Chapter 80
You might find it surprising, but I tend to maintain the relationships I form.
I also contact people first fairly often, and I know how to actively make plans to meet up.
As the restrictions imposed by the pandemic gradually weakened, our society was adapting to a new order.
Accordingly, bans on gatherings were eased, and people began attending all sorts of gatherings that had been put off.
I was no exception.
For starters, I'm in exactly five group chats.
One is a group chat for my orphanage peers.
It's a group chat for kids around the same age. It basically functions as an announcement channel, but we also communicate quite actively.
Another is a group chat made by my school friends.
However, most of the people there are orphanage peers anyway. So its nature isn't all that different from the first chat.
After that, we enter the realm of work.
First, there's the company group chat.
It's a group chat with Blooming, NOIRIS, and the boss.
We usually use it for work-related matters.
Then there's the Singer Star Top Ten group chat.
It's practically dead, with conversations taking place about once a month.
Lastly, there's the group chat made by the people who filmed Do You Like Music? together.
Surprisingly, conversation here was fairly lively. Maybe it was because everyone worked in the industry? You could verify the truth of all kinds of entertainment-industry rumors here.
Once the ban on gatherings was lifted, Hanyul, the most talkative person in this group chat, organized a get-together. Since none of us were particularly busy, making plans was easy.
“Senior Hanyul doesn't promote himself, but he's incredibly talkative in the group chat.”
“…Unni. That's a terrible way to talk.”
“The boss keeps asking me when Senior Hanyul is going to promote himself.”
I listened to Jia while letting out a deep sigh.
Her personality seemed to have grown a little arrogant thanks to her soaring popularity lately.
Bad Monster, the group Jia belonged to, was practically dominating the fourth generation of girl groups.
From digital music to first-week sales.
I don't know, but if they held a concert next year, I felt they could fill Gocheok, at least in Korea.
“Jia. You shouldn't say things like that.”
“…Okay. I'm sorry.”
Jia answered with a pout after Saki rebuked her.
Only Jia, Saki, Baek Yuyeon, and I were seated at this table.
To lighten the mood, I addressed Baek Yuyeon in a slightly mechanical high-pitched voice.
“Y-Yuyeon unni, you look like you're doing well lately, too! I heard you're doing a drama OST this time.”
“Uh… yeah! I definitely have more work these days!”
Aside from her own albums, Baek Yuyeon continued to work primarily on various historical-drama OSTs.
As Saki entered the twilight of her idol career, she was gradually looking for another way to make a living, and that path was acting rather than becoming a solo singer.
She said she had recently landed a supporting role in an OTT drama, though I didn't know whether it would do well.
As we naturally talked about the others, the conversation moved on to me.
Of course, I couldn't tell them that I had created an alter ego under a Japanese identity, so I had no choice but to vaguely claim that I was resting well.
“Siyeon's a producer too! Even if she isn't doing individual activities, she's busy. Our producer is incredibly busy too!”
“That's true. Producers are just as busy as idols.”
I couldn't exactly say, ‘No, I'm not busy. I'm coasting on songs I made in my previous life,’ so I simply smiled silently.
“Aww! You've gotten even cuter in the year since I last saw you?”
“Hehe. I suppose so.”
The idea that cuteness fades with age applies only to commoners.
Still, I naturally opened up about my worries in a lighthearted mood.
“But I'm a little worried because my actual popularity hasn't caught up with my songs' chart performance.”
“Isn't that a little too greedy for someone who's only in their first year?”
“H-honestly, from our perspective, you're frighteningly close on our heels…?”
The others' reactions were different from what I had expected.
And to drive the point home, Baek Yuyeon spoke in an incredulous tone.
“Siyeon, aren't your expectations a little too high…?”
“…Is that so?”
* * *
Come to think of it, everything I had done since reincarnating into this life had been going incredibly well.
In my previous life, I would have looked at NOIRIS's achievements and congratulated myself, calling them unprecedented… so why had I been thinking of them as somehow underwhelming?
Wasn't this called the law of diminishing marginal utility in economic terms?
It felt as though my satisfaction with my achievements was gradually decreasing.
What if I returned under Seo Siyeon's name in this state, only to crash and burn spectacularly?
