"Yuri risked her life to catch these! Eat them with a little more sincerity!"

Yuri, sprawled out on the living room floor of the dorm while eating the shrimp that Yunkyung and Shinyu were peeling for her, grumbled at the other members.

Even though she was the one going yum-yum, only taking the peeled flesh the Youngests handed her, Yuri was trying to give us the absurd order to chew and eat everything from the shrimp shells to the legs.

Normally, it was the kind of rotten table-manners that deserved an immediate knuckle flick, but today, I decided to let it slide.

"Mm···the shrimp’s texture is incredibly alive. This is a texture you can only get if you grill truly fresh shrimp. And this sea scent that’s like it’s stabbing your nose! Is this wild-caught?"

"Sion!"

Yuri looked like she wanted a strong reaction, so when I whipped up a plausible-sounding taste review, she popped right up and threw herself into my arms.

"You worked hard."

"Yuri isn’t going to complain about side dishes anymore. Do you know what kind of place the sea is? It’s not just water. It’s a place where life and I exchange with each other···."

Maybe going out on a boat today had been that brutal—she wasn’t even joking around like usual, just whining and venting.

'How is her Korean this good?'

When I matched Yuri and halfheartedly bobbed my head or alternated an "Huh? Really?" "Wow!" triple-combo, she seemed satisfied, and Yuri turned back into one with the living room floor.

"Who knew they’d drag her away right away."

"I had a feeling our schedule was suspiciously empty today!"

"Yuri looked so pitiful when they took her."

That charity auction content the company prepared without us knowing.

Like they were truly determined, the day after the content ended, the "Life-Experience: On the Scene" team came to our dorm and kidnapped Yuri at 3 a.m.

"Eek? Yuri has to sleep! Today is a day off!"

"We have to hurry. If we’re taking the dawn boat, we need to leave diligently right now! Sleep in the car!"

"Wait! Save me!"

Yuri screamed so loud the dorm could’ve lifted off, but—

"Mm···I can’t hear anything."

"Sorry, Yuri. I’m too sleepy."

Me and Lee Gahyeon, who shared a room, pretended not to see Yuri and went right back to sleeping like the dead.

Because of that, after she came back, Yuri showed the absolute extreme of holding a grudge toward me and Lee Gahyeon, but thankfully, it looked like she’d completed the mission well.

"Yuri has a lot of global friends now. This time, Yuri made a Vietnamese friend, and the name is Nguyen. Yuri asked why Nguyen came to Korea, and Nguyen said something bad happened back home. Nguyen said Nguyen wants to work as a hunter in Korea!"

"A hunter?"

Maybe she’d made a lot of foreign friends on the boat, because she introduced friends of various nationalities, but it felt like a lot of Yuri-style tall tales were mixed in.

In a Korea where the only animals you could realistically hunt were wild boar and water deer, how could there be someone who crossed over from Vietnam saying they wanted to become a hunter?

Anyway, starting with Yuri—who was the first among us to get sold off and come back—every member of ours had to carry out their own mission.

"Why am I the only one going to the military! Send me to a normal variety show too!"

"Gahyeon, I have to go to the jungle···."

First, Lee Gahyeon and Shinyu, who were scheduled to leave for the military and the jungle once Following the Three Kingdoms ended.

"I have filming scheduled next week."

"Me too! Next week I have to go on the kids’ show Hanmani and dance in a mascot costume!"

Seo Ryujin, who had filming scheduled for the current-affairs education program History Journal: Today in History, the "The Rise and Fall of WWII Germany" episode, and Yunkyung, who had to go on the children’s program Hanmani.

Lastly—

"That’s why you all should’ve worked hard as usual."

"Y-you! Didn’t you pull strings with TSP? Why are you the only one fine and going on a good program!"

"Yuri went and caught shrimp, so why is only Ayeon going on a popular variety show! This is an unfair treaty!"

"Hey! I told you that word can’t come out of your mouth!"

"Kyaaaah! Spare me! Yuri was wrong. Yuri’s whole body is sore and stiff right now!"

While Seo Ryujin punished Yuri for saying something she absolutely shouldn’t have, the rest of us—including me—shifted our gaze to Ryu Ayeon, who sat on the sofa with her legs crossed with lofty elegance.

'She’s the only one going on Working Man!'

In this charity auction content, the only person you could say truly "won" was Ryu Ayeon.

Out of all the programs the teams were bidding for, if there was a program everyone wanted, it was probably Working Man—Sunday weekend variety, famous as the kind of program any idol wanted to go on at least once.

"Ryu Ayeon, 3.4 million won!"

And the member Working Man chose was Ryu Ayeon.

"An idol’s duty is dancing and singing. For our members who neglected that, divine punishment came down."

"Don’t be ridiculous! You’re the only one who practiced? We practiced too!"

