Idol Hides His Military Service Chapter 53: Choreography

Thud.

I had no idea how long they’d been following us, but the mont the lights ca on, we were surrounded by the production team from front and back.

On top of that, they even had caras in their hands, like they were filming.

‘I got caught!’

Only then did I realize we were like Sun Wukong, just jumping around in the Buddha’s palm.

Co to think of it, it had been strange that everything was going so smoothly.

No matter how thoroughly I’d planned, the fact that there hadn’t been a single crisis was sothing I should’ve been suspicious of from the start.

Carelessness.

I must have underestimated the Idol Ground 100 production team too much.

Especially the demon of ratings who was smiling at us from in front of the gate right now.

‘I overlooked the fact that my aunt has the sa blood as Madam Sukja.’

Lately, she’d shown a lot of weak sides, but I’d forgotten that my aunt was also a monster who’d inherited the bloodline of the Deoksu Kim clan.

In the end, we had no choice but to put our spoils of war down on the ground.

For a general who’s lost the war, all that’s left is surrender.

“Can we at least keep the lona? Little bunny Suyeon is waiting in the dorm just for the lona···.”

“No.”

Staff mbers started gathering up the bags scattered on the ground.

But I had no intention of just ekly letting this happen.

“Hey, here.”

“Are you crazy?”

Right before I put the bag down, I pretended to beg the staff mber, and secretly slipped a Hershey’s chocolate drink out of the bag.

Then I passed it back to Ryu Ayeon.

“I don’t even have pockets right now.”

“Just shove it sowhere.”

When I quietly told her to hide it, she hesitated like she really couldn’t do it.

“Hey, Jihae said she really wanted to drink that. We have to get this through no matter what.”

“What?”

There was no way I was going to let them take away even the present for Yoo Jihae, the only one of our team who hadn’t taken part in tonight’s operation.

And after hearing what I said, it looked like Ryu Ayeon hesitated for a mont, then—

Snatch.

She took the drink I’d secretly handed her.

‘You’ve changed a bit.’

Without realizing it, a small laugh slipped out of .

The great Ryu Ayeon joining in on smuggling a drink.

If it were the old her, that would’ve been unthinkable.

Honestly, tonight’s Great Escape had been for Ryu Ayeon’s sake too, and it seed like it was working.

-C-Captain, aren’t we leaving the garrison area if we do this?

-Yeah, we are.

Back then, my platoon leader, First Lieutenant Lee Jinho.

The guy was always suffering under the pressure that things had to be perfect and the obsession that everything had to be done strictly by the book.

Of course, both of those weren’t bad traits for a soldier, but what mattered was moderation.

There’s an old saying that floats around the army: the very worst kind of soldier is a stupid but diligent commander, then next is a stupid but lazy commander, then after that a diligent and clever commander.

The best is a clever but lazy commander.

People who heard this for the first ti couldn’t understand why a clever but lazy commander could be better than a clever and diligent one.

But if you spent even a little ti in the army, you’d get it.

If sothing is too stiff, it breaks; a person who’s rigidly stubborn like that will end up causing a big accident.

You have to accept from the beginning that people can’t be perfect, and only then do you start using your head more to compensate for that.

So I took Jinho, left the garrison area, went to Seoul to have fun, and ca back the next day.

Garrison area?

Technically it was sothing you were supposed to obey, but if there was nothing happening before or after, you could let it slide once in a while and it’d be fine.

The only thing was, after that, our Jinho sotis crossed the garrison area line again, ended up getting a girlfriend, and it’s a bit of a sore mory that he got married before I did.

***

Miyoung could only smile as she watched her niece washing dishes in the dorm cafeteria kitchen, wearing a face that said she’d been treated unfairly.

The Bang! Bang! Love team, minus Yoo Jihae, who had pulled off the enormous stunt of escaping from the dorm.

Of course,

-PD-nim, the kids are preparing sothing weird.

Before the evening was over yesterday, when she got a call from a junior who was monitoring the dorm in real ti, Miyoung had thought, So it’s finally happening.

‘With the way the nu’s been the last few days, it was about ti sothing exploded.’

The dorm’s nu lately had been a series of dishes that completely killed your appetite.

Of course, there were no issues nutritionally, but the taste was a huge problem, and there was no way the production team had put those out thoughtlessly.

The nu had been deliberately planned for the broadcast to co later, and in the process, they’d been hoping to get so small, fun clips from the participants.

Like catching them secretly eating snacks or cup ran they’d hidden away.

Nothing big—just hoping for 10 to 30-second snippets here and there they could use in between during the episode.

But since Miyoung’s niece, Lee Sion, was in it, the Bang! Bang! Love team had far surpassed the production team’s expectations and delivered enough footage to make a whole segnt out of it, so she couldn’t help smiling.

