"Chocolate··· where's the chocolate."

The moment Ryujin stepped into the convenience store, she started roaming around in a trance looking for chocolate, like one of the zombies from that Zombie Lab content she had appeared in.

Chocolate.

Even though she had such catastrophically bad cooking skills that she could somehow produce chocolate no one should be allowed to eat, it was still one of Ryujin's favorite snacks.

How much did she like it? Even during the Agbaek training camp, she had secretly packed enough chocolate in her suitcase to last two weeks.

Ryujin normally practiced hard, and whenever the company gave her a target weight, she would grit her teeth, manage her diet without complaint, and do everything she could to hit it, but for some reason, she just could not endure one thing: chocolate.

'How am I supposed to help wanting what I want to eat!'

Sometimes people would ask why she liked chocolate so much when she wasn't a little kid, and Ryujin would simply say it was because she liked it.

Just like Lee Sion loved cola enough to flop onto the practice room floor and throw a fit if there wasn't any, chocolate was that kind of food for Ryujin.

Under this brutal diet control, she had been able to endure salads and even the side dishes Mrs. Sukja had made herself, but the craving for chocolate boiling up from deep inside her body was hard to suppress.

"Let's load up fast! Even if we left Ayeon tied up, they'll figure it out soon!"

"Okay!"

Driven by that craving, Ryujin had even done something she normally could never have imagined herself doing: tying up Ryu Ayeon at the pork bone hangover soup restaurant and leaving her there, even though Ayeon had only been trying to stop the members.

Considering that Ryujin was usually the one stopping Lee Sion and the others from causing trouble, it was completely ridiculous.

"I wanted that banana milk!"

"I want jelly and chips!"

"Yuri wanted pudding!"

Still, watching the members happily picking things out in the convenience store, some of Ryujin's guilt faded.

'Yeah, this is for the members.'

This had been such a hellish stretch that even Ryujin, whom both she and the people around her considered strong in stamina and endurance, had found it hard to bear. So for the other members, there was no need to even say it.

If they didn't let off steam now, something even bigger might happen later. Ryujin kept hypnotizing herself with the thought that this small act of rebellion was preventing a worse incident down the line.

So she shoved the regret aside and, standing in front of the snack shelves piled with chocolate and other treats, started sweeping emergency rations into a basket to hide in the dorm.

One by one, chocolates dropped into the small basket in her hand, and when she finally faced all those dearly missed chocolates she had only seen in dreams, her hands began to tremble and her mouth watered on its own.

Just imagining tasting them on the way back to the dorm, then secretly hiding them away and savoring them one by one after grueling practice, was enough to make her happy.

Bang.

But that happy fantasy didn't last long.

The convenience store door suddenly slammed shut.

"Lee Sion? No, how is even the CEO here?!"

"Sluggish Ryujin really did something bold. I told you, sir. The kids are all in the palm of my hand."

"It was indeed the right call to entrust the tracking to Miss Sion. Miss Ryujin, please do not add any further to your sins, and obediently put down what you are holding."

Standing in the convenience store entrance were Lee Sion, looking so relaxed she almost seemed bored, and beside her, CEO Kim Sanghyeok, wearing his usual expressionless face.

"How did you get out?"

Getting caught by Sanghyeok, the head of the agency, while holding a basket crammed with chocolate was shocking enough, but there was only one thing dominating Ryujin's thoughts right now.

How was Lee Sion here?

Before leaving the dorm, Ryujin had checked Lee Sion's sealed condition over and over again.

She had been sure Sion had been sealed away thoroughly enough that she couldn't possibly get out, and Ryujin had been convinced that this time Sion wouldn't be able to do anything.

"Shinyu··· you made very good use of what you learned. I never imagined you'd be the one to lock me up."

"We definitely locked you up so you couldn't get out! You said yourself even you wouldn't be able to get out unless someone opened it from the outside!"

"That's right. Unless someone opens it from the outside."

"What?"

That meaningful smile from Lee Sion, followed by an even more suspicious line.

The instant those words left her mouth, Ryujin turned to look at the members who had escaped with her.

"Yare yare. A promise to Sion-chan must be kept, yes?"

"You did well, Agent Yuri."

"Truly, deceiving the members is such a painful thing."

Kurosawa Yuri, who had been with the escape team including Ryujin, shook her head from side to side and naturally started walking toward the entrance where Lee Sion and CEO Kim Sanghyeok were standing.

"Yuri, you betrayed us?!"

"Kim Yuri! Are you insane?"

"Yuri, how could you betray us?!"

And as Yuri walked over to Sion's side while acknowledging her betrayal as naturally as breathing, the members erupted in tearful outrage.

But—

"I never betrayed you."

"What?"

"I was on Sion-chan's side from the beginning."

