"Theo, let me see your sword!" An excited voice woke Theo up early in the morning.
"That could sound very wrong..." Theo muttered as he woke up lost.
Looking around, he found himself in the room of the old Theo of this world, a room very similar to the room he had as a teenager, with only a cheap laptop, a few music books and a guitar that this version of him hadn't yet learned to play.
When the Theo of this world found out he had a Seed, his personality completely changed to idolize everything related to music, so he sold his old comics for music books, bought a guitar and started taking online lessons, and spent most of the day just studying to become a good musician.
At the bedroom door stood a smaller version of Theo, a boy with short black hair, a handsome, thin face with some baby fat that still hadn't disappeared, wearing pajamas from an online game he liked, staring at Theo with bright green eyes.
"Please, bro, let me see your sword!" He said excitedly as he entered the room and stood next to Theo.
It took Theo a few seconds to process what was going on, where he was, and how Liam was so young again, but remembering the transmigration yesterday, he quickly connected everything and understood which sword Liam was talking about.
Smiling, Theo stretched his hand forward and black smoke began to billow from his hand, quickly turning into his black sword.
Seeing that sword, Liam's eyes began to shine even brighter. "Bro, I can't believe you actually got through Bloom and became an Idol!"
Theo smiled at how Liam was acting, missing seeing his brother being so close to him.
"Do you want to hold it?" Theo asked as he held out the sword to Liam.
"Can I?" The boy asked as he wiggled with excitement.
"Sure." Theo nodded and handed the sword to Liam, causing the chains to rattle and the sound of metal to reverberate around the room. "Just be very careful because that sword is very sharp."
Liam nodded and looked at the sword as if it were the most incredible thing in the world.
"I think that's the most awesome Piece I've ever seen! What's it called?" He asked curiously.
This confused Theo. "Name? I haven't thought of a name for it..."
Liam looked at Theo in surprise before shaking his head from side to side. "No way, you have to give it a cool name, a name that matches how badass it is!"
Theo looked at the blade in Liam's hand, who was swinging it from side to side carefully, and a name came to mind. "I think I'll call it Hope."
Before Liam could say anything, the blade pulsed slightly in a white light, as if reacting positively to the name it had received, surprising both boys.
"Did you like the sword?" Liam asked shocked, looking at Hope with even more interest. "But thinking of the song you sang while Hope was being created, that really is a good name!"
Theo felt as if Hope had actually said she liked the name, which was surprising. As far as he could remember, only A Rank Pieces awakened consciousness...
But his thoughts were interrupted by the bedroom door opening, where Elena was holding a basket of clean clothes and looking at Liam with a horrified expression.
"LIAM, DROP THAT WEAPON NOW!" She screamed in fright as she dropped the basket of clothes and ran to Liam.
Startled, Liam did as he was told and opened his hand, dropping the sword which began to fall towards his foot, startling the three of them.
Theo quickly reached out to Hope and commanded it to return to his soul, dissolving the blade into smoke before it cut his brother's foot.
At that, the room fell silent.
Liam was staring at his nearly severed foot in shock, Elena was looking at Liam from head to toe to make sure he hadn't been hurt, in shock, and Theo was wiping the sweat that had broken out on his forehead from the stress of the situation.
After confirming that Liam was all right, Elena looked at Theo angrily. "Theo, are you crazy? What kind of idea is it to give a sharp sword to a child?!"
'What almost caused the accident was your scream...' Theo thought as he controlled himself not to roll his eyes, but not wanting to cause even more conflict, he just bowed his head and apologized. "I'm sorry."
It had indeed been irresponsible to give a sharp sword to a 14-year-old boy, but considering that even if Hope wasn't in his hand, he still had control over it, he was confident that he could handle the situation as he did now.
But considering that if he was a little slower in his reaction Liam would really lose his footing, Theo felt that it was his responsibility too.
Elena was surprised that Theo was so open in admitting his mistake and didn't quite know how to react.
"Mom, don't fight with Theo, I'm the one who woke him up and asked him to show me his sword..." Liam quickly tried to defend his brother, who had only done what he had asked.
Seeing Liam defending his brother, Elena felt reason come back to her and understood that the reason for the accident was the shout she gave that scared Liam, so she nodded to Liam and spoke while looking at Theo. "I'm sorry too... if I hadn't shouted it wouldn't have happened... but don't let Liam hold that weapon anymore, Theo, it's too dangerous."
Theo was also surprised by his mother's reaction, but quickly nodded in agreement.
