Principle 2: Beware the Red Pill
After her call with Kim Hye-min ended, Han So-yeong carefully reviewed the email Kurogami Yui had sent.
If Shin Se-young and Yui joined, this would feel closer to a festival than a personal concert.
She wondered whether she ought to change the performance name even now, then set the thought aside for the moment.
Shin Se-young is as good as confirmed since it's the CEO's request, but I should discuss the Yui matter with Nari as well.
With the schedule so tight, time was money.
So-yeong dialed Yu Nari without a second's hesitation.
"Hello!"
"Nari-nim, this is Han So-yeong. I have something to pass along regarding the VR concert."
"Is something wrong?"
"Good news, actually. Shin Se-young can come as a guest for the concert."
"Shin Se-young?! For real?!"
Yu Nari's voice brightened in an instant. No wonder—Se-young had served as a judge for Virtual Voice Fight and was a massive celebrity besides. To someone like Nari, who had come out of applied music, she might well be more than an idol.
Han So-yeong reined in the excited Nari and moved on to the next item.
"There's one more thing. Kurogami Yui volunteered herself as a concert guest. Are the two of you acquainted?"
The Nari who had been bouncing a second ago went quiet.
"……Yui-nim? W-we're not close or anything."
"Is that so? Either way, it might not be a bad thing for us. Se-young is famous outside, but inside Link, people like Yui could actually do more for the promotion."
"Hmm……"
After a long silence she finally spoke again.
"……If there are two guests, won't the time allocation for the concert get complicated?"
"Not particularly. The VR map for the venue is something we built ourselves, so it's ours, and since it's online we can use as much of it as we want. That said, if it runs too long it'll drag, so we'll cut it under an hour and a half."
"Hmm, Yui-nim is so famous that the viewership might get split."
"Ah—Yui wrote that she won't open her own stream on the concert day and will pour everything into ours instead."
"……"
She said they weren't close. Are the two of them on bad terms, maybe?
A small suspicion flickered that Nari was fishing for excuses.
"Is there something that bothers you? Should we turn her down?"
Rationally speaking, once you considered Kurogami Yui's influence there was not a single reason to refuse. The question existed only out of consideration for the feelings of their own artist, Lunari.
Nari hesitated a long while before answering.
"No. Let's take Yui-nim as a guest."
Deep down Yu Nari wanted to refuse. But the image of Do-yoon, working so hard to help her stream grow, rose in her mind, and she simply could not turn the offer down.
"Understood. We'll proceed on that basis. I'll open a group chat and invite Se-young, Yui, and you, Nari-nim. We'll need to coordinate."
"Yes, thank you. Always."
"Ah—should I invite Yeong-il as well? Do you think you'll need him?"
"Oh! Nononono, that should be fine. Hehe."
"……Understood."
The call ended. So-yeong did not set her phone down right away; she hesitated.
There was one thing she had not passed along to Yu Nari.
At the bottom of Kurogami Yui's email, beneath the concert business, one more line waited.
Additionally, once the concert is over, may I inquire whether a work request to Producer Yeong-il would be possible?
The phrasing almost read like a condition in exchange for participating free of charge. Simply asking whether a request was possible was not a difficult matter. This was not something for Lunari; it concerned Yeong-il, so she could just relay it to him directly.
Even so, remembering the closeness between Yeong-il and Lunari, So-yeong had nearly mentioned it during the call.
Something about this feels off.
Nari's awkward, half-hearted attitude toward Yui had stirred an unexplainable sense of dissonance. In the end So-yeong decided not to tell Yu Nari and to deliver the message to Do-yoon himself once the concert was over.
"Haa……"
Is this because that Gi-dong bastard keeps yapping in my ear?
They're one hundred percent involved, that was a young man's voice, Yu Nari is a psycho—and so on, and so on. Even if she let it go in one ear and out the other, the residue still clung to her judgment.
So-yeong shook her head hard, pulled herself out of the spiral, and squared her shoulders in front of the computer.
Shin Se-young for external promotion, Kurogami Yui for carving out a slice of the pie inside Link. Revising the plan again meant another round of scrambling.
