Something Feels Off About My Agency Coworkers (4)
The collab stream ended earlier than planned. We had split up the parts ahead of time considering the condition of her throat and scheduled two full hours, but one of the participants—Priya—never returned to the Syncroom. Still, none of us made a big deal out of it. Instead, we kept dropping comments about how much we missed the missing Priya. We had realized that if we handled this wrong, the situation could spiral completely out of control. Even Karen, who usually bickered with Se-rin nonstop, was playing along with the mood. At the very least, it seemed her claim of being serious about VTubing wasn’t just an act.
“Haaa… It’s finally over…”
“Good work, everyone…”
After Airi confirmed the stream had ended safely, we left the Syncroom and gathered in a lighter Buscode voice chat. The moment they joined, Airi and Shura let out deep sighs as if they had only just realized we had somehow survived the day. I felt the same—like I had just climbed a steep mountain—and slumped into my chair.
A heavy silence stretched on with no one speaking, until Airi finally addressed me in a slightly lower, worried tone than usual.
“Same here. I’ve been sending them every five minutes, but it doesn’t even look like she’s read them.”
Over the call, she let out an adorable little scream at my answer. It sounded like a puppy whose ear had just been bitten by a cat. Apparently she had been trying to reach Se-rin throughout the stream too, but—like me—she hadn’t gotten a single reply.
At this point, I really wished someone would just explain what the problem was…
As I stared blankly at my phone, Airi’s exhausted voice reached my ears again.
Airi fell silent at Karen’s immediate rebuttal. She had looked cheerful just a little while ago, but now her aura was downright icy. If I had to pick a side, my opinion was closer to Karen’s. After all, the one who had proposed this collab was none other than Se-rin herself. We had all trusted her despite our worries and prepared for today’s stream together. So blaming us for not stopping her earlier was nothing but hindsight. If we were assigning fault, hers was clearly the heaviest.
‘You said you wanted to take a step forward.’
Even so, I didn’t feel like blaming her. She must have decided she couldn’t just stay stuck like this. She had simply found the courage to change. I didn’t want to call that desire itself wrong. What was really messing with my head right now was the fact that she wasn’t answering any messages. The way she was ignoring everything completely was driving me crazy.
I couldn’t just sit still. Even if I couldn’t help, I had to do something. I gripped my phone tightly and made up my mind.
“I’m heading out first!”
I ended the call amid my friends’ goodbyes and stepped out of the soundproof booth. Then I did something I almost never did first—I called Se-rin. As expected, though, the phone rang several times without her picking up. At this rate, I was starting to wonder if she had lost her phone entirely.
After thinking it over, I sent a message to the boss instead. I asked if she knew where Priya was, since she wasn’t responding at all. The reply came quickly.
How could I possibly leave her alone…? And that answer definitely sounded like she knew something! I glared at the boss’s clearly evasive reply in frustration, then quickly searched for another adult in my messenger and sent a desperate message.
This… there might be a chance! I had found an opening. I bombarded the hesitant manager with a barrage of messages. I didn’t know what kind of prank I might pull next time we met. Wasn’t it a manager’s job to look after her talents? If she didn’t tell me everything, I would drag her onto my stream and create a black history she would never forget for the rest of her life.
Maybe my sincerity—and the not-so-subtle threats—finally broke her will. She sent me a message that sounded like she had no choice.
Wait, during the collab stream?! The manager’s answer snapped me to attention. I shot up from my seat, grabbed a coat from the closet, and hurriedly changed into outdoor clothes. There was no time to care about my appearance, so I simply tied my hair back roughly, threw on whatever clothes were handy, and rushed to the front door. I jammed my feet into my sneakers.
Mom and my little sister asked where I was going at eight in the evening, but I brushed them off by saying a friend had called for me and dashed out of the house.
“First… let’s head to the office.”
