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“Do you know what? We’ll fix this and find the missing ingredient you need.” Kai clicked his fingers repeatedly, trying to kickstart his brain.
Leo felt a spark of energy in Kai that wouldn’t let this rejection beat him.
“We live in exciting times, Leo. There’s so much technology at our disposal to help us figure this out. All that stuff you’ve got on your computer, there must be something that can glue your stuff together, some magical pixie dust.” Kai grabbed Leo’s phone from the table. “What’s your passcode?”
“Same as my PIN. 4532, why?”
Kai thumbed through it, dropping into the app store to download a few select apps. “First thing’s first,” he mumbled to himself.
“What are you doing?” asked Leo.
“Creating a TikTok account for you. And an Insta. And an X account. That’ll do for starters. Honestly, there are people on these things getting millions of views for breaking into bloody houses, and these apps still pay those assholes money for views. It’s insane. If they can earn a pound note or two from this, you sure as hell can for doing something that’s actually fecking good.”
Leo exhaled a breath, twiddling one of his curls. “Aren’t we a bit ‘old’ for TikTok?”
“Speak for yourself, Grandad. You’re thirty-one, after all. I’m only thirty. Actually, maybe I should register instead.”
Leo playfully smacked him on the arm, then forced a smile.
“Look, you’re doing this,” said Kai. “You’ve got to make your own fortune in this life. Life is brutal if you don’t step up and take control. You can’t just sit here and rely on those silly wankers spinning around in their Herman Miller chairs, drinking their cucumber water. You can do this yourself. Here you go: @konshus. It’s not even taken yet. That’s gotta be a sign, right?”
Leo smiled and nodded. “Ok. You’re right. I don’t need those arseholes.”
“Grand, that’s the spirit. Fancy a beer to celebrate?” suggested Kai.
“It’s 9:45.”
Leo laughed, shaking his head in mock disbelief as Kai launched himself from the sofa and headed towards the kitchen. “I’m aware. I’m taking the rest of the day off, whereas you, baby, are going to beaver away in your studio until you find the pixie dust that’s gonna make your music go stratospheric—which it will. I personally guarantee it.”
Leo watched Kai saunter off to the kitchen with a swagger.
“Fuck’s sake,” he shouted from beyond the archway in the hall.
“Another moose?” enquired Leo.
The next thing to hit Leo in the head was exactly that.
ChapterSix
LONDON: THREE MONTHS LATER.
Stood in the kitchen, Leo stared at his phone screen, mouth agape. “I can’t believe us talking absolute shite to each other in the kitchen made a million views.”
“1.2 million, actually,” said Kai. “I don’twantto say ‘I told you so’, but-?” He seemed to fight smugness about being right about blitzing the social media channels, but then failed, bathing in his glory and doing a little glory shuffle.
Instead of continuing with the stress of trying to find some elusive complex ingredient to make his music more artistically complex, with the help of Kai, Leo accidentally stumbled across something that he couldn’t believe anybody else was doing. A combination of the power of social media and Leo’s new philosophy to keep his music simple and accessible for all was where the magical pixie dust that Kai spoke of all those weeks ago lay.
Kai had showed Leo a bit of software whilst they were playing around in Leo’s makeshift studio. It was a live auto-tune plugin that worked with Leo’s music software. Leo happened to be in the kitchen one day, making drinks, when Kai grabbed his microphone, pressed play on one of Leo’s beat loops and sang his drink order to Leo.
That was when Leo had that ‘eureka’ moment. He stopped what he was doing, ran into his bedroom, grabbed the other mic and sang back to him about the first world problem of running out of oat milk.
It was unbelievably simple, incredibly catchy when sang along to a funky beat loop and, most important of all, a completely unique style. Including Kai in his productions seemed to be that elusive missing ingredient. Alright, Kai couldn’t sing in tune, but since they started using the auto-tune software that Kai discovered, Leo had started including him in his tracks.
Leo would position Kai in the background of his TikTok videos, seemingly going about his business. It would look like Leo was filming a music video: he would sing a mundane everyday question, and Kai would pop up from somewhere in the background singing an answer. Their followers were chomping at the bit for more.
Leo started reciting the words that captivated their followers after he’d made some toast two weeks ago, realising they were out of butter and that the price of it had suddenly gone through the roof.
“You turn a diamond into a ring and gold into a band,”sang Leo.
