Kirinuki
"Alright, Seorin. Get home safe."
"I will. See you at the café tomorrow. Bye."
She waved goodbye to Ijun, and they went their separate ways.
Seorin pretended to walk off, then turned back to watch his retreating figure disappear down the street.
Why? Hard to say.
She simply didn't want him to go.
But she didn't especially want him catching her at it, either.
…Well. They had spent the entire day stuck to each other, after all.
"I might be a way more clingy girlfriend than I thought."
Seorin had always considered herself pretty cool and collected. Looking at herself today, though, she was anything but.
Lunch had been her idea. Dinner, too. The little breaks they stole at the café. The walk home. She had been with Ijun through all of it—and still, even at the moment of parting, she stood there watching him go, reluctant to let the day end.
Honesty was her style, sure. But if she let this much show, she worried Ijun might finally get tired of her.
"…And there's that whole thing about how guys hate girls who cling too hard."
So even though she wanted a little more time with him, she had played it cool to his face—and now she was sneaking a greedy look at his back like some kind of stalker.
The second he turned the corner and vanished, a soft little "ah" slipped from Seorin's lips.
That was it. Really over.
She wouldn't see him again until tomorrow.
"…Alright. My turn. Home, then bed."
She shook off the last of her lingering attachment and started walking.
If she went to sleep now, she could wake up tomorrow morning and head to the café for work.
Once she got home, she threw together a rough dinner from whatever side dishes were left in the fridge. She showered, pulled on her pajamas, and climbed into bed.
Lying there blankly, arms wrapped around her favorite rabbit plushie, she stared at her phone—and her mind wandered.
"…I wonder what Ijun's doing right now."
Was he scrolling on his phone, trying to fall asleep too? Rewatching old Rabiel videos? Or had he already drifted off?
…And was there any chance—just a chance—that he was thinking about her the way she was thinking about him?
"I'm not some lovesick teenage girl… Ugh."
Watching herself melt into the kind of sentimental haze reserved for a girl in the thrall of her first love, Seorin shook her head hard, as if she could rattle the thoughts loose.
If she kept going down the Ijun rabbit hole, she would get all warm and fuzzy and never get to sleep. That much was obvious.
She was forcing herself toward sleep for tomorrow's sake when a message lit up her phone.
The name on the screen made her blink in mild surprise.
It had been a very long time since she had seen it. They hadn't spoken once—not privately—since he graduated. His number had survived in her contacts only because she had never gotten around to cleaning them out. She never imagined he would reach out again.
…A favor? From him? For her?
She had a rough sense of what he had been up to. Plenty of her friends and acquaintances still kept in touch with Ju-hyeok. Just like back in college, he was still deep in music—working the indie scene as a session guitarist and composer, doing reasonably well from what she had heard.
So what could someone like that possibly need from her?
When it came to music, she was barely an amateur. The only musical work she had done since graduation was the handful of tracks she had released during her VTuber days.
"Still… I should probably answer, right…?"
For a second she considered pretending she had never seen it. But she and Ju-hyeok had history. Things had gotten awkward between them for reasons of their own, but she knew he wasn't a bad person. Even after this long, a reply didn't seem like too much to ask.
And honestly, she was a little curious what this "favor" even was.
After a long hesitation, she finally hit send—and a reply shot back almost instantly, as if he had been waiting.
How had she been? Should she say fine? Or not?
Seorin hesitated over an answer she didn't even know herself, then settled on something vague.
Singing.
The word hit her chest like a dull weight.
Of course she wasn't. She had stopped the moment she quit virtual streaming, and it had been a long time since then. It was a sore spot—one she would have preferred he left alone. But Ju-hyeok clearly didn't know her situation. He had probably just asked without thinking.
So she answered carefully, doing her best not to let any of that show.
Not right now—or not ever again?
Not ever again felt more likely. If she kept studying the way she was and actually became a civil servant, she doubted there would be any time left for singing. As a hobby, maybe. But making a living from it the way Ju-hyeok did? That felt out of reach.
Loved—past tense?
She still loved it. Circumstances had just made it impossible, that was all.
