Preparing the Tracks
Once the heat of the competition had faded, Lunari’s viewer count was steadily dropping.
Remembering that eight thousand people had once poured into this tiny broadcast might have made the decline feel terrifying, but Yu Nari wasn’t bothered in the slightest.
Between school and agency work, her days were already a whirlwind. Barely a month ago she would have been thrilled just to crack double digits. The numbers she had now still felt like a miracle.
As a complete beginner, she hadn’t even fully settled on the vibe of her stream yet, so a manageable audience was perfect.
Just as Lunari’s broadcast was starting to find its footing, a donation alert chimed.
“Huh? A video clip? What is this?”
The clip began to play.
A VTuber with wolf ears and a tail flashed finger-hearts at the camera and spoke in a bright voice.
Anyone who had spent even a little time watching VTubers on Link would know that face. Her slightly clumsy Korean pronunciation only made her cuter, and her natural cheer and approachability had rocketed her to fifty thousand followers in a single year. Five years in, Kurogami Yui sat at a hundred and ten thousand.
“Ah! Right! I must have missed the email. They always pile up all at once, you know? I’d be honored if Yui-nim wanted to stream together. What should we do that would be fun~?”
The cat demi-human avatar beamed with perfect brightness.
Flawless acting.
While the chat flew by, the real Yu Nari outside the camera bit her lip without realizing it.
She hadn’t missed the email.
She had opened the one from Yui quite a while ago. And the content wasn’t the simple collab invitation the clip made it sound like.
Buried under every flattering phrase about wanting to be friends and how a collab would be nice, the real request was clear: could she hand over the MR for “Broken Clock,” and could she introduce her to the composer Yeong-il?
A vague “let’s grab a meal sometime~” collab proposal with the concrete ask carefully softened.
She’s trying to reach Yeong-il-nim through me.
That was the only conclusion.
Fair enough. He was that good.
Nari had opened the reply window right away, ready to answer. But her fingers refused to move.
Why?
It wasn’t that she disliked the idea. She just… didn’t feel like replying. So she told herself she’d do it tomorrow, and the days slipped by until now.
She really had just forgotten. She’d been busy. Meetings, streams, all of it. Yeah.
That was what she decided to believe.
Anyway. That was that.
But why bring it up on stream of all places?
The Yui smiling so brightly in the clip looked pure. Someone of Kurogami Yui’s caliber had to know that mentioning another streamer on her channel would force a connection. Nari might have been overthinking it, but that seasoned move left a faint, unnameable unease.
Still, she had to stay cool.
This was a great opportunity for the channel of a streamer who’d blown up overnight. She could just send the MR and explain that introducing composer Yeong-il would be difficult.
It wasn’t even a lie. Yeong-il-nim was busy and hated dealing with people.
Nari resolved to write the reply that way.
“JPOP content could be really fun! Once the stream ends I’ll dig up the email and send a proper reply right away!”
Lunari plucked one chat message out of the stream and steered the conversation.
“Ah! The music? Ehehe…”
Her meaningful little laugh flipped the entire mood of the chat. Most of the people gathered here had come for her singing; any news on that front was pure excitement they couldn’t hide.
“There might be good news soon…? Or maybe not? Or maybe yes?”
It wasn’t IG, but being able to release music and work with Do-yoon was more than enough. Nothing was finalized yet, so she couldn’t say anything solid. Better to rein in the hype.
“Aaaah nothing is confirmed!! Not yet! And for the record, it’s not IG!”
No, it’s really not, why won’t they believe me.
Reading chat was hard in so many ways.
“It’s really not… And we have to finish talking about it tonight before anything’s set. Still dunno~”
Tonight, after the stream, at one in the morning.
Kim Hye-min, Kim Do-yoon, and Yu Nari herself—brought in as a buffer for the two awkward ones. The three of them had promised a call to hammer out the details.
It would be settled today.
Unless Kim Hye-min’s terms were a scam, the contract was as good as done. The conditions were simply that good.
