Their Own Circumstances
Title: Just got back from listening to A-il's Invisible.
I cried my eyes out the whole way through that song.
When Eumnya dropped I already thought it was incredible, but the discourse was so mixed I just kept my mouth shut.
I'm done hiding. I want to say it loud and clear: this track is all-time. Yeah.
This bastard Yeong-il just never disappoints.
Title: A-il's new track feels like a shot at Mellow.
Part of the lyrics:
It's okay if I go unseen
It's okay if I go untouched
Even without a dazzling stage
Even without bright lights
If you listen, that is my world
Even with my name hidden, my face covered
My heart will still reach you honestly
The place I can stay is right here
Even if no one can see me
This melody keeps flowing on
It's like the loneliness of someone who can't even get on stage. That feeling hits hard.
For the people asking why this is a shot at Mellow, let me walk you through the context first.
1. No Muse Family VTuber stage at this year's Mellow Music Awards. (Could've been a refusal, and we don't know the full situation, so fine, whatever.)
2. First solo track, and it wasn't even registered on music platforms. Uploaded to YouTube only.
3. Thumbnail is just a black screen. Zero effort, like a practical-music student's study piece.
4. Timing is a few days before the awards. (Could also be coincidence.)
Put it all together:
They had to upload so fast they couldn't even register it as an official release. And they put it on YouTube only because they didn't want to look at Mellow's face.
Domestic music platforms don't even have the status they used to, right?
It's a straight-up declaration.
"If you won't acknowledge us, we'll just put it on YouTube!"
The title itself is Invisible. Unseen. Exactly how VTubers get treated as transparent at award shows.
Except the quality of a song they threw together in a rush is so absurdly high that people might not even clock it as a diss track lmao
Doesn't that sound plausible?
Right?
Or don't mind me~~
Yu Nari sprawled across the floor, fingers flying over her phone. A1st—the fan café that had sprung back to life the moment A-il's track dropped—was under her care. It had only been a tiny community of about a hundred members, but new sign-ups were ticking in one or two at a time in real time.
Do-yoon is a genius.
The melody of the song and the color of his voice felt, to her, like a siren luring sailors to the rocks. She herself must have hit play at least twenty times the night before. The songs he wrote for other people were already the best, but hearing Do-yoon sing them himself sent a shiver of emotion crashing through her.
It's all wonderful, but…
Watching people finally recognize him filled her with quiet pride—and at the same time…
A sly little jealousy began to creep up from somewhere deep inside her.
Hmph. I got the live version from Do-yoon yesterday, you know.
Have any of you ever heard his pure raw voice with zero mic effects? The live take with every breath still in it?
Last night was still vivid—clutching her pillow like it might burst, pouring every scrap of focus into the sound in her headset. Just as she started to wonder whether it was childish to feel jealousy and superiority in turns over fans…
Yeah. I'm childish. Fine.
She admitted it cleanly. What was she supposed to do about liking something?
Her phone rang while she was still diligently managing the café. The second she saw the name on the screen, she abandoned everything and sat up properly on the bed.
"Hello? Do-yoon-ah!"
"Nuna."
A triumphant little smile tugged at her mouth.
This is the power of a fan café president. Direct phone calls, baby.
Of course, the real reason he was calling was about the MAMA stage—but contact was contact.
"In the Black Cat section, there's that bridge connecting verse one and verse two. I want to tweak the costume direction a little there."
"How?"
"Keep the current style for the first verse, then when the bridge hits, the lights shift blue and a blue effect runs through the costume. Like Lunari's silhouette swaying under moonlight."
She nodded.
"Yeah, that sounds good."
"And for the Eumnya stage I want the opposite—warm. Lighting in orange and pink tones, background with that soft, under-the-blanket texture."
"I love it!"
"If you're okay with it, I'll pass this direction on to the planners."
"Absolutely! If it's coming from Do-yoon, I'm okay with it."
Anyone listening might have found the answer embarrassingly spineless, but Nari meant every word. Absolute trust. Do-yoon's instincts were always right. With Black Cat, with takeout food, with Eumnya—everything he said "let's do it this way" about had turned out correct. So she believed him this time too. She was certain he had a gift for this.
Singing on a stage that dwarfed any music-show set in scale—just imagining it made her hands and feet tremble. But—
Back then, and from now on too, as long as I'm with Do-yoon, I'll be fine.
"You're working so hard, Do-yoon-ah. Preparing songs and thinking through stage direction."
"Nah. My part's basically done. You're the one working hard, Nuna."
That flat, unbothered voice of his made her want to melt into the bed and whine. She was the older one, and somehow his bluntness still completely disarmed her.
