Chapter 63
“So… that filming of us going around sightseeing was the music video storyboard?”
“Yep! Since the song’s theme is what it is.”
Come to think of it, whenever we went somewhere, one of the five had always been filming us with a small camera.
Naturally, I thought it was just personal footage for recording memories… but all of it had been music video filming?
“Wait. Then why did the filming crew…”
“Now we have to film the rest of the footage with them. They’re supposed to film all five of us.”
I looked up at Yu Seol-ha.
Something huge was blocking her face, so I could see only her upper body.
Still, I could roughly imagine what expression she was wearing.
‘Judging by that look, she’s obviously wearing an expression that says she pulled it off.’
Apparently, the Blooming members had been having fun teasing me lately—Yu Seol-ha most of all.
Weren’t they all satisfied watching me get completely fooled, as though I’d fallen victim to an illusion?
“…That’s all that matters.”
“Aww! Anyway, you worked hard! So Siyeon’s going to be in our music video too?”
“…Is that really okay?”
“It’s fine for you to appear. All our fans like you.”
In fact, Blooming and I did share a fair amount of our fandom.
Aside from the fact that we were quite close, our positions overlapped to some extent.
Since we both had the title of “young and musically gifted,” our fandoms were inevitably formed among somewhat similar demographics.
Naturally, I overwhelmed them when it came to general popularity.
“The song is called ‘To My Youth,’ so the director said scenes of us having fun together would be enough! Besides, it wouldn’t feel awkward to have Siyeon in there too.”
“Well, I suppose there’s no problem. We can just call it a special appearance.”
“Then should we appear in your music video too?”
“Ah, that might be a little…”
My music video wasn’t really that kind of concept. Yu Seol-ha made a sullen face, but some things simply weren’t meant to be.
* * *
Fortunately, we spent the remaining two days in Tokyo resting at our accommodation without any particular schedule.
We relaxed at the accommodation, with anyone who felt like going out to have fun doing so on their own, then all of us went to a nearby restaurant reputed to be good when mealtime came.
They were two leisurely days like that.
I actually preferred this kind of travel to rushing around. I was an introvert by nature, so I tended to prefer a comfortable trip to one packed with activities.
That didn’t mean Europe or the first part of this trip to Japan had been bad, but this was definitely more comfortable for me.
“Oh, right. Today’s the day this week’s episode of Do You Like Music? airs, isn’t it? Ugh… I wanted to watch it!”
“There isn’t much to see. Not really.”
The scene of me composing on the train had already aired last week. Next would presumably be the busking performance we did in Italy.
“Come to think of it, the Internet’s been going crazy over that lately.”
“Over what?”
“That… composing scene.”
“Oh.”
Well, I thought that was understandable.
To other people, it must have looked like I’d whipped up a song on the spot.
While it was true that I’d drawn inspiration from that place, the melody’s form and the genre itself had already existed to some extent in my head.
It was true that I had fleshed out the melody after seeing the contents of the novel and the stars over the wheat field, but I hadn’t really created everything there on the spot.
I wasn’t that much of a genius.
In the first place, I didn’t consider myself a genius as a composer. If I had been one, I would have hit No. 1 on Billboard and won a Grammy in my previous life.
If anything, I thought Seo Siyeon’s genius as a vocalist deserved more praise.
‘I’m already looking forward to seeing where she’ll be in a few years.’
Come to think of it, I’d forgotten about this until now, but had Kim Seol’s live-performance problem really been resolved?
I asked Yu Seol-ha, and she looked at me with an utterly fed-up expression as she replied.
“You have no idea how much we suffered just to fix that one part of hers…!”
“Anyway, I guess it worked out. That’s good.”
This song had a drum solo in the middle, after all.
Kim Seol had talent for drums to begin with.
She simply hadn’t worked hard. But now that she had entered the realm of professionals, she had to improve her playing somehow, if only because she didn’t want to ruin a stage with her precious friends.
I had taken that into account to some extent when writing the song, too.
Personally, I found Blooming’s story of growth appealing, so I had been hoping that Kim Seol’s weakness being covered this time would give them yet another growth arc.
