62 When Did You Think We Weren’t Filming?

“Wow! Japan!”

“…Take me home…”

Beside Yu Seol-ha, who was shouting energetically, I weakly murmured about going home.

If I’d felt excited when we headed for Europe, this trip—or non-trip—wasn’t welcome at all, nor was it the kind of trip I wanted.

The gist of it was this.

With less than a month until Blooming’s comeback, they still hadn’t filmed a music video for their song.

From the agency’s perspective, it was nothing short of a catastrophe, but as long as they met the deadline, strictly speaking, they weren’t late yet.

At least, perhaps we could call it fortunate that the music video’s storyboard was ready. Normally, they would have finished filming somewhere suitable, like Jeju Island or the outskirts of Seoul, but Blooming wanted to go to Japan, where they’d taken their first group trip, so the destination had changed.

On top of that, my music video fundamentally needed French wheat fields as its backdrop. But wheat fields in this season?

Naturally, there were none in Korea, and none in Japan either.

I could schedule a trip to France now, but no matter what, that would put too much strain on my body, which was only nine years old.

And with the year-end awards season approaching, it was difficult to set aside a long stretch of time in my schedule.

So, as the next-best option, we chose a silver grass field with scenery somewhat resembling a golden wheat field.

To do it perfectly, we’d have to wait until next summer, or film only after the Korean Music Awards were over, but waiting that long would be too difficult.

‘That time is approaching, too.’

Remembering the results of the growth test I’d received recently, I briefly frowned, but Yu Seol-ha’s innocent words quickly snapped me back to reality.

“Hehe. I’m happy we came on a trip together, Siyeon! You feel the same, right?”

“…Yes. I really dooo.”

Of course not.

Maybe if we’d come at another time… but right now, I really wanted to go home.

* * *

In fact, Korea also had plenty of silver grass fields. As expected, it was still the season when the silver grass remained in good condition, so there would have been no problem filming my music video in Korea.

No, on the contrary, doing it in Korea might have been better.

But in the end, I chose to come to Japan to film.

If you ask why…

‘I don’t know.’

Well, this way was more efficient from the company’s perspective.

They only had to hire a filming crew once, and could produce two music videos without spending all that much extra time.

To top it off, Sengokuhara, the silver grass plain where I was going to film, wasn’t particularly far from Tokyo. It wasn’t extremely close, but it was a reasonable distance to travel after finishing Blooming’s shoot.

Still, it wasn’t as though the company was short on money, and there were plenty of ways I could have filmed more comfortably, even if they were a little inefficient.

“Siyeon, do you want to come with us to Akihabara?”

“…Siyeon looks exhausted.”

Jo Nayeun chimed in brightly, agreeing with Kim Seol’s remark.

“Exactly! Seol-ha, you’d stay there all day once you got going… How can you take Siyeon along?”

“She looks tired. We should probably go by ourselves.”

I gave a short reply to their words.

“No, I’ll go.”

“Huh? A-are you sure? You look exhausted.”

“It’ll be hard to do this kind of thing from now on. I want to enjoy it properly this time.”

“…?”

At last, I remembered why I’d come along on this trip in the first place—the chain of thought behind that decision.

[Mysterious pneumonia spreads in China; fears of a resurgence of SARS…]

Because I’d seen an article like this before.

Soon, once a little more time had passed, it would become impossible to go out like this or gather together like this.

This time, I firmly decided to enjoy it while I still could.

* * *

By now, my relationship with the Blooming members had become too close to call awkward.

We’d been close since Singerstar, and we’d continued sharing our activities even after it ended.

If anything, it would be stranger for things to be awkward.

So I knew very well that they fell into what people generally called the “otaku” category.

More specifically, they were hardcore otaku, to the point of singing an anime song in the finals of an audition program watched by practically the entire nation.

But I’d never actually seen them getting excited over a 2D character on a screen in person.

“Kyaaa…! Our Hiku-chan. She’s so freaking cute!”

“I’d only seen her on Instagram… She really is exactly the same in person.”

