Free Web NovelKim Pilseung, 24 years old.
He was a healthy, four-limbed, able-bodied South Korean man who had finished his service as a Marine Corps sergeant.
"From now on, you will follow this instructor’s orders. Understood?"
"Yes!"
"Answer with 'Akk!'"
And right now, he was standing there as an instructor in front of Iam, the hottest girl group in South Korea these days.
'Whoa, holy shit, it really is Iam?'
Pilseung still couldn’t believe a famous girl group like Iam would come to a Marine camp that wasn’t even well-known.
- Pilseung, you free next Tuesday?
- Tuesday? I don’t think I’ve got anything special?
- Then come in that day, extra. We got a sudden booking, and they say they’re filming something? You might end up on TV, so if we’re gonna advertise, we need someone who at least looks presentable.
Pilseung Invincible Marine Corps Camp. That was the name of the Marine camp where Pilseung was working part-time.
The boss was a real former Marine who still yelled about “Marine spirit” nonstop at every company dinner,
- But I was Army?
- It’s fine. We even have people who were exempt. What matters is Marine spirit! Just follow this manual and you’re good!
and the part-timer instructors running the camp were a multi-branch coalition force, mixed together from Army to Air Force.
Thanks to that, Marine Corps alumnus Pilseung had become the ace of Pilseung Invincible Marine Corps Camp.
'High hourly pay, and the schedule had room. It was the best part-time job spot.'
Something felt off, but the pay was decent, and the fact he only had to come in two days a week suited him so well that Pilseung was working as an instructor at Pilseung Invincible Marine Corps Camp until he went back to school.
Plus, the boss liked Pilseung’s name so much that he treated him well, too.
Anyway, the main customers of a Marine camp like this were elementary, middle, and high school kids, but then a girl group showed up out of nowhere, so Pilseung’s head went completely blank.
- TV? Like that “6 o’clock in my hometown” type of thing?
A famous person wouldn’t have any reason to come to a not-that-famous place like Pilseung Invincible Marine Corps Camp, would they?
So even when the boss said a TV station was coming to film, Pilseung just figured it was local TV, or some program only older people watched.
Even if he asked the boss where the filming crew was coming from,
- What was it again··· I don’t really know, but anyway, show them our invincible Marine spirit good!
- Aren’t you appearing too, boss?
- I’ve got a Marine buddies association meeting that day, so Pilseung, you take the kids and handle it!
the boss, either not remembering or not caring, dumped everything on Pilseung and left for the meeting.
Since a lot of part-timers only stayed two or three months and left, Pilseung—already working here for half a year—had somehow become the senior-most one.
"From now on, we will conduct basic drill training. Are you ready?"
"Akk!"
Either way, Pilseung had gotten so used to it by now that he could chew up the customers with his eyes closed.
"Your response is too quiet!"
"Akk!"
It was already so loud it hurt his ears, but the key point of a Marine camp was that you always chewed them out once, no matter what, for being “too quiet.”
'But why do all their expressions look so murderous?'
Pilseung was feeling some kind of unknown killing intent from the ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) Iam members in front of him, who were glaring at him with fierce eyes like flames were burning.
Normally, when people got dragged to a camp, the standard look was the face of someone who was dead inside, but right now, the vibe was way too vicious.
If Pilseung hadn’t been wearing black sunglasses, his flustered eyes would’ve shown exactly as they were.
Especially—
"Should we seize a vehicle?"
"Hold it, Lee Sion. You don’t have a license."
"If we pull in just one staff member by saying we’ll go easy on them···."
Even Pilseung knew Iam member Lee Sion, and Lee Sion’s expression—like she was in the worst mood out of all the members—was such a vicious look she could practically take someone’s head off.
'Pretty···.'
Even so, since she was the prettiest person he’d ever seen in his life, Pilseung found himself rolling his eyes without thinking and staring at Lee Sion’s face.
But he couldn’t keep doing that.
"Trainees, no chatting among yourselves!"
"Akk!"
Because the job he was assigned was instructor.
No matter how much Pilseung liked Iam, and separately from how happy he was to see the members in person, he still had to do what he had to do.
"Do you see the combat uniforms and combat boots placed in front of you?"
"Yes."
"Akk!"
And mistakes popping out when he hadn’t even properly started yet.
'Yes'—when he looked at the one who answered that way, it was Lee Gahyeon.
"Trainee, how did I tell you to answer?"
She was an Iam member he liked, but Pilseung decided to target Lee Gahyeon as a good example case to give some discipline.
"Akk?"
"Pfft."
Pilseung hadn’t expected "Akk?" instead of "Akk!", and he barely held back the laugh that almost burst out as he continued.
"Can’t you get your head straight?! All trainees, run at full speed to that flag you see over there and come back!"
"What?!"
"Answer!"
"Akk!"
The instant the response ended, the Iam members turned around and ran toward the flag.
"Pilseung-hyung, it’s Iam! Iam!"
