I took the chance when we paused filming to walk up to Senior Lee Gyeonwoo.

“Senior. Thank you.”

“What for. I get to promote my movie too. Win-win.”

Watching the Hallyu star receive it with a broadcast-ready smile, I pointed at the camera.

“We’re in a cut right now. Cameras aren’t rolling.”

“Ah. Really?”

The beauty in front of me sagged.

Taking another calming pill from his manager, the senior actor muttered that variety shows were just too hard.

We offered a few pointers.

“If you just toss out some light lines, we’ll carry it through the second and third beats. Feel free to ad-lib.”

“You’re doing great. Senior, fighting!”

“How should we frame the movie promo beats for you?”

After we wrapped the last of the promo talk, I slipped a question to the actor as he practiced his smile again.

“By the way, senior.”

“Yeah?”

“Um... how do you do the transformation? You’re so cool at it that I want to learn.”

“Oh, you mean talking and smiling in celebrity mode?”

His brown eyes sparkled with amusement.

“It’s acting.”

“Acting?”

“Yeah. Acting, in the end, is playing to what you already have. You can’t make fried eggs if there aren’t any eggs in the fridge.”

“True.”

“So you build the character by maximizing certain facets in you and minimizing others. In this case, emphasize the confident part and press down the timid part.”

“Oh.”

“Put simply, think of it as creating your own role model.”

Our maknae, who’s an active actor, and the rest of us all nodded in admiration. Then we copied him right away.

“A role model......”

Sparkle, sparkle.

When I flashed a perfect copy of Senior Lee Gyeonwoo’s smile, he paused.

“Uh... right. That’s it, but......”

Blinking at the other kids, he said,

“Why are there four Woojus...?”

“Huh?”

I snapped my head around.

My dongsaengs were shining their eyes with that cheesy, trying-to-imitate-someone grin, and the staff and I burst out laughing.

The mood turned rowdy.

Senior Lee Gyeonwoo downed his calming pill in one go.

“Okay! Today is our escape-room special with Senior Lee Gyeonwoo. We’re about to record for the HBS variety show.”

First, the setup.

“We’re kind of newbies to the escape-room concept, and it’s scary to go on a variety show without any prep, right?”

“Correct.”

“So we got in touch with Senior Lee Gyeonwoo last night. As someone who’s been on before, he gave us advice—and suggested we try it together.......”

After explaining how the guesting came together, I nodded at Senior Lee to take the line.

“Hello again. Hi, I’m actor Lee Gyeonwoo. I’m the culprit who lured NewBlack into doing an escape room with me last night.”

The peerless beauty paused, then continued with a smile that makes people feel good just seeing it.

“To be honest, I’m here to promote a movie.”

“Hahahahaha!”

“In our film Honest People, the tagline for my role is ‘Isn’t honesty life itself?’”

“What’s it about?”

At the maknae’s question, the actor answered smoothly.

“My character, Yoonsoo, is a pharmaceutical researcher who committed perjury. One day, he ends up locked in a massive underground prison. Inside are people who each told different lies, just like him.”

He explained it was a story where the prisoners must keep playing a game about truth and lies to escape to the surface.

Biju laughed and said,

“That lines up with the escape-room concept too.”

“Yes. Director Jang Moon actually toured escape-room cafés researching in person.”

“Ooooo.”

After we grabbed enough for a 30-second to 1-minute cut in the edit, we jumped straight into the escape game.

Senior Lee’s manager handed over a laminated sheet.

“There are four experiences here. Please pick one.”

“What are the stars?”

“Difficulty. Far left is easiest, far right is hardest.”

“Hmmmmm.”

We huddled, breathing each other’s questionable breath as we pondered.

On the far left: “Haunted Lodge 1970.”

“Do we have to do ghosts.”

“Ghosts......”

“Is it Eastern ghosts or Western ghosts? If it’s Western I can kind of handle it.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Like the difference between The Conjuring and Shutter. Or the mom ghost from A Tale of Two Sisters?”

A party of proper nouns I didn’t really know flowed from the maknae’s mouth.

Maybe because he’s the one who “watches horror movies the most,” the maknae’s shoulders were bouncing.

