Confusion
Hood pulled tight over her head, Kurogami Yui stormed ahead, fuming with every short, rapid step.
Yu Nari watched those hurried strides from behind and found the words leaving her mouth before she could stop them.
"Want to grab a meal? My treat. You covered karaoke, after all."
Yui turned around.
"...Okay."
Still pouting.
They stepped into a nearby kimchi jjigae place.
Guess the whole 'Japanese people can't handle spicy food' thing really is just a stereotype.
Nari pushed the half-remembered short-form video from a few days ago out of her head and sat down.
Leaving the karaoke room for a restaurant had been fine, but once the shared activity disappeared, the silence between them turned thick and awkward.
"Sooo... Yui-nim, how did you end up becoming a VTuber?"
Nari forced the question out.
"I wasn't trying to be VTuber originally. I really wanted to become singer, you know."
"Huh? Really?"
It was close enough to her own reason for stepping into the virtual world—needing a stage—that Nari felt a spark of genuine interest.
"I wanted to sing and stand in front of people, but in real life there was no chance for me."
Coming to Korea to study had been part of it. She had knocked on the doors of several companies, she explained.
"Is your major music?"
"No, completely unrelated department. I just went around taking auditions. Failed them all, though..."
She had never imagined that the streaming life she started by accident would take off the way it did.
"Before I knew it, five years already passed."
A bitter little smile touched her lips.
"As streamer I feel proud, and seeing my fans is nice, but..."
She still couldn't let go of the dream of being a singer.
"That's why I wanted to do solo concert, you know?"
The praise her viewers poured on her had given her courage and confidence. Around her second year of streaming she entered a fairly big contest, and that was where she first met Sion.
First round. She sang a Japanese song the way she always did on her personal streams.
Ah... um...
I have no idea what she's saying.
The difference in fundamentals is just too huge.
The unfamiliar viewers' mockery had stabbed into her like knives. All those years of believing she was good at singing suddenly felt like a betrayal.
"After that I kept postponing the solo concert. Because I was scared. For the next three years I took lessons steadily and practiced, and the first contest I worked up the courage to enter again was the recent VBF. Seeing Sion again just made me freeze with fear."
Yui lifted the head she had been hanging and looked at Nari.
"But then Nari-nim, who seemed similar to me, almost beat Sion in the finals. So I wanted a special song like that too."
"...Ah."
"The Nari-nim I saw at the concert was different again, though. In the end it was skill more than the song, I guess."
Nari only clinked her spoon against the empty bowl.
So that's why she wanted Do-yoon's song.
The reason she hadn't been able to answer Yui's email asking to be connected with Do-yoon right away. The reason she had ultimately refused, using Do-yoon's social anxiety as an excuse. Those impulses had been dragged up from the bottom of her chest by a strange, surging feeling.
...Was I being a bad person?
Even though she had said she wanted people to know about Do-yoon's talent.
Nari looked into the small, petty corner of her own heart that had become so unfamiliar and finally understood. She saw the direction of that faint possessiveness filling her insides.
The name of the emotion circled soundlessly inside her mouth.
Jealousy.
The childish, crystal-clear word stamped itself onto her chest like a brand.
But jealousy over what?
Do-yoon's songs?
Or... Do-yoon himself?
Just because she watched a little of Yui's stream?
Don't tell me she was afraid of losing a friend? What was this?
Through that tangle of thoughts, a voice reached her.
"Nari-nim, what's wrong?"
Yui tilted her head at the blank-faced Nari.
"Ah, no. It's spicy. The stew. Haha."
"Your face is red. You can't handle spicy food better than a Japanese person? That's unexpected. I thought all Koreans eat spicy things well."
Nari scooped up a glass of cold water and was about to gulp it down when Yui asked,
"But what kind of person is Yeong-il-nim? I only know the name."
"Pfft—!"
"Whoa, whoa, here's a tissue."
What kind of person.
What kind of person was Do-yoon, really.
"Thanks... uh, well."
What was she supposed to say.
For starters—
"Someone who's sincere about his work...?"
"His songs are really good, though."
"Right? When you talk music with him he goes on forever. Normally he's super quiet. Lately he's been helping with my streams too."
"With your streams?"
"Yeah! Hehe. He watches my broadcasts here and there and gives feedback. Feels more like... higher than a manager. Like, not just a music producer but a broadcast producer on the side too?"
Without her noticing, Nari's face had brightened.
"You've been doing well on stream lately—so that's why...? A quiet guy who's good at his job, huh!"
"Exactly. He talks a lot about the things he's interested in, but with other topics he gets awkward. Unless it's songs or streaming he just, pfft, stumbles around."
"Ah, there are people like that. Otaku types."
"But that stumbling around is also..."
Nari let the end of the sentence trail off.
"...kind of strangely cute, I guess."
Then, one second later, she realized what she had just said.