Why does the scale keep ballooning? This is supposed to be a small show……
Maybe the track would blow up. The era when you could chart on pure merit without a fandom was over. So-yeong knew that better than anyone, yet whenever she listened to the songs Yeong-il made for Lunari, those wild fantasies still lifted their heads.
The news that Shin Se-young and Yui would join Lunari's VR concert was genuinely surprising.
Why those two?
One was a celebrity who seemed to have zero connection to us; the other was the streamer I watched more than anyone else. Neither of them looked like someone who would have ties to Yu Nari. The company's power? Was this what an agency could do?
Yu Nari's voice cut through my brooding.
"So-yeong-nim told me we need to buy new VR gear and make a temporary avatar too."
"Ah, right—Shin Se-young wouldn't have a VR avatar."
"Yeah! Time's tight so they're asking the creator if something simple is possible, but it seems like there's a lot of fretting."
A simple temporary avatar. Shin Se-young was already a face-known singer—the kind people whispered was so beautiful cameras couldn't capture her properly. Building an avatar for someone like that would not be easy.
"Yeah, for someone like Shin Se-young, avatar production would definitely be rough."
"Is it? I feel like they could just use anything."
"It's already hard enough to make something prettier than the real person. A half-baked temporary character would just look cheap."
"Hmm… you're right. She is pretty. I've seen her in person."
"Whatever they make, people will still say 'the real thing is better,' so that comparison is unavoidable. Just using a photo might actually be fine."
"You sure have a thing for Shin Se-young's looks, Yeong-il."
"I saw her for the first time at VBF and thought she was pretty?"
"Riiight. Must be niceee. Being pretty and all."
The tail of Yu Nari's words stretched just a little longer.
What was that? Jealousy? Envy? The thing pretty girls supposedly go through?
Not exactly a positive development.
I felt the need to steer Nari's gaze away from those negative feelings.
"Do you remember what I said? Streaming principle number two."
"…Huh? Out of nowhere? Th-that one about being careful with the red pill?"
"Exactly. Looks mean nothing. All we ever see is the avatar."
"Why are you bringing that up now."
"Viewers don't approach VTubers because of the face of the person inside. I think the inside matters more."
"So why are you saying that right now."
Maybe Yu Nari lacked confidence in her real-life appearance. I was circling around the fact that, to us, that simply did not matter.
"Of course, letting people feel that the person inside is an ordinary person just like the viewers is fine. I mentioned there are certain kinds of content that work, remember?"
"……Like the tofu mukbang—stories that don't cross the line into personal info?"
"Right. Light red-pill stuff that shares everyday life keeps people glued to the stream."
"I've already spilled a decent amount, though."
"I think you're still just barely inside the acceptable range. What's spilled is spilled; what matters is going forward."
"Okayyy."
"When it comes to streaming, the heart matters more than the face. And since you're a VTuber, you can treat your fans with the sincerity that's inside. Fans don't imagine the person inside is, like, extremely heavyset or completely hopeless on the outside, after all."
"……?"
The air on the call grew a touch heavier.
"Right now"
A voice that felt like it had plummeted below freezing brushed my ear.
"are you calling me fat?"
"No? I was speaking generally."
"A second ago you were going on about how Shin Se-young's real face is amazing, and now 'heavyset' this, 'face' that?"
"It wasn't a comparison—I was talking about the structural advantages of VTubers."
"You just like pretty people like Shin Se-young, Yeong-il! And I'm not ugly, okay?!"
"I never said you were ugly……"
"I haven't been able to work out the last few days, but I don't have any flab, I'm decently tall, on the slim side, and I was popular back in school! I'm prettier than my avatar too!!!"
"S-sorry."
No… if you're pretty that's a good thing, why are you getting mad……
Sensitive about appearance talk. Possible complex. Note to self: be careful.
I filed that away, then delivered the warning that still needed delivering.
"Nari-nim, you're dumping red pills all over the place right now. That's exactly what I'm saying you shouldn't do on stream."
