless stamina, and pushed others to do the same. And when he didn't push, he inspired hard work by his mere presence.

It was productive, exhilarating, and exhausting, but together, they composed the covers they were going to make in record time. Although they weren't just covers anymore, they were rearrangements.

Nel's cover on Tristan's 'Dragonfly' was an even wilder rearrangement of an already metal song. When Nel showed Tristan a rough version of it, Tristan's first reaction was incredulity.

"You want to turn this into dubstep, Nel? Seriously? That's…" Tristan paused. "That's amazing, actually. Definitely not something I'd come up for a stage performance!"

Dubstep music was a genre of electronic music. It had powerful bass lines and beats with sounds that couldn't be performed without a DJ station.

And to add more contrast to this all, Nel planned to record his music video in nature, a place that was the most removed from electronic music.

Nel laughed.

"Your cover of my 'Jester Jester' is much better! I swear—whenever you play a guitar, it's like God himself descended to us to show how to do it right. And threaten people who do it wrong with eternal punishment…"

Tristan huffed.

"I don't do that."

"You don't even have to threaten, the idea is scary enough already."

For his version of Nel's song, Tristan slowed the melody, turning it from a fast and energetic one to a song that was almost lyrical. The mood of it changed completely.

Now the 'Jester' in the song became very Gothic, just like the costume Tristan planned to wear in the music video.

He put a lot of his time and effort into making the video as quickly as possible. If he was doing this alone, Tristan could have finished in a few weeks, but an entire crew of people from the agency handled shootings and such. And they worked with other stars from the agency at the same time, too.

Even though Tristan was given priority, there was a limit to how quick or slow things could be.

He just wanted to release this project before December.

But while Tristan waited for other people involved to do their part of his work, he also began preparing his performance for the Californian Young Star contest.

Nel's electronic arrangement of Tristan's song actually gave him an idea.

A song that will show off Tristan's skill with the guitar to awe everyone.

Saying that dubstep couldn't be performed without a DJ station, after all, was a lie. It was technically possible to perform on a few other exotic and very specialized instruments. Or, if you were a real pro, it could be played on an electric guitar.

With a performance like that, and Tristan's hypnotic voice, there was no way for anyone to compete with him in song quality alone. Although hypnotic voice didn't carry over records, it would still awe a living audience.

In short, Tristan was sure that music-wise, this contest will be a smooth sailing. Arranging things with the gang business was harder, but Tristan was getting there, too.

Of course, something had to throw a wrench into Tristan's work schedule.

***

Greenpawl's residence.

Jane stared at the screen of her phone, aghast.

When the next day after her manager passed the offer of cooperation, she was told that Tristan refused it without explaining the reasons, Jane was disappointed. However, she quickly assured herself that Tristan was simply too busy preparing for the December performance to work together with her at the time.

Jane realized she was too naïve again.

She had many friends in the showbiz industry. It was important to have connections, after all. And many of these friends knew about Jane's opinion about Gemello—which she wasn't even hiding, anyway.

Now one of them sent her terrible, terrible news.

It was the true reason why Tristan rejected Jane's generous offer.

[!!!! Jane :((((]n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

[Gemello is making a promo with that shiny guy who took second place at the contest. It's 100% true!!!! Look]

Next was a screenshot of a conversation between Jane's friend and one of the assistants inside of the GTG agency's production team.

Although the assistant didn't speak about the project between Nelson Mayar and Tristan Gemello directly, he alluded to it so clearly that there could be no doubts.

Seeing this, Jane wanted to spit someone in the face!

Tristan rejected her again, and this was all because… because of…

'It's because of this buffoon, Nelson!' Jane thought. 'I don't know what lies and tricks he used to convince Tristan that he's a better choice for a project together, but I will expose him to the world!'

***

Tristan and Nel were at the final stages of the shooting for the music video, shooting a bit about their meeting in the music hall.

Since dramatically reenacting scenes without all the staff members and other actors was pointless, Tristan and Nel just walked around the empty hallways of the building and talked about things.

Nel wasn't a trained actor, but he was expressing his emotions very genuinely and it looked good on camera, anyway. As for Tristan, every shot with him exuded so much charisma that all women and some men in the production crew sighed wistfully every five minutes of work.

Despite the sighing, everybody worked hard, and Tristan hoped to finish the shooting itself on that day.

It was around noon when Nel took a break from standing under cameras, while Tristan continued shooting, and soon after, when he froze in shock. Read new adventures at m_v-l'e-NovelBin

Although he was looking at the camera at the moment, Tristan still noticed this with a corner of his eye. Gesturing for the camera operator to wait, Tristan stormed toward Nel to see what made him look so pale, it was visible through his makeup.

Nel was staring at a social media post, which linked an article on some yellow pages news outlet.

[Nelson Mayar—a promising star with a shocking secret? Interview with his parents!]