Nekomimi vs. Natural

I got word from Han So-yeong that Kurogami Yui would be joining the label.

Out of nowhere? That was my first thought—until I looked over what the company was offering. For a VTuber, it was pretty tempting.

Kurogami Yui sat among the mid-tier streamers, but closer to the big names than not. Once word got out that a VTuber of her caliber had moved, the whole VTuber industry would probably start buzzing.

We're not turning into a virtual-only company, are we?

It was hard to dismiss the thought outright. Of the label's three artists, two of them—setting aside the meaningless me—were already VTubers.

Well. Doesn't really matter.

Either way, nothing in my life was going to change. Right now, writing Vocaloid tracks was my bigger preoccupation.

Never thought the lyrics would be what stalled me out.

The arrangement was finished. The problem was the words—lyrics that looked meaningless and yet had to mean something, that felt tossed-off while still hiding an intention. That kind of writing was hard. The Vocaloid genre was not as easy as it looked.

Even now I was hanging on Lunari's stream, fishing for any hint that might help me land a fitting line.

Lunari had shown up with a title that looked like an illegal gambling ad, and she was buzzing with energy.

"Heh heh. The great me arrives. That ranking slot at number ten is mine—wait, no photos, please."

Blackout Cat had finally cracked the top ten, which had her shoulders swelling with pride—and she'd upgraded her model, too. It was a genuine achievement, but the streamer was so busy piling boast on top of boast that a little contrarian pushback started seeping up through the chat. Viewers tossed jabs, fishing for something to pick at, but nothing was going to drag that result down.

"I never imagined every track I released would land inside the top forty. Personally I really love This Is All of Me, so it being the weakest of the bunch is a little sad."

"Yeah, it's a song solo streamers working out of their rooms can really relate to~ A five-pyeong little room—this place is an endless universe—"

Lunari's stream pulled so much outside traffic that her audience came from every layer imaginable. Setting the room's mood was never easy, but she powered through it with pure character. Taking the advice she'd gotten after that one drunk stream—that she needed to lower her own pedestal a little—she'd dropped the awkward formal speech and grown a lot more approachable. What took shape was a personal broadcast where a whirlwind image and the scent of a tiny tyrant coexisted in the same space.

Ding!

At the donation chime, Lunari's ears perked straight up.

"A YouTube ad? That was today! It came out well, right? Let's watch it together. I'll put it on."

The video Lunari queued up opened on a pink-haired girl slumped over a desk in a classroom. A rumble from her stomach, then a phone dropped onto the desk in front of her. Her eyes spun at the flood of delivery options and she started tapping everything in sight. Delivery riders sprinted for the school gates, and at last they arrived.

Sweet-and-salty! Spicy! Savory!

My song—rearranged to the client's request—swelled underneath as Lunari's eyes lit up. She leapt toward the food that had materialized in an instant, face pure happiness.

"Hungry? Yogi Delivery!"—and cut.

A clean finish, crowned by Lunari's satisfied high note.

"Cute, right? Too short, though. Shall we check the comments~?"

The YouTube comments were all praise. The live chat, however, was a different story.

"Huh? This is cute too, though? I did agonize over it a bit, but is no ears really that big a deal…? Flat-head faction, die. You're getting banned. There are adult circumstances involved, okay!"

Only I knew the truth: Lunari had been against removing the ears and tail too. She'd simply knelt to the money.

Whatever she'd felt about it, the viewers had finally found their angle of attack, and the chat ignited on the spot.

"The client said clean and neat looked better, so we took them off. I felt empty about it too, you know! I didn't throw them away—look, they're right here!"

"Don't go pitching me to your friends—you're getting cut off. Cat ears are cute, but without them I'm pretty too…"

Lunari pouted, then folded her ears flat and flicked them back open, as if double-checking they still existed. Whether it was the model upgrade or just how used to them I'd gotten, even I had to admit she was cuter with them on.

"If you people had paid for the ad, you'd have said take the ears off too, you know? It's not fair… All of this comes back as investment in the stream…"

The viewers hadn't been serious about hating it either, so they shifted to a different angle of teasing—"guess the check was just too big to refuse"—and the back-and-forth kept rolling.

That was when the Natural faction, which had been sitting quietly, raised its head.

The donation hit, and Lunari's ears vanished on the spot.

"Heheh, thank you! Clean looks pretty, right!"

"Woooooah? What? They're on!"

Thanks to Lunari's zero-hesitation attach-detach system, a war of pure money kicked off from there.

Natural Faction vs. Nekomimi Corps.

Accusations of furry this, stay in RP that. In the middle of a completely meaningless exchange of fire, Lunari alone sat there going heh heh heh and laughing.

And then.

"Hweeeeh?! A million won?!"

The true animal-ear alliance had arrived to end the war.

She's a company colleague now, too.

Lunari reattached the cat ears and swore to Yui that she would no longer be moved by money. She'd already raked in everything she was going to rake in before saying that, which was so absurd it was funny.

"While Yui unnie is here, a little spoiler! We're doing content together soon! Meeting up in real life!"

People would probably assume it was another real-life collab like before, but from what I'd been told, it was a motion-capture studio collab to celebrate Yui joining the label. They were apparently planning to announce Kurogami Yui's contract on stream that day.

