Idol Hides His Military Service

Ah.

Was this how Caesar felt, betrayed by Brutus?

“That was a sharper punch than I expected.”

“I got hit on the back, Commander.”

I was rubbing my stomach, and next to me, Yunkyung was devoted to rubbing a back that an arm couldn’t even reach.

‘Die!!!’

The moment I tried to exchange a joyful high-five with Nayeon, who had come back after splendidly showing off skill in front of the F class participants, Nayeon struck my stomach with a lightning-fast fist and then smashed Yunkyung’s back.

“You should be grateful it ended with just that!”

While I was still grumbling because the place I’d been hit still stung, and while Yunkyung was doing the same, Nayeon was huffing that we still weren’t reflecting at all.

How can someone be that brazen?

Maybe this is why there’s that saying, “You shouldn’t take in black-haired beasts and raise them.”

But it seemed my and Yunkyung’s sacrifice wasn’t useless.

“I think it’d be good if Nayeon took the leader role.”

“I agree! I feel sorry for unni Gahyeon, but with skill like that, it definitely seems like things will be better than before.”

“Let’s hurry and start practicing again!”

Once they confirmed with their own eyes the skill of Nayeon, who had stepped up saying she would take the leader position,

The F class trainees, who had been hanging limp and listless until now, had regained their energy.

Of course, it wasn’t like everyone was like that.

‘Looks like this hit hard.’

Now the former F class leader, Lee Gahyeon, was drooping, in contrast to the festival-like atmosphere of F class.

Honestly, if someone could stay unfazed after going through this, that would be what was strange.

I had kept things as gentle as I could in my own way, but even so, this was an incident that basically said, “You don’t have ability, so step down.”

Because I’d predicted this outcome too, I had no choice but to agonize and agonize again up until the moment before I launched the coup.

‘Still, there was no helping it.’

But from experience in my past life, I knew.

Once sympathy starts getting involved in the moment of making a judgment, it comes back later as an even bigger regret.

*** 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

“Raise your arms a bit more. And when you turn, the person in the middle should give the count just loud enough for the formation to hear. If not, like now, the timing won’t line up and you’ll crash into each other.”

At Nayeon’s instructions, the F class participants nodded with difficulty, panting with exhausted faces.

A new formation, new vocal parts.

Right after becoming leader, Nayeon changed things by rebuilding F class’s stage completely from scratch.

In the process—

‘Why are you putting me in center!!!’

Nayeon took an extremely radical measure.

It was putting me, Lee Sion, in center on F class’s stage.

‘I can’t help it. Wherever you put Lee Sion, all the attention gets pulled there, so it’s actually most ideal to just put her in center.’

Obviously, it wasn’t like Nayeon put me in center because Nayeon liked me.

But even in F class, whose visuals weren’t behind the other classes, my looks stood out so much that from the moment the stage started, I snagged the viewers’ gaze in one go.

So Nayeon judged it was better to plant me in center and concentrate the gaze there.

And that choice wasn’t wrong.

“Say my name.”

“A genius...”

“Louder!”

“The greatest genius in history, who even insults the gods...!”

Even now, with all the F class members sprawled out from the never-ending practice, the figures of me and Yunkyung, brimming with energy and spouting nonsense, came into Nayeon’s eyes.

‘It’s one thing for Yunkyung, since still young, but what is Lee Sion taking, some kind of drug?’

Basically, idol trainees’ stamina was good.

On top of dance training all day, they had to exercise separately to manage stamina and physique, so someone with weak stamina couldn’t endure trainee life.

But even such trainees had become utterly limp after today’s five hours of continuous practice under Nayeon’s lead...

Only I, Lee Sion, looked as fine as if I’d just been out for a walk.

‘It’s not just stamina, either.’

Nayeon judged that, for F class’s stage to improve, it was ultimately most important to raise the skill of the participants with no basics—starting with me—and focused mark on me, drilling practice.

‘Steps?’

‘Yeah, the reason your choreography keeps breaking and not connecting is because you haven’t learned basic steps.’

The first thing idol trainees come into contact with when learning dance is rhythm training and basic steps.

Of those, basic steps usually refer to practicing moving different parts of the body separately, like groove, wave, isolation.

Though it looks simple on the surface, since it’s the foundation of all choreography, it was a must-learn essential.

‘You were keeping something this good to yourself?’

And when Nayeon demonstrated a simple example to teach basic steps, the memory of being shocked, watching me copy it on the spot, was still vivid.

Controlling the body part by part may be “basic,” but if you don’t have the feel for it, there are people who still can’t copy it after a week—so it absolutely wasn’t easy.

But once Nayeon taught me, I rode the groove and did waves as if I were doing something I already knew, and the way it looked wasn’t awkward even compared with Nayeon’s own basic steps; it was that natural.

And that wasn’t all.

Pick me now, pick me wow

The name that will make you flutter

Among countless stars

Choose me— right now!

After correcting the choreography, Nayeon had me try the vocal part as a test.

‘Why am I good at this?’

Up until just yesterday, my only redeeming point had been tone, with terrible singing skill, but seeing me sing the highlight part of the theme song “Spotlight” without a hitch,

Nayeon had thought this had to be a dream.

The highlight of “Spotlight” was extremely difficult.

The pitch climbs step by step, and at the “Choose me— right now!” part, it suddenly shoots up into the third octave.

The problem is that the choreography also has a jump at that timing, so it was a part that was absolutely not easy to sing properly.

But I, Lee Sion, sang that highlight part all the way through in one go, looking completely fine, as if I wasn’t even out of breath.

‘Oh, that? Teacher Hyeryeong told me to try singing it like this.’

Nayeon, stunned, had asked how I could sing it, but after hearing my answer, was even more dumbfounded.

