Idol Hides His Military Service

Peerless.

My mom—no, my mother—really seemed to have been born in the wrong era.

If she had just been born a thousand years earlier, she definitely would have snagged a general’s position somewhere.

“So they needed you to be on the broadcast, but they thought it wouldn’t be good if Sion went out there as-is, so Miyoung, you made up a story, and Lee Sion just followed that exactly. That’s what you’re saying?”

“Yeah···.”

“That’s exactly it, Mom!”

“Be quiet.”

It was the first time I realized my aunt was such a weak woman.

Maybe it was because there’s a pretty big age gap between her and my mom, so she’d been changing my dirty diapers since I was a baby?

Maybe Miyoung couldn’t even bring herself to rebel, because she had to sit there like some quiet noble family’s young lady and experience Madam Sukja’s fierce palm with her whole body.

As for me, after getting hit for nineteen years straight, maybe I’d built up some kind of resistance, because it was bearable now, but it must have been the first time in a while my aunt was getting hit by my mom, since she even started to cry.

“Just what exactly did you have to sell that was so lacking that you went and sold off your big sister and your mom on TV!”

“We couldn’t sell the country, could we?”

“You haven’t been hit enough yet, have you?!”

This was bad.

Normally at about this point, Mom’s berserk pattern would end with, “This girl, there’s nothing she won’t say!” and she’d just let it slide.

I guess the nationwide image of a hysterical ajumma slapped on her by Idol Ground 100 airing this time was just too big an incident.

I secretly poked my aunt’s side with my finger as she knelt on the floor next to me.

At first, she glared at me like, what the hell are you doing.

But when our eyes met, she suddenly wore an expression like she understood what I meant, and she nodded.

“Uh··· big sis! Let’s go get a lifting procedure together this time! You know Kim Heesoo, right?”

“Kim Heesoo?”

“Yeah, national actress Kim Heesoo! They say the dermatologist in Gangnam she goes to is so good at lifting! There isn’t a single female celebrity who doesn’t go there!”

As expected of Kim Miyoung, thirty-third-generation descendant of the Deoksu Kim clan, showing off her reflexes.

Somehow she knew Madam Sukja had been stressing lately over her skin sagging by the day, and she threw out a lifting procedure as bait.

And I could clearly see the muscles in Madam Sukja’s face twitch ever so slightly for a moment.

But we couldn’t stop here.

“Oh right, Auntie! Didn’t you say you were going to give Mom that Japanese hot spring trip voucher you got last time?”

“Uh··· uh! That’s right!!! Yeah, I got a hot spring trip voucher from my company not long ago, but where do I have the time to go! It’d be perfect if you and brother-in-law went!”

“Wow! If my mom gets a lifting and then goes to the hot springs, am I going to get a little sibling?”

Twitch.

At my and my aunt’s joint offensive, the corner of my mom’s mouth twitched.

“This kid, no matter what you say··· ahem.”

Tap.

My mom smacked my forearm lightly, telling me not to be ridiculous.

‘Not a smack, but a tap? We did it!’

If she were still in berserk mode, there would’ve been a red mark on my forearm, but this touch was like a girl in love whining playfully.

It was the moment the alert on one Jindo dog was canceled.

***

- If you do that one more time, you really will be in for it!

Just like a starving beast won’t react to prey anymore once its stomach is full, my mom, having obtained satisfactory compensation, left my aunt’s place with a gentle smile, the exact opposite of how she’d arrived.

But,

“Now, shall we talk about us?”

“Uh··· huh?”

It seemed my aunt had failed to notice there was still a beast left whose stomach wasn’t full yet.

Tap.

I took out my smartphone, pulled up the video on YouTube, and shoved it in my aunt’s face.

[Idol Ground 100 Ep.1 Highlight]

(Lee Sion holds up a V sign to her face and sticks out her tongue)

↳ daked23: It’s already been two weeks and Lee Sion still won’t leave my head. Recs: 24,593

↳ Grapevine: The really scary thing is that she does all that without laughing even once. Recs: 21,382

↳ xide5: Ahem, this is clearly on purpose. She put this all together in advance planning to go to F class and start a rebellion. Recs: 13,927

I’d heard there’s such a thing as a digital undertaker.

People who, for money, delete bad posts you’ve put online, or erase your shameful dark history for you.

They say the cost varies wildly depending on how much there is, but I couldn’t even imagine what they’d charge if I went to a digital undertaker and asked to have all of this erased.

“So, Sion! First of all, calm down and listen to what your aunt has to say.”

“Speak. But choose your words wisely, Auntie. I came here ready to lose a blood relative today.”

I had already lost everything.

The shock I was feeling now was comparable to when I lost all the Bitcoin I’d collected.

