Idol Hides His Military Service

“Hmm···.”

“Captain, are you planning to do something bad again?”

“Yunkyung, I’m someone who’s never done a bad thing in my life. You could say I’m the kind of person who could live even without laws.”

After practice ended, there was a short free period until dinner.

Some people went back to the dorms to rest for a bit, and others were too lazy to move and just sprawled out in the practice room.

Among them, Yunkyung chose to stay in the practice room. She trotted over to my side and, maybe because she was curious what I was thinking about, started grilling me.

“You’re not someone who could live without laws. You’re someone who can only live if there aren’t any laws.”

“You’re saying something obnoxious again, Seo No-Fun.”

“W-What?!”

Cutting into my conversation with Yunkyung and picking a fight out of nowhere was Seo Ryujin—no, Seo No-Fun.

-I’m going to talk about the history of idols this time. First, it’s fair to say idols started in the United States. New Kids on the Block, who debuted back in 1984···.

↳Um···this isn’t easy

↳Ryujin, can’t you just show your face?

↳If you keep looking down to read your prepared script, there’s no point watching this live

↳Ryujin···I came into this live to take a break from studying, so why are you making me study here?

Seo Ryujin’s live stream was genius in a different way.

“To think she’d prune even her own fans.”

While everyone else tried to broadcast on topics people would like, Seo Ryujin suddenly went and found “EBS: The History of Idols” and turned her live into a documentary broadcast.

Watching the viewer count, which had been over 9,000 at the start, drop in an instant looked like watching Staff Sergeant Park’s stock account back in my unit.

“The real 2,000 diehards are the kind of fans who’d cheer for Ryujin even if she committed murder.”

“I agree with Yunkyung. You did that to keep only the real fans, right?”

“Was that your intention?! Ryujin had already started managing the fandom! As expected, you’re incredible!”

Like cats that can’t just walk past a fish shop, the others must’ve caught the scent of something fun, because before I knew it they’d gathered around too, getting excited and using Ryujin’s live stream as ammo to attack her.

‘If you ask me, Shinyu is the most vicious one.’

The one who landed the finishing blow was Geum Shinyu, who looked at Ryujin with sparkling, admiring eyes as if she truly thought she was amazing—then proceeded to dig her up and execute her all over again.

Ryujin endured Yunkyung and Ryu Ayeon’s vicious comments, but at Geum Shinyu’s last line her face turned bright red and she couldn’t even lift her head.

“···I thought they’d like it···.”

And when we saw Ryujin, speaking in a voice so small it sounded like an ant crawling, say she really prepared it because she thought the viewers would like it, all we could do was fall silent.

“Next time, just talk about that Three Kingdoms story you heard from Lee Sion.”

“Shut up! What do you know?! That broadcast that day was an important story about the origins of idols!”

Maybe she decided she’d just be shameless now, because Seo Ryujin raised her voice at us instead.

But then,

“Ryujin, do you happen to know my father’s name?”

“How would I know that?”

“Do you want to know?”

“···No, I don’t really want to know.”

“Your live is the same.”

When I kindly educated her at eye level, Seo Ryujin had no choice but to shut her mouth.

“Anyway, how did we even get onto this?”

“Ah! That’s because the captain looked like they were seriously thinking about something, so I was curious and asked what it was!”

“Why do something that pointless? If that one’s thinking about anything, it’s just tonight’s dinner menu.”

Maybe she was annoyed at being attacked one-sidedly, because Seo No-Fun the petty one once again took the lead in spreading baseless rumors about me today.

“If I tell you what I’m worried about, it’ll be far too high-level for brats like you to understand.”

As the adult here, I decided to forgive them generously.

“Just say it. Don’t keep making that face that screams you want to ask all day.”

“Me? Not at all. I’m not going to tell you!”

“Then we’re going back to the dorm first.”

“No, if you’re that curious, I might feel like telling you.”

“It’s fine. Take some time alone to think seriously.”

It seemed like Ryu Ayeon didn’t know the Korean virtue of doing something three times.

With that lack of warmth, maybe she had some American blood mixed in?

Anyway, since they were this curious, it didn’t seem bad to tell them.

Even a blank sheet is easier to lift together—maybe I’d get a usable answer.

“Earlier, Hyeryeong showed us a demonstration.”

