Idol Hides His Military Service

"This bitch wouldn’t do something like this···."

"Why are you like this again, honey. Isn’t it a good thing if Sion works hard?"

"You stay out of it. No matter how I look at it, it’s suspicious."

Kim Sukja.

An ordinary housewife in the Republic of Korea, she had one daughter.

-Ma’am Sukja!

A bratty daughter who usually called her ma’am, but only called her Mother when she’d done something wrong.

When she was little, she was definitely bright enough for her age that people even called her a gifted kid, but for some reason, at some point she’d turned into a sloth instead of a person.

Stuck to the sofa like it was one body, then before you knew it going into her room and shrieking while she got absorbed in playing games—Sukja’s daughter, Lee Sion.

Sukja had raised her for 19 years and thought that as a parent she knew Sion better than anyone,

[Idol Ground 100 A new wind blowing into the idol world that’s gotten stagnant?]

[A trainee who hasn’t even debuted yet is the advertising world’s blue chip?! Companies targeting Lee Sion!]

[A new history for audition programs! Can it break the highest ratings ever for a cable variety show?]

[Personal fan club members already 100,000! How did Lee Sion become a hot topic?]

Looking at the entertainment news on her smartphone screen right now, she couldn’t help suspecting she was being pranked with a hidden camera.

"Where is there a kid as pretty and cute as our Sion? People in the world only just found out about Sion now."

"Cute? I’ll give you a hundred concessions and admit she’s pretty because she takes after me, but cute is only like that in your eyes!"

"···She’s cute."

Hearing the words of Sukja’s husband and Sion’s father, Lee Jiho, Sukja decided she shouldn’t even talk.

A hedgehog dad, he was just excited and happy to hear that his daughter was popular, but Sukja found it suspicious no matter how she looked at it.

'Well, if it wasn’t for that face, it would’ve been a big problem.'

Of course, her daughter Sion’s face wasn’t pretty because she was her parent—objectively, she was pretty.

So much so that even when Sion was loafing around doing nothing,

-She won’t starve to death, right.

Sukja had just left her alone thinking that with that appearance, she’d do something, anything.

Honestly, Sion wasn’t the type to listen even if Sukja said anything, either.

But even knowing Sion’s looks, Sukja had never thought she’d become a celebrity.

-Sorry, Mom, the clothes you bought are too uncomfortable. I like this.

Wouldn’t Sukja have wanted to dress up her only daughter?

Everyday life where she’d sometimes be shopping, buy clothes that looked pretty, and try to put them on her—Sion would shriek and resist, and in the end she’d wear some worn-out sweats anyway, and Sukja would get angry and it would end with Sukja smacking her on the back.

Sion was the type to resist because she didn’t want to go to the hair salon like it was some kind of prison.

Makeup?

After it took a full three years just to make her put on even skin lotion, Sukja had never even dreamed of it.

But that Sion becoming a celebrity?

It was hard for Sukja to imagine.

But,

[Lee Sion is just a born idol, I’m telling you?]

"Honestly, if Sion’s mom wasn’t there, Sion would’ve already debuted as an idol and swept the entertainment industry."

↳For real, if my daughter had that visual, I would’ve made her be an idol no matter what

↳How could you look at that face and think about making her study only?

↳It’s lucky she grabbed the chance to be an idol even if it’s late

↳If she lived normally with that visual, it would’ve been seriously unfair

↳No, it’s just that she didn’t learn singing and dancing from the start, but when you see her improve, she’s just born with it

Looking at the posts that came up in droves when she searched her daughter Sion on the internet, Sukja couldn’t believe it.

No, even while watching the broadcast, she’d wondered if this was really reality.

[Ag‧baek Group Battle Mission Lucid Dive B Team]

Views: 5,362,410 Likes 105K

↳This is the nation

↳How is it possible that Lee Sion looks good in that outfit!

↳Seriously, I don’t even know how many times I replay just the last part

↳2:45 My heart got smashed, I’ll follow to hell if I have to..

↳Can’t you just debut them with this exact lineup?

Sukja had dropped her phone in shock when she saw that the views on the first video that popped up when she searched Sion on YouTube weren’t in the thousands or tens of thousands, but in the millions.

