2 Rumours and Stardom

Michelle Wu sighed heavily. Her final trump card did not work either… She knew Nikolas would be difficult to convince. But she did not count on him to not even bat an eyelid when she confessed. How could that be? She had full confidence in her beautiful face and fit body. And she was doing her best too. Dressed in her prettiest clothes. Even practised her lines and facial expressions and everything. Didn't he know how much effort she put into this? She bet he did not even notice her initiatives. She sighed again.

Pulling up a chair, Michelle carefully sat down. Her heart and hands were still wrecked with tremors courtesy of an adrenaline high. Somehow, somewhere during the confession her nerves got the better of her. She hoped Nikolas did not notice it.

Anyway, it was his disconcertingly sharp stare that gave her the stage fright. She suspected he could shoot laser beams out of those eyes if he was given enough motivation. Fortunately she had not given him enough motivation or else he would have fried her to a crisp by now.

"Michelle! That was amazing! You actually made Prince Charming stumble and show some emotions!"

Michelle looked up to see her friends running over from where they were hanging around, pretending to mind their own business. Apple and Christine looked like children who had been given their favourite candies. Things must have gone smoothly on their side.

"He looked like he wanted to kill you! Ah, but even his angry face is sooooooo pretty! Today's my lucky day!" Christine had a dreamy look as she raised her new smartphone up high. She was staring at the display with awe.

"Let me see."

"Here!" Christine playfully shoved the phone into her face. "Come on, kiss him! I know you want to!"

Instead of dodging away from the phone, Michelle stuck out her tongue and licked the screen.

"Yuck! Michelle! That's so gross!" Christine had immediately pulled the phone away, but it was too late. "I just bought it too…" She looked as if she was contemplating to throw the phone out the window.

"Serves you right." Michelle smiled with satisfaction. "You know I'm not that crazy for him."

"But you just licked him!"

"Nope, I licked your phone to disgust you. Apple, what'd you get?" Michelle turned her attention to her other friend. Apple's real name was April Chen, but since Apple was easier to pronounce than April, it became her nickname since she was little.

"A nice video of you two." Apple answered calmly, still busily tapping the video app on her phone. "There's no usable audio except for the last part. Also you two were a little too far away. If only I could bring my super HD video camera… but that would be too obvious." She replayed the video of the confession up to Nikolas' parting words in front of Michelle. Christine was right, his angry face was dangerously handsome.

"It's a shame we can't include his voice." Michelle lamented. Nikolas sounded so cool too despite the fact that he was telling her to go to hell. She giggled a little seeing how ticked off he was in the video.

"Yeah. I was thinking to edit it into a short 10-second clip with no audio. The title should be 'Prince Charming Confessed to No. 1 Beauty and Rejected Harshly'. What do you think?" Apple skipped the video to the end. "Video quality is excellent. Especially over here, he looked so desperately angry as he walked away. Easy for people to believe he had just been rejected."

"Sounds great. It'll surely be popular." Nodding calmly, Michelle was reminded again of why this unassuming girl was never someone to be looked down on. Apple could come up with the best idea to create hype within seconds.

"It's a good way to start off the term. Throw a firecracker with the loudest bang, and then keep up with interesting updates of your activities." Apple was a meticulous planner like that. She'll be a successful social media gossiper for sure.

"Ah, but Michelle, you told Nikolas you are going to spread rumours about him being gay?" Christine was busily rubbing her phone with a wet wipe, but her ears never missed the best gossip she could overhear.

"Are you crazy? If really I do that my social accounts would be littered with so much hate and death threats from his fans. I'd be harassed online and offline, possibly assassinated within a few days." Michelle pouted. She knew Nikolas's fans were a lot more obsessive than hers. It was regrettable, but accusing him of being gay would only backfire on her. And she had a feeling Nikolas knew it too.

"That's too bad." Christine pouted too. "I'm his fan too but I don't mind the gay rumour."

Don't mind? Michelle suspected Christine would be elated.

"In any case, like he said, he really didn't care what people thought of him. During high school, there were all sorts of rumours about why he transferred school, but he never came out and said anything to defend himself. In the end, a lot of teachers had to take the initiative and asked everyone to stop making a fuss about him."

"That serious?" Christine never failed to dig deeper.

"Yeah. It went so far that some were saying he was the son of a mob boss and he'd killed people. Others said he was expelled from his old school because of a fight with some powerful people's heir. Then some imaginative students tried to connect him to European mafia because he could speak some European languages. Evidently all these rumors made girls fall head over heels for him, and they craved more wild rumours. Finally it became a cycle of craziness."

Thinking back, Michelle had a feeling the Nikolas of that time were less approachable than now. At least nowadays he talked when he had to.

"Of course some jealous retard who wanted to sound reasonable simply said his grade was not good enough to graduate from the school so he had been booted out. I personally don't believe that." Said jealous retard was her ex boyfriend.

"So what's the truth?"

"Nobody knows the truth but him. That's why the rumours went out of control. His old school was an exclusive school for gifted students. Apparently students from that school were so dedicated they don't have time to spread gossips."

"Wow, he's so mysterious." Christine had stars in her eyes.

"Yeah, very mysterious." Apple also had stars in her eyes, but for completely different reasons. "I should focus on his account a bit more. Or maybe I should open a new one that depicts him in a darker, more mysterious light? It would surely be able to attract fans of mysterious boys."

"…"

Michelle was at a loss for words. She thanked her lucky stars that Apple attended this college with her. Because of Apple's interest in social media marketing, Michelle shot to stardom in only one term of college, and even got the title Number 1 Beauty of Business Faculty. There were a lot of beautiful girls in Business Faculty, all aspiring to be beautiful secretaries and office ladies who snagged wealthy businessman husbands. However, Michelle got the most votes and won the poll. It was all made possible by beautiful pictures and videos of her in an IG account, carefully arranged to depict her as a lithe beauty who had just started college and having the time of her life.

Now that second term was starting, she needed more explosive news for her continuous stardom, and Apple did not disappoint. Although Michelle failed to get Nikolas to be her boyfriend, the video and pictures of the two of them talking privately would spread rumours like wildfire. She could count on that. Nikolas's fans would surely hate her for it, but the attention on her would skyrocket and drown out her competitions. As a result, her popularity would rise even more. Michelle smiled contentedly.

"I should go and edit these pictures. I want to post them as fast as possible." Christine said eagerly as she turned to leave. Christine was a true fangirl of pretty boys. She had a few fansites of pretty boys of the college, but her fansite of Nikolas was the one with the most followers.

"I should go edit this video too. See you later." Apple was already on her way out, trotting after Christine with renewed vigor.

Michelle bid them goodbye and grabbed her bag. Time to leave for her planned evening activities.

As she left the room, Michelle was reminded of how Nikolas left the room in anger. She had always known he was not the unmoved person he tried to be. It was just a facade. She had been observing him a lot last term so she noticed quite a bit. Like how he sometimes had a small smile when something funny happened around him. And he would seemed a little concerned during quizzes and tests. Also at times she thought he looked lonely, especially when everyone was enthusiastically participating in class discussion.

Her conclusion was, Nikolas totally cared about everything going on around him, but he refused to participate, or even allowed others to see his feelings. He had tightly concealed himself into a shell. She wondered how he would be if the shell was not there.