Somehow a Producer
I glanced at the message Yu Nari had sent saying she was heading over to IG Entertainment, then set my Discord window aside.
Personally, I was more of the "why not just handle this over the phone?" school of thought. But if she wanted to go in person, who was I to argue? And a guy who couldn't even manage a proper phone call himself had even less room to talk.
I was worried, sure—but honestly, there wasn't a thing I could do. Bring up money, contracts, company talk, and I'd be the one unable to meet anyone's eyes, sweating buckets. Besides, this was almost certainly a contract where Yu Nari was the star, not me. She'd handle it fine.
So I opened Cubase like always. I laid down a new track on a blank project file, loaded a piano virtual instrument, and pressed a chord.
Ding—
The note rang through the room. When it faded, I pressed the next one.
Ding—
"……"
Quiet. So quiet that the sound of my own keyboard felt unnaturally loud. A month ago, silence had been familiar. For six years, the kinds of noise that floated around my room had been fixed and limited. Lately, though, something sometimes felt missing—like someone had stripped the drum track clean out of a song.
Eventually I pulled my hands off the MIDI keyboard and grabbed the mouse.
Click.
Link's main page opened.
"……"
My eyes drifted naturally toward the Virtual category.
Lunari's channel. Offline. Of course—she'd gone to IG today. It would have been nice to have something playing in the background: Lunari's quiet chatter, a hummed practice melody, anything. But of course not today.
There was a time I'd browse MIDI community boards or used instrument marketplaces. At some point that habit had migrated here. Being conscious of a chat packed with people still made me uncomfortable—but when sound filled my room, it brought its own kind of calm. What even was this contradiction? Lately I barely understood myself. Maybe I'd become a thoroughly complicated, high-maintenance human being without noticing.
Scrolling Link's main page, names I'd seen during the tournament snagged my eye. Sion. Kurogami Yui.
…Just a quick look.
I'd barely ever watched any VTuber streams besides Lunari's, so I was a little curious.
Sion's stream had about 1,400 viewers. She was singing a ballad—and as expected, her skill left nothing to criticize. That rock-solid stability without even a trace of a waver made me turn my earphone volume up without thinking. So this was what a tournament winner's presence felt like. Admiration poured through the chat as well.
One song ended, a short stretch of small talk followed, then another song. After the chat, another song. After about thirty minutes the pattern was obvious. Song, chatter, song, chatter, song.
"……"
I glanced at the chat. When she talked, messages flooded up; when she sang, the pace dropped hard. Viewer count ticked down slightly every time she stopped chatting and lifted the mic.
Even singing this well, people still leave in decent numbers.
A few unsolicited tips rose in my head; I forced them down. Not my stream.
Then Sion spoke while taking a drink of water.
"Haa, I sang a lot today. My throat is killing me."
Don't push yourself~
What are you having for dinner tonight?
"Dinner? Ah, dinner… I ordered something earlier."
Her words paused, and the avatar's movement shrank. About two seconds—a very short silence.
"…I should stop eating. Ordered again today. Haha."
She said it with a laugh. Light reactions floated up in chat—"lololol," "what did you order?," "eating again?"—and a "what a pig lmao" got sliced out of existence right in front of my eyes.
Softly glowing platinum hair and pale skin gave off a bright atmosphere. And yet… something about her was dark. A gloom that an avatar couldn't hide leaked through her voice and expression. Maybe I was just being oversensitive. An unexplainable unease brushed past me, but I wasn't in any position to dig deeper.
I moved the mouse and switched to the next stream.
The moment I entered Kurogami Yui's broadcast, I was a little surprised. Viewer count: 2,800. She was ranting passionately while drawing something in Paint, and the room was chaos.
"So like! Last night middle of night I got hungry, so I buy cup ramen at convenience store, right? I no like spicy so I pick mild one. No chili mark even, I check real careful-careful and buy it, but when I eat my tongue go AAAAA! Why Korean people always make so spicy. My butt is on fire."
HAHAHAHAHAHA
What'd you do with the rest?
The butt part lmaooo
You just didn't check properly lol
"Careful-careful" is so cute lmao
Korean mild = the minimum pain a human can endure
"I DID check properly! Yui's eyes work fine! In Japan we don't have this kind of thing! That is violation of JAS law!"
Pulling Japanese law on us lololol
International incident over ramen let's go
So cute
"……."
Even if the final consonants went wandering now and then, Kurogami Yui's Korean was at a solid level. The occasional mashed pronunciation was cute enough to become a charm point rather than a flaw. More impressive than her pronunciation, though, was her streamcraft. She stretched a single ramen story for ten minutes while chat never stopped climbing—reading messages in real time, layering reactions, shifting her expression, and whenever the energy sagged, casually tossing out a new bait to keep the flow going. During the tournament I'd only heard her singing and thought, yeah, she's good, and moved on. As a streamer, this might have been the talent I envied most.
Lunari still flailed in front of her viewers as a daily routine; Yui alone was playing 2,800 people like an instrument. That had to be know-how built from years of experience.
The conversation drifted from ramen to triangle kimbap and stretched a little further—then a donation came in.
Taking song requests?
