Change
“……”
Maybe I should just emigrate.
Which country would be good to live in?
Having achieved a kind of enlightenment, Yu Nari sat slumped at the edge of her bed with her mouth hanging open.
Ah. I don’t have any money.
Then just die.
Die, you stupid bitch.
Nari’s despair showed no sign of ending, and her hand still couldn’t bring itself to reach for the computer. She kept praying that these jumbled shards of memory weren’t the truth — but given the circumstances, she had made a complete mess of herself in front of her viewers, and in front of the composer she’d grown closest to lately.
How was she even supposed to apologize? What if he started hating her?
Right in the middle of that spiral, her phone buzzed.
Bzzzzz— Bzzzzz—
An unknown number. After a moment of hesitation, she picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hello. This is Han So-yeong, operations manager at Muse Family.”
“Ah, yes… Nice to meet you…”
She had only ever heard the name in passing from Kim Hye-min. This was the first time they’d actually spoken. A call from ops at a moment like this — Nari’s head drooped.
“How’s your stomach feeling?”
“……I don’t know.”
She honestly couldn’t tell whether it was a hangover or pure psychological damage.
But how does she even know? People don’t know I’ve joined the label yet, so nobody would’ve reported it…
“Hmm. In that case, let’s check a few things. It’s possible the whole night blacked out for you.”
“Yeees…”
“Let’s see… During the stream you drank two bottles of soju, but you were already drunk before that, so more than two bottles total. Over a two-hour broadcast you banned viewers eighty-two times and temporarily blocked one hundred thirty-eight. And the stream ended with repeated vomiting sounds followed by a force-stop. Is that correct?”
“Uuughhhhhhh……”
Nari answered with silence — which was as good as a yes.
“Summarizing the stream content: ‘I went live because everything was fucking shitty.’ ‘My first-fan-turned-composer Yeong-il wasn’t focusing on the recording.’ ‘He stopped watching my streams and I caught him watching someone else.’ ‘But the song is still ridiculously good, which is infuriating.’ ‘He didn’t show up to the studio on recording day.’ ‘I’ve been abandoned—’”
“KYAAAAAAAAH— S-stop, please just stoppp!”
Han So-yeong’s kindly recap snapped every scattered puzzle piece into place with merciless precision. Invisible arrows seemed to drive themselves into her heart one after another. Nari yanked the blanket over her head and collapsed like a corpse.
“Hmm. From what I found, there’s more, so I do need to go through it for confirmation. First off — I can see you were trying to trash the composer. You also showed off a surprising talent for trot, and you’re quite good at swearing. You don’t usually talk like that.”
“W-wait! I wasn’t trying to trash him… Is he getting flamed…?”
The corpse sat bolt upright at the possibility.
“No. I scraped the community reactions for info, and the consensus is mitigating circumstances. You behaved so completely unhinged that he got a free pass. Oh — and the bit where you taught your viewers about ‘music-addicted playboys’ went viral because it was hilarious.”
“Th-that’s… a relief?”
“Hmm. And this next one I have to ask as the agency.”
“Yes?”
“Are the two of you dating? It’s a tiny minority, but there were a few people going, ‘Aren’t Yeong-il and Lunari a couple? Is that really something to get that upset over?’”
“Whaaaaat?! Absolutely not! I was just drunk and my emotions went haywire! He’s a good person, but there’s nothing romantic about it. We’ve never even met, and we don’t know each other’s ages.”
It all came tumbling out in a single breath. Yu Nari had never so much as been in a situationship in her life, so defining those kinds of feelings felt awkward and impossibly hard.
“Ah, right, right. Dating or not, I just needed to confirm — don’t take it the wrong way. Most people already settled on ‘she’s like that because he was her first fan’ as the official take.”
“However.”
“Yes?”
“A few corrections. Producer Yeong-il now knows Lunari’s age.”
“Not just Yeong-il — all the viewers know. You’re a twenty-two-year-old applied music student living in Seoul. You said it in front of four thousand eight hundred people. That part hadn’t come back to you yet?”
Something thudded on Nari’s end of the line.
“Are you okay?”
“……Yes.”
“I contacted the platform. Looks like they suspended you as a protective measure. It’s a first offense, so it’ll lift in three days. Rest up in the meantime.”
“I-I’m so sorry…”
“It’s fine. Also, the 2D illustration cover for the digital album is outsourced, and the rough draft just came in. I’ll send it over — please take a look. We can still revise while the distributor files are transferring, so let me know quickly.”
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry for the trouble when you’re so busy…”
“Don’t worry about it. Being busy is just my constitution. I added ‘check the communities in the morning’ to my schedule, but I never imagined it would pay off this immediately.”
“I-I’m sorry……”
After the coolly efficient Han So-yeong hung up, Nari finally registered the full-body scream rising from her organs.
I’m never drinking soju again. If I do, I’m a dog. A dog.
Spouting the classic alcoholic’s empty vow, she at last sat down at her computer and cautiously opened the popular posts on the Link-related communities. She didn’t usually like ego-searching, but Han So-yeong had clearly gathered her intel from here, so she couldn’t not look.
“Please tell me Yeong-il isn’t getting flamed because of me…”
She scrolled with a knot of worry in her chest and clicked a clip.
She closed it immediately.
