[Iam's Tech Tree Prediction]

「Iam debuted this year and in one jump vaulted into a top-tier girl group.

The fact that their popularity is no joke is something every idol fan admits.

But despite that popularity, Iam’s future has been laid out in an extremely by-the-book tech tree.

Because there’s no shortage of idols like this in the idol scene—no, in the music industry.

First of all, Iam has no pedigree.

VYNNIA and LYNX, who debuted alongside them and are currently sitting in the rookie girl group top three, have legendary senior girl groups who dominated an era.

But Iam has no seniors.

By nature, a group with no pedigree collapses early.

This Three Kingdom second mission, Heritage, will prove that···.」

⤷Is this just the whining of losers who got beat by a pedigree-less Iam in the first mission?

⤷Pathetic, even the excuses.

⤷This is what you’re calling an attack? Why are the VYNNIA and LYNX kids so soft?

⤷For real, it hurt more when we were fighting each other during Agbaek.

⤷I miss it... the days we’d drop fake-manipulation links in the comments under the members’ “please vote” posts.

⤷Fuck, was that you, asshole? I clicked that back then and I still can’t forget it, you X-bastard!

MPlay’s new survival program Three Kingdom had only aired two episodes so far, but the reaction online was blazing hot.

And of course it was. The fact that Iam, VYNNIA, and LYNX—girl groups currently boasting the best popularity—would choose themes, put on stages, and rank the results was more than enough to grab the attention of idol fans and the general public alike.

[Excuse me, is this the third-place trash online?]

(LYNX, sitting at 3rd place on the first mission ranking board)

⤷Fuck, it’s been two days since the broadcast ended and the bugs are still crawling in.

⤷You can tell what their fandom level is, seriously.

⤷Those aren’t even their fandom kids.

⤷Then who is it?

⤷Who do you think? Just trolls who came to mess with us.

⤷Ah... seriously, if I have to see that crap again next week too, I might end up hospitalized with a brain bleed.

There weren’t many countries in the world that loved ranking as much as Korea did.

And in a Korea like that, there also weren’t many people who could stand three rivals going head-to-head and the result coming out as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

In this first competition, LYNX’s fan community—after taking 3rd place by a hair—was already going through hell because of the flood of trolls that swarmed in after the broadcast.

Of course, VYNNIA’s situation at 2nd place wasn’t all that different, either.

-Being an SY stan and experiencing something that isn’t 1st place is kind of pissing me off?

⤷Calm down, it’s only the first competition.

⤷First my ass, for our girls, 2nd place is last place.

⤷This time, Iam clearly came out locked in.

⤷If we lose the next mission too, I’m seriously going to show up at SY holding a protest sign.

⤷The mission theme is literally made for our girls, so we absolutely can’t lose.

They weren’t last, but VYNNIA’s fandom—furious that they didn’t take 1st—were sharpening their knives, saying they’d protest if they lost again.

Meanwhile,

[Great Raon]

(Raon, who gave Iam the highest score of 95 points)

⤷This is what a producer is.

⤷LYNX, VYNNIA? Didn’t those guys get stomped by us in Three Kingdom? Alright, trash, right?

⤷Kyaa, this shamelessness—of course it’s Yours.

⤷If Raon hadn’t given the top score, it would’ve been close, though.

⤷Shame is temporary, records are forever.

Iam’s fandom, Yours—who had proudly taken 1st—were enjoying the festival for a while.

But,

[But seriously, isn’t this mission theme basically targeting us?]

「SY and TSP can pick their own seniors’ songs, but we don’t have seniors.」

⤷Yeah, watching Lee Sion eat Lee Gahyeon alive, you can tell there’s no “up and down” in that group.

⤷Ghh... it pisses me off. If only we had seniors too.

⤷Kim Miyoung! You’re abandoning your niece?!

⤷But the theme is also kind of appropriate, so it’s hard to even complain.

⤷We just have to hope the kids handle it on their own.

After Three Kingdom’s second mission was revealed, Yours had no choice but to fall into confusion.

-Three Kingdom’s second mission is Heritage!

The identity of Three Kingdom’s second mission, revealed by main MC Jang Junseok before the broadcast wrapped up after the first mission stage ended and the rankings were announced.

It was none other than reinterpreting the stages of K-POP seniors.

-K-POP, represented by idols, has already reached its 20th anniversary. I look forward to your stages as you inherit that great legacy and spread the Korean Wave across an even wider world.

Twenty years.

Jang Junseok explained that twenty years had already passed since SY first introduced Korea’s first male idol group, H.I.T., in 1996 at the end of the 20th century.

And behind Jang Junseok, the images of countless idols who had debuted across those twenty years flickered past on the screen.

-This stage isn’t simply recreating seniors’ songs—the focus of judging is on expressing the history contained within them!

