"I seriously can't take this anymore!"

Yunkyung's grief-stricken voice rang low through the dorm.

"Shh! Be quiet. What are you going to do if Lee Sion hears you?"

"It's fine. The boss is gaming right now, so with the headset on, Sion won't notice anything unless we walk in there and smack the back of her head."

Swish.

At Yunkyung's words, the other members all turned at once to look at the tightly shut bedroom door.

"Ah! Gahyeon completely ruined it! This is seriously all Lee Gahyeon's fault!"

"You were already at 7 deaths. Wasn't it doomed from the start?"

"Shinyu, just now was the only timing this round where I could've turned it around, but Gahyeon got in the way and ruined it. So even if I lose this game, it is not my fault."

Usually, no matter what the members did, Lee Sion tended to let it slide with total indifference, but when she was gaming or watching historical dramas, she became so sensitive there was no dealing with her.

That was why, whenever she played games, Sion always made sure to shut the door so she wouldn't be disturbed.

Thanks to that, if the door was shut and she had her headset on, it really did seem like no ordinary commotion would let Sion know what was going on outside.

"What about Jiu?"

"The company called, so she's outside on a call right now."

At Yunkyung's status report, a little color returned to the members' faces.

"Is now our only chance?"

"Ryu Ayeon is still at the practice room, Gahyeon."

"This is a heaven-sent opportunity, Gahyeon!"

Including Yunkyung, all the members were staring at Lee Gahyeon, the oldest, hoping she would make the call.

"Right, it's now or never!"

At last, when Gahyeon made her decision, the other members clenched their fists and rallied behind her.

"From now until comeback, we're going into strict control mode."

Around the time work on the album started in earnest, Raon had warned the members that preparing for this comeback was going to be hard.

But it wasn't their first comeback, and the members had already gone through it twice, so they hadn't reacted all that sensitively.

And really, what was there to prepare before a comeback besides recording, choreography practice, and diet control?

At first it had been hard, but now they were used to it.

That was why the members had thought they would be able to get through this comeback prep without much trouble.

That was before Hell Week arrived.

"Somebody stop Ryu Ayeon!"

The moment they arrived at the practice room, there was Ryu Ayeon, the demon of dance, checking the choreography.

"No··· this isn't it! Again!"

Like a master potter smashing a slightly misshapen pot with a hammer, if the members' movements were off by even a little, Ryu Ayeon would shake her head and call for them to do it again.

How bad had it gotten?

Bad enough that Yunkyung had started having nightmares where Ryu Ayeon showed up shouting, "Again!"

And that wasn't all.

Once Ryu Ayeon's dance hell was over, Raon's treadmill hell began.

"Your breathing fell apart! Is this all you can do? The stuff you're doing now is what SY trainees do before they even debut!"

Minimum five sets.

The treadmill hell where they couldn't get off until they'd sung the new song five times on a treadmill with the speed raised all the way to 12 never became familiar, no matter how much they trained. Every time it felt brand new.

"Starting tomorrow, let's add one set each day."

After the members somehow finished practice half-dead and collapsed on the floor, Raon had smiled and said that tomorrow they should add one set at a time.

Looking at that smiling face, the members learned what murderous intent felt like.

Of course, if that had been all, they still could have endured it somehow.

"I think my skills have been improving lately."

"You too? Me too!"

"That's right. Parts that used to be hard for me are easy now!"

Putting aside how demonic the methods were, both Ryu Ayeon and Raon were excellent teachers, so the effect of their intensive training was unmistakable.

It was brutal, but the members had endured the pain because they could see themselves improving day by day.

But,

"You need to watch your diet, right?"

Dieting was the one thing the members absolutely could not give up on.

Usually, the meals idols ate at the dorm were simple.

During promotions, there was barely any time to eat at the dorm, so they usually ordered delivery, but during rest periods like this one, they generally put together meals from simple side dishes.

Of course, aside from Lee Sion, there wasn't really any member skilled enough at cooking to make side dishes from scratch, so most of them had been sent by the members' parents.

"Hmm··· just as expected, Gahyeon's mother is a good cook."

"Just as expected?"

"If someone grows up that big, of course that person has to eat well."

"So that's what you meant?!"

From the side dishes Gahyeon's mother made with her excellent cooking skills,

"What's this?"

"My mom sent it for you all to eat!"

"M-M-M-Beef."

to the special treats sent from Yunkyung's house.

And besides that, the company had stocked convenient foods for the members too, so food had never really been a concern.

But that was a thing of the past.