“So?”

“She looked really relaxed compared to us, but somehow my eyes went to her even more.”

Lately, watching our practice, I’d been feeling something off.

Up until now, we’d been too busy keeping up with the pace to have time to think about the stage itself, but this time we had a little breathing room. As I started thinking about the stage, more and more problems became visible.

Then I watched Hyeryeong’s demonstration today, and it confirmed it.

The feeling that this was exactly what we were still lacking.

“That’s obvious. Hyeryeong is in her eighth year since debut. Of course she’s going to look relaxed.”

“Also, comparing her to us doesn’t even make sense. She’s one of the top active female singers.”

“That’s right! Hyeryeong should be excluded from comparison!”

Everyone spoke in unison, saying we shouldn’t compare ourselves to Hyeryeong, but that wasn’t what I meant.

“This time, we’re not competing in front of an audience. It’s a concert.”

Hyeryeong, Lee Jungyoon, and even Raon, the producer of the new song, all said the same thing: performing at the Gymnastics Arena is completely different from performing on a broadcast stage.

“But when I look at what we’re doing, it feels like we’re still performing like it’s a competition.”

“···Isn’t that natural? We still don’t even know which debut group is set.”

“That’s our situation.”

“What?”

I understood that our competition was fierce.

The number just dropped from 100 to 25 in the process of choosing only 7 to debut, but we participants—no, we, including me—still had to compete to debut.

But that was our situation, not the situation of the people coming to watch the stage.

“The Final Round is being held in concert format, but if we’re the ones decorating that stage and we’re all tensed up, will the people watching actually enjoy it?”

“···.”

From my previous life to this one, I’d never been to a concert.

I didn’t have a singer I liked that much, and concert tickets weren’t cheap to begin with.

But put another way, that meant the people who come to a concert are people who like that singer enough to come.

“They say it’s really hard to get tickets even though 10,000 people are coming to watch the Final Round.”

The Gymnastics Arena, which can hold 10,000 spectators, was practically a symbol of popular idols.

It was hard to fill 10,000 fans who’d come to see a concert with just any level of popularity, so only idols with proven popularity could hold a concert there.

Of course, our show couldn’t really be compared since the tickets were distributed through a free lottery, but I thought the feelings of the fans who wanted to see us wouldn’t be all that different.

So what did we need to do?

“We have to show them the best stage.”

“The best stage?”

When Ryu Ayeon challenged me like she was saying, “What’s the best stage?” I continued.

“A concert is something where the people performing and the people watching both have fun.”

The conclusion I reached was enjoyment.

I wanted our Final Round stage, which could be our last, to become a concert where both the people watching and the people performing had fun.

***

‘So that’s what “bigger” meant.’

Ayeon ended up in charge of the stage for Bang! Bang! Love! that she’d performed before in the Final Round.

“Wow, this is really hard. Jihye, didn’t you injure a joint doing this back then?”

“What? You little—!”

Since Ayeon had raised the difficulty when she built the choreography, the new team members struggled at first, but as expected of the skilled people who’d survived this far, they adapted quickly.

Of course, it also helped that Ayeon changed the unique choreography parts she’d made for the old members and the final symmetrical sequence into something else.

Because Ayeon adjusted the existing choreography into something appropriate for the new team, it felt like just yesterday everyone had practiced without a word—yet now they were even joking with Yoo Jihye, the team’s oldest.

But,

“Guys, can we talk for a second?”

“Ryu Ayeon, it’s scary when you say it like that.”

“Ayeon, is something wrong?”

Ayeon thought a change was needed.

“Let’s gather and watch this once.”

When the team members gathered around, Ayeon played the recorded Bang! Bang! Love! team practice video on the tablet in her hand.

“Isn’t it fine?”

“We can fix the parts that are a little off pretty quickly.”

“I think at this level, we can definitely get good enough in the time we have left.”

And through the tablet, the team’s practice looked pretty solid.

It wasn’t arrogance—objectively, it really felt like we just needed to polish it now.

“I thought the same thing until yesterday. But what do you think it’ll look like if we do this at the Gymnastics Arena?”

“The Gymnastics Arena?”

“On a broadcast stage, just this choreography will look full enough. I made it with that in mind. But the Gymnastics Arena is different. If we do it like this, it might look fine on broadcast, but to the audience watching live, ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) our stage will look weak.”

