Barn of Dreams
Han Doyun held out a pair of high-fidelity monitoring headphones connected to his phone.
"I've been working on this for a while, but this is the first time I'm letting anyone hear it, so I'm a little nervous. The title is Barn of Dreams."
I took the headphones without a word and slipped them over my ears.
Ding—.
I quietly followed the flow of the music. After the verse, the buildup began, and then a dangerously addictive chorus exploded out.
Holy Mama Mama Papa
I looked into my mirror
I lived so hard, but everything's empty now
Run Away gain gain gain
and gain gain — guess it's already too late
Even if I start all over
Who's gonna take me in? Hey Hey Hey —
Without realizing it, my head started bobbing along to the rhythm.
I didn't take the headphones off until the song had ended and the fade-out had completely died away. Only after the last lingering note vanished did I slowly open my eyes.
"Doyun-ssi. You wrote this yourself, right?"
"Yes. Lyrics and music, all me…"
I let a beat of silence hang, then allowed the faintest smile to touch my lips.
"It's dangerous."
"Huh? Th-that bad?"
Doyun's shoulders visibly slumped.
"No. Dangerous for the competition. I honestly think you could take this straight onto the stage as is."
At my assessment, his eyes lost their focus and wavered.
"R-really? It's really okay?"
"Yes, really. It's good. I think you could put it on stage right now without changing a thing."
Only then did a look of pure relief wash over Han Doyun's face.
Behind him I saw Na Eun and Yoo Sia stretch their necks out like meerkats, watching us closely.
Han Doyun gave a small laugh and turned to them.
"Would you two like to hear it as well?"
"Yes! I'm so curious!"
"…Well, if you're offering."
They took turns listening to the track.
In the meantime Han Doyun bowed his head to me.
"Thank you for the feedback, Jiyoung-ssi. Honestly, even while I was writing it I couldn't feel sure, so I was really torn."
"You made this recently, didn't you?"
At my question Doyun's eyes widened slightly in surprise.
"Yes, that's right. I worked on it while keeping in mind the vocal issues you pointed out last time. Once I cleaned up my breath support and opened the nasal resonance, the message I was trying to deliver came through so much cleaner."
My ear hadn't been wrong after all.
Feeling a little proud of him, I gave Doyun a solid thumbs-up.
Just then Na Eun finished the song, yanked the headphones off, and started bouncing on her feet.
"Wow! The song is seriously good?! Oppa, this is going to be a huge hit! The melody keeps looping in my head!"
"I've never listened to country music before, but this is way more polished than I expected."
Sia delivered the comment with her usual cool detachment, then startled when her eyes met Doyun's and hastily added,
"…sir."
"Thank you. Thanks to all of you I feel a lot more confident. I'm going to ride this momentum and jump straight into practice!"
Han Doyun strode into his private soundproof booth with renewed energy.
Everyone's working hard.
Na Eun and Sia seemed to feel the same spark; they scattered to find their own practice rooms.
Night deepened, and the pension filled with the sounds of ingredients being prepped and bursts of laughter.
The kitchen was so spacious you could have filmed an entire cooking competition show in it without trouble.
The contestants divided the work, simmering stews and grilling meat.
Rivals or not, sweating side by side to put a meal on the table created a strange sense of camaraderie.
After the lavish dinner, someone suddenly shouted,
"Tonight's the night Voice of Legend episode 2 airs!"
"Oh right! We have to watch!"
All twenty contestants drifted as if entranced toward the living room with the giant TV.
Even the wide sofas weren't enough; people sat on floor cushions, every gaze locked on the screen.
Finally the broadcast began.
As if the teaser for episode 1 hadn't been bait, the first ten-plus minutes of episode 2 were devoted entirely to me.
On screen I sat in the interview room answering questions.
"Whoa… Jiyoung-ssi, the camera loves you."
"Look at that vibe. She's not playing around."
The contestants sitting right beside me murmured among themselves.
Knowing full well I was right there made the comments so embarrassing that I could only fidget with my toes inside my socks.
The power of editing was terrifying.
Especially the moment I stepped onto the stage and locked eyes with CEO Kim Taesung in the judges' seats.
The production team had captured that split-second of silence as if it were two sworn enemies meeting in the middle of a battlefield.
Na Eun poked my arm and whispered,
"Unnie, what were you thinking right then?"
"Nothing much."
"Come on, you were secretly thrilled, right?"
"…Maybe a little."
Then the me on screen plucked the guitar strings.