"It wasn’t enough, Gahyeon. The Working Man PD recognized the fruits of my effort."

"Aaaagh! This is so irritating! Why did she get this shameless!"

There wasn’t anything special about why Ryu Ayeon got picked, as she sat on the sofa looking down on us in a posture that was arrogant beyond arrogant.

"That twenty-minute dance initiation you showed on The Guy Next Door! Can we do that on our side too?"

"Even an hour is possible!"

"Good! That’s it!"

It was because she hit the Working Man PD’s exact taste—someone who especially loved guests dancing.

So Ryu Ayeon was ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ enjoying a winner’s leisure while flexing at the other members, but I knew Ryu Ayeon was actually getting anxious.

'Ryu Ayeon’s repertoire is running out, little by little.'

Maybe the impact of that twenty-minute dance time she’d shown on The Guy Next Door had been too strong.

Because broadcast people demanded dancing wherever she went, Ryu Ayeon’s once-massive dance repertoire had quietly bottomed out.

Because of that—

"This one and this one, I did last time though?"

As if proving she really was a coward, she looked worried she wouldn’t be able to show what people expected. After the auction content ended, she stayed alone in the practice room, agonizing as she scrambled together a dance repertoire to show on Working Man, and I happened to catch a glimpse of it.

"But when does Boss film?"

While I was watching Ryu Ayeon’s bluster, Yunkyung suddenly asked about my filming date.

"In four days, I heard it’s about one to two days of filming?"

"No way! Then Boss, are you acting now?"

"I think Sion would do great even as an actor!"

"Thinking about it, isn’t the real jackpot not Ryu Ayeon but Lee Sion? Her luck is good again!"

"The drama team was insane! Why did they raise it all the way to twenty million won?"

When I said filming was scheduled in a few days, the hyenas bared their teeth at me next, showing their envy.

But from where I stood, I was the one who drew the biggest dud.

'How is it that everything was okay except one, and that one is what I got snagged by?'

Honestly, I couldn’t say it because I knew the members would lynch me, but I wanted every single program the members got stuck with.

First, History Journal: Today in History, which Seo Ryujin was appearing on, was one of my favorite programs—I watched it on YouTube before falling asleep.

And the jungle expedition Shinyu was going to was also a program I loved.

'Seeing a Komodo dragon in real life is one of my bucket list items.'

They were sending me to the jungle for free, something I’d want to go to even if I paid. There wasn’t a more generous program than that.

Paldo Man, which Lee Gahyeon ended up going to, was basically a nostalgia trip for me, and I liked Life-Experience: On the Scene, where Yuri went, too.

How often in your life do you get a chance to go out on a boat and catch fresh seafood with your own hands?

It would be exhausting if you had to do it every day, but for a day, it was perfect—going out as a little trip in exchange for being able to eat fresh seafood.

As someone who liked variety shows, Working Man had value just from being able to see the nation’s MC, Yoo Jaeho.

I also wanted to try ripping a name tag at least once with Kim Jeongguk—my senior singer who was even more famous for muscles.

So the things I most didn’t want were Hanmani, which Yunkyung got stuck with, and—

'Of all things, it had to be a drama.'

The drama team.

Even now, I could vividly remember how terrifyingly obsessive the drama team had been.

"Jungle Expedition, five million won! Uh···Drama Team, six million won."

Whenever another program bid, the drama team immediately outbid them. With that boldness, my auction price blew past ten million won in an instant.

"Please, let us use Lee Sion!"

Among the teams that fought the drama team until the very end, there was the culture-tour team for the program I wanted the most—Following the Three Kingdoms—so I had to swallow my tears.

"If you pick me, I can even do thirty-one days of filming, thirty nights!"

"Hey! How many shoots do you already have booked! We can’t do that!"

To pump them up, I shouted that I’d do anything they told me to, but because of that cunning PD Raon’s interference, and—

"The director approved it—push more!"

"Yes!"

Because of the drama team’s madness, dumping money like I couldn’t even understand why, I ultimately had no choice but to be sold for the massive sum of twenty million won.

'Acting is a bit unfamiliar to me.'

Because of that, I was sunk deep into worry.

The drama script stored neatly in my room right now.

[I Kiss Tomorrow You - Episode 2 Script]

A UBS Monday-Tuesday drama, I Kiss Tomorrow You, based on the male lead suffering from a fictional disease called Face-Variable Cognitive Syndrome.

That was the title of the production I was going to appear in.

***

"Seriously, you’re so shameless!"

"After all this time, the first thing you do when we meet is complain, kid."

"Grrr! This isn’t complaining—how can the first thing you say after contacting me in forever be that you want me to teach you acting!"

"The best person at acting around me was you, Jaei."

"Of course! I’m an actor who built up my career step by step, starting as a child actor."

Yoon Jaei felt a little puffed up at Lee Sion’s praise.

