In the waiting room.
Baimu leaned against Blissey and scrolled through his constantly buzzing phone. The other contestants stole glances at him, looking at him as though he were something other than human.
29.8!
He was just half a point short of a perfect score, and that half point was probably because viewers outside the venue couldn't fully share the experience. Otherwise, Blissey's song-guided illusion had deserved full marks.
Was a perfect score hard to get?
Yes!
But back when May competed in Hoenn's Pokémon Contests, perfect scores hadn't been especially rare. Even Jessie had earned one with Chimecho at the Lilycove Contest.
As times changed and judges came and went, scoring grew stricter. Perfect scores, in particular, were no longer handed out lightly.
Almost everyone present, except those about to perform, had gone to watch that performance from a viewing area provided by the organizers. They knew firsthand how it had felt.
It was ridiculous!
How many people in the world could perform at that level consistently?
You could count them on one hand!
Most of them had never scored above twenty-nine, but they knew what it meant to get that kind of reaction from Patestan and Yanase, two judges with exacting standards. It was no ordinary feat.
An average Coordinator might get two lines of feedback from Patestan and a sixty-decibel squeal from Yanase as he flipped his bangs. Only a performance that truly moved them could draw a torrent of praise and a deafening verdict.
Never mind Patestan. Since Yanase had become a Pokémon Contest judge, he had stripped down to reveal the character for "bright" only twice.
Every Coordinator to receive that reaction had gone on to become a Top Coordinator. No exceptions.
As for the Miss Joys from the different regions...
They were the hardest