"What... what is happening?"

"CEO! PD!! Why are you avoiding our eyes!"

"This is a prank, right?"

The practice room filled with the members’ flustered voices.

Inside it, Gahyeon glared at CEO Kim Sanghyeok and Producer Raon, who were avoiding the members’ eyes and forcing themselves to act like nothing was going on.

"Ahem..."

"Hm-hm."

Both of them, like they had something to feel guilty about, kept dodging the members’ stares and trying to look busy. Gahyeon stared at them with a dumbfounded look, then her gaze shifted toward the people sitting on chairs that had been set up along one side of the practice room.

A group wearing name tags that showed their affiliations—[Paldo Man], [Working Man], [Drama Team], and so on—were looking at the Iam members with bright smiles and greedy eyes.

"I sincerely welcome everyone who came to today’s Iam charity auction."

Even when the Iam members demanded to know what on earth this was, Sanghyeok kept pretending not to know, and at some point he was already up on the podium, starting the hosting.

"He’s ignoring us now?"

"Wow! The CEO got insanely shameless!"

"Fine, Producer Raon, I can believe it, but even the CEO tricked us—there’s nobody on our side in this company anymore!"

It was obvious the company had cooked up something again, using the members as targets.

'A charity auction?'

Even so, Gahyeon still couldn’t quite grasp what was going on.

Gahyeon’s last memory was falling asleep while returning to the company after finishing the event schedule earlier.

With how packed their schedule had been lately, Gahyeon and the Iam members hadn’t been sleeping properly, so on the move, they had no choice but to grab sleep whenever they could.

"Wake up, Lee Sion! Why are you drooling so much!"

"Mmm?"

And when Gahyeon woke up, Lee Sion was asleep with a whole bucket of drool on her shoulder, so she immediately shoved Sion’s head away and sprang up in disgust.

After that, one by one, the members woke up /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ too, all half-asleep, and followed Yunsik into the practice room where filming had supposedly been prepared.

Click.

Right now, the practice room was a cauldron of chaos.

Sion was quickly looking for an angle to bolt, and as if they’d expected her to do exactly that, the managers, Yunsik and Jiu, had locked the practice room door and were desperately guarding it.

"Yunsik, you betrayed us again!"

"No, Sion, calm down! And you’re slipping into casual speech!"

"How could I use polite speech on someone who doesn’t even know basic human decency!"

"Anyway, you can’t leave until the content is over!"

"Kieeeek!!!"

When Sion got blocked by the two and wailed—

"Pfft!"

"This is exactly what I saw in the video!"

"This is reality!"

"Good! Today, we’re definitely taking one home!"

The eyes of the nametagged people sitting in the chairs were filling with an incomprehensible kind of frenzy as they watched.

'I’ve seen that look!'

And Gahyeon really had seen eyes like that before.

"Mom... when are we going home?"

"Hold still! Oh my, why is this so fresh?"

"You know your stuff, ma’am! This fish came in on the first truck at dawn. The mackerel color is insane, right?"

"Give me one."

"Yes, I’ll clean it for you right away!"

It was the same look Gahyeon’s mother used to get at the market whenever she found fresh side-dish ingredients.

"Thank you to the many broadcast stations and filming teams who attended today. Today’s winning bids at the KJ Entertainment charity auction will all be used as donation funds for underfed children in Korea, and..."

Sanghyeok kept hosting stubbornly while dodging the members’ murderous stares. Producer Raon, helping him, was handing something out directly to the seated people.

They were paddles with circles drawn on them.

'Auction.'

At this point, even Gahyeon—who always got scolded by the members for having no sense—couldn’t not understand what was happening.

"It looks like they’re going to hold an auction!"

"Yuri saw this on TV! They’re going to sell our precious treasured items!"

"Hm? That’s more normal than I expected?"

"Don’t tell me they’re after my limited-edition Zhuge Liang Three Kingdoms figure!"

"How would that be it, Sion!"

Sanghyeon and Raon clearly looked like they were about to auction something off to the people gathered here.

Now that she understood the rough shape of it, Gahyeon finally felt a little relieved.

'They must’ve snuck into our dorm and brought items to auction without telling us.'

It made sense—among idol content, auction content was actually pretty common.

"This is clothes I really like."

"This perfume is my favorite scent!"

"This is the writing tool I use!"

Idols put personal treasured items up for auction to fans, then donate the raised money in the idol’s and fandom’s name—an extremely wholesome type of content.

Other idols did it at least once, so it wasn’t weird.

But—

"Now, KJ Entertainment’s first auction item is..."