And it made sense—Sion in the video really was dancing and singing like an idol, and seeing that, Sukja doubted her own eyes, wondering if that really was her daughter Sion.

'I did think it’d be better than just rolling around at home doing nothing.'

When Sion said she was going on an idol survival program on the recommendation of her younger sibling Miyoung, Sukja had been happy, but that wasn’t because she thought Sion would become an idol.

It was because she thought, so I finally get to use that face.

Even as Sukja, who didn’t know much about idols, she never thought Sion would become an idol.

It was only a vague expectation that through the program, maybe she’d get interested in modeling or acting.

Whatever it was, she thought it would be better than watching Three Kingdoms dramas at home.

But now that people were saying that Sion really might become an idol, it was hard to believe.

[Idol Ground 100 Episode 6 The long-awaited Position Evaluation—what are the results?!]

In Sukja’s eyes, the teaser for Idol Ground 100 Episode 6 that would air today came into view.

"Honey, what time is it right now?"

"Right now? Uh, it’s 7."

"Good grief···looks like sleeping early is out again today."

Since she’d gone all the way to Europe with the cruise travel voucher Miyoung gave her, she was still struggling because she hadn’t recovered from jet lag, so today of all days she’d tried to fall asleep early and normalize her sleep pattern, but it didn’t seem like it would work.

'How do you vote?'

Sukja regretted a little that when Sion said she’d teach her how to use the computer, Sukja had refused because it was annoying.

But it was fine.

Since her husband next to her was making a fuss saying he was worried about whether Sion was doing well, it seemed like she could just make him do it.

***

"Sir, I’m really sorry, but may I go smoke and come back?"

"What? Hey, you punk, even if it’s your last stretch, how does it make sense to ask me to send you out to smoke right now?"

"I’m sorry. I’ll go to sleep right away."

The duty officer, who’d stared at Hakyeon with eyes like he was seeing some crazy bastard, soon sighed,

"Ugh, fine. Go smoke quick and come back."

"Thank you!"

And allowed him to smoke.

Normally, he never would have allowed it, but the TV lights-on time had just ended and the barracks were noisy, and in Hakyeon’s case, since he was a senior close to discharge, the officer probably allowed it thinking he wouldn’t cause trouble.

'Whew···this is driving me crazy.'

With the duty officer’s permission, Hakyeon moved to the smoking area outside the barracks, and even as he took out a cigarette and smoked, his emotions didn’t settle easily.

Idol Ground 100 Episode 6 that had just ended.

It was something he never could have imagined before, but recently, Episode 6—the newest episode of Idol Ground 100, which was the program Hakyeon enjoyed watching the most—had such severe aftereffects after watching.

Because until now, Idol Ground 100 had been full of variety-show elements, but this Episode 6 was packed with the tight tension that felt like a real idol survival show.

And it wasn’t just Hakyeon.

Usually, when the live broadcast of Idol Ground 100 ended,

-Hey! I told you, Lee Gahyeon is gonna blow up?!

-Unexpectedly, the Lee Sion and Ryu Ayeon combo is pretty good, I’m telling you

-I like Kurosawa Yuri!

-Ah, seriously, if I were outside, I would’ve watched infinitely

It was normal for them to chatter noisily about the broadcast until they fell asleep, but today everyone watched with unusually blank silence, and even after the broadcast ended, everyone fell asleep with dazed expressions.

Hakyeon was going to just sleep too, but strangely, the last stage of the broadcast kept coming to mind, and he wanted to smoke a cigarette.

'It was seriously cool.'

If you asked Hakyeon why he got into Idol Ground 100, it wasn’t anything special.

He got interested because a pretty girl said she liked overseas soccer—among it, Ronaldo—then as he watched, she was charming, so he kept watching.

So he didn’t really care about stages or songs, and he’d been watching the program just thinking he’d look at Lee Sion’s face—Hakyeon.

But today was different.

Since it was the day they showed the stages for the Position Evaluation, which was Idol Ground 100’s second mission, he’d thought it wouldn’t be that fun so he didn’t have much expectation.

-If your stage goes like this, the viewers are only going to curse you.

Idol Ground 100 Episode 6, which showed the final check for each ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) team and then immediately followed it with the actual stage video, was fun unlike Hakyeon’s expectations.

