A Celebrity's Celebrity
"Our Seulbi. Don't get intimidated out there, okay? Greet everyone properly. Got it?"
"But the unnies should be going with me…"
"You're lucky they even booked the maknae."
Stage name Seulbi, real name An Ju-hui, forced her voice up bright and loud among the unnies fretting over her.
"Don't worry, unnies. I'll do great and come right back!"
Seulbi was an idol currently active in the entertainment industry. Two years earlier, she had debuted as the maknae of the five-member girl group Midkiss.
They weren't a group everyone would recognize on name alone. They belonged to that tier where people who casually followed idols might go, "Oh, those girls?" and leave it at that.
In tier rankings, they sat somewhere between three and four. They had drawn a brief flash of attention at debut, but after that both their music chart performance and their name recognition had been thoroughly underwhelming.
Like most idols, Midkiss had dreamed of the absolute top before debut.
Release a new song and watch the album fly off the shelves, seize the top of every streaming chart, open a concert and sell out tens of thousands of seats in an instant.
But ideals and reality were different animals. The reality waiting for them had been cold. Compared to their trainee days, when they had clung to the vague hope that simply debuting would make everything work out, the present felt even bleaker.
At least as rookies they had drawn some curiosity. Now they had nothing particular to show for themselves.
Seulbi and the other members were afraid. Afraid of sinking into obscurity as just another forgettable group. Afraid of ending their careers in entertainment just like that. To have poured their golden teens and twenties into this and receive nothing in return was too sad a thought to bear.
Fortunately, Seulbi and the members had not given up yet. The unnies kept practicing in every spare moment even while working part-time jobs between schedules, and beyond that they appeared in web dramas and stayed in touch with fans through their Vtube channel, steadily pushing forward on every front they could.
Seulbi's appearance on the variety show Midnight Talk was for the same reason. It was only a one-time guest spot, not a regular seat, but still — it was something.
She steeled herself to make something meaningful of this appearance.
I'm going to kill it. The panelists, the other guests, even the crew on set — all of them…
If she did, her footage wouldn't get cut in editing; she'd get plenty of screen time, and people would naturally start wondering, "Who's that funny girl? Oh, she's an idol," and take an interest.
If you held on long enough, opportunity always came. How many cases were there in entertainment of groups with Midkiss-level obscurity suddenly blowing up overnight?
Actors bouncing between bit parts who suddenly exploded. Idols whose fancams went viral and shot their recognition through the roof. In this industry, you could wake up and find the whole world changed. Anything could happen.
But opportunity was never free. Every one of those success stories was the result of the people involved grinding without end.
Luck brought the chance to your door; skill was what let you grab it. That was why Seulbi, young as she was, refused to be swayed by every temptation and kept working steadily.
"Seulbi, head up first. I'll go say hi to the staff and come in."
"Yes, oppa."
Once they arrived at the studio, Seulbi's manager walked her as far as the waiting room door and then left. He needed to put in face time with the PD and the rest of the crew.
She had heard he was on friendly terms with the PD. The booking itself, she had been told, was something her manager had finagled through that connection. He, too, was doing everything he could within his reach.
I have to work hard too…!
Seulbi steeled herself one more time in front of the talent waiting room. Someone might already be inside, so she took a breath, ran through Midkiss's group greeting in her head, and opened the door.
"Uh…"
And then, contrary to everything she had prepared, she couldn't get a single word out.
Because a woman she had never seen before was sitting inside the waiting room. Hair too richly white to be a simple bleach job, eyes so blue they looked like they held the ocean.
She was seated in one corner of the room, and because the door had just opened, she was looking toward Seulbi, those enormous eyes blinking.
A guest? Is she a guest? Who is she?
In truth, Seulbi had not been told a single thing about the other guests by the PD in charge. She had only heard that four guests total, including herself, would be appearing.
Maybe they thought the show's concept worked better that way. Thanks to that, Seulbi had been turning over possibilities in her head since the day before about who might show up alongside her.
Kayak, for her part, had not been given much information about the cast either, so the arrangement was at least fair.
Seulbi scanned the woman in front of her quickly. But the face did not exist anywhere in her memory. Which meant she was at least not an idol.
An actress, maybe, or a model. That face was striking enough that actress felt plausible.
There's no way I'd see a face like that once and forget it…
If she had appeared in even a single production, it was the kind of unforgettable face that would have lodged itself in your mind.
