Idol Hides His Military Service

-Today, all of you must work together to gather information, uncover the secret of the Iam Laboratory, and escape.

The moment we finished getting ready and stepped into the studio, the content team told us what we had to do today, then disappeared just as fast.

Thanks to that, the only people left in the studio now were us, the Iam members.

The way they explained everything in an instant and vanished immediately after was suspicious, but pros moved first and figured things out on the way, so we started looking around the laboratory set like they told us to, trying to find a way out.

"It’s huge."

"I think the company really overdid it this time!"

"If they said we have to escape, I guess it’s like an escape room."

Just like Shinyu said, maybe the company really had gone all out for this content, because the studio had been set up in pretty elaborate detail to look like a laboratory.

And it was fairly big, too, so if we all wandered around together, it felt like it would take forever just to look through this one place. So we split up and started searching separately.

"I found a note!"

Not long after that, Seo Ryujin, who had been digging around in one corner, shot her hand into the air and shouted like she’d found something.

"What is it?"

The members all crowded around her at once.

「202X. 3. 4

Today, at last, the first stage of the experiment showed meaningful results.

After administering the VX-13 virus to 12 mouse subjects, we observed their condition for 6 hours. At first, there were no notable changes, but after 2 hours and 40 minutes, Subject No. 7 showed a clear reaction.

Its heart rate and body temperature rose sharply, and it displayed far more aggressive behavior than usual. It was repeatedly biting the other subjects in the same cage···.」

"Huh?"

The note Ryujin found was crammed full of writing, and the contents were anything but ordinary.

"It looks like they were doing some kind of experiment?"

"If this is the secret of the lab, it’s kind of lame."

"Didn’t something go wrong during the experiment, and that’s why the lab ended up like this?"

After reading the note, the members all started making their own guesses.

'Something definitely happened here.'

For a normal laboratory, there were way too many things like bloodstains splattered here and there, and experimental machines of unknown purpose smashed to pieces all over the studio.

At a glance, it was obvious something had gone down here.

"Zombie···."

"What?"

While everyone was putting their heads together to figure out the lab’s secret based on the note, Ryu Ayeon suddenly blurted out the word zombie, and all eyes turned to her.

"What’s written here is exactly like the setup for a zombie movie."

"Zombie means··· those uuurghh things?"

"Yeah."

Ayeon answered in a voice full of certainty.

For some reason, she looked so confident that it made me uneasy, but looking at what was written on the note, zombies really did come to mind.

Dead bodies that wandered around biting people while going uuurghh.

"Then that means there are zombies here?" 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Wow··· what kind of in-house content films something like this?!"

"So the lab’s secret was zombies?"

"There’s probably more. Let’s keep looking."

At some point, Ayeon had gotten fired up and started directing everyone, so under her lead, we began tearing through the lab again.

"There’s something here!"

"I found one too!"

Then one by one, things we’d missed at first started turning up.

The first thing we found was a square frame hidden behind a divider, with five holes cut into the middle.

But—

-How do we open this?

-No clue. Just rip it open first!

Apparently they had no intention of giving us the hint nicely, because they’d hidden it inside a wooden box. So I just grabbed it and tore it open with my hands.

"That’s the strength Sion was planning to use to rip me apart?"

"I can do that later. For now, we’re supposed to fit this in here, right?"

The second thing we found was a set of round alphabet letters.

O, M, B, Z, I

"It obviously says ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) zombie."

It looked like Ayeon had been right, because when we put the letters together, they formed the word zombie.

"This isn’t the kind of thing you hesitate over."

The others were still debating whether we should fit the letters into the frame, so I stepped in and started doing it myself.

Click.

The letters slid in with a satisfying fit.

Clank!

And the moment the word ZOMBI was completed, the cover of an air vent on one side of the laboratory wall dropped open.

At the same time, a ladder came sliding down out of the vent in a piece of technology I honestly could not believe.

"That’s it!"

Anyone could tell we were supposed to escape through there, so the members and I hurried straight toward the open vent.

"Sion goes up first, and after that Yunkyung and Shinyu!"

"Okay!"

It wasn’t ridiculously high, but it was still elevated enough that it could be dangerous, so just in case, I went up first since I had the best athletic sense, planning to help catch the others from above.

"This reminds me of climbing over that wall during Agbaek."

"Right. I caught you then too."

"The captain seriously looked insane back then."

"She’s still insane now."

