The Eye of the Storm
Outside the world Kim Do-yoon could not bring himself to care about, the signs of change were anything but ordinary.
Even before the official digital release, Lunari’s songs had already earned high praise among the so-called hipsters—the ones who sniffed and declared, I actually listen to real music, as they turned their backs on the mainstream.
A genre-defying approach. An unplaceable cool. And above all else, music that sent the ears into pure rapture.
In raw numbers they were only a handful, but they handed out their own private medals of honor for “real music.” And in those corners where the public’s gaze never reached, industry people were always lurking.
Even if the first hit could be dismissed as a fluke of winning a streaming-platform contest, a second one meant talent.
#31. Blackout Cat
#39. Delivery Food
#54. Broken Clock
#76. The Me Who Ends Here
All four tracks kept climbing without a pause. Delivery Food, with its easy familiarity for the general public, had even closed in right behind Blackout Cat.
Music outlets. Agencies. Advertisers. Video production houses. On and on.
People with a newfound interest started asking.
“Who’s Yeong-il?”
“Who’s Lunari?”
The more the questions multiplied, the heavier Han So-yeong’s workload grew, and the more their names were passed around. Do-yoon’s safe zone—the eye of the storm—was shrinking by the day.
Students still had to go to school.
Ugh, so annoying.
Pickled in exhaustion, Yu Nari collapsed into a lecture-hall seat as if melting into it. Lately she’d been meeting Han So-yeong almost every single day. Ads were coming in, virtual-related events, booking offers. Wrestling the sudden flood of schedules into shape already felt like a bit much—and on top of that she still had streams to prep for, and the streams themselves ran long. She felt like she might die.
Happy complaining, she supposed. If she went back a few months and told her past self about this future, that girl would have told her to stop peddling snake oil.
Nari folded her arms tight on the desk and buried her face in them.
All of this is thanks to Do-yoon.
After she’d come back from meeting Kurogami Yui, she’d grown weirdly conscious of him and even avoided him for a while. It hadn’t lasted long. After exactly twenty-four hours of agonizing, Nari had reached a conclusion.
Where was this jealousy coming from?
Do-yoon was her benefactor, her colleague, a friend she could open her heart to. And right now, she didn’t really have anyone else around she could properly call a friend. Anyone would get jealous over their one and only friend, wouldn’t they? That wasn’t so strange, was it? The only difference was that the person in question happened to be a guy instead of a girl.
Still, one thing was certain.
I can’t get too obsessed. That’s dependence. Dependence.
He’d done so much for her that she might have started leaning on him without meaning to. Hold back. Keep a healthy distance.
That was the vow she’d made—and now, two more days later, the reality looked like this: yesterday alone she had sent him thirty-one messages first and called twice. The very first thing she’d done upon waking this morning was message him that they’d climbed the charts.
It’s because he answers every single one of them.
Nari went so far as to pin the blame on Do-yoon and hugged her arms even tighter.
“……”
There was no need to force distance. They were friends.
The lecture-hall door rattled open and students filed in.
“Hey, you heard Blackout Cat? That shit slaps.”
Their conversation snapped her swirling thoughts into sudden stillness.
“Isn’t that just famous ’cause it blew up on Shorts?”
“No no no—the songs themselves are actually good. Check out the other ones too.”
“Oh! Wait, I’ve heard it! Some cartoon character was singing it, right?”
“VTuber, you idiot. VTuber. You don’t even know that?”
“Says the damn otaku.”
Still face-down on the desk, Nari’s eyes snapped open. Her classmates were talking about her right behind her back. Cold sweat beaded along her spine.
In the past she had always avoided her classmates. She hadn’t wanted them to see the broken version of herself, so she’d made excuses and run. Now she could sing with her head held high—unlike back then—but she still never joined even the smallest hangouts, busking trips or karaoke nights. The reason had simply changed.
Not because I can’t. Because I might get found out.
“We should shoot a Reels challenge too. If something like this blows up, it all goes on the résumé.”
“Ugh, what a pain… but wait, this one?”
One of her classmates listened carefully, then said,
“Yo, this would suit Yu Nari perfectly? Sounds kinda similar—she could totally cover it.”
“Oh? You think so? What even is Nari’s voice like again? I’m not close with her, so you ask.”
Don’t call me, don’t call me—
“Hey, Yu Nari! Wanna shoot a Reels with us?”
Kyaaaaaah—
Fused to her desk, Nari silently screamed. Forced to lift her head, she found a classmate thrusting a phone at her.
“You know the Blackout Cat song? Your voice would match it so well—wanna do the challenge?”
“I don’t really know it……”
“You only have to practice the highlight, so it’s easy. Won’t take long.”
“……”
Should she just curse them out? Please go away. She was already burning through her mental energy everywhere else—she hadn’t expected college to pile on the exhaustion too.
Just as the end of her patience came into view—
“Nari! I came to return the stationery I borrowed yesterday!”
Park Hye-jin cut in. She popped up out of nowhere, hooked an arm through Nari’s side, and said,
“Sorry, she’s got something with me! Borrowing her for a sec!”
Without waiting for an answer, Hye-jin hauled Nari out and vanished down the hallway at speed.
A quiet corner of the corridor. No one around. Only after scanning every direction did the two of them finally catch their breath. Nari didn’t know why Hye-jin had stepped in, but it had helped, so—
“Thanks, Hye-jin. You totally saved me.”
Hye-jin stared straight at the girl offering her thanks.
“You’re Lunari, right?”
“Pff—! A-absolutely not?!”
“What, you’re ridiculously obvious.”
“W-what are you talking about.”
“Hmm?”
Hye-jin folded her fingers down one by one as she spoke.
