Chapter 93
“No! Rian, did you fight that princess?”
“Ahahaha… W-well, it wasn’t exactly like that.”
“If it wasn’t, why are you being so guarded?”
In the first round, the celebrity judges didn’t come anywhere close to figuring out my identity.
Honestly, I thought I might be exposed in the first round, but it seemed harder than expected for them to think of Seo Si-yeon.
I stared blankly at Rian, who had removed his mask and revealed his identity in the waiting room, getting gleefully roasted by the judges.
My second-round opponent had been decided: ‘The Flapping Honey Badger.’
Looking at the stage, he was a typical male ballad vocalist.
His skills seemed quite good, and his voice was familiar, so it was obvious at a glance that he was fairly famous.
“But why is the honey badger flapping? Does it have wings?”
I wondered about it, but it wasn’t important enough to dwell on, so I erased it from my mind.
As I’d said before, my second-round song was an idol song with a cute, aegyo-heavy feel.
It wasn’t particularly suitable for showing off how much my vocals had improved, and my opponent was quite skilled as well, so it was difficult to guarantee victory.
Still, I couldn’t change the mission song now, so my priority was to do my best.
In the earlier match, a female contestant who led with powerful vocals had advanced.
She wasn’t trying to hide her identity at all, either.
‘Saki unnie… she came to promote.’
Her drama was airing any day now, after all.
In the past, Saki had objectively been better than me.
But things were a little different now.
More than a year had passed since my voice change ended, and after refining my singing technique and vocal production, I wouldn’t be outdone by Saki.
“For now, let’s make absolutely sure we win the second round.”
“Ms. Si-yeon! We’re ready for you.”
“Yeees.”
'But I can win this, right?’
Thinking that, I slowly headed toward the stage.
* * *
The first stage of the second match in the second round.
The Flapping Honey Badger’s performance was quite excellent.
The celebrity judges had figured out long ago that the person inside was a famous Korean ballad singer.
It was a performance exactly on the level of his reputation.
“I can’t even imagine what song she’ll sing.”
“Me neither.”
“Will she do another song with lots of aegyo?”
In contrast, the princess’s identity remained a complete mystery.
She was somewhere in the mid-150-centimeter range.
Judging by the way she sang, she was definitely a singer.
Naturally, there were several people who fit that description.
But no matter how carefully they listened, her voice was clearly different from theirs.
Yet it was equally clear that she sang too well not to be a singer.
Yoo Ha-seong subtly asked the junior beside him.
“Hey. Anyone come to mind?”
The junior had once been an idol who had dominated Korea
and had broader musical knowledge than Yoo Ha-seong did.
“…I really don’t know. There isn’t even anyone similar.”
If even he didn’t know, then what could he do?
At least identifying her from her vocal qualities didn’t seem easy.
“This round, I’ll have to pay close attention to her behavior and gestures.”
It was a method frequently used by this nonmusician, who had exposed the identities of countless contestants up to now.
He would infer the answer from hand gestures or body shape and take a shot at it.
It had a better hit rate than one might expect.
The studio darkened.
Then a petite girl walked down the corridor through the darkness.
She hadn’t been able to put on a good stage in the first round because she had been swept along by the person beside her, but what would the second round be like?
“Wow. I’m looking forward to this.”
The intro began amid the judges’ mechanical reactions.
“Hmm?”
Naturally, the celebrities seated on the panel were all somewhat older and highly interested in the Korean music scene.
That was why more than half of them could identify the song from its intro.
It was a soft, dreamy intro characteristic of idol songs from the early 2010s.
Then the first line emerged.
-The flower called an emotion that blooms in an instant
“If she knows this song, is she a little older?”
“Hyung, it’s from the early 2010s. Why are you calling her old?”
It wasn’t fundamentally a song with difficult high notes or challenging breath control, but the original’s distinctive dreamy atmosphere was so strong that covers had a hard time making it their own.
However, this stage was a little different.
Seo Si-yeon’s vocal tone was inherently quite beautiful.
A childlike, refreshing, and clear voice.
And high notes in the mid-to-upper range of the third octave coming from that voice.
Her strengths had been reinforced after going through her voice change, and she had been skilled at putting emotion into her voice since her Singer Star days.