"When that shameless Lee Gahyeon comes up, I should kick her with my foot."

"You don’t even call me unni anymore!"

Once I got up there, I found the vent passage was wider than I’d expected.

As I helped the others up one by one, before I knew it, the only two left below were Gahyeon and Ayeon.

And just as Ayeon was about to climb onto the ladder—

Thunk.

"What the hell?!"

The ladder, which had originally been long enough to reach all the way to the floor, suddenly split in half and broke into a lad-der.

The members and I froze on the spot at the unexpected situation.

Ayeon and Gahyeon, still down below, were flustered about what to do when—

"The doors are opening!"

The laboratory doors we’d already checked, the ones that hadn’t budged at all and that we’d assumed were just props, all started opening at once, and—

"Uuurghh!"

Zombies poured out.

***

"Uuurghh!"

Ma Dongjun, one of the extras, was covered head to toe in zombie makeup and diligently making grotesque noises with his mouth as he shuffled toward the Iam members gathered by the air vent.

-You absolutely can’t run. Walk slowly like this. Think of it like dragging your feet.

At first, he’d signed up for this extra job partly because he thought he’d get to see celebrities and partly to make a little spending money, but when he found out that the girl group Iam—currently one of the hottest acts around—would be appearing, he’d been shocked.

But—

'This is hard!'

At first, he thought playing a zombie would be easy, just lurch around and that would be it, but it turned out to be a lot more exhausting than he’d expected.

He couldn’t just jump out by himself, so he had to shamble in step with the zombie extras around him, and that was surprisingly difficult.

On top of that, he couldn’t even drink water properly in case the makeup got ruined, and all he could do before the cue came was sit around waiting, so his whole body was aching.

Honestly, running would’ve been easier, but if he acted on his own, then instead of getting paid, he might end up fined under the contract, so he had to hold himself back.

Still—

"Kyaaaah!!!"

"I’ll go up first!"

As the zombie extras closed in, Dongjun found himself weirdly excited watching Gahyeon scream in panic while Ayeon left her behind and climbed up the ladder that had been cut in half.

'Oh!'

Ayeon jumped high enough to grab the dangling end of the half-ladder, a height that would’ve been hard for most women to manage so easily.

Then she climbed up it in a flash like she was some kind of special forces soldier, and with help from the members waiting above, she slipped into the vent passage in no time.

That left only Gahyeon.

"Uuurghh!"

"Kyaaaah! You’re ugly!!! Don’t come near me!"

'Ah, that one stings a little···.'

Dongjun had been placed at the front of the zombie line because people said his acting was good, and by the time he got close, Gahyeon was screaming out of her mind. Maybe because she was so panicked, the words just flew out, but he still felt a little hurt.

Gahyeon was actually his favorite Iam member, which made it worse, but work was work.

So he slowly kept closing in on her.

"Unni, hurry up and come up!"

"Ugh!! Hey, this is too high!"

"Grab my hand!"

Unlike Ayeon, who’d leaped right up onto the ladder, Gahyeon kept flailing and couldn’t grab it despite being tall. So Sion, who had gone up first, climbed back down, hung off the half-ladder, and stretched out a hand to her.

Gahyeon grabbed for it and tried to pull herself up, but—

"Kyaaaah!"

Grab.

Before anyone noticed, Dongjun had gotten close enough to grab her by the ankle.

"Aaah!!!"

"Argh!! Sion, my arm’s coming out!"

"Hang in there!"

Even though she only had one hand free because she was holding onto the ladder, Sion used ridiculous brute strength to drag Gahyeon upward by force.

'How is she this strong?'

Dongjun, still holding Gahyeon by the ankle, was startled when her heel lifted off the ground a little despite everything.

There were three zombie extras hanging onto her leg, and of course none of them were using too much force in case she got hurt, but even so, Sion was still hauling against the pull of three adult men all by herself.

Which made it obvious Gahyeon wasn’t exaggerating at all when she screamed that her arm felt like it was about to get ripped out.

Sliiide.

The instructions the zombies, including Dongjun, had gotten from the content team were that at the first location, if possible, it was fine to eliminate at least one member.

Dongjun hesitated. If they kept up this tug-of-war with Sion over Gahyeon, she might actually get hurt.

And apparently it wasn’t just him. When he glanced around, the other zombies had the same uncertain look in their eyes.

Then, right in the middle of that awkward standoff—

Smack.