'This woman is really so random.'

After performing on the same team on Idol Ground 100, Lee Sion had kept in touch, and Jaei had been a little surprised.

Because unlike herself, who went back to being an idol trainee after Agbaek, Lee Sion had been charging forward like a battering ram from the moment she debuted until now. Their positions had become very different from before.

As someone who used to be a child actor, Jaei knew in a bone-deep way how cold the entertainment industry could be, and she also knew how much people changed once they gained popularity.

"Jaei, sorry, but from now on, don’t talk to me like we’re close."

She’d experienced it firsthand—back when she was a child actor, a friend the same age who used to be close suddenly acted like they didn’t know her after getting popular by landing major and supporting roles in a drama.

So Jaei had thought Lee Sion would change too.

But—

[Sion] : When will you debut?

[Me] : They say there’s no plan yet... This is all because of you!

[Sion] : (a meme of a frog with a question mark over its head)

[Me] : With Iam and VYNNIA and LYNX promoting like they’ve lost their minds, how is a rookie supposed to debut!

[Sion] : Listen well, young sprout. In the past, Liu Bei rose up from nothing in Tak County on nothing but benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, and against the naturally silver-spoon-born Cao Cao and Sun Quan···.

Lee Sion was the same as before.

Even though her schedule had to be insanely busy, once in a while she’d randomly send a Kakao message asking how Jaei was doing.

And it wasn’t only Jaei.

"I barely talked Sion out of coming to our company the other day."

When Jaei heard that Lee Sion kept contacting every single teammate from their concept evaluation stage team without missing anyone, she thought it was to the point of, why go that far?

'If I contacted her first, it would feel like I was trying to cling to her, so I couldn’t.'

Honestly, Jaei had an inferiority complex toward Lee Sion in ways she didn’t even fully admit.

Back in Agbaek, they’d been teammates laughing and talking together, but Lee Sion had climbed so high. If she reached out first, it would feel like she was pretending to be close because of popularity, so she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

But as if she knew Yoon Jaei’s heart, Lee Sion contacted her first with the same attitude as always.

Because of that, even up to recently, they’d steadily exchanged messages, and the link between Jaei and Lee Sion had stayed connected.

"This drama is Writer Kim Hyunsuk’s work?"

"You know that person?"

"Yeah, this person is really famous. People call them a hit-maker, and if they take a script, actors go crazy trying to get cast."

"Hoh."

"Sion, you don’t know Embracing the Moon Cloud?"

"Ah, that one?"

"Writer Kim Hyunsuk wrote that one too."

And today, Jaei was going to be Lee Sion’s acting teacher.

'So this is why the drama team picked Sion.'

Last night, Lee Sion suddenly called and asked Jaei for help.

Jaei asked what happened, and it was an absurd story—so absurd she wondered if she’d even heard it right.

Lee Sion said the company held auction content and she got sold off to the drama team, and now she had to make a surprise appearance in a UBS Monday-Tuesday drama. How was anyone supposed to take that?

But then, today, when Jaei read the script Lee Sion brought and realized the drama’s writer was Kim Hyunsuk, everything made sense.

'Writers prioritize visuals over acting.'

Directors who handled drama direction usually preferred actors with good acting.

They had to—if an actor who was terrible at acting wasn’t a supporting role but was mixed in as a lead, that alone caused major disruptions to the on-set schedule.

On the other hand—

"You can only get immersed if the acting is good, but if you pick visuals well, even if the acting is a bit clumsy, people will still get immersed."

Writers preferred casting actors who matched the image they’d envisioned, more than the on-site circumstances, and among them, Writer Kim Hyunsuk was especially famous for valuing actors’ visuals.

To that writer, Lee Sion’s visuals would definitely be attractive.

And besides—

"This script is fun!"

"Is it? I don’t really get it."

"That’s normal the first time. If you read the script a bunch of times, you start to get a feel for what it’ll be reborn as."

"That sounded professional just now."

"I’m a veteran at acting!"

"How many years has it been since you stopped working as a child actor?"

"···I’m not teaching you."

"I get to see a more mature skill!"

When Jaei deliberately acted sulky, Lee Sion instantly changed her attitude and started softly buttering her up.

Seeing Lee Sion like that made Jaei let out a hollow laugh, but right now, her focus was on the script.

A romance drama about the male lead, who has Face-Variable Cognitive Syndrome, meeting the female lead who changes every episode, and the incidents and accidents that happen.

First, the premise itself was very unique, and the fact that the female lead wasn’t one person but multiple people rotating through was even shocking.

And among them, the role Lee Sion would take—the female lead with the prettiest appearance.

'This is basically a role made for Sion.'

If she said it to her face, Sion would probably cringe and smack her on the back, so she swallowed it, but Jaei was convinced there wasn’t anyone who suited this role better than Lee Sion.