"Sorry, girls."

"Where did all our side dishes go?!"

"The company ordered that from now on, you girls have to manage your diets with Madam Sukja's food."

Recently, the members' dorm meals had been fixed to one thing and one thing only.

Kim Sukja.

The side dishes sent over by Lee Sion's mother.

At first, when they got the news that they'd be eating Sukja's food, the members hadn't cared all that much.

"How bad can it be? It can't be worse than salad."

Lee Sion was always raiding the members' snacks and saying Sukja's cooking was catastrophic, that looting was the only way she could survive,

but because the company meals during practice were made up entirely of greens, Lee Gahyeon had confidently declared that even plain rice would taste good no matter what the side dishes were like.

But,

"···Gahyeon, you're not eating any more?"

"I'm sorry! I was stupid!!!"

That confidence collapsed in a single day.

Putting aside whether it tasted good or bad, Sukja's food had a magical way of killing a person's appetite.

"Madam Sukja's the type who, if it's healthy, just throws it in first."

Only then did the members realize that what Lee Sion had been saying was not a lie but the truth.

Cruel practice and even crueler meals.

Even Lee Gahyeon, the member who had always had the hardest time losing weight, had slimmed down so much that even the staff they saw every day were shocked and said they hadn't recognized her.

"We can't live like this!"

"Please, just let us eat one proper meal and I will die happy!"

"I never thought Ayeon and the boss would side with the company too, not just Ryujin!"

Of course, it wasn't as though the members had simply sat there and taken it.

After already living with Lee Sion, they had grown enough to casually ignore the norms of ordinary society.

"Hmm··· I smell delivery food from somewhere."

"Lee Sion!"

"This is being confiscated! Jiu!"

But if there was one thing the members hadn't anticipated, it was Lee Sion herself.

Ordinarily, the first member to rise up against this kind of vicious company oppression would have been Lee Sion.

However,

"What's that?! The company bribed you with that!"

"Ahem! Bribe? There is such a lovely phrase as give and take."

"That's a bribe!"

Lee Sion was carefully polishing some bizarre object none of them had seen before as though it were treasure.

"A life-size Green Dragon Crescent Blade··· what a rare prize I've acquired."

Apparently, she had been bribed by the company.

Maybe it was thanks to that newly acquired Green Dragon Crescent Blade, but Lee Sion, formerly just as much the company's hunting dog as Seo Ryujin, had become even more vicious—a hellhound of the company hunting down the members—and there was no shortage of victims.

Even when they tried to order delivery,

"Room 1101? It was already delivered there."

not only would she intercept the food halfway,

she would also find and consume every last snack the members had hidden away.

"Why doesn't Lee Sion have to diet?!"

"Because she doesn't gain weight anyway. You do!"

"This is so unfair, so unfair!!!"

"Burrrp."

When Gahyeon whined about why Lee Sion got to eat whatever she wanted, Sion answered by chugging cola and belching, and Gahyeon had nearly blacked out on the spot.

"Are you not making a comeback?!"

At the company, there was the demon of producing.

"Watch even your water intake! It makes your dance lines look sloppy!"

At the practice room, there was the demon of dance.

"You aren't getting away!"

And at the dorm, there was just a demon.

Under the combined assault of the demons, even Seo Ryujin, the original hunting dog who had been comforting the members and helping them endure at first, had lately started to look like nothing but hostility wrapped in human form.

"First step is tying up Jiu and sealing away the boss."

"Jiu deserves whatever happens!"

"Should we tie her up and seal her in Sion's room too?"

"No. If they're together, who knows what might happen? We seal them separately."

As if one Lee Sion wasn't enough, the company had even stationed their manager Jiu at the dorm to live there with them and keep watch.

Park Jiu.

A new employee at KJ Entertainment, and the rookie manager first assigned to Iam.

"Girls, are you okay?"

Back when they had first met, Jiu had definitely been a soft-hearted, mistake-prone, delicate newcomer to working life.

That Jiu had been dead and gone for a long time now.

"She's not sleeping."

Now Jiu had been reborn as a true Korean office worker—lying on the dorm couch to guard against any possible escape attempts by the members, and reporting every move they made back to the company.

Under the watch of Jiu and Lee Sion, the Iam members had withered away day by day on Madam Sukja's food.

In the end, the members decided to stage a rebellion.

But calling it a rebellion made it sound grander than it was.

All they wanted was a small act of rebellion—slip outside past the eyes watching them, enjoy a brief taste of freedom, eat the food they wanted, and come back.