They’d clearly had no idea they were being watched from the practice room where they’d been hatching their plan.

‘They’ve got screen-ti monsters in their team, but these kids have no idea they’re the main characters.’

From the beginning, even just one of the three—Lee Sion, Ryu Ayeon, or Yoo Jihae—would’ve been enough to put them on the high-priority watch list, and with all three on the sa team, the Bang! Bang! Love team had been under extrely close supervision from the mont it ford.

Thanks to that, their plan had been recorded on cara from start to finish.

“PD-nim, we asked the °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° convenience store and got the CCTV footage.”

“What about the practice room footage and the participant interviews?”

“The practice room stuff has already been sent to the editing team. As for the participant interviews, we’ve done about half, and we’re planning to grab the rest after they finish the dishes.”

“Okay.”

The only thing that bothered her was,

‘I can’t not use this, but if I do, it’s way too far from the core of the program.’

Idol Ground 100, with Miyoung as main PD, was a variety show, but at the sa ti, it was definitely also a survival program.

That was why it couldn’t lean too far into variety, and it also couldn’t lean too far into pure survival; keeping the balance in the middle was important.

If the production team hadn’t held back on using Lee Sion’s footage, Idol Ground 100 would’ve already turned from a survival program into a variety show.

Because of this, main PD Kim Miyoung was currently agonizing over what she should do with this.

“To think there were mics installed with the practice room caras··· next ti I’ll really make it perfect···.”

“For the love of god, just stay still for once!”

“No, but seriously, what I ca up with this ti is flawless! The operation na is Incheon Landing Operation, so listen—we first···.”

And making Miyoung’s worries pointless, Lee Sion was already trying to smother the program in variety again.

Currently, as punishnt for staging the Great Escape, Lee Sion had been assigned the morning dishes in the dorm cafeteria, and now it looked like she was plotting sothing again.

No matter how good the footage they got was, wrong was still wrong, so the entire Bang! Bang! Love team had been assigned dishwashing as punishnt, and even in the middle of that, seeing her niece already thinking about causing more trouble made Miyoung feel both happy and uneasy.

‘Did my sister handle Sion for nineteen years like this?’

She could endure because at least the program was doing well, but the fact that her older sister Sukja had looked after that ti bomb for nineteen whole years without batting an eye filled her with nothing but deep respect.

***

“Why did you take the punishnt too, unni? You could’ve just rested.”

“I couldn’t be the only one skipping it when the kids are all doing it.”

Yoo Jihae was too kind.

Even though she hadn’t taken part in this operation, she’d still joined the team in doing morning dishes as punishnt for the Great Escape, saying that not stopping them had also been her fault and coming along without any real complaint.

A kid this good definitely deserved a present from Santa.

“Go, Yunkyungmon!”

“Yes!”

At my words, Yunkyung hopped up, ran across the practice room, and headed for the cara.

“It’s covered!”

Soon, with that tiny body, she covered the cara and announced mission complete.

“Hurry and drink this!”

“What is it? How did you even···?”

Taking that chance, I passed the chocolate drink that Ryu Ayeon had successfully smuggled in to Yoo Jihae, and Jihae, surprised and asking how we’d brought it, still followed instructions and downed the drink in one shot.

Once the carton was emptied and thrown into the trash, Yunkyung, who’d been blocking the cara, naturally stepped aside.

Tap-tap-tap!

At the sa ti, we heard footsteps running toward the practice room we were in.

“Haah··· w-what were you doing? You can’t block the cara!”

“Did we block the cara? Oh no··· Yunkyung, haven’t I always told you to rest in a quiet place when you’re taking a break?”

“Yes! I’ll be more careful about where I stand from now on!”

The cara crew backed off wearing frustrated expressions, knowing sothing had happened but having no proof.

If you got hit when you didn’t know any better, that was a mistake, but if you knew and still got hit, that ant you were disqualified as an army officer.

“Thanks, guys··· but didn’t they take all your convenience store stuff?”

Yoo Jihae’s expression had clearly brightened after drinking the chocolate drink.

Seeing that made feel once again that it had been worth the risk to bring it.

How lonely is it when your friend brings food to school and you’re the only one who doesn’t get any?

Even if she hadn’t been there with us, sharing the sa mories as a team was extrely important.

“Ryu Wuss was the one who got up the courage to smuggle it.”

“Hey! You shoved it off on ! And stop with that ‘wuss’ thing already!”

I’d been the one to hand it off, but the one who’d actually hidden it in her clothes and carried it in was Ryu Ayeon, so you could say the main culprit was Ryu Ayeon.

