Episode 179. At that moment, along with the sound effect of heavy footsteps, someone walked up to the grand piano and dropped into the seat.
But their face could not be seen.
The pure white mask that had been an important device in the music video for State of Mind.
Because the pianist was wearing that mask.
-It’s Han Sion lol
-Yeah, 100%
-But they look a little short sitting down?
-Maybe he took out his shoe lifts, what else.
-What do sitting height and shoe lifts have to do with each other;
-Maybe he took out a cushion or something.
Though the face was hidden, people were certain the pianist was Han Sion.
To begin with, among the members of Sedalbaegil, who else could possibly present a performance—let alone a piano solo?
At that moment, long, slender fingers rose over the keys, and the performance began.
The pouring performance was dazzling.
State of Mind had been evaluated as the song that made the best use of emo-sentiment sound in 2017.
It was a slightly different matter, but after State of Mind’s music video became popular, amateur composers had also begun to handle emo hip-hop.
Emo hip-hop was a descendant of post-hardcore rock, and it had an obligation to be intense.
And the pianist expressed that intensity through splendor.
The performance bloomed riotously, richly filling out the melody of State of Mind and radiating outward.
Expressing intensity through splendor was no easy task.
That was why people were certain.
That had to be Han Sion.
After the performance had poured out for those twenty-two seconds…
Bzzzzzzzt—
With the distinctive noise of lo-fi cutting in, the melody the piano had been playing changed completely.
-Kyaaaaaaaak!
Cheers burst from the fans on site.
Because it was K-Pop Struggle.
And this time, it was not a piano solo.
Drums, bass, and guitar came in, and effect sounds were laid beneath.
At the same time, two men, still wearing masks, appeared and began to show the perfectly synchronized choreography of K-Pop Struggle.
Since they were wearing masks, their identities could not be confirmed, but judging by their heights…
‘Han Sion, I Ion?’
That was what the public guessed.
Because the two of them were the tallest in Sedalbaegil.
“Huh?”
But Han Sion was playing right now, wasn’t he?
Then was it Gu Taehwan?
The general public tossed around such thoughts without thinking too deeply, but Titi, Sedalbaegil’s fandom, was different.
‘Their dance lines…’
The habit of splitting the beat one more time than others.
The sense that even in dance, they showed outstanding rhythm.
It was Han Sion and Gu Taehwan.
They could be certain.
K-Pop Struggle was the promotional track that Sedalbaegil had personally asked Titi to choose for them.
At the time, after Colorful Struggle had become too great a success on Color Show, Sedalbaegil’s identity as idols had been called into question.
This song was how they had broken through that head-on.
The song had been revealed through a general notice on the official site app, and the fans had voted directly.
The first-generation Titi remembered the shock and thrill of that time.
They had replayed that video an unbelievable number of times, savoring, dissecting, and enjoying it frame by frame.
So they could be certain.
Those two people were Han Sion and Gu Taehwan.
But…
‘What about the piano?’
Then who on earth was playing that piano?
And there was another strange point.
‘They seem a little taller than Gu Taehwan? Their shoulder line and body line are different too…’
An entertainer’s height could vary depending on shoes or lifts, but Sedalbaegil did not change much in that regard.
From the time they performed in the indie scene until now, Sedalbaegil’s group shots had always been consistent.
And so Titi, who could see details more closely than the general public, felt even greater confusion.
No, curiosity.
They were confused, but it was not a negative impression.
Meanwhile, another two men appeared, also wearing masks.
The song began.
I’m confused
Inside me are
Dangerous Things
It was Gu Taehwan’s part, and it felt like Gu Taehwan.
But the voice was different.
It sounded like it might be Choe Jaeseong’s, or like On Saemiro’s.
It was definitely not I Ion, whose tone stood out, but strangely, it also seemed as if I Ion’s voice was mixed in.
Bang, bang!
At that moment, the man who had been playing the piano struck the keys hard, sprang up from his seat, and joined the stage.
Dangerous Trip
I’m here
Watching—
Then he sang while carrying out the choreography, and anyone could see it was Choe Jaeseong.
The voice was Choe Jaeseong’s, and the dance was Choe Jaeseong’s.
But wasn’t he the person who had just played the piano?
That wasn’t Han Sion?
Titi felt as if they were watching some kind of magic show.
No, perhaps the word shell game was more accurate.
The members of Sedalbaegil performed choreography on stage and sang.
The group choreography and formations placed between parts—everything was exactly as they knew it.
And yet the elements were different.
The person they thought was Han Sion sang Choe Jaeseong’s part, and the one they thought was Gu Taehwan danced I Ion’s choreography.
Even so…
It was thrillingly fun to listen to.
On top of that, the five men on stage were only wearing masks; their outfits were familiar.
Clothes that had called Hong Kong noir to mind.
They were the stage outfits from Pin Point.
But their boots were all different colors, so they could be distinguished.
-The purple boots are Sion. One hundred percent.
-He did play the piano, but isn’t his height and dance line a little different?
-Aren’t the blue boots Sion?
-The blue ones seem like Ion?
-No. The ocher ones are Ion.
While the fans gathered on the official site chatted passionately in small groups, State of Mind’s stage had already rushed toward the climax of the chorus.
La
-La
La
-La
In time with it, the intense choreography began, sharply splitting the beat from both shoulders down to both knees.