"Hey, there’s a camera right now, watch how you address people. Talk about that during break, and when the members come back, you know our pattern, right?"
"Yes, we change them right away, then give them one more round of discipline, then go into drill training, right?"
"Yeah. Anyway, they told us to remove anything that could get them hurt today, so let’s do basic drill, then go to conditioning drills."
"Yessir!"
Taking advantage of the gap, the junior instructor working with Pilseung today yapped excitedly with a thrilled face, saying when would they ever get a chance to run Iam members like this again, but—
'Oh, they’re fast?'
Pilseung, since he was still the person in charge, stayed focused on the Iam members running out and coming back.
- Please exclude rappelling and the gas-mask chamber, just in case. If they get hurt or their skin breaks out, it’ll be a problem because they’re promoting right now.
- Then we’ll just do simple drill, conditioning drills at the end, and maybe a boat movement exercise.
Since they were special customers with more to worry about than normal customers, safety had to come first above all else.
So Pilseung, keeping an eye on them without getting distracted in case something happened, watched the members.
It had to be hard to run on sand, but the members were running to the flag and back pretty quickly.
Normally, he would cut it by first-come-first-served and make them repeat it a few times, but that felt like it would be too much from the very beginning, so for now he decided to be satisfied with this.
"From now on, each of you will take the combat uniform and combat boots placed in front of you, move to the barracks in that building, and change."
"Akk!"
Maybe because they’d just run, they were panting hard, but their responses had gotten much louder than at the start.
Pilseung glanced at the watch on his wrist with a satisfied smile.
"Current time is 10:42. Can you change and assemble by 10:50?"
"Akk!"
"Good response. Move out!"
Peeeep.
With the whistle hanging around his neck shrieking, Pilseung watched the Iam members immediately grab their combat uniforms and boots and run to the barracks, and he thought to himself.
'The first time you put it on, no matter how fast you are, you’ll go over ten minutes.'
They were given eight minutes, so even factoring in travel time, the Iam members would definitely go overtime.
Then he could use that as an excuse for another simple round of corrective exercise and go right into drill training. It would be the perfect course.
***
Tap.
There are things people say the body remembers.
Like how nobody consciously thinks about breathing—things that get repeated and drilled in naturally until your body just reacts on its own.
For me, changing into a combat uniform was like that.
'Been a while since I felt this chill.'
First, I put on the pants and quickly tighten the boot laces.
Then I stand up and whip the top on, and I’m done changing.
It felt like it took me about one minute to change into the combat uniform.
Back in my prime, it only took about thirty seconds, but putting on combat boots after a long time took longer than I expected.
Anyway, once I finished first and helped the members change, and roughly checked that everyone had their combat boots and combat uniforms on, I kicked the door open and ran out while ordering them to put their belts on while running to the assembly point.
When they saw me running, the members ran after me for now.
Whether they put their belts on while running the way I taught them, by the time all our members arrived at the assembly point, everyone was perfectly changed. freewebnovel.cσ๓
"Haa··· hahk."
"Ssssh!"
Maybe because they’d been busy running, they were breathing hard, but seeing the members standing in a single-file line, one column, with a sharper form than at the beginning, an old, nostalgic memory surfaced.
How many squad members and company members had I taught drill training to?
- Third rank, far right, step back a half step.
- Step back a half step!
Later on, I’d had hawk eyes that could find where the formation was crooked just by scanning it.
But that was a story I missed when it stayed a memory. Being in the position of receiving drill training didn’t feel very good.
'How dare you trick me!'
I remembered when we got out of the car.
- Move, move, move! Trainees!!
The moment me and the members got out of the car, what we saw were instructors in black sunglasses, red caps pulled down, screaming at us.
- This is··· what.
When we were flustered because we didn’t know what the hell was going on, the content team started explaining like they’d been waiting for this, beaming with huge grins.
- Today’s Iam self-produced content is a Marine Corps camp in preparation for Paldo Sanai!
- Preparation for Paldo Sanai?
- You’ll find out soon, but one of the members is scheduled to appear on the hit variety show Paldo Sanai. To prepare for that, through a military experience···.
The main point was that one of us was going to appear on the hit terrestrial variety show Paldo Sanai, and for that, we came to a Marine Corps camp for a practice run.
The important part was that the content team had decided from the start to trick us.
When they asked me for cooperation for once, I thought they’d finally given up, but who would’ve thought they were plotting something like this.
"···All right. Everyone changed within the time limit."
But right now was the time to focus on the situation in front of me.
Maybe the instructor hadn’t expected me and the members to assemble earlier than predicted, because the instructor’s flustered look was obvious.
'Pilseung?'
Looking at the name tag, it said Kim Pilseung, and it seemed like a Marine-style assumed name.
"Then, from now on, we will conduct basic drill training. Under this instructor’s control, when the assistant instructor demonstrates, you will follow exactly."
