I'm Eighteen!
It was a murder scene.
There was a dead body on the company sofa.
Arms and legs flung out every which way, head hanging over the front edge of the cushions, long hair cascading down like a waterfall.
Or maybe a ghost?
I was carefully taking it all in when my eyes met the upside-down face's gaze—and the corpse twitched and moved.
……!!
I barely managed to swallow the genuine scream that nearly burst from my throat.
The head that had been sprawled across the sofa rustled up, and its owner hurriedly fixed her posture.
Thankfully it wasn't some weirdo—it was that Japanese person I'd met before.
Yui… right?
Putting every clue together, ninety-nine percent sure.
She shattered the tension hanging in the air and charged straight toward me.
The afterimage of her looking like a corpse just moments ago refused to leave my mind. On top of that, the way she spoke every word so carefully in Japanese made her sound exactly like the narration from some cheap horror flick.
Ugh. Horror movies.
Her neck had been bent all the way back.
Terrifying.
I was so spooked I unconsciously started edging backward when—
"C-candy! The candy, I ate it well, desu!"
Yui had switched to Korean.
Her pronunciation was a little clumsier than the Yui I remembered… but this was still better.
Apparently the handful of candy I'd pressed into her palm down in the basement last time had made quite the impression. As thanks, she'd said she wanted to leave a present of her own in the underground studio snack box.
Trying to restock what she ate, huh. What a little squirrel of a person.
She was so tiny—matching her personality—that I barely felt any resistance around her.
I told her that was fine and started walking toward the recording studio.
Should I apologize for treating her like a kid?
My forgotten mistake came floating back up.
Should I? Shouldn't I?
If I was going to apologize, I'd also have to admit I knew she was Yui… and then I'd have to reveal my own identity first, right? That would be the natural order of things?
I kept wrestling with it the whole way down, and even after we arrived.
"Eh! Your legs!"
Something.
"Heeee—! Sugoi—! So cool!"
Something…
"This guitar looks expensive—! Can I touch it? The mic? It looks so funny."
Something something…
"Eat this. I hate mint. Chocolate is the best!"
Because of her short stature, organizing the snack box on the desk was hard, so she was crouching on the floor sorting the snacks instead. I watched her steadily.
It is Yui… right?
The more I listened to her voice, the deeper my conviction grew….
When she looked at people, her eyes kept blinking blink-blink, her head tilting this way and that. When she talked, she bounced her hands and shoulders and radiated pure energy in every direction.
Every single motion was so rich it put anime to shame.
These were absolutely not the gestures of someone trying to look mature.
It's different from what I heard on stream.
As a viewer who'd watched Yui's broadcasts, I had to admit the real version was far more mischievous and clingy than the one wearing the VTuber face plate. If she was like this in front of someone she barely knew, what was she like with people she was actually close to?
Had she secretly always loved acting spoiled?
I was too curious to hold it in.
Plus the way she was bouncing around the recording studio like an excited puppy was getting in the way, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone.
After Yui came back from the bathroom, I carefully opened my mouth.
"……Um, I'd like to focus on work, so when were you planning to head back…… You are Yui-nim, correct?"
Ah. Water's flowing.
Startled that I'd said her name, the cup in her hand tipped, and water dripped steadily onto the floor.
A fly was going to fly into that open mouth of hers.
Looking at her wide eyes and gaping mouth, I figured I'd gotten it right—until she said,
"I am not Yui, desu."
"…What?"
This time I was the one thrown off.
Not her?
"I'm eighteen! High schooler! Kurogami Mai! Nice to meet you, desu!"
"……"
She had a little sister?
I dug through my memories, trying to recall if Yui had ever mentioned a sibling on stream, but nothing came up.
If she said so herself, there was no need to interrogate her. No reason for her to lie, either.
Similar voices because they were sisters?
Well, if it really were Yui, she probably wouldn't be bouncing around this hyperactively.
Some of my doubts seemed to be resolving themselves.
Even accounting for a baby face, she really did look young.
So she was just genuinely little, huh.
That explained it.
"Yeong-il! Right? My sister told me about you, desu."
"Ah, yes. Hello."
"You're so amazing! I listen to your songs a lot!"
"Thank you."
"My sister said she really, reeeally wants to receive a song from you next time!"
"Please tell her I'll contact her if I write something that suits her."
Her pronunciation was a lot leakier than Yui's, but Mai the little sister still spoke Korean well. At the beginning hadn't she only been speaking in single words? The inner workings of a high-tension high school girl were beyond me.
To someone like me who never even finished high school, she was a rather mysterious life-form.
Once we'd introduced ourselves, the floodgates of the schoolgirl's mouth burst open.
"What's your name?"
"Kim Do-yoon."
"Kim Do-yoon… Ah! Can I call you Do-yoon?"
Yui's little sister fidgeted with her fingertips as she murmured the question.
Can she call me Do-yoon?
That brought back old memories……
Her careful question made me remember the first time Yu Nari and I dropped honorifics with each other.
It had felt so awkward, trying to talk casually with someone else after so long.
Back then, Yu Nari had definitely said……
"You can use plain speech with me. But you still have to call me Oppa."
"What?!"
I did exactly what I'd been taught.
"I'm fine with it, but some people get uncomfortable if you drop the titles and just use plain speech."
People like Yu Nari.
"Uh… h-how old are you?"
"Twenty-one."
