บท 314: Chapter 314: Conan (3)
[General POV]
The crowd went silent again after seeing Edward underneath the spotlight. Wearing sunglasses, Edward's finger pressed gently on the piano keys.
"The song is called, 'When I was your man'" Edward whispered seductively at the microphone as he turned his head to the crowd.
[Bruno Mars– When I was your man]
"♫♪Same bed, but it feels just a little bit bigger now♫♪" He crooned, which made a lot of the female fans swoon. Taylor, who was feeling a bit sad before, immediately became absorbed in the music as it was the first time for her to listen to it too.
"♫♪Our song on the radio, but it don't sound the same♫♪"
Taylor flinched slightly as she heard the verse. 'Didn't he say he's going to make it up?' She thought by herself, her heart beats quicker.
As Edward sang, he glanced at the audience slightly before looking straight forward. "♫♪When our friends talk about you, all it does is just tear me down!! Cause my heart breaks a little when I hear your name♫♪"
The spotlight shone on the background singer, revealing their presence on the stage. Conan become mesmerized by the narrative Edward had created and mumbled, "NBC really fucked up considering Edward has a bad impression of them now."
"♫♪It all just sounds like (Ooh, ooh)...Mm, too young, too dumb to realize!! ♫♪" Edward's powerful voice transported the audience. His [Soul Voice] resonated, and it made some of the fans become dazed.
"♫♪That I should've bought you flowers… And held your hand… Shoulda gave you all my hours…When I had the chance♫♪"
Taylor looked affectionately at Edward, however, her immersion would soon be ruined by the next verse.
"♫♪Take you to every party, 'Cause all you wanted to do was dance… Now my baby's dancin'...But she's dancin' with another man♫♪"
"As if!" Taylor retorted by her lonesome. Taylor knew that she had never danced with someone else.
As the piano melody continued, Edward glanced at Taylor slightly with a smirk on his face, knowing that she'd be pissed off by the lyric. However, he aimed to make her mood change again.
"♫♪Uh, my pride, my ego, my needs, and my selfish ways… Caused a good, strong woman like you to walk out my life♫♪"
"That's better." Taylor exclaimed to herself.
"♫♪Now I'll never, never get to clean up the mess I made, oh…And that haunts me every time I close my eyes♫♪" Edward's bellow made the crowd let out a small gasp.
"♫♪It all just sounds like (Ooh, ooh)...Mm, too young, too dumb to realize!!♫♪"
The way Edward played with his vocals made the crowd extremely impressed. If Taylor's performance was considered great, Edward's performance was phenomenal.
Edward dropped his head slightly as he sang, "♫♪That I should've bought you flowers…And held your hand… Shoulda gave you all my hours… When I had the chance♫♪"
"♫♪Take you to every party… 'Cause all you wanted to do was dance…Now my baby's dancin'... But she's dancin' with another man♫♪"
He pressed the piano keys passionately as he raised his head and bellowed, "♫♪Although it hurts!!!! I'll be the first to say that– I was WROooOOOooOOOng!♫♪"
"Wow." Annie, who has her first experience watching Edward performing live today, felt breathless as she looked at him.
"♫♪Oh, I know I'm probably much too late… To try and apologize for my mistakes… But I just want you to knOOOWWW- OH! ♫♪"
The melody slowed down as Edward continued. The spotlight turned on at Taylor's stage, revealing her lone figure standing there. The crowd had to cover their mouths to prevent themselves from screaming.
Taylor wasn't surprised with the sudden exposure as Edward had told her about it before. She gazed at Edward, and he too, looked intently at her.
"♫♪I hope he buys you flowers… I hope he holds your hand… Give you all his hours
When he has the chance♫♪
♫♪Take you to every party… 'Cause I remember how much you love to dance♫♪"
Taylor walked towards Edward's stage, and the two headlights slowly merged into one.
"♫♪Do all the things I should've done…When I was your man♫♪"
"♫♪Do all the things I should've done…When I was your man♫♪"
Edward grabbed Taylor's hand and kissed the back of it. The crowd erupted thunderously as he finished the performance.
