High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 37 - Shining Star

Mean was worried.

Damn it, he should just have turned off his phone before entering the venue.

His agency had booked him to attend an award gala again. This time, he was even invited to present a minor award by himself in front of a high-level audience, giving him a precious opportunity to show his face on stage and hopefully gain traction for his music career.

He had been very excited about this opportunity on the way here, even if he was once again only invited as a handsome face and not as the musician he was striving to be. This gala was more prestigious than any of the others he had attended so far. Even better, the organisers had surprisingly given clearance to his agency's request that he could mention his upcoming first single while he was on stage.

Today would be the first step towards officially launching his music career, and not just placing hints and teasers.

Everything had been set up for a useful and productive evening schedule – which was still somewhat of an exception as far as official schedules went – until he had received two unexpected messages from Plan:

Your parents are taking me to attend a dinner event at the Chamber of Commerce. Any tips?

Your mum says I shouldn't have informed you. You shouldn't worry about it and concentrate on your event. They don't take me there as your boyfriend. According to her, many people at the CoC asked them about the physicist that they have taken in, and they have to "show me off" and it can't be delayed.

In Mean's mind, there was an unwritten word at the end of the second message: help!

If he wasn't so worried about Plan's fate in the lions' den, Mean would be angry with his parents. There was no way they hadn't known about this before, but they had deliberately waited with the invitation until Mean was out of the house for his own important event.

Of course, Plan couldn't say no to Mean's parents – he was living in their house for free, after all.

Mean believed that the core of his mum's message was true. They wouldn't expose their son's relationship like that, without consulting him. On the contrary, they had very obviously separated them from each other for this event on purpose.

He could only guess their intention. It was probably something stupid, like making sure Mean didn't cause trouble. He hated this type of event with a passion, and in the past, he had always been creative in his attempts to get out of them. Though if they thought he was that dense and would stir up trouble when his boyfriend's reputation was on the line, they were really underestimating him.

It wasn't as if his parents had ever discouraged him from trying to evade the few responsibilities he had towards the family business. They would somewhat scold him in front of their peers to save face and try to make him attend, but as a teenager, Mean had quickly figured out that his parents were actually secretly happy about his behaviour.

At times, they were so paranoid about him developing even a remote interest in the family business, that they preferred him as a rebellious teenager. It was really obvious how different his parents' treatment of him was from everyone else's parents. Most of his exploits had been instigated and run by Viola, who was set to take over a branch of her family's business by her parents, and she had always gotten into a world of trouble for acting up.

Not that it had ever prevented her from trying again.

Before he had found out about her secret relationship with Rose, and the marriage-swap agreement she had with her brother, Mean had been convinced that Viola was doing everything in her power to get disinherited from her family and start something on her own.