86 Korean

In every country, people consumed by extremism lose the ability to think rationally.

It arises regardless of factors such as a person’s education or intelligence, which is why people often call it an incurable disease.

Naturally, Japan has that disease too.

If anything, it exists in a more severe form than in Korea, and most of those afflicted hate Korea.

They were the groups commonly known here as net right-wingers.

It was only last month that the “Empress of the Ice” caught their attention.

It was the first Olympics the story had reached after a long serialization—the work’s central event, so to speak.

Although the protagonist was still young enough to have more than one opportunity to compete in the Olympics, most readers had no doubt that she would win a gold medal at her first Olympics.

Because she had finally defeated her Korean rival for the first time at the World Championships immediately beforehand.

However, defying everyone’s expectations, the protagonist was beaten by her rival at the Olympics and won a silver medal.

In other words, in a Japanese figure-skating manga, a Japanese protagonist had lost to a Korean at the Olympics.

As everyone knew, it was the sort of content that poked at the trauma of Japanese people who liked figure skating.

At the same time, criticism of the “Empress of the Ice” plot began pouring out across every online community, including Twitter.

Naturally, the incident was also picked up by the net right-wingers’ radar, since they were always lurking online.

They began spreading conspiracy theories about the author being Korean and so on, and while that whole situation was unfolding…

Out of nowhere, the author leaked the artist for the anime tie-in.

At first, they naturally thought nothing of it, but the moment they learned where and how “Mikansei” was popular, their attitude changed 180 degrees.

Mikansei had basically achieved success by appealing to the young, plugged-in crowd centered around TikTok.

And that crowd, along with TikTok, made up K-pop’s primary consumer base.

So Mikansei, who had risen to fame through TikTok, became Korean.

What kind of logic led to that conclusion?

Nobody knew. They simply thought that way, refused to listen to anyone else, concluded that Mikansei was Korean, and began leaving comments on the channel.

-So you’ve finally shown your true colors (laugh). I knew it from the moment you promoted yourself as being popular on a low-class platform like TikTok. Don’t use Japanese anime as a marketing tool for the Peninsula. It’s disgusting.

-A work by an author who received anti-Japanese education, with a song by a Korean-affiliated artist popular on TikTok… Do they take Japanese fans for fools? I’ll turn off the TV the moment this song starts.

-So there was a reason the plot of the Empress of the Ice was so strange. They pushed the protagonist down to a silver medal and hyped up the Korean skater, and now even the theme song has been taken over? It’s disgusting to see Japan’s cultural invasion happening this blatantly.

-Why choose this low-quality singer instead of a talented Japanese artist? I can’t fathom the intention.

-Mikansei is Korean? What are these comments even talking about?

-Be satisfied with K-pop alone. It’s disgusting when Koreans pretend to be Japanese.

“…How did they figure that out?”

Their approach was fundamentally wrong, but the result was correct.

It was a perfect example of how even a nonsensical approach could sometimes lead to the right answer.

That didn’t mean many people believed the story was true.

Besides, even if the rumor that Mikansei was Korean spread, it wouldn’t cause much harm.

My main fan base wasn’t made up of people who hated Koreans online.

That was why I thought this incident would simply pass as a temporary fluke.

“…You mean she said she wanted to apologize to me in person?”

“Yes. She seemed very sorry.”

“She doesn’t need to go that far.”

That was how I saw it, at least, until the author’s side directly told me that she wanted to apologize to me.

* * *

The fundamental reason I had created the alter ego Mikansei was to overcome my slump.

I had shed the name Seo Siyeon, which had flown too high, and put myself in a situation where I could prove that my songs would resonate regardless of nationality, even when nobody expected anything from me.

I hadn’t originally intended for things to go this way, but by this point, I had to admit that I was beginning to look forward to people’s reactions after Mikansei’s identity was revealed.

The sort of reaction that went, ‘Mikansei, Japan’s faceless singer, and Seo Siyeon are the same person?’

You could call it a tendency to seek attention, but that was exactly what it was.