Taylor pretended to smile as people applauded her. She whispered to Edward, "Huh-humm, what's with the dancing part? I'm going to beat you up."
"Just a hook for the song. Don't think too much about it," Edward replied casually.
She faked a laugh and said, "I'm going to beat you up twice now."
Edward turned toward her and asked, "You want to stay after your part is done?"
"No. I'll just watch from backstage," Taylor replied casually. Both of them returned to the talk show together and sat in front of Conan again.
Conan did his crowd work first to ensure a smooth transition between the performance and the talk show. "Welcome back! What an incredible performance from Taylor and Edward! Let's give them another round of applause!"
The crowd cheered joyfully, finally releasing their pent-up excitement after being kept quiet during the performance.
Conan turned to Edward and Taylor. "So, the songs are the last ones from your project, right? What's going to happen to the ones you didn't perform?"
Edward widened his eyes in realization and said, "Oh, I'm going to include those in my next album."
"Oww!" Conan exclaimed in disappointment before turning to Taylor. "What about you?"
"I'll do the same thing," Taylor replied with a chuckle. The audience reacted with disappointment before laughing again.
Conan commented, "Just admit that you guys insult each other so much that you had to scrap that song."
Edward pointed at Taylor and said, "She actually did that."
"Hey! I didn't!" Taylor protested, prompting laughter from the crowd. "But you know, this is actually not the end," she added, changing the subject.
"Huh?" Conan perked up. "You mean this is not the final one?"
Edward replied, "We actually thought of releasing a duet at the end. However—" The crowd cheered loudly before he could finish. Edward chuckled slightly before continuing, "However, our schedules in the next two years are so different that if we did that, we wouldn't be able to perform it together."
"Awww…" the crowd exclaimed in disappointment again.
"So will there be a duet or not?" Conan asked.
Taylor replied, "There will."
The crowd applauded enthusiastically, whistling and shouting the celebrity names. Conan looked at them incredulously and said, "Are you all just their fans, or are all Californians like this?"
As the crowd laughed, Conan suddenly held up his bucket. "By the way, I finished all of it. Now, we can resume the interview uninterrupted."
"Are you okay?" Edward asked with concern. "Some of those are really spicy."
Conan fanned his face with his hand and said, "Spicy? That was spicy for you? It's an ordinary chicken wing for me!" Despite his bravado, he panted like a dog, his face turning red, revealing his playful exaggeration.
After a brief moment, Conan sent Taylor off the stage, as her role was over, and she wanted to enjoy watching the interview.
"Earlier, you told us the reason the project was disrupted—one of them is the missile attack," Conan said, smoothly leading into the conversation.
"Ah, we're doing this now?" Edward leaned in, fully engaged.
"Are you ready?" Conan asked.
"I'm ready." Edward took off his sunglasses, folded them, and tucked them into his chest pocket.
"Before we dive in, I want to show the audience some exclusive footage from the day your house was blown up," Conan said, generating excitement in the room. "Let's watch it first." He gestured to a large TV that a staff member rolled onto the set.
Conan played the video, and it's a short 15 second clip of him and his friend, acting out a skit of the missile attack.
[Conan: We're going to attack the President of the United States. When we breach the white house's system, we're going to send missiles to every military base in the country!"
"What about Edward Newgate's house? I fucking hate that guy." His friend, Paul Andrew Richter said with a frown.
"Okay! Let's blow up his house! Anything else to be blown up!?" Conan asked.
"The Starbucks in my place keeps getting my name wrong." Another fake terrorist was added.
"We're going to blow it up too!" Conan said. "Anything else?"
"There's this puppy shelter that kept asking me for donations." Another terrorist asked.
"Blow up the puppies too!" Conan said seriously.]
The absurd skit made the audience laugh out loud. As it ended, Conan turned to Edward and said, "Secret service sources said that I got 100% of the reenactment right."
Edward couldn't help but lose his composure a little and laughed. For the first time in the interview, he was speechless.
Conan finally felt satisfied and continued teasing Edward, "Unless there's an insider that can refute it. This is going to be written down in the history books."
"I actually still have the footage of what happened inside the house that day." Edward said, suddenly dropping a bomb into the studio.