Just like how, back during the F-class rebellion, the ringleader had been Kim Nayeon.

“Everyone, give her a round of applause!!!”

Clap clap clap.

With the sound of applause echoing through the practice room, Yoo Jihae and Ryu Ayeon’s eyes t.

“Thanks, Ayeon. It was really good.”

“···Yeah.”

Saying thank you, Jihae, and answering in a small voice with her head still ducked, like she was embarrassed, Ryu Ayeon.

At this point, it seed like the aftereffects of the mid-check had mostly faded.

Which ant it was ti for us to return to the main objective of our Bang! Bang! Love team.

“I think it’s ti we talked about the stage, guys.”

It seed I wasn’t the only one thinking that, because at just the right timing, Yoo Jihae brought up the topic of the stage.

“Actually, I was going to say it anyway. I think the choreography we showed last ti just isn’t right.”

And picking up where Jihae left off, Ryu Ayeon started speaking like she’d been waiting for the chance, and what she said was pretty shocking.

The shocking statent that she thought her own choreography was wrong.

At those words from Ryu Ayeon, the expressions of the team mbers were pure shock, and understandably so, because when Yunkyung or Shinyu had asked her a few days ago what she thought about revising the old choreography,

-I think this is the best choreography for Bang! Bang! Love.

She’d refused with eyes like a master potter shaping clay.

“So I’m thinking of adjusting it into sothing a bit more suited to our team.”

“Are you really okay with that? You worked so hard on it···.”

“I’ve realized that a good choreography isn’t necessarily the best choreography. I want to make it into sothing the team mbers can do a bit better.”

The look on Ryu Ayeon’s face as she said she’d change the choreography clearly wasn’t forced or reluctant; it was strong with the sense that this was what she genuinely wanted to do.

But,

“You’re doing the wuss thing again.”

“What?”

From my point of view, that was running away.

“This is your first lesson.”

“What are you suddenly···.”

“Teacher Jungyoon said that if we could pull off that choreography, it would’ve been one of the best stages.”

“That’s···.”

It hadn’t just been my imagination that the choreography I’d watched Ryu Ayeon create during practice felt like it really suited Bang! Bang! Love.

The team mbers themselves had felt that the choreography was good, and judge Lee Jungyoon had said that the choreography itself was excellent.

“I like your choreography. I think changing it is running away.”

“But··· that’s not the answer! If we adjust it more to fit our team a little···.”

“We ca here to do a survival show so we could beco idols. You all rember, right? How they said the last Group Battle Mission was to introduce us, and this Position Evaluation is the ti to show our skills.”

At my words, the team mbers nodded.

Since it was sothing the main MC, Jang Junseok, had said himself before the Position Evaluation, it looked like everyone rembered.

“If we were going to take the easy route, then like the Group Battle Mission, it would’ve been way easier to just ask Shinyu to rearrange the song and tailor it to us, right?”

“···.”

At that, the team mbers all went silent like they had honey in their mouths.

The truth is, people instinctively try to avoid anything that’s hard.

Our team had held on well so far, but that didn’t an practice wasn’t hard or that they never wanted to give up.

That’s why, when Ayeon said she wanted to lower the difficulty of the choreography to match the team mbers, everyone had subconsciously been ready to agree.

“We’re not just going to scrape our way past this Position Evaluation and be done, right?”

Even if we lowered the difficulty of the choreography and muddled through this stage, if we didn’t grow from it, it would be aningless.

“I want to stay in this program all the way to the end with our team. To do that, we have to show a more advanced version of ourselves with this stage.”

It’s easy to give up on the best option.

But there’s no way the judges, or the viewers, would like that.

In the end, as long as this program was a survival show, we had to beco stronger ourselves.

“I-I’ll do it! I can do it!”

“I’ll do it too! If I keep running away just because it’s hard, like Sion said, I’ll be stuck in the sa place forever.”

“I don’t like agreeing with what Lee Sion says, but this ti she’s right.”

“She has this weird way of convincing people.”

“If everyone’s on board, then I’m in too. Honestly, I’ve always thought Ayeon’s original choreography was good.”

And the team mbers agreed with .

Now, the only one left was Ryu Ayeon.

“Really··· are you all sure about this?”

“I want to look cool on stage like the other unnies. I can’t keep getting a pass just because I’m young forever.”

“That’s right. Honestly, I think I’ve always used producing as an excuse to put in less effort with dance and singing. It can’t go on like this.”

“Hey, if you guys say that, then what does that make ? I’m not young and I can’t even produce!”

At the cautious words Ryu Ayeon had offered, the ex–Lucid Dive trio answered with confidence.

Watching them, there was definitely a faint smile on Ryu Ayeon’s face.