The Empress on Ice
The term tie-up refers to inserting a newly released song into television programs like dramas or animations as a promotional tool. While it’s not unheard of domestically, it’s especially active in neighboring Japan. For top-tier singers, it’s almost a given that they’ll have at least one track tied up with a popular anime.
In Japan, dozens of anime air every season. Most of them need opening and ending themes, which creates an enormous amount of demand. Of course, many productions use voice actors as vocalists, so it’s not quite that many actual opportunities, but the demand is undeniably high.
“Huh? A tie-up?”
That’s why even a rookie like Mikansei—who only had one hit song and nothing else—could receive a tie-up offer.
No matter how you look at it… this feels off.
From the producer’s perspective, there was no real reason to offer a tie-up to someone like me.
“They even accepted the price I quoted based on your current market value, Siyeon. You’re already so busy right now…”
I was in the middle of working on the next track, after all. Accepting a tie-up request on top of that would mean an overwhelming workload.
It would turn me—a child of the new nation—into a salary worker pulling all-nighters until dawn.
Living like that would be the worst thing for my growth. No matter how little I cared about my height, getting proper sleep and waking up early was crucial during this prime growth period.
“Hmm. I think I should turn it down… but let me at least hear the conditions first.”
If it turned out to be a massive hit anime, I’d have to accept it regardless of growth spurts or anything else.
If I could sing the opening for an anime like that, I could shoot straight to the top tier of artists in Japan in one go.
“The title is apparently ‘Empress on Ice.’ It’s an anime about figure skating…”
“I’ll do it.”
“……?”
“I own the entire manga collection at home.”
At those words, Lee Hajun shook his head slightly, looking utterly dumbfounded.
“Have you been infected by the Blooming kids…”
“That’s not it at all. Those people don’t read manga.”
Because Blooming only watched anime. They didn’t touch the original manga.
I’ve said it many times before, but I am not an otaku.
I simply consume various cultural media to gain inspiration for making music. It’s true that anime makes up a disproportionately large portion of that media, but there’s a clear reason for it.
“…Because there are so many uniquely original works that pop out of nowhere.”
Korean dramas, for the most part, tend to fall into certain clichés. In other words, watching them often feels like seeing the same thing again.
Of course, with the dawn of the OTT era that has completely changed, but that era hasn’t fully arrived yet. People in the know like me are seeking them out and subscriber numbers are steadily rising… but it’s not yet the time when every citizen uses OTT like in the future.
As a result, even Korean OTT original dramas haven’t fully unleashed their originality. I went on a long tangent, but one thing is certain: I am not an otaku.
“Heheheung…!”
So even though I was thrilled to be singing the opening for an anime adaptation of a manga I already loved… the real reason my mood was soaring was because this secured a foundation for Mikansei’s growth in Japan.
To be honest, commercial success? I couldn’t guarantee it. The original manga itself wasn’t overwhelmingly popular—it was more of a cult favorite among a dedicated fanbase.
A figure-skating anime centered around middle schoolers and older seniors. The main story followed the protagonist and their rivals competing in various world championships and the Olympics.
And the reason I knew about this somewhat niche work and fell for it so hard was simple.
The protagonist’s rival was a Korean character.
It’s not common to see Korean characters in Japanese manga, so it caught my interest. Once I started reading, I became a fan immediately.
“Ah. Since it’s a figure skating anime… the opening should…”
Just thinking about it being the theme song for a manga I loved made good ideas start pouring out.
It felt a little different from when I made other songs.
“People really should do what they love.”
Countless directions filled my head. Among them, I chose classical sampling.
Sampling. It means taking an existing audio source, cutting it, and reprocessing it into something new. It’s a technique frequently used in modern music.
It gives listeners a sense of familiarity and makes the song easier to approach. That’s why classical pieces—sounds that people all over the world are familiar with and have no resistance to—are commonly used as sampling material.
Especially since Empress on Ice was a figure skating anime, sampling classical music would make it easy to create a track that matched the work’s atmosphere perfectly.
The moment I decided, I immediately began composing, my fingers flying across the keyboard and mouse as if sliding on ice. Since I had already read the manga three times cover to cover, I didn’t need to look at it again and could focus entirely on the work. Writing the first draft didn’t take very long.
“…What? The time.”
That was only a relative statement, of course. No matter how capable I was, creating a decent song required—
“It’s already time to go to school…”
—an all-nighter’s worth of time.
I had completed the first draft of the song, but that didn’t mean the track was perfectly finished. Even I could see clear shortcomings, which meant I needed supplementation to fill those gaps.
“…It lacks a sense of speed.”
I’ll admit it now: in both my past and present lives, I had never once stepped on skates. I had never even tried skiing or snowboarding. Having never been close to any winter sports, I had never truly felt the sensation of speed on snow or ice.
If I could experience that sense of speed, maybe it would fill the empty feeling I had with this draft… That’s what I thought.
But there was one big problem.
“But I don’t have anyone to go with.”
Seo Siyeon. Fourth grader in elementary school. An age when kids should be running around and have plenty of friends in class. The problem was, I didn’t have any friends close enough to invite to a place like this.
It’s not that I was ostracized or bullied. I simply hadn’t been able to make very close friends because my mental age didn’t match theirs. Still, I was close enough with the Blooming and Noiris members to call them friends… but suddenly asking them to go skating with me felt a bit much.
They were all extremely busy right now anyway, right before their promotion period—practicing, managing their bodies, the works. It would be too much of a bother to ask a coworker—who was practically their boss—to go skating with me in the middle of all that.
“…Do I have to go alone?”
Well, going alone was fine in theory. But how was someone who had never skated in their life supposed to go alone and actually skate?
After agonizing over it by myself, I came up with a brilliant idea worthy of Einstein pondering the relativity of light…
“Should I rent the entire ice rink and take all the orphanage kids?”
It was the kind of idea only a rich bourgeois would have, but I had more than enough money to pull it off. The royalties I had earned so far were enormous. Of course, since I hadn’t been able to do offline events like concerts, it wasn’t an insane amount of money, but I had more than enough saved up in my account to casually spend a few million won.
Besides, if I told the company, they would handle it for me.
I went straight to the director and told her the plan. Naturally, she welcomed it with open arms.
Even after renting the ice rink, there was still one problem.
The fact that I myself had zero experience walking on ice.
The orphanage kids, having grown up there, obviously wouldn’t have any skating experience either. With that in mind, I tried to hire an instructor for group lessons, but…
“We all know how to skate?”
“…?”
“We go to the skating rink as a group every winter. You’re the only one who never went.”
Now that I thought about it, that did sound familiar. The original Seo Siyeon’s personality meant she probably never joined them, and after I possessed her, I had been far too busy to pay attention to things like that.
“S-so I’m the only one who can’t skate?”
“…Obviously. Everyone who said they were going already knows how.”
The orphanage kid finished speaking and walked right past me. So while all the other kids were zooming around on skates, I would be the only one wobbling around holding the instructor’s hand?
But there was no other option, so…
“Alright. Siyeon, sweetie. Would you like to hold teacher’s hand?”
“…Yes.”
That day, I ended up taking a private skating lesson, holding the instructor’s hand all by myself. Watching the other kids—even ones several years younger than me—skating skillfully around me gave me a very strange feeling.