Ryujin felt dizzy.

She couldn't believe what was happening in front of her was real, but—

"When are you giving me my snacks?"

"I'll hand them over separately. You won't be disappointed."

"Sion-chan always settles accounts properly."

Seeing Lee Sion and Kurosawa Yuri calmly talking like this, Ryujin had no choice but to accept that it really was reality.

-Yuri left wallet behind! I'll go get it quick.

When they had escaped the dorm, Yuri had said she'd left her wallet behind and gone back up alone.

'It was then!'

Thinking it over, Ryujin realized that must have been when Yuri let Sion out.

Looking back, there had been more than one suspicious point.

Even if Jiu had failed to send the regular status report, could Ryu Ayeon really have made it all the way to the pork bone hangover soup place in a little over thirty minutes?

And now that she thought about how strangely passive Yuri had been when they overpowered Ayeon, Ryujin realized they had been dancing in a traitor's palm from the very start.

"Sloppy··· If you really wanted to stop me, you should've gone for the neck."

Thud.

At Lee Sion's words, all the strength drained out of Ryujin's body, and she collapsed onto the convenience store floor.

A monster. A demon. A natural disaster.

Was this what human helplessness felt like when thrown barehanded against something impossible to fight?

"This is too much··· You were playing with us from the very beginning!"

"Lee Sion! You're a demon! Don't trample our hopes!"

Not just Ryujin, but the other members too were wearing expressions of despair at this unbelievable reality.

"Mmm··· How sweet it always is, the voices of the defeated. Sir, shall we drag them back now?"

"Yes. I just got word that the staff are on their way here."

Lee Sion and CEO Kim Sanghyeok stood there blocking the entrance completely while waiting for the staff to arrive.

The members might not have been afraid of Kim Sanghyeok, but they all knew Lee Sion's monstrous physical abilities. None of them had any confidence they could break through her.

And just when all of them had sunk into despair—

"Sorry, Mom. I really didn't want to pull this out, but···"

"Yunkyung?"

The youngest, Im Yunkyung, stepped forward from between the members with a hand in the pocket.

Then she pressed a button on the smartphone she had pulled out and shouted, "Please help us!"

Click.

Not long after, the door opened, and a group of burly men in black suits entered the convenience store.

***

'Iam really has to be a group heaven sent for stanning.'

High school senior Lee Jiyeon lay in bed before going to sleep, fiddling with smartphone in hand.

The college entrance exam was now only a week away.

It was the season of final preparation, with Jiyeon devoting herself to studying at school, at hagwon, and in the reading room.

A time of endurance, where she split even meal times to memorize one more English word, and solved and re-solved past exam sets the hagwon had handed out for test prep.

That meant her only real break was right now: about thirty minutes before sleep, playing around on her phone. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Until a few months ago, Jiyeon had sworn not to look at anything related to Iam at all, but after that incident where she had unconsciously watched Iam music videos in the study room all the way until closing time, she had started giving herself little outlets here and there so her fangirl heart wouldn't completely explode.

'I wonder what they uploaded today?'

The thing that kept Jiyeon going through her brutal exam life was Iam alone.

And more than anything, she was always grateful that Iam uploaded at least one piece of content every week on YouTube.

Other variety shows the Iam members had appeared in—

like the Idol Athletic Championships episode that people had been calling legendary lately, or that Today in History: World War II episode—

were things she absolutely wanted to watch, but they were too long, and as a student preparing for exams, she felt guilty even thinking about it.

But the videos uploaded to YouTube were at most around thirty minutes long, which made them perfect to watch before bed.

So at some point, it had become Jiyeon's routine to fall asleep with earphones in while watching videos on Iam's YouTube channel.

And the self-produced Iam content she loved so much had grown so numerous, and so varied in genre, that it was hard to choose a favorite.

Which only meant that if you were Yours, you couldn't help anticipating what kind of video would go up today.

"Huh?"

Jiyeon opened Iam's YouTube channel with an excited heart.

But the thumbnail on her phone screen made a puzzled little sound burst out of her.

(2017. 3. 2)

Instead of the usual thumbnail hinting at what today's content would be, there was only a mysterious date written in an old-fashioned font against a black background.

At first she wondered if it was some kind of comeback date teaser, but if so it was way too far off. Then she checked whether it matched any of the members' birthdays, but it didn't overlap with a single one.

'Wait, if it's April 1 next year then···'

As Jiyeon briefly puzzled over what date it could be, the answer suddenly flashed through her mind like lightning.

Iam's disbandment date.

If it had been any other idol group, she would've snorted and said what kind of idiot says a disbandment date is already set in stone, but Iam actually did have an official disbandment date.

After all, Iam had debuted through MPlay's survival variety show Idol Ground 100, and from the very beginning they had been scheduled to promote for exactly one year before disbanding.

