Free Web Novel“Then, we’ll start when I blow the whistle.”
After taking the cap and whistle back from me again, Instructor Kim Pilseung said that with a look like, is this really right?
The inflatable boat training that was originally going to be held in the afternoon had been changed into a match between Iam and the content team.
Thanks to that, Instructor Kim Pilseung and the assistant instructors ended up taking charge of filming and judging instead.
“Even now, if you offer sashimi, I’m willing to forgive you up to the point of not making you go into the water.”
“We’ll also overlook you going into the water if you reflect right now and eat the combat rations, Miss Sion.”
“Hah··· rejecting the cup of wine and choosing the cup of punishment—why are you this foolish?”
“You’re really going to make me regret it!”
“Wow! Now you’re going off the rails without caring about the broadcast, Team Lead. Don’t edit this out—air it exactly like this, okay? Seriously!”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
The content team had already entered a combat stance and was trading fierce trash talk with me.
A content team that, at the end, I tried to show mercy to, but rejected it and said they were going to see this through to the end and settle it with us.
‘I’m definitely dunking you.’
If it were some other idol, no matter who won, they might’ve made the ending warm and wholesome, but looking at it now, it didn’t seem like we had even a tiny bit of intention to go easy, and the content team didn’t either.
I held out my hand myself and you rejected it—yeah, I think I need to teach you a lesson.
“Hey, Lee Sion. Are you confident?”
“Huh?”
“They’ve got four men.”
Hm.
While we were warming up before the match, Ryu Ayeon asked me, looking uneasy, what kind of plan I had.
The content team was made up of four adult men and three women, so on the surface, it might look like they had the advantage over us.
But,
“Yunseok threw out his back recently.”
“Yunseok did?”
“Yeah. Last time, I went to steal snacks from the break room and got caught, so we talked a bit, and Yunseok said Yunseok tweaked it while moving equipment.”
“Then···.”
A true strategist sees a thousand miles while sitting, and sees ten thousand miles while standing.
The content team was already in the palm of my hand.
“The two writers are people who’ve never exercised in their lives. Those two climb up to the fourth floor at the agency and start panting.”
“Right! The writers really did that!”
“Their actual combat power is three men. And on top of that, one of them is···.”
“One of them?”
“There’s something.”
At Ryu Ayeon’s question, I trailed off and glanced over at Lee Hyuksoo, the content team’s editor.
And since Lee Hyuksoo was also looking at me, our eyes met.
Without making it obvious, we exchanged a secret sign, giving each other the slightest nod.
‘Planting a spy inside the enemy is the basics of the basics in military strategy.’
Haan neighborhood Zhuge Liang. The reincarnation of Sun Tzu in the 21st century.
-You insane bastard, I told you to make an operation plan, so why did you bring me a northward advance route?!
-Breakfast in Cheorwon, dinner in Pyongyang··· this is the true—!
-We’re the rear support unit, you insane bastard!
Unfortunately, I didn’t have Liu Bei or Wu Zixu, so in my past life, I couldn’t fully carry out that ambition, but against a content team? I was confident I could handle that alone.
-You know, Hyuksoo?
-Sion, if Senior Hakyoon catches me, I might actually die.
-It’s fine. This is a mistake anyway.
-Still···.
-We’re already a community of fate!
-Okay···.
Lee Hyuksoo was a content team mole I’d recruited a long time ago.
‘They tell me not to write “mole,” but there’s no word that sticks to your mouth like this one.’
The moment we agreed to a 7 vs 7 match, I immediately approached and sweet-talked Lee Hyuksoo in secret, since we’d been filming together since Agbaek and had built rapport.
Once the match started, Lee Hyuksoo would troll in small ways here and there, without being obvious, and lead us to victory.
“Alright, everyone, take your positions on the starting line. Only the distance you move while holding the inflatable boat will count. Also···.”
While I was briefly imagining the content team’s glorious last moments today, the inflatable boat moving match was already about to begin.
Instructor Kim Pilseung was diligently explaining the rules, but it didn’t look like anyone was listening.
Me and the members, and the content team too, were all standing in front of the starting line, gripping the handles attached to the side of the inflatable boat tightly with one hand.
We were too busy glaring at each other, eyes filled with determination to win.
“Fweeeet!”
At last, the whistle rang out.
At the same time, I lifted the inflatable boat with all the strength I had.
“What is this! This is insanely heavy!”
“Nngh! Seven people are lifting this?”
“This is migrant worker abuse!”
On the outside, you’d think, it’s just an inflatable boat, how heavy could it be?
‘An inflatable boat used for an amphibious landing operation isn’t going to be thin like a pool tube.’
It was like the difference between a regular tire and a cargo-truck-only tire.
So this was practically a people-killing weight.
But,
“The weight of the inflatable boat we’re carrying right now is lighter than a father’s shoulders!”
“What?” fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
“Forget all the suffering when you gave birth!”
“··· and the heart that struggles day and night raising a child!”
If we couldn’t even lift this, it would be shameful as an ex–Army company commander.
I used a repertoire I used during marches when the company was exhausted, and the response came immediately.