“Want to hear it?”
“No. I’m sure she did fine on her own.”
Unlike during Singerstar, I no longer needed to coddle Blooming and look after every little thing for them. They were professionals now, too.
“…Siyeon, you’ve been neglecting us lately!”
“What are you talking about?”
* * *
Though I had drawn inspiration from the wheat fields of France, the true main setting of the novel The Stars was a cottage on a hill, and the beautiful starry night seen from there.
That was why we had to deliberately find a place where the stars shone brightly.
We had to shoot at a high elevation, as the filming director had insisted.
“Huff… haaah…!”
“Unni, why are you acting like you’re about to die?”
We were climbing a mountain in the countryside near Tokyo in the middle of the night.
Still, perhaps the effort I’d put into regularly going to the gym after Singerstar ended was helping? (In truth, I had barely gone.)
I was a little tired, but in any case, I managed to reach the mountain’s summit.
“I-I think I’m going to die…”
“M-me too…”
“I told you not to wear heels.”
“I didn’t know it would be this high… I thought it’d be like a hill in the neighborhood.”
In fact, I’d thought the same thing.
If the hill where the shepherd lived in the original novel had been this high, the young lady might have simply turned around and gone home halfway up.
In any case, the filming crew, who had laboriously hauled their camera equipment all the way to the summit, was busy preparing to shoot.
Amid the bustle, I sat in a corner and plucked the strings of an acoustic guitar.
As I did, I looked up at the sky. I wondered if there weren’t fewer stars than I’d expected.
There were supposed to be enough stars to seem as though they were pouring down… There were quite a few in the sky now, but not that many.
“Ah, we can just cover that with CGI. The important thing is the mood.”
“……”
Hearing the camera director’s answer to my question, I inwardly wanted to ask why we’d gone to the trouble of climbing this mountain if that was all it took.
But I felt I wouldn’t get a satisfactory answer even if I asked, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.
“The sky is so pretty…”
Beside me, Choi Yeon-ah was murmuring exclamations of admiration as she gazed at the sky, while Kim Seol was hurriedly writing something down next to her.
I took a furtive look at what it was and saw that it was a novel.
“Oh. Just a hobby. I was bored.”
“…Do you still want to become a novelist?”
“No? Even if I did, I’d only be compared to my dad… I’m happier playing drums.”
True enough, it would be difficult for Kim Seol to win a Nobel Prize for literature like her father.
Even she, whose father was a living great man, seemed to have troubles of her own.
From my perspective as an orphan, anything Kim Seol said would sound like bragging, though.
But when Kim Seol said things like that, Park Heesu, who had chosen the same musical path as her mother, was put in a rather awkward position.
From her perspective, it meant that she had to win a Grammy to avoid being compared to her Grammy-winning mother.
‘Well, popular music and classical music are completely different, so no one will compare them on equal terms.’
Still, whenever Blooming got criticized, Park Heesu would probably be dragged into it and criticized too. That would apply equally to every member, though.
‘Well, who told you to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth?’
I had no one to be compared to, since I was an orphan.
* * *
In truth, filming the music video was nothing special.
Since they didn’t demand any particularly difficult acting from a child like me, all I had to do was strike vaguely emotional poses as instructed.
Of course, repeating the same pose several times was a little tiring.
We finished filming at the mountaintop that evening, and the next day we went to the silver grass plain and shot several scenes under the director’s instructions.
Apparently, they planned to make the music video by intercutting scenes from the two locations.
Even if I had been the general producer in my previous life, music videos weren’t my specialty. So I had no choice but to wait, assuming they would do a decent enough job.
The weeklong trip to Japan came to an end like that.
And two weeks later.
I was standing blankly in the waiting room of a music show I was visiting for the first time in this life.
“…I already want to go home.”
I could hear people around me whispering as they watched me, and I saw several people debating whether to come talk to me.
A few of them were idols whose names I knew, which made things even more awkward.
“…Ah, when will this be over?”
“Blooming, get ready!”
At that moment, a staff member called out Blooming’s group name.
Finally hopeful that I could escape from this place, I headed toward the side overlooking the stage.