"Ah, no, I mean the vibe is like that, not that he's actually cute or anything."
Across the table Yui's eyes narrowed.
"Don't tell me... what kind of relationship...?"
"No no no, we've never even met in person. It's not like that! Just friends, friends!"
Yui's gaze landed on Nari's reddening ears.
Was there anyone whose eyes went that soft when describing someone they had never met? Her voice had jumped up a whole pitch too, clearly.
Yui didn't have complete certainty, but she had a pretty sharp hunch. Hidden behind her young-looking exterior, she was still an older adult—her instincts were quicker than Nari's.
"Ah! Yui-nim, where do you live?! I was surprised how close the meeting place was."
Nari desperately changed the subject.
"I live alone near here. My family is in Japan."
"By yourself?"
"Yes. I don't know many people in Korea, and all my Japanese friends went back."
"That's impressive. I live alone too, but my family is nearby."
"Hmm! It's not that impressive. After graduating I was just wondering what to do, and then streaming took off."
After that the two solo-living streamers fell into an easy stream of shared complaints.
How hard it was to go to school while streaming.
How nervous they got using the applied music practice rooms in case someone noticed.
How leftover food was a pain, and buying side dishes was expensive.
And so on.
"Oh, it's almost time for my stream. I should go now."
Before they knew it more than three hours had passed since they met.
"Thank you for today."
"I don't know if I was actually helpful..."
"I didn't find the answer at karaoke, but I'll keep looking slowly."
They walked together until their paths split and stopped at the fork.
"Um, you can call me unnie if you want."
"Uh, uh? Okay, then you can speak casually to me too."
Nari discreetly scanned Yui up and down and committed the private, slightly rude thought that physiologically it might not be that hard to call her unnie.
"Okay! It's been so long since I had an offline friend. Next time if there's a chance we should do a real collab."
"Yeah, sounds good. Contact me, unnie!"
Yui waved both hands wildly and brightly as she walked away; Nari returned a light wave of her own, then muttered to herself,
"Sheesh, why do I want to mess with her so bad."
She really was the older one, but...
Nari wanted to ruffle her hair.
She'd get mad, right?
She firmly pressed down the mischievous urge rising inside her.
It was their first meeting, after all.
Do I actually have a weird personality?
Nari turned her own feet toward home.
Was I drunk on barley tea?
Obviously not, yet I woke up from the best sleep of my life.
I rubbed my eyes, climbed out of bed, and the first thing I did was drink the water waiting by the computer.
That little routine always cleared my head.
Then I turned the computer on and headed straight for the music platform.
I had the original files, but those never felt real. There was a special flavor to listening on an actual music site—a thrill that never got old.
Even though the songs had only been out for a day, I already knew this was going to become a new routine.
Which track first?
The hesitation didn't last long.
Nari had been drunk yesterday, so Blackout Cat felt right.
I typed in Blackout Cat and was about to click when something looked different from the day it dropped.
"What's this next to it."
Rank 84.
A number was stamped beside the album.
"Huh."
No way.
I immediately swung the mouse toward the top 100 chart on the right.
Scroll, scroll—
I skimmed down past 87, 86, 85, and there it was at 84.
"What? Why is this here?"
It broke into the charts?
Just in case, I scrolled lower and found Delivery Food sitting at 98 as well.
Weren't you supposed to have to spam streams and stuff to crack the charts? How did they climb this high in a single day?
Joy and shock stampeded around inside my chest together.
Wondering whether Nari already knew, I opened the message window and found only an apology for getting drunk last night waiting for me.
On my phone there was one missed call from an unknown number.
Probably spam. I added it to the block list and started typing to Nari.
Right. We had agreed to talk casually.
I started to type "Don't mention it" and stopped. It looked stiff, and it still felt like formal speech.
After that the conversation slid into the classic "What would you do if you won the lottery?" kind of daydreaming.
A few more exchanges later my fingers started to hurt.
Why were we still texting instead of just calling? Any other day she would have dialed without hesitation.
Looking at Nari's messages, her default was already two or three lines long. Even I, a man of few words, was getting sore fingers—how was she holding up?
Unlike usual, Nari turned me down and immediately jumped topics.
"Yui?"
Since when?
She never seemed particularly fond of her. Every time Yui's name came up Nari got a little sharp, like there was some rivalry there.
So she had a softer, more gentle vibe than expected.
Just the usual conversational filler. It fit the flow, and since they had gotten close I felt a little curiosity too.
"..."
An excited Nari dumped TMI all over me, and I learned a truth I really hadn't wanted to know.
The image was completely wrecked.
I shouldn't have asked.
My tiny bit of curiosity had just murdered the blue wolf living in my head.
Still, I never expected her to describe everything in that much detail.
...Nari had zero virtual-world sensitivity.
That night, another pair of eyes was staring at the exact same charts as Do-yoon.