“We can do it!”
“Damn it! Where did you even pick up words like that?!”
“Let’s all put our strength into it!” freёwebnoѵel.com
Whoosh!
When the members squeezed out every bit of strength, only then did the inflatable boat that had only been twitching on the ground finally lift, rising above our heads.
“Kyaaaagh!!! Yuri, it feels like my hair is getting ripped out!”
“If you don’t want to go bald, you have to move!”
“Just run first!”
There’s a traditional Korean game called “expressway.”
You make a fist and press down on someone’s head like you’re shaving it with clippers—if anyone gets hit with it, the pain is so bad they’d spill the location of a secret independence army base that doesn’t even exist.
Right now, we were getting hit with that expressway.
“Kkiyaa!”
“We’re not even the cast!”
“Argh! My back!!! My back!!!”
It looked like the other side was the same.
They had some men, so it seemed like they managed to lift it somehow, but the pain was fair.
“If we lose, we have to go into the water after this!”
“Just beat them!”
We screamed through clenched teeth, moving with the inflatable boat on our heads, but the speed was like grubs.
And my first move worked.
“Hey! Lee Hyuksoo, why are you suddenly collapsing?!”
“S-sorry. I suddenly twisted my foot.”
“Get up, now!! If even one person drops out, the rest of us die!”
Team Lead Lee Hakyoon pushed Lee Hyuksoo hard, but Lee Hyuksoo dragged it out, pretending the ankle hurt and stalling for time.
“Now!”
I couldn’t waste the time bought by Lee Hyuksoo’s tearjerking sacrifice, so I tried to widen the gap right away, but—
“Uwaaaagh!”
“Yuri, what are you doing?!”
“Yuri also twisted a foot.”
“What?”
A bad premonition flashed through my head, and I looked toward the other side.
Then my eyes met Team Lead Lee Hakyoon’s.
-You too?
-Hey, me too!
It looked like the enemy pulled the same little trick I did.
***
What Pilseung saw wasn’t a match.
This was a match between beasts.
“Let’s die together!”
“Lee Gahyeon, block!!!”
Iam and the content team had already reached the point where the only purpose was to get in ahead of the other side while holding the inflatable boat, and they were busy focusing on interfering with each other.
“It’s a distance that takes less than a minute, and they’ve been fighting for ten minutes?”
“In my life, I’ve never seen such a dirty match.”
Pilseung couldn’t even figure out how to explain what just happened.
From each team, one person suddenly lay down, and after that, both teams started peeling off one person at a time to interfere with the other side.
The methods were extremely petty.
-Don’t trip people, Lee Sion!
Lee Sion quickly sticking out a leg to hook the other team’s legs, for example.
-Argh, who threw sand!
One of the content team writers scooped up sand and even threw it at the Iam members.
Was that all?
-Go, Yunkyungmon!
-I’m going!
Im Yunkyung, who wasn’t much help in lifting the inflatable boat, used that small frame to try to climb onto the other team’s boat—the scene was absolute chaos.
Because of that, not the finish line, not even close—both teams were still at the midpoint, trading dirty tricks back and forth, and by now they’d completely pushed the inflatable boat into the background.
“Everyone, stop!”
And in that filthy scene, Seo Ryujin’s voice rose up.
If it had been some ordinary voice, everyone would’ve ignored it, but Seo Ryujin’s voice carried a heavy force of appeal.
“At this rate, we’re all going to die!”
“Hah··· hah···.”
Sure, it was ten minutes mostly focused on dirty tricks, but throwing yourself into a chaotic brawl was exhausting.
Maybe that was why—everyone let out strained breaths and focused on Seo Ryujin’s words.
“If we’ve done this much, let’s all just eat together and end the shoot!”
At Seo Ryujin’s words to wrap it up around here, the Iam members’ and the content team members’ faces wavered.
And honestly, that made sense, because they didn’t even really know why they had to compete in the first place.
But,
“What are you saying! We have to dunk the content team!”
“Lee Sion! At least Lee Sion has to go into the sea!”
The only two who still seemed to have energy to spare, fighting to the bitter end, were Lee Sion and Team Lead Lee Hakyoon.
Seo Ryujin’s icy gaze went to the two of them.
“Let’s dunk those two, and we’ll go eat.”
“Agreed!!”
“I’ll go with Ryujin’s opinion!”
“Let’s dunk only the Team Lead! Honestly, today, this was the Team Lead’s plan anyway!”
“Get those two!”
The miraculous moment where, for the first time today, Iam and the content team’s opinions matched.
“Uh···.”
“No, wait···.”
Lee ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) Sion and Lee Hakyoon were surrounded in an instant by the other people.
“Jaeseung.”
“Yes, Pilseung.”
“I’m going to quit being an instructor.”
“You too? I was thinking that too.”
Pilseung and Assistant Instructor Jaeseung looked at Lee Sion and Lee Hakyoon, who were being placed on top of the members’ and team members’ heads and headed toward the sea instead of an inflatable boat, and thought.
Commanding people really wasn’t an easy thing.
