Commercial Shoot
Restless.
"Why isn't it here yet."
The text had said it would arrive sometime between two and four in the afternoon…
It was now 3:50 p.m.
He had been pacing back and forth in front of his door since two, waiting for the delivery driver.
As four o'clock drew nearer, the perfectly normal website started looking more and more like a scam page, and even the courier company began to seem shady.
The anxiety that had been racing toward its peak melted away the instant the doorbell rang.
He burst out of his room and yanked open the front door.
"Oh…"
His twenty-million-won guitar!
He carefully escorted it into his room.
He took out a knife, sliced through the tape, and lifted out the case inside.
The Martin logo engraved on the surface gleamed.
Something I'd only ever seen in photos is finally in my hands.
He snapped a few pictures, then carefully opened the case.
"Whoa."
The weight that no photo could capture hit him all at once.
The polish on the headstock machines, the mother-of-pearl inlay running along the sides, the deep grain of the body.
Buying something this expensive online without even trying it out had felt like pure insanity.
No — this was the best. Electrifying.
The instrument itself looked excellent, and the strings were clean.
He slowly lifted it, set it across his knees, and brushed his trembling fingers gently over it.
E—A—D—G—B—E.
Basic tuning done.
His fingers found their familiar positions.
C major.
He swept across the strings once.
Diiing—
……
Damn. That was good. So this was the taste of money well spent?
What should he play — and then he tried the intro of his own song, Invisible.
"When the stories I could never put into words
ride the melody and begin to flow—"
Same song, yet somehow it wore a different color now.
The corner of his mouth softened, just a little.
Ziiing—
A vibration buzzed from the desk.
…?
Yu Nari's name appeared in his field of vision out of nowhere.
Ignoring a call just because he was playing guitar would be kind of rude, wouldn't it?
"Hello."
"Do-yoon-ah. Are you busy?"
"Yeah."
Busy.
"Ah, really? I was on an ad shoot and got bored, so I thought I'd call! If you're busy, no big deal."
"If something's up, just say so. I've got a little room."
"No, no — you're eating properly while you work, right?"
"Uh… I haven't eaten yet, actually."
"Hey, you need to take better care of yourself."
Playing with the guitar had killed his appetite.
He wanted to keep feeling this under his hands a little longer.
Food could wait. This was a feeling he could only have right now.
"Hmm, you sound kind of occupied. Oh, right — Do-yoon-ah, nothing major, but have you talked to Yui-unnie recently? I've been lining up schedules and got a little confused about something."
"No?"
"Oh, okay~ Talk later, then~"
"Yeah, yeah."
His entire mind was locked on the guitar, so the answers came out short and simple.
After hanging up, he wondered if he had been a bit too curt.
He hadn't talked with Yui, but he had run into her little sister — that probably wasn't information she needed, though.
Given the mention of an ad shoot, it had to be work-related anyway.
Diriring— ding— thing—
The moment the call ended, his fingers were already finding the chords again.
"Man, listen to how clean that sounds."
Today was going to be spent messing around with this all day long.
Nova Space filming day, at the mocap studio.
Yu Nari, sitting in a chair in a motion-capture suit, closed her smartphone.
That's weird. Do-yoon wouldn't lie.
His answer had been honest, with no hesitation at all.
Do-yoon wasn't the type who was good at lying, either.
Which meant those Japanese snacks that had been in the studio…
So it really wasn't Yui-unnie?
Ever since she had discovered those suspicious traces in the underground studio, Nari had been coming into the company every single day.
And then she had run into Yui by chance.
Yui couldn't even look her in the eye, stammered, then vanished with some awkward excuse.
On a hunch she had dug through the wiki — and what do you know? There was a whole TMI note about how Yui loved sweet snacks.
Japanese treats that looked like they'd spike your blood sugar, and Yui's suspicious reaction.
She's definitely hiding something.
Suspicion was thick, but she had no way to confirm it.
Every time she tried to probe, Yui cleverly dodged her calls, which only left her more frustrated.
And asking Do-yoon directly…
That would be embarrassing. He might even notice.