Satisfied, Elena left the basket of clean clothes in Theo's room and said as she left: "These are your clothes that I've washed, breakfast is almost ready, get dressed and come and eat."
As she left the room, Liam looked at Theo with an apologetic expression. "I'm sorry, bro, if I hadn't asked you to see Hope I wouldn't have gotten you in trouble with Mom..."
Theo smiled at the boy and rubbed his hair. "Don't worry, it wasn't your fault, let's get changed and eat."
Liam nodded and ran up to his room, leaving Theo alone.
After changing, wearing a white sweatshirt with black jeans, Theo went down to the kitchen and started eating.
When he got to the kitchen, the first thing Theo did was eat two more spoonfuls of honey.
Seeing this, Elena became worried and asked. "How's your throat?"
"It's much better than yesterday, I think the honey moisturized it well from yesterday to today, maybe by tonight I'll be completely recovered." Theo replied.
"Good." That was the only thing she said about it.
Ever since Theo had commented that he wanted to become an Idol, while Thomas had been very much in favor of the idea, Elena had hated every part of it.
Not only because of how difficult it was to go through the Bloom, but because of how dangerous the life of Idols was, who had to fight monsters constantly and had the responsibility of dealing with monsters that appeared near them, putting themselves in "unnecessary danger" according to Elena.
Theo understood her view, if one of his children also wanted to take a chance on something like this, he would also be concerned, but because the old Theo was so hard-headed, the two of them couldn't talk to each other like civilized people and whenever this subject came up, the two of them fought.
There were so many fights that at some point a few months ago the two stopped talking altogether, just ignoring each other at home.
Theo knew that the old Theo hated it and missed talking to his mother, just as Elena had also given several signs that she didn't like being away from her son, but as Theo could only talk and think about music, their relationship became very strained, reaching a point where it was difficult to remedy.
Theo wasn't mature enough to understand his mother's side of the story, and Elena worried so much that she couldn't feel comfortable listening to her son talking about being an Idol and fighting monsters every day.
But with the mind he had now, Theo felt that he could improve his situation with Elena, and maybe even make her like him being an Idol.
It would be impossible to make her stop worrying, but if he reassured her enough, and showed her the difference he would make to the world, that would go a long way to improving her impression of him.
For the time being, it was still too early to change anything, Theo was already content to talk to his mother from time to time, leaving their relationship to improve little by little over time.
After breakfast, Theo went back to his room and turned on his laptop.
Looking at his account on Blink, the world's largest social network, Theo was surprised to see that he had just over 10,000 followers, and that with a profile with only personal photos that he posted every few months!
Opening the most recent photo, Theo began to read the comments and understood where these people came from.
[@luna.arts: Wow, Theo... I never thought that leather jacket and serious look matched your shy personality, but after yesterday... it was perfect].
[@isa.cristal: I cried listening to Hope... and I cried ugly. It reminded me of when I lost my father... thank you for putting that into such a beautiful song].
[@Miguelfanbeuty: Congratulations, you destroyed Miguel's dream just to waste that spot on Divine Idol... I hope you get eliminated next week!]
[@natymoonlight: My brother never compliments anything I like, but yesterday while I was listening to you sing Hope he came into my room and kept listening to the song with me, he even asked me what your name was so he could add your song to his playlist!]
[@flaameonnn: Please release Hope on Lyra urgently, I need to hear this song again without having to open the recording of yesterday's episode every time!]
Reading these comments, Theo understood that all this audience came from yesterday's show!
Out of curiosity, he looked at the other contestants' profiles and was surprised by the result.
'I already knew they were popular, but I didn't imagine it would be this much...' he thought.
Among the other 8 contestants on the show, the least popular contestant had 100,000 followers, while the most popular had almost 2 million!
Even Miguel, who was eliminated yesterday, had 80,000 followers.
The sense of confidence he felt when he saw the 10,000 followers he had quickly disappeared.
'I need to grow my Blink profile... I was lucky that the song I sang was much better than Miguel's, because if I relied solely on popularity to get votes, I'd lose for sure. Theo thought. 'And considering that there's no one in this world trying to stop me from growing, with what I know I think I can make this profile more popular by next weekend. Even if I don't reach the top contestants, if I use the show's popularity well I might be able to multiply my current fanbase a few times over!'
Having decided this, Theo quickly downloaded a music production program and decided to record Hope, with the recorded song he could make several promotional videos that could go viral.
'I hope those otherworldly viral video tactics work here too...'