Free Web Novel[Humanity’s Last Survivor]
「(Seo Ryujin throwing Lee Gahyeon aside and running toward the exit)
At this level, you really could survive all the way to the end even in a zombie apocalypse」
⤷ Isn’t the cliché that once an incompetent ally becomes the enemy, they get stronger?
⤷ Are you trying to say Gahyeon is incompetent on both the ally side and the enemy side right now?
⤷ Iam really is legendary. I never imagined I’d be watching zombie variety content in idol self-produced content
⤷ Did they dump the Three Kingdoms prize money into this?
⤷ I’m a room-escape expert, and no matter how I look at this, I really don’t think this is how you’re supposed to escape
⤷ But they escaped, didn’t they?
A storm in a teacup.
It meant something that felt like a huge deal to the people involved, but to outsiders felt like nothing much.
Usually, people called idol content a storm in a teacup.
And that made sense, because unless someone was an idol fan, there was no reason to watch an idol’s self-produced content, so no matter how much people said, My bias looked so pretty! Our girls are this funny, it just wasn’t relatable.
But,
"Shouldn’t we change our events?"
"What?"
"Look at this. If we go ahead like this, it feels like the Iam girls are going to sweep everything."
Iam’s self-produced content was very different.
It had only been uploaded three days ago, but the terrifying view count was already charging toward one million.
And it wasn’t just the views.
Even though it was nothing more than content uploaded by idols, articles about this newly uploaded Zombie Laboratory content could easily be found in the entertainment news section.
And UBS variety PD Kim Daehan was also in agony after watching Iam’s latest YouTube content.
The Idol Athletics Championships.
It was UBS’s flagship Chuseok variety show, and this time Daehan was the PD directing it.
They gathered male and female idols with at least a decent amount of name recognition and ran it in a field-day format, so if you were an idol fan, it was a show you had no choice but to watch.
From popular idols to reasonably known idols, they all turned out and competed, so before anyone knew it, it had largely become a pride fight between idol fandoms.
At first it got cursed out a lot—actually, it still got cursed out a lot—but it had already continued for several years, so now it was also a variety show firmly established as a big event in the idol world.
If there was one thing people were looking forward to most at this year’s Idol Athletics Championships, it was without question the showdown among the rookie girl groups led by Iam.
Iam, VYNNIA, LYNX, and even DARE; ON, which had been gaining popularity lately.
So many rookie girl groups had debuted and were becoming popular in 2016 that it would have been fair to call it the year of girl groups, and people all wanted to watch those girl groups battle it out fiercely.
In fact, even Three Kingdoms, which had wrapped up successfully not long ago, had broken past the ceiling of cable variety and recorded double-digit ratings, shocking everyone at the network.
-You have to book Iam no matter what!
As a result, broadcasters lately were desperate to book Iam however they could.
[The Paldo Man women soldiers edition was a huge hit! The Iam effect?]
[Lee Sion proves it with ratings, overturning concerns about her drama appearance!]
[A rebellion from educational variety? Field Site of Life takes first place in its timeslot!]
There had even been chatter for a while in the broadcasting industry about the variety PDs who had participated in Iam’s charity auction content.
-Have they got no pride? She’s not some world star, so why are they going that far just to book one girl group?
People said broadcasting PDs weren’t quite as powerful as they used to be these days, but their influence was still immense.
Unless someone was a major top star, the casting authority still rested with the PDs, so naturally they couldn’t help getting full of themselves.
So no matter how much Iam was on a roll these days, there were always PDs gossiping that they couldn’t join in that clown show just to book one girl group.
Of course,
-Get the hell out, you bastard!
it was no secret that when the programs Iam had appeared on through the charity auction all became massive hits, every PD who had refused to participate out of pride got put through hell by their superiors.
'I got lucky.'
At least Daehan had been lucky.
He had not participated in the auction content, but as the PD in charge of the Idol Athletics Championships, booking Iam had been a given.
What was giving Daehan a headache now, however, was the crazed side the Iam members had shown.
[The idol you’d least want to run into in a zombie world]
「1. Ryu Ayeon
2. Lee Sion
3. Lee Gahyeon
Who do you think is scarier?」
⤷ That’s not an easy one
⤷ Why is Lee Gahyeon even in here?
⤷ In zombie stuff, the scariest thing isn’t the villain, it’s your allies
⤷ Ryu Ayeon comes up with brutally cold schemes, and Lee Sion carries those insane schemes out without a second of hesitation
⤷ Honestly, this is Ryu Ayeon
⤷ Agreed. Anyone who saw Ryu Ayeon’s face when she blocked the door in the last room is picking Ryu Ayeon no matter what
Reading the community reaction posts about Iam’s content, Daehan desperately agreed.
"She’s smiling···!"
"What?"
Swish.
At Daehan’s sudden remark, the staff member looked baffled, so Daehan silently turned the laptop he had been watching and showed it over.
