Official Debut! Kuro's One-Man Team!
5:53 p.m.
Less than ten minutes remained until the debut stream went live, and the viewer count had already blown past five hundred. Chat was a solid wall of people screaming to open the door, loud enough that CEO Jo Kyuhyun actually caught himself wondering whether he should just hit the button early.
He had dealt with aggressive fans at idol events before, but this was the first time he had ever been subjected to an indiscriminate internet assault. He could only stare at the chat window, the color gone from his face.
Beside him, Kang Ho-yeon shook her head.
"CEO. Instead of wasting brain cells on that garbage, how about you actually check the equipment for once? What are you going to do if something falls on the kids? Then... this. No—then you'll find out that what you're looking at right now was the angelic version."
A cold sweat slid down Jo Kyuhyun's temple.
This... is the angelic version?
No matter how he turned it over in his head...
This was angelic?
Whatever "angel" meant here, it was clearly not the word Jo Kyuhyun kept in his dictionary.
"I should go over the checks again, then... but why am I the one doing it? I'm the CEO."
"Haa... Jo Kyuhyun, seriously! You know why you always look so out of it? Because you think way too many useless thoughts. Go move around and cool your head!"
"Uh... alright, fine."
Kang Ho-yeon shoved him in the back, and Jo Kyuhyun started the equipment check with a dazed look still stuck to his face. Still—once he stopped paying attention to everything else, the headache that had been sitting behind his eyes melted away. So that, at least, was a win.
I just shook my head at the two of them.
"What is this, a sketch?"
"Did you just say something?"
"I didn't say anything. We're about to start—did everyone memorize their lines?"
"..."
Both unnies silently ducked my eyes.
Unbelievable. If they couldn't even memorize a script this short, what exactly were they planning to do out there? There wasn't that much written down to begin with. Answers to a mere twenty questions. And they still couldn't get it into their heads.
"You're an actress. You've got methods for cramming walls of text this fast. We don't."
"Yuwol unnie. That's just the excuse losers make. Can't do it? That's not it. You never planned to do it in the first place, so you hide behind 'I can't.' So."
I smacked both of them once across the back.
"Ow!"
"Ugh... what was that for."
"Both of you. Stop thinking about folding and get up. Just memorize the biggest parts. I'll cover the rest."
Like they'd said, I already had the whole script down. Years of chewing through drama and film scripts had trained my body in how to swallow a lot of words at speed. Give me about ten minutes and twenty sentences were nothing. I had always been pretty confident in my memory anyway, even before all that.
"Mumble mumble..."
"So... here I give this answer, and..."
The two unnies started whispering under their breath, cramming the script into their skulls with the desperation of people facing a firing squad. I pulled tissues and dabbed the sweat beading on their foreheads, then punched a hole in a water-bottle cap, slotted in a straw, and held it up to their mouths. They latched on and started sucking.
"Time! Everyone get ready!"
The staff call made me check the clock. About two minutes left.
"Unnies. We have to move."
"W-wait. Just this... just this last part. Let me read it!"
"Me too... just a little more..."
"I said hurry up."
I grabbed both of them by the hand and dragged them toward the set.
"What even was that, you guys?"
Every pair of eyes in the room swung toward Yumin, president of the VTuber club. They had rented a party room for today—three hundred thousand won for the day, which sounded brutal until you did the math. Total headcount was seven... no, one person was out, so six of them had split it n-ways. Fifty thousand won a person, plus whatever snacks each of them had brought, and a whole day of hanging out still came in under a hundred thousand. In this economy? A day that didn't even crack a hundred thousand won. Where else were you going to find value like that?
A massive TV on the party-room wall was already jacked into NewTube. A black screen ticked the countdown down at speed, and the title sitting over it read:
Refresh Official Debut Stream!
"Everyone stay calm! It's about to start!"
"Calm? You're the least calm person in this room. Am I wrong?"
"She's right..."
Yumin's voice was doing anything but staying calm. Beside him, Lim Hyun-kyung put on a wry smile and knocked back her cola. In the seat right next to her, Choi Wooseok was sitting ramrod-straight and sweating for an entirely different reason.
"Why are you sweating so much? Is it hot? Well... I guess the weather is pretty warm."
"That's not..."
Hyun-kyung fluttered the hem of her uniform just enough to hint at the curve of her chest. She wasn't actually flashing anyone. It was a maybe-you-see-it, maybe-you-don't kind of tease, aimed squarely at her junior. Wooseok knew perfectly well he was being messed with, and he still couldn't peel his eyes away. Well. Yeah.
