Chapter 88
Being young and pretty. Other than that, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the four of them. The girls, dressed in achromatic long-skirt outfits that gave off a school-uniform vibe, each took her place.
“The song is titled ‘Mirage.’ Then, we’ll begin.”
‘What the hell.’
Her cold tone, as if dousing them with cold water, left the fan feeling vaguely insulted.
The previous bands had come onstage, said a word or two, and at least smiled before starting, but these girls did not. The other audience members seemed to feel the same way, and the murmuring continued, but…
That mood did not last long. The audience could sense the tension among the bands watching the stage.
The song opened with the sound of a keyboard. It flowed languidly, dragging out its trailing notes. Perched atop it was a bass line that was blunt and low, and all the sweeter for it.
And then, the guitar.
The beginning was nothing special. Just the ordinary sound of a guitar ringing out. She wondered if there was something different about it, but she couldn't clearly identify what.
Outside the window,
The dusk grows distorted.
The low, murmured voice was about as loud as the instruments. No, if anything, the guitar seemed to be drowning it out. The audience felt a sense of incongruity at this atmosphere, the exact opposite of the bands that had performed so far. Some were already pressing their voting buttons.
‘Wait, what if there’s a twist later? Why are you voting already?’
She didn't like the song's atmosphere either, but shouldn't they at least listen to the whole thing before voting?
You beyond the horizon,
Are you really there?
But just as she began wondering, ‘Is there really something coming later? Or is this just a band with a bad case of hipster syndrome?’… a guitar suddenly rang out with ferocious intensity, as if jolting the audience out of their drowsy reverie.
But it quickly died down, as if nothing had happened.
…Maybe it hadn't been a guitar. Despite how violently the sound had rung out, the band onstage hadn't moved much at all.
Dandelions by the roadside,
Clouds drifting across the blue sky.
After that momentary disturbance, the drums began sounding little by little, like a heartbeat. The blunt sound seemed to pour from the speakers and flow along the ground. The drums trickled and splashed their way down until, before she knew it, they had reached her feet.
It was only when the guitar playing began again that she understood the phrase “a guitar cries.” When Han Seungyun, the guitarist from her beloved [2MAJOR], occasionally complained on Instagram Live, “I want to play guitar well. I want to make the guitar cry,” she had comforted her “bias” while thinking, Isn’t playing guitar just a matter of playing it?
‘So that’s what “crying” means.’ That was what she thought. If Seungyun really wanted to do something like that, he still had a long, long way to go, even if he kept playing guitar.
And before she knew it, the bass, piano, and drums began raising the tension, repeating a simple riff while gradually climbing in pitch.
The guitar layered over them was… still crying. No, it was no longer so much a cry as a roar—an enormous sound closer to a howl. The ferocious playing swept over the audience like an avalanche rushing down from a mountain ridge.
‘What the hell.’
She had thought that for the second time that day. But the meaning was different.
The first had been disbelief; now it was confusion. The guitar was no longer playing a melody. From the fingertips of the girl playing with her head slightly bowed came regular and irregular sounds, as if manufactured goods were being spat out by a conveyor belt.
And that sound, coming through the speakers, spread out and seized control of the space. It dominated and subdued. The venue, filled with sound and fury, was being controlled by a single guitar.
Yet even moments that seemed eternal eventually come to an end. The playing cut off abruptly, like someone unplugging a computer. Once the thing that had been less “music” than a “mass of sound” vanished, all that remained was a desolate stage plunged into silence.
In the silence, someone suddenly stood up and applauded. One became two, and two became eight.
Throwing it all away,
Why do I chase you?
Before the movement had fully spread, the guitar rang out again. Leaving the participating bands standing awkwardly before sitting down sheepishly, the guitarist murmured those words.
And so the stage came to an end.
She stood dazed for a moment, then looked around. She wondered if she alone felt this way. Fortunately, there were quite a few kindred spirits, and everyone seemed unsure how many points to enter on the voting device.
She felt the same, but entered a score anyway. She had no idea whether it was the right score or not.
* * *
The audience voting ended, and it was time for the mentors to make their selections.
“We listened to ‘Mirage.’ I’m not sure whether to say you broke the format, but it was an incredible song in many ways. Could you explain what kind of song it was?”
At one of the mentors’ questions, Suyeon tilted her head slightly. She seemed to be choosing her words, as if unsure what answer to give.
“The theme is utopia, right? I thought utopia could also be interpreted as ideal playing.”
“Yes.”
“What is ideal playing? After thinking about it in various ways, I came to a thought. Like blues or jazz, wouldn’t a random improvisation without a predetermined framework be the ideal? Because the path itself becomes the music.”
“…What?”
The mentor wore an expression that seemed to ask what she was talking about. The fan felt much the same. What on earth did that mean?
“So we just played improvisationally from beginning to end. Without deciding anything separately.”
“Wait, so the entire band played that way? You just jammed on this stage?”
One of the mentors could not hold back and cut in at Suyeon’s words. Suyeon answered with a faint smile.
“No, not exactly. I played the guitar without deciding anything in advance. We only decided things like when and how the keyboard, drums, and bass would play—certain overall aspects, like the rhythm. For example, the part where we stopped playing earlier—we decided things like that beforehand.”
The set fell silent, as if someone had poured cold water over it. Even someone in the audience murmuring, “Does that make sense?” sounded loud. The fan felt the same way.
