NOVEL NEXT chapter 39 - Vacation
– So, unfortunately, contestants who ranked from 76th to 100th will not be able to participate in the next mission. However, what you have shown so far on the broadcast···.
Once I left the dorm and got on the bus home, the warm air inside, unlike outside, melted my frozen body.
I sat down in an empty seat and stared blankly out the window, and the things that had happened before we left the dorm started to come back to me.
‘Lee Sion, you have to debut.’
No. 24, Park Hyerim—my fellow F-class member, and all we’d really done was exchange a few conversations.
For some reason, I couldn’t forget the way Hyerim, who had been called as eliminated with the frustrating rank of 78th, had forced a smile and patted my shoulder.
When we returned from the Group Battle Mission, what was waiting for us was none other than the ranking announcement ceremony.
– I am now holding in my hands the results of the 5,000-benefit votes awarded to the ten teams that won in today’s Group Battle Mission, combined with the online pre-voting from the past two weeks.
At Jang Junseok’s words, the gazes of the 100 contestants gathered in the auditorium all focused on the cue sheet he was holding.
Was there a single contestant who wasn’t curious about the contents of that cue sheet, with the rankings from 1st to 100th written on it?
Even I, who could afford not to care if I was eliminated, was curious about those rankings.
And the announcements came out all jumbled.
First, he announced 74th place, and then one after another he announced down to 50th.
‘Sniff··· s-sniff. Thank you! I’ll work even harder from now on so that I can definitely live up to the expectations of the viewers who believed in me and voted for me···.’
In that range was Lee Gahyeon, and the truth was, the gap with 70th place hadn’t been that big, so if she hadn’t gained 5,000 votes from this Group Battle Mission, she could really have been in danger.
Gahyeon probably knew that too, which was why she hadn’t been able to hold back her tears.
After that, the rankings after 50th place kept being announced one after another.
Among them were the names of my teammates—Suyeon, Yunkyung, and Shinyu—so only then was I able to feel relieved.
– Now, we will call the contestants who ranked from 10th to 1st one by one!
The problem started from there.
The total number of people who could debut from Idol Ground 100 was seven.
That meant that starting from 10th place, it was the visible range where you could realistically aim for debut, so from the contestants who hadn’t been called yet to those who already had, everyone couldn’t help but stare holes into Jang Junseok’s mouth.
– 10th place is contestant No. 38, Yoo Jihae!
At last, the name of the contestant who had taken 10th place came out of Jang Junseok’s mouth, and then 9th and 8th were announced as well, and finally only three rankings remained.
– Aside from 75th, there are only three remaining survival rankings. First, we will reveal 2nd place! 2nd place is··· contestant No. 72, trainee Seo Ryujin from Logic Entertainment!!!
Called as 2nd place, Seo Ryujin strode up to the podium with confident steps and gave a speech, and I also gave her a fervent round of applause.
‘She’s definitely going to debut. Then 1st is Ryu Ayeon, and who’s 3rd?’
Now only 1st and 3rd were left.
Among the contestants remaining, the only ones you could really call top-rankers were about Ryu Ayeon and Park Soyeon.
‘No, how the hell did she get 3rd? The viewers’ eyes must be busted.’
Ryu Ayeon was so famous that I could accept it even if she took 1st, but I really didn’t like Park Soyeon taking 3rd.
I was thinking to myself that once I got eliminated and left the dorm, I’d have to go find my aunt and grill her about how she’d edited things this time, when—
– In this first vote of Idol Ground 100, the contestant who has taken the grand 1st place is··· none other! Trainee Lee Sion, contestant No. 100!
I still don’t remember clearly what happened then.
Somebody pushed my back while I was spacing out, telling me to hurry and go up there, and thanks to that I somehow managed to move my feet and climb the podium.
I’d been so dazed I couldn’t even remember what I said, and by the time I came to my senses, I was already back in my seat in the auditorium where the contestants were gathered.
‘Is it really true that I’m 1st?’
‘Unni, congratulations!!!’
‘I always thought Sion unni would be 1st from the start!’
‘Commander, don’t abandon me now that you got 1st!!!’
Contestants I knew, starting with my teammates, crowded around to congratulate me.
It felt weird.
‘What is this? My aunt definitely said she’d erase all my screen time, though?’
