Free Web Novel“All you have to do is just jump down.”
“Are you really sure it’s safe?”
Yunkyung asked me, looking at me like she was suspicious.
On top of that, even though I’d guaranteed it was safe, maybe they still didn’t trust it, because starting with Shinyu, they were tugging on the bedsheet rope hanging out the window as if to test it. freeweɓnovel.cøm
Ryu Ayeon was darting her eyes around with an anxious look, totally living up to being a wuss, and only Lee Gahyeon and Kim Nayeon were managing to keep a calm attitude.
“If it weren’t for you guys, I’d just jump.”
In fact, our dorm building had a very low floor height, so even though this was the second floor, it wasn’t actually that high.
If I were escaping alone, it was the kind of height where I would’ve just squeezed my eyes shut once and jumped down.
But unlike me, these kids were extremely dull, so just in case, I’d even gone so far as to make a rope out of blankets.
If you grabbed that and went down just a little, you could land on the ground with nothing more than a light hop.
“As you all know, the dorm entrance just locks itself as soon as it hits 20:00. The dorm window is the best escape route.”
For safety reasons, the front entrance on the first floor got locked at 20:00, and besides that, the first floor was where the staff lived, so it wasn’t suitable as an escape point.
“Shu, the country Liu Bei founded, was in a really rough terrain, so it was very hard for enemies to invade.”
“Where did that come from all of a sudden?”
“Just listen first. Anyway, Shu trusted in that natural fortress of a terrain and only blocked the entrance side to defend. Because once you blocked that one spot, that was it.”
That’s right.
Since Shu was mounting an impregnable defense centered on Jian’ge, which was practically the same as the entrance into Yizhou, even mighty Wei had a hard time just recklessly coming in.
“And that’s when a guy named Deng Ai climbed the mountains, crossed the cliffs, and hit them in the back of the head!”
“What does that have to do with us right now?”
“The basics of strategy and tactics always start with stabbing at the spot your opponent didn’t see coming.”
The production team was incredibly lax.
To think they were being so complacent as to just block the front door when dealing with me.
“The production team probably hasn’t even imagined we’d escape from the second floor through the window.”
“Or maybe they just didn’t imagine we’d try to escape in the first place?”
“··· Anyway, once we get out through here, the rest is a piece of cake!”
The Great Escape team members who had gathered in my room for tonight’s operation.
Up until before this, they’d had the momentum like they were going to flip the world over with me, but now that it was actually time to escape, they seemed scared in this and that way.
I could see them nitpicking over this and that with nervous expressions on their faces.
At times like this, you needed to lead by example.
“I’ll be back, Suyeon, Nara!”
“Bring back Melona!!”
“Okay!”
When I was the first to grab the bedsheet rope and get ready to go out, Suyeon and Nara waved their hands, telling me to be careful and come back.
Annoyingly, the rest of the kids were watching the bedsheet rope closely rather than me, like I was just some kind of lab rat and what they really cared about was whether the rope was safe.
And then,
Sssk.
Without a hint of hesitation, I grabbed the bedsheet rope and started climbing down out the window.
The blanket itself wasn’t made of a slippery material, so it had a certain amount of friction; even without gloves or any kind of special equipment, I could feel that my grip was solid.
‘At this level, it’s not going to slip.’
Once I’d come down to exactly about the middle of the bedsheet rope, I looked down.
The distance between the ground and the soles of my feet was now only about the height of a desk.
Tap!
So I just jumped down, and my body landed perfectly on the grass-covered ground.
“Oh! It actually works?”
“As expected of our captain!”
“This is sturdier than I thought!”
“Damn it··· I don’t even care anymore.”
After seeing me succeed, the rest of the Great Escape team members apparently gained some confidence and started climbing down while holding onto the bedsheet rope.
“Careful, careful!”
“Uaah! Hey, catch me!”
As you’d expect from trainees, their basic physical fitness and athletic sense were better than average girls, so they each clung to the rope and came down one by one without any particular crisis.
“If you’re scared, Ryu Wuss, you can just go back.”
The only one left at the end was Ryu Ayeon.
“···I’m not scared.”
She’d somehow ended up being dragged along, but when it came to actually escaping, she was still hesitating, so when I nudged her a bit, without even having time to say anything back, Ryu Ayeon grabbed the bedsheet rope and started coming down.
“Wow, why does Ayeon’s form look that good?”
Separate from being a wuss, when we saw the way Ryu Ayeon was coming down the rope in a posture like some special-forces soldier doing airborne training, the team members who’d come down first let out sounds of admiration.
‘No wonder, it felt like my palm was getting hit with a level of force I hadn’t felt since Madam Sukja.’
Sure enough, Ryu Ayeon’s form didn’t look ordinary; even though it was winter and she was wearing thick clothes, I could practically feel the back muscles hidden underneath.
I was starting to think I really needed to refrain from provoking Ryu Ayeon in the future.
Tak.
And so, once even Ryu Ayeon had arrived, the Great Escape team members had all safely gotten back out of the dorm building.