"Oh wait! Song? Yes yes, maybe I sing today. I put up songbook~"
Kurogami Yui shared some kind of sheet in the chat notice. A clean list organized by genre—J-pop, K-pop, anime OSTs, and more. It looked carefully put together, and the song count was substantial. A catalog of everything she could perform. So this was what people called a songbook.
I scrolled through the list in order.
"……Huh?"
My eyes stopped somewhere. Bottom of the list, under the "Other" category.
Broken Clock — Yeong-il (Self-made accompaniment ◯)
The song Lunari had performed in the VBF semifinals—my song. And the exact song Yui had lost to in those same semis. There was no official place anywhere to get the accompaniment file. Yet it said self-made accompaniment.
Separating and reconstructing just the backing from a broadcast audio mix of vocals and instruments was no small feat. If you knew your way around an audio editor, you could try phase inversion to pull the sound out. These days people said AI could separate vocals, but that alone wouldn't give you a clean track—you'd still have to fill in the missing instrument parts yourself.
The person who'd lost to my song had gone as far as building the accompaniment and practicing it. Something about that felt… complicated.
Broken Clock never came up among the viewers' requests. I didn't request it either. Spending money to request a song felt awkward, and more than that, requesting my own composition was a little too secondhand-embarrassing. But I was curious. What would it sound like if Yui sang it? Interpreting my song with that rock vocal of hers would come out in a completely different color from Lunari's.
…I'd like to hear it someday. How much was one song again?
I buried that curiosity in a corner of my chest and kept listening.
When song time ended and Yui drifted back into chatter, a familiar name came through.
"Ah, right—can I even say this? Hmm, whatever! Actually after VBF ended I send email to Lunari, you know?"
Collab stream??
Lunari? She might mesh well with Yui
Please collab!!
What are you gonna do?
"Yes yes, I want try collab! Lunari sings so good too~ And somehow I feel she match well with Yui? I am wolf demi-human, Lunari is cat demi-human, right~"
The viewers' reactions were positive. Yui read the chat with satisfaction, then shrugged.
"But still no reply~ She seem busy, no contact~"
Said lightly—no blame in it at all, just a "that's how it is~" tone.
Still though, she should at least reply, right?
Her influx jumped after the tournament
Just wait, she'll come through
Yui + Lunari combo might slap
Sending a clip
"Yes yes, I wait~ Lunari if you watching, message me okay~"
Yui threw a finger-heart at the camera and smiled.
"……"
So it must have been among those three hundred emails Yu Nari had received. Probably a sorting mistake. This time the human carrier pigeons would be flying clips her way, so the next time she went live she'd check it immediately. It even occurred to me that Yui might have deliberately set up the clip angle, knowing exactly that. A five-year streamer, after all. This person… was sharp.
It had been a while since I'd gotten this absorbed in a livestream. By the time I came back to myself, I'd stayed on Yui's broadcast quite a long time. When was the last time I'd watched a stream this intently? Was it possible that my on-again, off-again relationship with Lunari's streams hadn't simply been about the entertainment value dropping?
I should check.
I closed the stream, and the silence of the room returned. Looking at the clock, Yu Nari had been at IG Entertainment for a while now.
Hope it's going well.
This involved me too, and here I was dumping it on Yu Nari while thinking, ah, maybe Lunari's streams just aren't that fun—my conscience jabbed at me hard. I opened Discord, figuring I could at least ask casually.
The second I sent it, I regretted it. She was probably in a meeting—wouldn't this interrupt her?
Less than a minute after the message went out, a call came in.
"Hello?"
"Hello."
"Hello? Yeong-il, I'm in a meeting right now."
"Oh—yeah."
"It's not going as well as I hoped. What do I do…?"
Her voice was different from usual. Not Lunari from the stream, not the playful Yu Nari either—something a little deflated. Something must have gone wrong.
What I'd seen on those streams earlier brushed through my head. Sion's broadcast. Yui's broadcast. This whole scene was running just fine without IG Entertainment. Was there any reason for Yu Nari to cling to a place that made her uncomfortable?
"Then… just leave…?"
"What?"
"Do you really have to do this if it means this much stress?"
The words came out of my mouth like they were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Ugh."
"Never mind. Yeong-il, seriously."
"What?"
"Nothing. Fine."
The call ended.
"……"
What was that. Did I mess something up? I fretted for a second, then gave up. When you don't understand, moving on is better for your mental health. I considered working, then opened Link again. Yui's stream had been pretty good.
Riiing—
Yu Nari again. Was it actually over this time? I accepted the call at a leisurely pace, and her voice poured through in a completely different register from before.
"Yeong-il!!"
"Yeah. Is it over?"
"Yeong-il, do you want to be the main producer?!"
"……What??"
What did she just say. What was this out of nowhere.
"Main producer!!"
"……?"
Had she been drinking…?
"Ah ah, sorry sorry! I got too excited—I'll explain! Let me breathe!"
A long exhale came through the receiver. This level of excitement from Yu Nari was the first since the tournament results announcement.
"So, okay—after the meeting ended and I was leaving, someone stopped me. He's IG's senior producer, and he runs his own independent label on the side."
"A label?"