“Twenty-two. Applied music major. Living alone in Seoul.”
All details that had come out on one of Lunari’s drunk streams.
“……That’s common enough.”
“I’m in Shin Se-young’s fan club, you know. So I watched all of Virtual Voice Fight and the concert this time too. The way you talk was completely you. I even dug up your personal streams to double-check.”
“……”
“And just now, the second Blackout Cat came up, you went white as a sheet. Did you actually think you could hide it?”
Nari leaned back against the wall and sent her a look of pure surrender.
“……Can you keep the secret?”
“Obviously. Why would I out you?”
Hye-jin grinned wide.
“But!”
“But?”
“Are you, by any chance, actually close with Shin Se-young? Like maybe an autograph or something… ahem ahem.”
“……I’ll look into it.”
“For real? Nari, I love you! From now on, I’ve got your back!”
Nari sighed, but relief settled in her chest. The first person she knew in real life to learn Lunari’s identity was Park Hye-jin—and that was something she could live with.
They were moving on when a murmur swelled from the lecture hall next door.
“Oh! Lunari’s Drunk Challenge just dropped on YouTube!”
“What is it? Let me see.”
“Ah, haha, that’s cute.”
“I’m becoming a virtual yuksu now.”
“What’s that even mean?”
One in the afternoon. Exactly the scheduled Shorts upload time Han So-yeong had mentioned.
“Ah— ahh.”
The image of herself filming that tipsy act slammed through her mind.
Students inside the lecture hall were laughing happily. Park Hye-jin glanced at Nari and snorted.
Scramble-scramble—
Nari bolted back into the classroom and buried her face in the desk. She wanted to die of embarrassment. She couldn’t even put on a thick face about it—not with someone who knew her identity sitting right there.
Hye-jin patted her back.
“Hang in there, Lunari. That’s just what it takes to eat and live, apparently.”
“Don’t call me that here……”
I should take a leave of absence…… What even is school for.
She wanted to call Do-yoon.
Would he laugh if he heard about my situation?
He’d made her famous—like the guy who saves a drowning man only to get hit with a demand for his bundle—so if she told him to take responsibility, what would he say? He’d probably freak out and look at her like she was insane.
“Pfft.”
Imagining Do-yoon’s reaction, Nari snorted softly—and the second class ended, she fled for home.
She needed healing.
A shared office in Mapo-gu, Seoul.
Jeong Min-ji—representative of Story Lab, the three-hundred-thousand-subscriber web drama channel, and its head of direction—opened an email. A file from Muse Family’s manager, Han So-yeong.
“It’s here. Jackpot! Looks like they’re taking the job.”
The music director beside her dragged a chair closer.
“We requested it in the Blackout Cat style, right?”
“Yeah. Let’s put it on.”
Humming under her breath, Jeong Min-ji dug through the attached file. The moment she’d first heard Blackout Cat, she’d thought, This is it—and when she’d gone looking for the other tracks by this composer Yeong-il, those had radiated an uncommon level of skill too. So she’d put in the commission right away. Watching the songs grow more famous by the day had made her antsy, but—
In the end the sample came. Everything’s okay!
Beaming, she hit play.
The intro rolled out. A low male voice began as if murmuring to himself.
Huh?
Jeong Min-ji tilted her head.
“This is different from Blackout Cat?”
She’d been expecting that dazzling intro; the atmosphere was completely different. Quiet. Sunken. Lonely.
Different—and yet she couldn’t stop listening.
When the low voice finished a phrase, the grain of the song shifted. The vocal climbed higher, the melody surged upward, and then the low voice cut back in and pulled everything down again. The two voices crossed and the song breathed. Two whole worlds lived inside a single track.
“……”
When it ended, silence hung in the air. Jeong Min-ji spoke first.
“This isn’t what we asked for, is it?”
“It isn’t.”
The music director nodded.
“But…… this is good too.”
Instead of answering, Jeong Min-ji hit play again.
A second listen, and conviction settled in. They’d wanted a bright, thrilling turn like Blackout Cat to detonate the protagonist’s feelings on screen—but this track felt like it sank stickier and deeper into the character’s emotional line. The story of someone hiding behind a mask. Someone who wants to stand on a stage but is afraid. It was as if the damp underside of that feeling had been shaped into sound.
“Look here.”
The music director pointed at the screen.
“The email says a female lead vocal and a male feature are needed.”
“Yeah. It does.”
“I don’t get why we need a female lead.”
“Couldn’t this male voice carry the whole thing from start to finish? This version already feels complete as it is.”
“I felt the same way.”
Jeong Min-ji rested her chin on her hand.
“If the composer built it as a feature structure, there has to be a reason. The way the two voices cross might be the core of the song.”
“In that case I am curious how it sounds with a female vocal in. Right now the guy is singing the women’s parts as guide vocals too.”
“True.”
Guide vocals, supposedly.
“For a guide, he really milked the flavor out of it. Looking at the doubling, he didn’t just phone it in either.”
Jeong Min-ji hit play a third time. This round she focused only on the male feature sections. Low and quiet, yet magnetic. No flashy technique—and still the emotion felt alive and moving. She just…… wanted to keep listening.
“We do have to cast singers, though,” she muttered, leaning back in her chair. “For the female lead, I think we should hear the composer’s opinion. The person who made the song will have a picture in their head.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ve got no idea who to cast…… I just really like this version itself.”
The music director had been listening quietly; then he opened his mouth.
“Then why don’t we just cast the person who sang the guide vocals?”
Jeong Min-ji blinked at him.
“Ah.”
Right.
Female main vocal, replace the feature with a male.
Replace it? This? With whom?
“……I guess we’d better get in touch.”
No better version came to mind.