If I hadn’t been an attention seeker in the first place, I wouldn’t have thought of taking the stage.

The saying that all creators are attention seekers was exactly right.

“…Wow. I-I never imagined you’d be this young…”

That was why Akane, the author of the “Empress of the Ice,” reacted to me in a way that more or less matched the image she had built up in her head.

If I had to put a score on it, around seventy points? To get a hundred, she would have needed to know about Seo Siyeon, but Akane wasn’t quite at that level.

That was understandable, since in Japan I was known only among the fans of NOIRIS.

It wasn’t as though few people knew me, but I definitely couldn’t be called broadly famous. If anyone was famous, Mikansei was several times more so.

Akane looked exactly as I had imagined.

A cute Japanese girl who looked a little menhera.

Seeing as she posted subtly revealing photos on Twitter with her face covered and occasionally wrote menhera tweets…

‘She really acts exactly how she looks.’

Separate from that, I liked this girl’s manga.

“I’m a fan.”

“I-I am toooo…! I’m a fan.”

I hadn’t intended to hide Mikansei’s identity quite that thoroughly, but that didn’t mean I planned to show my face to just anyone.

Even so, the reason I had met this girl was because I was a fan of her manga.

“Please give me your autograph.”

“Ah, ahh…!”

She quickly moved her hand and signed the cover of volume one of the Empress of the Ice that I had handed her.

“W-wait… This isn’t what I came here for.”

She stamped her feet restlessly for a moment before bowing toward me so deeply that it looked as though her head had folded 180 degrees.

“I-I’m sorry!”

At least when it came to apologizing in Korean, her pronunciation was quite skillful.

I could tell that she had practiced hard for this moment.

“It’s okay. I didn’t really care in the first place.”

“B-but the comments…”

I gave her a small smile and spoke.

“Once the song is released, they’ll all shut their mouths. Don’t you think?”

She gave a small nod, affirming my confident statement.

After that, ordinary days followed and time passed little by little, until I was invited to the WMA and showed my face in front of people for the first time in a long while.

Blooming and NOIRIS didn’t win the grand prize, but each took home two awards, which was a decent haul.

The next thing to arrive was the second New Year I had experienced in this life.

* * *

New Year.

It was a day that held its own meaning everywhere in the world.

In Korea, it was considered one of the major holidays and was famous as a day when people ate tteokguk regardless of where they lived.

Perhaps that was why the orphanage served tteokguk for breakfast that day as well.

“…There’s barely any meat.”

Then again, what could I expect from Neulneul Orphanage, which struggled with its budget every day? The fact that there was even a little meat in it was fortunate.

No matter how much money the orphanage came to have, it was still an orphanage.

“Unni! Are you going to Seoul again today?”

“Huh? I’m not going today.”

“Huh? You’re not going to wear a hanbok and post it on Instagram like last year? You looked so pretty, like a princess…”

Come to think of it, I did need to post a New Year’s greeting on Instagram like last year…

For a Korean, greeting one’s fans with a post at New Year was only natural.

People exchanged New Year’s greetings even with those they weren’t particularly close to, so it made no sense not to exchange them with the fans who were supposed to be closest to me.

I was already on hiatus, so if I didn’t even do this, I wouldn’t be able to face my fans.

“Then why don’t you wear something from the orphanage and take a picture?”

“…There are hanbok here?”

“Yeah. If you rummage through the storage room, there should be quite a few.”

Surprisingly, that turned out to be true.

In the storage room, I was able to find fusion hanbok in both men’s and women’s styles, in sizes that fit my current height reasonably well.

When I wondered why they had something like that, I was told that they had bought the clothes years ago when some members of the National Assembly said they would come volunteer at the orphanage for New Year’s.

They had been told to buy them for taking pictures, so they had done so, but when it was time to wear them, the lawmakers’ secretaries had simply told them not to, and the clothes had been shoved into storage.

It had been an enormous waste of money, but… well, I had found a use for them now, so perhaps everything had worked out after all.