A Sudden Surge and an Early Graduation Offer

The Happiness Theory exploded in a single moment, reaching the peak of its field. And that field was the virtual YouTuber scene, directly tied to the internet singer known as MIKANSEI. Naturally, the VTuber industry itself had yet to enter its golden age. Compared to the scale I remembered from my previous life, it was still just a tiny fraction. Even so, a shoutout from a major VTuber with 670,000 Twitter followers was an enormous lifeline for someone like me, who had been slowly sinking in the depths.

The comment section for Happiness Theory began overflowing with people who had come after seeing Chiyuki’s Twitter post. Thanks to that, word-of-mouth spread rapidly across Twitter, and it only took a single week for the view count to surpass ten thousand. Momentum is truly a terrifying thing.

The era had changed. The center of trends had shifted to TikTok. In Korea, TikTok was unusually rejected and pushed aside by Reels and Shorts, reduced to something only kids used. But during this period in Japan, TikTok’s influence was overwhelming. The algorithm was incredibly complex and utterly unpredictable. And the bare minimum requirement for a song to be chosen by that algorithm was simple: “The melody must be memorable.”

Happiness Theory met that necessary and sufficient condition perfectly. After all, it had been composed with short-form content in mind from the very beginning.

One month after Chiyuki’s shoutout. As soon as that single trigger appeared, the Happiness Theory challenge began spreading across TikTok with terrifying speed. The highlight section of the song sat in such an extremely high vocal range that even I found it difficult to hit. At the same time, the fast tempo left almost no room to breathe. That was why Japanese TikTok influencers suddenly started pumping out short-form videos of themselves tackling that exact highlight part.

And the results were incredible. It only took a single month for the view count to break one million. Naturally, this spotlight didn’t stop at the challenge itself. The song’s overall quality and the music video’s aesthetic began receiving attention as well.

It might sound a little self-praising, but I was an artist who had swept all four major Korean music awards. Not every song I made could be good, but this was my comeback track after several months of deliberately setting aside my creative urges ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and falling into a slump. Of course I had confidence in its quality. And the music video produced by Yuna’s uncle’s company was quite stylish too.

A girl riding a motorcycle speeding down a rainy road. She was wearing a school uniform, yet her face held a smile full of madness as she raced along the asphalt. The strange sense of liberation and speed that radiated from it paired perfectly with the song’s fast and intense melody, making it more than enough to ride the short-form trend.

“Hmm…”

For some reason, the image of racing down the road on a bike reminded me of Seo Siyeon’s parents… but they probably hadn’t made it with that in mind. After all, while the public knew her parents had died, the fact that they had sped off on the highway wasn’t public knowledge.

“Wow. No matter how many times I think about it, they really were crazy people.”

For someone as timid as Seo Siyeon to come from people like that… genes really were a strange thing.

Anyway, word of mouth breeds more word of mouth, and one short creates another short. Those shorts generate views, the views create chart rankings, and those rankings bring in new audiences. And if you manage to ride that infinite loop properly—

It becomes possible to experience the magic of gaining 400,000 subscribers in just half a year.

And while MIKANSEI was undergoing such dramatic changes—

“Wouldn’t it be better to graduate early?”

“…I’m still only in fourth grade, though?”

I suddenly found myself being recommended for early graduation.

Sojin Art Middle and High School, a private institution located in the heart of Seoul. It was a foundation school with both middle and high school divisions, and it was a place where many students aspiring to become artists enrolled. From the beginning, this was the school I had planned to attend. The reason I hadn’t bought a house near the orphanage and was only renting a studio was precisely because of this. Since property values here would never rise in my lifetime anyway, there was no need to waste money on a house I would soon leave. I had planned to simply enter middle school and then buy a house. Thanks to that, my escape from the orphanage had been delayed quite a bit… but there was no reason to throw money away on the ground, was there?

“So why exactly early graduation…? I mean, I’d love it, but.”

“As always, the issue is time. If you want to pursue normal activities, a regular school with strict attendance requirements will clearly have its limits.”