***
DON’T BLINK, DON’T BLINK
It jumps all the way to my fingertips
DON’T BLINK, DON’T BLINK
Now’s the time, trigger
A girl lay in bed with earphones in, listening to Iam’s new song, “DON’T BLINK.”
“They’re good.”
It was none other than Lee Jia, LYNX’s youngest.
Tomorrow’s comeback stage was right in front of her, so she should’ve gone to sleep early, but was it because she was nervous for no reason?
Unable to fall asleep, she fiddled with her smartphone, and while watching an Iam music show stage video that popped up in her algorithm by chance, the words “They’re good” slipped out without her even realizing it.
“Huh?”
“No!”
Hearing Lee Jia’s voice, Sayu (Lee Jia’s roommate), one of LYNX’s Japanese members, asked as if Lee Jia had called out, and Lee Jia flinched, answered no, and pulled the blanket over her head.
‘This song really looks like it’s going to blow up.’
Inside the blanket, still staring at Iam’s stage video, Lee Jia felt strange.
If it were the old her, she would’ve been upset, but now she just felt strange.
-Jia, I’m really grateful that you think about me, but··· the team I’m in right now is Iam. And you debuted too, didn’t you? We couldn’t debut together, but we can still keep seeing each other.
After getting into trouble with Lee Sion during the last promotions and shocking everyone, Jia was able to talk with Ryu Ayeon afterward.
At first, she blindly thought her idol, Ryu Ayeon, had been taken away, and she only thought she wanted to get Ayeon back, but after that conversation, her thinking changed.
‘I’m going to shock Ayeon when I meet Ayeon later.’
Even if she couldn’t be on the same team, she still wanted to show how she’d grown within LYNX too.
And,
-It’s fine. Kids can be like that.
Lee Sion still sometimes appeared in Jia’s dreams.
She wanted to show Lee Sion a lesson too.
‘Damn it. All strength.’
On days when Lee Sion’s face showed up in her dreams—doing shadowboxing and scaring her—Jia would kick the blanket off and wake up without even realizing it.
When they were alone in the restroom, Lee Sion built up fear with the most vicious face imaginable, then later, when Lee Sion came to the waiting room, she acted like a gentle adult to the point it was hard to believe it was the same person—it was so annoying.
Back then, Jia had done something wrong, so even while watching that annoying act, she couldn’t say anything, and that stayed as a lifelong grudge even now.
DON’T BLINK, DON’T BLINK
My feet jump first
There’s no time to stop
We go, we go—yeah
But if there was one thing that was a little different from then,
‘Why did they get even better!’
It was that she’d come to acknowledge Iam’s skill, even if only a little.
During Iam’s last promotion song, “Something Feels Like It’s About to Start,” Jia honestly didn’t rate Iam that highly.
Fundamentals.
LYNX and Iam debuted around the same time, but the length of time they’d spent matching as a team couldn’t be compared.
Minimum one year, maximum five years.
As trainees under the same TSP, preparing stages like monthly evaluations, the experience points the LYNX members built up were on another level, so Jia thought they were better than Iam.
But the skill Iam showed in this comeback was, once again, different in a way she couldn’t even recognize.
-You’re doing well even now, but I want you to pursue perfection even more.
She remembered Park Taesu coming to the practice room not long ago and provoking the LYNX members by using Iam, their competition, as an example.
Back then, she’d felt an unspoken dissatisfaction at being compared to Iam not by popularity, but by skill, but now she understood why he said that.
Iam’s stage, synchronized in a way that was unrecognizable compared to before.
And Lee Sion, leading the stage from center again this time, shone especially brightly.
How did she make those simple, hard-to-sell whacking-based choreography moves look that full of feeling? It looked like she learned it directly from some gay guy.
-These kids’ outfits and the stage this comeback are fucking insane
↳Last time the school uniform style was good too, but this time it really feels like an idol vibe is pouring out
↳Is Seo Ryujin insane or what? Why does a ponytail suit her this well?
↳Seo Ryujin too, and this whole concept overall, it fits them perfectly
↳But don’t you think their skills improved a lot this time?
↳Yeah, last time they had that overflowing rookie energy, but they already got stage ease now
↳Dance and song both, it definitely got better
↳This promotion is just a smash hit
It wasn’t only Jia who felt that way—fans also seemed to be feeling Iam’s change through this new song.
Tap.
Without even realizing it, Jia searched Lee Sion on a portal site.
Then, in a smooth scroll, Lee Sion’s profile and related articles filled the screen.
‘What kind of rookie has this much material?’
Who would believe this was material for an idol member who’d only debuted a little over three months ago?
‘This isn’t because I’m curious. This is information gathering!’
Soon, on MPlay, the variety program Three Kingdom would start, with LYNX and Iam, and even VYNNIA appearing, so Jia brainwashed herself that this was preparation for then.
Didn’t they say that if you know the enemy and know yourself, you’ll win every battle?
As she read one by one and slowly scrolled down, Jia’s eyes stopped in one spot.
‘Huh?’
[Lee Sion Namu Wiki]
It was the moment she found something that looked fun.