On YouTube and across the internet, if you searched ‘Lee Sion’, thousands of posts popped up right away already.

There weren’t just a lot of them.

Somehow, whoever had watched them, the view counts started in the thousands and ones over ten thousand were everywhere.

[How to vote for Lee Sion (MUST READ)]

「First, when you go to the MPlay homepage, a link to the Idol Ground 100 voting screen comes up right away.

The problem is only accounts verified with real names can vote, but first, make as many accounts as you can with your family members’ info.

And since you can vote for 7 people once per day, you have to use this to pick your gallery owner and then use the leftover picks to do mutual-aid trades with other galleries.

But Ryu gallery and Seo gallery are competing with us for 1st place right now, so if you post cooperation offers there that’s the same as declaring war, so don’t, and instead go to the galleries of other contestants who are desperate for votes and do vote trades with them.」

Especially the post encouraging people to vote for me that was pinned as a notice in the Lee Sion gallery had already racked up tens of thousands of views.

Thanks to that, on the real-time voting ranking chart that popped up as soon as you entered the MPlay homepage, my picture was stuck right at the very top.

Only now could I understand how I’d managed to take 1st place at this most recent ranking announcement ceremony.

All of this was thanks to Kim Miyoung, who could easily be called the Lee Wanyong of the 21st century for selling off her niece for ratings, so I stared at my aunt.

With just a bit of killing intent in my gaze.

And my aunt, taking in that gaze, opened her mouth like she was saying she was the one who was really the victim here.

“I tried to edit you out as much as I could, but···.”

“But?”

“You showed up in too many important scenes. If we took you out in this situation, it’d be like going to a restaurant and not getting the main dish.”

Hmm.

When I thought about it, I did butt in all over the place.

Looking back, maybe because I was sure it’d all get edited out anyway, I’d ignored the cameras and roamed around freely like it was my own house.

But even so, I could not possibly accept that they had edited me into a gag character.

I asked my aunt how she could do such devilish editing and turn a person into a laughingstock like that.

“Editing? Hey! For the parts you were in, all we did was add captions, we didn’t touch anything! How is that devil’s editing?!”

“What?!”

At my aunt’s ridiculous excuse, I said I’d check myself and dragged her in front of the TV, then put on Idol Ground 100’s first episode.

‘It’s her money anyway, so whatever.’

Since it hadn’t been out long, we had to pay to watch it, but it wasn’t my money, so I paid coolly.

Once payment was done, Idol Ground 100 episode 1 started playing on the TV.

‘This feels weird.’

Seeing myself and the participants I’d lived together with for a month on the screen gave me a strange feeling.

Before, it would have just been one of those common variety shows, but now it felt more like watching close friends do talent show acts on a school retreat.

Thanks to that, even though I’d put on Idol Ground 100 to expose my aunt’s misdeeds, I soon found myself focusing on it.

‘I fixed Kim Nayeon when she was like that, and she paid me back with a gut punch.’

The scene where Kim Nayeon made a mistake on stage and froze in place,

‘So Yunkyung did this stage here? And Lee Gahyeon is still clumsy.’

Watching the entrance stages of the team members I hadn’t paid attention to back then because we weren’t close—no, I should call them former team members now—was kind of fun.

And when I watched the stages of the skilled participants, I could see things differently than before.

‘Back then watching it live, I didn’t notice, but so they put this much effort into it just to show this one stage.’

After a month of practicing singing and dancing every day, I could now tell, at least a little, how much preparation had gone into the entrance ceremony stages the participants showed.

From the formations on down, the way their moves locked together in perfect sync was so obvious it hit me right in the eyes.

And at last, the part with me started to come on.

“W·hat··· what is this?!”

A crazy woman started running wild on stage.

It had been embarrassing at the time too, but watching it now, it was even worse.

This was a stage that should not exist in this world.

From the way I ignored the backing track and came in on completely random beats, to how my moves were so stiff I regretted calling Lee Gahyeon clumsy earlier—it was like watching a literal plank of wood.

After about a hellish minute of that, the judges’ evaluations of me, standing there brazenly after the stage, came out.

‘These people are really good people.’

Maybe it wasn’t even worth harsh criticism, or maybe they saw how hard I’d tried even though I was terrible, but after a simple word to keep working hard, they gave me an F grade, and the program moved on.

“Watch closely, we really didn’t touch anything.”

“···Just be quiet!”

My aunt protested that I’d come out exactly as I’d done it, but it didn’t change the fact she’d broken her promise, so I lightly ignored her objections.

Right now I just wanted to watch episode 2.

***

Settlement money 300.

For this level, it seemed like not a bad price.

‘Please··· I already have way too much money I have to spend on your big sister. Just let me off this once, Sion!!!’

