Chapter 11
By now, Friday at 7 p.m., the broadcast time for Singerstar Season 5, had become the official TV-watching hour at Neulneul Orphanage.
Since the show was currently enjoying nationwide popularity, and I—a resident of the orphanage—was even appearing on it, nearly every child in the orphanage gathered around the TV to watch.
On the other hand, thanks to the ridiculously tiny screen of the old TV, the picture was hard to see if you were pushed even a little toward the back, so the high school students occupied the front while the elementary school students were forced to the rear.
“Whoa…! Look at her. She looks exactly like a doll.”
“Right?”
“Hey, Na-hee. If you hadn't gotten rid of it back then, you might have had a daughter her age, couldn't you?”
“Can't you shut your mouth? And she's not that cute.”
However, thanks to the privilege that came with being a contestant, I was watching Singerstar from the very front, squeezed in among the older students.
The episode I appeared in had already aired last week.
It was rather interesting to see such sharply contrasting reactions to keywords related to family and parents, probably because we were all orphans.
Some missed them or felt sad and wiped away their tears, while others listened to my song cynically, harboring resentment toward the parents who had abandoned them.
If I hadn't had the memories of my previous life, I would probably have reacted more like the latter group.
Seo Si-yeon's parents left her at an orphanage as soon as she was born, then died.
The cause of death was a motorcycle accident.
Apparently, they died while doing the insane thing of speeding down a highway together on a motorcycle.
Perhaps it was divine punishment for abandoning Seo Si-yeon.
‘Actually, speeding down a highway on a motorcycle is basically suicide. Whatever.’
I had no idea how someone as cute as Seo Si-yeon had come from people like that.
I had sung the song about the family photo with feelings for my mother from my previous life, rather than for my parents in this life.
I genuinely missed her a little, after all. It was relatively easy to pour my emotions into that song.
“Oh. He's on!”
“Wow, he's totally the perfect son.”
In the middle of the audition, which had been proceeding uneventfully, the appearance of one boy caused the entire audience to stir.
He was over 180 centimeters tall, with striking features.
In contrast, he wore a two-block haircut that looked entirely unstyled, along with a casually thrown-on hoodie.
“Wow. He's insanely handsome. He's my husband.”
“Isn't Seo Na-hee's husband Lee Jun-seo?”
“Shut up. We broke up a week ago.”
Joo Jin-woo, like me, had been assigned one of the very last slots among the male soloists.
Unlike the potential group, however, quite a few decent contestants had emerged from the male soloists.
But as soon as Joo Jin-woo, the most anticipated contestant, took the stage, the atmosphere changed unmistakably, from the judges' panel to the audience and even the people watching in front of their TVs.
This was the power of someone considered one of the current frontrunners for the championship.
Apparently, the current betting sites had Joo Jin-woo's victory ranked first in terms of odds, with mine ranked second.
Perhaps they considered my chances of winning low because I was excessively young.
‘But why do betting sites even take bets on something like this?’
Joo Jin-woo had chosen a 2000s ballad called ‘Our Sky.’
At this rate, Joo Jin-woo was going to drag a ballad onto every stage, starting from the preliminaries.
Joo Jin-woo adjusted his grip on the microphone and quietly closed his eyes. This was a physical presence that needed no flashy adjectives. The moment he inhaled, the studio noise ebbed away like the tide.
It was a classic, orthodox ballad. But its depth was on another level.
-Your name hidden behind the scattered clouds…
-The day you called out to me beneath the cold moonlight.
The moment the first line was released, the commotion among the high school students in front of the TV died down in an instant.
Joo Jin-woo's vocals were in a completely different league from the rough edge of Uncle Park Han-su's voice or my own refreshing emotional style.
No-frills vocal technique, perfect breath control, and a relaxed steadiness that did not waver even in the high notes. Even through the eyes of someone who had watched countless singers over many years, that was the culmination of effort beyond mere talent.
Did you need to be smart to sing well, too? His precision was as if he had perfectly analyzed the mechanics of vocals and hammered them into his own body.
“Wow... This is seriously insane. How can a person sing like that?”
Seo Na-hee mumbled beside me, completely dazed. The lighthearted mood from earlier, when she had been talking about her ex-boyfriend and whatnot, had long since evaporated.
Joo Jin-woo's singing had that kind of power—the power to erase every surrounding narrative and make you focus solely on his voice.
As the song reached its climax, an orchestral sound burst forth majestically. Joo Jin-woo slightly furrowed his brow and shot his high note straight upward.
-If I could meet you again at the end of the sky…
-I want to reach that place, even if I have to abandon everything I have.
This wasn't some flashy technique like a three-stage high note. It was simply the straight, orthodox approach.