"Yes! He's under IG headquarters, but he has an independent label underneath them."
"And that means…?"
"Ah, you don't know. Umm, so basically—IG foots all the bills, they don't interfere, and you share a bit of the revenue? That kind of structure. For all practical purposes it's an independent company. Super common in the industry. Look it up later."
That sounded ridiculously good. Structures like that actually existed?
Yu Nari caught her breath again and continued.
"Ahem. Listen. If we join, first of all they promised full support for music releases. They've got a studio packed with top-tier gear for recording and mixing, and we can use all of it. Mastering through the best firm in the country, too!"
Whoa. That meant working in a pro studio. I had to admit, that was tempting. Even if I sold every piece of gear in my room, I probably couldn't afford one of their speakers.
"But—promotion at full IG headquarters level would be hard, he said."
"Hmm."
"And the rights to the songs you make stay with you, and it's not exclusive either! A structure where you can work freely. Want to write a song, write one; don't want to, don't."
Not exclusive, and free?
"Ah, and this is the most important part."
Yu Nari paused for effect again. She always did this when she had good news to deliver.
"If—if a track charts in the upper ranks—he said he can do revenue sharing at co-CEO level."
"Co-CEO level?"
"Yes! So it's not just delivering tracks and taking a fee—you'd be a core partner in running the label. As main producer! That's why I said it like that earlier."
This was good, that was good—every single thing she said was good. Dream conditions, honestly. Which was exactly why it felt wrong. What was he betting on with me?
"……"
I was a nobody. I'd made a bit of a name in a streaming tournament, but I'd never released a track, had no track record, and hadn't even shown my face—an anonymous composer of completely unknown identity. These terms, for someone like that?
"Nari."
"Yes?"
"You're not getting scammed, are you?"
That felt more realistic.
"No, everything sounds great, but… I keep thinking, why? What does this person actually want?"
"…You thought that too, huh? There's more to the story."
Yu Nari's voice dropped a little, turning serious.
"I asked him too. What he wanted in return."
"And?"
"Two things. One—he wants to talk to you directly over the phone."
"……"
"Not video—just a voice call. I think he wants to have a conversation with you about music. Like there's something he wants to ask."
Still didn't add up on a cost-benefit level. Phone calls might be awkward for me, but for normal people a call was nothing. Why go this far?
"So… what's the other one?"
"If he talks to you himself and decides you're legit, he wants to put a junior composer he brought into the label under you."
Ah. So I had to earn recognition first? And what was this junior composer thing. How was I supposed to take charge of a person when I could barely meet people myself. My already-complicating brain was sliding toward overload.
"What does 'put under me' mean?"
"Feedback, direction-setting kind of role? His main job is so busy that he brought them in and then couldn't actually look after the label."
"……"
"Ah! And the really important part!"
There was more?
"He promised there wouldn't be any in-person meetings. And about taking on the junior composer—I already confirmed you wouldn't need to meet face-to-face either."
"Huh? For real?"
"Yep yep, totally amazing. He said file or document feedback is fine! And the junior composer isn't some big deal either—he's a student. A student."
"So basically, none of this moves forward unless that senior producer guy signs off on me."
"Right. But quoting him directly—'As long as, as long as that person didn't plagiarize, there shouldn't be any issue with the skill level, I thiiink.'"
What was that voice impression in the middle. The senior producer, I guess.
I reorganized the terms. Full support for music releases. Recording, mixing, mastering at industry-top tier. Promotion a bit underwhelming. Chart in and get co-CEO-level revenue share. Freedom guaranteed. In exchange, pass a musical verification over a phone call—and if recognized, take on junior composers.
"Nari."
"Yes?"
"Is this person… okay? As a person?"
"Hmm… yeah. This might sound weird, but. I got a… similar vibe? To you. Like—someone who doesn't particularly like meeting people. Except this guy seems like he got forcibly socialized by living out in the world?"
Was that a roundabout way of calling me a social misfit? It was accurate enough that I stayed quiet and listened.
"Anyway, no vibe of lying or scamming, and even if he seemed a little dopey he said everything that needed saying—kind of a weird guy. You'll know once you talk to him."
"Alright. I'll think about it."
Too much information had hit me at once; I needed time to sort it out. The prospect of having to call a complete stranger weighed on me. High-end equipment kept floating in front of my eyes. And more than anything, I genuinely wanted to release my songs as properly produced tracks. Honestly, I couldn't imagine better conditions than these. Maybe that was exactly why I was hesitating more.
What was certain was that only talking to this senior producer would clear the uncertainty away. Phone calls—I really, really didn't want to do them…
Tension crept into my toes and fingertips. Whatever had happened, Yu Nari had clearly gone through a lot too. If I dug a hole and crawled back into it now, I'd just be a pathetic friend. Once I set my mind to it, a strange confidence started to rise. Okay. Let's do this. Boldly. Just a phone call.
Into my moment of resolve, Yu Nari's voice cut through.
"Ah, but Yeong-il."
"Yeah?"
"What were you doing today?"
"……"
"Hm?"
"……I was writing a song."
Unable to speak the truth, I briefly tossed all that boldness to the dogs.