I couldn’t understand how I could possibly be 1st, so I couldn’t react at all.
And then Jang Junseok’s ranking announcements continued.
– The last survivor, 75th place, is trainee Park Soyeon from UI Entertainment!
Park Soyeon, who I’d predicted would be 3rd, had barely survived with 75th place, and her face was twisted, like she herself hadn’t expected to be ranked so low.
But I couldn’t laugh even at that expression on Park Soyeon’s face.
The production team, in truly cold-blooded fashion, didn’t even call the remaining contestants by name, but instead announced their rankings all at once via the screen installed in the auditorium and told them they were eliminated.
Because of that, the contestants who ranked from 76th to 100th all went up to the podium as a group, and all they got to do was ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) leave a single short comment.
– Lee Sion, still, thanks to you it was fun when we practiced in F class. You have to debut.
And that one line left by my fellow F-class member, Park Hyerim, was still making my heart ripple.
[The next stop is ···.]
When the sound announcing we had arrived at the stop near my house rang out, I pressed the bell and got up from my seat.
These tangled feelings didn’t seem like they were going to resolve anytime soon, so all I could think about was that I wanted to go home and lie down on my bed.
***
"Haah··· there’s no helping it. I’ll just have to break my savings account."
Miyoung steeled herself to cash out the account where she’d been saving money for her wedding.
– Sion, you remember your aunt’s house passcode, right?
Miyoung had already left a message for her niece Sion, and she was expecting that Sion would come to her place before long.
After all, since the “Cinderella and Stepmother Operation” she and Sion had plotted together for Episode 1 had gone on air exactly as planned, there was no way Kim Sukja would leave Sion alone once she came back home from the dorm.
‘She’ll probably get beaten to a pulp and kicked out, and when she comes to my place then, I’ll have to calm her down nicely.’
In reality, since the program itself literally couldn’t function anymore without Sion, Miyoung had no choice but to play her trump card.
Money.
The only way she could persuade her niece Sion was money.
Ever since she was little, her niece had never shown much interest in toys or clothes or anything else, but only when it came to pocket money, Sion would treat Miyoung with the utmost politeness.
Even the emergency stand-in appearance on the idol survival program had ultimately been because she’d been hooked by the bait of 1 million won, so Miyoung knew very well that there was no more effective bargaining chip with Lee Sion than money.
Half-baked excuses or emotional appeals would only backfire.
In this situation, silent bribery with cash was the best, so Miyoung had even resolved to break her savings.
Ding-dong.
As Miyoung was worrying about how much she should hand over to Sion as the price for negotiations, a chime sounded in her ears.
"Who is it?"
Miyoung picked up the intercom to check who it was.
"Aunt, it’s me, Sion."
"···Oh! Okay, I’ll open it right away!"
Miyoung had known Sion would be kicked out, but the timing was faster than she’d expected, so she was a bit flustered as she quickly went to open the front door.
‘She probably hasn’t finished watching the broadcast yet, right? Then I’ll calmly start with the explanations first···.’
Running a hurried simulation in her head to prepare for how to handle things once she met Sion, she finally unlocked and opened the front door.
"It’s hard to get a look at my little sister’s face these days, huh?"
What was in front of Miyoung’s eyes was Kim Sukja.
***
Human beings have something called ingrained fear.
For example, how they instinctively fear the dark, or how their bodies freeze up when they see a spider or a snake.
Our ancestors must have been experiencing that since the distant past.
The predators that appeared out of the dark without a sound.
The snakes and spiders that were small but carried deadly venom.
And so, to warn us, their descendants, of their danger, it was burned into us as the instinct of fear.
So it wouldn’t be forgotten.
Smack!
"Argh!!!"
My back was radiating scorching heat as it begged to be spared.
Right now, I was paying very dearly for ignoring that instinct.
After getting off the bus and dragging my suitcase step by heavy step home, I punched in the passcode on the front door and was just about to go inside when I felt an inexplicable chill.
‘What is this?’
It felt like I could hear a voice next to me, trying to tearfully hold me back, telling me I absolutely must not open this door right now.
But maybe because I was so exhausted from going through the Group Battle Mission and then the ranking announcement ceremony right after, I ignored that feeling and opened the door anyway.
Fear.