Along with attacks pouring in from sites that were relatively hostile toward me, I might even suffer a total mental collapse.
“…I think I need to lower my expectations a little.”
But there wasn't really a solution to this aspect of the problem.
I couldn't deliberately release a strange song just to flop. All I could do was wait for the problem to correct itself naturally.
Even so, the worry didn't disappear, so I visited Park Han-su's instrument shop for the first time in a while.
Park Han-su had been active in a band for quite a long time, so he had plenty of both successful and disastrous experiences.
I had visited to ask this highly respected senior musician for advice, but the greeting Park Han-su blurted out as soon as I entered the shop left me flustered.
“Yo. Has the rookie artist who appeared like a comet, Mikansei, graced us with your presence?”
“…What? How did you know?”
“Gut feeling.”
Could this guy's intuition alone really be the best in the world?
Thinking that, I leaned back against an old chair set up in the corner.
“You're not as surprised as I expected.”
“I figured someone would recognize me eventually. Since you recognized me while no one else did, I'm actually grateful.”
It wasn't as though Park Han-su had heard my changed vocal style before, so he had become certain of my identity based purely on genuine intuition.
An intuition practically bordering on divination.
“…Blooming didn't recognize you?”
“No.”
“The style is unmistakably glassy sky.”
“Exactly.”
Honestly, I thought Blooming would be the quickest to recognize me if anyone did.
That was because they were diehard otaku by nature, making it easy for them to encounter Mikansei's songs. More than anything, they were the band I made the most songs for in my current style.
And yet, although they listened to Mikansei's songs, they hadn't realized that I was Mikansei.
“…You really think they didn't recognize you?”
“Yep. They really had no idea.”
“…I see.”
He tilted his head.
Why was he reacting like that?
In any case, I told him about the worries I had been dealing with lately.
“It's something everyone goes through, you know? The higher you fly, the farther away the ground feels.”
“You've been through it too, sir?”
“Yeah. My first album was a huge hit, and then I spent two years floundering. It was painful.”
He raised his head and stared at the ceiling as though recalling the past.
“How did you recover mentally?”
“I went to a psychiatric hospital.”
“Ah.”
That was the most straightforward answer possible.
* * *
[Happiness Theory]
[33,471,436 views][Uploaded 7 months ago]
[MIKANSEI][430,000 subscribers][1 video]
“The rate at which the views and subscriber count are increasing has definitely slowed.”
It wasn't a bad sign. To be honest, the numbers had risen quite a lot in a short time. It was simply time for the rate of increase to start dipping.
Rather, when the first song passed 30 million views, I realized that knowing information about the future really was an advantage.
The genre of songs targeting short-form content hadn't emerged yet. To some extent, it was understandable that people were going crazy for Happiness Theory on short-form platforms.
You could also put it another way: it was gradually becoming time to release a new song.
“…What should I do?”
There were two options.
I could pull out one of the songs I had made in my previous life—in other words, one of the songs on my hard drive—and use it.
Or I could make another new song.
And my choice was…
“I'm tired… Let's take a break.”
The first option.
Now that I had made it through the COVID period as well, my workload was gradually increasing.
As the seasons changed and the atmosphere shifted toward allowing concerts again, it was time for Blooming to start rowing.
I had basically done nothing for nearly half a year, so I had to oversee the process of bringing their skills back up, as well as make songs for Blooming's activities.
You might ask, ‘Can't you just coast by using the band songs you made in your previous life?’ But I had already used almost all the band songs I had made.
I had made two singles, a mini-album, and even a full-length album.
Unless I started taking other people's songs wholesale, there were no songs left to pull out and use.
“Using someone else's song would be a bit much now.”
It wouldn't cause any particular problems if I did… but honestly, my conscience was starting to bother me.
You might ask what I meant after using so many songs during Singer Star, but I had always tried not to use them whenever possible.
I had only taken them because my schedule was too tight and I didn't have a suitable song.
In any case, for Mikansei's new song, I would pull out a suitable song from the hard drive and arrange it for use.
“This one should work.”
After several hours of searching, I managed to pull out a suitable melody from among the countless melodies I had made.