Idol Hides His Military Service

"Promotion wrapped without any issues, right?"

"Yes. None of the three teams broke the rules, and there were no safety incidents."

"Fuu."

At the staffer’s report, Miyoung let out a breath of relief.

'We got insanely lucky.'

To be honest, this guerrilla concert was packed with risk factors.

-Not screwing up on an outdoor stage is basically a miracle.

Unlike an indoor performance in a controlled environment, an outdoor stage was something you had to treat mistakes as a given.

On top of that, having girl group members go out and promote the guerrilla concert themselves was the kind of setup where accidents were just waiting to happen.

That was why Miyoung and the production team had done site checks and rehearsal runs in advance, placing security guards and safety personnel to reduce the chances of something happening—but no matter how much you prepared, you never knew where an incident might pop, so they had no choice but to wait in a state of extreme tension.

But thankfully, the moment she heard that all three teams had just safely finished promotion and returned to their venues, Miyoung finally let herself loosen up a little.

'Now it starts.'

Of course, since this was only the first step toward making the guerrilla concert a success, it was still too early to drop her guard.

-Miyoung, I’m only trusting you.

Starting with Director Kang Hyukjin, who had poured generous support into Three Kingdoms as an outsourced production because he believed in her, all the way to SY Production, who had also trusted Miyoung and backed the show hard.

Up to now, Three Kingdoms had been pulling great numbers, living up to those expectations—but as always, the ending was what mattered.

If the final competition—a guerrilla concert where Korea’s top three girl groups were battling it out over the rankings—ended up shabby, that was unacceptable.

'We can run a boy group version later too, and we can do a girl group version again with legends—there are endless formats.'

Just like Agbaek Season 2, which was drawing attention even though filming hadn’t even started yet, Three Kingdoms also had a long road ahead.

"By the way, things were wild on Iam’s side."

"That bad?"

"It was like the Pied Piper Iam."

Miyoung, who’d been lost in thought, snapped back to attention at what the staffer who’d been dispatched to Iam said.

"What girl idol on earth drags a palanquin around? People were following them around like they were possessed just to watch that!"

"That has to be Lee Sion’s doing."

"Huh?"

"No. It isn’t."

Watching the staffer make a huge fuss—saying it was the first time in her life she’d seen something like that, and it looked like a scene straight out of the Pied Piper fairy tale—Miyoung could guess exactly who the culprit behind this whole palanquin incident was.

-You want to use a palanquin? I’m sorry, but like we notified you last time, promotion is members only.

-The members will carry the palanquin.

-···.

Ahead of the guerrilla concert promotion, Miyoung had gotten an unexpected question from KJ Entertainment.

Something totally out of left field—asking if it was okay to use a palanquin during promotion. Of course Miyoung had said no.

At first, she thought KJ Entertainment had lost its mind.

And for good reason: if they allowed outside manpower, it was obvious the big agencies like SY and TSP would have the advantage—so it was basically asking her to loosen the rules with their own hands.

But when she heard the shocking line that the members themselves would carry the palanquin, Miyoung and the production team had gone speechless.

-It’s not a rule violation, technically.

-The “no rides” ban was for stuff like cars···.

-Do we allow this?

Since there wasn’t any regulation they could use to forbid it, in the end, they had no choice but to allow Iam’s palanquin promotion.

-Bwoooo!!!

"Isn’t it insane? Watching this, I started clapping without even realizing it!"

"Yeah. It does look insane."

The staffer who’d been out filming played the video proudly, and seeing it on-site made it even more unbelievable.

Im Yunkyung, sitting up on the palanquin, blowing away on a horn like she was having the time of her life—and the members carrying the palanquin with grim, determined faces as they marched forward with force.

Kurosawa Yuri and Geum Shinyu were hopping around and scattering flyers like they were bodyguards escorting the palanquin carriers.

'This isn’t what I pictured at all···.'

Miyoung was happy, and yet kind of miserable.

What she’d originally planned was—

-At 1 p.m., VYNNIA has a stage at Yeouido Hangang Park! Please come watch!

-LYNX is doing a guerrilla concert! Please come check it out!

Like the other groups, she’d pictured them walking the streets, running into regular citizens, and grinding through promotion the hard way.

Idols getting hurt by indifferent stares sometimes, then getting energized again by fans they happened to run into—struggling and pushing through.

LYNX’s and VYNNIA’s promotion videos contained exactly that kind of intent from Miyoung.

But—

-It’s not like Iam comes every day!

-Ah, Iam guerrilla concert! Cheaper than shoes!

