Idol Hides His Military Service

Terrestrial 1st place.

Originally, it would be more accurate to call it “terrestrial broadcast,” but strangely, when it came to music shows, the habit had continued where people called it “terrestrial 1st place” rather than “terrestrial network 1st place.”

"Sion, you should’ve said something cool! How does 'Wait, we’re 1st place?' come out as your acceptance speech!"

"This is extremely unfair, though?"

"What is?"

And on this glorious day when our Iam achieved 1st place, I had to get interrogated by the members at the dorm.

"How was I supposed to know the thing I blurted out to myself would go out as the acceptance speech."

"Captain, I feel like your shamelessness is on another level."

"Lee Sion is the type who’d still have her mouth floating if she fell into water."

Hyenas biting at me when I was only telling the truth.

Of course, it wasn’t like they were doing it for no reason.

-Wait, what? We’re 1st place?

↳Yes, you’re 1st place.

↳There’s an idol who drops casual speech as the first line of an acceptance speech?

↳lol I was about to get touched watching the kids win 1st and then I instantly burst out laughing

↳Sion, sometimes being serious isn’t bad either

↳Seo No-Fun usually can set a serious mood even without being told, so why was she just sitting there today!

Today’s Popular Top Ten announcement for 1st place, the last week of May.

Even if you were a strong real-time favorite, you couldn’t know 1st place on a music show until the final announcement at the end of the broadcast, and because the vibe was that LYNX was the likely winner, I think I let my guard down without realizing it.

-If you take 1st place, we’ll turn your mic on right away and you’ll have to give a speech, so please prepare.

Even though everyone—from company people to station staff—had warned us about the things we needed to be ready for regarding 1st place, the unconscious words that popped out of my mouth—

After that, the MCs, the other singers, even LYNX burst out laughing, so for the first time in a while, I had to go bright red.

The only saving grace was that there wasn’t any profanity in it, so it didn’t turn into a broadcast accident.

-In the middle of all this, why is the encore stage so good too?

↳lol her face looks like she got pickpocketed or something, but her feet are moving cheerfully

↳This is what a pro idol is: an upper body drowning in feelings and a lower body addicted to capitalism

↳But for real, you can obviously see she looks frantic during the encore, but the lines are art-level

↳I saved the clip of Lee Gahyeon doing the choreography with tears in her eyes. I’m printing it and bringing it to the fansign hehe

↳lol this bastard is really a devil. Share the clip first though

Maybe because we handled the encore stage that followed right after winning 1st place well even while flustered, like the internet reactions said, the company also—

-At this level, it’s not even an accident.

-CEO, aren’t your standards getting way too low? At this level, it’s definitely an accident.

-Is that so? Somehow, because it’s Miss Sion doing it, it felt like a very benign level··· Maybe my baseline dropped without me realizing it.

CEO Kim Sanghyeok, Producer Raon, and even the other employees, all gathered at the company without even going home, to celebrate our first-ever terrestrial 1st place.

Since they brushed off the accident I caused like it was nothing, it didn’t seem like it would be a big problem.

But—

"We prepared so hard···."

Only our members were especially regretful.

And it made sense. Since it was our first time winning, in our first Music Count 1st place broadcast, it seemed like it still bothered them that we’d fumbled and rambled during the speech.

-Uh··· so, first of all, Yours who support us, and also··· uh.

Seo Ryujin, who said “uh···” so much you could call her Fish Ryujin instead of Seo Ryujin, got teased by fans, like how could even an acceptance speech be so no-fun.

Because of that, Seo Ryujin had been reading a collection of famous quotes whenever she had a spare moment lately, saying she’d deliver a stylish speech the next time we won 1st place.

'Was the sky controlling me to stop Seo Ryujin’s stitched-together famous-quote speech?'

Thinking about it, the true broadcast accident might’ve been Seo Ryujin’s famous-quote acceptance speech, and the moment that thought hit, my guilt vanished cleanly.

"That’s not what’s important right now."

"There it is again. Lee Sion’s pattern when she tries to change the subject."

"Sion, isn’t your pattern too simple?"

Anyway, I tried to move on to another topic to shift the mood, but now the members weren’t getting fooled so easily.

The side effect of being glued together 24 hours a day: we’d gotten too familiar with each other.

But right now, it wasn’t that I just wanted to change the subject. There was something we actually needed to discuss.

"Are we really going to just let our first terrestrial 1st place pass like this?"

"Huh?"

"What did we eat in the waiting room today?"

At my words, the members tilted their heads like they were digging through their memories, then with an "Ah!" they all spoke at the same time.

"Lunch boxes!"

