"Ah, right! I left my wallet behind, Yuri! Go get it and come right back!"

"Are you insane? We don't have time right now, so hurry!"

"Gomen, gomen!"

Bringing both hands together in front like a quick apology, Yuri sprinted back toward the dorm.

Watching Yuri go, Gahyeon was a nervous wreck inside.

'Ugh··· how does Lee Sion do this all the time? I'm shaking myself to death here.'

After sealing Manager Jiu and Lee Sion inside the dorm and boldly attempting an escape with the other members, Gahyeon's heart was pounding so hard it felt ready to burst.

[No matter how you look at it, Lee Gahyeon's face reads like]

"that older girl who used to glare at me with contempt in school and shake me down for money"

⤷ fr if I ran into her in an alley, she'd smile a little and crook a finger like come here, and before I knew it I'd be following like I was hypnotized, then her face would go cold and she'd start going through my pockets

⤷ that's suspiciously specific...

⤷ so what, she's Lee Sion's toy anyway

⤷ lol she looks the most like she'd be out wilding, but when you actually watch what she does she's the most innocent

⤷ Gahyeon's a baby

⤷ too big to call a baby though?

⤷ are you seriously trying to say Seo Ryujin is the real baby then?!

Gahyeon had been misunderstood plenty because of her looks ever since she was little, but unexpectedly, she had lived a very model-student school life.

She had been too scared to even do the usual things like skip school or leave early, and when other kids snuck out, she had stubbornly stayed in her seat.

"Too annoying."

"You're always saying everything's annoying. Fine, we'll go without you."

Of course, in front of her friends, saying she was too scared to go would've been embarrassing, so she had always just used being annoyed as an excuse, but the truth was that she was timid.

For that same timid Gahyeon to lead the members and actively drive an incident like this was more than enough to count as a major event in her life.

It was that same anxious, jumpy feeling as when she used to go to school as a kid without having done her homework.

Right now, Gahyeon already felt scared enough to die just from sneaking out of the dorm after shaking off their manager, so she genuinely couldn't understand how Lee Sion always wandered out at night like it was nothing.

"Hey Gahyeon, this is for you."

"Seriously, where do you keep running off to every night like that? If the managers find out, you'll get in trouble!"

"My nights are other people's mornings. Don't worry."

Some nights it was the convenience store. Some nights it was a PC bang. Some nights it was just a walk.

Watching Lee Sion's endlessly varied nightly escape patterns, Gahyeon had thought to herself that Sion really had no fear at all, but she had never imagined the day would come when she herself would end up following Sion and causing trouble too.

It was the kind of rebellion that only became possible because, little by little, she had been influenced from the side after watching all of Lee Sion's crazy stunts.

And it wasn't just Gahyeon.

"If you do it like this, you can keep the door from opening from the outside too!"

"Shinyu! Where did you even learn something like that?"

"Sion taught me!"

Geum Shinyu, who had demonstrated a bizarre technique for locking the bathroom door from the outside so Manager Jiu couldn't get out after they trapped her inside, also said she had learned that skill from Lee Sion.

"If we stay near the dorm, we'll get caught right away! We have to move along a route they'll never predict."

"Where is that?"

"Near the company, actually! Once the company realizes we're gone, they'll definitely start tearing through the area around the dorm first, so being near the company will actually be safer."

And then there was Yunkyung, mapping out their route while taking the company's pursuit into account from a perspective alarmingly identical to Lee Sion's.

"I'm back! We're going near the company, right?"

"Yeah. We'll take a taxi, eat as fast as we can, then hit the convenience store at the end and stock up on snacks. Don't get nervous. We just follow the plan."

And now there was even Seo Ryujin, neatly summarizing the plan and relaying it to Yuri after Yuri returned from grabbing her wallet at the dorm.

Even without Lee Sion, they were filling the empty spot perfectly.

In fact, even Lee Sion herself hadn't expected that Shinyu and Yunkyung would lock her up, which was why she had gotten trapped in the middle of gaming without even realizing what was happening.

"Boss, drink this while you play."

"Excellent work, Lieutenant Im."

While Im Yunkyung drew her attention by bringing her water and keeping her eyes occupied, Seo Ryujin had snuck in and stolen Lee Sion's phone.

"What are you doing?!"

At the same time, Lee Sion had sensed something was wrong with pure animal instinct and tried to spring out, but Gahyeon shoved Sion back onto the bed, and in that gap Geum Shinyu swiftly shut the door and locked it from the outside.

They had planned out who would do what beforehand, but even so, the Seal Lee Sion Operation had flowed so smoothly it was hard to believe it had been such a hastily improvised mission.

"Kyaaaah!!! I won't forget this! I will never forget what happened today!"

The members had flinched for a second at the voice of the archdemon, thick with resentment from behind the sealed door, but soon enough they had all high-fived and burst into cheers of joy.