‘They improvised that? Is that even possible?’
From the introductions earlier, she remembered hearing that Suyeon had only been playing guitar for about a year. If that was what one year of playing could do, why was Han Seungyun still fumbling around? He had played strangely earlier too. All he had going for him was his vocals.
“All right! That was an incredible performance. Have all the mentors made their picks?”
Normally, this would have been the time for more questions. But perhaps because of the silence hanging over the set, the MC cut in. The mentors nodded.
“Then first, let’s take a look at the scores given by the audience!”
From what she had heard, the audience score was an average score out of 100. It would not affect the current round, but it would have an important impact in the next round, so getting a high score was important… That was why the production staff had asked them not to vote carelessly.
“The audience score is… sixty-two… points? That’s, what it is!”
When the audience score was announced, she rubbed her eyes in disbelief. Sixty-two points? Had they really received the correct score? Even the MC seemed flustered and stumbled slightly over the words, while voices rose from the bands’ seats: “Why is it so low?”
“Sixty-two points… That’s currently the third-lowest audience score. Then what about the mentors’ picks?!”
The MC composed himself and called out cheerfully. With his cry, the mentors raised their placards. Five placards went up.
“I’ll pick Group Sound.”
“Our team will as well…”
“Us too.”
“We’ll pick them too.”
“Same for us.”
It was the exact opposite of the audience score. Yet the mentors looked calm, as if they had expected this.
“Five picks for Group Sound, following Mystica’s four! At this point, I’d actually like to ask the teams that didn’t pick Group Sound why they didn’t. Could you tell us?”
“Uh… first of all, it’s not that they played poorly or that the song was bad.”
Mentor Surak began speaking in response to the MC’s question. He looked slightly flustered as he rubbed the back of his neck, then continued.
“The audience just gave them 62 points. And the mentors gave them five picks. I think this might be a symbolic scene, in a way. There’s a bit of a discrepancy, you know? I suppose you could say I didn’t feel much mainstream appeal in that performance.”
“Oh~ So Group Sound is a band that can’t make money?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Why are you acting like you don’t know?”
Surak hurriedly waved his hands at the teasing jab from beside him.
“Besides, this is an extremely important audition and stage, and they still brought an improvised performance even though there’s a repechage. That shows an extremely strong ego, you could say. We don’t have the confidence to handle that team.”
“Thank you, we’ve heard you. I think that’s a fairly valid point. Even so, the other mentors all picked Group Sound… So now it’s time for the mentors! Tell us why Group Sound should pick you!!”
As the MC called out boldly, the mentors began appealing one after another for Group Sound to choose them. During the brief lull in the filming, she stealthily took out her camera and snapped photos of Han Seungyun and the members of [2MAJOR].
‘He’s handsome every time I see him.’
A few audience members gave her dirty looks because she had pulled a telephoto lens out in the cramped seats, but she ignored them and took a few more pictures. She had essentially come here to do this, so why should she care what other people thought?
After taking several more, she was about to put the camera away… when she looked at Ha Suyeon, who was watching the mentors from the stage.
Even after zooming in sharply with the telephoto lens, Suyeon’s skin and looks rivaled those of her bias, [2MAJOR]’s Han Seungyun. Her refined face, combined with her indifferent eyes, gave her a slightly cold impression.
‘Well, I’m just taking pictures while I’m here. Maybe I can sell the data.’
Repeating that to herself, she took picture after picture of the girls in Group Sound. For some reason, she felt as though she had taken even more of them than of Han Seungyun and [2MAJOR].
* * *
“Does 62 points make any sense? This is character assassination.”
“It can’t be helped.”
Myeongjeon scooped up a bite of affogato. The sweet ice cream spread through his mouth, bringing energy back to his exhausted body and mind. Playing improvisationally from beginning to end without a main melody had been grueling even for someone who had played guitar for a very long time—and it was something he had never done before.
Thinking that he would never have done it if he had known it would be this difficult, Myeongjeon put another bite of ice cream in his mouth.
“Hey, you ordered coffee and you’re only eating the ice cream. If that’s what you wanted, you should’ve just ordered ice cream.”
“Hey, Mr. Choi, don’t meddle in another person’s eating habits.”
“What are you talking about…” Iseo muttered, and a brief silence followed.
“But will it be all right?”
It was Hyuna’s voice that broke the silence. Just hearing it, one could tell how worried she was about what lay ahead. Myeongjeon took another bite of ice cream, then leaned his head back to look at the ceiling.
“Even if it isn’t all right, what can we do? It’s already happened.”
Getting picked had been good. He liked that they had received five picks, and it seemed their intention of putting on an overwhelming stage so the bands wouldn’t dare challenge them had worked as planned.
But because they had failed to capture the public’s interest, they had received an audience score of 62. They were 28th out of 30 bands, and by far the lowest-ranked band among those that had received picks.
“If we’d known a mission like this was coming, we wouldn’t have done it that way.”
‘The audience score has an important impact on Round 2.’ That had certainly been true. The Round 2 mission song they received because of that audience score was…
It was JUMPING! by [Vivid Orange], a song famous for its “ridiculous music video” and “addictive lyrics.” Nearly a decade old, it had become famous for its “engine dance”—not because the song was particularly good, but because the dancing in its music video was so funny.