Chapter 185: Impossible to Hide
Chapter 185: Impossible to Hide
After finishing the Round 1 stage, I returned to the waiting room.
It was nice that they did not make contestants do separate talent-show segments here.
If this had been a Korean variety show, they would have made me perform all sorts of side acts in the middle of the stage segments.
The old days of wearing that Yellow Dog mask and acting cute flashed past like a nightmare.
I liked it all the more because it was an environment where I could focus solely on singing.
That aside.
The reaction had been pretty good.
Not just the panelists, but even the audience had been going wild. I could feel it vividly even through the mask.
Changing the Round 1 song really had been the right move.
The bold choice of handling a male-female duet all by myself.
Because of that, the Primacy Effect had probably hit very strongly.
The human brain remembered information it received first as far more important than information received later.
Now, even if I made a slight mistake in Round 2 or Round 3, the audience would already be highly likely to evaluate me positively because of that initial shock planted in their minds.
Of course, I had absolutely no intention of making a mistake.
Unlike the Korean version of Mystery Singer, I was aiming to win outright here.
The American version used a seasonal format, so even if you won, your identity would be revealed right away.
Meaning there was no need to keep wearing a mask for weeks just to defend the King title.
If I survived to the end, seized the winner’s trophy, and then revealed my face amid expectation and curiosity...
That would leave a powerful impact on the American public.
It was a scenario Michael would probably be quite pleased with too.
Round 2 had begun, but it would still be a while before my turn.
I leaned back into the sofa and was about to close my eyes for a moment when I suddenly felt something off.
...Why is no one here?
The waiting room was empty.
Team Leader Jo Sehun, manager Jeong Daeyeop, and everyone else.
It should have been noisy.
Just as I was glancing around in confusion—
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you—”
The team members sprang out from all directions where they had been hiding.
Team Leader Jo Sehun came over holding a cake and smiling brightly.
“Happy birthday, our dear Sunho—happy birthday to you—”
Ah.
So today was my birthday.
I had been living so busily that my sense of dates had dulled, and I had completely forgotten.
“The candles are melting! Hurry up and blow them out!”
“No! Your wish! Make a wish first, then blow them out!”
I stared at the flickering candlelight and thought for a moment.
What should I wish for?
Winning Mystery Singer right now?
Or the film becoming a hit?
Hmm, or...
After a short moment of thought, I repeated one sentence to myself in my heart.
Then I opened my eyes and blew out the candles strongly.
Fwooo—
“Waaaaah!”
“Happy birthday! Sunho, Sunho!”
It was my first birthday in a foreign country.
It did not feel bad.
No, to be honest, it was a little moving.
Because I really had not been thinking about it at all.
“So what did you wish for?”
“...That’s a secret.”
“Aw, that’s cheap.”
“They say wishes don’t come true if you say them out loud.”
It was a bit too embarrassing and awkward to say aloud.
I just shrugged and laughed it off.
That was when it happened.
A status window rose before my eyes.
Ding!
【Ripple Effect Achievement Accomplished!】
【Goal Achieved: Ripple Effect 60 reached!】
【Reward Granted: Stat Point +1】
What?
Why had Ripple Effect suddenly gone up?
As I blinked at the sudden notification, Team Leader Jo Sehun checked his phone and said, “Korea’s thirteen hours ahead, so by now the news about Sunho’s donation must have spread all over Korea.”
The donation project together with the fans.
It seemed that once the press release had gone out, it drove Ripple Effect upward.
I took the phone Team Leader Jo Sehun handed me and scrolled down.
The main page of the portal site was plastered with articles about me.
[Ryu Sunho and fandom “Seonhosasang” donate a total of 1 billion won for his birthday... “Unprecedented positive influence”]
[Donations instead of tribute gifts... The mature fan culture shown by Ryu Sunho’s fandom]
[Ryu Sunho answers fans’ fundraising with a matching grant... A heartwarming birthday]
The comment reactions were very good too.
More than the simple fact that a large donation had been made, people were responding positively to the story my fans and I had created together.
“Wow... it’s amazing enough that the fans raised 500 million won, but then Ryu Sunho adding the same 500 million himself to make it 1 billion is seriously legendary...”
“Usually when it’s a celebrity’s birthday, aren’t people busy with luxury tribute gifts and proof shots? lol Here they’re posting donation certificates instead.”
“This is way cooler than bragging about luxury goods all day long.”
“This is what real positive influence looks like. Honestly, I’ve always hated watching celebrities show off their money, but I admit this.”
“‘Like actor, like fans’ really fits here. In a positive way.”
“After seeing this, I went and donated a small amount too.”
“I’m always seeing depressing and negative news, so this kind of news made me feel good first thing in the morning.”
While I looked at the comments with satisfaction, another new notification popped up on the status window.
Ding!
【A new Aura is being formed.】
【Aura Formed: LV.6 Aura That Cannot Be Hidden】
【Your presence cannot be concealed by anything】
【Effect: Even if your face is covered, your aura radiates from your silhouette】
【Additional Effect: You can use all acquired Auras】
...Aura That Cannot Be Hidden?
An aura had appeared whose name alone was anything but ordinary.
Round 2 had started, but the eyes of James Rogers, seated at the panel desk, held no vitality.
The reason was simple.
The stages were too dull.
There’s no stimulation. No stimulation at all.
Of course, it was not that the other contestants lacked skill.
Since they had made it through Round 1, they were all showing high-level singing ability.
But compared to the shocking twist Flower Deer had shown in Round 1—
that powerful performance crossing back and forth between male and female voices—
everything else felt bland as plain water.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
He gave only mechanical, soulless applause.