Scratch. Scratch.

My right hand's pen, which had been sitting still, started filling the blank page. Choosing to watch Lunari's stream had been the right call. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ideas that had cut out mid-lyric writing were bubbling back up one after another.

Cat ears and a tail. And snoring.

With those two as the core, locking in the lyrics got a lot easier than before.

Should I head to the company studio for this one too? Once you'd tasted high-end gear, working at home just felt unsatisfying. Someday, if I made enough money, I was going to set up a studio of my own.

I shelved the dream talk and came back to reality. If I was renting the studio, better to do it when nobody else was around…

"Ah!"

I'd go work when Lunari and Yui went to the mocap studio. Then the company would be empty again.

I started typing out a message to Han So-yeong.

Muse Family label.

Han So-yeong was processing Kurogami Yui's contract. The reverse offer had come out of nowhere and left her flustered, but the representative had said okay, and the equipment they'd received was frankly a waste if it only supported Lunari alone. Looking purely at results, it wasn't a bad call for the company.

On top of that, when she'd explained that—unlike a regular MCN—if song offers came in she might have to be active as a singer, Yui had actually been delighted.

"It's a mystery. A total mystery."

With a working adult's mindset she could shrug it off, but rationally it still didn't add up. Someone at Kurogami Yui's level could walk into a major corporate MCN. Those places threw support around just as generously. But if she was happy with this, fine.

She closed the contract file and opened her inbox. The main reasons she was so busy all lived here. Email inquiries—especially anything related to Yeong-il. Interview requests, ad inquiries, song commissions. Ever since the web drama OST teaser dropped, the volume of mail had climbed. People assumed he was expanding into outside work now, and the flood had started all over again.

The OST was just a lucky break.

No point making enemies, so she typed out rejection lines one by one—until an unfamiliar email caught her eye.

"Ah. End of the year already."

Awards season was approaching. They needed Yeong-il's information at the preliminary survey stage for Rookie Producer of the Year.

There's still two months left.

The ranking climb for the tracks, including Blackout Cat, was hitting its late stage. Currently at number ten, and from the data it looked like it would finish at nine. On top of that, the other songs had risen as high as fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty-four—absurd numbers for a rookie producer who hadn't even come out of a major agency.

And that was the current state of things. Spotlight's reaction hadn't even detonated yet. The teaser alone had already cleared four hundred thousand views on YouTube; a few days after the official release, it would probably climb the charts all over again.

A shiver ran through her.

The inquiries are going to pour in again.

Han So-yeong stared blankly and rode the current of her own thoughts. Maybe part of why Kurogami Yui had chosen the label was Yeong-il's stake in it? The two of them had worked together, after all. Humans were creatures of emotion.

Looking at how she's tied to Yeong-il… maybe her too? Like Yu Nari?

A tiny sprout of suspicion unfurled. That Yu Nari harbored romantic feelings for Yeong-il—for Kim Do-yoon—was practically a certainty at this point.

"Hmm."

When Gi-dong first reported that Yeong-il was the owner of an extremely handsome face, she'd assumed Yu Nari's claim of never having seen him was a lie. He was good-looking, so of course she liked him. That kind of logical judgment had come first.

Then came the day of the Prism ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Tree collab. Yu Nari had finished the motion-capture shoot at the speed of light and bolted straight back to the company. From what she'd heard again from Park Gi-dong, the two hadn't crossed paths there either.

So she really never has run into him. It's a confirmed one-sided crush.

Whether he was actually handsome or not, she had no direct confirmation—but she did know Yeong-il was the kind of person who could reel someone in by voice alone. Which was exactly why a small suspicion about Kurogami Yui was forming too.

What kind of person charms people through conversation alone? They're not going to end up fighting over him, are they…?

Having recently been deep into romance fantasy webtoons, Han So-yeong's thought process was already following the pink light—and drawing its own conclusions without permission.

Bzzzzt—!

"Hweong—you startled me."

The message was from Yeong-il. Given the timing, she flinched.

The content was simple: he wanted to use the studio for track work.

"Again? Is he a song-printing machine?"

Spotlight was a track Do-yoon had written a while back, but for Han So-yeong, that felt like a minor detail. What kind of song is it this time? True to a rising producer, Yeong-il's tracks always had a certain charm. A manager is allowed to be curious, right?

Han So-yeong casually asked what the song was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like.

The cool reply let her enjoy a brief stretch of Santa-waiting anticipation. Han So-yeong opened the arrived email and hit play immediately.

"……??"

A giant question mark seized control of her world.

The guide vocal is… a machine voice?

She'd assumed Yeong-il would be singing it, but a mechanical voice without a single breath of human life was doing the singing. The breakneck pace left no room to even chew on a single lyric line and knocked the soul clean out of her.

When the song ended, Han So-yeong's head tipped back and she stared at the ceiling.

With a Producer of the Year nomination on the horizon—he was going to put out this?

It was a million light-years away from mainstream sensibilities.

"Mmm-nya mmm-nya mmm-nya…—hup."

She snapped her mouth shut, startled by the chorus that had slipped out of her on its own.

It is catchy, I'll give it that.

Whatever. He could do what he wanted…

Han So-yeong tried to return to work. Still stunned—and still tapping one foot in time.