Idol Hides His Military Service

All-Out.

It was a four-character idiom that meant the will to do something with all your heart and strength.

"Don’t come out."

"···I wasn’t going to go out."

"Then why can’t you look me in the eyes."

"···I’m just not good at looking people in the eye."

My gaze, unable to look at Nara, only staring at empty air for no reason.

Maybe it looked funny, because for the first time since the rank announcement ceremony, Nara smiled.

"You really can’t lie all the way through, Sion."

"If you’re going to do that, then just cry."

"I’m not going to cry."

Idol Ground 100 was a really cruel program.

-After the rank announcement ceremony, we have prepared a bus for the participants who placed 26th and lower. Please pack your things and come out.

The moment the rank announcement ceremony ended, the staff told the eliminated participants to pack up and come out, without even giving them time to talk among themselves.

Because of that, the eliminated participants—who had only just moved into the dorm—had to get ready to leave again without even unpacking.

'Maybe this is better.'

At first I thought, Isn’t this too cold?

But thinking again, if the eliminated participants stayed here any longer, it would probably just hurt more.

"Do you remember how there were four of us in this room at first?"

"Yeah."

Nara held the suitcase she’d brought, and before leaving the door, she slowly looked around the dorm like she wanted to store the scenery in her eyes one last time.

Watching her like that, I was reminded of when we first became roommates.

'I was so embarrassed I wanted to run away.'

Back then, after the entrance ceremony stage, we got assigned our grades and came to the dorm, and all I could think was how humiliating it was and how badly I wanted to be alone.

The incident where we pulled a midnight Great Escape through our dorm window to the convenience store.

The nights we’d lie in our beds and talk about the practice we did that day until we fell asleep.

It hit me again how many memories I had with Nara.

"Now that it’s just two of you, stop picking on Suyeon."

"···I wasn’t picking on her."

"I think I’m going to miss your Three Kingdoms stuff and your Legend of Valley stories when I go home."

"When you’re out, I’ll tell you a hundred times."

"That’s a little much, so just buy me something tasty instead."

"···Fine."

Nara smiled as she asked me to buy her something tasty, then waved and walked out of the room.

"She left."

"Yeah."

Honestly, I wanted to walk her out all the way to outside the dorm, but Nara refused no matter what, so we had no choice but to say our last goodbye inside.

"Suyeon."

"Yes."

"Let’s debut."

"···Yes."

When I saw the first group of eliminated participants, my heart just felt heavy. freewёbnoνel.com

It was because I kept thinking, Do I really have the right to stay in this program in their place?

When I saw the second group of eliminated participants, I was sad.

Because when participants you’ve struggled alongside, talked with, and only just started to get close to get eliminated, it hurts.

And today, at the third rank announcement ceremony, my heart felt heavy and I was sad again, but I didn’t cry.

-Idols have to show people an illusion.

It was because I remembered something Shinyu had told me during the last break.

Seventy-five participants had already been eliminated from the program.

And since an additional eighteen would probably be eliminated at the final stage, that meant ninety-three participants would not debut.

If so, there was only one thing I could do for them.

Stand on stage for everyone, all-out.

"I think we should head to the practice room soon."

"What are they going to make us do this time?"

"Who knows? It’s the final, so I don’t think they prepared a normal mission."

At Suyeon’s words that it was time to move to the practice room, I pushed the past aside in my head for a moment and thought about what might come next.

Because now all that was left was the last stage with the name Final Round, and the staff said they’d announce the details once we gathered in the practice room, so we had no idea what was waiting for us.

'I’ll find out when I get there.'

It wasn’t like there was any point worrying about it, so I hooked one arm around Suyeon’s neck and headed to the practice room.

Forcing myself to ignore the emptiness—because Suyeon used to be on my right and Nara used to be on my left.

***

"Starting today, we’re changing online voting to one vote per person."

"Whoo··· That’s going to be brutal."

"It can’t be helped. It’s necessary."

Idol Ground 100 production meeting.

Hyungsoo explained the Final Round voting method to the staff managing the voting system.

"From now on, we don’t need people’s casual favorites. What we need is solid core fans."

"That’s true. What matters for idols is core fans."

"So online, of course, and even the live finale text vote—we’re limiting it to one vote per person, so we can filter out the real picks."

Idol Ground 100 wasn’t a program that would just end as variety entertainment.

It was an unprecedented project: out of a hundred participants, they would select seven through the public’s votes and debut them as a girl group.

Because of that, they also had to consider what would happen after the program ended—after the group actually debuted—which was why the staff had been slowly changing the voting method.

At first, they let people vote for seven, so lots of people could take interest in a variety of participants.

Then they reduced it to three, so viewers would have to think about who they truly wanted as debut members.

And now, it was the final stage.