Either a complete newcomer who had never been in anything, or an actress whose every project tanked the moment she was cast — that was Seulbi's working theory. She was not entirely unfamiliar with that side of the industry, but she was not deeply informed either.
Seulbi finished running through all of this in roughly a minute. Whether the other woman was an actress or a model, what she had to do was simple.
"Hello! I'm Seulbi, sub-vocal of Midkiss!"
She bowed her head politely. It was the single thing she had done most often since entering the industry, and also the point her unnies had drilled into her hardest.
Who didn't greet properly, who half-assed it — that kind of talk turned into "that group's got no manners" in the blink of an eye.
Because she didn't know the face, she projected her voice the way she would greeting senior artists. A flawless greeting, Seulbi thought.
Meanwhile Kayak, who had completely missed the window to return the greeting, could only roll her eyes around while staring at the soft, fluffy crown of the idol's head.
"Ah, yes. Midkiss… Seulbi of Midkiss. Nice to meet you. I'm, uh, Kayak of KayakTube…"
I had been sitting in the waiting room reading over the script when I suddenly got hit with a full ninety-degree bow.
I was so flustered I ended up introducing myself with the ridiculous line "Kayak of KayakTube."
"So you stream on Twish…? And you run a Vtube channel too?"
"Yeah, that's right. See, here's my channel."
"Whoa, you have so many subscribers! That's insane!"
A short conversation with Seulbi cleared up the misunderstanding.
Apparently she had mistaken me for a senior in the entertainment industry. For an idol from a group that hadn't racked up much seniority and still had low name recognition, working hard at greetings was simply the correct play.
"I just subscribed! When I get back to the dorm I'll tell my unnies to subscribe too!"
She was a friendly kid. Eighteen years old, the team's maknae, she had said. Seulbi steered the conversation with that fresh, bright energy unique to her age.
"Hello, I do theater with a troupe—"
As the new arrivals introduced themselves and I was about to do the same, the woman who had introduced herself as an actress got there first.
"Did you happen to go to Bosingak for New Year's?"
"Yeah, to hear the bell…"
"I knew it! I saw you on the news! The Bosingak Camilla Girl!"
"What's the Bosingak Camilla Girl?"
After that it was explanation time all over again. I didn't even have to step in myself — the person who recognized me pulled up the news clip, and everyone who watched it started praising how pretty I was and how well I spoke.
Then Seulbi asked what Camilla was, and this time the guy from the theater troupe took over the explanation.
There was a game called Abyss, and a character in it named Camilla, and she looked so much like her that people called her the Bosingak Camilla Girl—
"I've been watching your streams. I'm a fan. You're even prettier in person."
"Ah, thank you."
The actress had known me as the Bosingak Camilla Girl; the man from a moment ago had learned about me through pro gamer Lee Jun-hyeok's comments.
Both of those incidents had contributed more than a little to growing the scale of my channel. Even so, I had never expected to run into people who recognized me in a place like this, so I was left feeling a little dazed.
"Unni, you're actually someone amazing. I was the only one who didn't know."
Seulbi looking at me with stars in her eyes was just the bonus. No — her reaction was probably the normal one.
It was just burdensome, the way she was staring at me like some famous celebrity simply because these people had luckily recognized me.
Regardless, I decided that once the show started, I would do everything I could to lift Seulbi up.
I had heard a little about her situation before everyone gathered, and the kid was just too pitiful. It felt like I had gotten a look at the bare face of an unpopular idol.
It wasn't pure pity, either. She was a good kid. It was admirable, watching someone so young keep grinding through tough circumstances. And the way she had greeted me so earnestly at the start had left a good impression too.
More than anything, our reasons for being on the show were completely different.
I was only here because I figured I might as well try appearing on terrestrial TV. For Seulbi, every single broadcast like this was a precious opportunity. You could call it a difference in desperation.
I wasn't the kind of person rotten enough to steal screen time from an idol for whom every variety appearance mattered this much. So I made up my mind to focus on supporting her from the side.
Once filming started, I just needed to zero in on Seulbi's stories and react hard. That was what I was thinking when the PD walked in and filming began on the spot.
"Hold on, what has Kayak-nim been doing this whole time?"
"You don't look the type, but you're a total disaster, aren't you?"
"Pffhahaha! Unni, you're too funny!"
Huh. This was not going the way I had planned at all.
The realization arrived fashionably late.