Conan, Pepper, Harvey, Taylor, Ted, Renaldo, Annie, Abed, basically everyone was extremely shocked when they heard it, except for Haley. Alex turned to Haley and asked, "Why aren't you surprised?"
"I mean, Ed told me he usually records everything going on inside his house using Robin." Haley replied. "So he is going to have the footage. It's not that weird."
"Really? Can we see it?" Conan asked, extremely excited. The representatives from the cable network became dumbfounded when they heard it. If what Edward said was true, then, it'll be the most exclusive news they could have, about his incident.
"I…I'm not sure about that." Edward hesitated a bit. "No one actually came to see me after my house was gone. So I'm not sure if they would want me to keep quiet about it, or I can show it…"
Conan immediately said, "If they didn't come to brief you, then that's their own mistake. You're not responsible for it."
"You think so?" Edward said before he thought about it for a bit. "Alright then. I'm going to show it. The censored version of it."
The crowd cheered in excitement as Edward gestured for Randall to hand him his laptop. Turning to Conan, he asked, "Should I start from the very beginning, or just when the house got bombed?"
"Start at an important part," Conan requested.
Edward faced the audience and added, "I'll skip ahead and explain. It'll take too long if I show the whole thing."
As he played the footage, everyone's eyes were glued to the screen. "Early that morning, my dad decided to make some burgers, and I invited some people over for a little party. But that's not important."
"That is important!" Conan interjected, leaning in eagerly. "Who did you invite to the house?"
"Well, the people who worked on the movie with me," Edward replied casually. "Some close friends. In fact, a few of them were still there when the whole thing went down."
"Who was still there?" Conan pressed, his curiosity piqued.
"Taylor's one of them," Edward said, prompting the crowd to erupt in cheers. He paused at a scene where two agents, their faces blurred out, entered the house with heavy injuries.
Annie gasped in shock as she saw it. "That's the authentic footage from the incident," Abed muttered, equally stunned.
"Wait, who are these guys?" Conan asked, a surprised expression on his face. Edward answered casually, "Oh, those are federal agents. They infiltrated my house before, so I knew what was happening at that time. They came by asking for help because they were being hunted down."
Conan rubbed his sore forehead, disbelief evident. "Wait… they infiltrated your house before?"
"Kinda. But it's just a game between me and the feds. If I didn't catch the spies, they'd put 24/7 security details around me. Since I caught them, they just watch me from afar now."
"Wha—Huh…" Conan shook his head in confusion. "You have this whole international spy, infiltration mission, secret identity kind of life on the side while also being a singer? You know what? Before they make a movie about the missile, we need to make a movie about your spy games first."
Edward shrugged and replied, "I don't care. All I want is for them to pay me back for breaking my glass wall back then. The second time they came, I lost a house."
"So these two people are responsible for it all?" Conan asked. "Are they the ones who made your house blow to smithereens?"
"I don't think so," Edward replied. "They just came by because of a medical emergency. The injured guy was dying. I checked up on him yesterday, and he's still on bedrest. At that time, they couldn't go to the hospital, so they had to trust me."
Edward pointed at the screen when he mentioned Casey. Conan was elated and asked, "So what did you do after they came by?"
"People thought that I alone fought off the terrorists, but actually, a lot of people were involved. Not just me," Edward said as he resumed the video. "My dad cleaned up the blood on the floor. I helped the female agent perform surgery on the dying guy. My close friend Selena and my cousin Maggie disposed of the bloodied couch by throwing it into the ocean."
Edward showed footage of Selena and Maggie giggling as they watched the cushion dropped onto the sea. Conan was flabbergasted and said, "Wait. I know her. She's the girl from Disney."
"Yeah. Selena's a singer. She's also a good actress. My cousin too I guess." Edward said. Maggie got pissed when she saw it. "You guess?!" She mumbled angrily.
Edward shared a lot of things about the incident. How the girls were trapped too, and how a Colombian step-grandmother helped to distract the agents together with Miss Daddario.
He continued till the part where 8 armed men entered the house, clutching their guns. During this time, the value of the interview had jumped to over 40 million dollars from a bid by TBS as they desperately wanted the exclusive.