“Ah···.”

Only now did the team members seem to realize what Ayeon meant.

Vocal-focused stages or songs performed with all 25 people didn’t need much adjustment.

But Bang! Bang! Love! was a stage planned and built as a dance performance from the start, and the number of members dropped from 7 to 5.

And on top of that, the stage itself was far wider than before.

Like this, the Bang! Bang! Love! team couldn’t properly show its charm on-site.

Normally, in cases like this, you’d bring in additional backup dancers to fill out the stage, but time-wise that was impossible right now.

“So if we want the five of us to make the stage feel fuller, I think we need to make the moves and formations a bit bigger.”

“Whew···Ayeon’s right.”

“I think we really didn’t think enough about the stage changing.”

“Let’s just be glad we realized it now.”

Thankfully, even with only a few days left until the stage, the team members accepted Ayeon’s suggestion to revise the stage without resistance.

‘Because everyone wants to do better just as much.’

More than anyone, Ayeon now knew that the team members, not just herself, wanted to show people a good stage.

To begin with, the reason other trainees and participants had pushed back against Ayeon’s old methods was because she’d shoved them through based only on her standards, without properly explaining the reason or the goal.

Now she understood that the hunger for a better stage was something anyone dreaming of becoming an idol would have.

-Our stage is for the people watching.

If it hadn’t been for Lee Sion saying yesterday in the practice room that the Final Round wasn’t a competition, but a stage for the people who came to see us, Ayeon probably wouldn’t have noticed the Bang! Bang! Love! team’s problem either.

‘I really don’t want to admit it.’

Thinking that she’d received help from Lee Sion yet again, Ayeon’s brow furrowed without her meaning to.

If Lee Sion found out about this later, just imagining how much she’d gloat was horrifying.

“Alright, then let’s start by adjusting the choreography again.”

“···Yeah.”

After briefly thinking about Lee Sion, Ayeon gathered the team again to go back into practice.

But unlike the earlier responses, maybe because they had to rework choreography they’d already learned, the team members looked visibly drained.

‘This won’t do···.’

Ayeon had learned—spending time with her former teammates, including Lee Sion—that practice efficiency changed depending on mood.

So she thought for a moment about whether there was a way to revive the team’s motivation from this slump.

Then, suddenly, a good idea popped into her head.

“Now I get it. Your level.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Ayeon, what are you suddenly—”

Ayeon remembered a line Lee Sion used whenever the team members were tired.

A magical line that, just hearing it, made strength surge through your whole body.

“I guess it’s kind of hard for you to keep up with my level, right? It’s fine. I wasn’t expecting my team to keep up with me anyway. Just follow along so you’re roughly similar.”

“!”

Just as expected, at Ayeon’s words, the Bang! Bang! Love! team members’ eyes sparkled back to life.

The effect seemed excellent.

***

“Hyeryeong, what did you do?”

“Yes?”

“The kids got better so fast it’s unreal.”

Raon said it while watching the participants who were pouring themselves into stage preparation in the practice room.

“I kept watching them, but I didn’t really do anything.”

“Yeah?”

At Hyeryeong’s answer, Raon wondered if the participants had changed on their own, but—

‘That’s a stretch.’

That felt like getting ahead of herself.

After all, for trainees who’d only barely experienced broadcast stages so far to notice the differences between a broadcast stage and a concert stage, and then change their routes and movements on their own, was absolutely not easy.

“Styling starts tomorrow, right?”

“Yes. They said they’ll do it the day before, since doing it right before the stage prevents leaks.”

“But are you really going to be okay with the outfits for this stage?”

“That?”

Looking at Hyeryeong, Raon asked if it was really okay—the stage outfits the participants would wear this time.

Hyeryeong just smiled and said it was fine, but unlike her words, her expression looked a little sad.

“I just think it’ll suit them well.”

For one team’s stage this time, Hyeryeong had personally arranged, through her agency, to even rent those outfits.

They were very special outfits that symbolized the peak era of G‧G, Hyeryeong’s former group.

They were the outfits that announced G‧G had reached the very top of girl groups in South Korea, the outfits everyone thinks of when they think of second-generation girl groups.

Raon was excited that they would appear again on Idol Ground 100.