"Ugh, the teacher keeps saying I'm a total klutz, I'm completely hopeless. I'm scared I'll mess up on stage this time."
"I don't know. I think you'll do fine. You always work hard. And if you mess up… that could be fun in its own way?"
"You think so? I want to do well. I want to look cooler."
"You're already cool enough."
"……"
The corners of Nari's mouth went soft all over again. This man, seriously.
Don't just drop lines like that in that deadpan tone.
She found herself wondering what Do-yoon would look like if he ever came undone the way she did. How could she get to see it? Teasing him face-to-face would be ideal, but that wasn't realistic right now…
Ah.
"Do-yoon-ah, you remember that?"
"What?"
"After the VTuber Awards Party, you and I did a after-party."
"Ah… the night you drank alone?"
"Yeah. You had juice, right?"
"No, barley tea."
"Oh, right. Anyway."
Nari clapped her hands together.
"Want to do an after-party once MAMA is over?"
"An after-party?"
"Yeah. We never did it properly last time. It basically ended with me drinking alone, so this time—together! To celebrate wrapping up something big."
"I've never actually drunk before. Wonder if it'd be okay."
"You're already good at going to convenience stores. You've got to try things at least once! What do you think?"
A low, thoughtful sound came through the line, then his answer.
"Okay. I've been curious, too. At least once…"
"Kyaa, it's going to be so fun! We can each bring tasty snacks and drinks."
"Excessive drinking is bad for you. Nuna, you should probably drink in moderation—"
"It's not an exaggeration to say I trained at convenience stores for this very day! Ehehe."
"……That training was not for drinking."
Having secured the promise, Nari flopped onto her stomach on the bed and kicked her feet. Inside, her head was already spinning.
I've never seen Do-yoon drink.
Drunk Do-yoon. She couldn't even picture it. What would happen when that usual flat, indifferent voice loosened? Would it slow down? Sink lower? Or would he talk more?
Just imagining it made her mouth curve into a dopey grin.
I bet he'd be cute.
Color rose in her cheeks, pink and warm.
I'll have to keep him in check. I'm the senior, after all.
He said it was his first time. The experienced one should set the pace.
"Just trust Nuna!"
"……?"
"You're supposed to drink with an adult the first time."
"We're one year apart. And Nuna, your drinking habits aren't exactly great…"
Nari breezily ignored Do-yoon's muttering and flailed her arms and legs, laughing. She was already starting to look forward to MAMA stage day.
The day of the collab stream with Iris, the Japanese VTuber with 1.8 million subscribers.
Yui sat in a corner of the motion-capture studio, already strapped into her gear. The sound of lighting checks and the busy footsteps of staff drifted past her ears without really landing—sliding in one side and quietly out the other.
"Haaah——"
Every time her mind went blank, that face rose up.
I never thought that day would be the last.
After that briefest of exchanges with the man, she hadn't seen him once. When she went back down to the basement that same evening, the door had been locked and the lights inside the studio were off. The next morning, and the morning after that—even after work was finished, she kept forcing herself to show her face at the company just to check. He never appeared.
I should have been braver that day.
But what was she supposed to do when she turned into a lagging idiot the second she looked at him? It wasn't a face you got used to easily. The moment excitement found her, the empty stretch after it had been so long that a dull ache settled into one corner of her heart. Yui sat there chewing on solitude with melancholy eyes, like the heroine of some pure-love manga.
"Huu… Maybe I should at least ask So-yeong-nim."
She had been too embarrassed to ask anything about that man. But if anyone would know, it would be the manager who seemed to know nearly everything about the company. Yui's patience had already hit its limit—past the point where embarrassment could hold her back.
Just then—
"Yui unnie!"
A bright, sparkling voice burst out in front of her. She lifted her head to find Nari waving, beaming from ear to ear.
"Nari?"
"Huu, a collab with a foreign streamer~ So cool."
Nari strode over and dropped into the chair beside Yui, carrying a brightness so intense it clashed with Yui's gloom.
"Something good happen?"
"Huh? Do I look like it? Hehe."
"Yeah. Extremely."
"Hmm~ Well, if you say so, mm-hm."
"What is it?"
What could possibly have Nari this cheerful? Yui poked at the first thing that came to mind.
"Is it Yeong-il? Did things finally move forward?"
"Huh?! A-ah, no they did not!"
"What? For real? Why the jump?"
Nari shut her mouth and just kept grinning, clearly with no intention of answering, and switched topics instead.
"But unnie, is something going on with you? You look tired. Are you okay?"
"Ahh? Ah, no. I just haven't been sleeping well lately."
She couldn't bring herself to say she had been losing sleep over a man.