The moment the rearranged version of Velvet Night's Good Night began to play, the living room fell as quiet as if someone had doused it in cold water.
When the song ended and the screen faded to black, gasps of admiration erupted from every corner of the room.
"Wow… that arrangement is insane."
"Still sounds amazing on a second listen."
"You can do that with just one guitar? That's actually crazy."
All eyes swung back to me.
The broadcast moved on to the announcement of the Round 2 mission — Reinterpretation of an Era.
Choosing teammates, receiving song assignments, the records of those days spent clutching our heads in frantic thought.
"Wow, that was only last week? Time really flies."
"Right? I still get chills thinking they were going to eliminate all of us in Round 2…"
The contestants added their own commentary while watching their tense faces on screen.
"Ah! There I am! Why does my face look so puffy!"
"Hey, you're lucky. I look like I was about to cry."
Laughter at one another's ruined appearances filled the living room.
The raw making-of footage unique to reality shows was steadily breaking down the walls between contestants.
Practice-room squabbles, scenes of people staying up all night memorizing lyrics — all of it was cross-edited, building the narrative of Round 2.
Then the teaser promising next week began.
Against a hard-driving beat, each group's stage flashed by in split-second cuts.
Vocalists belting spectacular high notes, trainees slicing through sharp choreography, and the judges' razor-sharp comments that controlled the tension at the center of it all.
At the end of the storm of footage, the screen froze for a single heartbeat.
And the stage everyone has been waiting for.
With the subtitle came the image of me standing under crimson lights in a black qipao.
Every contestant gathered in the living room stopped breathing at the same instant.
On screen I held a fan at a slant, piercing the camera lens with a seductive gaze.
After that fleeting silence the screen went black with the words:
Coming Next Week
"Waaaaah—!!!"
"Insane! Jiyoung-ssi, what was that look just now?!"
"A qipao? For real? Next week's ratings are going to explode!"
The living room erupted into even louder chaos than before.
…I want to die.
The editing team were definitely perverts.
Out of all those countless cuts, they had to pick the single most mortifying moment and slam it into the end of the teaser.
"Jiyoung-ssi, lift your head! It looked really pretty, okay?"
The more praise poured over me, the hotter the tips of my ears burned. My toes curled up inside my socks again.
If I stayed any longer my face was going to explode.
"I-I'm heading up first! Good night, everyone!"
I sprang off the sofa like a coiled spring.
"Hey! She's running away, running away!"
"Jiyoung-ssi must be embarrassed! Where did that stage expression go!"
"Seriously, she acts all deadly on stage and then turns into a total mess in real life?"
Leaving the living room roaring with laughter behind me, I practically sprinted up the stairs.
Bang—!
Only after I shut myself inside my room did a long sigh of relief escape me.
Right. That had been a kind of performance.
Stage lighting, a singer's gestures, even a single glance — everything had to come together to complete one melody.
Dance was simply another tool that made the music richer. I understood that with my head, and I thought I'd gotten used to it, but…
"…Even so, that was a bit much."
I flopped face-down onto the bed and buried my face in the pillow.
Watching the footage alone for monitoring and watching it on TV with everyone else in the living room were completely different things.
The me on screen was so alluring she felt almost unfamiliar even to myself, and the fact that she was me was unbearably awkward.
Just then a small red light blinking in the corner of the ceiling caught my eye.
Right. They said cameras run in the dorms too.
Except for the bathroom and changing rooms, there was no such thing as perfect privacy here.
The thought that even the way I was thrashing around on the bed right now might end up on air later sent a chill down my spine.
"…This won't do. Time for some mental management."
I sat up and dug a portable game console out of the depths of my suitcase. I needed peace of mind and body.
Focusing on the screen, I started working the buttons. Whether the dorm camera was filming me or not, right now taking down the boss was the more urgent problem.
A little later Yoo Sia, who had clearly been thoroughly teased downstairs, opened the door and came in.
"Already sleeping?"
Without lifting my head I answered,
"Not sleeping. Playing a game, so don't talk to me."
"You can actually focus on a game in this situation? SNS is going crazy right now."
Yoo Sia came over to the side of the bed and shoved her phone at me, but I stubbornly kept staring at the console.
"Ria from Velvet Night posted a screenshot of Unnie singing on her Instagram story."
"…What?"
My hands finally stopped.
"She even put heart emojis on it."
Why was she doing things no one asked her to do?
A sigh escaped me on its own.