Idol Hides His Military Service

-What bastard is crying and making a f*cking scene?

I almost blurted out that famous line from some movie without thinking, but barely toned it down to just calling her Ryu Wuss.

“···I want to be alone. Can you leave?”

“I’m gonna have to refuse that.” 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

“···.”

When she slipped off by herself in that sketchy way, I followed, and sure enough, Ryu Ayeon went into the bathroom.

Just in case, I secretly watched from outside the door, and when I saw her turn on the water at the sink and shove her head under it, I couldn’t help sighing.

“Is this because of Jungyoon-saem’s evaluation?”

“···.”

She didn’t answer, but it was obvious at a glance.

Anyone could see her mentality had blown to pieces after Judge Lee Jungyoon’s harsh mid-check comments.

“Yeah··· it’s my fault. I ruined everything! Just yell at me already!”

Hm.

It looked like her condition was worse than I’d thought.

I hadn’t said a word and Ayeon was shouting on her own, even crying.

But,

“Uh··· sorry, but your influence isn’t that big.”

“What?”

Before answering her question, I dug around in my pocket and took out the handkerchief I always carried, then held it out to her.

“···I don’t need it.”

“It’s for the protection of the viewers’ eyeballs. We can’t put a panda on broadcast.”

At my words, Ayeon flinched and snatched the handkerchief, then checked her face in the sink mirror, and only then seemed to realize her eye makeup had run like a panda’s.

Then, flustered, she hurriedly started fixing the smeared makeup with the handkerchief, and I kept talking.

“This performance had seven of us, so you’ve got, like, one-seventh of the influence, tops.”

“What does that even···.”

Apparently she wasn’t really following what I was saying.

“Anyone watching you like this would think you ruined the stage. If that were true, Yunkyung, Shinyu, and Gahyeon-unni should already be holding hands and sprinting out of the dorm compound right now.”

“What do you know! Because of me··· because of the choreography I made, our team···.”

“Did you choreograph it to tank the stage? Or did you half-ass it or something?”

“That’s not it!”

“Then good. The rest is something we figure out together. Sitting here wallowing by yourself isn’t going to solve anything.”

At my words, Ayeon looked at me with an expression that said she couldn’t believe this, but at least she was done crying.

“I’ll keep it a secret that you snuck off to cry in the bathroom just because a judge said a few words. My lips are more sealed than you’d think.”

“I wasn’t crying!”

“Yeah, got it, so let’s go back to the practice room now, Ryu Wuss.”

Bathrooms are for people coming to take a dump, not to cry.

***

It wasn’t my first time seeing somebody like Ayeon.

‘She’s the extremely delicate, sensitive type.’

Back when I was a company commander, one of the platoon leaders under me had been exactly like her.

Like he was terrified of the future or something, before doing anything, he was the meticulous type who would picture himself doing the action and even consider every reaction that might happen.

Put nicely, he was a meticulous perfectionist—in simple terms, a wuss.

-Company commander, if we don’t mobilize the personnel and start the work now, we won’t make the fighting position construction deadline···.

-If you make the troops work outside in August afternoons, they’ll all die, Jinho. You trying to get me on the 9 p.m. news?

Fighting position construction? Even if it got finished a little late, worst case I’d just get scolded once by the battalion commander at the weekly meeting, but First Lieutenant Lee Jinho kept asking me to send him out with his platoon, saying he could get the job done.

It was like he was imagining the worst possible scenario if he didn’t complete his assigned mission.

But I was the one who’d turned even that First Lieutenant Lee Jinho into an excellent platoon leader.

‘Compared to that, Ryu Wuss is nothing.’

Even now, Ayeon was glaring daggers at me.

“Captain, did you do it again?”

“What exactly is that supposed to mean? That sounds terribly insulting, Yunkyung.”

“Just, seeing the way Ayeon-unni’s eyes look, it kinda seems like you did something.”

Hooh.

This impudent middle schooler’s eye for things was still sharp as ever.

I’d gently talked her down and brought her back to the practice room from where she’d been holed up in the bathroom wallowing, but for some reason, instead of being grateful, Ayeon was looking at me with the eyes of an ungrateful traitor.

“That’s not what’s important right now.”

“Huh?”

“What’s important is that tonight’s dinner side dish was eggplant muchim.”

Grilled yellow croaker for lunch, eggplant muchim for dinner.

It really felt like the production team was testing how far they could push the participants’ patience.

There was no other way that menu could have appeared back-to-back at lunch and dinner.

Clap!