There really was nothing like sincerity when it came to moving someone’s heart.

It was absolutely not that I got drunk on the money and forgave my aunt.

There was just something about a salaried worker’s cry that made a person’s heart soft.

“Cola.”

“Have you lost your mind?!”

I missed it.

Back on my last vacation, I’d been treated like an emperor with absolute power, but now there was no such thing.

‘It’s hard just to go buy a bottle of cola.’

Because of the broadcast’s impact, the moment I stepped outside the house I couldn’t help running into people who recognized me, so even going to the convenience store to buy cola was tough.

‘Actually, this is good. I can use this chance to recover the rank points I dropped.’

I was the type to turn crises into opportunities.

Since I hadn’t been able to log into the game for almost a month, I needed to normalize my Legend of Valley tier that had dropped.

[Bronze 1]

It was a shameful rank.

I’d definitely been in Silver 5, but at some point my brilliant silver tier had turned to poop-brown.

This was even more humiliating than getting an F grade, so I hit “start game” without hesitation and began queuing.

- Death is like the wind···

Maybe because it was the weekend, the queue popped quickly, and as soon as the champion select screen came up on my monitor, I picked the familiar portrait of my champion without hesitation and locked it in.

AndongBulGidung: What the hell, another top YaXuo!

zizonSion: I’m a YaXuo master, don’t worry

BusanJoa: This crazy XX, if you’re a master why are you in Bronze!

zizonSion: This chat is filthy, tsk tsk, muting you all before we start

The friends of the Rift I was meeting again for the first time in a month still had no patience.

They didn’t understand that even with the same tool, the results varied wildly depending on who wielded it, and, trapped in confirmation bias, they kicked up trouble from before the game even started like fools.

The fact my tier was lower than my actual skill was largely because of people like that.

‘DariXs?’

Soon, after I’d put all four teammates on mute, the opposing team’s top laner’s pick had been locked in.

They picked a character who cheerfully smashed the enemy champion’s head open with an axe.

It was a champion I used to enjoy playing as well, so I knew the counters to it to some extent.

‘Perfect for my comeback match opponent.’

With the game about to start, I placed my hands on the mouse and keyboard and began to meditate like Saker, and at last the game started.

.

.

.

[Defeat!]

“This bastard’s on a smurf.”

0 kills, 12 deaths, 3 assists.

It was a record that was hard to believe, but it couldn’t be helped.

Our jungler hadn’t come top at all, while the enemy jungler was living top, and no matter how good I was, there was no way to win a 2:1.

On top of that, the enemy top laner who played DariXs was definitely someone who had their main account somewhere else and had come down to lower tier on a smurf to stomp people.

There was no other way I could have lost that miserably.

On days like this, it was best to turn the game off quickly.

According to the vast amount of big data accumulated over time, I knew from experience that if you kept playing on days like this, you’d fall into an irreversible disaster.

‘Still, I have to do what I have to do.’

Before leaving the game, I couldn’t forget to report the mid and ADC from champion select for abusive language.

I reported the jungler for intentional trolling since they never ganked all game, and I reported the support because they were the support.

Once I’d done my part for a slightly better Rift world, there was nothing left to do.

Honestly, I wanted to go out to the living room and watch the new historical drama “Battle for Chu–Han” that should be airing right now, but unfortunately, my mom was in control of the remote, so I had to do something else.

‘It’s absolutely not because I’m curious, I’m just bored.’

With both games and dramas off-limits, I had nothing to do, so I had no choice but to open YouTube and search for Idol Ground 100 episode 2.

[Idol Ground 100 Ep.2 Highlight]

I played the edited video of Idol Ground 100’s second episode, which had already surpassed a million views.

Tap.

I dragged the playback bar to skip the earlier parts and started playing from the part where our F class was getting its mid-check from the judges.

Pick me now, pick me wow

The name that will make your heart flutter

Among countless stars

Choose me— right now!

I stared blankly at my own image in the center of the formation on the monitor, dancing and singing.

There were still plenty of rough edges, but compared to the entrance ceremony stage that had been my first performance, I liked how much I’d improved.

And,

↳ This is a totally different kid from the entrance ceremony, though?

↳ It’s not just Lee Sion, the other kids are completely different from their first stages too. It just feels like F class as a {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} whole evolved.

↳ Up until now they were just funny, but seeing F class practicing all night really hit me hard. For me, this F class stage at the mid-check was the best.

People’s reactions weren’t bad either, which made it feel even better.

What kind of reaction would these people have when they saw the group battle mission stage I’d just done?

Just thinking about that made my heart beat a little faster.

After that, I kept wandering around the online communities, looking for posts about me or Idol Ground 100.

‘Huh?’

One of those posts caught my eye.