I nodded at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Lee Ha-jun’s words. He was right. In a normal school rather than an arts middle school, handling attendance would be extremely difficult. If I were only composing like now, it might be fine, but once the pandemic passed and the time for proper in-person activities arrived, attendance would become a massive obstacle.

“…But how would that even work? I’m not exactly a genius at studying.”

Naturally, since it was still elementary-level material, I was handling the classes without much difficulty. But if you asked whether I was a prodigy capable of early graduation… well, of course not.

“There’s a separate system for that. Don’t worry about it…”

There was something like that? I had never heard of it. Still, since it was possible, they must have brought it up to me. From what I heard, it required some kind of genius-level achievement that the education office could accept. Since I had already received the Korean Music Awards, there was no way it wouldn’t work.

“Then what do I need to do?”

“Just wear your mask properly and attend school diligently.”

“Huh? That’s it?”

“You can also resume your personal activities.”

In truth, I didn’t even need to attend school that diligently. Eighty percent of the classes were remote anyway. Following the sacred rule of remote learning, I always left the lectures running while doing something else. So the things I needed to do for early graduation were…

“Nothing?”

As expected, in matters like this, the power of adults worked far better than anything a child could do. After our conversation, Lee Ha-jin obtained approval for my early graduation from the education office in just one month.

However, even after early graduation was confirmed, not everything was over. Once I graduated, I would need to enroll somewhere. Sojin Art Middle School was fundamentally an arts school. As such, it required a basic practical exam and interview. First round: practical skills. Second round: interview.

It was the time when summer vacation had ended, autumn had passed, and the weather was gradually growing colder. I took the practical skills test. I chose vocal performance as my major and sang one of the songs I had performed during my Singer Star days, and I passed. It was an unreasonably easy test—so much so that failing would have been impossible. The interviewers and teachers at schools like this were mostly graduates of prestigious arts universities. Most of them had walked the path of a singer, failed, and turned to education, or worked as critics. For people like that, it was impossible to give an objective evaluation of skill in front of an authority like the Korean Music Awards. Was this why public institutions these days conducted blind tests during interviews?

Still, even if they had properly evaluated my skill, I would have passed with ease. My voice had taken another leap forward after passing through puberty.

Even during all of this, MIKANSEI’s subscriber count continued to grow at a frightening pace. And separately from MIKANSEI, there was another issue that was bothering me…

“The results are a bit strange…”

Noiris, the group I had debuted centered around Haruka and Lee Hye-na. Now entering their second year, their results were peculiar.

I basically didn’t pay much attention to Noiris. More precisely, it would be more accurate to say I didn’t need to pay attention to them. Because during the process of debuting and producing Noiris, the only thing I had really handled was the music. And the music was essentially on auto-hunt. In other words, I was using almost the exact same songs I had made in my previous life. So there had been little room for me to get involved from the start. Promotion, album design, and everything else was handled entirely by the production team Lee Ha-jun had assembled. The music videos were the same.

There were two criteria for judging an idol group’s tier. One was public appeal—chart rankings and music video views fell into this category. The other was the size ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of their fandom—album sales and concert mobilization power. The title tracks I had given Noiris were songs that had either dominated the charts or at least taken daily first place in my previous life. So their chart performance was quite decent. In terms of public appeal alone, they were competing for second place within the top tier. For a first-year group, that was quite impressive.

However, when it came to album sales… their most recent album had sold 370,000 copies. That was at the level of the bottom end of first-tier girl groups. It wasn’t a small number. In fact, for a first-year group, it was on the higher side. The problem, though… was that the majority of those sales came from Japan.

In other words, Noiris’s Korean fandom was abnormally small compared to their Japanese one. The core of their fandom consisted only of Haruka’s Japanese fans. Even if they could fill a dome in Japan, it was uncertain whether they could even fill Jangchung Arena or the Olympic Gymnastics Arena in Korea.

“Is it because we went too much with easy listening?”

The biggest problem was that even I couldn’t figure out the reason. That was why I asked someone who was quite knowledgeable about the industry, and—

“Isn’t it a bit greedy to have such high expectations when they’ve only been around for a year?”

The person who said that to me was Saki from FYG, whom I hadn’t seen in quite a while.