Gahyeon noticed something was off.

If this was normal auction content, did the managers really need to be barricading the entrance this hard? Did Sanghyeok really need to be so committed to hosting while refusing to make eye contact with the members?

And usually idol auction content was for fans, but—

"How much are you prepared to spend?"

"Ah, our director said it’s fine even if we burn through the whole half-year budget. It’s a donation anyway, so go big."

"Wow, nice. Our budget’s tight, so I don’t even know if we can snag one person."

The people sneaking glances at Iam and licking their lips weren’t fans no matter how you looked at it.

No—no matter how you looked, they absolutely reeked of broadcast-industry people.

And as if to answer Gahyeon’s doubts, Sanghyeok—who had paused to draw everyone’s attention—opened his mouth again.

"Today’s first auction is Miss Lee Gahyeon’s appearance ticket, the one who serves as Iam’s oldest member!"

"What?"

"Waaaaah!!!"

The crowd erupted into cheers.

Becoming the first auction item, Gahyeon blanked out for a moment at Sanghyeok’s words.

***

'They really are lunatics.'

Oh Jaehak, a hotshot terrestrial-variety PD, was raising the paddle in hand as hard as possible while staring at Lee Gahyeon, who’d been dragged onto the podium and was standing there with a vacant expression.

"Paldo Man team! Two million won!"

"Wow, they came in committed."

"I thought Paldo Man would absolutely go for Lee Sion."

"Do we need to pivot to someone else instead of Lee Gahyeon?"

Maybe that sprint of a bidding race startled them, because competitors started dropping out one by one.

Right now, Iam members were being auctioned off.

More precisely, Iam members’ appearance tickets were being auctioned off.

Jaehak recalled the call received from KJ Entertainment about two weeks ago.

"We have content we’re planning at KJ Entertainment. Would you be willing to participate?"

"Content?"

"Yes, charity auction content."

A random call asking if participation was possible in content KJ Entertainment was planning.

At first, Jaehak was going to refuse—there was no reason to participate in someone else’s content.

But the moment Jaehak heard the “items” were Iam members, Jaehak decided to join immediately.

Right now, booking Iam members was like plucking a star from the sky.

With only slight exaggeration, people even said that if Iam appeared, ratings were guaranteed. Their popularity and buzz were just that extreme, and there were so many places that wanted them.

Because of that, KJ Entertainment had a headache too.

"That’s kind of hurtful."

If Iam only appeared on one specific program, plenty of people would feel hurt about it, so KJ Entertainment couldn’t help agonizing over which program to choose.

And then KJ Entertainment reached a conclusion.

"If you have a member you want, win the bid and take them!"

When that was first heard, it felt like KJ Entertainment had finally gone insane.

'To think they’d tell us to donate money and “take” a member if we want one.'

Who would’ve imagined they’d put the members themselves up for auction—not even treasured items, but the members as-is?

Still, it also felt like it would be funny.

Even just looking at Lee Gahyeon, the one being targeted—

"Please save me!!! I’ll work hard, directors! Anything but Paldo Man! I don’t want to go back to the military again!"

Wasn’t Lee Gahyeon already begging the other filming teams participating in the auction, horrified as the paddle kept going up and the bids kept getting shouted?

"Getting it all on camera, right?"

"Yes, we’re capturing everything, focusing on expressions."

Jaehak checked with the staff that came along to make sure they weren’t missing a single one of Lee Gahyeon’s desperate expressions.

And when the staff answered confidently that filming was perfect, a smile crept up without realizing it.

Just imagining inserting Lee Gahyeon’s reactions into the broadcast later was fun.

"Aaaagh!!! PD, why are you smiling at me! Don’t smile! Take Lee Sion instead!"

"No! I only want Miss Gahyeon!"

"Why!!!"

Why?

Wasn’t Lee Gahyeon proving it right now?

'That reaction! Lee Gahyeon is a born tank!'

To be honest, the member originally wanted was Lee Sion.

After all, among Iam members, Lee Sion had especially high buzz and popularity—someone everyone wanted.

And variety too: Lee Sion was absurdly good at it, always making an impact no matter what show she appeared on, so from a variety PD’s perspective, nobody was more tempting than Lee Sion.

Otherwise, why would the PDs of top-tier variety programs—known for being picky about guests—be here aiming for Lee Sion?

But—

'She’s too good.'

After watching Iam Goes to Marine Corps Camp! content, the greed for Lee Sion could be let go.

Lee Sion was too good.