His high notes, driven upward with a thick mixture of chest voice, hit with such pressure that they seemed capable of ripping through the TV speakers.
As expected, he was the most difficult kind of opponent for someone like me, who competed through emotion and narrative.
Against physicality like that, most minor tricks became completely useless.
Representative Yoo Sang-hyeon on the judges' panel nodded with satisfaction. He looked as if he were watching an avatar that perfectly embodied his own musical philosophy.
Well, from his perspective, seeing Joo Jin-woo must inevitably remind him of his younger days.
“This won't be easy.”
I whispered those words to myself in a voice no one else could hear.
* * *
The format of the second round of the main competition was simple.
Approximately sixty contestants had survived so far.
From among them, the judges would select the top twelve and appoint them as team leaders, granting them the right to select their team members.
Only six of the twelve teams would advance to the upper rounds, while two contestants per judge could be rescued from the eliminated teams, for a total of six rescues.
In other words, nearly half the contestants would be eliminated.
I would probably be rescued even if I were eliminated, but Blooming wouldn't.
For their sake, at least, I had to do my best to lead us to victory and advance with the winning team.
As expected, the draft proceeded without any significant variables.
I succeeded in bringing all five members of Blooming onto my team.
Since I had selected Yoo Seol-ha, the vocalist, in the first round, and Park Hui-su, the bassist, in the second, everyone must have naturally realized that I intended to take all of Blooming, so no one interfered with me.
“Could you tell us why you brought every member of Blooming onto your team?”
In the brief interview with the writer after the draft, I answered the question like this.
“I thought they would be the team members who fit me best. Also, Blooming was the only group among the survivors that could actually perform as a proper band.”
Every band that had come from Hongdae had been thoroughly beaten down by the judges and kicked out.
And for good reason. Proper bands were diligently active in Hongdae instead of hoping for a lucky break by appearing on a show like this.
Everyone who came here was a complete mediocrity.
Among them, it was only natural that Blooming, which had continued performing and practicing for a relatively long time, was the most skilled.
Still, that wouldn't stop the internet from branding the Hongdae bands as pathetic losers who had even lost to high school girls.
That was none of my concern. Any band destined to make it big would do so on its own during the band boom a few years from now.
“You can look forward to seeing me make perfect use of Yoo Seol-ha Un…nie's voice. I've even prepared a song for that!”
At the end of the interview, I stubbornly mentioned the natural form of address ‘Unnie,’ raising the viewers' expectations.
To accommodate me as much as possible, the Singerstar staff rented and prepared a practice room near Juan Station.
Apparently, they had decided it made more sense to set up the filming location on my side rather than with Blooming, who could travel back and forth on their own.
“Hmm… I definitely think it would be better to change some of the instruments here.”
The production crew had even installed a computer in the practice room and was filming me working all day long.
Since the claims that all my self-composed songs were staged had recently begun gaining serious traction, they said they would release the footage on YouTube to dampen that sentiment.
‘Then I might need to stage things a little, shouldn't I?’
Honestly, I had already finished the song.
I had been tweaking the topline little by little while fiddling with virtual instruments, but the version I had made at the beginning was still the best.
This was a song I had made after possessing this body.
As a result, it had an atmosphere that differed somewhat from the songs I had made in my previous life.
Since it was my first attempt at a song using subcultural conventions, I had struggled quite a bit.
However, I added the funky groove I had often used in my previous life, worked in a jazz-inspired sound using violin, and layered various effects from MIDI. The result was a difficult but surprisingly listenable song.
“The bass… I remember she played it pretty well.”
As I worked on it, the bass line ended up requiring a fairly high level of skill.
I tried playing the melody directly on an electric guitar and on a keyboard as well, and neither part was particularly difficult.
For people who had been handling instruments for a long time, it was a level of difficulty they could digest without much trouble.
However, I didn't know how to play bass.
I could only vaguely guess that the difficulty of the performance would be high.
“You said you were an arts high school student?”
Park Hui-su, the bassist, was the only music major in the band.
The reason Blooming's ensemble was so stable in the first place was that she, as a music major, quietly laid down the foundation on bass.
Would she be able to handle the rhythmic, funky performance this song demanded?
‘Well, if she can't, we can cover it with a backing track.’
Thinking that, I played the song for her without preamble at my first meeting with Blooming and printed out the bass sheet music.
“…How am I supposed to play this!”
After saying that, she made an expression that looked utterly dumbfounded.
“What? You're pretty good.”
“…Why is this working?”
She gave a performance that was nearly perfect on her very first try, then stared back with an expression of bewilderment herself.
Seeing that, I became certain.
At least, the protagonist of the second round of the main competition would be our team.