As soon as the theme of the second mission was revealed—reinterpret senior idols’ stages and present them—people all started saying that this time, Iam would have it rough.

-SY is idol history itself, and TSP might not match SY, but as an idol agency, it has more than enough representativeness.

VYNNIA from SY, and LYNX from TSP.

Both groups had powerhouse seniors in their own agencies—seniors who’d etched a mark across the idol industry—so if they reinterpreted even one song out of the countless songs from those seniors, people felt there was no way anything could be more fitting for this theme than that.

But KJ Entertainment—a new agency—was in a tough spot, because their first-ever artist was Iam, meaning they couldn’t benefit from the halo of those seniors.

"How about picking one of my songs?"

Because of that, Raon suggested to Iam’s members that they choose one of her songs.

"Honestly, if it’s Raon PD, doesn’t that have meaning?"

Starting with the leader, Seo Ryujin, it seemed like Iam’s members also felt Raon’s suggestion sounded plausible, because they nodded.

"That’s right! When Raon PD debuted, wasn’t Raon PD an idol too?"

"Wait a second, Shinyu? That ‘when you debuted’ part is really rubbing me the wrong way."

"A fossil of the music industry! An elder of the idol world! Yuri grew up in Japan listening to Raon PD’s songs!"

"You little punks, seriously!"

There was a small incident where Raon smacked Shinyu and Yuri on the back for adding unnecessary comments, but in the end, Iam’s members decided on one of Raon’s songs as their second mission track.

***

"PD, I’m seeing you in a new light."

"Huh?"

"No, I didn’t realize before, but you sang this alone?"

A stage video of the singer Raon playing from a tablet.

Watching it, I couldn’t help being impressed.

I had finished drama filming and returned to the company without even a moment to rest, for Three Kingdom stage practice.

-Sorry. Your schedule’s been tight lately, right?

-Don’t worry. Big money comes with big labor.

-Huh?

-My personal principle is: if I got paid, I show the performance that matches it.

Seeing me like that, my manager, Yunsik, had been worrying lately about whether my schedule was too hard. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

'The members are what I’m a little worried about.'

The moment our comeback promotions ended, we were doing the ads and events that had piled up, and preparing Three Kingdom’s stage, and squeezing in in-house content shoots in between.

We’d been living days so busy we couldn’t even catch our breath, so it made sense the company would be worried about our condition.

And honestly, even if you excluded Yuri, who whined every chance she got about “abusing foreign laborers,” even Seo Ryujin—who had never once shown signs of struggling physically until now—would sometimes look like she was losing her grip.

But in my case, if I thought back to my old army days, it actually made me feel energized.

-Every time I get duty pay, it feels like I’m being humiliated.

-How much is it, sir?

-Ten thousand won.

-What?

It goes up later, but at this point, it wasn’t even ten thousand won on weekdays, and I’d stand 24-hour duty shifts while getting ten thousand won on weekends too—so now that I made money in proportion to how much I worked, it was hard to complain.

'It feels like the dream of a Zhuge Liang Three Kingdoms remake is one step closer, so I don’t even notice being tired.'

If I worked hard right now, then a few years later, when I became the richest person in Korea, one of the things I’d do—casting actors for Zhuge Liang Three Kingdoms—would change, so it naturally made me feel motivated.

If I wanted to stack the cast with acting monsters like Actor Yoo Jinseok—the kind I’d seen while filming—I had to work diligently.

Anyway, after finishing my personal schedule and coming back to the practice room, the rest of the members were already gathered and practicing.

While I was gone, they said they’d decided to pick a song by Raon PD as the second mission theme, but the problem was what came after.

"How does she have this many hit songs?"

"It’s because we see her all the time now, so we don’t feel it. Back in Raon PD’s prime, she sold out a 25,000-seat concert in two seconds."

"When Yuri was in Japan, Raon PD’s songs were playing out loud on the streets!"

Raon.

Even for me—someone who didn’t have much interest in idols, let alone singers—if you said Raon, a few songs immediately came to mind, to the point she was a representative female singer of South Korea.

And because she was Raon, there were so many songs that hit that you couldn’t even count her signature tracks on one hand.

"Isn’t this the song you sang, Ryu Ayeon?"

"Yeah. That time, preparing this song was really hard."

"If you say that, what is Yunkyung supposed to do?"

"Boss! Why are you picking on me again!"

Starting with "Pop Star," which Ryu Ayeon had sung at the Entrance Ceremony,

"Do you remember, Sion? When we did the Lucid Dive stage, the reference we used was also Raon PD’s song!"

"That was my recommendation."

"That song came out when I was way too young, so I didn’t know it, but when I listened, I was shocked."