“Where are we going now?”
“We go to the front gate.”
The front gate we used to go in and out of the dorm was our final escape route.
In reality, there was no way out anywhere else.
There was Y-shaped barbed wire laid out on top of the wall that surrounded the dorm, so suggesting we climb over that would’ve been way too dangerous.
‘Back when I was playing opposing forces, we used to throw our uniforms over and climb over, though.’
Of course, for me it was just a moment of reminiscing, but for these kids, it was out of the question.
So, together with the team members, like stray cats tiptoeing along, we started walking through the dark toward the dorm’s front gate.
Before long, the dorm front gate came into view.
“It’s closed.”
“Well, did you think it’d be open?”
“Huh?”
“We climb over. Didn’t you ever climb the wall when you were in school?”
“Why would I climb that!”
Looking at the tightly closed front gate, the team members seemed flustered and at a loss, like they hadn’t expected this.
But unless the production team had gone crazy, there was no way they’d walk around with the front gate left open.
From the beginning, I’d been planning to climb the wall.
“Then what did you do when the school lunch was bad?”
“We just ate it!”
“Or you could go to the snack bar, right?”
“You could skip a meal.”
The things they were saying were ridiculous.
At times like that, the standard play was to climb over the wall and go to the snack shop in front of the school and buy a tuna kimchi rice ball for 3,000 won.
“Wrong. Lee Sion’s way of thinking is different from ours.”
The scene of the others nodding and agreeing at Kim Nayeon’s words didn’t sit well with me at all, but this wasn’t the time to argue about that.
“I’ll climb over first and catch you, just like when we came out of the dorm earlier.”
It really felt like they’d all been raised too preciously at home.
Walls were built to be climbed over.
Once again, I had no choice but to take the lead and demonstrate.
The wall next to the front gate wasn’t even that high.
I hooked my hands on the edge of the wall, pushed off the ground, and vaulted over in one motion.
Tak.
“How was that?”
“Oh! Captain, you looked totally like a monkey!”
“Why is she so weirdly good at stuff like this?”
“Don’t try to understand her, Gahyeon.”
When Ryu Ayeon climbed down the rope earlier, I was pretty sure they’d been letting out exclamations of admiration, but now, for some reason, their reactions felt closer to mockery.
The important thing, though, was the escape, so I focused on helping each of the team members over the wall in turn. freewēbnoveℓ.com
If anyone got hurt, that’d be a huge problem.
So now, all that was left was for Lee Gahyeon to climb over last.
“Why is this one so heavy?”
I was up on top of the wall to help the others over, and I was in the middle of pulling up Gahyeon’s arm, which was unusually heavy.
Unlike Yunkyung or Shinyu, who’d come up easily, Gahyeon took some real effort.
“Shut up!”
All I’d done was state the facts, but Gahyeon glared at me fiercely.
Anyway, after some struggling, we finally got Gahyeon over the wall too, and now all that remained was the road to our final destination, the convenience store.
***
Ding-a-ling.
“Welcome to··· huh?”
At a 24-hour convenience store in Yangpyeong County, Choi Minsu (age 22), working the night shift, heard the sound of the bell as the door opened and reflexively started to greet the customer, but then he froze.
“Huff··· huff.”
“Do we really··· huff··· have to go this far?”
“Haah··· if we leave our seats empty too long, they might notice.”
The people who had come into the convenience store were a group of five who looked like high-school girls.
Of course, five girls coming to a convenience store a little past 10 p.m. was unusual, but not quite at the level of something to be shocked about.
If not for the fact that the five high school girls in front of his eyes looked like they’d just run a marathon or something, with sweat beading on their foreheads even in the middle of winter, and panting so hard it seemed like their breath might stop at any moment, leaving him no choice but to be shocked.
“Haah··· we don’t have time! Just grab and think later! Yunkyung, you’re in charge of snacks! Shinyu, drinks! Nayeon, chocolate! Ryu Ayeon, you keep watch!”
When the one high school girl whose breathing was the least ragged shouted, the customers scattered in every direction and started grabbing items as if they were trained soldiers.
In no time, the customers brought back everything from drinks to snacks, cup ramen, triangle kimbap, and all sorts of things, and set them down on the shelf in front of the counter.
“Boss! Please ring us up, quick!!”
“Ah··· y-yes!”
Overwhelmed by the force of the blue-eyed high school girl in front of him, Choi Minsu immediately started scanning [N O V E L I G H T] the barcodes of the items.
‘Is she mixed-race? No, but they all look like this, they can’t all be celebrities or something···.’
And then, the customers’ looks, which he’d been too flustered to notice until now, finally started to come into his eyes.
All five of them were so glamorous and beautiful that in a countryside like this, you could’ve called them celebrity-level, and among them, the customer currently standing at the counter stood out as especially beautiful to the point he couldn’t help sneaking glances without realizing it.
‘I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere?’
For some reason, her face felt familiar, like he’d seen it somewhere before, but as someone who’d gone through boys’ middle school, boys’ high school, engineering college, and then the army, there was no way Minsu would’ve actually met women like that, so he figured he was just mistaken.