"Is that really what you want to say right now!! Sheesh—ah, I'm out of time! Just you wait. Someday you'll see me in person."
Her language had gotten rougher lately. The way she didn't hesitate to talk about hitting people made me wonder if she was a bit of a violent type in real life……
"Violence is bad……"
Scary.
Yu Nari had only called to pass along the news before heading to her university class, so she vanished quickly. I logged into Link.
Current time: 3 p.m.
Right when Kurogami Yui would be doing her afternoon stream.
If I wanted to help Nari's channel, I figured it was important to keep watching other rooms steadily. It was absolutely not because I found her entertaining.
What's she doing today?
The Kurogami Yui who appeared on screen looked to be in a better mood than usual.
Yui's fluffy tail swished this way and that. The motion was so smooth it really looked like she was happy and couldn't keep still.
Chat exploded with people demanding answers and others trying to guess the identity.
She kept calling it a secret while basically saying everything. Plenty of people already knew Lunari's renewal concert was coming up, and Yui had mentioned on stream before that she wanted to be friends with Lunari, so for regulars of Yui's channel the hint was not hard.
Even so she kept going "Secret, secret—" right to the end, lips curling into a mischievous little smile.
Maybe those playful little acts were exactly what drew viewers in. She looked pure, easy to watch. When the chat teased her she got flustered; when she was happy she couldn't hide it. This was what a real friend-type streamer looked like.
It would be nice if Lunari could grow in that direction too—though it might be hard. No brewing yuksu, just pure friend-group teasing. I hadn't really had friends since elementary school, so I couldn't be sure, but I figured this was roughly the vibe that fit between friends of the opposite sex.
Her red-pill content was also well-balanced. Lunari's tofu mukbang had borrowed the idea from Yui's skate mukbang—reactions you could hear, photos of the food on screen, a virtual face that flickered in and out of recognition while she ate. Content that lived on the border between reality and the virtual.
A donation arrived from a viewer who was already certain Yui would appear at Lunari's concert. My ears pricked up.
I had seen my song in her songbook, but I had never once heard her sing it live. I had designed the track to bring out as much of Lunari's huskiness as possible—what would it sound like in Yui's voice?
"Why not."
Disappointment pulled the words out of me in a real voice.
Tch. I had wanted to hear it.
From what I had half-caught, Shin Se-young, Lunari, and Yui were deciding the setlist together. Apparently nothing was locked in yet.
Instead of my song that the viewer had requested, the accompaniment for the track Yui had chosen began to play. She had picked a JPOP number with a fierce band sound. Being Japanese, her native pronunciation was excellent and it suited her perfectly—easy on the ears.
The quiet night wind knocks upon the window
She mixed breath into the soft murmur and the atmosphere came alive at once. The air felt different from when I had watched her at Virtual Voice Fight. Emotion now clung, precarious and vivid, to every single word.
Farther in, the racing drums and electric guitar forced a rise and fall into the song. Yui nodded along, riding the rhythm. She smiled brightly, as if the coming highlight were a gift waiting for her.
This heartbeat that hurts so much it stops my breath—!!
She poured that feeling straight into her voice—a cool high note that climbed clean and vertical without a single waver. A different flavor from Nari's vocalization. A ringing, piercing resonance? If it were a weapon, it would be the feeling of being run through by a long spear.
What kind of sound would come out if I wrote a song for her?
Something rock-leaning? More modern than the "Blackout Cat" I made this time. Layer a popular melody on top so it feels familiar. I started putting flesh on the bones of the idea—then stopped.
Yes, I enjoyed watching her streams. But we did not have the kind of relationship where I would write her a song. Just because she was joining the concert did not mean a connection formed between her and me. Having a complete stranger write you a song would be… weird.
Besides, this sort of thing happened to me all the time. Sitting in my room imagining other singers performing the tracks I made was one of the things I did most often.
I quietly turned my ears to the next song. After four more in a row, Yui gave her ending greeting.
The concert. I was looking forward to it for all sorts of reasons.
(Kurogami Yui, Virtual Avatar)