"Ryu Ayeon!"

"Abandon the ones you have to abandon. That’s Rule Number One in zombie stories."

Ayeon, who had crept up behind Sion, coldly slapped Gahyeon’s hand off Sion’s.

"Uh··· uh! Ryu Ayeon, you psycho!"

"Sorry, unni! See you later!"

"This really wasn’t me! I’m going first for now!"

Gahyeon fell from the ladder with a blank expression and landed right among the zombies, while Ayeon and Sion disappeared in a flash, leaving her behind.

And the zombie extras, Dongjun included, just stared at what they’d seen.

"···."

"···."

When their eyes met with Gahyeon sitting on the floor after landing hard on her butt, an awkward silence drifted through the laboratory studio.

***

"Ah."

"This is a disaster, isn’t it?"

A disaster.

Depending on where you set the bar for disaster, the content team’s ambitious new project, Zombie Laboratory, could be judged differently, but at least the version Hakyoon had planned was dead.

-What’s this rope thing?

-Isn’t it there so we can tie up the zombies if they show up?

-Oh! Ryu Ayeon, are you a genius?

-Trust me. I’m a zombie expert.

Hakyoon wanted to say absolutely not.

The rope attached to the ceiling of the vent had been there so the members who hadn’t made it up yet could be rescued when the ladder snapped in half.

"Why is Ryu Ayeon going off the rails?"

"I don’t know. I’ve never seen her this excited before."

The person Hakyoon had been most careful about while preparing this content was Lee Sion.

And for good reason. She was the main culprit behind wrecking every piece of content he’d prepared up until now, so there was no way not to watch out for her.

When she tore open the wooden box with the hidden clue inside, he’d nearly had a heart attack.

The male team members had tested that box themselves and sworn up and down that it absolutely could not be opened without the key, and she’d ripped it open with her bare hands anyway. A true content-destroying criminal.

But now, as if Sion alone weren’t enough, Ayeon had joined forces with her and was blowing up the content team’s plans too.

'What I planned was a beautiful scene where they all work together to save a teammate.'

At first, maybe heaven really had been helping, because the Iam members had been moving exactly according to the picture the content team had in mind.

Hakyoon and the others had been smiling ear to ear when the members found the hidden clues scattered all over the giant studio they’d rented with KJ Media’s help, and even when they pieced them together and figured out the zombies.

Sure, the way they found some of those clues had been a little unexpected, but there was a saying, wasn’t there? It didn’t matter how you got there as long as you got to Seoul.

Anyway, when they discovered the first escape route the content team had prepared and started showing heartwarming teamwork while trying to escape together, he’d nearly teared up.

Right up until Ayeon smacked Gahyeon’s hand away and sent her falling.

'Do we really air this as-is?'

Honestly, it was hilarious.

Ayeon coldly knocking Gahyeon’s hand away, Sion staring at her in total disbelief, and Gahyeon on the floor below, looking up speechless.

If people saw those expressions, Hakyoon had a near-certain feeling this would absolutely make the Top 5 most iconic scenes in Iam’s in-house content this year.

But if this aired, then even Ayeon, who until now had at least held onto the image of being one of Iam’s more serious members, would definitely get locked into a variety-show image too. So he hesitated.

-Just accept it. Either way, you’re getting footage.

Then he suddenly remembered something Park Hyungsoo, the man who took over Agbaek as PD after Miyoung, once said.

Watching Sion and her gang constantly shove the show in whatever direction they wanted and drag it off course, Park Hyungsoo had said that waves weren’t something you fought against. You rode them. If the ratings were good, everything was fine.

Back then, Hakyoon had grumbled to himself that it sounded way too spineless for a PD, but now he understood exactly what Hyungsoo meant.

"Just let them do whatever they want."

"What?"

"It’s already out of our hands."

"Then what are we supposed to do?"

"What do you mean, what? We need to go to Gahyeon."

"Gahyeon?"

Hakyoon nodded.

-Aaah, Ryu Ayeon, I swear I’m getting revenge!!!

Gahyeon, the first member the zombies had captured, had been lifted up in their arms and carried off to the prison set like some kind of sacrificial offering.

And even while they were dragging her away, she was shouting Ayeon’s name with such raw fury and swearing revenge so fiercely that even the staff watching through the monitors had flinched at the killing intent coming off her.

Because there was still something they needed to do for Gahyeon.