Conan continued interviewing Edward, "They already have the place surrounded. How did you guys escape? Did you jump into the ocean? Please tell me you jumped into the ocean."
"Actually, I escaped using a slap." Edward said with a grin. "You slapped them all?" Conan widened his eyes.
"No, I got slapped." Edward said, which elicited some forcefully held back laughter from the audience.
"Wait what?"
"Yeah-yeah. I got slapped by Taylor." Edward skipped the video forward until it reached the part where Taylor slapped him. He replayed the slap a few times which surprised the audience.
"Why did she slap you? It seems…quite deserved, but why?" Conan asked in a teasing manner. "Should we use the lifeline again?" He added.
"There's no need. The slap is quite deserved, as I planned it to be," Edward said casually. He then explained, "When the terrorists came, they acted like federal agents, so I just played it cool. They warned me about helping the two real federal agents, saying they had gone rogue and were highly dangerous."
Everyone held their breath as Edward recounted the events of that day. "I pretended not to care and told them that even if the rogue agents showed up, I wouldn't risk it because I had something better to do."
"And what was that?" Conan asked, intrigued.
"Breeding," Edward replied nonchalantly, prompting gasps from the audience and confused looks from some. "What?" Conan did a double take, unable to believe his ears.
Edward laughed out loud. "I pretended to be a horny teen. I told them that statistically, after a terror attack, people seek reassurance and affirmation of life, so they tend to hook up. I had a lot of beauties in my house, so I didn't want to help."
"Why would you say that? And why admit it? That'll just make the girls mad," Conan pointed out, confused.
Edward chuckled slightly. "That was the aim. Even if I whispered it to the guy, I made sure it was loud enough for the girls to hear. That way, they had an excuse to get out of there without raising suspicion."
The crowd admired Edward's openness about the tragedy. He skipped over the part where he knocked over two agents, but people still caught glimpses of the fighting inside the house.
"So, everyone was gone, and you even sang a song. Why did your house still get attacked?" Conan asked.
"To be honest, I didn't really know at the time," Edward replied, shaking his head slightly.
"So you know about it now?" Conan prodded.
"Yeah, that bitc— Sorry," Edward quickly apologized after almost cursing. Conan immediately defended him, "Why are you apologizing? Your house is gone! You can get worked up and curse the one sending the missile. No one will blame you for it."
Edward laughed a bit before saying, "Alright then. That bitch, Skip Tyler. He's the one responsible for the attack on my house. He's one of the reported casualties inside the White House, if you remember."
"Yeah, the hacker. Why was he targeting you?" Conan asked.
"I'm sure Apple and Microsoft will remember him. He used to cause a lot of trouble for them," Edward continued. "He loves to infiltrate company systems and create chaos. But he couldn't get past my defenses, so I guess he threw the missile at my house as part of his tantrum."
"Is that a brag? Are you bragging?" Conan asked incredulously.
Edward smirked. "It's not really bragging if it's the truth. Also, my aim isn't bragging; it's just to make some money."
Conan was a bit frazzled but kept his composure. "You want to make some money from this interview?"
Edward nodded. "Yeah. My house is gone, and now the insurance company keeps postponing my payout, so I can't buy a new house. I've been sleeping in hotels and crashing at friends' places. The media keeps trashing my name. Overall, December is not a very good month for me."
Conan leaned back in his chair, looking at Edward with a mix of admiration and sympathy. "You know what. I feel really bad for you now."
"I feel bad for myself too." Edward laughed at his own misery.
…
As the interview ended, TBS cable network representatives quickly sent a contract to get the rights for the show, and they paid Entertain 45 million dollars for it.
Although it sounds impressive, it still wasn't the highest bid in history. For example, Oprah Winfrey's interviews or those related to major scandals have fetched high prices, sometimes exceeding $50 million.
Edward knew that he could get people to bid more, however, TBS made another offer. They wanted to set up a talk show for Conan.
Edward told Conan about it and asked for his opinion even though Conan has no deciding power for what to use the interview for. He only asked Conan because he respected him.
In less than 3 hours after the interview ended, the whole thing was broadcasted to the TBS cable network.
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