Chương 37: Watching You Under the Spotlight
Song Suggestion: Riptide by Vance Joy
Actually, this song pretty much fits most of their childhood memories.
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As he lay down on the same bed as the man he despised.....
Leon recalled the first time he saw Wolfe again after being separated as children.
He saw him on the internet, performing as a side character in a movie. Wolfe was 15 then, and he was 17.
He was casted as a side character and child actor in the indie screen play, 'The Sailor's Poet'.
It was performed not in Broadway, but in a small production in California. Leon followed this production even before when he learned Wolfe was there.
He really felt that it was a struck of fate for him to work with them out of all places, and for him to see him again, even in his phone screen.
It was a musical movie, but had a more theatrical feel to it when it comes to camera work, that's why it was called a screen play. It was low budget, but there's beauty with how simple it was.
It was all about a sailor single father called Alexander, living alone and fishing with his son after World War 1.
Then, he met someone whose boat capsized. This person was a poet, writing under the pen name Hephaestion.
Leon felt the play was pretty on the nose. "Alexander the Great and his 'friend' Hephaestion, huh."
He was hooked by the concept of the play, but his heart almost stopped beating when he read the announcement on who would be Alexander's son, Tadeo.
Wolfgang Amadeus Fang.
He gulped, and his young teenage heart felt like it was going to burst just from seeing that name.
He watched the 45-minute indie film released free in Youtube. There were only 100k views and 20k likes.
But it was a masterpiece for Leon and all the other supportive fans in the comment section.
There he was. Appearing at the start of the film, just a boy sitting on a row boat with his father.
He was made to look a bit more 'Americanized', as he was the son of a white man after all, but they also explained that Alexander's deceased wife was Vietnamese, so there's really no need to.
It still worked though, as his blond wig still fitted him perfectly, and his gray eye contacts.
'Tadeo' was shown watching the sunset at the boat and smiling.
That smile.....
It brought everything back to Leon. Even after almost 10 years.
That boy he saw picking flowers in the field, singing 'Annie' with a terrible voice, the times they played around and laughed and even got married and built a house...
These memories never really disappeared, they just got buried with new painful ones.
But nothing was more painful than his lovely memories with Wolfe Fang.
Look at him now. He was definitely different from that chubby boy, he lost all his baby fat. And...
He was singing. Beautifully.
"Away she goes, the loveliest ship I have seen
Away she goes, with her sails billowing
Away she goes...."
Leon was watching this movie during lunch break. He tried hard to stop himself from crying, since people might see him crying over this pretty boy.
Wolfe Fang was singing. He's a musical actor now.
"I'm the one who taught him how to sing..... Haha....."
He almost didn't look human in the entire show. He looked like an angel depicted by master painters on the ceilings of the Vatican Chapel.
There was a scene where he was just watching his father and the poet, smiling knowingly. In fact, there was a bit of sad yearning in his eyes when he looked at them, on top of a hill where a lighthouse stood.
He sung:
"I want what they have, the Sailor and the Poet
One sails the seas of life, and one writes its rhythm
I want what they have, a friendship that never ends
Forever and ever....."
"Where are you, my friend for forever?"
Leon felt that as he was watching him there, wind billowing his hair and clothes, a distant look in his eyes over the crashing waves....
That he was singing about him. He must be.
He knew that this was a song written for a play, and not by Wolfe himself. But he wanted to believe....
That he was that friend he was searching for, yearning for.
That desire, and that incident with Mickey Xing, led him to move to America after middle school.
He moved to Los Angeles, hoping he'll see him here in California. Then he became an intern at the police station, and many more incidents ensued.
Many painful and regretful memories.
So much so that he almost forgot what he even was here in America for.
But then, he heard about the big news of someone replacing Leslie Del Mar. A newbie singer who thinks he was a bigshot.
It was Wolfe Fang again.
At that time, Leon was still deciding over that offer by Interpol to be a member of their Special Representatives in United Nations Plaza at New York.
But once he learned about this, he immediately took the offer, and packed his things to travel 2,000 miles away.
From the cool beaches of California.....
And into the lonely corporate jungle that is New York.
He wanted to see his Tadeo, see if he was still looking for that 'forever friend'.
But once he saw Wolfe Fang, he was a different person now.
He was not Tadeo. He was not even that boy that he heard singing 'Tomorrow' badly.
He was more confident, which he first thought was a good thing back when he saw him at The Sailor's Poet.
But this Wolfe.....
He had this self-assured, prideful smile, losing that genuine and humble smile he had as a kid.
He was not the same Wolfe anymore.
Just like how he was not the same Leon after everything that happened over the course of another more 10 years.
Ten years really changes a lot, and twenty years changes too much that you may not recognize the person anymore.
You start to doubt if you ever knew them at all, and if it was correct to assume that they were the same kid back then.
That was how he came to hate musicals.
Every time he saw a poster, he would be infuriated, remembering that condescending smile his former friend wears.
"He's really made for the spotlight, huh?"
Leon said to himself, as he had learned about Wolfe's current lifestyle as a famous star after Red Riding Hood's success.
And he too, unconsciously, had mimicked that lifestyle.
All that yearning he had to see him again was lost. He couldn't even care any less about him when they first had an actual encounter in a bar that resulted to a fight.
So, this yearning to see him turned into disappointment...
And disappointment turned into hatred.
As he looked at this man sleeping beside him, he wondered what that hatred would turn into next?
Rage?
Sorrow?
He felt like if it got any worse than this, it might be his death.
This man would be the death of him someday.
Just like in that movie, Death in Venice, where the main character dies just staring at the boy named Tadzio from afar.
Unable to ever reach him, no matter how near he may be.
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