"Right. Fans even gave us lunch boxes to eat."

Fans who knew better than anyone how busy we’d been lately gave us lunch boxes at lunch to cheer us on.

Tribute.

Originally, it was a word with a very impure meaning, but in the idol world, it was used with a slightly different meaning.

Back when the tribute culture didn’t exist, fans would personally give letters or gifts to singers they liked.

But because it got to be too much, it became hard on both the giver and the receiver, and people gathered around the idea that instead of this, fans should pool their strength and gift the singer the things the singer actually needed. That was how the tribute culture was born.

To people who weren’t idol fans, it was easy to look at it sideways and think, why are they even spending money on gifts, and back when I didn’t know anything, I also used to think similarly.

But—

-Iam, we’re wishing for your terrestrial 1st place! We’re always cheering you on!

That was an overly biased way of thinking.

"Everyone remembers the lunch box menu today, right?"

"How could we forget that?"

"I even took pictures! I’m keeping them forever!"

"It was better than the course meal I ate at a Michelin three-star restaurant before."

Inside the carefully packed lunch boxes were all kinds of foods said to be good for stamina, plus fruit for dessert because they were worried we weren’t getting proper nutrients during promotions, and even drinks for throat health because the fine dust had been bad lately.

It was a lunch box where you could feel, one by one, the fans’ kindness and concern for our condition in every item.

-Lord, you did not scorn the lowliness and insignificance of your servant, and you bent your precious body to visit your servant’s hut three times—how could I dare not offer myself to the toil of dog and horse?

Was this how Zhuge Liang felt when Liu Bei visited three times?

If I saw fans’ loyalty like this and did nothing, I couldn’t call myself a 32nd-generation descendant of the Gyeongju Lee clan.

"We need to pay them back."

"Reverse tribute?"

"That's right."

The moment I said we should repay the fans’ hearts, the members understood right away.

These days, when singers repaid this kind of fan support, it was called “reverse tribute,” and the types were incredibly varied.

Sometimes they’d send a coffee truck for fans waiting outside, sometimes they’d give lunch boxes like we received today, or they’d hand out small thoughtful gifts—there were all kinds.

"How much does a coffee truck cost?"

"If you look it up, it comes right up! Usually they say it’s around one million won?"

"One million won? Ugh··· I couldn’t do it alone, but if we all put in, it feels like we could."

"I’ll pay!"

The moment I brought up reverse tribute, the members got excited and immediately started talking about what to give.

Ryu Ayeon’s face briefly stiffened at the one million won and then relaxed, and then Yunkyung confidently said she’d pay like it was no problem.

Tap.

"Ouch! Captain, why did you hit me!"

"Impudent child. You still don’t know what’s important."

"Huh?"

But that wasn’t what I wanted.

One million won.

Honestly, it’s not a huge amount.

It’s an amount I could cover just by selling five—no, four—of the coins I’d been stacking away as emergency cash.

But that had no soul.

If I borrowed Yunkyung’s power, we could even gift luxury brands to every fan who came to support us, but that wouldn’t show our sincerity, so I didn’t like it.

"Listen carefully."

"It’s starting again! Sion is calling attention for no reason because Sion is about to say something pointless!"

"In Legend of Valley, one of the champions, Maximus, has a special skin."

"What’s a skin, Sion?"

"Like a Barbie doll dress."

"Ah!"

Seeing the members’ faces like they roughly understood, I kept explaining.

"That skin is special because the Legend of Valley company released it as a design made by a little kid with a rare disease who loved Maximus."

A Maximus skin the developers specially made to grant a sick little kid’s wish.

And after I heard the beautiful story that all the revenue from that skin’s sales would be used to help kids with rare diseases, I remembered the beautiful days where I ran all over the Rift with Maximus, from bot to mid to jungle, for a while.

-This is for you.

Champion voice line changes are normally only attached to expensive skins, but to cheer the kid on, the developers even added lines for the kid to Maximus’s skin.

That was why the skin was special.

"So the conclusion is?"

"Not money—sincerity. We’re going with handmade reverse tribute!"

Yours—It was time to start the This is for you project.

***

"How about making a YouTube filming space inside the company? Since we still don’t have many artists, we have a lot of unused space anyway."

"That sounds good. If we don’t, we’ll keep having situations like today where the CEO office gets taken over."

The CEO office on the top floor of the KJ Entertainment building.

That space, where Sanghyeok normally worked, was under invasion today.

-Please cooperate for content, CEO!

The sight Sanghyeok saw the moment Sanghyeok arrived at work—the content team filming Lee Sion while Lee Sion was doing a full prostration bow in the company lobby—was extremely bewildering.

