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"Yuri!!!"
At Yuri’s baseless Japanese closing greeting, a reply came back from the candidates in thick, gravelly bass voices.
Like they couldn’t let anyone forget they were officer candidates, even their cheering came out with diaphragmatic breathing, and it filled the parade ground.
'Now this is real Korea-Japan exchange.'
Wouldn’t it be fair to call it true Korea-Japan exchange when officer candidates of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces—legitimate successors of the Korean Liberation Army—are sending cheers to a Japanese idol?
"Wow, the reactions at a military base stage are no joke!"
"I’ve never gotten a response this intense while performing."
"I don’t think it was even like this at the Agbaek Final Round."
And it wasn’t just Yuri’s last greeting. The candidates had been screaming their lungs out and cheering the entire time during today’s stage.
The members looked startled by the passionate roar they were getting for the first time, but—
'They’re just college kids. They don’t have enough desperation.'
To me, compared to a real troop support performance, it was still a pathetically weak response.
- Milky-white Taenamgwan!!!
Back when I was a company commander, a trot singer named Taenamgwan came to our unit for a troop support performance.
To this day it was still a mystery why Taenamgwan came as troop support, but anyway, even that person got top girl-group level responses at a real base.
Compared to that, the candidates’ cheering didn’t have soul in it.
Maybe because they could go back to civilian life in a few days, they just didn’t have enough desperation.
'Someday, I want to let the members taste a real base performance.'
For a moment, I thought I wanted to let the members hear those gravelly voices of people who truly craved freedom, but for now, I decided to be satisfied with this.
Me and the Iam members had agreed to briefly appear in the Paldo Man female officer candidate special.
I participated in the shooting training, and we’d even finished today’s surprise stage, so our mission was over.
"Don’t go... take me with you too!"
And the moment Lee Gahyeon—who’d joined us briefly to perform together—came down to the backstage waiting room behind the stage set up on the parade ground, she started whining.
"Why are you being so clingy?"
"One day here is way too long! I won’t complain that practice is hard anymore! I’ll practice hard and work hard on stage!" freewebnovel.cσ๓
Clinging to my forearm and hanging off me, Lee Gahyeon threw a tantrum about how she wanted to get in the car with us and leave too.
Even though I slapped her hand off my arm with a sharp smack and told her not to cling, she still didn’t look like she had any intention of letting go.
The other members looked at her like, No wonder she’s like that, feeling sorry for her, but I didn’t.
'She’s got military syndrome.'
Military syndrome—the thing every soldier gets at least once after entering the army.
-When I get out, I’m definitely getting a scholarship.
- First, once I’m discharged, it’ll be May, so I’ll work part-time for three months and save up money...
- I’m going to apply for night study hours and prep for the college entrance exam.
When you come into a place like the military that forces a regular lifestyle on you, people start clinging to pointless hope.
Maybe because you repeat a healthy routine every day, you see soldiers all the time going, I can change! I’ll use this time wisely and actually ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) accomplish something!
It looks exactly like a gym in early January.
But once exactly one month passes, the guy who swore he’d apply for night study and study is passed out in the barracks snoring hard enough to shake the walls, and the guy who swore he’d start a part-time job the moment he got discharged—
- Company commander, LoL?
At 3:30 a.m., he sent me a message asking if I wanted to run the Rift with him.
Lee Gahyeon would be the same. It was obvious.
Right now, she was overflowing with confidence like the moment she got out she could do anything, but two days after she got out, she’d be flopped out in the practice room like always, moaning about being tired.
"All right, wrap up properly and we’ll get going."
"No!!! Don’t go! If you’re leaving, at least leave that cola!"
"Hey. How can you drink it alone when the other candidates can’t?"
Even while staff from Paldo Man had shown up and were grabbing her and dragging her away, Lee Gahyeon begged for just one sip of the cola in my hand—so I downed it in one shot and left her nothing but a burp.
"Sion, when Gahyeon gets back, you can’t complain if she murders you!"
"Captain is seriously a devil."
"Even if Gahyeon doesn’t kill you, PD Raon will."
The members scolded me without understanding my kind intention of not letting her cling to false hope, but whatever.
And then—
"Die, Kim Yunsik!"
"Uwaah! Raon! I’m sorry!"
"Did I tell you to give someone the passcode to my place so you could pack my stuff behind my back?!"
"Ack!"
After leaving Lee Gahyeon behind and heading with the members toward where our van was parked, we witnessed our manager Yunsik getting assaulted by Raon.
"Get in, fast!"
"Hey! Let go! I’m really just going to talk to Sion!"
