Idol Hides His Military Service

Thud.

I had no idea how long they’d been following us, but the moment the lights came on, we were surrounded by the production team from front and back.

On top of that, they even had cameras in their hands, like they were filming.

‘I got caught!’

Only then did I realize we were like Sun Wukong, just jumping around in the Buddha’s palm.

Come to think of it, it had been strange that everything was going so smoothly.

No matter how thoroughly I’d planned, the fact that there hadn’t been a single crisis was something I should’ve been suspicious of from the start.

Carelessness.

I must have underestimated the Idol Ground 100 production team too much.

Especially the demon of ratings who was smiling at us from in front of the gate right now.

‘I overlooked the fact that my aunt has the same blood as Madam Sukja.’

Lately, she’d shown me a lot of weak sides, but I’d forgotten that my aunt was also a monster who’d inherited the bloodline of the Deoksu Kim clan.

In the end, we had no choice but to put our spoils of war down on the ground.

For a general who’s lost the war, all that’s left is surrender.

“Can we at least keep the Melona? Little bunny Suyeon is waiting in the dorm just for the Melona···.”

“No.”

Staff members started gathering up the bags scattered on the ground.

But I had no intention of just meekly letting this happen.

“Hey, here.”

“Are you crazy?”

Right before I put the bag down, I pretended to beg the staff member, and secretly slipped a Hershey’s chocolate drink out of the bag.

Then I passed it back to Ryu Ayeon.

“I don’t even have pockets right now.”

“Just shove it somewhere.”

When I quietly told her to hide it, she hesitated like she really couldn’t do it.

“Hey, Jihae said she really wanted to drink that. We have to get this through no matter what.”

“What?”

There was no way I was going to let them take away even the present for Yoo Jihae, the only one of our team who hadn’t taken part in tonight’s operation.

And after hearing what I said, it looked like Ryu Ayeon hesitated for a moment, then—

Snatch.

She took the drink I’d secretly handed her.

‘You’ve changed a bit.’

Without realizing it, a small laugh slipped out of me.

The great Ryu Ayeon joining in on smuggling a drink.

If it were the old her, that would’ve been unthinkable.

Honestly, tonight’s Great Escape had been for Ryu Ayeon’s sake too, and it seemed like it was working.

-C-Captain, aren’t we leaving the garrison area if we do this?

-Yeah, we are.

Back then, my platoon leader, First Lieutenant Lee Jinho.

The guy was always suffering under the pressure that things had to be perfect and the obsession that everything had to be done strictly by the book.

Of course, both of those weren’t bad traits for a soldier, but what mattered was moderation.

There’s an old saying that floats around the army: the very worst kind of soldier is a stupid but diligent commander, then next is a stupid but lazy commander, then after that a diligent and clever commander.

The best is a clever but lazy commander.

People who heard this for the first time couldn’t understand why a clever but lazy commander could be better than a clever and diligent one.

But if you spent even a little time in the army, you’d get it.

If something is too stiff, it breaks; a person who’s rigidly stubborn like that will end up causing a big accident.

You have to accept from the beginning that people can’t be perfect, and only then do you start using your head more to compensate for that.

So I took Jinho, left the garrison area, went to Seoul to have fun, and came back the next day.

Garrison area?

Technically it was something you were supposed to obey, but if there was nothing happening before or after, you could let it slide once in a while and it’d be fine.

The only thing was, after that, our Jinho sometimes crossed the garrison area line again, ended up getting a girlfriend, and it’s a bit of a sore memory that he got married before I did.

***

Miyoung could only smile as she watched her niece washing dishes in the dorm cafeteria kitchen, wearing a face that said she’d been treated unfairly.

The Bang! Bang! Love team, minus Yoo Jihae, who had pulled off the enormous stunt of escaping from the dorm.

Of course,

-PD-nim, the kids are preparing something weird.

Before the evening was over yesterday, when she got a call from a junior who was monitoring the dorm in real time, Miyoung had thought, So it’s finally happening.

‘With the way the menu’s been the last few days, it was about time something exploded.’

The dorm’s menu lately had been a series of dishes that completely killed your appetite.

Of course, there were no issues nutritionally, but the taste was a huge problem, and there was no way the production team had put those out thoughtlessly.

The menu had been deliberately planned for the broadcast to come later, and in the process, they’d been hoping to get some small, fun clips from the participants.

Like catching them secretly eating snacks or cup ramen they’d hidden away.

Nothing big—just hoping for 10 to 30-second snippets here and there they could use in between during the episode.

But since Miyoung’s niece, Lee Sion, was in it, the Bang! Bang! Love team had far surpassed the production team’s expectations and delivered enough footage to make a whole segment out of it, so she couldn’t help smiling.

