The Meeting
IG Entertainment.
On the subway, Yu Nari pulled out her phone and double-checked the address of the company building.
Me, walking into IG headquarters…
To Yu Nari—an applied music student at a no-name college—this massive agency was nothing less than holy ground, an impregnable fortress she could never hope to approach. If any of her classmates found out she had come here for a private meeting with IG Entertainment, they would probably foam at the mouth and collapse on the spot.
Even if she was arriving as the VTuber Lunari rather than as the singer Yu Nari.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to bow and scrape, though.
She clenched her fist tight.
Every single one of these opportunities had come to her solely because of one person: Do-yoon.
Her only goal for this meeting was simple—steer everything toward a direction where she and Do-yoon both came out ahead.
The Kim Do-yoon she knew was astonishingly blind to his own worth. No matter how many times she gushed, “Yeong-il, you’re a genius! This song is insane!” he would just brush it off with a dry “You’re just saying that because you know me,” as if it were empty flattery.
Does he not even look at the internet? The community clips, the YouTube reuploads—dozens of people are reacting every single day.
Was he simply uninterested, or was he afraid to look?
She had a strong hunch it was the latter. That hunched figure who avoided people and locked himself in his room had to be carrying some past where the world had chewed him up and left scars. For someone who had listened to every song Do-yoon had ever made, the guess wasn’t hard to make.
This time, Yu Nari swore to herself, she would be the one watching over him.
“Excuse me, miss?”
A uniformed security guard approached the girl who had been pacing the lobby, lost in thought.
“Here for a trainee evaluation? The audition hall is on the third floor that way…”
“Ah—no! I’m here for a meeting. With Manager Kim Hee-dong from the A&R team.”
She waved her hands in flustered denial, and the guard’s eyes went round.
A small, porcelain-pale face with striking features—anyone would have mistaken her for an idol center ready to debut any day now.
“Oh my, I’m sorry. You’re just so eye-catchingly pretty, I assumed you were a trainee.”
“Ahaha… thank you.”
Getting called pretty by an entertainment-company security guard actually gave her self-esteem a little boost.
About five minutes later a man came jogging out and greeted her.
“Hello. I’m Kim Hee-dong, manager of IG Entertainment’s A&R team.”
“I’m Lunari—uh, Yu Nari!”
“Wow, with looks like that I’d believe you were an idol hopeful. Hard to see why you’d bother with virtual streaming.”
Maybe it was all the years of VTubing, but the offhand comment from a clueless civilian made her bristle for a second.
So every VTuber has to be ugly and fat or something?! What kind of tone-deaf, zero-VTuber-sensitivity nonsense is that!
Hah. I’ve really become a full-fledged VTuber. Lines like that just pop into my head now.
She only muttered it inwardly, but the unexpected little swell of pride made her nod along without realizing how oddly she must have looked.
They didn’t head straight into the meeting. Under Kim Hee-dong’s guidance she got a light tour of the IG building. True to a celebrity company, everything glittered and the design was flashy—there was a certain pleasure just in looking around.
That was when she ran into a familiar face near the cafeteria.
Kim Hee-dong greeted Shin Se-young first.
“Oh, Se-young-nim, running late for lunch?”
“A little… and this is…?”
Shin Se-young turned her gaze toward Yu Nari, the polite smile of someone about to exchange a casual greeting.
“Hello! I’m Lunari!”
“…What?”
“The VBF runner-up. Nice to meet you, Judge.”
The tray in Shin Se-young’s hands tipped slightly to one side. Her eyes widened, slow and deliberate.
“Lu… Lunari?”
“Yes.”
“Ah… hello…”
She answered, but her expression was strange—neither blank nor fully shocked, something floating awkwardly in between.
“Se-young-nim? Are you all right?”
“Ah, no. It’s not that, just… a little… Red Pill…”
“Pardon?”
Shin Se-young shook her head. She could hardly admit she was reeling from a forced Red Pill dose.
For a VTuber, her VTuber sensitivity is kind of low…
That was all she muttered under her breath.
“Haha, Se-young-ssi, we’ll be heading to our meeting. Yu Nari-nim, this way, please.”
“Yes! It was nice meeting you. I’m a real fan!”
“Th-thank you…”
Yu Nari watched Shin Se-young’s back as the singer trudged away. The sharp, charismatic presence she had shown on stage was nowhere to be found—just something vaguely vacant.
Kind of… a letdown.
It was a day when both of them left each other a little disappointed.
The conference room Kim Hee-dong led her to afterward was clean and cool. Compared to the glossy spaces she had just toured, it felt unmistakably like a workplace.
“First, may I ask you a few things about Yeong-il-nim?”
The question she had expected.
Figures. They’re more interested in Yeong-il than in me.
“What would you like to know?”
“Well, we have almost no information, so anything is fine—age range, previous activity history, that sort of thing.”
Yu Nari thought for a moment.
“I’m not sure about his age. From the voice I’d guess mid-to-late twenties? Maybe even thirties. He never really said.”
“And previous activity?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“He’s not an established composer, then?”
She gave a small shrug.
“No idea. I just received the songs and used them.”
Just as she had decided from the start, Yu Nari kept every scrap of personal information about Do-yoon locked away. She didn’t even hand over his number or his DearCode ID. Anything he hadn’t authorized, she would not say.
Kim Hee-dong scribbled a short note on his pad and nodded. The lack of information had been expected; it didn’t throw him. But one thing came through loud and clear from her attitude.
The trust between these two is pretty thick.
That was both a good thing and a troublesome one.
“Now for the main topic. First, of course, we’ll handle the digital release for you. Second, regarding the virtual business side—please look through this material while I explain.”