A time-limited group with a fixed end from the start, made up of trainees from different agencies.

-Those Iam bugs have less than half a year left anyway

-Yeah and then your precious Iam disappears lol

-They only got big off variety, they're not even real idols

-Iam had plenty of haters for a group that was as popular as it was.

Of course, the general public tended to have a favorable image of Iam, but idol fans were a little different.

Even if the members of rival groups like VYNNIA or LYNX were personally close with them, there was no reason their fandoms would look kindly on Iam.

And really, how irritating must Iam have been, when on top of competing fiercely with the groups they supported every single time, Iam had also made them swallow bitter defeats on major stages like the Grand Slam and Three Kingdoms?

And it wasn't just VYNNIA or LYNX. Existing girl-group fandoms in general were starting to keep Iam in check because of how frighteningly fast the group had been rising lately.

[Is it really right for Iam to win Rookie of the Year?]

"Honestly, I don't think Iam should win Rookie of the Year.

A group that MPlay openly pushed and created getting Rookie of the Year at an awards ceremony feels kind of weird, doesn't it?

They're going to disband next year anyway, so I don't think they should be given an award like Rookie of the Year, which has a lot of meaning to idols.

If Iam wins this time, I feel like the idol scene is going to get weird because of all the survival show groups that'll come after them..."

⤷ wow so I wasn't the only one who thought that?

⤷ I think exactly the same as OP, honestly I know Iam is popular but that's separate from awards

⤷ you idiots are really putting your whole hearts into this bullshit, huh. Anyone reading this would think other fandoms felt so sorry for those idols that they even bought a single album for them

⤷ you all got steamrolled by that project group and now you're trying to grab them by the ankle over Rookie of the Year, that's seriously disgusting

⤷ wasn't Iam pushed like crazy from the KJ side?

⤷ guess SY and TSP just leave their kids to rot?

Because of that, antis online had started banding together in an organized way and were slyly pushing the absurd logic that Iam should be excluded from the upcoming award ceremonies, using the group's time-limited status as an excuse.

Naturally, Yours weren't just sitting there watching that nonsense in silence, but because those arguments were being spread so cleverly across so many different places, more and more people were starting to follow that opinion, and it was turning into a real headache.

'If it weren't for the college entrance exam, I'd be fighting with them too!'

As someone with the blood of a born keyboard warrior running through her veins, Jiyeon was furious that all she could do was watch the antis commit such cruel atrocities, but since her fellow Yours were fighting hard in her place, she had no choice but to endure it.

Anyway, for Yours, it was a date they couldn't help remembering while praying it would never arrive: 2017.4.2, Iam's disbandment date.

Wanting to know why such a hideous number had been uploaded to Iam's sacred YouTube channel, Jiyeon clicked the video.

And then the video began to play.

"The camera slowly moves down a dark hallway.

A single fluorescent light flickers, and the air is so still the silence feels as if it can be felt even through the screen.

A moment later, the shot changes to a conference room.

Contracts are lined up neatly across a long table.

The camera closes in on the pens one by one.

Rustle.

The sound of paper turning.

Rustle.

Another page.

Between those sounds, scenes cut across one another.

—The moment they had collapsed onto the practice room floor, gasping for breath.

—Backstage, the trembling wait when they held each other's hands tight.

—The day they took first place on a music show for the first time and burst into tears.

—Back to the present.

The camera settles over a single contract.

[Iam Exclusive Contract]

The door quietly opens, and the members enter one by one.

Lee Sion. Ryu Ayeon. Seo Ryujin. Kurosawa Yuri. Geum Shinyu. Im Yunkyung. Lee Gahyeon.

They stop in front of their respective seats, but no one sits right away.

They look at one another once.

No words, but every conversation is already over on their faces.

Lee Sion is the first to let out a short laugh.

'What is this? Why's the mood like this.'

At that, the tension loosens a little.

A small ripple of laughter spreads, and someone nods.

Slowly, everyone sits down.

They pick up their pens.

The camera catches their hands one by one.

A hand trembling just slightly.

A brief moment of hesitation.

And then—

Scratch.

The first signature is carved onto the paper.

One by one, each name is written down.

At the end, Lee Sion picks up the pen, pauses for a moment, then looks up at the members.

'Let's go.'

A short sentence.

Scratch.

The final signature is completed.

—In an instant, the screen changes.

Under brightly lit stage lights, the roar of the audience explodes, and on stage, the Iam members are shown smiling at one another.

Then a single line appears.

[We will continue together.]

[Iam — ALL MEMBERS RENEWED]

—Practice room.

Right before the camera cuts off, someone's voice is heard.

'Hey, we're really in this for the long haul now.'

Laughter.

Thunk— the screen goes dark."