Chapter 50
[Singerstar Finals: Final Results and Vote Counts]
Winner—Seo Siyeon
Votes: 308,453
Runner-up—Joo Jinwoo
Votes: 235,480
3rd Place—Blooming
Votes: 210,567
Personally, I was surprised that the gap between Joo Jinwoo and Blooming wasn't as large as I expected.
Regardless, I'd like to tell all the contestants that they did a great job.
I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of activities the artists produced by Singerstar 5 pursue in the future.
-Whatever the case, this feels like a legendary season. Upvote lol
-Seo Siyeon is a legend… The difference is almost 1.5 times. Isn't the vote gap bigger than last season's?
ㄴ Info) Last season's winner received 186,733 votes. That's even lower than Blooming's.
ㄴ Lee Hyojin was pretty damn popular too… She even devoured the charts.
ㄴ Honestly, the lack of competition also played a part in Lee Hyojin's case. Her comeback timing was insanely good every time.
ㄴ Don't downplay her. She even won a Korean Music Award; calling it luck is too much.
ㄴ Fact) Seo Siyeon already has the Korean Music Awards and WMMA grand prizes reserved.
ㄴ I don't think WMA will give her one, though.
ㄴNonsense ㄴ If she doesn't get it, it's rigged.
-The fact that there was so much other talent worth talking about beyond these three is proof this season was legendary.
ㄴ Even Lee Hyena would have definitely made the finals in any other season.
-I wonder which agencies everyone will end up joining.
ㄴ One of the Big Three, right?
ㄴ ㄴㄴ Blooming isn't.
ㄴ ?? How do you know?
ㄴ There's a rumor from a stock-brokerage tip that Yoo Seolha is the heiress of Yuseong Semiconductor, and that her family will buy her an entertainment agency outright.
ㄴ That's such a fictional-sounding setup lol
“They say internet rumors are actually more likely to be true when they sound utterly ridiculous…”
The stock-market rumor about Yoo Seolha is true.
Honestly, I still can't quite grasp Yoo Seolha's true identity. The heiress of a company with a market capitalization exceeding 100 trillion won…
The status gap between an ordinary orphan like Seo Siyeon and her is absurdly huge.
However, as always, status doesn't matter when it comes to building a friendship.
“Siyeon. Let's take one last picture!”
“Sure.”
“Come here!”
It was almost time to leave the dormitory we'd grown attached to.
At Yoo Seolha's call, I took one last picture with Blooming and Joo Jinwoo, with the dormitory building in the background.
“I guess it's time to go back…”
At last, the long, long Singerstar had come to an end.
It had been a four-month journey filled with an incredible number of events and quite a bit of hardship, but I couldn't deny that I had gained just as much.
The biggest gain was, of course, the 200 million won in cash.
The 200 million won had all been processed for taxes and had become entirely my personal funds.
There were endless ways to use it, and I already knew where it would go.
‘I need to escape. From that wretched place.’
I couldn't bear the thought of staying any longer in that goddamn tiny space where four people slept together.
My first priority was to strike a deal with the director and get permission to live on my own.
If I gave him the car that had come with the 200 million won and asked to live independently in exchange… he would probably allow it, wouldn't he?
Well, maybe not.
Then I would have to seriously look for someone willing to become my legal guardian.
Naturally, there would be countless people wanting to adopt me now that I had become a nationwide star.
However, filtering out someone trustworthy from among them was practically impossible.
So, as Park Hansu had said before, I might have to find someone suitable among his connections.
‘Why do I have so much to worry about even after winning?’
No matter how I thought about it, something was wrong. Blooming had said they were going to Hawaii for a vacation, while Joo Jinwoo planned to spend about a week traveling in Japan before returning to music…
Why was I the only one already worrying about what would happen at Neulneul Orphanage?
This was all because I had been born an orphan.
Not having parents to meddle in my affairs might not be a bad thing, but being an orphan was still a huge legal vulnerability.
“What a filthy world.”
The bus ride back to Neulneul Orphanage.
Unlike the others, whose parents had come to meet them, I was heading home on the shuttle bus provided by Singerstar, just as I had on the way there.
Yoo Seolha's driver had offered to give me a ride, but I had stubbornly refused because I felt awkward accepting one.
