The Number One Star in the Interstellar Era

ELLIS chuckled after hearing that. "Well, that is indeed true."

Astrid was glad that the heavy atmosphere surrounding Ellis subsided even just a bit. "But kidding aside, has she always been like that? Someone who's controlling?"

And maybe a bit paranoid as well. Because why the heck would she put all those restrictions on her four-year-old son if she's not? But Astrid decided to keep that opinion to himself. After all, he still hadn't gauge Ellis' current thoughts regarding Olivia Crane.

Ellis seemed to be thinking on how she should respond to his question. "Certainly not in the past. Olivia, she... she's a very bright person full of optimism. She's sweet and very charming. She could easily light up even the darkest of places with just her smile. But that didn't mean that she's a pushover. No, on the contrary, she's full of fighting spirit. She wouldn't let anyone bully her and she would fight for the things she wanted."

Olivia was full of ambition. That innocent appearance that hid a cunning interior, it's one of the reasons Ellis fell for her. It must have sounded weird when one put it that way, but she liked that part of Olivia. She knew what she wanted and she fought for it tooth and nail.

When the two of them met, Olivia was only a member of a small theater troupe. Since performances could be done in the [VirtualNet], theater troupe could also have freedom to do a variety of genres. They could do action, fantasy, even historical dramas. The performers even had the freedom change their appearance based on the character they were playing.

Some theater actors preferred that setting of the theater where they could act while remaining anonymous to the public. After all, there were those who only loved acting but didn't want the fame that came with it. But there were also those who used the theater as a stepping stone.

Olivia was the latter.

She wanted to be noticed by the agents who would go to theater performances to scout possible talents. Because that's the fastest way she could think of to achieve her dream of becoming a star.

Olivia was born in a poor planet that could barely support itself. As an orphan, she had always dreamt of leaving there and having the best life there was. But it was hard. There's too many obstacles her way that prevented her to do that.

It was when she was a teenager that she started to dream of becoming an actress. It was just a childish dream at first. She thought that it was the easiest way for her to have a good life.

But Olivia knew that even that was hard to achieve considering the place where she lived. So, she did her research and came to the conclusion that joining a theater troupe would be her best bet. She didn't have to leave the planet, all she needed was a virtual pod to enter the [VirtualNet] and looked for a theater troupe that would accept her.

After buying a second-hand virtual pod, she joined a theater troupe and began her theater life. She earned enough money from that to go to the capital. And that's when the two of them met.

Or at least, that's Olivia's past according to the stories she told Ellis. After the betrayal she suffered from the other, she was no longer so confident that all of those things were true. But the fact that Olivia started in theater was at least correct.

"That's definitely a far cry to how I imagined her to be," Astrid commented.

What he envisioned in his mind was someone uptight and domineering, certainly not the little miss sunshine that Ellis described.

"Well, I could certainly see why," Ellis said in a dry tone.

If she didn't know Olivia personally and her only basis was the things the child, Livi, had said, she would also have a different image of her. And that's the thing she couldn't understand the most. Why would Olivia treat her child like some kind of robot? It was something Ellis would have never imagined her to do.

Unless, this was the real her and the one she fell in love with was just an illusion.

Ellis was starting to believe that that was indeed the case.

"Maybe marriage changed her," Astrid commented with a shrug. "She married a noble, so that's certainly possible."

He wasn't even sure how Olivia even managed to marry one with her background. Not that he's looking down on her, it's just that, most nobilities married within their ranks. The word 'love' seldom existed to describe a marriage among them. So, it was quite rare for a noble to marry an actress. Especially since that noble was quite a high ranking one.

The heir of a viscounty. Not a second son or a third son, but the heir. From what Astrid read about the whole marriage thing between the two (he did some research when Ellis became his agent), the parents of that noble were still alive and well. He couldn't imagine them agreeing to letting their heir marry an actress who was, at the same time, an orphan and didn't have any powerful family backing her up.

It just didn't make any sense.

According to the article he had read, it was a marriage of love. But if he considered Olivia's change after five years and how she was treating her own son, Astrid had a doubt that it was really a marriage of love.

So, what was the truth?

"Anyway, no matter what her reason was for asking you to guess in this program, we should be careful regardless," Ellis said.

"Do you really think she would target me?" Astrid asked. "In all honesty, with all the footage we got today, she's the only one who would appear bad in the eyes of the general public."

The show would need a godly editor if she was really planning to turn this episode against him.

And that was another 'mystery' he couldn't understand with all this.