-Strike up the band, Im Yunkyung!

-Bwoooo!

Iam’s promotion had turned the whole scene into something like a traditional open-air market, and it reeked of Lee Sion, not Miyoung.

Watching the palanquin promotion—something that was obviously born inside her nephew’s brain, no matter who saw it—Miyoung’s feelings got complicated.

'Why do I have to feel inferior to my nephew—no, to an idol?'

If you asked Miyoung to name the moment that was the happiest and the most humiliating for a PD, it was when a cast member went beyond what she’d intended and delivered something even funnier.

Happy, and yet crushed.

Her planning skill lost to a cast member’s quick thinking, but the show got more entertaining anyway—that contradictory emotion was something Miyoung felt from her nephew Lee Sion almost every single day.

But—

"Nothing else come in from the stage install team?"

"No. Everyone’s on standby, and they say we can start the performance at one on the dot."

"Okay. Put the feeds up, and we go into standby."

"Yes!"

Now was the time to take full advantage of her nephew.

Over ten monitors spread out in front of Miyoung.

She had to monitor all three venues where the guerrilla concerts were happening in real time, checking for unexpected situations that might happen mid-performance.

"Don’t drop your guard. If something blows up, we have to run immediately."

At Miyoung’s words, the staff next to her—and the other staff as well—nodded with firm expressions.

Since this was the highlight of everything that had happened so far on Three Kingdoms, this was the time to pour everything into it.

***

'There are so many people.'

Hyejeong clicked her tongue as she looked at the crowd that had flooded into Seoul Forest Plaza in an instant.

[Iam’s doing a guerrilla concert at 1 in Seoul Forest?]

(A photo of Iam walking around the streets promoting while riding a palanquin.)

"During lunch, I came out for a walk and saw a crowd, so I went over like what’s going on, and Iam members were promoting while riding a palanquin.

They handed out flyers and it says they’re doing a guerrilla concert at 1.

Anyway I’m gonna watch."

⤷holy shit I thought this would be on the weekend and they do it on a weekday, those psycho producers

⤷Saw posts on other communities too saying VYNNIA and LYNX are performing

⤷So it’s happening in three places at once?

⤷The locations are super close too, at this rate it could all funnel into one spot

⤷But why is nobody calling out the palanquin thing? Is this really what idols should be doing to promote?

⤷Newbie?

⤷At least they didn’t put on clown makeup, so they held back

⤷They’ve improved a lot

A sighting post about Iam that went up on SNS during lunch.

'Lucky. It’s near my place, so I could come right away.'

Since it was a five-minute ride by taxi, Hyejeong grabbed her camera the moment she saw the post and headed straight for Seoul Forest.

Because as Lee Sion’s fansite master, there was no way she could miss a big event like this.

But even though she’d sprinted over to claim as good a spot as possible, knowing the performance started at one, Seoul Forest Plaza was already packed wall-to-wall with people.

"Sorry, but when you enter, we need to do a headcount!"

At the entrance, people who looked like production staff were busy counting attendees with click counters in their hands, like they were tracking the audience size.

Because of that, the stream of people jammed up at the entrance, forming a long waiting line.

If Hyejeong had been even a little late, she would’ve been trapped in that line and missed a good spot—the crowd was swelling that fast.

"Lee Sion! You’re so pretty!"

"Shinyu, look over here!"

"Ryu Ayeon, I ditched work to see you!"

Anyway, having secured a good vantage point where she could see the whole stage, Hyejeong pulled out her camera and started setting it up, listening to the cheers around her.

"Wow··· Lee Gahyeon in real life is insane."

"Seo Ryujin’s face is hilarious if she’d just stop talking."

"Yuri seriously looks like an idol. Her voice is cute too!"

The audience was hyped, calling out each member’s name.

'If you’re talking balance, this is pretty damn balanced.'

Hyejeong thought Iam was an idol group with an unusually good distribution of popularity.

Because she’d been a fan of different idols before, Hyejeong knew exactly how brutal the popularity gap between members could be inside a group.

For example, in the male idol group Death Perado, which she used to stan with Jiyeon—back then, about eighty percent of the popularity had funneled into one core visual member.

That was extreme even for Death Perado, but in general, huge popularity gaps inside a group weren’t rare.

The less popular the group, the worse it got—and even for popular idols, it was common for schedules to pile onto certain members.

Everyone pretended it wasn’t happening, but if you’d done even a little idol fandom, you couldn’t not know that plenty of idol groups had disbanded because of popularity disparity between members.