The slim booklet laid out IG’s vision for its virtual business: content guidelines, image management, schedule coordination—page after page of plans that felt far closer to idol training than to streaming.
As if they were dreaming of virtual celebrities.
This isn’t what I want to do.
It was grand and stifling.
A virtual avatar. The freedom that came from hiding her face. The happiness that freedom had given her.
If she still had no freedom even with her face covered, what was the point?
And that wasn’t the only problem.
“Ahem. Yu Nari-nim would join the new virtual business team, while Composer Yeong-il would of course sign an exclusive composition contract with IG Entertainment.”
“Then that means we wouldn’t be going together, right?”
“No, no—that’s just the contract structure. Yeong-il will be attached as the dedicated composer for VTuber Lunari. The two of you are a set.”
There wasn’t a single speck of deceit on Kim Hee-dong’s brightly smiling face.
Is that true? It doesn’t sound like a lie, so why does it feel so…
An instinctive unease rose in her chest.
Yu Nari’s anxiety was not baseless.
Kim Hee-dong was not lying to her. In the early stages of the contract, Yeong-il really would be assigned exclusively to Lunari.
What he simply wasn’t saying was this: once a composer signed exclusively with IG, having him write only for a single virtual streamer was commercially inefficient. Once Yeong-il’s talent was confirmed, the company would naturally want to distribute that talent to other artists as well. Lunari would become one client among many.
Sliding down the priority list would only be a matter of time.
But was there any need to bring that up right now?
Kim Hee-dong decided there wasn’t. Creating unnecessary variables before the contract was signed would be foolish.
“To be honest, composers like Yeong-il-nim are rare, so we have to tread carefully with every word. Considering his talent, working with IG would give him a much bigger stage to grow on.”
That part was true.
IG’s infrastructure was a dream environment for an unknown composer—studios, session players, mastering, distribution, promotion.
Kim Hee-dong wasn’t dangling a false lure. He was mixing truth into the whisper, as if urging her not to keep that talent locked away.
“If we give him a proper environment, the results will be far better than they are now, and Lunari-nim can support him from the side so you both cheer each other on, right?”
Yu Nari’s expression was beginning to waver, and Kim Hee-dong didn’t miss it.
Representative Kang Seong-min had said it would be fine to place Yeong-il in the new virtual business division. But that was only the roadmap the representative had sketched. Day-to-day operations belonged to the field, and the final team structure was at Kim Hee-dong’s discretion.
And Kim Hee-dong believed separating the two contracts was the right call.
If Lunari succeeded, the two of them would naturally stay together. If she failed, they could cut losses while preserving Yeong-il as an asset.
The trust between them might become great chemistry—or it might become the risk of losing both the moment one of them rebelled.
Risk management came first.
Not a base scheme; just ordinary professional judgment.
At least that was what Kim Hee-dong himself believed.
Seeing Yu Nari’s face grow steadily darker, he added one more line.
“We’re not saying we’ll neglect Lunari-nim at all. We’re simply opening the door for Composer Yeong-il to work on a larger stage—that’s also our role. In the end, if Yeong-il grows, that benefit flows back to you as well, doesn’t it?”
Nothing he said was wrong.
Not a single word of it was wrong.
Yet admitting that made something in Yu Nari’s chest ache.
She knew he was speaking from a rational company perspective. But inside that rational talk she could instinctively feel the word “together”—the word that bound her and Do-yoon—quietly slipping away.
She was still fidgeting with her toes inside her shoes when—
Ding-a-ling—
The familiar notification tone made her flinch. The moment she checked her phone, a faint color returned to her face.
“Would it be all right if I stepped out for a moment? An important message just came in.”
“Ah, of course.”
Yu Nari fled into the hallway and stopped in a quiet corner, phone already in hand.
Was this man some kind of psychic?
The way he always appeared exactly when she was struggling never stopped being strange. And of all times, he had chosen this unsettled moment to message her first—something he almost never did.
So she hit the call button immediately.
“Hello?”
“Yeong-il, I’m in a meeting right now.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not going as well as I hoped. What do I do…?”
“Then… just leave?”
“What?”
“Do you really have to keep stressing over it?”
The moment she heard those words, laughter bubbled up.
It was absurd—and funny. Here she was, fretting herself sick over this very person.
“Ugh.”
“…?”
“Never mind. Yeong-il, you really are something else.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing. I get it.”
She couldn’t just dump this clueless guy here and walk away. She needed to stay by his side.
That was the conclusion she reached.
“Manager, I’ll be going now.”
Kim Hee-dong shot to his feet, unable to hide his surprise at her sudden exit.
“Ah—wait, let’s talk a little more. The terms can still be adjusted.”
“I tend to make decisions quickly. Thank you for your time.”
She left the materials on the table and stood. Manager Kim Hee-dong began to sweat as he tried to turn the send-off into more persuasion, but she paid him no mind.
Riding the elevator down and stepping out of the building left her strangely light. Scenery she hadn’t noticed on the way in seemed to appear; even the sunlight felt warm.
She was heading toward the subway when a voice called from behind.
“Lunari-nim?”
She turned. An unfamiliar woman stood there, looking around thirty. Neatly dressed, with rather sharp eyes that left an impression.
“Ahem. You don’t know me, of course. I’m Kim Hye-min, ch-chief producer at IG Entertainment.”
Yu Nari flinched at the introduction.
Chief producer.
“I have something I’d like to say to you p-personally.”
Kim Hye-min smiled as she spoke.
“I’ll handle the digital release for you. Could you spare me a little time?”