Don't Lower the Key
Younghoon's face went slack with disbelief at the kid's sheer nerve.
Did she miss it...?
It happened all the time. Contestants worn out from waiting would wander off to a nearby café, or duck into their cars to rest, and come back having missed the previous performances entirely. That had to be it. He was sure of it.
"Excuse me, miss."
"Yep?"
"You know the singer Han Jisu, right?"
"Yeah. I know her."
"Han Jisu just performed, and she set an all-time high score."
"Yeah. I saw it."
"......"
She saw it...?
And she still wanted to go on after that? That was basically lighting her ten-thousand-won entry fee on fire. The money wasn't much, fine — but if you looked at the chat right now, Han Jisu had jacked everyone's standards through the roof. Eyes and ears both.
Hmm...?
Looking closer, her looks weren't bad. Cute and round-faced — actually pretty adorable. The kind of face that would clean up with the simps if she ever went live.
"Hey, do you... happen to do YouTube?"
"Huh!? How'd you know!? Wait — don't tell me Younghoon-nim is one of my subscribers!?"
He was, of course, not one of her three hundred and forty-nine subscribers. Younghoon snorted a little laugh and gave a small nod.
"Ah, I see. So you entered to promote your YouTube channel, then?"
He fully expected her to nod along and ask him to plug it.
"Nope. I'm here for the prize money."
"...Sorry? The prize money?"
"Yep. If I take first today, I really get two million won, right?"
"That's... right. But..."
She was so brazen the words just died in his throat. She had clearly said she'd heard Han Jisu sing.
Where is this confidence coming from?
"Younghoon-nim. So when do I go up on stage?"
"Ah... right now. Let's go."
Younghoon took the mic again and climbed back onto the stage. Then, in a voice so flat it carried not a shred of anticipation, he delivered his spiel.
"Everyone, we've now come down to our very last contestant. Let's welcome our final performer to the stage. Contestant, please come on up."
Hayoung, looking bashful, kept her head ducked as she bounced up onto the stage in little hops.
"Please introduce yourself to the camera."
"Hello. I'm Yoon Hayoung, from Gangwon-do. Please take good care of me."
"Home's in Gangwon-do? So what brings you to Seoul...?"
"I officially got accepted as a girl group trainee at Wooju Entertainment today. Heheh."
The crowd around the stage stirred at once.
"Wow, that's really impressive at your age. Work hard — I'll be rooting for you to debut."
"Thank you."
"Once you debut, you'll come back on our channel, right?"
"Ah, of course. Heheh."
It had been nothing but courtesy, of course. The same light small talk he'd given every other contestant.
"All right then — let's meet the stage of our final contestant of the day, Yoon Hayoung! And the song you've prepared is...?"
"The song I'm singing is Farewell Heaven."
"What!?"
Younghoon's startled face hit the jumbotron, and the whole venue dissolved into laughter. There was a reason for that.
Farewell Heaven was the song that had made legendary female rock vocalist Shin Woo-ri a phenomenon. Released some twenty years ago, it had swept the charts for weeks and been wildly loved across the country.
But thanks to its relentless gauntlet of high notes, not a single person had ever covered it perfectly. This was not a song a regular person who "sang a little" could touch. A generational banger — and, at the same time, a song from hell.
Even Shin Woo-ri herself transposed it down these days. A song so brutal the original artist admitted it was a hell track. And this kid wanted to sing that?
A full-scale disaster one minute from now sketched itself out in Younghoon's head. But if he dropped the seriousness and just played it for comedy? If he could gift thirty thousand viewers a massive laugh? From a YouTuber's standpoint, that was an automatic yes. He'd already pulled a legendary clip from Han Jisu's stage, so the pressure on views was gone.
"Farewell Heaven, huh... How many keys should I take it down?"
A smile slid across Younghoon's mouth. If she sang the original as written, a voice crack was a mathematical certainty. Even transposed, the breath control made it nearly impossible to finish — and she wanted it untouched. Guaranteed comedy gold. A legendary video of a completely different kind from Han Jisu's might be about to drop.