And as soon as they finished paying, the customers grabbed their food and instantly headed for the tables inside the convenience store.
Their momentum was so fierce it was hard to even say anything to them.
***
“Captain···!”
“Use the time you’re talking to eat, Im Yunkyung!”
Steam was billowing up from the cup ramen.
And on top of that sat a triangle kimbap.
By the time the ramen was done cooking, it would probably be warmed up to just the right temperature.
“Ah···.”
While I was waiting for the cup ramen, I glanced to the side and saw Nayeon holding a chocolate snack with a face like she was ascending to heaven.
Gulp.
I also saw Gahyeon watching the piping-hot hot bar in front of her with a conflicted look.
“Why aren’t you eating, Gahyeon?”
“Well··· I still have to manage my weight···.”
“There’s a saying. There’s not much difference between a billion in debt and 1.01 billion.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means not eating that one thing isn’t going to magically make you slim··· ack!”
Before I could even finish speaking, Gahyeon smacked my back.
She had a bad habit of snapping whenever she heard something true.
And then,
“Why aren’t you eating?”
“···I’m not supposed to eat stuff like this.”
“Why?”
While all the other team members were too busy stuffing their faces to think, only Ryu Ayeon wasn’t touching anything; she just watched the food in front of her.
When I asked this Ryu Ayeon why she wasn’t eating, the answer that came back was that she wasn’t supposed to eat this kind of thing.
When I shot back that if you weren’t going to eat something this good, then what exactly were you going to eat, she said,
“The agency said trainees aren’t allowed to eat things like this···.”
“And did that agency say it was okay to escape from the program dorm?”
“···.”
“I swear, hang on.”
When you let someone vent their desires, you have to let them vent properly.
If we’d gone to all the trouble of escaping only for her to drink a single sports drink and go back, that would’ve been worse than not coming out at all.
I poured out the water from the Buldak stir-fried noodles and the Gonghwachun jjajang ramen I’d carefully been cooking, and started mixing the two together.
‘This is it.’
One of the things you learn in the army is how to combine ramen.
Among them, what I was making now, the so-called Gonghwa-dak, could be called the soldiers’ bestseller, a devilish ramen where the spiciness and the savory flavor of the jjajang were layered together.
Sssk.
I grabbed a big chopstickful of the finished Gonghwa-dak and brought it to Ryu Ayeon’s mouth.
At first, she shook her head and pouted like she wasn’t going to eat it.
But after smelling it and seeing that provocative visual right under her nose, it was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to hold back.
“Try, try.”
And after my repeated pushing, saying it over and over, that she’d just take one bite, Ryu Ayeon finally opened her mouth.
“!”
And in that moment, I ended up waking the demon of appetite that Ryu Ayeon had been hiding.
In an instant, Ryu Ayeon demolished my Gonghwa-dak, and even after that didn’t seem satisfied, she started sneaking looks at the triangle kimbap I was holding.
“Want some?”
“···It’d be rude to refuse if you’re offering.”
Pretending like she was only giving in because of my offer, Ryu Ayeon took the triangle kimbap and took a bite, and just like when she’d eaten the Gonghwa-dak earlier, her eyes went wide.
Thinking she might choke at this rate, I casually slid the cola over to her, and she downed that right away too.
Wondering just how far she’d go, I then quietly pushed over a hot bar, and after that, a chocolate snack.
Surprisingly, the same Ryu Ayeon who had at least pretended to refuse up until now started scarfing down whatever I held out like a baby bird taking food.
‘Hmm··· it was worth coming out.’
Sure enough, people bond by doing bad things together.
***
“I’m so full!”
“If someone saw you and Ayeon eat, Captain, they’d think you were both starved for like a week.”
“If you think about the jelly you ate, the calories come out about the same.”
“I’m still growing!”
Im Yunkyung, that cheeky middle-schooler who only ever pulled the age card when it was convenient for her.
We really had eaten a lot.
Especially Ryu Ayeon; whether it was because it was her first time eating convenience store food or what, her eyes had gone round as she tore through every kind of food.
It was to the point that the other team members had even given up their food to her, telling her to eat.
After that satisfying meal, the Great Escape team members started heading back to the dorm.
Our hands were full of food that doubled as emergency rations and things we planned to share with the other participants when we got back, so they were quite heavy, but our hearts were light.
Was this how a father felt on payday, carrying fried chicken home?
It wasn’t just me; it seemed like everyone was pleased with the successful results of the Great Escape, and as we chatted excitedly about this and that, before we knew it, we’d already arrived back at the dorm front gate.
Just like when we came out earlier, I was going to climb over the wall first and take the stuff as they handed it over, and I was just about to climb the wall when,
Pop!
The lights around the front gate, which had been off, started turning on.
-Lee Sion, Ryu Ayeon, Lee Gahyeon, Im Yunkyung, Kim Nayeon, Geum Shinyu, please put down whatever you’re holding right now.
And through the speakers, a very familiar voice could be heard.