"Your stare's getting pretty hot...? What, you interested? Jiwoo's are bigger than mine, aren't they?"
"That's..."
The second the conversation hit chests, Wooseok's face went scarlet and he dropped his head. Hyun-kyung snorted at how cute it was.
"I'm kidding, kidding. It's starting. Everybody focus!"
Right on cue, Refresh's debut stream kicked off. The group had been drawing heat even before they went live. People were already floating the idea that if their popularity kept climbing, they might land music-show stages or even an offline concert, the way the male VTuber group Brave had. And after Kuro's stream the night before—production quality that punched way above a debut, and a voice that could mug a recording studio—even people who didn't watch VTubers had started paying attention.
"It's six."
The black screen finally gave way. A stage filled the frame, and music spilled out with it.
"Oh? Here they come."
Through the speakers came not a thud of footsteps but the sharp click of heels. A blonde VTuber walked out onto the stage: Luna.
"Luna's first."
They already knew Refresh was a four-member group; the teaser had made that much clear. Luna settled into a pose just off center stage. Next came a slim VTuber with blue hair. There was no public information on the two members who weren't Luna or Kuro, so the camera helpfully zoomed straight in on her chest—where a name tag reading Tsuki was stuck. Tsuki took a spot much farther from Luna than the center would have allowed.
After her came a platinum-haired girl with a figure a little fuller than Tsuki's: Jina.
Three members in. The only one left was the person everyone had shown up for, the one they had rented a room and bought snacks and watched a countdown to see.
Click.
Click.
Black hair with a wash of blue on the inner layer swayed as she walked—two-tone, catching the lights. Unlike yesterday, every member was in the same costume. Kuro took center, right beside Luna, and the instant she hit her pose the intro shifted and the song began.
Here we gather~
Luna took the first line, and the members threw themselves into the choreography.
"Hello, everyone! I'm the thousand-year-old fox who showed up to grant all your wishes. The name's Aruru! Treat me kindly~"
The second the song ended, Aruru popped out of nowhere and greeted the camera.
An unannounced Aruru appearance sent the chat into a full identity crisis.
"I get why you're all surprised. But this isn't a hack, and I didn't hijack the stream either. I'm just Aruru, the MC here to help out with Refresh's debut broadcast today~ Be nice to me, everyone!"
She clapped her hands, bright and crisp, and yanked the energy right back up.
"Alright, enough about things that don't matter! Today's protagonists aren't me! They're Team Refresh! Say hello, everyone~!"
The moment Aruru started the introductions, the shot cut to the Refresh members sitting in a row.
"One, two,"
"Peaceful rest, to one and all. We're Refresh!"
I laid down the count, and the members delivered the greeting.
"Songs from the future, for everyone. I'm Kuro, and I'll be serving as leader of Team Refresh."
"Dazzling style, for everyone. I'm Jina."
"Cuteness maxed out! It's Tsuki~!"
"Warm songs... no, wait. Mercy, to everyone. I'm Luna."
Once the introductions wrapped, Aruru clapped again and rolled us into the next beat.
"I was told Luna is the oldest, though. So why is Kuro the leader? Is there a story here?"
The viewers thought it was a sharp question. For us, it barely registered. It was just one of the questions already sitting in the script we had memorized.
"That's..."
"I'll take this one."
Luna cut across me before I could finish and stepped forward.
"Unnie?"
"It's better if I answer here. The viewers will get it faster too."
She wasn't wrong. If I said it, people would just assume the company had leaned on us. I nodded. Fine.
"We introduced ourselves as a team, but the truth is, we're not a team."
"Ooh~ that sounds like something fun is coming. If you're not a team, then what are you?"
Yeah, what? I was a little curious myself. The script said I had become leader because I set the most exemplary example.
"The truth is... we're a Kuro one-man team. It wouldn't even be an exaggeration to say this group was built entirely for Kuro."
"Wait... if you put it like that..."
"That's right."
"Yeah, yeah!"
Everyone except me nodded in perfect unison.
"So the team was forced together just to debut Kuro?"
"Forced? No. We volunteered because we wanted to debut with Kuro... 'latched on' is probably the better way to put it. I'll say it loud and proud, right here!"
Anxiety bloomed in my chest from the very first word.