During Agbaek’s first competition—the Group Battle Mission—we’d even referenced Raon’s song "Flame" for the arrangement of our mission song, Lucid Dive.

'It was a staple song for girls’ talent shows.'

Like this, for adult members like me, it was obvious, but there were even hit songs that younger members like Shinyu and Yunkyung didn’t know—Raon wasn’t lacking anything as a label for a singer who dominated an era.

"Raon PD is already in her 16th year since debut. She’s released a lot of songs, so of course she has a lot of hits too."

"Huh? If it’s 16 years, then she debuted when I was born?"

And while Yunkyung was newly shocked by Raon’s history, I was shocked in a different way.

'I didn’t know back then, but now I can see it.'

Raon’s stage videos, that we were playing together to decide which one of Raon’s songs to pick for Three Kingdom.

Before, they’d looked like nothing more than stage videos of a famous singer, but now I could tell how incredible the things inside them were.

"Raon PD’s vocals are insane!"

Yuri said that, shaking her head like she was sick of it.

'Isn’t this live?'

A video of Raon performing at an event venue where the sound was muffled—not on the kind of stage with a great audio system that we usually performed on.

But despite performing under those bad conditions, the beat that snapped perfectly into place and the pitch that was so accurate it looked like it had gone through editing were enough to send chills down your spine.

And the fact that her solid voice cut through the speakers clearly through the mic was on a level beyond “she sings well”—it was almost awe-inspiring.

And that wasn’t all.

"Her vocals are insane, but PD’s dancing is seriously good."

Seo Ryujin also let out an exclamation while watching the video, and at Seo Ryujin’s words, even Ryu Ayeon—who normally would’ve taken a swipe—just nodded silently in agreement.

Sometimes it was hip-hop dance, in another video it was street-based dance, and in the most recent stage video, she even perfectly pulled off jazz dance—so nobody could raise any doubts about her skill.

'It’s not just riding the beat. She’s reacting to every single instrument sound.'

If I had to pick the best dancer among people I’d actually seen, it was still Ryu Ayeon.

But the level Raon was showing right now was even beyond Ryu Ayeon.

Raon’s dance, reacting instantly to tiny rhythm changes through shoulders, wrists, or even her gaze. It felt like music and her body had been one from the start.

"No, why did someone like this retire?"

I honestly couldn’t understand it.

-Me? I just felt like this was as far as I could go.

At some point, I’d asked Raon why she and the members had suddenly retired and then switched to being a producer.

Back then, Raon said she’d been born too early, and that this was the end.

At the time, I’d just gone, Oh, okay, and moved on, but watching Raon’s active days like this now, I couldn’t understand it at all.

It felt like she could come back right now and chew up the music industry, but she said she felt a limit and gave up.

'America really is scary.'

Nobody said it out loud because everyone was being careful, but everyone pretty openly knew what made Raon decide to retire.

-The “America fever” ruined a bunch of people, for real.

⤷TSP, SY, I don’t get why they’re all so desperate to break into America.

⤷For real, Anygirls were doing great, wasted time trying to go to America, and «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» now Raon went to America too and disappeared.

⤷Because we call it K-POP, they think it’s actually pop.

⤷I thought Raon would be different, but Raon is still the one who pioneered Japan.

⤷Honestly, just promoting in Asia is enough. She just got greedy. Like, Westerners aren’t going to listen to Asian music.

Raon’s last round of activities was three years ago.

Back then, Raon—under SY—ambitiously hired even local production and producers and tried to break into the U.S.

-That was a huge buzz. After Anygirls, articles came out saying a singer was finally going to break into America for the first time again···.

I didn’t know the detailed circumstances, but even now, it was treated as a pretty big incident in the industry. Yunsik—who had been Raon’s manager at the time—said that at SY, mentioning that incident was taboo to this day.

After that, Raon returned to Korea and stopped promoting, or so I heard.

'It’s a shame.'

I got it.

Raon was a top star in Korea, to the point even I knew her, and she was the beginning of the Korean Wave—called the first person to pioneer the Japanese market.

The Queen of Asia.

She had a nickname that felt too much for anyone else, and yet even with skills that were still incredible right now, she couldn’t get past the wall called America—so maybe she burned out.

All of a sudden, I remembered the slightly lonely expression Raon had made when she explained to us why she retired.

"Requiem···."

"What?"

Even though she worked us hard, and also sold us off pretty casually,

-This is what the entertainment industry is like! I’m doing it all so you guys do well, okay?

She was the kind of person who’d wave it off with ridiculous excuses like that, but she was a good producer, and also a good senior.

"For someone like that to retire without even getting a proper ending—that’s too much of a shame."

Only today, now that I finally understood the singer named Raon properly, I wanted to prepare this Three Kingdom stage for Raon.