Having continued to train during her hiatus and become adept at changing her singing technique, Seo Si-yeon showed off that potential.
The rhythm flowed gently at the beginning.
There wasn’t much of an explosive moment even in the middle.
However, her voice, which made listeners smile, and the careful, tentative steps she took were more than enough to enhance the mood of the song.
“…Isn’t she younger than we thought?”
“At least in her early twenties. Definitely not in her thirties.”
To the judges, who were of a certain age, the hand gestures and footwork she used onstage were so cute that she absolutely couldn’t be very old.
She might not have realized it herself, but her behavior already conveyed far more childlikeness than maturity.
Considering that the opposite had been true during Singer Star, it was quite a significant change.
However, this performance only made the judges even more puzzled about the princess’s identity.
A female singer shorter than 160 centimeters who could sing that well and give off such a cute vibe?
“Who on earth is she?”
Just as everyone was thinking that,
Yoo Ha-seong asked the princess a question.
“How many centimeters of insoles are you wearing?”
* * *
The first thing that occurred to me when I heard the question about insoles was this.
‘Is this a leak?’
How had he figured it out?
The answer came immediately.
“Your walk was definitely awkward. Unless you’re wearing heels or height-boosting shoes… there’s no way you’d walk like that.”
And then.
“What’s more, when you walked forward during the middle of the performance earlier, I caught a glimpse of the bottom of your shoe, okay? There was a heel there. I saw it!”
“Hyung, you must have really good eyesight.”
“Huh? Seriously? Even though you’re so short right now…”
“If you were any shorter… wouldn’t you be a minor?”
Everyone questioned Ha-seong’s deduction.
If she were any shorter, she would be under 150 centimeters, and no one at all came to mind from that range.
While I could feel everyone’s gaze on me even through the mask, I opened my mouth.
“…Ah, I’m not, thoughhh…?”
Even I could hear how conspicuously awkward the way I had said it sounded, and Yoo Ha-seong clapped his hands and shouted.
“I knew it! Wow. You’re not much of an actress!”
“I am!”
I only yelled sharply then, but the train had already left the station.
The judges began reasoning under the assumption that I was wearing height-boosting shoes, and it didn’t take long for them to reach an answer.
“Seo Si-yeon. You’re Seo Si-yeon, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
I answered that way, but several of them already seemed almost certain.
Some were still unsure, but after a few rounds, it wouldn’t be long before they became certain.
‘Well, I might as well get found out.’
That was the kind of program it was.
You had to let them figure out your identity to some extent if you wanted to make it entertaining.
It wasn’t as if I had been identified the moment I appeared, and getting found out in the second round was perfectly acceptable.
Still, I honestly did have my sights set fairly firmly on the crown, so even though my identity had been exposed, I considered the announcement of the third-round result important as well.
Then the identity-guessing time ended, and the voting began.
“The person heading to the next round is…! By a vote of 53 to 46, the Princess Who Conquers the World with Song advances to the third round!”
Fortunately, I won, though the margin was a little close.
The identity of my opponent, revealed next, was the ballad singer I had expected, someone widely regarded as quite skilled.
‘It’s encouraging that I won even though it isn’t my main genre.’
It couldn’t be an absolute yardstick, but defeating a ballad singer recognized for his skill in the Korean music industry meant that my own abilities had risen beyond that level.
And then came the third round.
I was matched against Saki of FYG.
* * *
A room at the highest point of the Masked Singer filming venue.
Inside, Joo Jin-woo sat in a throne-like chair, trembling as he watched Seo Si-yeon.
‘No way, that’s Seo Si-yeon?’
The little squirt he hadn’t seen in nearly a year.
First, he was shocked to see that, even with height-boosting insoles, she now had a figure that looked almost like an adult woman’s.
Second, he was startled by how much her vocal tone and skills had changed.
Her voice was similar to the one she had possessed in the past, but it was more mature now that its childlike timbre had disappeared.
Her vocal skills had improved so much that comparing them to two years ago felt almost insulting.
“It was absolutely a good thing I prepared in earnest for today’s stage.”
Since he was about to leave the show and had planned to hand over the crown this time, Joo Jin-woo had suddenly changed his mind and prepared seriously through this stage.
A rematch of the Singer Star final.
This choice was, for him personally as well,
the best possible choice for generating buzz.