“You ran first in that Jeju courage test.”

“You ditched all your hyungs and ran.”

“Still hurts to think about.”

While the maknae pouted and grumbled, the single star on the difficulty caught my eye.

If we could just endure the scary part, it was the easiest.......

“Should we pick this?”

“Hmm.”

“Ghost concept is a likely bet for us.”

Same with the producer’s past show, which was a ghost-story program.

And in the pre-meeting the PD gave off a vibe that our arc might come out in some kind of ghost or spirit concept.

“Hyung.”

Then Biju swallowed and said,

“But I was thinking.”

“Yeah.”

“Even if we see scary stuff in advance here, that doesn’t mean we won’t get spooked on set.”

“Uh... true.”

Watching one horror movie doesn’t make the next one not scary.

The moment Biju made his reasonable point, we snapped our heads away from “Haunted Lodge 1970.”

Junhyun covered the word “Haunted” with his palm.

“Hmmmmmm......”

Our gaze moved.

“Which one did you do, senior?”

“Second one. Murder Hot Spring.”

“Like murderous steam blasting out?”

“No, it’s a whodunit at a crime scene.”

We passed. The senior already did it, and the Japanese onsen setting wasn’t ideal.

If we used a Japanese onsen backdrop, the next day a Japanese current-affairs show would post, “NewBlack uploads content with Japanese onsen vibes!”

—In Korea, escape-room cafés are popular among people in their twenties. The presence of a Japanese onsen shows that the “Cool Japan” image is spreading among trend-conscious folks, don’t you think?

Surely not—but every time we uploaded something to NewBlack TV, it ended up on a current-affairs show the next day.

After debating what to do, we chose the highest difficulty: “The Secret in the Basement.”

“It won’t be scary, right.”

“Like, what secret can a basement have. Manager, this one isn’t scary, right?”

“Yes. Of course.”

As he said that, the manager was seen preparing herbal tea for Senior Lee.

We traded looks.

“We’re doomed. Who picked this.”

“You did, hyung.”

“Right. Underlings have no independent will.”

While my outsourced-brain dongsaengs shot me accusatory looks, we all put on blindfolds.

“Do we usually wear blindfolds?”

“Yup.”

Our resident escape-room veteran, the maknae, said,

“Though this place is a bit unusual. The cafés I’ve been to stick to a single concept.”

“Oh.”

“Looks like a really big place.”

We had a moment of awe at the Hallyu star’s means, buying a place like this in one go.

Blindfolded beside Senior Lee, we followed the manager’s directions into the room.

[clunk]

In an instant, you could feel the air of a basement.

“Oh. It really feels like a basement.”

“Basement air.”

“Well, we are actually underground.”

At Riyuk’s comment, we took off the blindfolds.

“Oooooo!”

We marveled at a space decked out to feel like a real basement. Just right to trap about six people.

But then why......

Were there only five participants besides the camera director.

“Biju’s not here. Did they put Biju somewhere else?”

“Maybe we’re supposed to rescue him. On From Now On, We they sometimes drop people into different rooms at the start.”

“Ahhhh!”

Right.

“So that’s why they gave us max difficulty.”

We were nodding, thinking through the puzzle-maker’s intent, when—

[clunk]

“Mm...?”

The door we’d come through opened.

With an awkward look, the manager came in with a blindfolded Biju, who scratched his cheek and grinned.

“Uh... I was by myself somewhere else for a moment.”

“.......”

“.......”

After Biju stepped in, the door went [clunk] shut.

The camera director’s lips twitched, and from outside we heard our staff clapping and breaking into laughter.

Meanwhile we looked at one another.

A Hallyu actor with a drowsy, calming-pill smile and a ragtag bunch boasting unity like grains of sand.

“Not easy from the start.”

“Not easy.”

We traded warm smiles.

Long story short, we escaped.

“Ahhhh.”

“So this is the air of freedom?”

“Kyaaah.”

Back out in the lobby, we breathed in and smiled.

“Thaaank you for your haaard wooork......”

Senior Lee’s manager, voice a little hoarse, took back the keys.

