Summer's Sea

Somehow,

I woke up to find it was already 9 PM.

Had I slept nearly thirteen hours?

My body felt refreshed. My mind did not.

I managed to sit up and hovered over the email window, fingers twitching uselessly without quite committing to the click.

Had Lunari checked it? Had a reply come? Or had she not even looked yet?

I tried to tell myself that even if the whole thing vanished as if it had never happened, that would be fine.

I'd made the track for fun. We could just quietly forget about it—the usual nothing.

Ah, but then there would be no one left to sing this song. I didn't like that. I hated unfinished things.

With those messy thoughts circling, I opened the email window.

A reply had come.

My heart hammered.

Four exclamation marks.

I caught the corner of my mouth lifting and forced it back ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠down at once.

Then I read it again.

And once more.

The clock read 9:22 PM.

Roughly forty minutes until the stream started.

For those forty minutes I did nothing at all—just sat staring blankly at an empty project file with the composition program open.

It is not a secret that my finger was already resting on the browser tab two minutes before 10.

When the time came I clicked through. Lunari's stream was already live.

She must have started about ten minutes early.

The moment I entered, it became one.

Yesterday that one-on-one conversation had felt oppressive. Today curiosity edged ahead.

It was a little unfair to Lunari, but for someone like me who found people exhausting, her unpopular stream might actually be comfortable.

"Aaaahhh!! English-nim!! You came!!"

A light greeting was met by tension that slammed straight into my eardrums.

"I've been waiting. Really!! Did you check the email?! I've been listening to that accompaniment all day long!!"

"How was it?! Do you think I can pull it off?!"

Her voice made the exclamation marks feel audible.

The excitement carried all the way through the speakers.

"Hehe, then—I'll sing it right now!"

"Oh, already? Nice."

The words slipped out under my breath before I could stop them. One of us was desperate to hear the song; the other was desperate to sing it. That was how today's stream opening began.

There was a short stretch of preparation. Rustling sounds came through. I leaned back against the chair. My heart was racing strangely. I had never expected the moment my arrangement met a living voice to feel this tense.

Thump-thump.

I was trembling.

Da-ri-ri-ring— dum—

The first note rang out.

Through the speakers in my room, the intro I had spent the whole night carving began to flow.

A decadent bassline crawling across the floor, a heavy, cool acoustic guitar melody laid over it. The air in the room turned calm and dreamlike in an instant.

Lunari carefully opened the first line.

In that instant every fine hair on my body stood on end.

It was different.

Same lyrics, completely different song.

That captivating huskiness that had been crushed while forcing itself to keep up with idol-song high tension now clung sticky and perfect to the slow minor bass rhythm, creating real synergy.

The accompaniment covered and hid her unsteady pitch, pushing only the color of her voice into the center of the stage lights.

The track built, climbing toward the chorus.

The cursed high-note section where she had cracked and gasped yesterday was approaching.

Without meaning to I clenched my fist and held my breath. Would the scene I had imagined actually appear?

If it simply flowed at its natural tempo, the way water moves.

The two seconds I had designed and promised.

Exactly as intended, every instrument in the background cut off with a clean click. Perfect silence. And then—

Boom— using that single breath as a detonator, the suppressed sound and rhythm exploded outward and swallowed the song whole again.

Unstable breathing transformed into the most sensual, dramatic device that tore the entire atmosphere of the track wide open.

"……"

What was this?

I had stacked so much music alone in this room for six years, yet never once had I felt anything like this.

The sensation of the sounds I made meeting a living voice and becoming something entirely different.

I just kept clenching and unclenching my fist for no reason.

When the song ended a brief silence settled.

"……Um, how was it?"

Lunari's voice returned carefully. The excited tension from the start had completely drained away.

I put my fingers on the chat window and paused.

What should I even write?

It was good. Too good. Way better than expected.

But I wasn't sure those words were enough.

My hands just moved with whatever came to mind.

"……Really?"