Remembering that, Gahyeon felt a little steadier.

"But it's too late now for somewhere like a cafe."

"We'll handle dessert at the convenience store. First we need to eat actual food."

Once they got in the taxi, the members finally felt like they had really escaped the dorm, and they chattered excitedly about what they wanted to eat.

Winter was just starting to approach, so the night air was a little chilly but still cool enough to feel pleasant. Maybe night air really did have some kind of magic that made people sentimental.

'This is weirdly exciting.'

Gahyeon thought she could understand a little now why Lee Sion sneaked out of the dorm all the time at night.

"For me it's definitely pork bone hangover soup!"

"Exactly, right?"

"Honestly, I can't be satisfied with just pork bone hangover soup! After that I want to go to Gimbap Heaven and eat rabokki and gimbap and pork cutlet too!"

"That's right. I also cannot be satisfied with only one bowl of pork bone hangover soup."

At last they arrived near the KJ Entertainment building in Jamsil.

They had been so busy with comeback prep lately that the company building was still brightly lit, and the members felt a twinge of guilt when they saw it, but they quickly steeled themselves again, deciding this whole escape incident was karma the company had brought on itself.

Pretending not to look at the building, they headed for a twenty-four-hour pork bone hangover soup place near the company, and because it was so late, the inside was nice and quiet.

"Welcome."

Along with the warm welcome from the owner, the smell and steam of hangover soup spread through the air and wrapped around the members' bodies.

"Four pork bone hangover soups, please! Oh, and two colas too!"

"Four soups, two colas."

The moment she sat down, Gahyeon ordered without hesitation.

There were a lot of especially good places near the company, but during this whole diet-control stretch, the one food they had all been craving the most was this pork bone hangover soup.

Originally it was something none of them had even tried before, but after Lee Sion dragged them there insisting she was going to die if she didn't eat pork bone hangover soup, every last one of them had fallen for it.

The broth was spicy and deep.

The generous meat came right off the bone with just chopsticks, and the dried radish greens were tender without having lost their texture.

In between, they would reset their mouths with the cubed radish kimchi that came on the side, and at the end, once you mixed rice into the broth and ate it, it was enough to make you say there was nothing in the world left to envy.

Clack.

And so, while they waited for the food to come out, the members sat there smiling, spending a blissful little moment together.

But then the door opened, and they all turned their heads on reflex—

"I knew it'd be here."

"Ryu Ayeon!"

"Everyone, put down your spoons and come outside, please."

Ryu Ayeon, apparently having run straight from the practice room, stood in the doorway wearing a sweatsuit, hair damp with sweat.

"How did you know we were here?!"

Gahyeon shouted without meaning to, jerking in shock like she'd seen a ghost.

And no wonder. The demon of dance, Ryu Ayeon, had been left out of the plan because she had still been holed up in the practice room today, saying she was going to keep practicing.

The kind of girl who would still be dancing in the practice room even if the world ended tomorrow.

The Ryu Ayeon Gahyeon knew was not supposed to be here at this hour.

But—

"I guess you all didn't know. Jiu sends a KakaoTalk report every thirty minutes from the dorm saying whether everything's normal."

"What? She does that too?"

"Looking at things now, turns out she had every reason to."

When they heard that, after the regular report from Jiu failed to come in, the company had already realized something had happened and spread a dragnet to capture the members.

Gahyeon's vision went dark. She had never imagined they were being watched this thoroughly.

But there was no way they could let it end here after working this hard to escape.

"Ayeon, eat with us."

"Gahyeon!"

"Think about it. How do you think you'll feel if you don't eat this hot pork bone hangover soup right now? You'll probably still be thinking about it while you practice. No—even every night when you lie down in bed, you'll regret it and think, why didn't I eat it back then?"

"···"

At this point, they decided they might as well drag Ryu Ayeon into the escape too.

'Ayeon's secretly food-motivated, right?'

Among the Iam members, excluding Lee Sion, who openly ate a lot, the member with the strongest appetite was Ryu Ayeon.

She hadn't originally been like that, but Lee Sion had basically broken the seal, you could say.

At first Ayeon would refuse, saying she wasn't going to eat, but then—

"···Then I'll just have one bite."

She would pull the one-bite move, then proceed to put food away at a level that would send mukbang YouTubers home in shame.

"That's right! Ayeon, you're hungry too. Let's just eat this one thing."

"If you don't eat pork bone hangover soup right now, you'll definitely regret it before you close your eyes tonight, thinking you should've eaten it then!"

"Ryu Ayeon! If we miss this chance, we're seriously going to be stuck eating Sion's mother's food until comeback!"

Of course the members knew that about her, so they all began desperately tempting Ryu Ayeon in their own ways.

And for one brief moment, Ayeon's eyes wavered at their desperate cries.

But—

"···No. If I eat now, the perfect dance line I imagined will collapse."

