Teaser

The Yeong-il Minor Gallery.

Known for short as Yeong-gal.

A little corner of the internet where a handful of music obsessives who adored the composer Yeong-il had gathered to talk.

They had been cast out—not quite banned, but effectively shown the door—from their original home in the Music Gallery for flooding every thread with Yeong-il talk, told in so many words to go chatter among themselves. So they had split off and made a place of their own.

Once Yeong-il's songs started climbing the upper ranks of the Mellow Chart, a thin but steady trickle of new faces began to arrive, and the board settled into a pleasantly low-key place to hang around and ramble.

Yeong-il wasn't a celebrity or a streamer, so there was never much real news to chew on. Most of the board was playful simping posts and completely unrelated banter, with the occasional long analysis of Yeong-il dropped in between.

There was so little hard information and the person's identity was such a complete blank that even pure rage-bait posts pulled solid views as long as they had anything to do with Yeong-il.

And then, one day, the real thing showed up on that gallery.

On a quiet afternoon, I chose to watch Kurogami Yui's stream.

Yui was going through clips her fans had uploaded to the fan café with everyone.

When you have that many fans, some of them are bound to be talented.

A grandiose BGM. Pointlessly flashy effects. And control from the pilot that was utterly, hopelessly terrible.

It was a death montage laser-focused on Yui's dazzling parade of deaths.

Puffing out her cheeks, Yui scrolled in search of something more entertaining, and then her mouse cursor stopped.

A few days earlier, Nari had filmed an idol web variety segment at a motion-capture studio.

A wave of positive reactions poured in at Lunari's newly crisp appearance.

To the general public—that is, to casuals who didn't watch Lunari's streams closely—her image was still primarily that of an artist, a singer. To people who had followed the streams for a while, though, it was a little different.

She had gotten herself banned for drinking on stream, and because she basically tried to keep things casual and loose on air, a tomboy reputation had steadily piled up around her.

And here especially—among Kurogami Yui's viewers—it hit even harder. The way she had relentlessly toyed with Yui during the last real-life collab stream was still fresh in everyone's mind.

That neighborhood tomboy, dressed up a little more composed and pretty for once, was radiating a whole different kind of charm.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Is that even the same avatar?"

I watched the richer expressions and movement with genuine interest. I knew she'd gone to the shoot, but not what she'd actually done, so I was looking forward to it.

The setup was that the PrismTree members had to complete missions to earn points, and only by stacking a set number of points could they escape the virtual world. Lunari showed up around the midpoint as their mission opponent.

"……"

Round one was copy-the-pose: randomly prompted poses they had to match. Lunari went completely limp, flopped around, then sprang up and collapsed again—over and over. The prompt had been a broken balloon doll. She executed it in roughly a second flat and took the next prompt…

A dragoon.

Both palms and the tips of both feet planted on the floor, face-down.

Once again Lunari claimed the points without a second of hesitation, and the PrismTree members' stunned faces—like they couldn't believe a person like that existed—were pure comedy gold.

Lunari's rampage continued. She ate a lemon like it was a tangerine. She belted out a phrase with a vibrato that could put a trot singer to shame. Then she casually drained the soul out of PrismTree and drifted away.

"……"

Lunari really lived hard, didn't she.

I might have been a little moved.

I started out snickering, then found myself admiring how fiercely Yu Nari threw herself into it. That professional fire—completely unfazed even with a line of tall, polished idols staring at her. That work ethic that didn't spare the body once the money hit the account.

Do not chat carelessly. Have you ever once been a person who burned for someone?

I mixed a half-remembered scrap of poetry with my own feelings and offered a quiet respect to the woman wrecking herself for a laugh.

Everyone else was laughing. For some reason I felt a little sad.

Even if she had just driven a stake straight through the tomboy, little-rascal image—well, what could you do.

"If she made it fun, that's enough…"

Later I should at least praise Nari for how much the stream numbers went up…

Yui kept rewinding the scenes and laughing for a long while after that. About ten more minutes passed, and it was getting close to five in the afternoon.

Her eyes flicked back and forth; her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠head swayed. Her movements started looking noticeably restless. Then, the moment the clock hit five on the dot—

It wasn't exactly a "the king has donkey ears" situation. The sentence she'd blurted out in a fluster was pure nonsense.

Up until now, Yui had not mentioned the OST on stream even once. The production side had wanted it that way, and Yui herself had chosen silence to keep the anticipation alive.

I already knew. That was part of why I'd left her stream open in the first place.

The cheerful energy she'd had while gleefully pointing fingers ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at Lunari had vanished somewhere, and a tremor had crept into her voice. The screen switched over to the YouTube channel she'd already had open.

She clicked the video that had just gone up on the Story Lab channel. Without meaning to, I sat up a little straighter.

The video opened on a black screen.

Backstage. Dark. Someone's hand was gripping the edge of a curtain. And it was trembling, just barely. The hand was clenched as if it would yank the curtain open any second—and that was as far as it went.

As the music laid under the scene swelled, a man's voice confessed its pain in a calm, unadorned way.

My voice.

Goosebumps raced down my arms. I had already heard the finished track more times than I could count, but listening to it with everyone else made it feel completely different.

Yui's vocals began to layer over it, and a thin light found the protagonist. The moment the two voices resonated together, the hand on the curtain tightened. The fabric pulled, the massive curtain rippled, and just a sliver of the world beyond the stage came into view.

Out there, a thunderous ovation was in full swing. The audience was sending the protagonist endless signs of gratitude. In the end, the protagonist never stepped through the curtain onto that stage. Their head dropped.

And from the dark, my voice rose again.

The teaser slowly faded to black, and the subtitles came up.

That was how the forty-second teaser ended.

It came out looking cool. At least, it did to me.

Just like the first time I'd put out a track with Lunari, I drifted in a strange mix of fear and swelling pride—until Yui yanked me back to reality.

Kurogami Yui cried with her mic still on. I was getting a little choked up myself, but with her bawling right in front of me, my head actually cleared instead.

The viewers started out teasing her—then the mic started picking up ugly little sobs, and only then did they panic and try to comfort her.

Had she wanted to release a song that badly? It was only the teaser. If she was already crying like this, the actual release was going to be chaos.

I half-listened as the list started pouring out like an awards speech, then decided it was time to leave and quietly started to close the stream—

Curious despite myself, I paused for a second.

Nothing to do with me, then.

I closed the stream and dove onto my bed.