She didn't want him to see even the tiniest scrap of these clingy, messy feelings of hers.
What if he got put off? The last thing she could allow was for this happy everyday life to fall apart.
So what Nari had chosen was to ask, in the most roundabout way possible, whether he had been in contact with Yui at all.
And surprisingly, he said nothing had happened.
"C'mere."
Nari pulled the teddy bear sitting on the chair beside her into her arms.
This was the bear doll they would use as a stand-in for A-il during the commercial shoot.
It was covered in green fabric for the chroma key work — and this little guy was going to become A-il's proxy.
She leaned her full weight into a tight hug and soothed her nerves.
Maybe I was just stressed and overthinking things.
As long as nothing had happened, that was fine. She could look into the snack situation later.
"We're ready to start filming!"
Following the staff's guidance, she headed out onto the set.
She set the teddy bear down in its designated spot and gazed at it steadily.
This is Do-yoon's stand-in.
When the finished product came out, Do-yoon's voice would be coming from this teddy bear.
Even if it was only a dummy, the couple-shoot vibe of it wiped her gloomy mood clean away.
At the director's signal, Nari's feet began to move, slowly.
At the end of her gaze sat the teddy bear in its chair.
The premise was that it was singing.
She approached slowly, slipped her arms up under its armpits, and pulled it into a back hug.
Maybe she had gotten a little too immersed.
It was just a stuffed animal, and yet her arms were trembling and her heart was pounding like something broken.
"Yes."
Too timid? Fine — this time she pulled it in deeper, as if hugging it straight against her chest.
"Huff."
As the one who had designed the composition herself, her satisfaction was off the charts.
What next? Ah — maybe nuzzle against it, subtle and affectionate?
She stroked its head, poked at its soft belly.
Nari spent a thoroughly enjoyable stretch of time clinging to and embracing the teddy bear in every way she could invent.
She kept shooting in a complete daze until—
"Yes?"
"Yes!"
…Ah.
She had gotten carried away.
She stopped using the shoot as stress relief and, following the director's notes, mimed a fresh, wholesome youth instead.
An OK came quickly after that.
Nari was privately disappointed.
Her original concept had been a one-on-one date with this teddy bear.
With a third party inserted, the amount of footage of the two of them hugging had been drastically cut down.
That didn't mean she planned to just give up and yield the ground, though.
"Director! Could we shoot one more take like this? It's one of the candidates I discussed with the coordinator."
Nari hugged the teddy bear into her arms, took the mic in her own hand, and held it up to the doll's mouth.
So that instead of the bear singing on its own, it could sing while cradled in Lunari's embrace.
Throughout A-il and Shin Se-young's duet section, Nari's arms tightened more and more firmly across the doll's back.
Squeeze—
Fortunately, both the on-site director and the coordinators all took to it positively.
"Um, Director!"
"Yes?"
"Would it be okay if I saw a few of the finished takes from what we just shot?"
"Of course. Here you go."
"Hehe, thank you!"
Nari cheerfully flipped through the files and saved the ones she liked.
IG Entertainment headquarters.
"We got turned down?"
"Yes. Their terms were better on the other side."
Kang Seong-min fixed Shin Se-young with a look full of suspicion.
A look that said, Don't tell me you half-assed it and let them go because you're on Kim Hye-min's side?
Even with a few hit songs under their belt, a still-unproven newcomer getting better terms than a deal worth ten billion won? He found that hard to believe.
"A one-year auto-renewal contract, and the composer keeps fifty percent of the master rights?"
"What? Fifty percent? Ha—! You're kidding."
"I checked multiple times."
Shin Se-young had wrestled with it all the way up to the moment she walked in to report.
Whether to hide the fact that A-il was Yeong-il.
In the end she had decided to report it as it was — because of how sloppy Muse Family was about secrecy.
They had already gone right up to the front of his place and openly gotten their picture taken, hadn't they?
Her judgment was that any cover-up wouldn't last long anyway.
"Ha— seriously. She was planning to leave from the start. Kim Hye-min."
A half-laughing sigh slipped out of Kang Seong-min's mouth.
No matter how much potential a composer had, nobody in the industry would ever put a stamp of approval on terms like that.