His head was filled with thoughts of Flower Deer.
When would that contestant come out?
What kind of stage would they show in the next round?
Just as his anticipation kept building—
finally.
The host’s introduction rang out.
“Our next contestant! The mysterious powerhouse who brought shock to Round 1! It’s Flower Deer!”
Flower Deer walked out of the darkness.
At that moment—
Waaaaaahhh!!
A deafening roar of cheers exploded from the audience.
Fervor bordering on worship.
But then—
“...Huh?”
Jenny, the actress seated at the panel desk, rubbed her eyes and nudged the person beside her.
“I feel like Flower Deer suddenly has a halo around them.”
“So I wasn’t the only one? For a second, I thought there was something wrong with my eyes.”
“They didn’t put a separate spotlight on them, right?”
“There’s no way they’d bias it that much. That would go against the whole point of the show.”
Watching the murmuring panelists, James Rogers gave a short laugh.
He interpreted the phenomenon through his own logic.
“It’s the Halo Effect. Everyone got their hearts stolen after seeing the Round 1 stage. When someone sings unbelievably well, their face starts looking handsome too.”
That was true to some extent.
But the reason the reaction at the venue was exploding so strongly was not only because of that.
【Aura Activated: LV.6 Aura That Cannot Be Hidden】
【Effect: LV.2 Aura of Shining Divinity is layered on top.】
【It draws people’s attention with an effect that makes it seem as though light surrounds you regardless of the lighting.】
The new aura Flower Deer had just acquired was overtaking the studio.
But of course no one could possibly know that.
So James Rogers merely stared at the stage with eyes full of anticipation.
“All right, let’s see how you’re going to make my heart race this time...”
A brief silence passed.
Then the intro to the song Ryu Sunho had selected began to play.
Ding— ding— ding— ding—
James Rogers’s brows twitched.
A very simple opening, yet one no one in the world could fail to recognize.
“...Oh my God.”
“...They’re doing this song?”
“...If you handle this clumsily, fans of the original will rip you apart.”
The audience stirred.
And understandably so, because this song was practically taboo on competition stages.
The original singer’s aura was so overwhelming that unless you did it extremely well, it was hard even to break even with a performance of it.
But Ryu Sunho took the microphone without hesitation.
—Is this a shadow of me
A sweet, dreamy soft voice scattered into the air.
It was another kind of soft voice, completely different from the heavy voice shown in Round 1.
But this was merely a taste.
If Round 1 had shown a transition of voices according to gender, then Round 2 was going to show a transition of voices according to genre.
To begin with, this song itself had a unique composition made by mixing completely different genres together.
The short ballad section ended, and the moment the tempo of the song changed—
Ryu Sunho’s voice changed one hundred and eighty degrees.
—Run away, run away!
The instant it entered the opera section, a thin, sharp voice mixed with falsetto and a heavy voice went back and forth like ping-pong.
The low and high registers crossed one after another without rest, creating the illusion that he was layering harmony by himself.
“What the...”
A curse escaped James Rogers’s lips on its own.
But the shock did not stop there.
Bang!
A fierce electric guitar riff burst out, and the moment the song shifted into the hard rock section—
—You can chain me to the truth—!
The person who had been singing opera just moments ago had vanished without a trace, replaced by shouted vocals mixed with rough scratch.
“Yeah! That’s it!”
“This is real rock!”
“That clears out my chest!”
“I was worried it wouldn’t explode here!”
From ballad to opera, then to hard rock.
Genres and voices jumping wildly inside a single song.
The audience went mad over that irregular structure.
The panel desk was no different.
And James Rogers in particular stared at the stage with enraptured eyes.
Setting aside the sheer width of the vocal range, the way the vocalization and emotional line change with each genre is so perfect it’s chilling...
This had gone beyond singing skill alone.
It was in the realm of acting ability and expressive power.
The words insane talent came naturally to mind.
Like a man possessed, James Rogers murmured, “...Just how many voices does this person even have?”
The result was obvious.
Flower Deer won by an even more overwhelming margin of votes than in Round 1.
To me, it felt like I sang the Round 1 song more perfectly than the Round 2 one.
But the result was the opposite.
Which meant...
It was proof that the atmosphere at the venue had completely tipped over.
Now I had to ride this momentum and drive in the final nail in the championship round.
Round 1 and Round 2 were about hammering them with powerful, heavy songs.
At this point, the stages had been closer to a vocal feat exhibition than to ordinary singing.
So Round 3 needed to ease up a little.
If I sang nothing but heavy songs throughout Round 3, no matter how good they sounded, the audience could still end up feeling fatigued.
This was not a concert where they came just to hear me sing.
The judges and audience had already been watching more than ten performances in a row and were bound to be tired.
Sitting glued to their seats and doing nothing but admiring the whole time was exhausting too, wasn’t it?
That was why I had selected a song with a different atmosphere for Round 3.
Songs aren’t listened to only with the ears. The eyes can steal from them too.
Borrowing what Quentin had said during the script reading, I intended to steal both eyes and ears at once.
“And now, the Round 3 stage that will decide the winner!”
I stood on the final stage.
The audience looked as though they were wondering what kind of performance I would show this time.
I had no intention of betraying that expectation.
Tak—
As soon as I gave the signal, a lively bass riff and funky guitar sound filled the studio.
“Huh?”
“Isn’t this rhythm a dance song?”
“This would feel dull if they just stood still and sang it.”
“...Wait, no way? Are they going to dance too?”
The doubt did not last long.