A full three-year gap with an eighteen-year-old. Yu Nari had gotten mad and ordered me to call her Nuna even though we were only a year apart.
"Twenty-one… w-wow, young. But! If we're going to be that strict about it, then instead of calling me by my given name Mai, you should be calling me by my family name, Kurogami-ssi……"
"Oh, is that so? Everyone just calls her Yui, so I thought Japanese people called each other by first names too."
"That's because it's a broadcast, so everyone thinks Yui is a nickname. I—no! My sister streams under her real name."
"So it was her real name."
Good grief. Now that I heard it, both of them had the surname Kurogami.
Didn't people usually use aliases?
There were so many VTubers with Japanese names that I'd just assumed Yui's was made up too.
"My sister started as a hobby, so she used her real name without thinking……"
"I see. Understood. Kurogami-ssi."
"Aaa, but Mai is fine! Hehe. I'm used to it now, and it feels more friendly."
"……?"
Was this that famous Kyoto-style doublespeak?
Was I supposed to use her given name or her family name?
"Anyway, let's talk comfortably. Us. Hehe."
"Hmm…"
Since she was a foreigner, was it okay to skip the titles?
But this was still Korea, the land of Eastern etiquette.
If she'd been a full-grown adult it might have been different, but with a student I felt the need to teach her Korean manners.
"It really doesn't bother me at all, but if you tell people to talk casually and then skip the titles too, there might be Koreans who get angry. Especially if you speak Korean as fluently as Mai-ssi does."
People like Yu Nari. Or Yu Nari. Or Yu Nari.
I looked at Yui's little sister with my eyes full of concern.
"Eep, if you look at me with those eyes…"
Her lips twitched through something too quiet to hear, and then—
"Okay… I understand."
Her mouth still looked like it had more to say, so I waited quietly.
"Do-yoon Opp… euh…ut. Oppa."
The way she chewed on her lip made her look somehow both resentful and embarrassed.
Was calling someone Oppa that hard?
My own little sister, who was basically a gorilla, just yelled Oppa Oppa every time she saw me.
Still, I had no intention of forcing a foreigner.
"If it's hard, calling me by my name is fine."
"I-it's fine! Oppa! From now on! We're dropping the formal speech, right?"
"Huh? Ah, uh, yeah."
"Uuugh, (I'm the older one here… but somehow it doesn't feel bad… and when they're handsome, even 'Oppa' is a thing…)"
"What was that?"
"Yana, Japanese just slips out of me out of habit."
She fanned her face a few times with her hand, then Mai gathered up her bag.
"I should get going now. My head hurts."
"Mm."
"I'll contact you."
Looking suddenly exhausted, Yui's little sister vanished like a shot.
With the noisy person gone, the space became extremely quiet.
Wow.
That was the first time I'd ever had a long face-to-face conversation with someone since locking myself in my room.
Treating her like I was scolding a little sister, I hadn't even felt particularly uncomfortable.
Maybe because she seemed a little dim, like she was missing a screw somewhere.
Just look at how she left.
We don't even have each other's contact info. How is she planning to contact me?
What a funny kid.
I adjusted my posture in the chair, shook off the stray thoughts, and went back to working on the track.
IG Entertainment headquarters.
Time was running short.
If Kim Hye-min stepped down, it would be difficult to pull Yeong-il out unless Muse Family collapsed entirely.
They had to bring him over before that.
By any means necessary.
Kim Hye-min had been against it, but honestly, even just asking as a courtesy had been more than enough to fulfill their moral obligation.
Anyway, Kim Hye-min is leaving Muse Family, so it shouldn't matter, right?
Whether Muse Family went under because Yeong-il left or not, she probably wouldn't care that much.
Contact him personally, look over the contract, pay the penalty fee, and bring him over. Done.
Most of the time recruitment stalls because there isn't enough money.
Nine times out of ten, other entertainment companies were already eyeing Yeong-il as well.
For now, they were probably taking it easy.
They didn't know Yeong-il might swallow Muse Family whole.
No matter how expensive he looks, Yeong-il is cheapest right now!
Knock knock—
"Come in."
At Kang Seong-min's summons, the recruitment staffer entered.
The head of IG Management was a man known far and wide as a social butterfly. He had connections in every corner of the industry and even memorized other people's family affairs—a true endgame boss of networking.
He was also an employee with outstanding results, but his expression right now was not good.
"Status update?"
"Couldn't find a personal email. Doesn't seem to exist—any contact has to go through the company once. Just in case, I even left comments on YouTube pretending to be from other companies, but it was useless."
"No acquaintances inside Muse Family?"
"I looked into that too. To begin with there are barely any employees, and none of them are from the entertainment industry, so I couldn't find a connection point."
Because the place ran primarily on VTubers, and because Do-yoon had prioritized portfolios over career history, people from this industry simply hadn't been hired.
"So I went myself."
"What? Are you insane? What if you got caught?"
"I used to be the type who ran around on foot. I have my pride—I couldn't come back with nothing to show for it. I did it stakeout-style so I wasn't caught, so you don't need to worry."
Whether to praise an employee for going on a stakeout just to recruit one composer, or to call him an idiot, was a genuinely tough call.
"I didn't stay long—about four days waiting at a nearby café. Ah, here are the photos."
What is he, a reporter? He even took pictures?
Kang Seong-min flipped through the photos handed over by the management team head one by one.