"Get in, hurry, guys!"
The moment Yunsik spotted me while he was getting beaten up, he threw himself in front of Raon and blocked her with his whole body.
It was such a sacrificial sight that the nickname "Yunsik of Steel" didn’t feel wasted, and even I had to hold back tears for a second.
'If I hadn’t put her on the bus, she really would’ve murdered me today.'
I barely managed to get into the car, dodging Raon’s hand as she tried to grab me through Yunsik’s blocking.
Bang!
Right after that, Yunsik ruthlessly tripped Raon onto the ground, climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove off.
In the process, there was the minor incident where me and the members got slightly pressed down by Raon’s energy as she pounded on the van window and spat out curses that sounded like they had a grudge mixed in, but anyway, our surprise mission ended successfully.
"I didn’t know Gahyeon would be good at shooting."
"Seriously! I thought Sion would win."
"Gahyeon is surprisingly good at delicate work. Some of the dolls in the room were made by her, right?"
Once Raon got farther away and the officer candidate school got farther away too, the members finally seemed to relax and started talking—and the topic was Lee Gahyeon hitting a perfect score.
- Lee Gahyeon! Lee Gahyeon!
- Is she a god?!
- Uwaaah!! Why isn’t the drink cola? Why is it Massta?!
- The bus is humanity’s greatest invention!
When the result of the match—me at nineteen and Lee Gahyeon at twenty—rang out over the broadcast, I remembered how the candidates had roared.
Thanks to that, Lee Gahyeon rode back on the bus getting treated like a queen by the candidates and the cast.
Even now, I could still picture her—glancing at me for cues, but acting smug and triumphant in front of everyone else—and a laugh slipped out of me without meaning to.
'It really was unexpected.'
Lee Gahyeon’s shooting—nineteen in reality, but officially recorded as twenty.
I was planning to play around a bit and then let her win, but she shot well enough that I had to focus hard too, just to build tension.
I figured I’d go easy from the start since I’d already messed with them plenty during PRI, but she made me shoot for real without me realizing it.
Looks like the Republic of Korea Armed Forces lost a wasted talent to the idol industry.
"Ugh... this doesn’t feel like rest."
While the members were talking about how much more Lee Gahyeon and Raon would suffer going forward, Yunkyung stretched and complained with regret.
The other members nodded like they agreed.
And it made sense. After this short rest, we still had a mountain of schedules to do.
Aside from Nara, who’d already finished the charity auction schedule, and Shinyu, who still had a lot of filming left, everyone else had to get through their own assigned schedules.
"I think we have to start meetings for the Three Kingdoms final round starting today."
Just like Ryujin said, we needed to start preparing for the Three Kingdoms stage too, since only the final round was left.
So after we returned to the company today, it wouldn’t be rest—we’d go straight into meetings, and trying to at least rest during travel time, the members started falling asleep one by one.
'Being busy is better than the alternative.'
Watching them, my head got complicated.
Not long ago, CEO Kim Sanghyeok had suddenly brought up contract renewal to me.
- You don’t have to decide right away. It’s just that, in terms of order, Sion’s renewal is first, so I’m only telling you in advance.
How was I supposed to think slowly after hearing something like that?
Anyway, after hearing about renewal, my head had been messy for a while, but after tormenting Lee Gahyeon and Raon today, I felt a little refreshed.
'I still don’t know.'
Renewal.
Even though it was something that would come sooner or later, it felt like a topic I’d been unconsciously avoiding.
Idol work—there was a simple reason I’d ended up doing idol activities for almost half a year already.
- You have to debut.
Back during Agbaek filming, at the ranking announcement ceremony, I watched contestants I knew get eliminated, and I decided to carry their will.
The rank of first place I carried didn’t just hold my own intent or will—it held the wishes of the people who’d been eliminated, and I had no intention of treating that lightly.
But renewal was a different problem.
'What happens if I renew?'
There was a massive difference between a one-year short-term project and making idol work my real job.
Usually, idol contracts were seven years under the standard contract.
But the Iam members and I had a special one-year contract with KJ Entertainment, and at the renewal meeting, it was unknown how many years the company would offer.
And I still didn’t know how the other members would take renewal either.
If the members rejected the renewal offer, would I end up doing entertainment work alone?
I didn’t like that idea.
"Are you not sleeping, Sion?"
"Go to sleep. Kids need sleep."
"I’ll be an adult soon too!"
"Sure. Our bright eighteen-year-old Shinyu."
Maybe she noticed I wasn’t sleeping, because Shinyu, sitting in the seat next to me, spoke up.