Biju looked sympathetic.

“Your throat got shot from the hint calls, huh.”

“Looks like it.”

Escape-room cafés have what they call hint calls.

You use a phone set in the room to go, “Pleeease give us a hint!” and he really suffered because of that.

Riyuk grumbled.

“This is all because of Wang Jiho. He bragged he’d be the best since he had escape-room experience......”

“No way! That’s what happens when your teammates are trash. Team games fail if the team’s bad. And Riyuk kept insisting the wallpaper had some hint, talking fractals and trying to find patterns, saying weird things.”

“No. This isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s all of ours.”

“Kim Biju was the worst.”

As the underlings bickered in their pathetic way—eeeeng—we had the staff cracking up.

Amid their laughter, we asked Manager Wonseok, who was also smiling,

“Hyung! Be honest. Who was the worst.”

“From what I saw... all of you.”

He gazed moist-eyed into the air.

Not wrong.

“Uwaaaah! I’m scared! I can’t go!”

“It’s pitch black over there!”

“Let’s just go in seniority order. Wooju— ah, Senior Lee’s here. Senior? You can’t go?”

“I have night blindness.”

“You didn’t have night blindness on Mister Producer.”

“Heheh... I feel drowsy.”

“Senior?”

Truly, it {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} was an escape-room run headed for a trainwreck.

“Escape the basement while avoiding the blue mold? Is this mold? Ughhh!”

“Calm down! Riyuk! It’s fake mold!”

“If it’s blue mold, isn’t that penicillin? That’s good. Hmm... uh-oh. Why did the alarm go off when I touched it?”

“Because you touched it! Uwaaaah!”

We really were idiots.

Above all, it was our first time doing this kind of deduction game, so the format itself was unfamiliar.

If there’s a positive spin......

“Hahahahaha!”

“Wahahaha!”

The staff watching us on CCTV were laughing their heads off.

We decided to take the win that we’d at least found a variety-show kind of fun.

“Subscribers, did you have fun?”

“For your laughter, NewBlack TV runs with our hands and grabs things with our feet.”

“Time for the ending lines... huh? Senior Lee?”

“Yeeees......”

We broke up laughing at the sight of the handsome man looking a bit hollow-cheeked.

“How was the escape room with us?”

“Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

“I never want to do it together again.”

We clapped and burst out laughing.

The next day.

On the day of battle, we moved to the call spot the production team gave us.

“Sneakers?”

“Check.”

“Stretchy pants?”

“Check.”

“Condition?”

“All green.”

We dressed in the most movement-friendly outfits we could.

Watching Riyuk put in eye drops over slightly bloodshot eyes, I asked,

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you sleep? At least a little?”

“An hour or two. I got up at dawn and looked up all kinds of puzzle types......”

Looked like he studied every puzzle that might come up with the escape-room concept. I smiled at our ever-diligent fourth.

“Riyuk.”

“Why. I’m tired.”

“Studying puzzle types is admirable... but is your brain working now?”

“Don’t worry.”

“Eight times eighteen?”

“One... one forty-four.”

He’s memorized the nineteen-times table like they say in India, so normally it’d roll right out—but his calculation speed was a bit slow.

“Catch some sleep.”

“Yeah. Wake me when we arrive.”

“I’m going to sleep too.”

“Ugh... whatever. Suit yourself.”

Riyuk leaned lightly on Biju’s shoulder and shut his eyes. Seeing that, the maknae promptly leaned on Riyuk’s shoulder.

While soft scuffling sounds played, I checked my phone.

There were a whopping 437 messages stacked up.

“.......”

Blinking, I heard Minki in the passenger seat ask,

“What’s up?”

“Since we’re appearing on the show, I asked tips from seniors who’d been on before. And each one sent like thirty messages.”

“Everyone must want to get close to you.”

“This much wasn’t necessary......”

Especially Mr. Jett Miller, who we met on that Australia reality show, sent nearly fifty messages with a “loyal, loyal” text.

Thanks to that, I could pick up various sweet tips in advance.

I could get a feel for the set vibe too.

“I’ll reply after we finish shooting.”