Then the staff member saw Ryu Ayeon bracing the door shut with her back to block the zombie horde, and—
"What the hell?! She’s smiling?"
"That’s what I’m saying. She’s smiling right there."
Ryu Ayeon, who had clearly taken on the solemn role of holding back the zombies for the sake of the members, was smiling as if she was enjoying herself.
And it was the bright, innocent smile no one had ever seen from her before.
[Ryu Ayeon is the real deal]
「(A gif of Ryu Ayeon smiling while blocking the zombies)
You can tell at a glance that right now Ryu Ayeon is totally immersed in the image of herself saying, 'I’ll hold them off here, you go on ahead!' in her own head」
⤷ Ngh... it’s a sacrifice that can’t be helped (throwing alligator feed)
⤷ So this is why people with convictions are scary
⤷ It went by so fast a lot of people didn’t notice, but she was smiling when she smacked Lee Gahyeon’s hand away and dropped her too
⤷ Holy shit, she really was?
⤷ This is the first time I’ve ever seen Ryu Ayeon having this much fun
⤷ It was funny as hell because of ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ that, but is this really right, Ayeon?
⤷ No matter how I look at it, this is not the kind of thing an idol should be doing lol
"We were thinking about this way too shallowly."
"No, what exactly have you been talking about this whole time?"
"Think about it carefully. Do you think Iam members are going to participate in the Idol Athletics Championships like normal idols? No. They’re definitely going to wreck the place."
"Surely···they won’t go that far, right?"
"Absolutely."
To the staff member’s question asking if they would really go that far, Daehan answered that they absolutely would.
Ryu Ayeon, who without a moment’s hesitation smacked away a fellow member’s hand and gifted that member to the zombies, or Lee Sion, who, the moment she was given a rope, used it to tie a member to a pillar.
Especially after seeing even the youngest, Im Yunkyung, get thrown to the zombies by those two without any hesitation, Daehan had the prophetic intuition that if they ran the Idol Athletics Championships the way they had originally planned, Iam might turn it from an athletics meet into an all-out brawl.
"Let’s rework the events."
"But we’ve already prepared everything from the set to the props···."
"I’m not saying we change everything completely. We need to revise the rules a little."
"The rules?"
Daehan only nodded quietly.
They said hunters who hunted bears used bullets different from what ordinary marksmen used.
And that made sense, because unlike other wild animals, bears were the kind of beasts that, if you shot sloppily, would ignore the bullet and still charge at you, so hunters had to change their equipment to fit the opponent.
'Iam needs rules tailored for Iam.'
Daehan had seen Agbaek before, the program that had once created Iam.
Right now, Daehan was recalling how the bizarrely named game the Agbaek production team had prepared back then, Battlefield Ground Zero, had crashed and burned in spectacular fashion.
For the viewers, it had just been entertaining, but from PD Daehan’s perspective, watching the original planning intent get brutally destroyed moment by moment had been enough to send chills down his spine.
As far as he could tell, Battlefield Ground Zero had clearly been a system where Lee Sion, Seo Ryujin, and Ryu Ayeon were supposed to protect the reward while being chased by the other contestants.
-Come here!
And yet what actually happened was the shocking sight of those three joining forces and running around butchering the other contestants instead.
'Lee Sion and Ryu Ayeon are the problem!'
Daehan believed the mistake had been tying together Lee Sion, who went wild even by herself, and Ryu Ayeon, who was usually quiet but went wild too whenever she got involved with Lee Sion.
"It’s about time our Idol Athletics Championships changed up its format too."
But from the mistake the Agbaek production team had made, Daehan found inspiration.
If they were going to wreck the place anyway, then the dangerous idea was that it would be better to let them wreck it properly.
In truth, as the Idol Athletics Championships went on year after year, heavy pressure from idol fandoms had gradually changed it from a competition into something more like a team-bonding event.
To prevent possible accidents, events involving intense clashes had disappeared, and physical contact was also being minimized because of conflicts between fandoms and the risk of rumors starting.
As a result, the freshness it had in the beginning had long since disappeared, and the Idol Athletics Championships, which had originally been a show watched by a wide range of age groups despite idols appearing on it, had gradually turned into a show watched only by idol fans.
Daehan was thinking of entrusting the revival of that Idol Athletics Championships to Iam just once.
***
"How is it?"
"It looks awesome!"
"It weirdly suits you so well, Boss!"
Hearing the younger ones showering me with praise, my shoulders somehow started bouncing.
"Heh heh···."
And to give fanservice in response to that enthusiastic reaction from the younger ones, I lightly waved the fan in my hand—no, the white-feather fan.
Then, following the flow of the wind, the white-feather fan danced through the air as if a bird were flying.
I felt like I had become Zhuge Liang.
'So this is how it felt, Chancellor!'