"What?"

"For the dance line I imagined, not just me but all of our members have to maintain exactly how we are right now!"

"You're insane!"

Ryu Ayeon's obsession with perfect choreography had beaten out even her appetite.

As Gahyeon watched Ayeon walking toward them with blazing eyes, goosebumps broke out all over her body.

At this point, anyone who could resist pork bone hangover soup wasn't human.

No, it was something that shouldn't even be called human.

Swish.

Gahyeon made her decision.

She rose from her chair and went over to the restaurant owner, who had stopped cooking midway and was staring at the members like this was the most fascinating show she'd ever seen.

"Do you have anything here I could tie a person up with?"

"Excuse me?"

Then Gahyeon quietly spoke, and the owner looked flustered at the completely out-of-nowhere question.

But Gahyeon didn't care in the slightest. She wound the length of rope the woman handed over tightly around her hand and walked toward Ayeon.

Because demons had to be sealed.

***

"You have to catch them!"

Watching Ayeon, bound to a restaurant chair and desperately shouting that they had to catch the members, Raon silently brought a hand to the side of her head.

"Yunsik, untie Ayeon first."

"Yes!"

Raon had rushed out the moment Jiu's reports stopped.

But by then, the members had already escaped long ago.

"I think I know where they'd be! I'll go catch them!"

Just as she was about to report to Sanghyeok and launch a capture operation with the staff, Ryu Ayeon had burst out first, saying she thought she knew where they were.

But alone, it had been too much for her.

Instead, Ayeon had been overpowered by the members and left behind tied up in the pork bone hangover soup place, while the wreckage of the meal they had devoured remained on the table like a message announcing that they had been there.

"They've lost their minds. They didn't leave a single drop of broth."

"That's not even the worst part! They tied me up and did a mukbang right in front of me!"

As Raon looked at the stone bowls, cleaned so thoroughly they might as well have been washed already, and felt a wave of despair, Ayeon bitterly poured out her grievance.

"Chances don't come twice."

"Stop! If you eat that right now, your abs are going to disappear again!"

"Mm, can't hear you~."

The four runaway ninjas had tied her to a chair across from them, then humiliated her by drinking pork bone hangover soup straight from the stone bowls.

"Ryujin and Gahyeon broke faster than I expected."

"It was pretty extreme."

"Still, they lasted longer than I thought."

Even in the face of this shocking situation, Raon wasn't actually as shaken as she looked.

To be honest, the members escaping the dorm and eating pork bone hangover soup was something she had more or less expected.

'That's how diet control plans are made in the first place.'

One thing that inevitably followed life in entertainment was diet control.

Not just idols, but actors and even variety stars had to manage their bodies every single day for how they looked on camera.

Raon too remembered how intensely she had managed herself when she was active—so intensely it had felt like an actual war against dieting.

The period when she had clenched her teeth and practiced while holding back food even as her vision swam.

Raon knew that hardship better than anyone, so even while putting the members through harsh diets and brutal training, her heart wasn't exactly at ease.

But if she went easy on them, that would only poison the members instead, so she had no choice but to be harsh.

In a world where even someone who looked thin in real life could look chubby on TV, if an idol—whose appearance was one of their major weapons—slacked off on management even a little, articles would come out about it.

And for idols especially, even a small difference in weight could make a stage look completely different, which was why diet control had to be that much stricter.

During rest periods, things could be loosened up a little, but right before promotions, tightening the screws hard was the standard.

Of course, it was rare for idol group members to endure that kind of brutal diet control all the way through.

Appetite was terrifying enough that if you starved someone for about a week, they'd probably shove chocolate into their mouth on instinct even if you told them it was poisoned.

That was why, from the beginning, Raon had deliberately made the diet control even tighter in expectation that the members would eventually snap and go on a rampage, so today's pork bone hangover soup binge still fell within expected range.

'Tying Ayeon up was not within expected range, though.'

She had never imagined they would tie up a member trying to stop them, so Raon hurriedly apologized to the restaurant owner and asked if anyone had taken pictures or seen what happened.

Fortunately, when the owner said no, Raon was finally able to breathe easier. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Lee Sion was already out there causing enough incidents as it was. If the other members also got branded with the same kind of image as Sion, Raon didn't have any confidence she could handle the fallout.

"Ah··· but where do you think the girls ran off to now? Up to here, fine, whatever—but if they go any farther, that starts getting dangerous."

While [N O V E L I G H T] Raon was wrapping up the situation, Yunsik, who had come with her, scratched his head and looked uneasy.

Maybe they could let the pork bone hangover soup slide somehow, but if the girls went beyond this, it really could become dangerous.

"Don't worry."

"Huh?"

Raon had no intention of allowing things to go any farther.

"Escapes have to be handled by an escape specialist."

She had already dispatched an expert to catch the members.