Judging from the manager’s message, Se-rin had already left the office. Even so, in this situation, that tiny clue was the only thing I could rely on. I opened the umbrella I had hastily grabbed and looked up at the sky. A mix of rain and snow—sleet—was falling under the streetlights. The heavy clumps, neither quite rain nor snow, clung uncomfortably to the umbrella.
What on earth was she doing in weather like this?
I hurried toward the nearby station while sending Se-rin another message.
No reply came. Just wait until I find you. I’m serious.
Beyond the dark window of the train I had frantically boarded, my own reflection stared back at me. For some reason, my face looked desperately earnest, completely devoid of composure.
*
By the time I arrived at the office, it was just past nine. Thankfully, the sleet that had been falling weakly had stopped, and moonlight peeked through the thinning clouds, faintly revealing its presence. I wouldn’t need the umbrella in this weather. I folded it and held it in one hand as I quickened my pace.
Just as the office came into view, I spotted a painfully familiar figure standing by the entrance.
“H-huh…? Seolhwa?”
Long, glossy black hair that reached her waist. An unfairly model-like figure with legs that looked endlessly long even without heels. She wore glasses and a mask, but her beauty was still obvious at a glance. In other words, no matter how you looked at her, it was the very person who had been tormenting me all this time—Se-rin.
“You little—!”
“Kyaa! Eh? Ow? That hurts?”
The moment I saw her standing there so casually, rage surged all the way to the top of my head. Without even catching my breath, I ran straight at her and smacked her butt as hard as I could with my palm. Se-rin, suddenly spanked, let out an adorably mismatched squeak. She wore a completely bewildered expression, as if she had no idea why she had just been hit on the rear.
“Why… why weren’t you answering your phone?! I was worried sick!”
“That’s… I left my phone at the office…”
“What? I’ve been messaging you nonstop since you left!”
“S-sorry…”
So I had been throwing messages at an empty phone the whole time! At least she hadn’t been deliberately ignoring me, but it still pissed me off…
Maybe because I had smacked her so hard, the emotions that had shot through the roof slowly settled back down. Once I had calmed my ragged breathing, I stared straight at Se-rin, who was avoiding my gaze, and asked,
“Why did you suddenly come to the office?”
“Well… um, I wanted to borrow some equipment…”
“Equipment? You mean the interface? You have one at home. Why come all the way to the office?”
“…”
Ah, she’s clamming up again… I looked up at Se-rin, who kept glancing around nervously with her mouth firmly shut. It was about time she spilled what was really going on, wasn’t it? Hurry up and tell me. I poured every ounce of that intention into my eyes.
But maybe that was exactly the part she couldn’t answer. She clenched her hands so tightly they turned white, whimpering softly, yet in the end she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Of course. We were just agency coworkers. I could understand why she wouldn’t want to share personal matters… But even though I tried to convince myself of that, the frustration refused to fade.
“Fine… You really don’t want to talk about it. Then go inside and grab your phone quickly.”
“…Huh?”
“I’ll wait here. If you catch a cold, it’ll be entirely your fault.”
“W-what…?”
I leaned my back against the wall near the entrance and closed my eyes. There was no need for me to go in with her just to pick up something she had left behind. It was my way of telling her to hurry up and come back. Se-rin, flustered by my sudden declaration, hurried inside. Not long after, she came back out holding her phone in one hand. Unlike her usual confident posture with shoulders back, she looked noticeably withdrawn.
“I-I’m back…”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Hmm… somewhere decent nearby, I guess?”
I didn’t actually know what was around here, so while she was inside I had checked a map. Recalling the location I had saved, I led Se-rin to a nearby park. Maybe because it was far from the bustling streets and not particularly large, despite its clean appearance, there wasn’t a single person in sight.
‘Must be because of the time… Well, that works in our favor.’
I glanced around, spotted a bench protected by a roof that hadn’t gotten wet, and sat Se-rin down on it. Then I carefully took a seat at the far end of the same bench, let out a silent sigh, and stared straight ahead. The quiet park with no one around, the gentle moonlight filtering through the clouds, and even the slightly fishy smell that lingered after rain. In that strangely calming atmosphere, I asked her bluntly,
“So what are you going to do now?”
