“Sion, I’m really excited right now.”

“Y-yes, ma’am?”

My arms were trembling.

Was this what it felt like to have your whole body beaten with one of those vibration machines?

Beads of sweat had formed on my forehead, pushing through my eyebrows and digging into my eyes.

“I’m absolutely not going to SY.”

“Since ancient times, they say horses should be sent to Jeju and people should be sent to Seoul···ghk! KJ Entertainment is too small a vessel to contain you, Producer!”

Crush!

The moment I finished speaking, a heavy weight pressed into my waist.

‘More than Lee Gahyeon!’

At that destructive power, surpassing Lee Gahyeon, the heaviest member of Iam, I nearly became one with the floor right then and there.

“Sion, if your posture breaks, I’m adding thirty minutes.”

“Kieeek!!! Are you trying to ruin your artist’s waist!”

“If I ruin an artist, would that count as property damage?”

This was wrong.

Negotiation was impossible with an opponent who could not be reasoned with.

“Sion···.”

“Commander!”

“Lee Sion, hold on!”

Just when I wanted to give everything up, I heard the members cheering for me.

“Stay still! You vicious criminals!”

“Manager Yunsik, you’re way too into the role!”

“Shut up! Right now, you’re not members of Iam. You are rebels who launched an uprising against Producer Raon, the second-in-command of KJ Entertainment!”

Manager Yunsik persecuted the captured members with exaggerated speech and expressions, as if he were acting in a play.

Even now, I could see him sneaking glances at Raon as if asking whether he was doing well.

And Raon gave him a thumbs-up, as if praising him.

‘I understand, Yunsik.’

I could understand Yunsik’s betrayal.

Normally, he would have said a manager was on the artist’s side and stood against Raon to protect us. But right now was not the time for that.

“If I go to SY, I can’t hit Sion. I’m absolutely not leaving KJ Entertainment until Sion leaves.”

“Agh, a devil!”

“Yeah, I’ll be a devil.”

From Raon, who was currently sitting on my back, I felt a familiar aura.

Even when she was usually angry, Raon’s combat power was only about 0.8 Madam Sukja, but now she had finally caught up to about half of Madam Sukja in combat mode.

Some might ask if barely half was any big deal, but Madam Sukja in combat mode was an inhuman monster even I still could not handle.

Catching up to even half of that was absolutely not a light matter.

In fact,

-Producer! The girls might die!

-Then, Jiu, you die first.

-Hwegh!

Manager Jiu had tried to stop Raon without reading the room and became a star in the sky.

-Hmm···I forgot I had an important meeting.

Sanghyeok, the CEO, must have predicted what would happen afterward from the moment we gave Raon her discharge beating, because he had long since fled to avoid disaster.

As expected of the head of an organization. Such judgment.

Natural disasters could not be stopped by human strength, so running away was the wise decision.

Of course,

“Kieeek!!!”

“Sion, you’re shaking a little. If you keep doing that, I start putting strength into my body.”

When running away was impossible, lying flat was the only option.

-Now then, let’s hear why you planned this nonsense.

After receiving the farewell greeting the members and I had prepared, Raon had asked us the reason with a smile, her hair disheveled and her back reddened.

At Raon’s overly calm state, I sensed that something had gone wrong, but it was already too late.

-I see. You thought I was going to SY, so you were sad and prepared this surprise show.

-That···is correct, ma’am?

-I almost killed you without even knowing you thought of me that way?

The moment Raon finished saying that it was true she had received a transfer offer from SY, but that she had rejected it, I briefly lost consciousness.

-Lee Sion! Sion did it!

Kurosawa Yuri, the quickest-witted among the members after me, swiftly named me as the ringleader and redirected the target.

-Lee Sion said we should do a discharge beating!

And when Sluggish Ryujin chimed in after seeing that, I had no time to do anything and had to receive Raon’s fury with my entire body.

“Shinyu!”

“I’m sorry, Sion.”

“Yunkyung! Aren’t you calling the bodyguards today?”

“Sorry, Commander···. My mom scolded me last time for calling them over something useless.”

Shinyu and Yunkyung, who at least understood human duty, tried to help me, but there was no real way.

‘We have no justification!’

We were the ones who misunderstood. We were the ones who threw the first punch.

If this situation were a traffic accident, Uncle Han Moonchul would proudly shout that it was 10:0.

Above all, Raon was not a magnanimous person like Guan Yu, who captured Cao Cao and still let him go because of old affection.

As if giving me a full-body massage had not been enough to relieve her anger, Raon now had me in the front leaning rest position and was sitting on my waist.

“Uh-uh, your posture is shaking.”

“Ghk.”

She did not let her guard down even a little, leaving no opening to escape.

-The mental state of the cadets is rotten! Can you become soldiers who protect the nation like this?!