On screen the pink cat-eared character froze for a second, then her ears perked straight up. Her tail started swishing. An expression of joy, maybe. The avatar looked like it was literally bouncing with happiness.

And the moment my short evaluation ended, Lunari poured words out.

"Honestly, after I got the song I planned to practice all day. But from the very first time I sang it, it felt so comfortable!"

"Ah—this is a song just for me. It felt like I'd actually become a real singer. How does it fit this perfectly? Even breathing was so easy. Normally when I practice a song I have to bring the sheet music and mark the breathing spots and the power parts and check them over and over while singing, but none of that was necessary! To exaggerate a little, it felt like every tiny habit of mine was melted into this track?"

Ah.

"Because it was an idol song with a lot of people singing, later on I always ran out of breath. So the chorus always kind of fell apart, but this one— the accompaniment makes space for me to breathe first, so it's so comfortable. Right when I'm struggling! You know what I mean! Did you do that on purpose?"

Yes. I had done it on purpose.

While rewatching Lunari's VODs I had mapped out exactly where she started to struggle and what sounds she made, then designed the track so that even the breath that entered her mic would become part of the music.

All of that was true, but……

I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud. It was too embarrassing.

The image of myself isolating her breaths and comparing whether this one would fit or that one would fit…… yeah…… a little, you know.

"Is this the feeling pros get when they receive a song? Could English-nim actually be working in the industry? Is that rude to ask…?"

I'm a shut-in in the corner of my room.

"……As a hobby? You made a track like this in less than half a day…… that doesn't make any sense— no! We'll just go with that!"

Lunari talked for a long time.

Praise for the song. Gratitude toward me.

And moments from her past that had been hard.

She kept going in a scattered way, almost like someone a little drunk.

Thanks to the periodic compliments on the arrangement, it became almost overwhelming how much she seemed to like my track.

"After the first time my professor praised me, that was the last time. After that it was always…… always just 'it's ambiguous.' But today while listening to my own singing, it felt so good I wondered if it was really me. Like—oh, so my voice could sound like this."

"If it weren't for English-nim I never would have known. Really."

She even teared up from time to time, making it hard to type anything in chat.

What was I supposed to say? Comfort felt too distant, yet pretending not to notice was impossible with a voice that clear.

Maybe I was being affected by her emotions.

Or maybe realizing that my music had actually reached someone made my chest tighten a little too.

"……Thank you."

A soft sniffle came through, and soon her bright voice returned.

"English-nim is truly the best. You have to keep coming often from now on, okay?"

"It's a promise. You have to. You can't go anywhere else."

We continued with small talk after that, and Lunari sang "Summer Sea" two more times as her closing songs for the night.

From that day on I started dropping into Lunari's streams regularly.

No particular reason—just habit. When I hit a wall composing in the middle of the night I would put her on for a bit, listen when she sang, and occasionally type in chat.

That was all.

Lunari went live almost every day.

Most of the time I was still her only viewer, but she didn't seem to mind.

I didn't particularly like people anyway. Honestly, the low viewer count felt comfortable.

Yeah. At first it did.

But then it became… something else.

While I was doing other things, watching Lunari talk to herself started to feel weirdly awkward.

This strange sense that I ought to answer her.

When she got tired of monologuing and just sat there blankly for a moment, a guilty feeling would rise up like I had done something wrong.

Still, since she herself didn't seem interested in growing the channel, I never said anything and simply stayed as one quiet viewer and fan.

Then one day it happened.

"I actually have a worry, English-nim."

Lunari brought it up out of nowhere. That day she hadn't sung at all—just kept chatting.

"I want to grow my stream more. I'd like more people to listen to what I say and my singing. But I don't know how."

A completely straightforward confession.

And I received a fresh shock.

She actually wanted to grow her stream?!

Someone like that went live during prime time at 9 PM, only half-heartedly streamed for four hours, and when she had nothing to do would pull some trash game off Steam?

I had assumed she was the type who enjoyed cutting off new viewers and occasionally singing while wasting bandwidth alone.