"All right then! Our final contestant — Yoon Hayoung, joining us from Gangwon-do — take it away!"
A honeyed intro unfurled through the speakers, and Yoon Hayoung quietly closed both eyes.
Farewell Heaven...?
Of all the songs Hayoung could have picked. A disbelieving laugh escaped me. Even for a fearless, swaggering Korean high schooler, this was insane. I had clearly told her to pick something with a reasonably high range. I had never told her to take on a hell song like this...
Even while the accompaniment rolled, the crowd stayed cold. The live chat on the jumbotron was already wallpapered in jeers, worry, and mockery aimed straight at Hayoung.
I was worried about Hayoung. That much was true. But a sliver of what if still sat in my chest. If the voice she'd shown in the president's office this morning was real — if that deep, lingering shock hadn't been a fluke...
As the intro wound down, Hayoung gently opened the eyes she'd been holding shut. With a calm, serious face, she tossed out the first phrase like it weighed nothing at all.
Even the sad memories you left me...
My eyes snapped wide open.
A mid-low register, quiet and deep, settled over everything. Every sound that had been filling the air vanished like a lie. Behind the stage, the host who'd been working so hard not to laugh went stone-faced. Every person on site held their breath and locked onto Hayoung's voice. Even the chat, which had been scrolling too fast to read, seemed to freeze into silence.
As the real opening of the first verse drew closer, Hayoung gently opened her eyes again and locked both hands around the microphone.
Just one look in your eyes—!! Whoa~
"Hahh..."
I'd known her for all of a day, and I'd still thought I had a decent read on her. I didn't. Not even close. This was a completely different animal from what she'd shown in the president's office that morning. I'd pegged her as an emotive vocalist in the same lane as Han Jisu.
And yet — here she was, ripping high notes in a rock-ballad technique that fit Farewell Heaven like a glove, clean and wide open. Subtract the small frame and the cute face, and there wasn't a trace of awkwardness in it. I wasn't qualified to judge, but the breath and the projection were far too perfect.
Come back to me~ you fool...
The instant the first verse ended, the person standing quietly in front of me suddenly roared.
"WAAAAAAAAAH—!!!!"
The person beside them joined in at once.
"Waaah! She's insane! She's insane!"
"Yo, what is she...!?"
"Who even is she, singing like that!?"
Only then did a deep smile settle on my own mouth. Every worry in my chest lifted and went sailing off into the air, and the relief that rushed in was almost dizzying.
Verse two was the harder half of the song. Somehow, though, my heart had gone completely calm. If it was Hayoung, she could do this. Her voice had properly warmed up; she sounded even more stable than she had in the first verse. If there was such a thing as being born for the stage, every last trace of nerves had vanished without a trace.
I can't live without you—! Whoa!
A chill shot down the back of my skull. And she wasn't done. She curled her small body even tighter into itself.
Whoa! Ahhh!!
A curse slipped out of me, half a gasp I didn't mean to make. It was so absurd I couldn't process it.
"Holy shit..."
A range far higher than when she'd dueled me on high notes at Namsan Tower. She had reproduced the original, note for note. No — with her unique tone layered on top of it, it sounded better than the original to my ears.
Every last drop of color had drained from Younghoon's face. White as paper, he trudged toward Hayoung.
"U-um..."
"Yep?"
Younghoon's expression snapped into something abruptly polite. He folded both hands neatly together and bent a little at the waist to meet her eye level.
"What... exactly do you do...?"
"I'm Yoon Hayoung... Ah! My YouTuber name is Yoonderella."
"Yoonderella? How many subscribers do you have right now?"
"Ah... three hundred forty-nine..."
"......"
Younghoon spun around, locked onto a staffer, and barked the order in a voice that had suddenly found its strength.
"Search Yoonderella on YouTube and put it up on the jumbotron!"