And then I had to face my mother, who had descended into this world in the form of the King of the Underworld.
"Argh!!! Dad!! I’m gonna die!! Stop Mom!!!"
"Apparently, winter walks are really good for your health? I’m just going to take a lap around the neighborhood."
While Mom was beating my back like it was a futon, Dad met my eyes.
I desperately begged Dad for help, but he pretended not to see, grabbed his coat, and evacuated out of the house.
‘Right, Dad at least should survive.’
Right now, in game terms, Mom was like a berserk warrior.
What that meant was that she had nothing left in her eyes.
Our family had learned through experience that nothing good came from touching Mom in this berserk state.
It was about a year ago.
Back in 2009, when Bitcoin had just come out, I had been mining coins on the home computer.
I’d been actively mining up until last year, so I used to imagine that maybe I was the person who had the most Bitcoin in the world.
‘Those were the days.’
Probably the most beautiful time of my life.
At night I had to game, so it was my daily routine to leave the computer on mining from when I went to sleep until I got back from school.
And I didn’t know.
That a computer was something that could blow up that easily.
Whether it was furious with the harsh labor I’d forced on it or not, the computer tried to reenact a 21st-century Luddite movement and attempted self-immolation while I was away at school.
As a bonus, the resulting power surge caused an electrical short that knocked out our power and wiped out every appliance in the house with splash damage.
If the 19th-century British workers in the afterlife had seen it, they probably would have smiled in satisfaction and given it a thumbs-up.
And apparently when Mom, who had just gone out briefly to buy groceries, came back home, she panicked because she had no idea what was going on, and then she smelled something burning and called 119.
When the eternal friends of the people, the 119 emergency responders, came to our house at Mom’s call and investigated the scene, what they said was:
‘It looks like an electrical short caused by the computer overheating.’
It was my death sentence.
That day, clutching the hard disk that had been burned pitch black and was gone beyond any recovery, I cried for the first time in my second life as Mom smacked my back.
Seeing that, Dad thought I was crying because it hurt (which it did, to be fair—both my body and my heart), and tried to stop Mom, but—
‘This isn’t my daughter!!! She’s your daughter!!! You die with her!!!’
He ended up just sharing my fate of getting smacked by Mom, who was in a rage.
"Haa··· haa···."
While I was reminiscing about that past tragedy, Mom, who had been whaling on my back like it was a drum for a long time, paused to catch her breath.
Grip.
But not wanting to repeat her previous mistake, she grabbed the back of my neck in a perfect hold that left me no chance to run.
It seemed that while I’d been learning dance and singing at the dorm, Madam Sukja had been learning martial arts.
Lately I’d been feeling like Mom’s power was weakening day by day, but had she undergone some kind of complete rebirth while I was gone?
If this kept up, I might actually die in my second life from a ruptured back; a sense of crisis washed over me.
"Sp··· spare me, Mom!!! I’ll do whatever you tell me!"
"Kim Miyoung··· she’s in on it too, right?"
"Huh?"
Mom asked me, then went on, a crooked smile at the corner of her mouth.
"Ever since that day, I haven’t been able to go to the neighborhood bathhouse."
Ever since Idol Ground 100 first aired—
‘Ugh, that lady says she’s pushing her daughter so hard for studying it’s like she’s trying to strangle a rat.’
‘Exactly. And then last time she was bragging about her daughter becoming an idol, tsk tsk··· people shouldn’t be like that!’
‘Oh my, oh my, is she glaring at us right now? No wonder her daughter cried on TV···.’
Mom said she couldn’t sleep from embarrassment because of the gossip of the neighborhood ajummas, and now she was suggesting I hand over my aunt.
If I did that, she’d end it with this, she said—with a temptingly sweet offer, like the devil’s own whisper.
Was this how our independence fighters felt when they were captured by Japanese police and tortured, being told to give up the location of the resistance base?
‘Hold on··· this bitch. The reason I’m getting hit is because of my aunt, isn’t it?’
But then, when I thought about it for a moment, that wasn’t it.
The reason I was getting hit was entirely because my aunt had broken the contract she’d made with me.
Once I sorted out my thoughts, I immediately dragged Mom into a taxi.
From olden times, it’s been said that when you share pain, it doubles.
I absolutely wanted my aunt to experience the pain I had just felt.