Idol Hides His Military Service

-So you finally admit it, Troll Sion.

-Lee Sion, apologize to the users you hurt!

-So it was real, lol. Lee Sion, where did your conscience go?

-How do you bully people in the Rift instead of real life?

Countless messages rushed into my eyes.

With this many people watching, the chat was scrolling so fast that even with my reflexes, reading it was pretty hard.

“After reading the various posts about me that the production staff showed me today, I had a lot to think about.”

I remembered the mountain of posts we’d looked at earlier in the meeting room.

My flashy match history, the things I used to do in-game, even the messages I’d typed in chat.

I was honestly surprised. When had they collected that much material?

“When I saw how many people were angry about the way I acted in the game, I started thinking maybe it was all my fault. So starting today, I want to use this as a chance to be reborn—first as a game user, before I’m an idol.”

-You know the standard apology is a full prostration, right?

-Let’s go! Cast the pink apology spell!

-Sion, don’t blame yourself too much.

-I’ll accept it if zizonSion (GOAT Sion) deletes the account.

-Defeated the enemy commander zizonSion. This is the Rift’s Liberation Day.

The moment I spoke quietly into the mic, the chat reactions got more heated.

Some people said it wasn’t really my fault, while others got excited and demanded an apology.

An apology.

In dictionary terms, it meant asking forgiveness for a sin or wrongdoing you’d committed.

I tried to recall the last time I’d apologized.

‘When Madam Sukja almost did something as horrific as killing a servant.’

Back during the computer arson incident a year—no, almost two years ago now—I’d had no choice but to offer Madam Sukja an apology as a sign of surrender.

Because after mining Bitcoin and burning up basically every appliance in the house, I couldn’t have survived without apologizing.

“To everyone who suffered because of my gameplay, I offer my deepest, heartfelt apology...”

Every time a word left my mouth, the chat surged again.

I’d never done a broadcast like this before, so I thought I’d be shaking with nerves, but maybe because I’d filmed plenty of variety content, I wasn’t as rattled as I expected.

Like always, I just had to deliver what I truly felt to the people on the other side of the monitor.

“I can’t do it!”

-Yeah, yeah, you’ll do better from now on... huh?

-That last part was weird.

-Breaking: Lee Sion refuses to apologize!

-You’re insane. You’re really going with this?

-No, you should probably do it right now.

-Lee Sion, is this live a joke?

I couldn’t apologize. That was my conclusion.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. Starting now, I’m going to explain that to all of you!”

Apologizing is easy.

Even if it doesn’t come from the heart, just bow «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» your head once, and you’d be surprised how smoothly things start to go. Even I knew that.

But—

‘If it’s not true, it’s not true.’

If I apologized here, all the memories I’d made over the last few years with zizonSion would fade into nothing.

I couldn’t let everything I’d built while roaming the Rift with zizonSion be reduced to nothing but “malicious behavior.”

“Then from here on out, I’ll tell you why I’m not at fault.”

It was time to reveal the truth.

‘Watch me, Seiker!’

I was ready to return as the top lane widow maker.

***

“M... you crazy bitch!”

Cheolsu swore without meaning to as he watched the live broadcast playing on his monitor.

A normal office worker in his thirties, Kim Cheolsu.

Like always, after getting off work, he was browsing around online to see if there was anything fun.

An office worker’s happiness was simple: delivery food, a can of beer, and something light—some YouTube video or a variety show—to watch without thinking too hard.

And as Kim Cheolsu, the hyena hunting for today’s daily entertainment, wandered around, what caught his eye was none other than a live broadcast.

[Idol Ground 100 Guerilla Live - Lee Sion]

‘Lee Sion... isn’t she that famous one lately?’

Even Cheolsu, who normally had zero interest in idols, had heard the name recently—MPlay’s variety idol show, Idol Ground 100.

And Cheolsu also knew that the most famous contestant on Idol Ground 100 was Lee Sion.

Memes and posts about her were everywhere in communities, so even if you didn’t care, you couldn’t help seeing them. And just yesterday, there’d been a controversy post tied to Legend of Valley—the game Cheolsu played too—so it stuck in his mind.

‘Should I watch this?’

He’d seen so many promotional posts that he’d started wondering what kind of appeal she had for people to push her this hard, so he clicked into Lee Sion’s live broadcast.

-Hello, I’m Lee Sion, and I’m currently participating in Idol Ground 100.

‘She is pretty.’

There were plenty of pretty women on internet broadcasts, but Lee Sion on screen right now was on a completely different level, even to Cheolsu.

To the point where he thought it would be worth watching even if she did nothing and just showed her face.

But—

-I can’t apologize!

‘Huh?’

Right after the broadcast started, messages about zizonSion flooded in, and after reading them, Lee Sion—who’d looked like she was about to apologize—started going off the rails.