After talking with each of them separately, Nari had realized something. Kim Hye-min and Kim Do-yoon felt like they were cut from the same cloth. The kind of people who would meet and just work in silence without saying a word.
Pfft. They’d probably get along great.
Imagining it made her smile for no reason at all.
The stream ended and the appointed hour arrived.
Nari was a little nervous herself, but Kim Do-yoon’s voice had gone even quieter than usual and he was answering everything with nothing but “yes, yes,” which was so funny it melted her tension away.
“Ah, Hye-min-nim, looks like you’re here! Yeong-il-nim, relax! What I told you beforehand is everything, so just listen comfortably. Comfortable, got it? Inviting you now?”
“Yes…”
Then Kim Hye-min’s voice came through, trembling even harder than last time.
“Ah, h-hello! I’m Kim Hye-min. IG’s ch-chief producer, and the representative of Muse Family. Ah, Muse Family is my label name… is that no good? Then I’ll change it.”
“……I’m Do-yu, no, Yeong-il.”
“……Khp.”
Nari had to pinch her thigh to keep from laughing at their painfully awkward exchange. She briefly worried whether they would even finish tonight at this pace—then Kim Hye-min brought up a topic and the conversation suddenly unlocked.
“There’s a reason I got interested in Yeong-il-nim’s tracks. Th-that competition, Lunari-nim sang ‘Graduation Ceremony,’ right?”
“Ah, yes, she did.”
“That original was mine. Y-you didn’t know, huh. Haha.”
Neither Do-yoon nor the singer herself had known. Hye-min added that it had been an outsourced composition so it wasn’t well known, and it was an old song—easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention.
And that was the starting point.
“I ran a TF analysis on the frequency bands of the competition files and it looked like virtual instruments? The balance was so perfect I thought you’d used session players, but virtual instruments? How did you do that?”
“I hand-carved the EQ on every instrument.”
“B-by hand? No presets??”
“Yes… I’ve done nothing but that for so long that I’m used to it now…”
“‘Delivery Food’ too—that twisted chord progression was the killer! Theoretically it should go from VI to IV, but you jammed a bII in there. And the second you hear it you’re just like, oh yeah that’s right. What kind of thought process even—”
“Ah, that one I originally meant to put a bVI but it felt too obvious so I raised it a half step, and then the melody was half-forced to follow and the chorus entry got smoother.”
“Aaaah so that’s why! That feeling of gears locking into place in the chorus! Ah so it was intentional! I thought it was accidental—well even if it was accidental it would’ve been amazing, but intentional is even more spine-chilling—”
The conversation kept rolling.
Plugins, reverb chains, virtual instrument layering. Nari understood fewer words than she didn’t.
Uh, this is a little… I mean, they just met, isn’t this getting a bit too friendly?
She had imagined them getting along, but not like this…
Do-yoon’s voice.
For over a month she had been trying to drag words out of him, yet here in front of a complete stranger his mouth opened so easily. She was pretty sure when they first talked the bulk of his vocabulary had been “yes,” “mm,” and “ah,” but now full sentences were pouring out.
She knew. When the topic was music, Do-yoon’s words got longer. That was why she had deliberately only asked about songs when they first started talking.
But being stuck in the middle of a conversation only the two of them understood was not a pleasant feeling.
“…Ugh.”
She should have been happy he could talk to someone else. So why did everything feel so prickly?
After that she was reduced to a spectator while a flood of conversation passed between them.
“Please just call me by my name instead of Chief Producer. I-it feels a little awkward somehow, and it’s too long so efficiency drops. Yes! Mm!”
“Ah, yes… Hye-min-nim.”
“And Yeong-il-nim—about the mixing!”
Too fast. In a single day.
The way they addressed each other stuck in her ears.
Yeong-il wasn’t even his real name, and he never used the nickname himself. And sure, people naturally started calling each other by name as they talked, but today it kept scraping at her nerves.
Must be the fatigue.
She had only just finished streaming, after all.
“I’ll, uh, go grab some water real quick.”
A cold glass of water would clear her head.