'We need the kind of real fans who are going to debut this participant no matter what.'

What Park Hyungsoo wanted were true fans who would support the participants no matter what even after debut.

-Park Garam seems really likable

-I’m just voting for Jung Ahyeon with my leftover vote because she seems nice

-Yeonhee looks like she’s working hard too, so I picked her

Some participants ranked high with safe, nice images, but to Hyungsoo, that was an illusion.

'There aren’t any billboard ads without Park Garam or Jung Ahyeon, but Lee Gahyeon, Geum Shinyu, and Im Yunkyung have them.'

People said they liked them, but in the end, it was the sad reality that nobody was spending money for those “likable” participants at the maximum level.

In the idol world, “likable” was just pity.

"Just from cutting the votes down, there are so many participants whose ranks drop like ghosts got them."

"And on the other hand, there are kids who shoot up, right? Those are the real picks of idol fans."

To confirm that, Hyungsoo had even turned rank rises and drops from the voting-method change into data.

Because he was debating whether to give a little more screentime to the participants who surged up, and a little less to the ones who plunged.

"What a shame. If I’d known the program would blow up like this, I should’ve gone bold and said we’d debut, like, nine—no, twelve people."

"That’s seriously a stupid thing to say."

"What?"

As they continued the meeting while looking over the materials, Hyungsoo shook his head at the youngest staffer, Hakyun, who had just said that.

"It’s because it’s seven that people vote like blood is flying and even do billboard ads and community promo for us on their own."

Twelve?

Debuting a larger number had its own advantages, but Hyungsoo judged that the explosive popularity Idol Ground 100 was generating came from the number seven.

If it was twelve out of twenty-five, that was roughly half, so fans of participants in a relatively safe zone would relax.

But if it was seven, even top-tier fans couldn’t fully relax until the very end, because of that “what if.”

In fact, comparing the second rank announcement ceremony and the third, everything from 4th to 25th got completely reshuffled.

"No issues with the Final Round stage setup, right?"

"Yes. We picked an event production company with a lot of Gymnastics Arena experience, the contract is already done, and we’ve even received the rough stage concepts."

"Okay."

"But PD, if we bring out too many partner companies again, won’t the broadcast commission complain?"

The meeting moved on to the Final Round stage. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

Unlike the existing Idol Ground 100 stages, the Final Round was planned in a concert format.

Hyungsoo had even secured the Gymnastics Arena, which could hold ten thousand audience members.

But the other staff were voicing concerns about his bold choice.

It made sense—the Gymnastics Arena rental fee alone was twenty million won per day.

And the Final Round they were preparing needed a total of three days, considering pre-setup, the main concert, and teardown afterward.

Just the rental fee was sixty million won, and when you added stage installation, the fee for hiring an event production company to prepare the concert, and all the other miscellaneous costs, the money poured into a single stage easily exceeded a hundred million won.

Even if Idol Ground 100 was a show the network was pushing, it was a budget that was basically impossible.

So from the earliest Final Round planning stage, main PD Park Hyungsoo had once again taken sponsorships and PPL from multiple sponsors.

"It’s fine. This time it’ll end at simple brand exposure. The advertisers were satisfied with those terms."

But the moment those words came out of Park Hyungsoo’s mouth, everyone in the meeting room couldn’t help being shocked.

It was hard to believe that even after sponsoring such a huge cost, they were satisfied with nothing more than brand exposure, not product placement.

Normally, even if MPLAY’s other programs openly promised product placement, ads didn’t come in easily at all.

"Is this the power of seventeen percent ratings, then?"

"We should try to break the wall at twenty percent too."

Because Idol Ground 100 Episode 7 finally broke through the fifteen percent wall and hit a peak rating of seventeen percent.

Because of that, lately, Park Hyungsoo had been showing up to work like a movie villain’s prince marching in.

He thought that with the remaining two episodes, even twenty percent—the cable network’s “cursed” rating—was absolutely possible.

"Now the last agenda item is the agency issue."

"Yeah··· We can’t put it off anymore."

A production meeting that went through various topics and even the smallest elements, since they were close to the end.

As soon as the last topic came out, silence hung in the meeting room.

"The seven-member group selected through AGBAC will be active under our parent company, KJ E&M, but since KJ has never planned an idol group before, we need to decide who will handle it for them now."

Until now, since the lineup wasn’t even finalized, they’d kept postponing the decision of which agency would support their activities.

But now there were only two weeks left until the broadcast ended.

Because they needed to debut as soon as possible to carry the program’s recognition and buzz after it ended, they had to pick one agency and make the decision now.

"Originally, we planned to cooperate with Logic, but···"

"Not anymore."

"Yes."

There had been an agency they originally planned to work with.

Logic Entertainment.