-At our age, wealth and fame can come a little late, but jungle cannot. Top loses? That’s automatically jungle’s fault.

She adjusted the broadcast layout, pulled up her match history on one side, then started defending her behavior like a lawyer in court.

-Why does our bot lane lose every single time? Why is it only the enemy support who comes top? That’s the kind of thing that kills your motivation from the moment the game starts.

-More than anything, top laners have a role that belongs only to top laners. And that role is to trust nobody and walk only your own path. Deaths? They don’t matter. This is a game about breaking towers.

People who didn’t know the game were getting swept up by Lee Sion’s smooth talk and started saying she was right.

Even among the people who did know the game, the fight split into “she’s right” and “she’s wrong,” and the side opposing her started losing steam.

But Cheolsu wasn’t her fan, and he knew the game well. To him, everything she was saying was bullshit, and it made his blood boil.

‘This is just incitement!’

A moment ago he’d only thought she was pretty—now her face looked like some kind of fox spirit that bewitched people.

Top laners.

One of the positions in Legend of Valley. If you had to name a defining trait, most top laners had an extremely unique mental world.

That was why they had nicknames like madman or top-lane lunatic, and there wasn’t a Legend of Valley player alive who hadn’t suffered at their hands.

Right now, Cheolsu could smell the familiar stink of a top-lane lunatic on Lee Sion.

Tap-tap.

[zizonSion, you’re actually terrible at this game, and all you do is blame your team and other people, so that’s why you’re Silver.]

In the end, Cheolsu couldn’t hold back and typed in chat.

But then something unbelievable happened: Lee Sion spotted his message and read it out loud.

Then—

-User cjftn89, I heard your opinion. So how about we test whose words are right?

Test?

Cheolsu couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

It wasn’t like they were having a debate—how were you going to “test” who was right?

-Tell me your Legend of Valley ID. Let’s do a one-on-one mid duel.

And then Lee Sion dropped the bombshell.

If he was confident, fight her in the Rift—one-on-one, mid lane.

Cheolsu’s eyes lit up.

“You picked the wrong one.”

Platinum.

That was Cheolsu’s tier in Legend of Valley.

Back in the day, his friends had even called him a carry machine. Cheolsu was pretty good at the game.

And this felt like the perfect chance to publicly discipline a top-lane lunatic—a cancer cell of the Rift—in front of a huge audience.

In a rush, he typed his ID, launched Legend of Valley immediately, and—

As soon as he logged in, an invite request arrived from zizonSion.

It was time to deliver justice.

***

“Ah, that’s a shame—we’re out of time.”

-LONG LIVE SION!!!

-Lee Sion, you’re the pride of us top laners!

-Our Sion is good at games too!

-I don’t know what happened, but I know Sion’s good. Everyone else got cooked.

“Mm-hm.”

With the promised thirty minutes almost over, I gave the viewers my closing greetings and looked at the chat window.

Unlike the beginning, it was now filled with nothing but praise for me. Everything had turned out exactly right.

‘Perfect. One jungler, one mid, one ADC—got to scrub them down by category.’

The sudden one-on-one mid duels that started because of a cocky provocation in chat seemed to have surprised the viewers quite a bit.

But this had all been planned.

-Sion, let’s properly show them your skills!

Main PD Park Hyungsoo had suggested we start the planned Survivor guerilla live broadcast earlier, and that I should go first today.

I’d been flustered by the sudden proposal, but after hearing the explanation, I couldn’t help letting out an impressed sound.

-Once you start the broadcast, people will definitely pick a fight with you over zizonSion. When that happens, you read chat, pick one you don’t like, and challenge them to a one-on-one.

If I showed my skill in front of everyone, Hyungsoo said, the suspicion going around would vanish in an instant.

I agreed immediately.

‘See? I wasn’t wrong.’

And the result was excellent.

-Sign it! Top laners are royalty, and Lee Sion is a god!

-Seriously, what are Lee Sion’s mechanics? It’s like she dodges after seeing the skill.

-How is someone with mechanics like that in Silver?

-Info: until not long ago, she was Bronze.

-The fact she’s good makes me even angrier.

-Mad and still can’t do anything, right? Every Plat, Diamond, and Master who came out to “catch” Lee Sion got wiped, didn’t they?

The chat was nothing but praise for me.

And of course it was. Today’s performance in those one-on-one mid duels was perfect—so perfect that even the people trying to smear me couldn’t argue back.

First, by bad luck, the first opponent I got was a Platinum jungler, and I disciplined them with Yasuo. The next one up was a Diamond ADC.

That Diamond ADC lost a one-on-one to my Ezreal, then ragequit without a word. After that, a Master mid appeared.

