Honorary Gallery Master
Whether girl group or boy group, idols have what people call tiers.
It isn't as if some official ranking declares that this group is such-and-such a tier. No authoritative body hands out the grades. But that doesn't mean the idea is meaningless, either.
From the fans who love the idol scene all the way up to industry insiders, everyone tacitly understands it. This group sits at about this level; that group sits at about that one.
First-week album sales, Vtube music video views, name recognition high enough that ordinary people know who they are—the criteria for ranking were many and varied, and by those various measures, Midkiss had only just begun hovering around the edge of third tier.
Originally, they'd been stuck at the very bottom of fifth tier, deep on the ocean floor. Even if you asked someone who knew idols pretty well, you'd get, "There was a group like that?" and only after playing them a song would you hear, "Oh, those kids—"
For Midkiss to have climbed this far from that position was a remarkable achievement. They still weren't a household name among the general public, but at least within the industry, people knew who they were when you mentioned the name.
The early fans who'd been stanning them hard since debut—the ones you could call true fans—had literally screamed with joy.
How much slander had they endured for stanning idols who barely counted as idols, celebrities less famous than most Instagram influencers—washed-up idols?
The criticism wasn't entirely wrong, either. Which was why the damage hit harder, and more than a few people left Midkiss's fandom, Kiss.
The reason twenty-five-year-old college leave-of-absence student Mijin had stuck with Midkiss to the end wasn't anything particularly grand. She simply felt that their desperate scramble to climb higher looked a lot like her own situation.
Whatever the original reason, it didn't matter now. Watching a group she'd cheered for steadily for years finally make it big, dopamine was flooding her brain nonstop.
It gave her a catharsis comparable to when a weak team that always lost suddenly took down a powerhouse.
Strike while the iron is hot—even the agency that used to come up empty every time was looking pretty good to her these days.
"I'm so proud of my babies!"
That was why Mijin had cracked open a can of beer in the middle of the day. Lately, everything they did drew gasps of admiration from her—she barely even needed drinking snacks.
"Seulbi stepped out downstairs for a bit. She should be back soon."
"Should we show our fans what we've been practicing?"
It wasn't as if she had no snacks at all. Midkiss was currently live-streaming in real time through one of the apps idols commonly used.
The way they still made time for their fans even while busy was utterly endearing.
And so the members of Midkiss—minus Seulbi—danced against the backdrop of the choreography practice room, and they had just passed the highlight section when—
"Unnies— I'm back—."
Seulbi's voice rang out as the practice room door burst open. Mijin had always considered Seulbi her one-pick, so the sudden appearance of the member who'd been missing was nothing short of welcome—except.
"What is that…?"
Mijin could only stare wide-eyed at her phone screen. On the live broadcast, someone following right behind Seulbi was just barely visible.
"Seulbi's here?"
"Seulbi, we're live, we're live!"
"Who's behind—"
"Ah, you're here! Come in, come in!"
From the camera angle, the unfamiliar guest wasn't visible to the fans. But judging by the Midkiss members' reactions, it was clear someone quite welcome had arrived.
"You're in the middle of a broadcast— I can just come back later—"
"No, no! You went out of your way to come, so just, um…"
"Don't go, unnie."
"If you're okay with your face being on camera, maybe join us—"
"Then first, let's say hello—"
The voices were coming from farther away, muffled and hard to make out properly, but it didn't matter.
Soon enough, an unfamiliar figure stepped into the frame that had been showing the members.
"Hello, Midkiss fans… I'm, um. The streamer Kayak who appeared on Midnight Talk with Seulbi."
The starting point of Midkiss's upward curve. The person who had put their song back on the charts. The one the Midkiss minor gallery called their Honorary Gallery Master.
Kayak had appeared.
Before we came to the practice room, Seulbi had given me a short rundown.
Most of it was about her unnies. The main point was that they all wanted to meet me, but information about them was mixed in too.
Besides Seulbi, there were four more. The eldest unnie was twenty-one. The second was twenty. And the two below that were nineteen, I think?
Which meant, if you did the math, they were younger than not only my old self but even my current self.
"Unnie, I really, really wanted to see you."
"What are you talking about? I wanted to see you more."
"I told all my unnies about you and made them subscribe to Kayaktube and watch every video that went up."
"I even watch your personal streams! I subscribed too!"
"Wait, why are you watching my streams…"
You're busy enough as it is—why are you watching my streams? Even if you weren't busy, my streams aren't worth watching.
Most of the content leans heavily toward games. There are female viewers, sure, but the base itself skews pretty male-oriented.
Girls like these would be better off watching dance, hangout, or beauty Vtubers, wouldn't they?
"Just going in and looking at unnie's face was fun enough?"
"Right, right—but seeing you in person, the real thing is way prettier."
"Speaking of which, could you do some beauty content sometime? Unnie's face is too good to waste."
"Talk casually, please—we're all younger than you. Hehe."
Everyone kept staring at me, reacting in real time to every little thing I did—an extremely draining situation. At least I'd gotten a lot better at handling this than before. If an introvert had been sitting in my place, they would've curled up into a dried squid on the spot.
If this had been content, I would've felt more at ease. Something like, "I visited a current idol group's choreography practice room," or whatever.
I hadn't expected things to turn out like this, so there was nothing I could do. If I'd known ahead of time, I would've brought at least one of my editors.
"You all still have a broadcast to do—can't I just sit in the corner?"
Originally I'd said I should leave since they looked busy, but their resistance had been so firm that I'd settled for offering to just sit quietly in a corner.
Ask for the big thing first, get rejected, then ask for something smaller. A classic negotiation strategy—except even that got shot down.
"It's fine! Seulbi's handling the chat."
"There were a lot of people wanting to see Seulbi earlier, too. It wouldn't be good if only we kept appearing."
That seemed to be true—Seulbi was clutching someone's phone, mouth running a mile a minute. Even so, she kept glancing over and winking at me, completely scatterbrained. Like a student goofing off behind the teacher's back during class.
"Ah, they're asking to see Kayak-nim. Honorary Gallery Master! You are the Honorary Gallery Master, right? Mm-hmm. You all know her too. Just a second."
Apparently my impression hadn't been wrong. The perfectly functional teacher was now taking an interest in this side as well.
Seulbi tilted the phone for a moment, came over, and asked,
"Unnie, want to come on for a bit too? The fans really want to see you."
"…"
It wasn't that I disliked it or felt any resistance. I did personal streams, appeared on terrestrial TV, and even got interviewed in the news—what reason would I have to refuse?
I was just puzzled. They'd come to see the celebrities they liked—why were they looking for me?
"Hello."
Seulbi's claim that the fans really wanted to see me hadn't been empty words—the reactions were genuinely warm.
Still, this being an idol communication stream, the chat was different from my usual broadcast chat in a lot of ways.
My chat wasn't particularly rough either, but over here it felt like people were typing purely so the celebrity on stream would feel good. Truly, endlessly kind.
"Uh, um. Yeah… I came along with Seulbi. This is my first time meeting the rest of the members."
I hadn't even said anything special, and they were cooing over me.
Part of it was probably good chat management to keep anything nasty from showing up, but mostly it was that the people who sought out personal communication streams like this were overwhelmingly true fans. An atmosphere like this was only natural.
I was still watching this whole different style of chat when the people who'd been sitting started standing up one by one.
Among them, the girl who was the eldest unnie and the leader asked,
"Unnie, it must be boring just sitting there—would you like to learn the dance?"