Even as a loser who had fled the internet broadcasting world, back then my low days still hit three hundred viewers and my high days six hundred.

Sure, my face and the guitar gimmick helped, but starting right after school at 3 PM every day had to have contributed something.

And I had put in all sorts of effort—guitar reactions to donations, penalty games for entertainment, the works.

I knew perfectly well that the streaming scene was never an easy place.

That didn't mean I had any intention of giving Lunari some "Back in my day……!" advice.

The streamer version of me had been dead a long time, and that was my own damp little secret.

It was a past I didn't want to tell anyone about until middle-school Kim Do-yoon was completely forgotten by the world.

Besides, virtual streamers were different anyway.

With the mindset of watching a fire across the river, I typed.

That seemed like the standard move. Much better than community ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠promo, at least.

"I have a YouTube……"

Ah, I see.

"I have four subscribers. All my alt accounts……"

"……"

Searching YouTube didn't even bring it up, so I gave up and got the link directly from Lunari.

It was full of edited VODs of her playing random games.

Thumbnails were just screenshots of the stream, and the "edits" were basically no different from the VODs already on the channel.

Horrifying. Who was supposed to watch this? I was the type of human who couldn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hold back advice.

"I-I'm embarrassed about singing…… There are so many people who are better……"

To my ears Lunari had the kind of skill worth showing off once the genre was right.

But I couldn't fully trust my own ears either, so I held my tongue.

I let out a light sigh and was switching from the YouTube tab back to the streaming platform when an ad caught my eye.

A virtual streamer singing tournament.

Application deadline in seven days.

Normally I would have scrolled right past it, but in this conversation it snagged my attention hard.

Perfect for promotion, wasn't it?

"……Huh?"

"No ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no no. Me?! I know what it is. It's impossible. It's an official thing so a lot of people will be watching."

Her cat ears shot straight up and her eyes went round.

"If a hako like me goes out and does badly I'll get so much hate, and famous people will be there too, so it's scary……"

Wasn't that even more reason to go? Lots of eyes meant perfect promotion.

"……"

Honestly even while I was typing I thought I was making it sound far too easy. Since it was someone else's business, the words just kept coming.

Looking at the judges, there were famous streamers and even an undisclosed active singer. If it were me, you couldn't drag me there even if you killed me.

Lunari stared blankly forward for a while. She seemed to be thinking seriously about something.

After a long stretch of quiet struggle she opened her mouth.

"……I actually saw that contest too. But I never thought of it as a place I could go."

"Ever since English-nim found me I've gained a lot of courage. But now I'm embarrassed that I'm the one saying everything will fail again."

Had she made up her mind?

"Hehe, and anyway I'm a hako so I'll probably get rejected at the document screening."

I checked the notice. Documents only required total stream time over 500 hours to apply, plus a recording of either verse 1 or verse 2 of a song of choice. That was everything.

On pure skill she would pass, but since it was broadcasting you couldn't completely ignore name recognition.

As Lunari said, the odds of rejection were probably pretty high.

"English-nim. Instead of just applying, I have a favor—no, a request. Listen first and if it's too much you can refuse, okay?"

After a little cough her voice carefully dropped lower.

"First, if I end up going to the contest, would it be okay if I use the arrangement English-nim made for me? 'Summer Sea.'"

"Hmm……"

Putting the crude little track I had cobbled together in my tiny room out in front of people was pretty embarrassing.

But I had no desire to say no when she herself wanted it.

I had already given it to Lunari anyway.

Ah, but if people called it trash my heart might hurt a little. Or a lot.

Either way I agreed readily.

"Thank you! And this is the real request! W-would you polish more accompaniment tracks for the songs I'll use in the contest?!!"

??

"If it's with English-nim!! I feel like I could try. If I were alone I never would have even thought of this."

"Please please! Could you plant just a little courage in me just this once?!"

The words I had so casually spat out as someone else's problem started tightening around my ankles.