Idol Hides His Military Service

-Staff Sergeant Kim, it feels like the battalion commander is going to come out on patrol during the kids’ night watch duty today.

-Is that so? I’ll get things tightened up right away.

A company that does well a hundred times but makes one mistake when people are watching is just a company that can’t do it.

A company that half-asses it a hundred times but does well once when people are watching is an ace company.

To survive in the military, reading the room was mandatory. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

-Today, there was shouting coming from the battalion commander’s office. It seems like something bad happened···.

-Really? Then he’ll do a patrol.

Collecting intel and preparing in order to read the mood of the direct superior you serve was the company commander’s basic duty.

-Second Company is very good. The kids stand their posts properly. Good work.

-Loyalty!

Thanks to preparing in advance to match the battalion commander’s pattern of liking surprise patrols whenever something bad happened, our company never got hit even once.

Of course, this kind of sweet tip doesn’t just fall out of the sky. You had to build a relationship ahead of time by casually slipping drinks and snacks to the driver, ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) the one person who could watch the battalion commander’s every move from up close.

-What are you plotting?

-How did you know?

-If I want to know, I know everything. What is it? Just tell me the gist once.

-Ah··· no. This is a real secret project.

-Hmm···.

The content team’s behavior had been suspicious since we arrived in New York.

The way they kept taking care of us and wandering around looking for anything else they could do for us was extremely shady.

And on top of that, a few people on the content team had been recruited to my side and would casually leak me information, but this time, they were saying there was absolutely no way and literally running away the moment they saw me.

"That’s why it felt shady."

"So you stole the card?"

"Hey, I didn’t steal it. The storage location changed."

"That’s the textbook line of a criminal."

"So are you going to find your way back to the original hotel alone?"

"···."

When I explained why I was holding the company corporate card Raon PD had, Seo Ryujin tried to slander me instead of being grateful.

But when I asked if she was going to refuse to use it and go back on her own strength, she couldn’t say a single word.

Honestly, this was mostly the content team’s and Raon PD’s fault.

If they made it that obvious, I had no choice but to prepare.

-Raon··· if I don’t drink cola, I can’t film anymore! Please, cola, for me!

-Sigh, fine. But don’t go alone. Go with Yunsik and Jiu, and buy drinks for you and drinks for the staff too.

-Thank you!

That corporate card she’d handed me during filming, telling me to go buy drinks whenever.

I didn’t steal it. I just “accidentally” handed her my personal card that looked similar by mistake.

Isn’t that something that happens all the time?

Like on a rainy day, when you accidentally take an umbrella that looks like yours from the umbrella stand. A trivial mistake like that.

And once the corporate card ended up in my hands by accident, I couldn’t exactly not use it.

"The filming team is definitely somewhere around here, right?"

"They’re probably in an emergency meeting."

And the moment the content team found out about the card, they were probably holding an emergency meeting right about now.

Thinking about how to snatch the card from me somehow and restore the content to the original plan.

"Waiting around for the enemy to have time to respond is the worst of the worst plans."

"Do you already have a method in mind, Boss?"

Honestly, the easiest method was trusting the card, grabbing a taxi, and going back to our original hotel.

But I had no intention of solving this with such a naive method.

"Operation Venus Flytrap."

"Venus flytrap?"

A venus flytrap plant was extremely unique.

A plant that eats meat is interesting enough on its own, but apparently, to lure in insects, it releases a fragrant scent insects like.

So even though the insects know they’ll get eaten, they can’t help diving into the venus flytrap’s mouth on their own.

"We’re not going. We’re making them come."

Raon PD was going to learn now.

That you don’t just leave a card with someone carelessly.

"You all worked hard filming, right?"

"Lee Sion, what are you thinking up this time?"

"We came all the way to America. It’d be a shame to just go back."

The music video schedule over the last three days had been so brutal it was on par with a march.

In the military too, after hard training, giving maintenance time with a “good work” was the unspoken rule.

"Should we start by ordering room service?"

Since we’d woken up after sleeping like we were dead right after yesterday’s shoot ended, I was hungry, so I decided to start lightly with room service first.

***

"PD, what do we do with this?"

"First, what are the members’ demands?"

"Well··· it would be best if you call her directly. We can’t not film, so we’re tailing them, but she keeps refusing, saying there’s no negotiation unless it’s with the boss."

"That’s Lee Sion, right?"

"Yes···."

Haa···.

A sigh slipped out of Raon on its own.

'You idiot!!! How can you forget the corporate card!'

While the members and the content team left for Connecticut, 100 kilometers away from New York, Raon planned to sleep in at the original hotel and enjoy a relaxed New York sightseeing day.

