47 Genius Girl

In modern society, Koreans have developed increasingly fragmented tastes.

That is due to the rapid development of the new technology called algorithms, as well as people watching YouTube instead of television.

People now watch only what they want through YouTube recommendations, while no longer encountering information that does not interest them.

Even Singerstar 5, which was pulling in ratings of thirty percent, could not escape that trend.

Its viewing demographic was limited to the middle-aged and elderly generations who mainly watched television, along with a small number of young people. No matter how many songs it put on the charts, young people were quietly losing interest in Singerstar as they played playlists of their favorite genres instead of listening to the music charts.

Yet sometimes, something outside the norm appears and breaks through all those barriers.

It was not a song manufactured to attract public favor or a sensational story fabricated for effect, but the truthful and honest story of an orphan.

“Is this for real?”

On her way to work, a woman happened to read what Seo Siyeon had said in a post on an online community and felt a sense of awe. She then read a summary of Siyeon’s life and burst into tears.

She had shown little interest when her coworkers talked about Singerstar at work, but only now did she belatedly begin searching for the stages Seo Siyeon had performed on Singerstar.

“Sniff… What are we going to do? She’s so pitiful…”

A high school girl watched Siyeon’s interview video on her way to school and squeezed out tears as large as chicken droppings.

“So this is what a real genius is…”

An undergraduate attending S University in Gwanak felt a shiver of excitement—and fear—after watching the interview.

People are fascinated by geniuses. They are especially fascinated by young geniuses.

Koreans have that tendency particularly strongly.

After passing through the era of colonial rule and the days when Korea was a weak nation ignored by the world, the country had now risen to become a powerful nation recognized around the globe.

Yet people were still hungry for geniuses, even though Korea was now a country that could function perfectly well through its well-established systems without any geniuses at all.

In that situation, a child genius had appeared. Although she was not extraordinarily talented in academic fields like mathematics or science, as a musician, she possessed a charm capable of captivating the public.

People were becoming fascinated by the talent of a genius who was not merely young but still a child, as well as by her unique and appealing appearance.

They ranged from people who had never shown any interest in music or popular culture to those who had been interested but deliberately kept their distance from current issues because of their characteristic hipster tendencies.

Such people were appearing across the country by the tens or even hundreds of thousands, and their attention naturally turned toward the live broadcast stage of Singerstar 5, which would take place the following Friday.

Producer Kang Junhyung, who was watching that entire process unfold, was filled with hope that he might be able to raise the ratings, which had been stuck in the low thirties, into the mid-thirties. He was trying to calm his pounding heart when…

“Huaaah…”

Seo Siyeon, the actual center of all that attention, had collapsed in the practice room as if she had passed out from exhaustion after practicing for the stage.

* * *

“Siyeon! Here, have some water.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

I accepted the bottled water handed to me by the youngest staff writer, who was round and adorably cute.

For some reason, it had a hole in the top with a straw stuck through it, just like the water bottles celebrities drank from on television.

Well, from my perspective, it was quite welcome.

I always wore a lightly tinted lip balm.

I was still too young for colored lip tints to suit me, but I always wore lip balm to keep my lips from getting chapped and making a mess.

So putting my lips directly on a water bottle was not very pleasant.

“Phew…!”

“Wow. The vocals are incredible. Siyeon, you’ve improved a lot too.”

Kim Seol, who had been watching my practice from behind, sidled over to me and whispered.

“But aren’t you practicing, unnie?”

“I finished earlier. It’s free time now. They said we’re meeting up again later?”

“Then I guess…”

Honestly, while I was practicing this hard, I was a little annoyed that Blooming was bringing out a song they played all the time and preparing their stage with such a free pass.

Still, watching them practice, I could see that they were extremely skilled. Honestly, they were good enough that I could understand why they just messed around instead of practicing.

“What about the other unnies?”

“Hm? They went to watch Mr. Jinwoo practice, I think? They said they’d already seen Siyeon’s a lot or something.”

“So they were traitors.”

Anyway, I had more or less finished practicing and decided to take a break, so I clasped Kim Seol’s hand and headed toward Joo Jinwoo’s practice room.

‘Her hand is so soft…’

It felt good in a different way from resting my head against her breasts.

Anyway, as we headed toward Joo Jinwoo’s practice room, high notes that sounded as if they might tear the microphone apart came roaring from inside.

