Final Stage (3)
Before the main competition began in earnest, celebratory performances by invited singers heated the stage and stoked the crowd’s energy.
The audience waved their light sticks, briefly forgetting the tension of the coming main stage as they lost themselves in the festival atmosphere.
And the true peak of that festival was, without question, Velvet Night.
“Waaaaah—!!”
The moment the intro music hit, a roar that seemed ready to tear the roof off the venue erupted.
Led by center Ria, the members of Velvet Night took the stage and delivered their performance.
When Velvet Night finally stepped down, a brief, hush-like stillness settled over the hall.
The murmuring noise died away, and the dazzling lights plunged into sudden blackout.
Every person in the audience swallowed dryly and fixed their gaze on the center of the stage.
Everyone instinctively understood that the time for a real, no-holds-barred showdown to crown a single legend—not a festival—had arrived.
Boom—!
A heavy bass that shook the floor of the stage rolled out, and dozens of pin lights poured down toward the exact center.
Piercing through that blinding glare, a tuxedo-clad MC appeared with an easy, unhurried stride.
He slowly scanned the flushed, excited faces of the audience, then adjusted his grip on the microphone and called out with force.
“You’ve waited a long time. Tonight is the night the final protagonist of the miraculous voice that shook the entire nation of Korea will be decided!”
The MC’s voice rode the speakers and stabbed into every corner of the hall.
“We sincerely welcome you to the final stage of Voice of Legend!”
With his declaration, the electronic display lit up one after another with the faces of the final five legend candidates—including Han Jiyoung and Han Doyun.
“Waaaaah—!!”
After the wave of cheers swept through, the MC raised a hand and settled the hall.
“For the sake of fair judging, we will once again announce the scoring method for the final stage. Just as in the previous semi-finals, seventy percent from the judges’ scores and thirty percent from the on-site audience vote will be combined to determine the final winner. In addition—”
The MC raised his index finger and added,
“Judges may not assign scores to any participant they themselves produced.”
The brief explanation of the rules ended.
All that remained now was the stage itself.
“Alright then—everything is ready. Please enjoy the performances of the final five to your heart’s content!”
As the MC disappeared below the stage, a massive velvet curtain slowly rose.
A few seconds of silence.
Then, from the darkness, a dreamy synth sound began to drift out.
An intro laced with deep echo.
Kang Soyoung, seated in the judges’ section, narrowed her eyes and looked at Kim Taesung beside her.
“City pop?”
Kim Taesung simply nodded in silence instead of answering.
Kang Soyoung let out a disbelieving huff of laughter and asked in a low voice,
“Isn’t that a little too much personal bias?”
Her concern was entirely valid.
In a competition—especially a final round—high notes that could explode with raw vocal power or grand, sweeping ballads usually held the advantage.
The reason Jiyoung’s previous-round performance of The Way Back had been so overwhelming was precisely that desperate, searing vocal power.
City pop, by contrast, lived and died by its distinctive groove and atmosphere; as a genre for proving sheer vocal strength, it could easily feel a little flat.
“Jiyoung said she wanted to do it.”
At Kim Taesung’s short reply, Kang Soyoung wet her lips with a soft “hmm.”
Inside, the unease still refused to fade.
If we’re not careful, this could end up being neither here nor there…
Still—this was Han Jiyoung.
She might take even a genre like city pop and unravel it in a way that was anything but ordinary.
On the stage’s electronic display, afterimages of flashy neon signs and a forest of buildings embroidering the night city began to flow.
The stage itself had been stylishly dressed to match an eighties theme.
And at its very center, where the pin light poured down, stood Han Jiyoung.
She adjusted her grip on the microphone, then roughly loosened the necktie that had been tightly constricting her throat.
“Oh…”
In the frontmost row of the audience, a man who had come as part of a couple let out an involuntary exclamation.
A model-like, long-limbed height wrapped in a perfectly tailored suit jacket.
And below that, short pants that emphasized her coolly extended legs, paired with black stockings.
Crowned by high heels, her leg line was nothing short of unreal.
An overwhelming visual that would instinctively leave any man dazed.
Especially once she loosened the necktie, the large chest emphasized even further between the open shirt was devastating.
“Like what you see?”
The girlfriend sitting beside him slapped the man’s open mouth.
“Gack!”
The man yelped and snapped back to reality, and just as the girlfriend was about to fire off another sharp remark—
Jiyoung’s first verse began to flow.