Maybe because they were a Master, they actually put up a solid fight.

But in the end, they got solo-killed by me and ragequit the same way.

After that, high-tier players from every position (support isn’t a position) had their hierarchy sorted out by me, so even the haters were stuck. They wanted to argue, but they couldn’t.

“Alright, then I’m heading out. The three people who lost today—make sure you vote and upload a proof shot.”

Before the one-on-one mid duels, we’d agreed: if I lost, I would do a full prostration on live and apologize for everything that had happened.

And if the opponent lost, they would vote for me and upload a proof shot.

Whether they actually did it or not didn’t matter to me.

“Lee Sion, you were the best!”

“I only ever insist on being the best.”

“LONG LIVE SION!!!! I knew it!”

When I finally pressed the end-broadcast button, the staff ran over cheering, shouting, and throwing their arms up.

Justice always wins.

With their cheers in my ears, I headed to the auditorium where the other contestants were gathered.

Since I was the first to go live, they’d made everyone watch together so they could use it as a reference for what kind of broadcast to do.

“I’m back!”

Just imagining how the people who always dismissed my Legend of Valley skill must finally be realizing my true ability today put me in a fantastic mood.

So I kicked open the auditorium doors and loudly announced my return, but—

“What’s with this mood? Why am I not hearing any cheering?”

Inside the auditorium, where cheers should have greeted me, there wasn’t a sound.

Instead, the contestants were only turning their heads to stare at me—like a scene from a horror movie.

“Lee Sion...”

“Did you watch my broadcast? How was it?”

They must have been so amazed by my incredible mechanics that they’d lost their words.

‘Even beginners could feel that overwhelming gap, huh?’

When people truly witness something astonishing, they lose their words.

I could understand their reaction.

So I started walking over, thinking I should calmly take my time and explain just how incredible what I’d just done was, but—

“Grab her!”

“H-hey... what is this?!”

The moment I got close, the contestants grabbed my arms and clung to me.

Then they started swarming toward me, and the energy was anything but normal.

It made me extremely uneasy—because it felt a lot like when the F-class people had mobbed me and jumped me.

“Lee Sion...! Do you have no shame?!”

“What? What did I even do?!”

Lee Gahyeon, her eyes twitching, stepped up like the representative and scolded me in a voice full of rage.

“If the first person goes and does a broadcast like that, what the hell are the rest of us supposed to do?!”

“Huh?”

“Have you ever done an internet broadcast before?”

“No!”

“Then who told you to do it like that?! Now we’re the ones who are going to get compared!!!”

Smack.

As soon as Lee Gahyeon gestured, as if they’d been waiting for it, countless palms slammed into my back.

“Gyaaah!”

“Kill her! Just make it so she can’t do anything!”

“Why do you always come back after causing chaos and jacking up everyone’s dopamine?!”

“Twenty thousand live viewers? If you have any shame, take at least one week off!”

That day, for about ten minutes, I had no choice but to endure a group beating from twenty-four people.

***

Late at night, music could be heard from the practice room.

‘One, two.’

Geum Shinyu was alone in the practice room, listening to the Final Round song, Still, Our Spring, and gently riding the beat.

Even if we drift apart once,

our season will return,

even within memories that scatter,

you and I shine.

When the song finally reached the rap part assigned to her, Shinyu looked into the mirror and tried rapping it.

‘This isn’t it.’

After listening to herself and tilting her head, Shinyu replayed her part and repeated her practice.

Still, Our Spring was a good song.

But each contestant’s assigned part was so short that if you didn’t show some personal color within that window, there was a high chance you’d get buried.

Three.

That was the number of contestants who had rap parts in this song.

Since even singing it alone would have been short, and they had to split it among three people, it needed impact—so Shinyu was trying her part in several different versions.

Pfft.

A few hours earlier, Lee Sion’s live broadcast came back to her, and Shinyu couldn’t help laughing as she flopped onto the practice room floor.

‘Sion is incredible.’

Thinking of Lee Sion, who’d pulled twenty thousand people in and made them get absorbed for thirty straight minutes on live, Shinyu felt it again—how amazing she was.

If it had been Shinyu, she clearly would’ve spent those thirty minutes doing nothing and boring everyone.

‘I thought I’d caught up a little, but she keeps running farther away.’

During the last concept evaluation, Shinyu had separated from Sion and tried standing on her own on another team.

After getting good evaluations afterward, Shinyu had thought maybe she’d gotten a little closer to Lee Sion.

But that was an illusion.

Watching today’s live broadcast, Shinyu realized she still wasn’t good enough to stand proudly beside Lee Sion.

That was why, even today, she’d come alone to the practice room to keep practicing.

Only one week remained until the Final Round.

She didn’t want any regrets left behind.