They’d clearly had no idea they were being watched from the practice room where they’d been hatching their plan.

‘They’ve got screen-time monsters in their team, but these kids have no idea they’re the main characters.’

From the beginning, even just one of the three—Lee Sion, Ryu Ayeon, or Yoo Jihae—would’ve been enough to put them on the high-priority watch list, and with all three on the same team, the Bang! Bang! Love team had been under extremely close supervision from the moment it formed.

Thanks to that, their plan had been recorded on camera from start to finish.

“PD-nim, we asked the °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° convenience store and got the CCTV footage.”

“What about the practice room footage and the participant interviews?”

“The practice room stuff has already been sent to the editing team. As for the participant interviews, we’ve done about half, and we’re planning to grab the rest after they finish the dishes.”

“Okay.”

The only thing that bothered her was,

‘I can’t not use this, but if I do, it’s way too far from the core of the program.’

Idol Ground 100, with Miyoung as main PD, was a variety show, but at the same time, it was definitely also a survival program.

That was why it couldn’t lean too far into variety, and it also couldn’t lean too far into pure survival; keeping the balance in the middle was important.

If the production team hadn’t held back on using Lee Sion’s footage, Idol Ground 100 would’ve already turned from a survival program into a variety show.

Because of this, main PD Kim Miyoung was currently agonizing over what she should do with this.

“To think there were mics installed with the practice room cameras··· next time I’ll really make it perfect···.”

“For the love of god, just stay still for once!”

“No, but seriously, what I came up with this time is flawless! The operation name is Incheon Landing Operation, so listen—we first···.”

And making Miyoung’s worries pointless, Lee Sion was already trying to smother the program in variety again.

Currently, as punishment for staging the Great Escape, Lee Sion had been assigned the morning dishes in the dorm cafeteria, and now it looked like she was plotting something again.

No matter how good the footage they got was, wrong was still wrong, so the entire Bang! Bang! Love team had been assigned dishwashing as punishment, and even in the middle of that, seeing her niece already thinking about causing more trouble made Miyoung feel both happy and uneasy.

‘Did my sister handle Sion for nineteen years like this?’

She could endure because at least the program was doing well, but the fact that her older sister Sukja had looked after that time bomb for nineteen whole years without batting an eye filled her with nothing but deep respect.

***

“Why did you take the punishment too, unni? You could’ve just rested.”

“I couldn’t be the only one skipping it when the kids are all doing it.”

Yoo Jihae was too kind.

Even though she hadn’t taken part in this operation, she’d still joined the team in doing morning dishes as punishment for the Great Escape, saying that not stopping them had also been her fault and coming along without any real complaint.

A kid this good definitely deserved a present from Santa.

“Go, Yunkyungmon!”

“Yes!”

At my words, Yunkyung hopped up, ran across the practice room, and headed for the camera.

“It’s covered!”

Soon, with that tiny body, she covered the camera and announced mission complete.

“Hurry and drink this!”

“What is it? How did you even···?”

Taking that chance, I passed the chocolate drink that Ryu Ayeon had successfully smuggled in to Yoo Jihae, and Jihae, surprised and asking how we’d brought it, still followed instructions and downed the drink in one shot.

Once the carton was emptied and thrown into the trash, Yunkyung, who’d been blocking the camera, naturally stepped aside.

Tap-tap-tap!

At the same time, we heard footsteps running toward the practice room we were in.

“Haah··· w-what were you doing? You can’t block the camera!”

“Did we block the camera? Oh no··· Yunkyung, haven’t I always told you to rest in a quiet place when you’re taking a break?”

“Yes! I’ll be more careful about where I stand from now on!”

The camera crew backed off wearing frustrated expressions, knowing something had happened but having no proof.

If you got hit when you didn’t know any better, that was a mistake, but if you knew and still got hit, that meant you were disqualified as an army officer.

“Thanks, guys··· but didn’t they take all your convenience store stuff?”

Yoo Jihae’s expression had clearly brightened after drinking the chocolate drink.

Seeing that made me feel once again that it had been worth the risk to bring it.

How lonely is it when your friend brings food to school and you’re the only one who doesn’t get any?

Even if she hadn’t been there with us, sharing the same memories as a team was extremely important.

“Ryu Wuss was the one who got up the courage to smuggle it.”

“Hey! You shoved it off on me! And stop with that ‘wuss’ thing already!”

I’d been the one to hand it off, but the one who’d actually hidden it in her clothes and carried it in was Ryu Ayeon, so you could say the main culprit was Ryu Ayeon.