Right now, in our practice room, the Three Kingdoms era had unfolded, rewinding two thousand years of time.
-Sion, a cosmetics ad offer came in, and this is a really good opportunity.
-Ahem! I already made it clear last time that I would no longer be doing powder-and-paint ads! Have you already forgotten that the contract clearly states I can reject ads I don’t want to—
-If you shoot the ad, I’ll give you this!
-This is···.
-It’s a fan handmade by a craftsman in a village in Shandong Province, China, where the descendants of Zhuge Kongming live! You know that even in China it takes over half a year of reservations to get one of these, right?
-I can film all day!
Producer Raon had appeared while I was, as usual, bullying Lee Gahyeon in the practice room.
She asked if I wanted to shoot a cosmetics ad, and I had been about to reject it on the spot, but—
'The hostage is too strong.'
Unfortunately, the item Raon brought was too powerful.
[This just came over from China]
「(A photo of an elegantly packaged white-feather fan)
They sell white-feather fans elsewhere too, but when it comes to the real thing, you have to get one from Shandong Province.
It’s a masterpiece painstakingly crafted stitch by stitch from the feathers of white birds by an artisan.
It’s so popular even in China that it was hard to get a reservation slot, but I got lucky and found one.」
A post that had recently gone up on the Sajomo cafe.
The moment I read that post, I had no choice but to throw the fake fan I had been treasuring in my room into a regular trash bag.
When I saw the white-feather fan that had been used as a prop by the actor who played Zhuge Liang in the drama Kongming of the Three Kingdoms, and which was supposedly handmade by Zhuge Liang’s descendants in China—
the white-feather fan I had bought on Coupang for 7,900 won looked like trash.
After that, I even searched the internet thinking I would buy the white-feather fan even if I had to sell my Bitcoin, but just like the person who posted in the cafe had said, it was hard to get because reservations were backed up even locally in China.
So I had no choice but to put off getting it until later, and now they were telling me they would gift me that sorrowful white-feather fan from my memories, so of course I accepted the ad.
"It’s driving me nuts, so stop waving that fan around already!"
"Oh, what a tragedy. To think there’s someone who cannot recognize the true value of this fan."
"A fan is just a fan! Stop making such a scene and sit still already!"
Lee Gahyeon snapped at me in a sharp, irritated voice.
Just as Warren Buffett, master of investment, had failed to recognize Google stock and missed the chance to buy low, I could only feel sorry for Lee Gahyeon for slandering my white-feather fan without recognizing its true value.
"Later, even if you offer tribute in the form of food and beg me just once to lend you this white-feather fan, I will not lend it to you."
"Are you insane? There’s no way I’d ever need to borrow that fan unless I got shot or something."
"How did you know?"
"What?"
I only flinched for a moment because Lee Gahyeon had inadvertently spoken my grave secret.
"It’s time for us to head up now."
Seo Ryujin let the members gathered in the practice room know that it was time to move.
"Hoo···."
And at Seo Ryujin’s words, Shinyu let out a sigh.
'Makes sense that she’d be nervous.' ƒгeewebnovёl.com
It wasn’t just Shinyu. The other members too were getting to their feet with tense expressions and heavy steps.
"Don’t worry, Shinyu! Your song is definitely going to make it!"
Unable to stand this kind of atmosphere, Yunkyung tried to lighten the mood by offering words of encouragement to Shinyu, but even while saying thank you, Shinyu’s stiff expression did not ease.
-Today you’ll have the meeting to choose the title track for your next album. We’re going to reflect the members’ opinions on this album too, so come to the conference room by 2:00.
And that made sense, because today was the day our next album’s title track would be chosen.
Shinyu, who had submitted her own song for this title track selection meeting, was more nervous than ever.
She had arranged songs many times, and she had even gotten a fan song onto the last album, but this was the first time she had submitted one of her own songs for selection as the official title track of an album, so it made sense that she would be nervous.
Because of that, not only Shinyu but the members too were tense along with her.
Since we all knew how hard Shinyu had worked these past few days, everyone was worried first about what would happen if the result turned out bad.
I too was trying to force the mood upward with jokes because I was worried that Shinyu, a younger sister I cared about, might get downcast if the result went badly.
But no matter what, it wasn’t easy. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
Lee Gahyeon, who normally would have laughed it off, had become so sensitive as if she herself had submitted a song that she couldn’t even play along with my jokes and was snapping back sharply, which showed just how cautious everyone was feeling.
'If the result turns out bad, do I need to stage a coup or something?'
In my head, I briefly imagined a Men in Black operation where, if Shinyu’s song was not chosen as the title track, I would karate-chop the backs of CEO Kim Sanghyeok’s and Producer Raon’s necks in the conference room and give them amnesia, but that did not seem easy either.
By the time I finished organizing my thoughts, we had reached the third-floor conference room.
It was time to choose our title track.