Focus on me
Beneath the messy sound of emo hip-hop, a clear sound burst forth.
They did not know what expressions Sedalbaegil wore beneath their masks, but one thing was certain: the expressions of the public were similar.
They were admiring them.
-They’re freaking good though lololol
-Can you feel the difference in power?
-Lololololol wait, this is raw live. I can’t hear any AR.
-Huh? No way.
-I’m telling you, it’s real. The sound system is insanely good, so you can tell. This is 100% live.
-Don’t talk nonsense. There’s no way they can dance that hard and do raw live at the same time.
-I’m telling you, it’s real;
-I’m kind of dizzy. It feels like watching a shell game.
-Lololololol I said the blue boots are Han Sion.
-No no no no, absolutely not.
-Can Titi recognize them?
-Doesn’t look like they can lolololololol
At that moment, with a bang of sound effect, the chorus ended and silence lingered.
The crowd’s cheers erupted, and among the five men heaving their shoulders as if catching their breath, one stepped forward.
It was not the purple boots that had played the piano at first, nor the blue boots that had shown Han Sion’s dance lines.
The man wearing ocher boots slowly walked to the piano.
And standing there, he began to play the piano lightly.
♬????????????????
The crowd’s cheers burst out once again.
There were many songs that had raised Sedalbaegil to their current position, but if one thought of the beginning, it was definitely this song.
It had been produced on the self-made content Independent Diary, and had taken first place on the music charts, beating Drop Out and NOP.
Because they had shown such a perfect performance, controversy over post-production had flared up intensely, only to be dispelled when the matter ended up on the news.
Resume.
The man in ocher boots stood before the piano, touching the keys with light, bouncy movements of his hands.
Then the dreamlike yet warm melody distinctive to bedroom pop flowed down, and the bass and guitar entered.
Before long, someone took off his mask.
Woo
-Hello
All night, did you have good dreams?
A warm feeling
It was Gu Taehwan.
Sweat-soaked, Gu Taehwan smiled faintly and began to sing…
And people were shocked.
-It really is live?
-It’s raw live lololol
State of Mind had frequent sound effects and required filter effects built into the microphone itself.
So even when they did not hear AR, people did not pay much attention.
But Resume was different.
The genre of bedroom pop itself meant music one could listen to lightly in a bedroom, and it aimed for easy listening.
The “easy” here did not mean easy for the singer, but comfortable for the listener.
Han Sion did not make songs that were easy to sing.
To be precise, he only made songs that seemed comfortable at a glance, but were extremely difficult if one wanted to show one hundred percent.
That was why his team members were always required to undergo high-intensity training and possess a strong desire to improve.
But Sedalbaegil pulled it off.
Behind Gu Taehwan’s voice, I Ion cut in.
Then he took off his mask.
As I Ion removed his mask, the crowd’s cheers erupted once more.
Woo
-Hello
A little, quickly
Start the day
A refreshing morning
When this song had first been released, I Ion had had to sing in a bathroom.
Since it was a live performance, they had deliberately created the feeling of his voice echoing in a bathroom to remove the tonal disadvantage.
But not anymore.
I Ion had been born with a distorted voice, but distorted guitar performances were a sound loved by people all over the world.
So if he could express sound pressure, pitch, and intervals as precisely as a guitar…
I Ion’s tone became an advantage.
Just like now.
The choreography for Resume felt cozy rather than dazzling.
The song itself was like that to begin with.
Sedalbaegil took off their masks one by one, smiling brightly, and showed who had been who.
Surprisingly, not a single prediction had been correct.
The one who had shown the intro piano performance for State of Mind was Choe Jaeseong, and the one who had shown Han Sion’s dance lines was Gu Taehwan.
As they appeared one by one like that, voices that shot out clearly, unedited and without a single scrap of AR, filled the stage.
Amid it all, the public on site was seized by a strange feeling.
If someone was attending an end-of-year music festival as part of the audience, in most cases, they were quite a passionate fan.
So they knew the difference between a performance and a broadcast.
But right now.
Sedalbaegil was not doing a broadcast.
They were doing a “performance.”
They did not know why it felt this way, but…
‘It feels like watching a concert.’
That was the feeling they got.
Even if they were not fans of Sedalbaegil.
And so Sedalbaegil’s stage, which had begun with State of Mind, continued into Resume and Pin Point.
Then it ended with Summer Cream.
They had sung as many as four songs, but since there had been no stage where they sang an entire song, in terms of running time alone, it was similar to the other teams.
But the quality that filled the stage was different, and the attitude was different.
Moreover, what became clearer with each stage was that they had presented pure live vocals without any device whatsoever.
Perfectly, at that.
People’s reactions were not light.
[An idol group that presented 100% live vocals at an end-of-year music festival.]
[An idol group that performed alone while everyone else was doing broadcasts.]
[Sedalbaegil MBN End-of-Year Music Festival fancam.]
In truth, the thing Han Sion had been rejected for by For the Youth, and the thing he had accomplished together with Sedalbaegil, was not that extraordinary.
It had just been one sentence.
“Shall we try doing something a little different?”
Of course, just because it was different did not mean the standard could be low.
So the time and effort they had to pour in for that difference were not small.
For the Youth simply had not found a reason to do it.
“Oh, our MR-removed video is up.”
“How about one round of dishwashing for every note that wavered?”
“Good.”
Unlike Sedalbaegil.