If Sanghyeok hadn’t adjusted to Lee Sion over the last two months, Sanghyeok might have shown a horrified reaction.

But now Sanghyeok had adapted to a degree, so instead of being shocked, Sanghyeok could ask what the reason was first.

-So, to celebrate our terrestrial 1st place, you want to make chocolates and hand them out to fans as reverse tribute, and you want to film the process as content?

-Yes! We were going to make them at the dorm, but Manager Yunsik said if we’re doing it, we should film it as content so fans can watch the process.

-CEO, I only made a suggestion. I did not say we should do it like this!

-Okay, /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ so first, stop that full prostration bow, Miss Sion.

-Yes!

After hearing it, Sanghyeok thought it sounded pretty reasonable in its own way.

'Not bad. The source of Iam’s popularity is that tight bond with fans that’s continued since the survival program.'

If the members made chocolates themselves and gifted them to those fans, it felt like it would be meaningful.

More than anything, it seemed like fans would love it too.

Originally, the company had been planning to pay and send coffee trucks or lunch boxes in the members’ names during week four music shows, but what Lee Sion brought up now felt even more appealing to Sanghyeok.

Of course, if they only made chocolates, it could end up looking meager against the intended meaning, so it felt right to have the members write simple handwritten letters too, and on the company side, to add things like a coffee truck and snacks.

So after calling in Raon and the other team leads and urgently discussing it once they arrived at work, KJ Entertainment ultimately decided to accept Lee Sion’s proposal.

"Sion, you do know I’m a busy person, right?"

"There’s nobody who can help except you, Hyeryeong."

"Ugh, I might get scolded at my company. Even if it’s not an official broadcast and it’s YouTube, showing up on my own like this."

"But honestly, it sounds fun, right?"

"That’s true."

And for this shoot, even Hyeryeong—a famous celebrity Raon urgently contacted, and also someone Raon knew—got pulled in.

Sanghyeok was realizing again that things could get big in an instant.

-Just making them doesn’t sound like it’ll be fun.

-Huh? What are you trying to do now?

-The seven members each make chocolates and get judged. First place gets a prize, last place gets a penalty. Doesn’t that make everyone work harder?

Devil.

Variety devil Lee Sion must not have liked a normal chocolate-making session, because Lee Sion suddenly demanded rankings.

So the judges were hurriedly decided as Sanghyeok, Raon, and Hyeryeong.

Raon said it would be better to have three judges and then suddenly called Hyeryeong, so Raon was flustered too, and Hyeryeong, who came running after getting Raon’s call because it sounded fun, was just as flustered.

Thanks to that, the CEO office now had desks and chairs set up like the judge table on Idol Ground 100, and in front of it were cooking tools, including a gas stove, and chocolate ingredients.

Because the practice room didn’t ventilate well, and the office was difficult since employees needed to work, the place selected was the CEO office. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

It was something that would never happen at other agencies, but it was possible because KJ Entertainment was still a small-to-mid agency wearing the mask of a big company.

"Yuri is a chocolate master."

"There’s no such thing as a chocolate master. Everyone knows today’s last-place penalty, right? Even if you cry and beg, I won’t go easy on you."

"Lee Sion is all swagger—have you even made chocolate before?"

"I learned from a famous pastry chef a long time ago!"

"When I was in school on Jeju Island, I made tangerine chocolate once as a field trip activity!"

In Sanghyeok’s eyes, the Iam members were already talking and starting an invisible nerve war as they faced the ingredients.

"Before we begin Iam’s fan-thank-you event, This is for you, I’ll briefly explain today’s rules and the rewards based on the results."

As soon as the content team leader signaled that they could start filming in earnest, Sanghyeok started hosting.

"Today, each member will make chocolates and be evaluated by three judges, including me. The member who gets first place will receive a special prize, and the member who gets last place will receive a penalty."

"Woooooow!!!"

They hadn’t even heard what the prize or penalty was yet, but the Iam members were cheering like they’d won the lottery.

Watching that, Sanghyeok had a rational suspicion that after going through Agbaek, the Iam members had reached the level where competition itself was fun.

"Since you’ll be using fire during the cooking process, please be mindful of safety, and above all, this chocolate-making is for the fans, so I hope everyone puts sincerity into it."

"Yes!"

It was only a few words, but already all the members were showing fighting spirit like they couldn’t wait.

'Is this really chocolate-making?'

Sanghyeok felt something was off, but Sanghyeok thought, it’s just making chocolates—what could possibly happen?

"Then, please start now!"

Not knowing Sanghyeok would regret it in just thirty minutes.