From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel-Chapter 95: Meet the Boys (3)

When the last bullet point on Jamie’s profile appeared, a clip of Jamie’s audition video, in which he played the guitar and sang an original song, sounded out before he performed slightly simple choreography to a country song.

Seeing Jamie’s slight awkward dance, Grace thought he was pretty cute, especially when he took of his hat showing off his slightly damp forehead from exertion.

Jamie’s photo then slid to the side, and the maze footage continued with the three boys sang together to get the door that Carlos had been stuck at open.

Hearing how well their three voices easily blended together while staying distinct, Grace’s eyes widened appreciatively as she added their names and video timestamp to the section of her notes that had a list of contestants whose voices blended together beautifully.

Later when the competition was further along and people started to make their lists of contestants that would work well together for debut, she would have her ideas and evidence prepared for quick posts.

After the door opened, the three boys continued running through the maze as their count down timer ran down until only 3 minutes remained.

Ari, who was in the middle of the two boys stopped them as they got stuck at another dead end and got boosted to the top by Jamie who then boosted Carlos up before climbing up himself.

The three boys then proceeded to walk on top of the maze walls, flashing a peace sign and posing in front of each camera that they passed before continuing along the top of the wall while dramatic spy like music played in the background and their count down timer began glowing red.

When the top of the wall became to thin, the three boys would jump to the ground before Jamie would boost the onto another wall section, and they continued their balancing act on the maze walls.

As the boys timer, ran down quickly and they approached the end of the maze, the panicked audio and footage of one of the staff members running to the PD was shown as she complained about cheating.

The PD, a blond woman labeled as Emily Raleigh laughed before bringing up a list of other trainees who had also used unconventional means to get to the end. As she called each name, a brief clip of those contestants were shown in addition to the Production team vs Contestants counter going up.

When the PD finished talking, the scene focused on the three boys, Jamie, Carlos, and Ari jumping off the wall.

The animal hoodie Ari was wearing got caught on his strange green mask when he stumbled upon landing.

As Ari removed the surprisingly cute hood exposing his black curly hair, the green mask also came off exposing the black and white makeup on his face.

Grace who had been hoping to see his full face with no makeup let out a disappointed sigh.

Jamie, who’s face had turned quite red, tried to headlock him before the two boys began fake wrestling until Carlos said something.

Then Jamie helped both boys climb the wall once more before they began running along the maze all toward the exit, where the cameras were already pointed up at them as the filming crew had been notified via walkie-talkie.

Jamie jumped down first and landed in a dramatic manner, followed by Carlos, and then Ari.

As the scene that was used as the thumbnail was displayed, the profile photo of Ari dressed in all black with strange white face paint and lipstick was shown, before the bullet points containing his profile was displayed.

- Ariel (Ari)

- Nationality: American, French

- Age 17

- Hair color: Black (natural)

- Eyes: Green (natural)

- Height: 5’10 (177 cm)

- Position: Vocals

- Favorite Food: Steak Frites, Coq au Vin Blanc

- Likes: Money

- Dislikes: Anything to do with alcohol

Then the profile faded away into a video of Ari’s audtion.

There was a brief 5 second display of his singing, but the other 40 seconds were filled with his dance audition to a childish song that had gone viral.

Watching the terribly uncoordinated dance with the bizarre makeup and punk rock outfit to the Infant Shark song playing in the background, Grace could only wince and cover her ears while secretly wishing it was over.

But Ari kept dancing, and dancing, and dancing.

When the screen finally went dark as the music stopped, the scene was already burned into her mind replacing his previously impressive vocal performance with the Warrior song and even the mini group song he had performed with Jamie and Carlos.

As Grace quickly checked the comments, her suspicions seemed to be correct as she saw many comments bashing him, wondering how he had made it through the audition and if he was an industry plant.

It was at this moment that Ari’s stock, which had slightly risen due to the decent vocals he showed in both the performance and his audition video, plummeted straight to the underworld.

Clicking back into the video, Grace stared at it, hoping that there would be something else, but that was the end.

The only thing that was displayed was text that said ’Production Team: 90, Contestants: 10’ meaning that only 10 contestants had made it through the maze in time with unconventional methods.

As an ad began to play, Grace wondered what Ari had done to make the production team and PD dislike him so much.

She had originally wondered if the PD was favoring him because he had been featured in the thumbnail for two major videos, but clearly, it was a setup for him to be criticized relentless.

After using his image, he had been left to the end and his embarrassing audition tape took up the majority of the time while his vocal audition tape where he probably did better was barely shown.

He had to have offended the PD badly!

Vowing to ask him what was going on the next time she saw him and urging him to apologize, Grace hoped that the internet would be kind to him and that the PD would have some mercy during the next videos that would be posted in the following days.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be a futile wish.