"Akk!"
Answering loudly to Instructor Kim Pilseung’s orders, I felt a slight sense of wrongness.
'What is it?'
The instructors I knew maintained a thorough, meticulous demeanor no matter what the situation was.
And that was because if they showed a sloppy side in front of trainees, they couldn’t keep their authority, so they had to act perfectly themselves first.
But—
"Attention! At ease!"
The instructor and assistant instructor demonstrating in front of me right now were way too sloppy.
"Hold on, hold on!"
"What is it, Trainee Lee Sion! During training, chatting is—"
"No, if you’re going to call attention, you have to call at ease first so the form comes out."
"What?"
The instructor looked at me with a blank, bewildered face, like he didn’t understand what I was saying.
And now that I looked, even the way he wore the cap was wrong.
Instead of pulling it down so low you could barely see his eyes, he was wearing it all goofy, trying to look stylish. That disqualified him as an instructor.
'You have to pull that cap down. That’s the whole point!'
And the way he had his belt on—was that even right?
"Did you not learn how to wear your belt?"
"Wh-what··· what?"
"The end line has to match the dead center, the pants zipper line!"
"How do you even know that···."
It was suffocating.
The three-line alignment was the basic standard of a combat uniform.
Top, belt, pants—those three lines had to align perfectly for it to be a real combat uniform, and he was wearing it like this and trying to teach someone?
"And, Assistant Instructor, do attention again."
"M-me··· me?"
"Not me. Me. You’re the assistant instructor right now."
"M-me··· me?"
"Ssssh··· Attention!"
An attention call rising up from the core.
At that, the assistant instructor standing next to Instructor Kim Pilseung immediately snapped into the attention position.
Swish!
And I opened my hand and jabbed it between the assistant instructor’s side and arm.
"Look at this! In a real attention position, there can’t be room for even one finger! Glue it on tight!"
"Yes!"
"Not 'yes.' The response is 'Yes!'"
"Yes!"
The attention position was originally a very hard, unmoving position.
I wasn’t kidding—if you stand in the proper attention position for just ten minutes, your whole body can start trembling and you might pass out.
And doing it like this was something I absolutely couldn’t let slide.
'This is pretty normal, though.'
Honestly, it wasn’t like the assistant instructor in front of me was completely bad at drill.
You get drilled hard as a trainee until your form is perfect, but once you get assigned to a unit and time passes, it’s normal for it to loosen up.
If you thought about how sergeants’ drill posture got all slack, you could say the assistant instructor’s posture right now was actually pretty decent.
It just didn’t meet my standards.
"What is this foot angle? You don’t know forty-five degrees?"
"Like this?"
"And you have to answer in formal drill style!"
"···Like this, is that correct?"
"Hm··· It’s not satisfying, but let’s move on for now."
"Thank you!"
There were still a lot of lacking parts, but since the attention shape came out for now, I moved on to the next target.
"Instructor Kim Pilseung?"
"Uh··· yes?"
"The foundation of all drill doesn’t start with attention. It starts with at ease."
"···Is that so?" free𝑤ebnovel.com
"No, what do they teach in the Marines these days? You have to call at ease, then you do the rest position, and then you do attention."
And the instructor had a lot of disappointing parts when it came to giving commands, too.
Even officers who came out of an academy or an officer training corps were bad at command when they were second lieutenants, so to give real command, you needed at least captain-level experience, maybe?
"I don’t really know about that either···."
"And when you give commands, just lowering your voice isn’t enough. This diaphragm breathing! You have to give commands with a voice coming up from the core so you don’t blow out your throat and it carries all the way to the back."
"Ah! So that’s why my throat always got wrecked."
"Now, follow me! Aaaat eeeease!"
"At ease!"
"No! Stretch out the 'at,' and keep 'ease' short and crisp, okay?"
"Yes!"
To an officer, diaphragm breathing was like breathing itself.
Even if you spit out a single word, it needed resonance and soul.
- The company commander is disappointed in you.
- Hngh, I’m sorry, Company Commander. Please stop!
In my past life, when I was a company commander, I could easily give a two-hour speech through diaphragm breathing, so without yelling, I could pull out the unit’s sincere reflection.
"Sion-chan! I believed in you!!!"
"Lee Sion, seriously, they say even a worm has a trick, and you really do!"
"Boss, how are you this good?"
"I always knew Sion was good at everything."
After I trained the instructor and assistant instructor for a bit, the members watching that scene started blurting out amazed exclamations at me in shock.
They probably thought I’d saved them.
"You all stand straight too!"
"Huh?"
"Ever since you put on the combat uniform earlier, there’s not just one or two things that bug me."
"No··· Lee Sion, calm down!"
Lee Gahyeon tried to stop me, but it was already too late.
Right now, I wasn’t an idol.
The Devil of the FM—the living specimen of “I won’t touch you as long as you do what you’re supposed to do,” Army Captain Lee Sion.