And the girlfriend, without realizing it, found herself completely focused on the stage.
On stage, Han Jiyoung swayed her body rhythmically to the beat.
It was neither sharp group choreography nor fixed dance moves.
She simply stepped and lightly bounced her shoulders as the music led her—a dance that barely qualified as dancing—yet that leisurely vibe only made it more enjoyable to watch.
She was fully savoring the stage right now.
Not a forced, artificial smile, but the expression that only someone who truly feels happiness inside the music can wear.
Perhaps the energy was contagious.
Without anyone taking the lead, the audience began to bounce their shoulders to the beat exactly as Jiyoung did.
For a moment the empty space where Jiyoung’s voice paused was filled by a cheerful drum fill.
A short silence just before the tension exploded.
Stand with me~
Knocking on the door in the middle of the night
I cried for you not to disappear
That memory stands right before my eyes now
Stand with me~
Repeating those familiar words again
Jiyoung stretched her hand freely toward the audience and smiled brilliantly at the camera.
By now the stage background had filled with the headlight beams of cars racing through a deep-night cityscape.
To the low-lying bass line she lightly tapped her foot.
The lyrics were sorrowful, yet Jiyoung’s expression was freer than it had ever been.
When the camera closed in on her face, she locked eyes with the lens and made a small gesture as if lightly tapping it with her fingertip.
The chorus repeated once more.
Now the audience, without anyone telling them to, raised their hands above their heads and waved them left and right in time with the beat.
The brilliant smile Jiyoung wore as she drew out the final note left a deep afterimage in the hearts of everyone watching.
During the short interlude she lightly stepped to the rhythm and took in the stage with her eyes.
Where that gaze landed—at the very front row—sat Jeong Seoyeon.
Seoyeon could not tear her eyes from her daughter shining on the stage, as if determined not to miss even a single moment.
The sense of presence was incomparable to the last live performance she had barely managed to watch through a phone screen during the previous semi-finals.
…My god.
Seoyeon’s eyes grew hot.
The Jiyoung before her was more radiant than anyone else in the world.
She was savoring this stage, this air, and every gaze pouring toward her.
Seoyeon still remembered the day five years ago when Jiyoung had suddenly declared she would quit music.
Even then her daughter’s talent had felt too precious to waste, yet Seoyeon had neither pressed for reasons nor scolded her.
She was the only family Seoyeon had left, and more precious than anything else in the world.
Because Jiyoung had never been a prickly child who ran wild, Seoyeon had simply waited in silence for the day her daughter would rest a while and discover what she truly wanted to do.
She had come the long way around.
Even the years spent lost in games, even the hours spent mindlessly pouring coffee at the hospital café—perhaps all of it had been the quiet wing-beats preparing for this very flight.
Looking at her daughter’s face, which finally seemed truly happy as if she had found her rightful place, Seoyeon felt relief and quiet pride welling up from deep in her chest.
The interlude ended, and Jiyoung brought the microphone back to her lips.
It was the start of the second verse.
Jiyoung’s voice left its final lingering note and scattered into the air.
As the dreamy synth sound faded out, silence claimed the stage for a brief moment.
Then applause that seemed ready to tear the studio apart erupted.
Jiyoung wiped away the brilliant smile she had worn on stage and returned to her usual indifferent expression.
She brushed the beads of sweat from her forehead, gave a light bow toward the audience, and stepped down from the stage.
In contrast, the judges’ section was wrapped in silence.
The four judges kept their poker faces as carefully as possible, conscious of the broadcast cameras, and rested their hands on the tablet PCs in front of them.
Because the final scores would only be locked after they had watched all five performances, the numbers they entered now were merely a guideline—yet their fingers moved with greater care than ever before.
Seo Geonwoo pressed the tip of his pen to his lips and sank into deep thought; Kang Soyoung repeatedly squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again as if trying to erase the afterimage of the stage she had just witnessed.
Kim Taesung, who had no authority to score the participant he himself had produced, simply savored the afterglow of the performance.
He lowered his head to hide his reddened eyes and silently wiped away tears.
The judges’ minds were tangled with complicated thoughts, yet the conclusion ringing from the deepest part of their hearts was only one:
As expected, Han Jiyoung is different.
When she first appeared on Voice of Legend, the public had half-doubted her—an unknown singer who had luckily reverse-trended, or a one-hit wonder who would flash and vanish.
But through three rounds, and now this final stage, she had proven it beyond any doubt.
Her success had never been a coincidence.