Lee Sion knew military drill and protocol so thoroughly that it made the Paldo Man team flustered—enough that you’d believe she wasn’t just someone who served, but a former military cadre.

Having a skilled cast member wasn’t necessarily bad, but honestly, it wasn’t fun.

What Paldo Man viewers wanted was celebrities getting thrown into the military, getting roughed up, and suffering.

In that sense, taking Lee Sion was more dangerous than you’d think.

So the other members got looked over, one by one.

'Yuri could be interesting because she’s foreign, and Shinyu’s stiff military-speech style could be funny too.'

Besides that, the crisp and sharp Seo Ryujin or Ryu Ayeon would make a decent picture, and picking the youngest, Yunkyung, so viewers could feel cuteness the whole time would be good too.

Honestly, it felt like it would be entertaining no matter who got taken, but the one pick was Lee Gahyeon.

"PD, she was born to do reactions. She’s a variety person who exists to react!"

It wasn’t only one person’s opinion.

Among the members Sion picked on, Gahyeon’s reactions were especially juicy.

Despite that sharp-looking face, she often made the most wronged expression in the world, and the moment it got imagined—Gahyeon dragged to the military and reacting while suffering—it clicked. This was it.

"Three million won!"

"Ah... no!"

So the Paldo Man team had come in targeting only Lee Gahyeon from the start, and luckily, she was the first item up.

"Sss... Lee Gahyeon is great, but the other members are tempting too."

"I’m absolutely going for Lee Sion."

"I’m aiming for Seo Ryujin."

"Huh? Seo Ryujin?"

"I film current-affairs education shows."

"Ah."

Lee Gahyeon was definitely tempting, but with six members still left, everyone was just watching and feeling things out.

"At most, only one member can be won per program."

Because KJ Entertainment had set a maximum number of winners in advance, the participants were enduring patiently, following the picks they’d already decided on.

So nobody could stop—or even wanted to stop—the Paldo Man team’s aggressive courtship of Lee Gahyeon.

Bang, bang, bang.

At last, three million won became the final bid, and Lee Gahyeon was officially won by the Paldo Man team.

"No! Producer Raon, who told you to go bang, bang, bang!"

"Give up, Gahyeon! You’ve already been sold!"

Maybe she still couldn’t accept reality, because Lee Gahyeon’s eyes went wide as she charged at Raon, who was holding the auction gavel.

'Can’t we get a one-plus-one?'

Getting Lee Gahyeon was already satisfying, but the thought even slipped in: what if Raon came along too?

***

"This can’t happen..."

Cold sweat ran down my back.

Iam members who’d already been sold off ahead of me.

"Yuri gets motion sickness!"

"It’s fine. You can throw up. The sea can embrace everything anyway."

"This is migrant worker abuse!"

"How did you know? This shrimp-boat special has a ton of migrant workers."

"···"

Yuri got won by an on-location life-experience program and ended up boarding a shrimp boat.

"I’m an idol."

"Perfect. Our History Journal: Today in History needed some freshness too."

"···No. If I go on that, I’m going to get labeled Seo No-Fun for real!"

"It’s fine! It’s already stuck, I’m telling you?"

Seo Ryujin got dragged onto the History Journal program I always watched as a special guest.

Besides that, Ryu Ayeon got snatched by the popular variety show Working Man, and Yunkyung got chosen as a one-day MC on a popular children’s program and taken away.

Now all that was left was me and Shinyu.

"Sion..."

"Shinyu..."

"I’ll go to the jungle..."

"Noooo!!!"

Even Shinyu, the last one left, just got sold off to the jungle expedition team.

No—more accurately, I got sold first, so the only thing left for Shinyu was the jungle expedition. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Done!!!"

"I didn’t think we’d spend twenty million won, but..."

"All that matters is we caught her!"

Looking at the people in front of me roaring and celebrating the successful hunt, my head started spinning.

'I got played!'

This charity auction content—so tightly planned that even I didn’t catch a whiff of it.

This time, unlike usual, I didn’t even have an excuse to rebel.

It was a program appearance that reflected none of our will, but since the purpose was “donation,” if I caused a scene, I’d instantly be branded human trash.

Producer Raon knew that, and was smiling smugly at me right now—sending a look that said, go ahead, wreck it if you want.

Ah.

Was this how Lu Xun felt—meeting an unjust death late in life because of Sun Quan 'Jerry’s' suspicions?

I swore I wouldn’t forget this.

But right now, revenge could wait. First I had to deal with the problem in front of me.

"Sion, let’s make a project together this time!"

Because the team that caught me—

Was the drama team.