“Whew. That’s high.”

“Even I, a woman, couldn’t hit that.”

‘Of course.’

I thought that as I looked at Kim Seol.

Because Kim Seol was fucking terrible at singing.

Joo Jinwoo’s vocals leaking through the gap in the practice-room door were downright violent.

It was as though a rock star in his prime had descended, and his sharp high notes traveled intact along the walls of the practice-room hallway.

Still holding Kim Seol’s hand, I quietly opened the door and peered inside.

The rest of Blooming’s members were already huddled together inside the practice room, watching Joo Jinwoo with dazed expressions.

Joo Jinwoo was drenched in sweat and gripping the microphone stand.

His usual smooth, sly air was nowhere to be seen. All that remained was the beastlike gaze of someone who had staked his life on a single sound.

The song he was singing was by a rock band that had been hugely popular in the 2000s. Its high notes were absurdly high, and it was renowned as a difficult song based on its range alone.

“...Fuck, he’s breaking through that in full voice?”

An exclamation of admiration escaped my lips before I knew it.

From my experience in my previous life, that was a gamble beyond merely grinding his vocal cords down to nothing.

But the moment that gamble succeeded, the audience would be crushed beneath his overwhelming volume and have no choice but to press the voting button.

As Joo Jinwoo drew out the final high note and finished the song as if dropping to his knees, a heavy silence settled over the practice room.

Yoo Seolha and Jo Naeun, who had been watching, stood there with their mouths open, unable even to bring themselves to clap.

“This should be fun.”

I grinned when I saw that.

Just as expected, Joo Jinwoo had brought out the strongest card he could play in the current situation.

Now, all that remained for our three teams was the real thing.

* * *

The title appeared on the giant electronic scoreboard at Gocheok Dome.

Although the subtitles announced the original author’s name and the fact that the song was an adaptation, the audience’s reaction was unexpectedly subdued.

That was because Blooming’s song choice and the reason behind it had already been revealed on the previous broadcast.

Some people criticized them, asking whether it really had to be a Japanese song, but most viewers were moved by their story and said they could understand it well enough.

Onstage, four girls stood facing one another in a circle. It was not the usual formation facing the audience.

They focused solely on each other’s eyes and steadied the instrumental interplay they had practiced thousands of times.

Yoo Seolha’s clear electric-guitar arpeggio broke the silence of Gocheok Dome.

- You know, if you put names to pieces of memories and preserved them, they’d be treasures.

Yoo Seolha’s vocals were neither as overwhelming as Joo Jinwoo’s nor as meticulous as mine.

But her voice carried the sincerity of a girl who would soon become a high school senior and, after that, find herself approaching graduation.

As the song progressed, Park Heesu’s bass gently supported it from below, while Jo Naeun’s drums joined in brightly like a heartbeat.

Even through the backstage monitor, it was easy to see that the audience was gradually being absorbed into that soft, warm emotion.

- Graduation isn’t the end; we’ll still be together from now on.

As the lyrics rang out, sniffles could be heard from various parts of the audience.

The camera captured them one by one, and their ages and genders were surprisingly diverse.

For the middle-aged and older viewers, the song brought to mind their children’s graduation ceremonies. For the small but tightly united young audience, it struck directly at the nostalgia of their school days.

This was not a song sung through technique.

Blooming’s time and memories themselves were the instrument.

The memories they had shared from elementary school through middle school and high school gathered on this stage, blossoming into a positive and moving performance.

In particular, Kim Seol’s bright smile as she swung her drumsticks, despite usually maintaining an expressionless face, was not something manufactured for the performance.

“Calling it play rather than a competition feels more fitting.”

Every member’s expression was brighter than ever.

As they reached the bridge, the highlight of the song, all five members turned toward the audience as if on cue.

-Sing in the same voice!

-But I met a wonderful angel

With Yoo Seolha’s voice leading, the harmonies of the five members piled up layer by layer.

-If you say, ‘I like you,’

-I’ll answer, ‘I really like you.’

-Always, forever, together.

Then they looked at one another and smiled brightly. A uniquely fresh atmosphere, one that could only be created at their age, filled the stage as the performance came to an end.

A band formed with childhood friends, and the culmination of the story of how that band had made it all the way to such a grand stage—the highest point that story could possibly create.

I could do nothing but applaud them all by myself from the waiting room.