I closed the chat after viewing it offline with mobile data off and stretched long.

Still, having gone through an escape-room café yesterday for a preview, my heart felt steady.

“Whaaa! Hyuung!”

“Haah!”

We only did it for the first time yesterday.

It happens.

I shook my head lightly and looked out the window.

Already May 2.

On the way to our destination, wildflowers along the road showed their flushed faces in the bright sunlight.

Maybe I should send Grandma a bouquet.

Watching dew-beaded flowers skim past, I closed my eyes for a moment too.

“......We’re here.”

“Smack.”

We snapped to with the kids, finished grooming, and got out of the van.

Four in the afternoon.

It felt like the sun would set and it would be dark in a few hours.

We greeted the production staff and cast who were already prepping and setting up gear.

“Hello! We’re NewBlack!”

“Waaaaaah!”

“It’s NewBlack. NewBlack just arrived!”

“You made it?”

“Oh my, look who it is. Biju! Long time no see!”

We greeted the fixed panel of From Now On, We.

Most were people we’d passed once or twice at the network. There was variety entertainer Yoo Changhyeon too, who once went to Taiwan to bake bread with us.

“Ay-yo! Sun Wooju!”

There was one face I hated to see.

I blocked Eunsung with my hand as he ran up all chipper.

“Beng-chief~!”

When I blocked him with my hand, he poked his face out to the side.

“Happy to see me, right?”

“No.”

“Be honest. Ah. ‘I’m doing an escape room for the first time and I’m super nervous but I’m really relieved Eunsung is on the panel. Eunsung is the best.’ Didn’t you feel that even a little?”

“I didn’t think that at all.”

“You always look at me coldly, but I know you hold the warmest feelings for me.”

I rubbed my temples and greeted the panel.

“Sorry. I’m the one who let this kind of kid loose in showbiz......”

“It’s not your fault, Wooju. Even if Eunsung wasn’t an idol he would’ve found some way onto TV.”

“We’ve adapted anyway.”

“Happy virus! Eun Kevin!” Eunsung cackled, and our dongsaengs clapped hands with him, laughing.

They kept sneaking looks at me and snickering—definitely talking smack about me.

Or not.

“They’re badmouthing my hyung right now!”

“Thanks, Jiho.”

I smiled at how united the kids were from the jump.

Then I shook hands with the panel and asked,

“Please take good care of us today.”

“We should be asking you.”

“Right.”

“Let’s ride NewBlack’s power to a number-one rating!”

Maybe because it’s a fast-rising variety show, the panel’s mood was fired up.

A woman on the panel winked and said,

“If it gets hard, radio us immediately. We’ll drop hints.”

“Thank you.”

Their job was to send us hints over comms and watch our run while reacting.

In a way the guests mattered more than the panel.

They’d coach at key moments and make the show more fun.

While they headed to the on-site control room, we got in a production van too.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.”

“I hear from your manager you did a dry run yesterday.”

“Yes......”

The PD smiled.

“Don’t worry too much. We really built the perfect playground for you to shine.”

“As long as it’s not scary.”

“Ha ha ha.”

Why won’t he say it’s not.

Shivering with the kids, clutching each other’s hands and huffing breaths, we were asked to put on blindfolds.

“Eeeeng......”

“Uuugh....”

Please let it not be scary.

Please let it not be scary.

“HBS Variety ‘From Now On, We’ — NewBlack Episode”

With the nervous members blindfolded and holding hands, the location finally revealed itself.

Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.

In the middle of a plot for a famous American theme park currently under construction, a building with high spires and handsome flags came into view.

A beautiful castle where a mouse mascot might wave.

Under it, an old-fashioned title card appeared.

[Secret of the Dragon Castle]

As the vehicle headed there, the members’ voices overlaid.

Junhyun: The air’s nice. Cozy-cozy, like a theme park.

Jiho: Jackpot! I think it’s not scary today?

Wooju: Good. So good.

Riyuk: So what if something scary comes out.

Biju: Right. We’re not scared.

And in answer, as if from the production—

Beneath the castle that looked so blissfully happy and fun, an ominous BGM began to swell.