Chapter 92
Because Masked Singer is recorded rather than broadcast live, it is impossible to reflect real-time voting.
The only people who decide which contestants advance to the next round are the 80 members of the general-public panel and the 20 celebrity judges present at the venue.
While voting, the celebrity judges also guess the contestants’ identities and ask questions, helping create entertaining moments beyond the performances themselves.
The most important part of all that is pretending to be shocked by a contestant’s identity.
That is because the show only becomes entertaining when they do so.
Even among the relatively seasoned celebrities making up the panel these days, there were far too many truly obscure entertainers whom no one knew.
If they just looked like they had no idea who someone was, it wouldn’t exactly make for a lively atmosphere.
“Hey. Have you heard who’s appearing today?”
“Hyung. I’m not part of the production staff. How would I know?”
“Geez. Those guys are so thorough. Would it kill them to tell us?”
Yoo Ha-seong, one of the senior celebrity judges and the comedian in charge of the terrible jokes, voiced his complaint.
The show had clearly still been fun last year, when guessing the contestants’ identities and getting them right had been part of the appeal, but lately he had grown sick of feeling like he had turned into a reaction machine.
“Is there no famous person who might appear?”
“Honestly, hyung, after five years, hasn’t everyone who could appear already been on the show?”
He had a point.
That was why Yoo Ha-seong wasn’t complaining too much to the production staff.
Still, it was also true that the recent shoots had all been painfully boring.
And judging by the show’s cycle, it was about time for someone famous to appear.
Aside from the current champion, the Frog Prince Who Sings Well—in other words, Joo Jin-woo—almost no one who could become well known had appeared.
Now, if they wanted to maintain the show’s buzz, it was time for the production staff to somehow lure a famous person onto the program.
“Let’s see what today’s stage has to offer.”
That was why Yoo Ha-seong sat in the judges’ seat and waited for the performances with an unusual sense of anticipation.
* * *
As always, showing yourself in front of other people brought both excitement and nerves.
The nerves of wondering what would happen if people weren’t satisfied with my performance.
And the excitement that came from knowing so many people would be watching me.
But this time, more than either of those emotions, I felt embarrassed.
“…Wow, wasn’t it supposed to be hidden by wide-legged pants?”
We had definitely agreed beforehand to use wide-legged pants with a long hem to hide the heels of my shoes.
But when I arrived at the venue, the outfit the production staff handed me was completely different.
A dress covered in dangling decorations, along with a tiara set with cheap imitation jewels whose origins I couldn’t even guess.
To top it all off, even the mask, which had originally been based on a fairy concept, had been completely changed.
“The Princess Who Conquers the World with Song… What in the world is this?”
‘The Princess Who Conquers the World with Song.’ I disliked every single word of this concept.
For one thing, having the word ‘song’ in your name on a music competition program put a great deal of pressure on you.
With a title like that, it sounded as if you had to be extraordinarily good at singing.
But that was nothing compared to ‘The Princess Who Conquers the World.’
‘What’s with “princess”? A princess? It’s so childish.’
“I’m sorry you didn’t like it… Um, but the main PD asked us to change it. He said he came up with a good idea yesterday…”
“…It’s okay.”
But I was a professional.
Whining just because I didn’t like the mask’s concept would have been unbecoming.
With that mindset, I changed clothes with the staff’s help.
“Did you not go to the salon?”
“Oh. Yes. I decided not to go because I was prepared not to take off my mask today.”
“Ohhh… As expected! You really do seem like the type to do that.”
It definitely wasn’t because I didn’t want to get up at dawn and spend several hours on the labor of getting made up.
Anyway, after changing my shoes and clothes and finally placing the tiara delicately on my head, I became an imperial princess whose appearance made it more or less clear what picture the PD had in mind.
“With the tiara on, you look over 160 centimeters tall!”
The tiara was creating an optical illusion that made me look far taller than my actual height.
If things stayed like this, there was absolutely no chance of my identity being exposed because of my height.
It was a response that showed how a PD running a five-year-old show was truly on another level.
“Oh, it really does.”