So when Hyejeong first became Lee Sion’s fansite master, she worried a lot.

'Iam is such a weird group.'

Unlike a normal idol group that debuted after an agency gathered trainees, this was a girl group created by viewers’ votes—survival show contestants from different agencies coming together.

So at first, Hyejeong had wondered if the fandom would even function properly.

Because Iam’s fans wouldn’t all be supporting everyone—they’d each have different members they supported, so if things went wrong, there was a real possibility they’d start fighting among themselves.

But Hyejeong’s worry was pointless.

[I used to hate Ryu Ayeon so much but these days she’s my bias]

"How did Ryu Ayeon even pretend to be quiet during Agbaek?

lol if you look, I think Ryu Ayeon might be the next most unhinged after Lee Sion"

⤷After Position Evaluation, once she met Lee Sion, she changed

⤷And isn’t it the same timing when Seo Ryujin suddenly got way less fun too?

⤷For real, before that she was just normal variety sense among the other contestants!

⤷It’s weird, once they get tangled up with Lee Sion, everyone changes

⤷Just look at Shinyu too, early on she was trembling, then later she’s still trembling while punching everyone in the solar plexus with facts

⤷Anyway, I guess this is also Ronaldo’s blessing

⤷holy shit why is Ronaldo showing up there!

Surprisingly, after they became one group, Iam’s fandom—which used to have strong individual member bases—started to lock together as one group fandom.

'Lee Sion is definitely the most popular, but it’s balanced, somehow?'

Hyejeong thought the reason was the members themselves.

Sure, if you had to pick the most popular member, Lee Sion would obviously be first—but the other members all had thick fanbases too, so when you added them together, it created good synergy.

If Lee Sion was broadly popular with the general public—men and women, old and young—Seo Ryujin and Ryu Ayeon were especially popular with female fans.

On the other hand, Kurosawa Yuri and Lee Gahyeon had overwhelming support from male fans, and in Geum Shinyu’s case, maybe because of her uniquely androgynous looks, she had the strongest, most solid core fanbase among the members.

'Im Yunkyung is the only one who’s kind of awkward, I guess?'

Still, since Im Yunkyung was the youngest member, her fanbase overlapped with Lee Sion’s and Kurosawa Yuri’s, so her presence was on the weaker side.

Even just looking at this venue, you could feel it—the ratio of people shouting Im Yunkyung’s name in the sea of names being called was lower.

"Thank you for coming to watch Iam’s guerrilla concert today!"

While Hyejeong was lost in thought, Iam’s members were already up onstage, like they’d finished preparing.

'So pretty!'

Maybe because it was a guerrilla concert and they cared, all the members were wearing crisp white short-sleeved school uniform shirts and skirts that fell to the knees.

And as a key point, they had neckties with three stripes—an absurdly perfect fit.

'Collaborating with Thom Browne was a god-tier move!'

Hyejeong remembered how the fans had gone crazy, saying Iam’s stage outfit quality had shot up after the collaboration with the luxury brand Thom Brand.

As a fansite master who filmed stage and event footage and uploaded it, lately Iam’s outfits had become even more fun to shoot.

"Our first stage today is Spotlight! This time, Yuri is center!"

"Waaaah!!!"

"Even louder, please! This is Yuri’s monumental Spotlight center, you know!"

"WAAAAAAH!!!"

Thanks to Kurosawa Yuri, who was so slick it was hard to believe she was a rookie girl group, the crowd’s cheers only got bigger.

Most of the people gathered here probably weren’t Iam fans—just people nearby who came to watch—but the reaction was so intense it felt like a fan concert, and Hyejeong was still staring in surprise when—

♬

The moment a familiar melody came out through the stage speakers, everyone started jumping, stamping their feet.

'That’s cheating.'

If you had to name the biggest hit among this year’s songs, you couldn’t leave out Spotlight, Agbaek’s /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ theme song.

Even people who didn’t know idols well couldn’t not know it—it played everywhere—so for a random crowd like this, it was the perfect track.

She wanted to get hyped and respond along with the other audience members, but Hyejeong, like a professional fansite master, lifted her camera and focused on the stage.

No matter how she thought about it, today’s guerrilla concert fancam was going to blow up.

Not some regular event or performance, but a guerrilla concert fancam.

The moment she uploaded this to Hyeryeong’s homepage, it was guaranteed to explode, so she’d set up her shoot with more care than usual.

'Im Yunkyung?'

Im Yunkyung, standing right beside Lee Sion as the formation locked in and the stage began, caught Hyejeong’s eye.