Chapter 39
[Made eye contact with Siyeon herself ㅠㅠ]
Praise myself for successfully booking a front-row seat.
-??
-You didn't see that, though?
-The head mod girl is having a blast lol.
-Is this where the pretty college-girl head mod is?
For real, though.
“Looks like that person from earlier is the moderator here.”
Naturally, the Seo Siyeon minor gallery was the online community I kept the closest eye on.
With no fan café and no agency, my fandom's only possible rallying points at this stage were galleries and Twitter.
Twitter users entertained themselves and kept things running on their own, so it wasn't really an issue, but with a gallery, the moderator's personality and ability to handle situations were extremely important.
“I hope her personality is as kind as her face suggests.”
If so, she'd be suitable to keep on as an administrator even after we officially set up a fan café later.
After that, I kept browsing various communities to see the reactions to my stage.
As expected, my name had seized a spot near the top of Twitter's real-time trends, and it was difficult to find any particularly negative reactions.
There were a few antis because I was close to Lee Hyena, but they were so few that it was almost cute. Whenever they posted publicly, quote tweets absolutely tore them apart.
All the other major communities had nothing but positive reactions to my stage as well.
“I mean, she did do well.”
“Right! Our Siyeon was amazing!”
“Hnyaat!”
I had no choice but to drop my smartphone and let out a pathetic shriek when a voice suddenly interrupted my muttering.
When I looked up toward the direction of the voice, I saw Yuseolha standing there with a sullen expression, my smartphone already in her hand.
“Hey! You mustn't visit bad sites!”
“…It's not a bad site.”
“This place definitely counts as a bad site.”
“There aren't any truly clean communities, anyway.”
“At least this one is moderated.”
Watching us debate whether the community where I'd been ego-searching was a bad site or not suddenly made me feel like dying.
“So, Siyeon. You watched our stage, right? Don't tell me you skipped it to check the community reactions?”
“W-what do you take me for? I watched all of it. I even watched it again in clips!”
Blooming once again put on a splendid stage without making a single mistake. Honestly, even if the drums or keyboard wobbled a little at this point, the bass and vocals were more than good enough to cover it.
And while they made minor mistakes, they never made any major ones, so there was no problem with their ensemble performance.
Yuseolha's vocals still captured people's hearts with a quality worthy of being called top-tier.
Joo Jinwoo, who had just finished his stage, was the same. He gave it his all and showed a somewhat different side from the round before last.
All that remained were Han Seongsik and Baek Yuyeon's stages.
There was almost a hundred-percent chance that one of them would be eliminated.
“What do you think, Unni?”
“Hmm? Ah… You mean Mr. Seongsik and Unni Yuyeon?”
“Yes.”
Yuseolha said it as though it were obvious.
“The odds-on favorite is Mr. Seongsik. But…”
“You have a feeling? A feeling that something unexpected is going to happen.”
I agreed with her.
Baek Yuyeon's style was so unique that it couldn't be found anywhere else.
That was both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Her distinctive historical-drama vocal style and raspy voice could, if used well, make listeners recall the most heartrending scene from a historical drama. But if used poorly, they became nothing more than loud noise.
That was why the quality of Baek Yuyeon's stages often varied dramatically depending on her song choice and condition on the day.
‘That song. It was definitely good.’
An utterly unknown OST with fewer than ten thousand views.
It was the OST of a historical drama released the previous year—a drama that had aired on a cable channel no one had ever heard of, with ratings far below one percent.
Like Seo Siyeon, who had been born in that dump of an orphanage in Incheon, it had gotten off on the wrong foot from the moment of its birth.
Yet among them were some that could show off their charm if given a proper opportunity, just like Seo Siyeon.
I wondered if that might be what the song she'd chosen this time, ‘Plum Blossoms,’ would become.
* * *
Baek Yuyeon went for the weight of the space rather than visual spectacle.
The moment the intro began, a scream like a haegeum being torn apart flowed through the speakers.
The distinctive sharpness I'd felt while working with gugak sessions in my previous life met Jangchung Gymnasium's modern sound system, creating a strangely jarring dissonance.
Dry-ice fog spread low across the stage floor, and Baek Yuyeon stood motionless within it, wearing a long dress reminiscent of a white funeral shroud.
Her normally squirrel-cute face looked, in that moment, like that of a woman carrying a lifetime of han.