A bitter taste settled on her tongue.
Ju-hyeok and Seorin had come up through the same practical music department—seniors and juniors, bandmates from the same club. Hui-su had played bass. Yeon-ju had been on drums. And just as Ju-hyeok said, he was the only one among them still making music.
The truth was, vanishingly few people who graduated from a practical music program actually stayed in the industry. If you were lucky, you might end up as a vocal coach. Building a real career off music itself almost never happened. Every practical music student knew that bitter little fact.
And Seorin was just one more ordinary graduate among them.
A guide.
A so-called guide vocal—a rough recording meant to show a singer the feel of a song, how it was supposed to be performed. For composers like Ju-hyeok, it came up more often than you'd think. Unless he sang the thing himself, putting the vibe of a track into words for another vocalist was surprisingly hard.
She hadn't done it often, but back in school she had recorded guides for a few seniors and gotten free meals out of it.
She had quit singing over a year ago. She had never even been in the indie scene. Why Ju-hyeok would specifically want her for a guide, she couldn't figure. If he was working in the industry, he had to know vocalists far better than her—real pros, not amateurs like she was.
As the band's lead guitarist and leader, he had been a senior who had done a lot for her musical growth. He had also been one of the people who truly recognized how good her voice was—her tone, her singing. …If that whole mess hadn't made things awkward between them, they probably would have stayed close. Freshman year, they really had been.
Mmm.
A hum of hesitation slipped out before she could stop it.
The day she decided to start studying for the civil service exam, she had told herself she was done with singing for good. And now here he was, out of nowhere, asking for this. It put her in an impossible position.
"…It's hard to say no when he's asking like that."
Seorin had never been good at coldly shutting people down when they came to her like this—and this wasn't just anyone. It was Ju-hyeok. Pushing him away cleanly was even harder. On top of that, he wanted her specifically because he liked her singing. Even if she had quit, no one who had ever made music could feel bad hearing that.
And separate from all of that, what snagged her attention was the pay.
Guide vocalists usually didn't get paid much. Two hundred thousand won for a two-hour recording session? Even accounting for the friend-rate bump, the number was surprisingly high. Who paid two hundred thousand a pop for a guide from a non-pro vocalist?
Back in her VTuber days, she had worked part-time gigs at ten thousand won an hour. And lately, having quit every side job and cut off her income entirely, two hundred thousand won was a dangerously sweet temptation.
"What if I just grit my teeth and do it for one day?"
Think of it as a one-off side hustle. It was a much easier way to make money than loading trucks.
She couldn't help being tempted by his offer. That much was unavoidable.
After rolling back and forth across the bed in an agony of indecision, she finally typed:
…This is really the last time.
Promising herself this would be the final time she ever touched singing, she hit send.
"Wait, you actually remember that?"
"It'd be weirder not to. That stream was legendary."
"Okay, fair—the karaoke chat was going crazy that night. It was a New Year's stream."
"And the hanbok was insanely pretty. All-time best outfit, no contest."
"True. The design on that one really did hit different."
We talked over our meal. Ever since that day, eating together had become the default. And no matter how ordinary the conversation started, somehow—maybe because we were both Rabi—we always ended up talking about Rabiel again before we knew it.
We were deep into one of Rabiel's legendary streams, the New Year's karaoke from her second year, when a question occurred to me.
"What was your favorite Rabiel stream, Seorin?"
As a music major, maybe a singing stream? Rabiel had done singing streams and sync rooms on a pretty regular schedule. That was my guess, anyway.
Seorin went a different direction entirely.
"Hmm. If we're talking favorites, there are way too many… but if I had to pick just one…"
"Yeah?"
"The first one that comes to mind is the Into the Light stream?"
"Ah, that one? The day she cried so hard she exhausted herself and ended the stream?"
"Pfft. Yes. Exactly. The reason for the emergency end was so ridiculous it just stuck with me."
"I still remember what she said right before she signed off. 'Everyone… I cried so much I'm sleepy. I'm sorry.' And then she just ended it."
I chuckled at the memory, and Seorin laughed with me.
