365 Days with the Celebrity

Chapter 5 - The Idea

"$23 million extra in total? No way! You're a WICKED negotiator," Arnold laughed as he playfully smacked Leon's shoulder.

"I'm LEON WALTZ, who else?" Leon proclaimed with a smug. "Let's get to business on how we can make this work and send our proposal to the old man this evening."

The army of marketing and PR executives gathered at the boardroom of Avon Music, filled with awards and plaques that Leon won over the years as an established international Pop R'n'B artiste, their biggest selling artiste to date. Since the day he was first discovered at the age of sixteen at a shopping mall singing his guitar compositions on stage, life for the once shy and soft-spoken boy was never the same.

Born to struggling working-class parents, Leon taught himself to sing at the age of 14 after he first fell in love with the songs of folk music. The aspiring singer performed on stage in school plays and was part of the guitar club in high school where he picked up guitar skills. He frequented malls and cafes to play his guitar and sing, with the support of his loving parents who never once thought that his hobby would one day blossom into the fame that he was now in. His older brother, Angel Waltz attended a prestigious university studying law after deciding that working as a business executive no longer interest him, a privilege which would have been impossible if Leon was not discovered for stardom while he was still in high school. The small two-bedroom house that his family used to rent was now replaced with a lake-side mansion nestled within the picturesque nature of trees and mountains, where his parents had retired. It was far from the prying eyes of the media. He would escape there once in a while to recharge his sanity, although he has not seen his parents for the longest time recently.

Leon remembered being the luckiest teenager on earth when he was first approached by the major music label, Avon Music to start a singing career in dance and Pop R'n'B, a genre that he had never explored before. He endured hours of gruelling dance and singing practices, harsh criticisms of his fledgling performances and how he should carry his image, and the pressure to look good. Leon soon realised that the world of fame was a maze filled with snakes, bending rules and fake friends beneath its glamourous lifestyle. At first, he found screaming fans with placards of marriage proposals amusing and exhilarating. Now, he had grown annoyed and numb at the avalanche of excessive attention. Longingly, he wished more than anything else, that people could see the real Leon Waltz than sexualise him as Leon Waltz, the world's sexiest bachelor and the Prince of Pop R'n'B. 

While the world envied his extravagant lifestyle, no one knew of his secret peering through his penthouse window at the regular people walking down the busy streets filled with laughter and contentment, without any worry of having their clothes or hair pulled by swarming fans. Such sight gave him an unnerving feeling of envy and unspoken depression, feelings that he tried to fight off with glamour parties, alcohol and women. He would be alleviated for a while before plunging back down to the bottom. Even to go down to the shop to buy a shaver was a hassle as he was instantly recognised and harassed by crazy fans, so he needed his personal assistant, Vinny Hashburn's help with his purchases and other personal matters.

Frequent travels across the different states and around the world meant little time for his family. Eventually, his inner circle became the closest thing to 'family', although he still maintained his boundaries with them when it came to work.

In his spare time, Leon would google about random things like life in college which he never attended, and entertain himself with reality tv that featured people in jobs and life situations that were not celebrity-centric, anything that made him curious about life outside the limelight. But he comforted himself that he would never exchange this enviable career for anything else in the world, not even for love. This was the only job that could give him and his family the comfort and the luxury that they now have, privileges that were once out of touch and out of reach for the majority of people in the world.

Singing was after all his passion, or so he wondered. This parasitic feeling of emptiness continued to linger despite his fame and fortune.

"You sure this would work?" Leon questioned with one brow raised.

"Trust me, it's purrfect," Arnold gave an Italian chef kiss with his thumb and forefinger, flashing the written proposal in the other hand.

"Alrighty, then. Let's email the proposal to Fujita. It's a wrap!" he applauded with the team on their completed proposal.