Chapter 32: Loss of Motivation-Part 3

After leaving Haram and the others in the Practice Room, Min-kwon trudged along for quite a while.

He didn’t want to go back to the Dormitory.

He just… for some reason, really didn’t want to go.

He was supposed to spread the rumor… and by doing so, harm Haram… only then would he finally look at me again, properly…

‘Pathetic…?’

Yet Park Minkwon’s thoughts still lingered at this stage.

Why did Haram pity him? No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out the reason.

And why am I…

‘Ugh, I don’t want to do anything…’

The more he mulled over those words, the more lethargic he became.

‘This is so damn ridiculous…’

He found himself ridiculous, feeling these unfamiliar emotions at every little thing Haram did.

Just then.

“Whoa~! Look who it is. Isn’t that Min-kwon?!”

Someone called out to Park Minkwon.

With eyes full of gloom, Park Minkwon turned his head toward the direction of the voice.

“Hey~! If you’re still hanging around here, you must be pretty decent, huh, Min-kwon?”

The moment he confirmed where the voice came from, he clicked his tongue at himself for turning his head so naturally.

“How are you here?”

“How else~ I just dropped by to check if the junior PD was handling the shoot well~”

What a load of crap.

It was obvious why this guy had come here.

“You’re not here to check up on the other participants you’ve planted here, aside from me?”

The middle-aged man jumped in surprise and hurriedly looked around. Luckily—or maybe not—no one else seemed to have heard.

His half-bald head leaned in close to Min-kwon’s face and whispered.

“Can’t you watch your mouth? If this gets out, it’s over for everyone, you hear?”

The fact that he was on his way to spread that rumor himself suddenly struck him anew.

Even though he’d already switched out the real subject of the rumor entirely.

“Anyway, just keep quiet! If you make it up to the higher rounds, then I’ll get in touch again!”

Was he planning to offer after-sales service or what?

As the man tried to leave, the faces of the guys who were supposed to debut with Park Minkwon flashed through his mind one by one.

‘A few of them dropped, but… there’s still a good number left, I bet.’

Some of those who’d been eliminated were even set to return to the finals with some incredible backstories.

Now, he’d probably go meet those guys one by one for ‘customer management.’

The half-bald man walked away with a single “Good luck,” looking positively thrilled. He seemed completely absorbed in thoughts of collecting payment.

Park Minkwon stared blankly at his retreating figure.

“Damn, I can’t stand the sight of him.”

He couldn’t help but feel bitter.

Was it because he hadn’t survived that pool? Or… had he suddenly developed a sense of justice?

No, that wasn’t it.

A fleeting image of Haram dancing to  on the preliminary stage flashed through his mind.

After that image passed by—

“Sigh…”

His bitterness only deepened.

He stared up at the ceiling and sighed. Then, not far off, he spotted a member of the same team passing by.

“…Hey!”

He called out, stopping the teammate who’d been planning to slip by quietly.

“Yes?”

The guy answered dumbly, and Min-kwon strode over to him.

“Did you hear that rumor…?”

This damned program.

Just crash and burn already.

*****

Some time passed.

Park Minkwon had spread the rumor to two more people.

The two who heard it this time were rather enthusiastic in their response.

“I knew it! Honestly, it was weird when he picked Clover in the prelims! It was rigged from the start!”

Park Minkwon hadn’t actually said that much.

Another teammate who’d joined the conversation midway chimed in.

“And the rankings—Duke? Does that even make sense?! They’re just trying to push Kim Haram, that’s all. Justice is dead, dead!”

Park Minkwon hadn’t said anything about justice being dead, either.

He was actually thinking it was their intelligence that had met a miserable end.

‘They’re so quick to jump on this?’

They didn’t seem to care at all about the risk if Min-kwon’s story turned out to be false.

In fact, they were even more enthusiastic than F-Grade… when he’d first told Hyun-seok Son, who’d seemed to have the most complaints about the team.

‘Should’ve just told these guys from the start.’

How efficiently would the rumor have spread? Park Minkwon wondered.

“Anyway, let’s just keep this between us for now. Haram might have his reasons, you know.”

Since it couldn’t hurt to play the good guy in this situation, Park Minkwon pretended to defend Haram for show.

This level of acting was nothing to him.