Another one.
Closed that one too.
“I want to die.”
And yet the comment reactions were pure delight. Everyone was laughing. The absence of any hate directed at Do-yoon was a relief — but figuring out how to face this colossal black-history boulder left her feelings tangled.
Ahh, whatever. All’s well that ends well…
Watching people laugh, the corners of her mouth lifted despite herself. Yu Nari was a streamer, after all. There was no fighting it.
I pulled an all-nighter.
Long after Lunari’s drunk stream ended last night, I kept grinding away at the track. Call it a runaway feeling? To capture that chaotic energy, I mixed rock into an electro-swing base and pictured a cute-but-insane cat tearing across the tables of a bar.
“Tara-ra dan-dada~”
A BPM over 150 set my heart pounding. Was this the first time I’d ever made something this fast? Even so, having a clear subject in mind brought it to near-completion surprisingly quickly.
Good. Great. I should get Yu Nari to sing this later. Just need to push through the lyrics.
Ring-ring— Ring-ring—
“Huh?”
It was Yu Nari. Already up? I checked the clock — yeah, it was about that time.
“Hello.”
“……I’m sorry. Really.”
Her voice was a little rough.
“You remember?”
“I was hoping I wouldn’t, but I remember perfectly… Even if I had ten mouths, I wouldn’t have enough apologies. Um… you’re not mad, riiight?”
“No. I was startled, but I wasn’t angry. Looking back, it was actually pretty funny.”
“Uugh…… Please forget it. Please.”
Missing the early part was a shame, honestly. I’d been curious about the beginning too, but the VOD got wiped, so there was no way to rewatch it.
“I’m not the kind of person who just goes around swearing. I’d never drunk that much soju before, so I didn’t even know I was a lightweight, and everything felt so stifling that I just…”
“You drank three bottles of soju. Calling yourself a lightweight is a stretch.”
“Anyway, I was already drunk by the first bottle, so……”
Nari kept apologizing, and I kept accepting it. At some point we needed to break out of this hamster-wheel of apologies.
“You can stop apologizing. I honestly didn’t realize how much stress the stream was putting on you either.”
“Th-that’s also my fault…”
“No — that part genuinely never occurred to me. Of course you’d have your own worries as a streamer.”
They say drunk words are sober thoughts. Nari had been stressing about how entertaining her streams were. I hadn’t spent the whole day thinking only about the song, either. I’d also been replaying what she’d said and done.
Watch my stream.
You only watch other streamers.
There was a small possessiveness in her — a monopolizing streak. Looking back, I’d had some sense of it for a while. Without meaning to, I’d been tiptoeing around and not exactly hiding that I watched other streams. Call it survival instinct, or something harder to name. I must have read that atmosphere on instinct.
Maybe I’m pretty good at reading people?
I didn’t think it made her a bad person. It didn’t even bother me. I’d been her first viewer, the one who grew with her through the hardest stretch. We were also a singer and a composer. Attachment made sense. Compared to the nightmare I’d lived through before, this was adorable.
Anyway. That possessiveness and the stress had collided, and she’d exploded under the belief that her stream was boring and her fan had been stolen. Wouldn’t it have been better if I’d just shared my real thoughts about streaming from the start? Deep down, I hadn’t wanted to get tangled up in stream stuff. So even when I noticed problems with Lunari’s broadcasts, I’d avoided pointing them out. But what was the point of that now? We were already this deeply involved.
So this time, I decided to say it.
“Yeah, that’s right. I watched a lot of Yui’s streams. They were fun.”
“……Uugh.”
“I don’t mean Yui’s streams are better than Lunari’s. You each have strengths and weaknesses.”
“Ow, that hurts… Is the hangover still going…”
“For leaving a stream on for a long time, yours is better. Actual watch time is probably about the same. When I put yours on as background, it’s gentle enough that my ears don’t get tired.”
“That sounds like you’re saying it’s boring… or not…”
Her voice started crawling along the floor, thoroughly deflated.
“Comparing stream skills with Yui coldly would actually be rude to her. She’s a five-year veteran, and you’re a beginner.”
“Yeees……”
From content planning to how you talk with viewers, the gap showed in every category. This wasn’t a singing competition — it was the streaming market, and there was more than one or two things to consider. And VTuber Lunari was missing quite a few of them.
“Yesterday when you were drunk, you said you wanted to stream well.”
“Huh? Yeah, I did.”
‘Tomorrow, gimme some stream coaching, okay? I wanna stream well too.’ She’d said it in that twisted, drunken pronunciation.
“I’ll put together what I know about what Lunari’s streams need.”
“Wait! R-really?”
“Not sure how helpful it’ll be, but I’ve watched a lot of other VTuber streams over time.”
“……So it wasn’t just Yui.”
I’d take everything I’d learned from my own past and from the past month of steadily watching VTuber streams — the strengths and the weaknesses — and try to apply it to Lunari’s broadcast.
“First.”
“Yes?”
“How about changing the name.”
I’d thought it for a while — Lunari was quietly awkward to pronounce.
“Huh?! Uh…… ummm……”
I could hear her thinking hard. Then she offered her opinion with extreme caution.
“Anything else is fine, but I don’t really want name criticism from someone whose name is Yeong-il……”
I had lost her trust.