Diaphragmatic breathing.

For a singer, this breathing method that must be practiced is not something you can do just because someone teaches it.

In the shortest case you have to repeat it steadily for a month, in the longer case for years, and only then, when you sing, can you naturally produce sound with diaphragmatic breathing.

Grasping it in only a single day verged on impossible.

‘No way... was the skill being hidden?’

Looking at me now, grinning and laughing with Yunkyung about who knew what, Nayeon thought.

When Nayeon imagined that I had deliberately pretended to be bad, hiding real skill, and carefully planned to put myself up front, chills ran down the spine for a moment.

***

‘I’ve been training diaphragmatic breathing since my platoon leader days.’

In the army, people with small voices simply couldn’t survive.

If you gave orders to the soldiers or lower-ranking officers with a small voice, to put it crudely, you had no dignity.

So at the Military Academy they mandatory taught the cadets how to speak using diaphragmatic breathing.

I’d never thought there would come a day when I could use that here.

“Look at this!”

“Wow! Unni, you’re a god of isolation!”

When I spun my neck like a fan with isolation, Yunkyung made a big fuss, saying it was amazing.

On top of the diaphragmatic breathing Hyeryeong had told me about, one of the things Nayeon taught me was something called isolation.

And this was pretty fun.

Keeping the body’s central axis fixed, you move neck, chest, pelvis and such, and because the sight of it was so interesting, I found myself doing isolation over and over without rest.

Doing that, I quickly got used to it, and now whenever I did isolation, Yunkyung practically cheered like watching a circus.

“Isolation is really not easy for me, but how did you learn it so fast, unni?”

“That, I don’t really know either.”

After watching my flashy isolation and repeatedly exclaiming in admiration, Yunkyung clung to me, asking me to share my know-how, but I really didn’t have any such thing.

‘I just watch and copy and it works.’

It was just that, when I saw people dancing, I could clearly see where they were putting strength and where they were releasing it, so I simply copied that.

A little while ago, when Nayeon was teaching me choreography, Nayeon had been startled seeing me imitate it right away; apparently, what I was doing now was not as easy as I’d thought.

“With you in center, it feels reassuring.”

“Why isn’t Nayeon standing in center personally and putting me up front?”

In the new formation, I was the one standing in center.

At first, I really didn’t want to take such a conspicuous spot and tried to refuse, but then I saw Nayeon silently clench a fist and had no choice but to accept.

‘Isn’t this going to make me the one who gets cursed at?’

What I’d envisioned was: put Nayeon up as leader, put Nayeon in center, put Nayeon up as trainer... and shift all the annoying work over.

Me stepping up as center wasn’t in the original scenario.

Plus, since my skill was lacking, I’d thought I wouldn’t have anything to say if the other participants complained—but unexpectedly, the others didn’t seem to have many complaints.

“Why else. If we put you in front, for some reason it just looks legit.”

“What?”

“If you just keep your mouth shut and stay still, unni, you’re a born idol itself.”

First my mom, then my aunt, and now even Yunkyung was telling me I was perfect if I just kept my mouth shut.

“All right, let’s practice again!”

As I traded jokes with Yunkyung for a bit, before I knew it, break time must have ended, because Nayeon’s voice announcing the resumption of practice rang through the practice room.

At the same time, the F class members, showing obvious signs of fatigue, got to their feet again and took their places in formation.

I stood at the very front of that formation, which had now become my place, and started to focus again.

‘While moving your feet, don’t think about the current move; you have to predict the next move in advance and set your steps.’

I endlessly repeated in my head the things Nayeon had taught me, listening to the music pouring out.

‘...Am I enjoying this?’

I realized that right now, I was tapping my toes to the beat, following the rhythm of music I hadn’t even known at first.

At first, since I’d been dragged here for pocket money, my head had been filled only with thoughts of going home quickly and resting.

But as time passed, and as the things I knew increased, I found it impossible to understand why this act of just dancing and singing was so addictive, to the point that now, I was... having fun.

***

“This is bad.”

“Senior, is something wrong?”

MPlay broadcasting station’s editing room.

Recently, this place was being used almost as if the Idol Ground 100 production team had rented it out in its entirety.

Naturally so, because with as many as one hundred participants, the manpower assigned to the program was the largest in the station’s history, and an enormous amount of equipment, starting with cameras, had been poured in.

And for the production staff, who had to watch all that footage and pick out cuts worthy of broadcast, it was sheer hell.

“The picture PD Kim originally drew was, we sacrifice F class to boost the A class members, ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) and at the same time shore up the judges’ image.”

“And?”

“We’re trying to edit it that way, but... the F class kids are just too funny for that.”

Lee Hak yoon, in charge of editing Idol Ground 100, was now sunk in deep worry.

‘Lee Sion. If we leave this one out, the program’s narrative itself just goes flat...’

Even from just a brief check, Hak yoon intuitively knew that to pull out fun in this program, including Lee Sion was absolutely necessary.

The problem was that, if they did so, the original plan of an A class–focused narrative might be weakened.

‘Among the current A class, probably half the debut lineup will come out... but if the A class narrative is weak, the program’s driving force could drop.’

So right now, Hak yoon was racking brains over whether to edit centered on A class, or to highlight a drama centered on F class.

“Ah, this is driving me crazy... If only this kid Lee Sion would just jump straight up to A class at the mid-check, everything would be clean.”

“Come on, senior... how could someone jump from F class straight to A class in one go. Then people would curse us, saying the program is rigged.”

“True enough. I should wish for things that could happen...”

Agreeing with the junior’s words, Hak yoon decided to watch a bit more footage and then decide the editing direction, and continued to check the remaining recorded material.