“Right! There’s really only Hiku!”

The character right in front of us was astonishingly one I knew as well: a beautiful girl with mint-colored hair in twin tails.

A machine that had sung countless Vocaloid hit songs.

Naturally, a similar character had existed in my previous life too. And, if I had to put it one way, I was a composer who had drawn quite a lot of inspiration from songs in this style.

Just before I died—in other words, by the end of my previous life—my composing style had shifted into one heavily inspired by J-rock.

Because a song I’d made according to that formula had become an enormous hit.

If I had to draw a distinction, I did have some fondness for the character before me.

In this life, this character held an unassailable position in the Vocaloid scene, and even after reincarnating, I’d heard quite a lot of the girl’s mechanical voice.

Strictly speaking, however, I liked the songs, not the character’s appearance.

“Hyunah, what do you think of this?”

“Oh, it’s super cute!”

“Hehe. Should I wear this onstage for our comeback?”

I inwardly screamed as I watched Jo Nayeun fiddle with a pair of glasses decorated with a tiny mint-haired anime girl.

‘Please stop.’

Even Choi Yeon-ah, who was usually timid, began running wild once she got here.

“W-what about this?”

“It’s cute! Want me to take a picture and put it on Instagram?”

“Y-yeah.”

For the record, there was no need to stop them from posting things like that on Instagram. They’d long since established an image of themselves as an otaku group by putting anime and Vocaloid profile pictures on Instagram.

They’d even created an official band account and posted birthday-celebration illustrations of anime characters they’d drawn themselves.

Since they had considerable drawing skills, we’d decided to let them draw the cover of this album themselves.

“Siyeon, you don’t like this kind of thing?”

“Hmm… If I had to choose, I’d say I do? I listen to a lot of the music, too.”

At this point in South Korea, hardcore otaku were exceedingly rare. So someone like me, who occasionally watched anime and listened to Vocaloid songs, qualified as otaku-adjacent at least.

Of course, after the epidemic ended, I would become an ordinary person who couldn’t even claim the title of otaku.

As soon as the Blooming members heard that I listened to a lot of Hiku’s songs, they began engaging me in conversation about her music, and I had to weather a wave of otaku enthusiasm pouring over me.

However, after spending about an hour in a café in what was less a battle than a battle in name only…

“Aagh… Siyeon, you’re a real demon.”

“H-how do you know more than we do?”

“There really was a genuine otaku here.”

I frowned at their muttering and replied.

“No, I told you, I only listen to the songs!”

Seriously.

* * *

On the first day, we went to Akihabara.

It wasn’t bad, in its own way. These shops naturally focused on displaying major titles, so there were plenty of things I knew, and it was pretty fun just wandering around in a group while holding the hands of pretty girls.

On the second day, we went shopping near Shibuya, then visited the PoXmon Center and Tower Records, followed by Shibuya Sky.

I was a little short on stamina, but I bought a doll to decorate the practice room at the PoXmon Center, along with a large plushie to hug while sleeping.

At Tower Records, I also bought several albums by Japanese artists whose music had made an impression on me after I came to this world.

On the third day, we went to a maid café and saw underground idols.

It wasn’t all that fun. If I wanted to look at pretty people, I could just look in a mirror, and I didn’t exactly communicate well with the maids.

On the fourth day, we toured live houses.

I was so exhausted by then that I wanted to die, but that day was so much fun I could barely stand it. It reminded me of my indie-band days… and it was refreshing to glimpse the earnestness of the bands onstage and the effort they’d poured into their performances.

And on the fifth day…

“But aren’t we filming? We definitely came here to film, didn’t we?”

“Hmm? We’ve been filming the whole time, haven’t we?”

I put on a blank expression when I heard that.

Since when had we been filming?

Yu Seol-ha then flashed a grin and raised her smartphone. She’d recently switched to the latest Apple phone, and it gleamed as though it had been polished.

Then she let out a little chuckle and opened her mouth.

“When did you get the idea we weren’t filming?”