Once I’d finished my thoughts about today’s disastrous meal lineup, I clapped my hands and gathered the team members who were scattered around the practice room.

“What now, Lee Sion.”

“It’s gonna be something pointless again, obviously.”

“Sion-ah, that Romance of the Three Kingdoms story can wait until after practice···.”

These impudent unbelievers and their cheeky remarks drifted over toward me.

But once they heard my grand plan, they’d have no choice but to be impressed.

“I want a soda.”

“!”

“I want to eat sweet snacks and meat.”

Gulp.

I could see the expressions of the team members gathered around me changing in real time at my words.

“Cup ramen with triangle kimbap.”

“···Stop.”

“Chocolate, jelly, and since it’s winter right now, there could even be steamed buns or roasted sweet potatoes at the convenience store.”

“···Why are you doing this to us, Sion-unni!”

The Idol Ground 100 dorm was really a place very similar to a military training camp.

Why is it that, once you come in here, you start craving the foods of the outside world so badly?

Especially on days when meat wasn’t on the side-dish menu, I could barely practice until 1 a.m., when I normally went until three or four.

Therefore, the Great Escape Project I was planning now was not in any way for my personal desires, but a public-interest project for the sake of our team’s stage.

Just looking at the team members made it clear it wasn’t only for me.

‘Are they Pavlov’s dogs?’

All I’d done was list off the names of some foods, and the team members were staring blankly, mouths hanging open like they were about to drool.

From their teens up to their very early twenties at most, there was no way those young bodies were getting full off the meals the dorm cafeteria gave us.

On top of that, there wasn’t even a basic vending machine for drinks, and outside items were banned from being brought in, so it was hard to get even a single snack inside the dorm.

Of course, at first, there had been participants who smuggled food in their suitcases, like Seo Ryujin, for example.

Thanks to that, it had become nearly impossible to even see outside food inside the dorm.

And that was why the participants’ cravings for sweet things had only grown stronger.

As proof, the kids who used to generously give me their side dishes, saying it was for diet management and whatnot, had lately been pretending not to see me even if our eyes met.

“Listen carefully—no, unnies, please listen carefully.”

“Fine, just say it already! You sneak in banmal all the time, why are you suddenly being polite now!”

Pork cutlet thief Lee Gahyeon snapped at me.

I was sure that was because she hadn’t been able to eat enough and her nerves were frayed.

“You know what I did during our last break?”

“Clout-chasing?”

“···Kim Nayeon, your speaking privileges are revoked for one minute. Anyway, I combed through our surroundings on Google Maps back then.”

Our dorm was located in Yangpyeong County, Gyeonggi Province.

When I searched to get detailed information about the building, I found an article saying that the military unit that had been there previously had relocated last year, and the county office had received the vacated building as a donation.

And MPlay was currently renting that space and using it, remodeled, as the shooting location for Idol Ground 100.

‘I thought it felt weirdly familiar, but it really had been a military base.’

It was a moment that reminded me again how you never forget those characteristic military base structures, even with time.

But that wasn’t the point right now.

“There’s a convenience store three kilometers away—exactly 2.8 kilometers from the dorm.”

A convenience store I’d happened to spot while riding the bus back to the dorm.

I conducted a thorough data investigation on that place.

‘In the countryside, there are sometimes convenience stores that aren’t open 24 hours.’

Someone who’d only ever lived in the city might say that was nonsense, but I’d already gone through convenience stores in Gangwon-do, so I knew that even a brand-name convenience store wasn’t necessarily 24 hours.

So I actually called to check, and achieved the great feat of confirming that the convenience store near the dorm was open 24 hours.

“You’re not saying··· we should go there, are you?”

“Of course.”

Round-trip, that was about six kilometers.

In march terms, it was barely an hour.

Plus, this time there’d be no heavy rucksacks or annoying rifles, so it was just neighborhood-walk level.

“I’ve already memorized the route to the convenience store.”

In my previous life, my classmates at the military academy had called me a living human compass, and I’d been known as a land-nav master.

Now that I’d checked the route to the convenience store via satellite map, there was no obstacle that could stop my Great Escape Project.

“If we get caught, then what?”

That was Gahyeon, who’d been nervous for a while now and kept raising objections to what I was saying.

But there was no way I would’ve planned a Great Escape Project without preparing for that as well.

“The Idol Ground 100 filming crew all clock out at 9 p.m., except for a minimum skeleton staff.”

That was data I’d collected over the past month of living in the dorm.