Why did I suddenly remember the discipline training conducted in the middle of the night back when I was a military academy cadet, because many cadets had fallen asleep during security education?

For some reason, the instructor from back then and Raon overlapped in my mind.

But that was not what mattered right now.

“Hup!”

Because a sense of crisis came over me that if this went on, my waist might never function properly again after today.

So I had no choice but to snap my waist and throw off Raon, who was sitting on top of me.

“Lee Sion, you haven’t been hit enough, have you?”

Producer Raon, who had fallen to the floor because of my sudden waist snap, looked dumbfounded for only a moment. Then, as if this worked out even better, she cracked her knuckles and approached me.

“Calm down, Producer. This isn’t the time for us to be fighting among ourselves.”

“Yeah. I’m not falling for it. How many times do you think I’ve been fooled? If I fall for that mouth of yours, I’m not human.”

I was slightly flustered by Producer Raon’s appearance, which made it clear she had lost all trust in me, but if I stopped here, I might really die. So I quickly worked my mouth.

“This is SY’s conspiracy!”

“What? You’re saying all kinds of things to avoid getting hit now?”

“Think carefully! How did I find out such important news as your transfer, Producer?”

“···That was by chance···.”

“There are no coincidences in this world! This was all a scheme plotted by our enemies.”

Thankfully, perhaps my gamble worked, because Producer Raon, who had been walking toward me, stopped and began relaxing the hand she had clenched into a fist.

‘I can’t stop here!’

Since ancient times, one method of calming internal dissatisfaction was creating an external enemy.

If there was no one inside who could absorb Raon’s rage, then we just had to create someone, didn’t we?

“It was strange from the start. Hyeyeon, an SY trainee, suddenly telling me the news of your transfer, Producer, and even Kaella admitting it too easily.”

“That’s right! It certainly flowed naturally, as if someone had planned it.”

“Now that I hear it, that’s true, isn’t it? There’s no way anyone would give secret information like that to Lee Sion, who’s famous for having a light mouth.”

“So Sion was a victim too?”

Perhaps my words had tempted them, because the members also jumped in one by one as if this was their chance.

I decided to postpone punishment for Seo Ryujin, who had slipped in a rather insolent remark in the middle, and carefully watched Raon’s reaction.

Raon seemed tempted too, and she appeared to be thinking about something with wavering eyes.

“Could CEO Seyon really have? No! Still, there’s no way the CEO would go that far··· Was it that Hyeryeong bitch?! It could be. She’s had a lot piled up against me lately···.”

I had only slightly poked the embers, but she apparently had people she suspected, because she looked like she had fallen into anguish.

‘Done!’

If I gradually redirected Raon’s anger toward SY from here, then quietly slipped away, it would be perfect.

It was truly using barbarians to control barbarians.

To face Raon, who was currently as ferocious as the Xiongnu at their peak, wouldn’t we need something at least as large in weight class as SY?

“Grr···those wicked SY bastards, trying to frame the strong bond between our Iam and Producer Raon! I was foolish and fell for the enemy’s scheme!”

Bang!

At this point, a performance was necessary too.

When I pretended to slam my forehead against the floor and made a thump with my fist, Producer Raon looked horrified.

“Lee Sion! Are you insane! What were you going to do if you got a wound on your forehead! Hurry up and get up!”

“No! An ungrateful disciple like me doesn’t even deserve to feel pain!”

The true effect of a performance was achieved when the other person tried to stop you.

If my forehead looked too fine, I might be suspected after this ended, so I pretended to hit it enough to leave a faint redness while making loud noises with my fist a few more times. Shinyu and Yunkyung grabbed one of my arms each and tried to pull me up.

“···.”

If it had been a moment ago, Raon would have hunted down Yunkyung and Shinyu for trying to help me, but now she quietly watched.

“Major corporations really are terrifying! To think they would slander us this far.”

“That’s right! We shouldn’t fight among ourselves··· Everyone here is a victim.”

Did they notice the signals I was desperately sending behind Raon’s back?

As Shinyu and Yunkyung worked together to shift responsibility for this situation onto SY, the mood had changed before we knew it.

Ring-ring.

Just as Raon was one step away from falling for it, her phone rang.

“Wait a moment. I need to take this call.”

Raon, who seemed conflicted with her thoughts in chaos, stretched out a hand toward us, gesturing for us to stay still, then picked up her phone and answered the call.

“CEO, I actually had something to call you about···.”

“Hey, Raon. I just got reports from the kids, and they said Lee Sion was going around grilling them about you.”

“Yes?”

At the same time as the question, Raon’s head turned toward me like a doll in a horror movie.

“I prepared a place for you since you were coming, and it seems a rumor spread through the company that you were coming. It wasn’t certain, but Lee Sion kept grilling them so hard that they had no choice but to answer. I called because I was worried you might misunderstand.”