"As a streamer, that's an automatic fail. Automatic. Anyway, I just like those healing, emotional story games."
That tracked. True to being a Rabi, Seorin's tastes lined up with Rabiel's in a lot of ways. Rabiel had always loved healing games and story-driven titles, and brought them on stream all the time.
"What about you, Ijun?"
"Ah—mine's easy. The cursed voice one."
"…Wait. You mean—"
"Yep. Rabiel's first and last horror game stream. Pretty sure."
Rabiel had been catastrophically bad at horror games. Not just "bad"—more like the kind of streamer who booted one up and then froze in place, too terrified to take a single step. Not the usual jump-scare-and-keep-going type. Literally, genuinely, unable to move.
Which is why, across three whole years of streaming, she had never once touched a horror title—until that day.
"Ugh. That one was brutal. All because she overslept."
The memory must have been vivid, because Seorin made a face like she had been the one playing it. The reason for her first and last horror stream of her entire career had been sleeping through her alarm. A classic punishment stream.
"Still, the content went nuclear because of it."
"…Yeah, that's fair. I bet the clips from that day are still some of the most popular ones."
"It was so good. The part where she ran away yelling for her mom, and then barely a few minutes in she was already going, 'I can't do this,' frying jeon and apologizing for almost a full hour while chat completely lost it."
"That was fun for you? You're more sadistic than I thought, Ijun. Didn't you feel bad for Rabiel?"
"I felt bad, which is exactly why it was cute. Rabiel is at her cutest when she's all curled up and pathetic."
"Freak. You're a total freak."
Just thinking about that stream made my mouth water. Rabiel's outraged, full-throttle screams. The pleading little voice going "Rabi…" because she was too scared. The way her whole face jumped and trembled every time something popped up on screen. Mmm. Not a single weak course in that entire meal.
"Chat and the donations that day were hilarious too. Everyone just had main-character energy for some reason."
"Really? I wasn't paying that much attention to any of that. I'm the type who gets scared of horror games myself."
"Wait, seriously? Not watching that is a genuine life loss. You have to at least hit the VOD."
"It's that good?"
"That good. Skip it and you've wasted half your life. Oh, right—there's an edited version of that day floating around, too."
One of the highest peaks in Rabiel history, and she hadn't even properly enjoyed it. As a fellow Rabi, I felt a moral obligation to make her rewatch it. I pulled out my phone.
I was pretty sure I still had the edit I had cut myself back then.
"The VOD's way too long, so watch this. I edited it down to two hours."
"Oh—I know this channel. Rabi is free, right?"
The second I pulled up the channel on my phone, Seorin recognized the thumbnail and said it out loud.
A tiny channel that had never even cracked a thousand subscribers. Just a little kirinuki channel I had run for other Rabi—and for myself—to collect Rabiel's best moments. The fact that Seorin knew it left me a little embarrassed and a little pleased at the same time.
"You know Rabiel clip channels too, Seorin?"
"Of course. Pretty much all of them. There aren't that many to begin with."
Which, fair. Clip channels for a small-time VTuber were always going to be few and far between.
She really is a hardcore Rabi, huh. Knowing the kirinuki channels seals it.
Normally I would have left it at a quiet little "impressive" and moved on. But maybe talking Rabiel with her had me riding high—or maybe I was just happy she recognized the channel. Before I quite meant to, the urge to show off slipped out as a careful little coming-out.
"Okay, this is a secret. I'm only telling you, Seorin."
"What is it?"
"I'm the one behind Rabi is free. That's me."
"What?"
"I said I ran that channel."
Of all the Rabiel kirinuki channels, it had pulled the best numbers. Maybe because I had poured every drop of my love for Rabiel into running it—it had been the biggest of them, and even if only a little, it had funneled a few new viewers her way. Hearing her mention inbound traffic from my channel on stream had made me so proud.
These days the channel was completely shut down, ever since Rabiel graduated.
"Wait—really? That was you, Ijun?"
Why was she this shocked? VTuber viewers running clip channels wasn't exactly rare.
Her reaction came back so much stronger than I expected that I was the one who ended up flustered.