So this had to have been something Kim Hye-min had cooked up as a stopgap contract before dumping the company — just enough to keep a hold on him.
"In the end, every track Yeong-il put out blew up… Did she calculate that far? No way. Or did they know each other from before?"
The more he dug, the further into the weeds he went, so he cut the thought short.
"If it was coincidence, it's insane. If she saw it coming, that was foresight. We should have locked him down no matter what back then."
Regret, disbelief, and admiration all mixed together and leaked out again.
He scratched at his head, let go of the afterimage that already felt beyond his grasp, and tried to focus on the schedule ahead.
"You're flying out tomorrow, right? We've already gotten word that the Osaka hotel and the surrounding area have been checked. Just get there carefully and you're fine."
The MAMA Awards were right around the corner.
Stage checks at Osaka Dome were already finished; all that remained were the artists' rehearsals and route checks.
Tomorrow, Shin Se-young and the rest of IG Entertainment's artists would be departing as well.
"There won't be time to sightsee after the performance, will there?"
"No. The entire flood of fans will be K-pop related. If you try to play tourist there, you might not even manage one step a minute."
"That's a shame…"
Looking at Se-young's eyes, which dripped with leftover longing, Kang Seong-min said,
"You said you'd take it easy next year. Go quietly then, on the down-low."
He almost added a warning not to wander into any otaku shops that could damage her image and get photographed — then held it back.
How many years had Shin Se-young been in this industry?
She had managed fine so far; she wouldn't do anything that stupid without being told.
He had expected her face to brighten at the mention of a break, but Se-young was surprisingly calm.
"Ah, when I rest… hmm… I've actually found something I want to do this time. Sightseeing in Japan can wait until after that."
"Something you want to do? Nothing dangerous, I hope? Dating?"
"No. It's a quiet hobby I do on the computer at home."
"Fine, then. Go on. You must be tired from preparing for the stage."
"Yes."
After Se-young left, Kang Seong-min clicked his tongue and dropped into his chair.
He had approved her taking next year off, but Shin Se-young was still one of IG's flagship faces.
Even knowing that rest helped creative work, he couldn't help feeling the loss.
And on top of that, they had failed to land the composer they had wanted so badly.
Muse Family's future was murky.
"Ugh. Let's just completely ignore the VTuber side."
All of this stress had started from there.
He had no idea how Kim Hye-min would play it, but for the time being he didn't even want to look at her face.
Kurogami Yui was currently unable to approach the company freely, thanks to Nari constantly coming and going.
On top of that, the occasional phone calls made her jump to the conclusion that she had been found out, so she was actively avoiding everything.
Yeong-il. Do-yoon. Kim Do-yoon.
She carefully shaped the names only inside her mouth.
They had barely spoken. Barely even seen each other's faces.
There had been far too little time, so she had never properly gotten to know what kind of person he was, or what he liked.
Every day she puffed out her cheeks in dissatisfaction.
A few more days passed like that.
And then Yui's patience hit its limit.
Fine. She would just contact him herself.
"Should I ask him to watch MAMA with me?"
On performance day, Nari would be stuck at the mocap studio all day for the live stage.
And Do-yoon would be watching MAMA that day anyway.
"That's perfect?!"
The absolute best timing to be alone together without interruption.
Thrilled, she was about to switch into 18-year-old high school girl mode and message Do-yoon — when
Ah!
Her schedule flashed through her mind.
20th — Watch MAMA Together
Once word got out that Lunari would be appearing at MAMA, Link had bought the broadcast rights for M-town.
Yui had also promised her viewers a watch-along —
and as the only one on the platform from the same agency as Lunari, with an actual friendship on top of that, she was guaranteed to draw a massive amount of attention.
For Yui, who thrived on stream ambition, it was one of those schedules she absolutely could not give up.
And I'm supposed to throw away this opportunity?
After wringing her brain for a long time, Yui's eyes snapped wide open.
"Ah!! That's it! I really am a genius!!"
A-il didn't do internet streaming, but he was under the same agency all the same.
She would invite him to a collab MAMA watch party.