“About what?”
“You couldn’t do it, right? Sing.”
“…Yeah.”
She gave a heavy nod at my question. Then, as if it was suffocating her, she took off her glasses and mask and placed them neatly on her lap. Under the faint moonlight, her unrealistically beautiful face was revealed. Her gently lowered eyebrows, different from usual, stirred up a protective instinct in me. I stared at the sight in a daze before belatedly snapping out of it and quickly looking away. I tried to comfort her in an awkward, rather cliché way.
“It’s okay. There will be more chances while you stream. I’m sure there’s some way.”
I’ll help you. I barely managed to swallow the words I had almost added at the end. For some reason, saying something like that in this situation felt a little embarrassing.
But apparently my words weren’t much comfort. The sadness still lingered on her face as she said something I couldn’t believe.
“I’ve decided to quit being a VTuber.”
“…What?!”
Why? How could she—! Just because she couldn’t sing one song…!
I stared at Se-rin with wide eyes and bit my lip hard. If I let my guard down even a little, my emotions would spill out as words. But I didn’t want to judge the decision she had made on my own terms. If my parents or little sister had dismissed my pain back when I shut myself in during middle school… that memory would have become a scar that stayed with me forever.
So I clenched my fists tightly and forced out a strangled voice to answer her.
“I… see…”
“…”
But I had nothing to say to her. She was crying without shedding tears. Knowing how much she loved being a VTuber, I could feel in my bones just how difficult this decision must have been. She must have asked herself over and over, suffered, and suffered again before choosing this. All I could do was stare at the ground, feeling as if I had swallowed ice.
If only she had said she didn’t want to give up—I would have pushed her forward with everything I had. The helplessness of being unable to do anything crushed me.
*
We stayed like that for a long time without speaking, and the mood naturally turned toward parting. Se-rin, no longer the VTuber Priya but the Korean princess, contacted someone and called a limousine. Before long, an intimidatingly luxurious limousine stopped in front of the quiet park. As she was about to get in, Se-rin turned back to me with worried eyes.
“Want a ride home? It’s late, and it’s dangerous for a high schooler to be out alone.”
“No, it’s fine. I have somewhere to stop by first.”
“…I see. If that’s how you feel, I won’t force you.”
I would probably die of nervousness if I rode in something like that. Besides, I wanted to stop by the office before actually going home. I shook my head and carefully declined her offer. Se-rin nodded in understanding and got into the limousine. The moment I was suddenly alone, I rubbed my face with dry hands and let out a deep sigh. Then I squatted down right there, clutching my head.
“Ugh…! Why is she quitting…!”
In my heart, I wanted to grab her tightly and tell her not to. I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and ask why she was quitting, at least hear the reason. But I couldn’t take even a single step toward her. After all, I wasn’t in any position to criticize her for not being able to sing.
‘Ugh… For now, I should go see the boss. I need to hear a proper explanation of what the hell is going on.’
The silver lining was that contract terminations by mutual agreement usually took quite some time. Until it was officially announced, there was still a chance to turn things around. At least she wouldn’t suddenly disappear this month. First, I needed to tell the boss about the situation.
Just as I was leaving the park to head back to the Unimori office, a suspicious shadow stood right in the middle of the path leading to the office.
“Eh?”
“Hey. We know each other, right?”
Looking closer, the shadow was a girl dressed entirely in black from head to toe. Her head was covered by a hood, and she wore a black mask. Not a single bit of skin from her neck to her ankles was visible. But surprisingly, the voice that came from behind the mask was one I had heard before. She pulled the mask down and casually revealed her identity.
“I want to talk to you about something very important regarding Se-rin…”
The girl in black was someone who had been in the same class as me in first year—one of Baekryeon High’s Trinity. If my memory was correct, she was the one they called the Moon… Ju So-hui.
For some reason, the black dragon’s eye embroidered upside down on the corner of her hoodie seemed to gleam.