Peach Mint
Peach mint.
The motion capture studio.
“A pleasure to meet you, Kurogami Yui. Welcome to the interview.”
On Lunari’s channel, the stream opened to Lunari in a solemn, severe office look and Kurogami Yui dressed like a fresh-faced new hire just starting her first job.
“Hello! Interview candidate number one, Kurogami Yui, reporting!”
“Hmm. One point deducted.”
“Wh-why?!”
“You’re supposed to close the door when you come in.”
“Ehh? There’s no door here?”
“Nonsense.”
Yu Nari strode past Yui and mimed shutting a door in empty air.
“Creeeak—click.”
“Hey, you just made the sound with your mouth!”
“Ahem. Show some respect to the interviewer. In here, I am god.”
“Tch!”
Yui clicked her tongue softly and sat down. Across from her, Nari pressed on with the questions.
“Name of Muse Family’s representative?”
“Kim Hye-min!”
“Name of the main producer?”
“Yeong-il!”
“Company motto?”
“……We have one of those?”
“Deduction.”
“Urghhh… What is the company motto?”
Nari answered with perfect calm.
“I don’t know either.”
“YAAAAAAAH!”
“Ahem. But I really don’t.”
Lunari’s shameless expression and Yui’s defeated hand gesture came through the motion capture with merciless clarity.
From there Lunari went full shameless. There was no script anyway. The opening had been agreed as pure skit material until enough viewers piled in.
“Alright, next~ Name three of Lunari’s charm points!”
“She sings well and her personality is… I don’t know… um.”
“What. You’re stuck already?”
“……Ears? She’s got ears?”
“How is that one of my strengths…?”
Whenever Yui tried to land a hit of her own, Nari hit back.
“Try using honorifics with the senior you’ll be working under from now on. I need to check if you can maintain proper workplace relationships.”
“B-but I’m the unnie…”
“It’s hard calling your unnie ‘unnie.’”
“What kind of nonsense is that, Nari-nari? We’re on stream…”
“Say ‘senior.’ Don’t you want to join the company?”
“Urgh, Na… Nari… se-sen… ior…”
The sound of grinding teeth mixed with a thoroughly satisfied laugh.
While Lunari, firmly in control, wrung comedy out of Yui, a staffer signaled that the next segment was ready. Time at last to read the prepared script.
“Mm! Excellent. Yui-ssi, you possess outstanding qualifications! You look more than ready to join our company.”
“Waaah, really?!”
“Yes! Muse Family has a free dress code, so why don’t you change and we’ll meet again!”
“G-got it! I’ll redo my makeup too!”
Kurogami Yui stiffly waved her arms and vanished, and the stage shifted. The interview room became a VR map modeled on the lobby of Muse Family’s headquarters.
“Aaah, hello everyone. Today I greet you as Muse Family’s se-nior! Lunari!”
Between the bizarre skit and Lunari’s over-the-top senior act, the viewers caught on fast.
The reaction was lukewarm. It felt even more uncomfortable than when Lunari had first announced she was under Muse Family instead of IG. Kurogami Yui’s viewers had wanted her safely under a big-name MCN without needing to take risks.
Lunari welcomed the familiar tension.
It was like this back then too.
Avatar renewal, concert, new song drop—she’d flipped public opinion by dumping everything at once.
“Alright alright, today’s a celebration of Muse Family welcoming its second VTuber! Shall we call Yui unnie out?”
Seeing beat hearing every time. Better to show than tell.
The curtain behind them vanished, and Kurogami Yui appeared—no longer in the neat interview outfit, but in the cool everyday look she preferred.
The avatar had a different sense of depth. The overall design hadn’t changed much, but Muse Family’s newly secured artists had overhauled the dimensionality and shaders. Shadows ran deeper; flat gloss now had real life.
Yui clearly liked the upgrade. She tilted her head this way and that with aristocratic flair, showing off without quite showing off. Lunari watched and fought down a smile. Cold city girl, icy rocker, fierce wolf—the real-life Yui had rattled off those exact requests while describing the look she wanted, and the two images overlapped.
This is force majeure.
Look at her proudly waving those short little arms. You expect me to hold it in after seeing that? That’s torture.
“Nari?”
“Huuu… Yeah. Work time.”
She fixed her expression and stepped up beside Yui.
“Ta-da! Doesn’t Yui unnie look prettier? A little gift prepared by Muse Family~”
“Hehe. Pretty, right? Doesn’t match the image? Screw you, what do you know, you’re just a new viewer.”
“Ahem ahem, no fighting with the chat over there. Why so prickly, junior?”
Lunari stretched her arms and spun in place.
“Ta-da! The place we’re standing right now is an optical motion-capture studio! Yes, the same one I visited before as a guest of Prism Tree.”
“It’s amazing! Completely different from the places I used to rent on my own!”
“Ahem! Do you people know how much it costs to rent a place this incredible?”
Viewers who knew VTuber economics tossed out plausible figures in chat.
“Exactly! Insanely expensive, right? But! Yui unnie, how much is it here?”
“Completely free! As Muse Family members it costs us nothing!”
“And that’s not all! Personal mocap gear provided! You can even use simple VR mocap tech at home!”