After I answered her briefly, I looked around.
Yunkyung and Yuri were already asleep, Ayeon had her earphones in listening to music, and Ryujin—maybe she could still hold out—had her phone out and was writing something.
'Hm...'
Back when we started Agbaek, I couldn’t even imagine I’d end up this close with these kids.
So I was curious what the members were thinking about renewal, but I didn’t bring it up easily.
Just like I had my own judgment, they’d have theirs too—and if I mentioned renewal first, it might burden them.
'Is this the weight of being an adult?'
You could call it delicate consideration that came from a different kind of experience than a bunch of babies.
And more than anything, renewal wasn’t what mattered right now.
- The final Three Kingdoms round... the topic is a guerrilla concert!
Three Kingdoms, which had been given over two full weeks of preparation time.
The topic for its final round was no ordinary thing.
***
"They really poured the budget in."
"I didn’t think the department head would approve this."
"Double-digit ratings are right in front of us, so even the department head is excited. If MPlay gets two double-digit-rating programs in a single year, that’s a historic achievement."
At Miyoung’s words, the youngest writer on Three Kingdoms nodded and agreed intensely.
"We’re getting a bonus this time, right?"
"Who knows? If VYNNIA loses, the CEO might be in a bad mood and pretend not to see it."
"Then at the final guerrilla concert, we should rig it—"
"Money is scary. Our youngest is saying 'rig it' with their whole chest now."
"I’m joking."
"Don’t even joke like that. Then it spreads as a rumor and an article comes out saying Three Kingdoms was fixed."
Maybe the youngest writer could feel Miyoung wasn’t just talking, because only then did their expression stiffen and they nodded quietly without a word.
'Everyone’s too excited. I need to rein them in a little.'
Miyoung knew the youngest writer was joking, but from experience, she also knew that the better things go, the more small things turn into problems and become obstacles—so she spoke harshly on purpose.
Ratings: 8.9%.
Three Kingdoms had already achieved the feat of taking first place in its time slot against strong weekend competitors, and first place in cable ratings.
[Raon really was a great singer]
(A black-and-white shot of Raon’s photo laid over Iam’s stage)
"Already miss her"
- She was still so young, how did it end up like this
- In my day, it was Raon
- I swear I just heard Raon talking!
- It still feels like she should be sitting in the judges’ seats perfectly fine, sob sob
- You guys are really terrible
The second round stage of Three Kingdoms, which had aired just yesterday.
Since the theme was heritage, all three groups participating in Three Kingdoms put on excellent stages, and it hit viewers dead-on.
[Watching this round made me think of memories, it was nice]
"Any Girls and G.G were seriously legendary"
- Be honest, shouldn’t they have let Iam be Kira?
- Kira should be happy as the third
- K-pop really has history now
- Yeah, it’s already the third generation, at this point it’s got tradition
- Maybe because each group did a junior group from their original agency, the stage quality was different
- Raon: They’re not my juniors
- So that’s why Iam sent Raon off
A lot of viewers sank into old memories watching LYNX and VYNNIA decorate stages with songs from Any Girls and G.G, the tracks that had signaled the start of the old girl-group showdown.
[Didn’t know Raon was this incredible of a singer]
"I thought she was just a funny producer, but after the stage I looked up old videos and she was dancing and singing all by herself.
She’s got so many really good songs too."
- There are a lot of kids who don’t even know Raon now
- She’s a singer who was a waste to retire
- A funny producer... if Raon sees this, she coughs blood
- She probably already coughed blood because of Iam
- Why did heaven make Raon and then make Iam!
- CEO Lee Seyoon was grinning while watching Raon look spaced out, I’ve never seen him smile like that
Iam’s stage, which expressed the history of the singer Raon, was also stirring up a lot of buzz online.
"- For this score, we evaluated purely based on the stage itself.
Performance matters too, but among the teams, I think the group that showed the meaning and stage most fitting for K-pop’s heritage was LYNX.
- VYNNIA’s stage was also good. To present a senior group’s song on stage with this level of completion, I can only imagine how much they worked for it, and I think that showed SY’s heritage properly.
- You guys... no, Iam, I want to talk after you go back to the company."
After the stages, there was some debate in fandoms and communities over the judges’ evaluations, but with LYNX taking first, VYNNIA second, and Iam third, Three Kingdoms ended up in a ridiculous three-way tie.
"We have to push past ten percent."
With only the final round left, depending on the outcome, first place would receive huge benefits: a solo comeback stage—the kind only top idols get—and an additional solo performance at a year-end stage.
And the topic of that final round was a guerrilla concert.