Because they had a good relationship with MPLAY, the plan had been to have them support the project group that would be born after the program ended, as long as nothing happened.

From the staff’s perspective too, Logic was still one of the agencies you could count on in Korea, so it was basically a done deal.

But then a problem appeared.

-We at TSP would like to plan the project group.

-Would you be interested in cooperating with SY?

The problem was that SY and TSP—known as two of Korea’s top three agencies—stepped forward saying they wanted to handle Idol Ground 100’s project group activities.

"Either choice is a jackpot."

"But if we choose one, what if the one we don’t choose gets mad?"

"Shouldn’t we keep our loyalty with Logic?"

Even the staff in the meeting room seemed split, like they couldn’t tell which side to choose.

'All three showed sincerity, so the one that doesn’t get chosen will feel slighted.'

Even Hyungsoo found this one difficult.

Logic had gladly let their trainees appear first during the program’s planning stage, and they helped with planning afterward too.

TSP sent out Ryu Ayeon, a trainee they valued, and she helped the program’s buzz early on, and their [N O V E L I G H T] CEO, Park Taesu, even participated as a producer for the concept mission.

But it wasn’t like SY’s contribution was small either.

They not only had one of SY’s top celebrities, Hyeryeong, appear as a judge, they also sent Tenji as a concept-mission producer—someone famous for never giving songs to singers outside SY.

By contribution, all three agencies had played a major role in the program’s success.

'But all three are shady, too.'

Of course the staff were grateful for the help, but at the same time, Hyungsoo could see their intentions too clearly, so he gave a bitter smile.

Normally, agencies didn’t want to take on project groups.

The advantage was that they didn’t have to train them from scratch, but the activity period was short, so it was hard to make long-term profit.

And even the money they did earn had to be split with the original agencies—and if the group’s stage quality wasn’t good, the project group was the one that got dragged to hell.

But now, top-tier agencies in Korea were all fighting to take it.

'It’s so obvious they want to tie themselves to Lee Sion.'

It was safe to say it was because of Lee Sion, the participant currently running in first place.

A top-class raw gem who didn’t fall behind even compared to members of popular idol groups in both recognition and buzz.

They wanted to debut Sion under their own agency. That was the reason.

***

"Again! Just because it’s only been two months, you’re going to sing the theme song this sloppy?"

"No!"

"Since the headcount dropped, each of your voices stands out more. That means if you do it half-baked like before, it’ll show immediately."

"Yes!"

At Hyeryeong’s words, the twenty-five participants gathered in the practice room answered with voices that sounded like they’d snapped to attention.

I’ve been waiting for this moment (Oh yeah)

My light I kept hidden

Now it’s time to show it

You can’t avoid my eyes

As the singing echoed through the practice room again, the participants were forming up with not a second to breathe.

'Even if it’s hard, it can’t be helped.'

Hyeryeong felt a little sorry looking at the participants already soaked in sweat, but right now, she had no choice but to push them harshly.

-This Final Round will show the audience and viewers a concert-style version of the stages you’ve done on the program up until now.

Idol Ground 100’s last mission, with only the final stage remaining, was a concert.

The twenty-five surviving participants had to perform a full collection of the stages they’d shown on broadcast, in front of ten thousand people at the Gymnastics Arena.

'The prep window is way too tight.'

The intent—compressing the program’s three months of broadcast into a concert—was definitely good.

Even Hyeryeong, when the staff explained it, thought, This is it.

The problem was time.

The participants had only two weeks.

In those two weeks, preparing everything from group stages to team stages wasn’t enough time.

Normally, for an idol group to prepare a concert, even a short prep would take a month, and a longer one would take several months.

But these participants only had two weeks.

"Alright! Let’s match the footwork again in the part we just did."

So Hyeryeong and Jungyoon got busy too.

In fact, their contract terms only required them to come once a week, but after hearing the final plan, they volunteered to help the participants practice.

After three months, they’d grown attached too, and they wanted the final stage to shine properly.

Shine me now, light me up

Believe in me to the end

There’s only one chance

It’s me now, it’s now!

"Hey··· the kids really improved."

"Seriously."

And it seemed like it wasn’t a bad choice.

They were speaking strictly for a better stage, but Hyeryeong and Jungyoon were genuinely enjoying watching the participants’ skills grow so dramatically compared to the beginning.

'They’re sparkling. Who would’ve predicted this at the start?'

As Hyeryeong traded a few quiet words with Jungyoon, she looked at a single participant standing dead center in the formation.

Lee Sion.

Back at the live theme-song stage for Spotlight, Sion had only been placed next to center because of her potential and visuals.

Now, she stood proudly at center, leading the other twenty-four participants.

-We all agreed that Sion should stand at center.

Not a recommendation from the trainers, but a decision the participants made themselves—for everyone to shine.