Rewind With A Superstar System-Chapter 123: Unfortunate Injury

<🎧 Song Recommendation: Bang Bang by Jessie J, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj>

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Following immediately behind the cat was Emily. His manager was sprinting way too fast. She lost her footing at the entrance of the suite, tumbled forward, and fell clumsily into the open room by mistake.

Emily groaned, catching herself awkwardly on her hands and knees. She blew a strand of hair out of her face and looked up, scanning the room to find the thieving cat.

Instead, her eyes landed directly on Von.

Emily completely froze. Her mouth slowly fell wide open as she stared at her artist casually standing in the center of the room, holding a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound couch entirely above his head.

Von’s mind raced at lightspeed.

If he set the couch down gently, the secret was completely out. There was no explanation for an ordinary human doing what he was doing without his spine snapping in half. He had to react immediately.

[Skill Activated: Emote]

Instantly, the relaxed, unbothered expression on Von’s face vanished. He forced his facial muscles to contort into a mask of pure, agonizing strain.

He made his arms shake violently, acting as if the sudden shock of Emily barging into the room had broken his adrenaline-fueled concentration.

"Ahhhh!" Von yelled loudly, letting his grip intentionally slip.

He allowed the heavy oak frame to tilt backward, mimicking a total loss of muscle control. He stepped to the side, trying to let the massive piece of furniture crash onto the carpet beside him.

But his acting didn’t work out as perfectly as he planned.

In his haste to sell the struggle, Von miscalculated the angle of the drop. The heavy, reinforced metal corner of the couch’s base clipped the edge of the coffee table, violently redirecting its path right toward him.

Smash!

The heavy furniture crashed directly onto his lower legs, pinning him to the hardwood floor.

Even with his newly acquired [Golden Vessel], the sheer force of nearly four hundred pounds of wood and metal slamming into his shins was not something he could just ignore.

The pain was real.

"Fuck!" Von cursed genuinely, his eyes watering as a sharp, blinding ache shot up his legs.

"Von!" Emily finally snapped out of her paralyzed state. She stood up from the floor and sprinted across the room, falling to her knees beside him. She desperately tried to push the heavy couch off his legs, but she couldn’t even budge it an inch.

Loki, the actual cause of the entire disaster, was nowhere to be found. The void lynx had already gone through the balcony door and completely vanished into the morning sun, leaving Von to deal with the chaos she had started.

"Don’t move! I’m calling the doctor right now!" Emily panicked and pulled out her phone to call for assistance.

***

Two hours later, the atmosphere in the luxury suite had finally settled down.

Von was lying flat on his back on his king-sized bed, his right leg heavily wrapped in thick compression bandages.

A doctor stood at the foot of the bed, carefully putting his medical instruments back into his leather bag. The older man kept shaking his head in absolute disbelief as he looked at the medical scans on his tablet.

"I have been practicing sports medicine for twenty-five years," the doctor said, adjusting his glasses. "I don’t know how you managed to lift a piece of furniture of that weight that high, Mr. Varley. But more importantly, I have no idea how your femurs didn’t turn to absolute dust when it fell on you."

"Just lucky, I guess," Von groaned, shifting uncomfortably against the pillows.

"Incredibly lucky," the doctor corrected him sternly. "You didn’t fracture a single bone. But you do have a severe deep tissue contusion and a sprain in your right knee. The swelling is quite big so you need to stay entirely off that leg for a week or two, minimum."

The doctor walked over to the corner of the room and retrieved a black pair of forearm crutches, leaning them against Von’s nightstand. "Use these if you absolutely must go to the bathroom. Otherwise, stay in this bed."

"Understood. Thank you, Doc," Zack said, stepping into the bedroom.

Zack escorted the doctor out into the hallway to settle the exorbitant private medical bill. When Zack returned a minute later, he crossed his arms and glared at Von from the doorway.