“After that, they leave the cameras fixed in place, and only a few camera crew stay behind to go around swapping batteries. And even those guys usually hang out in their break room.”

Knowing the enemy’s numbers and the terrain, this was a battle I couldn’t lose even if I tried.

Even the unbelievers who’d doubted my Great Escape Project were slowly nodding along, sucked in as they realized my plan actually sounded plausible.

“We execute at 10 p.m. tonight. We’ll gather in my room and start the escape from there.”

“Your room? Isn’t Suyeon and Nara there?”

“I’ve already recruited them. One snack each from the convenience store was enough.”

For some reason, Suyeon had looked oddly happy when I told her I’d be going out at night, which bothered me a bit.

‘Today was supposed to be the day I told her about Seiker’s second Worlds win, but we can do that tomorrow.’

Unfortunately, Seiker’s biography would have to be postponed until tomorrow.

Right now, the convenience store was the top priority.

“Sion-ah, I’m going to sit this one out.”

“Huh?”

But at that, our leader, Yoo Jihae, voiced her opposition to my plan.

“It’s just··· I mean, I’m kind of older, right? If I got caught out there, I think I’d die of embarrassment.”

Ah.

Come to think of it, Jihae was the oldest participant on Idol Ground 100.

Of course, “oldest” only meant she was twenty-four, but if she participated in the Great Escape Project and got caught, as someone who’d already debuted as an idol, she was probably afraid it would become an eternal stain on her record.

“Hm···.”

“Wh-what··· why! Why are you looking at me with that weird look again!”

Unlike Jihae, the second-oldest in the team, Lee Gahyeon, didn’t say she was sitting out.

I guess keeping those huge things maintained couldn’t be done on dorm meals alone.

Aside from her, Shinyu and Yunkyung declared they’d join the operation, with the expressions of people making up their minds to join the independence movement.

“I-I’ll go too.”

Even Kim Nayeon, who usually acted like she had an allergic reaction to any plan I suggested and fiercely opposed it, said she’d join this time.

Which made sense, honestly—Nayeon was extremely weak to sweets, so it was the natural answer.

-Where did you get ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ this?!

Back when we’d raided Seo Ryujin’s suitcase and stolen some chocolate, she’d practically gone feral and lunged for it.

And lastly, the one who was left,

“Ryu Wuss, what about you?”

“···Didn’t I tell you not to call me that? And I can’t do that kind of thing···.”

When I asked Ayeon if she’d join, I got the response I’d expected.

But this was something I was doing for her too, so her personal wishes weren’t all that important.

If I decided to include Ryu Ayeon, she’d end up coming no matter what.

“Guys, earlier, in the bathroom, Ryu Ayeon was··· mmph!”

Ayeon rushed over and clamped a hand over my mouth.

Unlike the dead-fish eyes she’d had since the mid-check, her eyes were blazing with passion now.

It was the exact same look Nayeon had in her eyes when she staged her coup back in F class.

“If you say anything, I’ll kill you.”

Ayeon whispered quietly in my ear while her hand was still over my mouth.

If I’d shaken my head no, I had the feeling she’d have snapped my neck right then and there, so I had no choice but to nod.

Only after she confirmed me nodding did Ayeon finally take her hand away from my mouth.

But I hadn’t actually been planning to say it anyway. That had just been bait I tossed out to provoke her.

“Guys, let’s leave Ayeon behind in the room.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

At my words, everyone except me shouted in disbelief in perfect unison.

They all had the same expression, like there was no way I’d give up that easily.

And they were right.

“Ayeon’s kind of a scaredy-cat. It’s a private matter between the two of us, so I can’t really explain, but it can’t be helped. It wouldn’t feel right to drag someone along who says she’s scared.”

At my next words, Ayeon’s cheeks started to twitch.

I’d finished analyzing her a long time ago.

‘On the outside she looks perfect and acts cynical toward others, but inside, she’s timid and actually terrified of people’s eyes on her.’

Because she feared other people’s gaze, she put up walls, and people like that also had incredibly strong pride.

When dealing with someone whose pride was that strong, trying to persuade them at length with logical arguments was extremely foolish.

Even if you kindly explained everything, it would just feel pedantic and boring, and you’d get a No from them, guaranteed.

So,

“I’m not scared! I just think that kind of behavior isn’t right, that’s all···.”

“Scared?”

Crack.

With just that one syllable, something snapped inside Ryu Ayeon.

‘I’d better get ready.’

I closed my eyes and quietly calmed my body and mind.

Smaaack.

Once you heard that sound, it meant it was time for my back to go to work.