Chapter 83
Tie-up (tie-up).
To define it, a tie-up is the insertion of a song into a television program, such as a drama or anime, to promote a newly released song.
Although tie-ups exist in Korea as well, they are particularly widespread in neighboring Japan.
To the point that any top singer is bound to have at least one song tied to a popular anime.
In Japan, nearly dozens of anime series are released every season.
Most of them use tie-ups for their opening and ending songs, creating an enormous amount of demand.
Of course, many also use voice actors as their vocalists, so the demand isn't quite that high, but there is still undoubtedly plenty of it.
“Huh? A tie-up?”
That was why even a newcomer like Mikansei, who had only produced one hit and had nothing else to her name, received a tie-up offer.
‘Even so… this is a little strange.’
Actually, from the producer's perspective, there was no reason to give a tie-up to someone like me.
“They even accepted the price… I quoted the fee you command as Seo Siyeon, and they agreed. Even though you're busy right now…”
I was already working on my next song.
So if I accepted the tie-up offer… my workload would become excessive.
I would have to stop being a good little child and become an office worker who worked overtime until dawn.
If I lived that way, I would never grow taller.
No matter how little I wanted to worry about my height, getting enough sleep and waking up early were important while I was still growing.
“Hmm. I think I should refuse… but I'll at least hear the terms.”
If they had requested a song for an anime that looked likely to become a huge hit, I would have to accept regardless of whether I was still growing.
If I could sing the opening for an anime like that, I could rise to the ranks of Japan's top artists in one shot.
“Apparently, the title is ‘Empress of the Ice.’ They say it's an anime about figure skating…”
“I'll do it.”
“……?”
“I own every volume of that manga at home.”
At that, Lee Ha-jun shook his head slightly, looking dumbfounded.
“Have the Blooming kids rubbed off on you…”
“You don't know what you're talking about. They don't watch this kind of thing.”
Because Blooming only watched anime. They didn't read the manga.
* * *
I say this again and again, but I am not an otaku.
I simply immerse myself in all kinds of cultural media to find inspiration for making music.
It was true that anime made up an unusually large portion of that media, but there was a perfectly clear explanation for that as well.
“…Because so many distinctive works come out of nowhere.”
When it came to Korean dramas, there were many that fit certain clichés.
In other words, even when I watched them, it felt like I was watching something I had already seen.
Of course, the advent of the OTT era had changed that statement completely, but that era had not arrived yet.
People in the know like me sought them out, and the number of subscribers was gradually increasing… but this was not yet the future, when every person in the country would use OTT services.
That was why even Korean dramas made as OTT originals had not yet been able to fully demonstrate their originality.
I had made a long excuse, but one thing was certain: I was not an otaku.
“Hehehehe…!”
So although I was going to sing the opening for an anime adaptation of a manga I had always liked… the reason I was this excited was that Mikansei had secured a foothold from which to grow in Japan.
Commercial success?
I couldn't guarantee it. The original manga itself was not particularly popular, being more of a hit among a niche audience.
It was an anime about figure skating, centered on older skaters who were at least middle-school age.
Its main story was the protagonist and his rival competing at various World Championships and Olympics.
And the reason I knew about and had become so invested in a work of such modest stature even in Japan was…
Because the protagonist's rival was a Korean character.
Korean characters were not common in Japanese manga, so I had taken an interest in it, read the manga, and immediately become a fan.
“Ah. Since it's a figure-skating anime… the opening…”
Once I thought of it as a song for a manga I liked, ideas started bubbling up.
It felt somewhat different from when I made other songs.
“People really should do what they love.”
A multitude of possible directions filled my head.
I chose classical sampling from among them.
Sampling.
It refers to cutting up an existing recording, reworking it, and using it in a new way, and it is a fairly common technique in modern music.
Because it makes it easy to approach listeners with something familiar.
That was why classical recordings that people around the world frequently encountered and found unobjectionable were commonly used as sampling material.
Especially for Empress of the Ice, since it was a figure-skating anime, sampling classical music would make it easy to write a song that matched the atmosphere of the work.
As soon as I made up my mind, I immediately began composing, gliding over the keyboard and mouse.
I had already read the manga from cover to cover three times, so I immersed myself in the work without needing to read it again, and it did not take me long to write a draft.
“…What? It's already this late.”
Still, that was only a relative comparison. Even I needed a considerable amount of time to make a song sound decent.
“I-it's already time to go to school…”
In fact, it took long enough for me to stay up all night.
* * *
Although I had finished the draft, that did not mean the song was perfectly complete.
Even I could clearly see that it was lacking in places, so I needed to make improvements that would fill those gaps.
“…It lacks a sense of speed.”
Looking back, I had never skated even once in either of my lives.
I had never skied or snowboarded, either.
Since I had never been familiar with winter sports in general, I had never experienced the sensation of speed on snow or ice.
I wondered if experiencing that kind of speed might fill the empty feeling I sensed in the current draft.
However, there was one major problem.
“But I don't have anyone to go with.”
Seo Siyeon.
I was in fourth grade.
It was the age when I should have been running around and playing, with plenty of friends in my class.
But I didn't have any close friends I could go somewhere like this with.
Of course, I wasn't a social outcast or a victim of bullying. I simply hadn't been able to make close friends because our mental ages didn't match.
I was close enough to the members of Blooming and NOIRIS to call them friends… but it felt awkward to suddenly ask them to go to a skating rink with me.
Besides, everyone was busy right before the start of their next round of activities, practicing and managing their bodies.
Wouldn't it be incredibly inconsiderate for me, their coworker and, in some ways, their boss, to ask them to go to a skating rink with me at a time like this?
“…Should I go alone?”
Well, I was fine with going alone.
But I had never skated in my life, so how was I supposed to go alone and skate?
After fretting over it alone, I came up with a brilliant idea, like Einstein thinking of relativity…
“Should I rent out an entire rink and take the orphanage kids as a group?”
It was the kind of idea only a wealthy bourgeois would come up with, but I had more than enough money to do that.
I had earned an enormous amount from copyright royalties over the years.
Of course, it wasn't an outrageously huge sum since I had been unable to participate in concerts and other offline events, but I had several million won piled up in my bank account—enough to spend on this without a problem.
And if I told the company, they would handle it in the first place.
I went straight to the director and told her about it.
Naturally, the director welcomed the proposal with open arms.
* * *
I rented out the ice rink, but there was still one problem.
I had never set foot on the ice myself.
Naturally, I assumed that the children who had grown up in the orphanage had never skated, either.
With that in mind, I was about to hire an instructor to give us a group lesson when…
“We all know how to skate, though?”
“…?”
“We go to the rink as a group every winter, but you were the only one who didn't.”
Thinking back, that did seem to be the case.
Given Seo Siyeon's original personality, there was no way she would have gone along to something like that, and after I possessed her, I had been so busy that I hadn't had the time to think about it.
“Th-then am I the only one who can't skate?”
“…Of course. Every kid who's going knows how to skate.”
The orphanage child breezed past me without another word.
Did that mean I would be the only one wobbling along while holding the instructor's hand as the other children skated effortlessly?
But there was no other way…
“Now, Siyeon. Would you like to hold the teacher's hand?”
“…Yes.”
That day, I took skating lessons alone while holding the instructor's hand.
Seeing the other children around me, even those several years younger than me, skating with ease made me feel very strange.