Just like how, back during the F-class rebellion, the ringleader had been Kim Nayeon.

“Everyone, give her a round of applause!!!”

Clap clap clap.

With the sound of applause echoing through the practice room, Yoo Jihae and Ryu Ayeon’s eyes met.

“Thanks, Ayeon. It was really good.”

“···Yeah.”

Saying thank you, Jihae, and answering in a small voice with her head still ducked, like she was embarrassed, Ryu Ayeon.

At this point, it seemed like the aftereffects of the mid-check had mostly faded.

Which meant it was time for us to return to the main objective of our Bang! Bang! Love team.

“I think it’s time we talked about the stage, guys.”

It seemed I wasn’t the only one thinking that, because at just the right timing, Yoo Jihae brought up the topic of the stage.

“Actually, I was going to say it anyway. I think the choreography we showed last time just isn’t right.”

And picking up where Jihae left off, Ryu Ayeon started speaking like she’d been waiting for the chance, and what she said was pretty shocking.

The shocking statement that she thought her own choreography was wrong.

At those words from Ryu Ayeon, the expressions of the team members were pure shock, and understandably so, because when Yunkyung or Shinyu had asked her a few days ago what she thought about revising the old choreography,

-I think this is the best choreography for Bang! Bang! Love.

She’d refused with eyes like a master potter shaping clay.

“So I’m thinking of adjusting it into something a bit more suited to our team.”

“Are you really okay with that? You worked so hard on it···.”

“I’ve realized that a good choreography isn’t necessarily the best choreography. I want to make it into something the team members can do a bit better.”

The look on Ryu Ayeon’s face as she said she’d change the choreography clearly wasn’t forced or reluctant; it was strong with the sense that this was what she genuinely wanted to do.

But,

“You’re doing the wuss thing again.”

“What?”

From my point of view, that was running away.

“This is your first lesson.”

“What are you suddenly···.” freёwebnoѵel.com

“Teacher Jungyoon said that if we could pull off that choreography, it would’ve been one of the best stages.”

“That’s···.”

It hadn’t just been my imagination that the choreography I’d watched Ryu Ayeon create during practice felt like it really suited Bang! Bang! Love.

The team members themselves had felt that the choreography was good, and judge Lee Jungyoon had said that the choreography itself was excellent.

“I like your choreography. I think changing it is running away.”

“But··· that’s not the answer! If we adjust it more to fit our team a little···.”

“We came here to do a survival show so we could become idols. You all remember, right? How they said the last Group Battle Mission was to introduce us, and this Position Evaluation is the time to show our skills.”

At my words, the team members nodded.

Since it was something the main MC, Jang Junseok, had said himself before the Position Evaluation, it looked like everyone remembered.

“If we were going to take the easy route, then like the Group Battle Mission, it would’ve been way easier to just ask Shinyu to rearrange the song and tailor it to us, right?”

“···.”

At that, the team members all went silent like they had honey in their mouths. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

The truth is, people instinctively try to avoid anything that’s hard.

Our team had held on well so far, but that didn’t mean practice wasn’t hard or that they never wanted to give up.

That’s why, when Ayeon said she wanted to lower the difficulty of the choreography to match the team members, everyone had subconsciously been ready to agree.

“We’re not just going to scrape our way past this Position Evaluation and be done, right?”

Even if we lowered the difficulty of the choreography and muddled through this stage, if we didn’t grow from it, it would be meaningless.

“I want to stay in this program all the way to the end with our team. To do that, we have to show a more advanced version of ourselves with this stage.”

It’s easy to give up on the best option.

But there’s no way the judges, or the viewers, would like that.

In the end, as long as this program was a survival show, we had to become stronger ourselves.

“I-I’ll do it! I can do it!”

“I’ll do it too! If I keep running away just because it’s hard, like Sion said, I’ll be stuck in the same place forever.”

“I don’t like agreeing with what Lee Sion says, but this time she’s right.”

“She has this weird way of convincing people.”

“If everyone’s on board, then I’m in too. Honestly, I’ve always thought Ayeon’s original choreography was good.”

And the team members agreed with me.

Now, the only one left was Ryu Ayeon.

“Really··· are you all sure about this?”

“I want to look cool on stage like the other unnies. I can’t keep getting a pass just because I’m young forever.”

“That’s right. Honestly, I think I’ve always used producing as an excuse to put in less effort with dance and singing. It can’t go on like this.”

“Hey, if you guys say that, then what does that make me? I’m not young and I can’t even produce!”

At the cautious words Ryu Ayeon had offered, the ex–Lucid Dive trio answered with confidence.

Watching them, there was definitely a faint smile on Ryu Ayeon’s face.