No—more precisely, it had the flavor of watching stages.

'In the first mission, there were a lot of clumsy parts, but this time everyone did insanely well.'

Even in the previous stage, the Group Battle Mission, the gap between good stages and bad stages was big, and you could see the contestants’ lacking parts, but this Position Evaluation stage was completely different.

Even though only two weeks had passed, whether their skills improved, the contestants showed different sides than before.

Especially among the vocal positions, the stage performed by the contestants who chose "Breath" was impressive,

-When your breath reaches me

The whole world sparkles

Like a dream that won’t end

Don’t disappear, hold me

Wrap me like a breath

Seeing Seo Ryujin singing with a sorrowful voice in the highlight part, even Hakyeon, who had been single-mindedly Lee Sion, wavered for a moment.

-Wow, that’s insane, Seo Ryujin sings crazy well?

-So wasn’t Seo Ryujin originally a dance-carry?

-Don’t know about that, but for vocal, if Seo Ryujin isn’t first, it’s rigged

Even the other soldiers watching together in the barracks unanimously put Seo Ryujin as Vocal Position 1st among themselves after hearing Seo Ryujin’s singing.

And then the dance position stage that followed.

The dance position also showed high-level performances like the vocal position stages before, so it had the flavor of watching.

One team grabbed your eyes by doing intense choreography to a boy group song, and another team, even though it was only three people, gave off the original song’s seductive charm and sent the barracks into chaos.

But the real highlight of Episode 6 was the last stage.

The last stage of the dance position that made you forget all the previous stages you’d admired while watching.

'Ah, this is pissing me off.'

When Hakyeon thought of the last stage, irritation suddenly surged up.

The stage he saw was a stage that you could call legendary without any lack, but he was so angry that there was no one to talk about that stage with.

If he wanted, he could go into the internet right now—not even a computer, a smartphone—and talk all night with the people who watched the stage.

But Hakyeon had to go to sleep as soon as he finished smoking and returned to the barracks.

'Jiyeon must be having a blast with that.'

At this point, Hakyeon became envious of his younger sibling Jiyeon, who would be at home on the computer, giggling and watching people’s reactions.

'Sigh, tomorrow’s the weekend, so I should go to the internet room right away.'

Sssst.

Since there was nothing he could do, Hakyeon ground out the cigarette ember and returned to the barracks.

But the atmosphere inside the barracks was strange.

"Everyone assemble! You bastards, I gave you TV lights-on time so you could rest, not so you could talk?! I clearly told you to turn off the TV and go to sleep, so why is the barracks this noisy!"

The duty officer’s angry voice.

Having just returned, Hakyeon thought if he reported his return now the fire would spread to him, so he quietly asked a junior who was gathered in front of the squad room what was going on.

"Ah···it’s that the people got caught talking without sleeping."

"How loudly were you talking for that to happen?"

"It seems like not just our squad room, but every squad room was talking, so it was noisy."

"What?"

Hakyeon thought these guys had lost their minds.

If you made a fuss after TV lights-on time, the officers might not give TV lights-on time for a while, so the rule was to quietly go to sleep, but they made a fuss as a group.

Now Hakyeon understood why the duty officer was pissed.

"What were you talking about that much?" 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"You know. Idol Ground 100."

"Ah···."

"After you, Corporal, left, something happened and they started talking about the stage, and I thought they were crazy bastards."

Hearing the junior’s story, Hakyeon’s hand went to his forehead on its own.

It seemed like he wasn’t the only one whose heart raced and couldn’t sleep after seeing the last stage.

***

"Seriously, does this even make sense?"

Jiyeon decided to change her computer monitor with the allowance money she’d get this Lunar New Year.

Jiyeon was desperately feeling regret over the image quality that she hadn’t felt back when she used to stan.

If Jiyeon could, Jiyeon wanted to crawl inside the laptop right now.

"Hey, hey! You’re gonna break the laptop!"

"How did you buy a laptop this expensive, oppa?!"

"This? Me, my major’s design, so to study, I had no choice but to buy an expensive one."

"That’s crazy! I should make you buy me one too, oppa."

"Stop sucking your oppa’s backbone dry."

At Jinsu’s words, freaking out as he looked at Jiyeon like that, Jiyeon joked that it was fine.