Opinion flipped like a pancake. Yui’s recent OST had already climbed to a respectable #96, written by Muse Family’s own composer Yeong-il. Now they were throwing in cutting-edge VR motion capture support? Fans had no reason to complain. If anything, people started worrying it was too good to be true.
The universal headache for VTubers was money. The faceplate that carried the face was a money-eating demon, and building VR maps or concert content cost a fortune. Muse Family covered every last bit of it.
Word of their ridiculous streamer support package raced through the communities. Existing streamer MCNs fretted that Muse Family might start poaching in earnest. Virtual streamers hungry for better content started quietly digging for the truth.
How do you even get in there? Do you need to sing well? Is there an audition?
Still wearing the label of an entertainment agency, Muse Family remained an unidentifiable invasive species to the native VTuber scene.
“Nngh, I’m wiped.”
In the car heading back to the office after packing up, Kurogami Yui sprawled across the back seat.
“I told you to just sit quietly and ride.”
“Everyone was carrying at least one box. How could I not?”
“You should have seen the way people flinched every time Yui-nim picked up a box.”
Han So-yeong let out a small sigh and shook her head. It looked like labor exploitation. Another reason they needed to fill the company roster yesterday. The mocap studio staff helped with the shoot, but she couldn’t keep caring for the artists and hauling company gear herself.
And today Yeong-il had rented the company recording studio again. Anyone else and she might not worry, but to Han So-yeong he still carried that killifish-fragile image. Leaving him alone felt precarious.
Need to hire for security too.
Every artist under the company was a VTuber; they needed proper building security more than most.
She was sorting the mental to-do list when Yui muttered from the back.
“By the way, are we still using this ‘I’m a celebrity now~’ black van? It’s way too eye-catching.”
“……Ahem. We got it from IG, so I’ll look into replacing it.”
Ha. The list never ends.
While Han So-yeong’s dark circles grew in real time on the drive back, Yu Nari’s thoughts drifted to the company basement.
He’d probably gone home by now. He’d said the workload was light and he’d been streaming, so…
He must have scurried off. Cute.
A fond, slightly greedy smile tugged at her lips. Do-yoon had never flat-out said when he went to the company studio, but by now she could read it. He couldn’t stay away from music work for long, and today was the only day the office would be empty.
Arriving at places the other had just left felt like a private little game no one else knew about. Pure meaningless fantasy? Imagination was free; this much was fine.
“We’re here!”
Han So-yeong’s announcement scrubbed the sticky thoughts clean. Nari climbed out. Park Gi-dong unloaded the gear while Han So-yeong headed upstairs to the office. Nari dropped onto a first-floor sofa; Yui flopped down beside her. Han So-yeong would drive each of them home, so they were waiting a bit.
In the meantime I really want to go downstairs…
The person rolling around next to her looked exactly like a middle-schooler, and it was hard to ignore. She wanted to peel away alone, but maybe they should just go down together. She was about to stand before overthinking killed the chance when—
Thud. Thud.
Her head snapped toward the basement stairs. Yui followed the motion and reacted first, while Nari froze.
“Eh? Someone’s downstairs? Who?”
Nari could only watch Yui’s back as she slid off the sofa.
Wait. No way. Do-yoon was still here?
Nari’s heart felt like it stopped.
A shadow appeared on the basement stairs. Footsteps drew closer. The person who emerged was a middle-aged man.
“Uh… hello? Who are you? The basement is… the studio… wait! Are you Yeong-il-nim?!”
Yui had heard Do-yoon’s young voice before, yet asked with zero bias.
“Ah, no. I’m the building manager.”
“Ah! Haha, sorry!”
Yui laughed and returned to the sofa. Nari couldn’t laugh. Her heart was still hammering through her whole body. Fear and anticipation had crashed in together and left only emptiness when they receded.
I almost met him.
In the most anticlimactic way possible.
She needed to check his traces right now. Only then would she calm down.
“I-I’m gonna run downstairs real quick.”
“Huh? Uh, okay.”
She hurried down the basement stairs, opened the recording studio door, and habitually sniffed the air. Someone had been here. The temperature was faintly warmer. She cleared her throat once and stepped inside.
First thing she checked: the snack box. Mint candy. Mint-chocolate wafers. Mint-choco caramels. A whole pile of the mint snacks she loved—little gifts she’d left early that morning for Do-yoon.
What did he eat?
Her eyes went to the trash can. Peach mint candy wrappers. Three of them.
“Haha.”
He’d said he liked peach, so of course he’d picked only those. Joy made the corners of her mouth twitch. The same candy Do-yoon had eaten. She pinched the end of a wrapper and twisted.
Crinkle— Inside, a pale pink candy appeared. She rested it between thumb and forefinger, studied it a moment, then parted her lips just enough to set it on her tongue. Her lips closed. The candy rolled along the inside of her cheek. Nari’s eyes drifted shut.
Not mint first—peach. A sweet, warm fragrance, then mint seeping in and cooling the tip of her tongue. Only the corners of her mouth lifted in a thin smile as her lashes settled.
Next time. If they were in the same place again next time…
She couldn’t promise she’d hold back.
The peach mint candy was always so much more intensely sweet than the plain mint she usually ate.
I checked my bank account.
Deposit: ₩73,102,450
“……?”
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Seventy-three million won. I’d definitely received seven million as an advance. It had jumped tenfold. No—they’d said seven million covering two months of expected pay. What the hell was this?