"You see what you’ve gotten yourself into?" Zack sighed, shaking his head with a smug, annoyed expression. "What even made you think you could carry a chair that size? Were you trying to impress the cat?"

Von groaned in pain, picking up a pillow and throwing it weakly to push Zack’s smug face away.

His mind was entirely on Loki. That damn cat had caused all of this to happen by stealing Emily’s tablet and starting a chase. And now he didn’t even know where she was. She had just caused absolute havoc and left the mansion as usual to go consume random emotions on the streets.

"It’s also Emily’s fault," Von grumbled, deflecting the blame. He pointed at his manager, who was sitting nervously on the edge of a nearby armchair. "I mean, she rushed into my suite without knocking. It startled me. I dropped it because I was surprised."

Emily opened her mouth to argue, but she quickly closed it, biting her lower lip.

She knew she was in the wrong for compromising his privacy. But even though he was clearly in pain right now, her brain was still completely stuck on the first thing she saw.

The sight of him lifting that massive couch effortlessly over his head for a fraction of a second still remained in her memory.

She didn’t even know if that was possible, or why he had completely understated what he did when the doctor interrogated him about the incident.

"Sorry for that," Emily finally sighed, rubbing her temples. "I really am. But Zack is still right, Von. You literally have a state-of-the-art gym in the basement! Do you know how heavy that couch is? It’s almost four hundred pounds!"

Von scratched the back of his head, offering a light, charismatic laugh to ease the heavy tension in the room. "Well, what matters is that I’m alright. Or, I’ll be fine soon."

"Yeah..." Emily trailed off, pulling her tablet into her lap. She looked highly stressed. "But I’ll have to immediately cancel the upcoming promotional show this Thursday. And probably the television appearance scheduled for next week, too."

Von frowned. He hated canceling shows, especially right after an album release.

His mind quickly flashed to the System Store. He remembered he had seen [Recovery Pills] in the past. He didn’t have them saved, but he could gamble with his vouchers and hope to see one on the showcase. That should heal him.

"No, don’t cancel it yet," Von said quickly. "Hold off on making the calls. I might be completely fine by then."

Emily raised an eyebrow at him, looking at him like he had lost his mind. "Thursday is only four days away, Von. Didn’t you hear the doctor? You have a massive contusion. I absolutely won’t allow you on a stage until you fully heal."

Von wanted to disagree, but he caught Zack giving him a highly suspicious look. If he magically healed a severe muscle tear in two days, it would raise way too many questions. He couldn’t afford any more anomalies today.

"Okay, fine," Von conceded smoothly, leaning back against the headboard. "Cancel only Thursday. We’ll play it safe."

He smoothly pivoted the conversation away from his legs. "But what about the album streams? It’s been out for over a day now. The numbers must have updated by now, right?"

Emily and Zack crossed eyes and smiles before Emily turned back to face Von in excitement.

"Well," Emily started. "You currently have four different songs sitting in the Top 10 of the Musicify New Releases Global Chart."

Von’s eyes widened. "Four?"

"It Doesn’t Even Matter is currently sitting at No. 1. Coming Home is right behind it at No. 2. Frozen Attitude is holding strong at No. 6, and You’re Gonna Come Home just returned to No. 9!"

Von let out a loud, triumphant laugh. That wasn’t just a successful release; that was an absolute chart monopoly.

"As for the rest of the tracklist," Emily continued. "They are all comfortably sitting in the top 20!

Von’s smile grew even wider. Hearing how incredibly well Lost & Found was doing made the throbbing pain in his leg completely fade into the background.

Everything had all paid off flawlessly.

Zack walked over to the bed and clapped Von lightly on the shoulder.

"You’re burying the lede, Em," Zack grinned down at Von. "Tell him about the record."

"Record?" Von asked, looking between the two of them. "Which one?"

"Oh, right," Emily laughed and shaked her head. "Just the fact that your album hit exactly fifty-five million streams on its first day, more than any independent album debut since music streaming began!"