-In the end, you fall, without ever making it into my arms.
The moment the first line burst forth, chills ran down my spine.
Her voice was more harshly cracked than usual, but rather than hurting her, it highlighted her ferocity.
Her nasal historical-drama vocal style could easily sound tacky, but she sang as though chewing and spitting out every syllable.
It felt as though I were hearing a woman driven mad by the loss of someone precious, howling into the empty air, and I rubbed my shoulders as goosebumps erupted across them.
-You said you'd walk through the snowstorm to come to me, so how can you scatter as flower petals?
As she entered the chorus, the highlight of the staging revealed itself.
A single plum tree appeared on the enormous LED screen behind the stage, and every time she let out a high note, the plum blossoms on the screen scattered like red blood, creating the impression that they were covering the entire stage.
“……Wow.”
Yuseolha, sitting beside me, muttered with her mouth hanging open.
Baek Yuyeon didn't try to forcibly smooth her voice into something pretty in the high notes.
Instead, she scraped her vocal cords and mixed in rough breaks, pushing the song's sorrow to its absolute limit.
It felt less like hearing someone wail for me to look at her and more like hearing the desperate cry of a woman who had already lost everything/
When all the instruments stopped during the final bridge and only her voice remained, the gymnasium was so silent that not even breathing could be heard.
-Even when spring comes, I will still live on in that winter.
As she held the final note and lowered her head, the red petals from the projected video slowly settled to the floor.
After the stage ended, Blooming and I applauded along with the audience.
Apparently, Baek Yuyeon's condition had been on fire today. Even the historical-drama OST she'd dug out of the trash heap happened to suit her tone perfectly.
It was a case of coincidence upon coincidence.
I didn't know what kind of stage Han Seongsik would put on after this, but it didn't look easy to beat Baek Yuyeon's emotional impact.
‘If you want to be exact, Baek Yuyeon's fandom was larger too…’
It was only natural that Baek Yuyeon, a beautiful woman in her early twenties, had a stronger fandom than a handsome middle-aged man.
Han Seongsik was in the position of having to overwhelm her with his singing, but his opponent had performed far better than expected.
“Wow! Great job, Unni!”
“That stage was amazing.”
While Han Seongsik prepared his stage, Baek Yuyeon entered the women's waiting room with a relieved expression.
Having seemingly poured every last bit of strength into her stage, she dropped helplessly onto the sofa.
“Aaaah… I feel like I'm going to die.”
“You put on a stage that would make anyone feel that way.”
Baek Yuyeon smiled at my words and replied.
“Thanks, Siyeon.”
After that, Mr. Han also put on a good stage. He brought an opera-style song and gave a fantastic performance with his uniquely absurdly high notes.
But the result was Baek Yuyeon's victory by roughly 2,000 votes.
“Everyone, you've all worked hard. I never imagined an opportunity like this would come to someone like me, and I suppose it's time to return to ordinary life. I hope you all continue to prosper and release lots of good music.”
Although he was disappointed, Mr. Han seemed to believe that it was too late for him to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.
Besides, he was being promoted quickly within his company and enjoyed the trust of his superiors, so it seemed difficult for him to abandon that and leave the company.
“If Miss Seolha inherits the company, we'll have plenty of opportunities to meet. What a shame. Haha.”
“Ugh… I can't do that sort of thing. I have an older brother, so please say hello if you meet him.”
He then bent his knees and met my eyes.
“I hope you continue to prosper from here on, Miss Siyeon.”
“Yes. You too, sir.”
“I hope you'll remember that there was someone like me.”
“…Of course I'll remember. Your singing is extraordinary.”
Honestly, he had enough talent to make me regret that he wasn't continuing as a singer.
Because of this, he'd probably become extremely famous within the company, but as time passed, more and more people would forget singer Han Seongsik.
“If you ever want to sing again, please contact me.”
“…Thank you.”
Finally, he exchanged a few words with Joo Jinwoo.
“Goodbye, sunbaenim!”
“Haha. What do you mean, sunbaenim? I'm an old man who's been out of school for more than twenty years.”
And so another person disappeared from the shared house.
As people began disappearing one by one from that enormous mansion, I felt as though we'd stepped into a horror movie.
But before I had any time to dwell on the lingering sadness of farewell, the next stage was already only a week away.