Perhaps because of that, Rian, my first-round opponent, stopped in surprise when he saw me just before we went onstage.
“…Y-your height.”
“I-I’m normally this tall, you know?”
“Nooo, you’re not…”
In truth, it was already well past time for us to have figured out each other’s identities.
Masked Singer had contestants rehearse while wearing masks to hide their identities, but it was practically impossible not to figure things out during the process.
The show was structured that way.
I held out my fist to him as he stood there, looking somewhat tense and stiff.
“Let’s do our best onstage.”
“…Yeah.”
Rian lightly bumped his fist against mine.
I tilted my head at the sight of Rian somehow growing stiffer and stiffer.
* * *
The fourth performance of the first round.
In other words, not a single famous singer had appeared by the time they reached the final performance.
Aside from an actor from a drama that had become a hit recently, everyone else was someone nobody really knew.
In that situation, Yoo Ha-seong forcibly stifled the yawn rising from his mouth.
At last, they had reached the final performance of the first round.
If this performance was poor too, a peculiar fatigue washed over him at the thought of having to watch stages like this all the way through the final battle.
The first man to come out looked fairly solidly built and tall enough that he seemed like an idol at a glance.
Then Yoo Ha-seong heard the name of the woman who came out second and straightened up, focusing on the stage again.
“The Princess Who Conquers the World with Song? How dignified.”
“Yeah. She looks classy at a glance.”
The panelists around him indulged in such cheesy remarks.
But anyone who had been on the show for a long time knew.
When a contestant’s name contained the word ‘song’ or ‘music,’ it usually meant the production staff had gone out of their way to bring on someone talented.
His first impression of the princess was that she was petite.
Although the tiara had added to her height, her stature still clearly fell well short of 160 centimeters.
Without the tiara, he guessed she was probably somewhere in the low to mid-150-centimeter range.
Yet unlike her appearance, there was a strange composure in the way she stood onstage.
Compared to the other man beside her, she seemed skilled enough to make him certain she had some experience.
“A veteran? It’s hard to tell just by looking at her.”
That meant he had to hear her perform.
He watched the stage with eyes full of anticipation, wondering what kind of performance the contestant favored by the production staff would show them.
But as he watched, he couldn’t hide his baffled expression…
“I-is this really a couple’s performance?”
The man’s gestures and vocals were painfully awkward.
* * *
‘Why is he acting like that?’
Seo Si-yeon frowned as she watched Rian beside her clutching his microphone and sweating buckets.
During rehearsal, he had sung the couple song perfectly well while creating a pleasantly sweet mood, but the moment he got onstage, he had short-circuited.
In a duet performance, the chemistry between the two singers was the most important thing.
That was especially true for a couple song.
Of course, direct physical contact was something she disliked too.
Still, weren’t things like making eye contact or using hand gestures to create the right mood necessary?
On top of that, his vocals were shaking mercilessly, making it blatantly obvious that he couldn’t focus solely on the performance.
To anyone watching, it looked as if he were being forced to sing a couple song with his parents’ sworn enemy.
‘No, this means I’m definitely advancing, but…’
She couldn’t help feeling disappointed that her first performance after returning had gone completely to hell.
‘Why did he suddenly start acting like that?’
But she had no way of properly understanding what it meant from an adult man’s perspective to sing a sweet couple song with an elementary schoolgirl on a fairly high-rated program.
What if that elementary schoolgirl was even called the nation’s daughter and was destined to remain a superstar?
Rian, an obscure male idol, had no confidence that he could possibly handle that.
That was why Seo Si-yeon had no idea that Rian, who was receiving the full force of her displeased stare, had gone onstage thinking, ‘Being eliminated is a hundred times better than creating trouble by putting on a sweet mood.’
“The winner? 84 to 15! The Princess Who Conquers the World with Song advances to the next round!”
Even in victory, Seo Si-yeon couldn’t feel all that happy. She puffed out her cheeks and glared at Rian with a sullen expression.
Meanwhile, Rian pretended to look disappointed on the outside while secretly letting out a sigh of relief.