“···Is that so?”

“Yeah. If something like this spreads strangely for no reason, it only puts you in an awkward position. Anyway, let’s have a meal sometime. What kind of kid rejects a contract so heartlessly and then just···.”

“CEO, I have something urgent, so I’ll call you later.”

“Huh?”

Click.

The call ended.

“Lee Sion!!!!”

And one beast roared.

***

“I’m so wronged, so wronged!!!”

“Calm down, Team Leader.”

“How would you calm down if you were me! This world is full of nothing but thieves!”

Despite Hakyun’s howls, the team members kept focusing only on their work as if nothing had happened.

Perhaps feeling betrayed by their attitude, Hakyun shouted with an even more wronged expression.

“Park Hyungsoo, you shameless bastard!!! How can you just suck up your junior’s idea like that!”

“I’d rather leave a fish with a cat. It’s your fault for drinking and telling Senior Hyungsoo your idea, Team Leader.”

“You! You MPlay lackey!”

“Aaah! Why are you doing this, seriously!”

Unable to endure Hakyun making a scene any longer, the team members practically pushed him out of the office.

“Sion···I understand how you feel now!”

Even after being chased out like that, Hakyun beat the wall and howled in resentment.

Only after the employees passing by started avoiding Hakyun as if he were something unsightly did the howling begin to die down.

Slide.

As if he had calmed down, Hakyun took out his smartphone and looked at the screen, only to become sorrowful again.

[LOL Is this insane? What kind of pilot program is this?]

「(A gif of the Iam members evaluating Lee Jungyoon from the judges’ seats)」

⤷Jungyoon, do you want to be an idol?

⤷They’re really giving back exactly what they went through

⤷MPlay seems insane lol How did they think of making the judges appear as contestants?

⤷fr, it was fresh

⤷It definitely has that raw feeling unlike public broadcast, so it’s fun

⤷If you’re going to make a pilot program, this is how you should do it. The PD has sense

The pilot program for Idol Ground 100 Season 2, which had aired two days ago.

With the fresh format of the Iam members, who had appeared as contestants in Season 1, becoming judges and evaluating the Season 1 judges, it was receiving favorable reviews from viewers.

[You’re doing variety until the very end, Sion-Sion]

「(A gif of Lee Sion throwing cake into Hyeryeong’s face)」

⤷It was a mistake, right? Yeah, let’s do well

⤷When they made that surprise appearance holding the cake at the end, I almost got a little emotional, but this crazy bitch...

⤷Anyway, it was fun, right?

⤷The judges got grilled throughout the whole program, then forgot it all and got emotional when they got the surprise event at the end, so it kind of made me sad thinking of my parents

⤷I also woke up my sleeping mother while watching the broadcast so I could throw cake at her

⤷As expected, filial piety is Yours

It was not simply a program that swapped the positions of judges and contestants. It also fully contained the emotion of Iam, who had grown into proper idols through the program, giving thanks to their teachers.

-Hyuksu may not have only been riding on Miyoung’s coattails after all.

-Exactly. Idol Ground 100 Season 2 might be worth looking forward to.

-A talented bastard is a talented bastard.

Thanks to that, not only viewers but also industry people continued to praise Park Hyungsoo, who had planned the program.

However,

‘That’s mine!!!’

Hakyeon was not one of them.

-Senior, I thought of some content this time. Iam becomes the judges.

-Iam?

-Yes! Don’t you think it’d be fun if Iam evaluated the Agbaek judges? If Lee Sion grills Hyeryeong, it’d be hilarious.

-Hmm···.

It was an idea that had come up while Hakyun was talking about programs over drinks with Hyungsoo at some point.

However, due to the nature of in-house content, where they could not invest much money, it was an idea he had no choice but to give up because it would be difficult to cast the judges, including Hyeryeong, or secure a studio where they could film.

-Hey, if you’re not going to use it, I’ll use it.

-What?

-I’ll buy you drinks later.

And Park Hyungsoo, who noticed that gap, had gobbled it right up.

It was possible because MPlay could provide everything from the studio to casting, but that did not mean it did not sting.

Of course, if it had been only this, Hakyun would not have exploded.

But recently, the formats he had been planning had been stolen not only by public broadcast stations, but even by the content team at competing company SY, so Hakyun had no choice but to rage at the shameless world of variety.

“Not guilty with money! Guilty without money!”

Hakyun howled toward the content thieves.

“I’m so wronged, so wronged!!!”

Then a familiar voice reached his ears.

A woman was also beating the wall and expressing deep resentment just like Hakyun.

“Lee Sion?”

Lee Sion, who had been pounding the wall while clutching her waist for some reason, turned her head at Hakyun’s call.

“Team Leader?”

The devils joined hands.