Tap.

Yunkyung stretched out a hand into the middle of the group.

"This time, we all have to work together and not betray each other."

Betrayal.

At some point, among the Iam members, betrayal had come to be treated as something that could be done if necessary.

But now, as Yunkyung had said, it was one of those important moments where they had no choice but to join forces, so everyone nodded in agreement.

And one by one, the members stacked their hands on top of Yunkyung's.

"We may have been born on different days."

"But we'll die together!"

And with that grim oath, their hands shot up into the air.

***

'Even PD Raon is worried.'

Jiu slipped the smartphone into her pocket and thought to herself.

"The girls have been way too quiet lately. It's suspicious. We definitely need tighter supervision."

Jiu, who had been keeping watch over the members in the living room as usual, had stepped out for a moment to take Raon's call.

Raon had told her to stay alert because the members had been following orders suspiciously well lately.

Of course, underestimating the Iam members was dangerous, but Jiu thought it was a little too much worry.

'Lee Sion is on our side!'

And really, now that Iam's final weapon, Lee Sion, had switched to the company's side after receiving an expensive gift, it was probably safe to relax.

After all, if you looked at the incidents and disasters Iam had caused so far, more than half of them had come out of Lee Sion's head in the first place.

As one of the people who had observed Lee Sion from the closest distance, Jiu thought Sion's true frightening quality lay in her sense of planning.

Lee Sion's schemes, with their strangely precise grasp of human psychology, were the kind of miraculous stratagems that would get you even if you knew about them, and of course would get you if you didn't.

And once she made up her mind, she pushed forward with overwhelming force, which made dealing with Sion's crimes nearly impossible.

With Lee Sion—the core element—now gone from the other side, Iam's remaining combat power could only be cut in half.

In fact, with Lee Sion's help, Jiu had been managing the members just fine all by herself until now.

Brrring.

Having finished the phone call, Jiu strode back into the dorm full of confidence.

"Jiu, it's an emergency!"

"What? An emergency?! What happened?!"

Just as she was about to resume surveillance as usual, Yunkyung came running up in a panic, and Jiu could only ask in alarm what had happened.

"The toilet's clogged!"

"What? You seriously scared me!"

"What do we do?! I can't even use the bathroom now, and at this rate I'm going to get constipated."

"Ugh··· hold on. I'll unclog it."

Yunkyung had carried on like the world was ending, only for it to turn out to be something as ridiculous as a clogged toilet, and Jiu let out a sigh and headed for the bathroom.

'Well, they are still kids.'

Jiu too was just starting out as a working adult, but even Gahyeon, the oldest of the Iam members, was still young enough not to have even graduated college yet.

This would be a good chance to show the members that she really was a proper adult, and so Jiu rolled up her sleeves herself and stepped into the bathroom.

'Ugh··· who clogged it? Gahyeon or Sion?'

But unlike her firm resolve, having to face something disgusting wasn't exactly pleasant.

Still, it was part of being a manager.

Taking care of your artists so they could stay in top condition and focus solely on their real work.

"Yunsik, Jiu, thank you for always taking care of us!"

Sometimes people around Jiu—people who weren't even acquaintances anymore, really, just strangers now—mocked her and asked if, after graduating college, all she was doing was running errands for celebrities.

But the more Jiu did manager work, the more she believed that was absolutely not what the relationship was.

A relationship of trust and reliance.

Jiu knew, and the members knew too, that for idols to shine on stage, there had to be people in the shadows supporting them.

That was why, no matter how dirty or hard the job was, Jiu was confident she could do it for the sake of the Iam members.

Clack.

At last, steeling herself, Jiu lifted the toilet lid that had supposedly sealed away the disaster within.

"Huh?"

But unlike what she had expected, the toilet bowl was filled with nothing but perfectly clean, transparent water.

"Yunkyung, it isn't clogg···"

"I'm sorry!"

Swoosh, then slam!

Standing right behind Jiu, Yunkyung deftly snatched the smartphone from Jiu's pants pocket and slammed the bathroom door shut.

"No!!!"

Normally, doors were meant to lock from the inside, but whatever trick had been used, the doorknob wouldn't budge, and Jiu grabbed it and cried out.

"If you open it now, I'll pretend none of this happened!"

"I'm sorry, but we have to get out. We'll come back and open it, so just stay in there for a little while."

"Girls! Your comeback is soon! Please calm down!"

But with the two sides shouting whatever they wanted through the door, all that echoed emptily through the bathroom were their voices.