Jiyeon said that before he enlisted, Hakyeon as an older brother used to take even Jiyeon’s meager allowance, so she was just getting it back as compensation, and Jinsu couldn’t take the older brother’s side anymore.

"Anyway, I ate well today, oppa!"

"Thanks to you, I spent my whole month’s allowance."

"Still, you’re grateful thanks to me, right, oppa?"

"Of course!"

Jiyeon, excited as she ate the newly ordered slice cake, and Jinsu, joking as he showed his empty wallet.

The two of them had just watched Idol Ground 100 Episode 6 together on a laptop at a cafe.

"Seriously, I survived on only Agbaek sets for meals for the last few days, but how can I not win even once!"

"I won two tickets, so think of it as even."

Jinsu thought it was really lucky at Jiyeon’s words.

The Agbaek pre-recording broadcast audience tickets, whose competition rate recently had gone past insane and gotten close to impossible.

And it was because they handed out half of the audience tickets not through applications, but through raffle tickets as prizes in Agbaek sets, so compared to before, the competition rate for audience tickets rose beyond comparison.

Because of that, Jinsu’s only hope, having naturally failed to get tickets, was the Agbaek set.

Of course, the Agbaek set’s winning probability was also extremely low, but with a just-in-case 마음, Jinsu bought and ate as many Agbaek sets as he could.

But as expected, he didn’t win, and when he was thinking he had to give up on this recording broadcast, a savior appeared for Jinsu.

-Oppa! I won again!!!

Jiyeon, who had been in steady contact with Jinsu, astonishingly said she’d drawn another audience ticket from an Agbaek set and that she’d transfer one to him.

As if she had the hand of God, while others couldn’t get even one ticket no matter how much they bought and ate, Jiyeon got a full two tickets, so it was possible.

'Seriously, I lived thanks to Jiyeon.'

Since these days there were plenty of people buying a single audience ticket for hundreds of thousands of won, if she wanted, she could sell it for an expensive price, but Jiyeon was just transferring it out of goodwill, and Jinsu was only grateful.

So Jinsu treated Jiyeon to expensive meat for dinner today.

-Ah, if I go home, it feels like I’ll watch the live broadcast a little late···.

-Really? Then do you want to go to a cafe and watch it on my laptop?

-Should we?!

As they ate while talking for a long time about Agbaek and Lee Sion, the time went past 9, so because of Jiyeon saying she’d miss the live broadcast if she went home now, they moved to a 24-hour cafe near the restaurant and watched Agbaek on Jinsu’s laptop.

And,

"These days, idol fans rent out cafes like this and do offline gatherings for fans."

"Rent out a cafe?"

Even while eating coffee and dessert, the topic of conversation once again headed to Agbaek and Lee Sion.

"You rent a cafe for one day or two days, hand out goods, drink beverages, and decorate it by putting up and decorating Sion’s photos, stuff like that. So fans can come."

"Wow, that sounds good! If we fundraise, it feels like it’ll gather fast—should we start right away?"

"Since there are only two rank announcement ceremonies left, we have to do everything we can."

Since the two had already teamed up to put up an ad on a subway electronic billboard before, the two were already famous figures in the Lee Sion fandom.

"Back then, the reaction to the way you edited Sion’s photos was really good, oppa. This time too, when we open the cafe, I think it’d be good if you touch up the photos."

"That took three days to do the work. If I have to touch up photos to decorate the cafe, I’m already dizzy."

"Still, we have to do it. I fundraise and submit ad applications and it’s super annoying too, but···still."

"Still, you can’t not do it."

Even though Jiyeon hadn’t finished, Jinsu knew what she was trying to say.

Jinsu, who didn’t know why people got crazy looking at idols.

But now he could understand.

"That stage was insane, right? It’s not just me who felt that, right?"

"Of course."

Having watched Agbaek Episode 6 together at the cafe, the two were in an extremely excited state right now.

After seeing a stage like that, how could you, as a fan, just sit still?

You couldn’t help thinking you had to do something.

"Should we go into Sionism first?"

"No! First, the Overseas Soccer Gallery!"

"Augh!! I want to do all of it."

They had to quickly share this emotion they were feeling right now with other people.