Go to that nice cafe she’d visited before, and if there was time, shop too.

Since she’d been buried in company work and hadn’t been able to spend leisurely time, she was excited, thinking of this as a kind of vacation and looking forward to finally having personal time again.

But—

-This is an emergency!! The members have the corporate card!

All of it turned into a midsummer night’s dream.

Raon, who was about to wake up late and grab a light meal, got a call from Content Team Lead Lee Hakyoon, and her head was still blank.

Lee Sion, who’d said she wanted cola yesterday and, for once, even acted cute while clinging to Raon.

Only now did Raon realize she’d been played by Lee Sion.

'What kind of idol member swaps corporate cards?!'

After hearing Hakyoon, Raon hurriedly pulled out her wallet and checked, and she went speechless when she saw Lee Sion’s check card sitting boldly where the corporate card should have been.

Who could’ve imagined there would be an idol who swaps cards?

This wasn’t Raon’s fault so much as it was the problem of Lee Sion doing something out of spec.

'Fine, let’s do this! You think you’re the only one who can go off the rails, Lee Sion?'

Thinking she couldn’t let Lee Sion snatch the initiative like this, Raon immediately pulled out her phone, found Lee Sion’s contact, and called.

And the call was picked up as if she’d been waiting.

"Hello."

"Hello? Lee Sion, you’re really going off the rails, huh?"

"It was an extremely polite greeting to the ringleader villain who sold us off to Connecticut."

"What?"

"To set up a scheme like this while I and the members were exhausted··· my heart hurt so badly I had no choice but to heal with steak."

"Steak? Hey! Stop that!! If you stop here, I’ll forgive everything!"

"Do you know room service, PD? Money is nice. I can order steak while rolling around in a hotel room."

"What··· what? Room service?!"

Raon was horrified.

Room service so outrageous it charged you a full meal price for even a normal drink—room service that Raon had thought was a money-burning stunt even back when she was active.

Hearing Lee Sion say she’d ordered that, Raon’s mind went hazy.

-So you didn’t go to America to film a music video. It seems you really went there to enjoy yourself.

When the cold stare of CEO Kim Sanghyeok, who would later see the statement, flashed through Raon’s mind, she realized she couldn’t just sit there.

"Hey! I have your card too! I’m swiping it right now, okay?"

"Do you know something?"

"Know what?"

Raon tried to threaten her back with the fact that she was holding a card too.

But—

"I don’t have money."

"What? I know you got your settlement not long ago."

"Money is a thing that only stirs greed if you keep it. I spent it all a long time ago."

"You insane—."

A curse slipped out of Raon’s mouth without her meaning to.

She definitely remembered Lee Sion getting a pretty big settlement, but Lee Sion saying she’d already spent it all and had no money—and telling Raon to go ahead and swipe the card and check if she didn’t believe it—didn’t sound like a lie.

Hoo.

A do-or-die crisis.

Taking a deep breath to stay calm, Raon steadied herself and thought clearly.

In a situation where only the other side held an asymmetric weapon like a nuclear bomb, a frontal fight was impossible.

"···What do you want?"

Then all that was left was negotiation.

"Now we can finally have a proper conversation."

At Raon’s question about what she wanted, Lee Sion’s voice sounded satisfied, to the point where Raon could practically feel the pleased expression through the phone.

Raon thought that if Lee Sion didn’t want anything, she wouldn’t be picking up the phone and talking like this.

If she had planned to do that, she would’ve ignored the call and gone around using the corporate card with excitement, or she would’ve done what Hakyoon predicted and just taken a taxi back to the hotel.

"We’re going to explore Connecticut while swiping the card."

"Explore?"

"There was a really fun movie a long time ago. Do you know a movie called 'Catch Me If You Can'?"

"You···."

Lee Sion suddenly brought up a movie title out of nowhere.

But even without hearing the rest, Raon could tell what Lee Sion was getting at.

A famous comedy crime film based on a true story, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, about a detective chasing a protagonist who commits fraud all over the world while impersonating different jobs.

"We’re not going. You’ll have to catch us."

The original purpose of this self-content was to capture the members struggling through missions and hardships to return to New York from a faraway place.

But Lee Sion was saying to flip it completely and play cops and robbers—make Raon suffer while chasing the members.

Raon was speechless.

"You’d better run well. The moment I catch you, I don’t care about the others—Lee Sion, you will definitely pay the price."

"Good luck."

Beep.

After yelling good luck, Lee Sion hung up.

Raon vowed she wouldn’t go back to New York until she caught Lee Sion and smacked that back.