Muttering “I knew that nickname was ugly from the start, never liked it,” Nari stood up from her seat.
While she was briefly gone, Hye-min and Do-yoon had already moved on to the actual music release.
“Th-the mastering will go to Philip Lab. Ah! That’s an outside company I’m personally close with; IG sends stuff there too.”
“Mastering… on my songs.”
“Mm-hm. From what I heard, Yeong-il-nim prefers to avoid meeting people as much as possible. Is that right?”
“Yes, I’d like that if possible. Would that be okay…?”
The conversation had been flowing so freely that the topic he had been most anxious about finally surfaced.
Would he have to go outside?
“You don’t have to come out at all if you don’t want to. Ah! Though if your home internet is slow, swapping the line would be nice. Recording and mixing can all be done remote. Technology these days is insane!”
“Huh? Really? I don’t even have to go for the recording?”
“Nope! Zero quality loss on the mic or the backing tracks. Lots of people do it that way now! Me included. Mixing is optional—if you want to do it yourself I’ll clear studio time so no one else is there. Or we can outsource it.”
“Hmm…”
Do-yoon did want to visit a studio packed with top-tier gear at least once. Curiosity about expensive equipment was only natural for a composer.
“Is any time fine?”
“Of course. Nobody else at the company even uses that room! It’s basically mine and I never go, hah!”
Not right away, but if one of the new tracks really grabbed him… if a song appeared that he wanted to pour his heart into, he would go once.
Do-yoon nodded to himself with that thought.
“The tracks coming out this time—‘Delivery Food,’ ‘Broken Clock,’ and ‘This Is All of Me’—honestly I’m not sure they even need professional mixing. Hmm! W-well, we’ll know once we record. I just really like the sensibility you carved into them.”
Even someone with the same social-avoidant tendencies, Kim Hye-min had been out in the world grinding as a professional. As a fellow composer she knew exactly what a new producer would be curious about, so she answered everything before Do-yoon even had to ask.
“Once mastering is done, the tracks can be distributed in two weeks. We can use IG’s pipeline so it’s fast!”
Search and the songs would appear.
Tracks born in a room barely five pyeong wide, stepping out into the world.
Plenty of people had already heard them at the competition, but official releases sitting on music sites was a realm he had never even dared to imagine. A ticklish warmth bloomed deep in Do-yoon’s chest and he smiled.
Just as the music production talk was wrapping up, Nari returned from her break.
“Nari-nim! You’re back! Once we lock the recording date I’ll let you know! Just come to the studio address I sent you!”
“Huh? Recording?”
“Yes! We’ll book it as soon as possible. Y-you’re already used to it, after all!”
The ice-cold water—three cubes floating, properly freezing—had cleared her head, but the word “recording” set it spinning again.
A recording studio?
Her professors at school had said it clearly. It was only natural for the composer to sit in on the session and give vocal direction.
An image flashed past: Do-yoon on the other side of the glass, headphones on, listening to her voice.
In the daydream his face had no features. She only knew the voice, only knew the songs, a person without even a Discord profile picture.
Everything that had piled up over the day melted away with that single image.
She shot to her feet and flung open her wardrobe.
Still, it’s the first meeting. Showing up looking too scruffy would be rude.
All the unnameable, uncomfortable feelings that had been needling her all day seemed to wash off. Nari smiled with a faintly sly edge, not even understanding why her mood was suddenly floating.
She wasn’t crazy enough to have romantic feelings for someone she only knew by voice, and putting a name to whatever this emotion was felt impossibly hard.
“…I don’t have anything to wear.”
She was just going to meet a little-brother type of older-brother she had gotten close to.
That was the conclusion she settled on.
Unfortunately, having missed the middle of Hye-min and Do-yoon’s conversation, Nari had no idea that Do-yoon would not be coming to the studio at all.
On any other day she would have double-checked. But after being yanked every which way today, she never even had the bandwidth to form the obvious question: He said it was okay to meet?
Trusting her professors a little too much had been Yu Nari’s mistake.