Now, I somewhat regretted not just taking him up on it.
“Should I watch some YouTube?”
I opened YouTube without much thought, and the algorithm happened to serve me a video that caught my interest.
It was a video titled [Predictions for the Future of the Undisputed Genius, Seo Siyeon]. It had not even been uploaded for a full day, yet it had already surpassed 500,000 views, so it seemed to belong to someone fairly well-known.
“A music-analysis channel with 500,000 subscribers.”
Just as I'd expected, it had quite a large number of subscribers. At this level, it was probably the number-one music-analysis channel in Korea, wasn't it?
I played the video as if in a trance, and a man's pleasant, deep voice flowed from it.
The content of the roughly thirty-minute video was simple.
It lavished praise on the diversity and depth of my music.
It discussed my rapid vocal growth and my distinctive knack for choosing songs that suited me.
It praised the pleasant lyrics born from my unchildlike word choices and depth of thought.
“Because I'm not a child…”
Being praised for things like that made me want to die of embarrassment, no matter how shameless I'd become or how well I'd adapted to life as an elementary schooler.
After that came speculation about my future path…
“Hmm… I guess everyone thinks I'll join one of the Big Three entertainment agencies.”
Well, I suppose that was only natural.
They were also the judges on Singerstar, and the support and benefits available at those companies were so enormous they couldn't even be compared with anywhere else.
In fact, the orphanage-related problem I was worrying about right now would probably be resolved in one stroke if I joined a major entertainment agency.
‘But the chances of my autonomy being infringed upon would be high.’
The internal structure of a major entertainment agency was quite complicated.
There were separate divisions for managing artists, power struggles broke out between those divisions, and it was common for the artists caught in the middle to suffer unnecessarily.
Producers or managers with strong egos would even meddle in my songs by inserting their personal opinions.
As for whether I could remain wholly original and continue working as myself through that process… my answer was NO.
Unless I was guaranteed complete autonomy, I had no intention of signing with a major agency, and they probably wouldn't allow that kind of contract.
It might have been different if I were an adult, but that would be even less likely because I was an elementary school student.
For now, I could secure enough buzz even by working independently.
To do that, though, I would need somewhere to communicate with fans, like Instagram or YouTube.
Well, I could make those later…
“Student Siyeon, we've arrived.”
“Oh! Thank you for your hard work!”
I hopped down and took the suitcase from the trunk.
‘Wait a second. Why did they make me bring the suitcase aboard when I first got on?’
The question flashed through my mind, but only for a moment.
A place that was deeply familiar yet nauseating to Seo Siyeon at the same time came into view.
The sign reading ‘Neulneul Orphanage,’ which looked ready to collapse…
“What? Where did it go? They replaced it with a new one?”
But there was no sign like that; what I saw was a flashy new sign that looked as though it had only recently been put up.
Come to think of it, I'd forgotten, but I had seen in the support video before the finals that the auditorium had been remodeled and the annex, once a derelict building, had been replaced by a new three-story building.
Of course, I must have been bringing in quite a lot of donations now that I was famous…
But even an enormous amount of sponsorship couldn't explain having enough money to complete so much work in such a short time.
While I was staring blankly at the newly built annex, cheers rang out from the orphanage's main building.
“Waaaaaaah!”
“Our hero has returned!”
“Seo Siyeon is here?”
“Siyeon! You're the hero of our Neulneul Village!”
The children's faces were remarkably bright, and they looked quite healthy. The orphanage had been feeding the kids well lately, so their complexions were always good, but…
There was a strangely upbeat atmosphere that their healthy complexions alone couldn't explain.
“Miss Siyeon, you're the hero of our orphanage…!”
I pointed to the annex beside the orphanage and asked the director, who was mixed in among the children praising me.
“Director, what on earth is that?”
“What do you think? It's the building Siyeon had built for us, of course!”
I couldn't hide my dumbfounded expression at his words.
How on earth had they built that, and with what money, for him to say something like that?
That question was answered the next day by a man who visited Neulneul Orphanage.
A handsome middle-aged man who somehow resembled Yoo Seolha.
It was the moment one of Korea's richest 0.0001 percent descended upon the orphanage in the hillside neighborhood.