***

"Thank you for your service."

"Wow!"

America really was a capitalist country.

You could even pay the tip by card. In Korea, people would’ve freaked out.

"If you came to America, you follow American law."

I gladly paid the outrageous 15% tip.

Lee Gahyeon saw it and tried to stop me in shock, but it was fine.

It wasn’t like I started this without thinking.

"Hey, aren’t we going too far?"

"It’s fine. The moment we started, we couldn’t turn back anyway."

Even though she was already participating, Lee Gahyeon kept voicing anxious worries like she was still concerned.

When I ordered room service back at the hotel earlier, Lee Gahyeon’s flustered face had been vivid.

Maybe because she remembered getting hit by my coup before.

Whenever I said I was going to do something, she would panic first.

But—

-We came all the way to America. Isn’t it too sad to leave after only filming?

-That’s···.

-If we go back to Korea, for a while, we’ll be so busy promoting we won’t even have time to breathe, let alone come back to America. We’ll probably finish a schedule, get in the van, close our eyes, and think,

Ah, if only I’d acted a little more relaxed in America back then, it would’ve been fun.

And if something happens, and you collapse, and you’re facing death, you might regret it on a hospital bed.

You don’t want to think, I came to the home of McDonald’s and couldn’t even eat McDonald’s, I just worked the whole time, right?

After I pushed her a little, before I knew it, Lee Gahyeon was leading the charge out of the hotel room harder than anyone.

But—

"Lee Sion! Even now, if we just do it the original content way, mmph mmph!!!"

Seo Ryujin had a personality that clung to principles in weird places, so she didn’t buy my persuasion.

So we mobilized the other members and restrained her.

"Try this, Ryujin! The fries are so good. The homeland really is different!"

"Yuri! Why are you being so cooperative with Lee Sion today? And Ryu Ayeon, why are you listening to Lee Sion too!"

"That’s···."

My left arm and right arm, Yuri on the left and Ayeon on the right, each hooking one of Seo Ryujin’s arms and pinning her down.

In Yuri’s case, she liked jokes to begin with, so content or whatever, she was just excited because it sounded fun.

And in Ayeon’s case—

"Ayeon! Your bacon tomato deluxe burger large set is out!"

"···."

"Aaaah!!! Ryu Ayeon, you’ve been hanging out with Lee Sion and all you did was grow your appetite!"

The old Ayeon who used to say we couldn’t eat stuff like that even when we went to the convenience store back in the Idol Ground 100 days was nowhere to be found.

This was New Ryu Ayeon, whose appetite had noticeably increased.

Ayeon was the one who practiced the hardest out of all of us, so she must’ve been burning a ridiculous amount of calories, and on top of that, with the comeback coming up, her meals had been controlled, so maybe she’d been struggling more than she let on.

-Room service? No··· I’ll just eat a salad.

-Ryu Ayeon, when you let it loose, you have to let it loose properly, that’s how desire gets resolved. You’re too clumsy. If you eat salad right now, you might explode. The appetite inside you.

I’d only lightly stimulated her with room-service steak, and her appetite monster exploded immediately.

She helped restrain Seo Ryujin first, and now she was about to devour a McDonald’s burger set too.

"Look at this, Yunkyung! It’s a cup shaped so weird!"

"It really is! I’m going to buy it and use it at the hotel."

"Then should we buy ones for all the members too?"

"Wait, then the older members’ colors would be···."

And the Youngest too, Shinyu and Yunkyung, were running around sightseeing like we were really on a trip, and now they’d gone into a little gift shop and were deep in a shopping trance.

At that age, this brutal filming schedule must’ve been hard to endure.

During filming, they’d looked blank and dazed, but the moment they were given free break time, they got lively again, and it was nice to see.

"But Sion, shouldn’t we move somewhere else fast?"

"Hm?"

While I watched Seo Ryujin’s flailing, Ayeon’s eating show, Gahyeon’s selfie trance, and the Youngest shopping with satisfaction, Yuri came over and asked if we shouldn’t move.

'That’s a fair worry.'

After all, the content team was tailing us while filming, phone glued to an ear.

They were definitely reporting our location to Raon PD in real time.

But it was fine.

"Let them come."

"Really?"

"The moment you get caught by Zhuge Liang of the Haan neighborhood, you’re already in the Buddha’s palm."

"Hahaha! Sion, you’re such an otaku!"

I fired a side kick into Yuri’s ribs for that insolence, and she started rolling around on the sidewalk.

'If only I had a feather fan··· it would’ve been perfect.'

Raon PD, furious, sprinting to catch us.

That was the real beginning of Operation Venus Flytrap.