“I mean… can we really just keep quiet about this…? Well, if you say so, Min-kwon… alright.”

The participant, who always insisted on using formal speech, nodded reluctantly.

It was as if Park Minkwon was the team leader and they were following his orders.

‘It’s obvious they’ll blab anyway.’

Park Minkwon knew that, despite his warning, the rumor would naturally spread—and get even nastier.

If human love for gossip could be controlled this easily, there wouldn’t be a single person who lost popularity or was abandoned because of some baseless rumor.

‘Kim Haram, giving up on himself…’

He pictured Haram falling apart.

“…….”

Again, he didn’t feel good about it.

Why on earth—

Anyway.

“…Everyone, seriously, keep your mouths shut. If this gets out, it’s over.”

He echoed almost exactly what the half-bald man had said to him earlier, tossing the words at the other two for no real reason.

Even he could tell that his thoughts and actions didn’t match up, and his chest felt tight.

“Let’s head back to the Dormitory!”

With the two, who were much more fired up than he was, leading the way, they headed back to the Dormitory.

“When we get back, I’m gonna glare at Kim Haram so hard!”

Seriously, it hadn’t even been twenty lines of text since he’d told them to be careful.

It was absurd, and complicated, and as he opened the Dormitory door with those mixed feelings,

“Hey!!”

Someone immediately started shushing the three of them.

*****

“Haram, are you sure this is okay…?”

Jo Seha, who’d been sneaking along behind me, whined.

“I told you, it’s fine. I did this a lot back when I lived in a Dormitory.”

“Dormitory…? But you’ve been living in company Dormitories since you were seventeen…”

“Tsk.”

That was Haram’s story.

Right now, I, Seo Jimin the human, am talking about my own experiences.

‘This brings back memories.’

By ‘back then,’ I mean about ten years ago in Seo Jimin’s timeline, when I lived in a high school Dormitory.

I used to pull stunts like this all the time.

Lost in thought, we arrived at our destination.

“I didn’t even know a place like this existed…”

We carefully opened the door to a secluded compartment in the building where the contestants’ Dormitory rooms were clustered.

“Did they make it safely?”

I closed the door without even a click and quickly headed for the window.

“Ah! There he is!”

Shh, be quiet. I shot a sharp look at Jo Seha, and he instantly shrank down.

If only he were this cautious all the time.

I poked my head out next to Jo Seha’s and spotted the F-Grade, Hyun-seok Son, waving from the bushes.

I lowered the rope that Soram made for us out the window.

Hyun-seok Son grabbed the rope from below and gave us an okay sign.

Good. Everything’s going smoothly. From my experience, if we’d made it this far, it was more than half a success.

“The team’s going to love this, right?”

Jo Seha, looking a bit more relaxed now that we were inside the compartment, spoke with a slightly excited expression.

“Of course they will.”

There isn’t a single guy in his late teens or early twenties who doesn’t love chicken and pizza.

At least, not in my database.

Maybe because I was feeling a bit more relaxed, the memory of us leaving the Practice Room earlier surfaced.

Grrrrr—growl—

Hyun-seok Son’s stomach rumbled.

“Man, I’m craving chicken for a late-night snack…”

Jo Seha picked the menu, sort of.

“You, help me out.”

I set my perfect plan in motion.

“You still have your phone, right?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah?”

Jo Seha still had his phone.

Hyun-seok Son and Sang-gyun Kim had questioned him about it, but it wasn’t a big deal.

We worked fast. We called the closest place that sold both chicken and pizza.

[Yes—? Oh, we don’t deliver to students over there. The Broadcast Station folks were so insistent about it.]

I clicked my tongue at Jang Yeonju PD’s thoroughness for a moment.

“Ten chickens.”

With overwhelming quantity—

[Ten…ten chickens…?]

“And five more.”

Capitalism cares not for rules.

[Fifteen chickens, coming right up. Where to?]

“Ah, hold on a second.”

As I hesitated, the owner’s voice took on a hint of disappointment, as if he’d expected this.

Not yet, sir, it’s too soon to be disappointed.

“And fifteen pizzas, too. Mixed toppings, please.”

Now his voice rang with the willpower of a true business owner.

[It’ll be there soon.]

The call ended, and we returned to the present.

“Will they really deliver…?”

“Of course.”

Never underestimate the Republic of Korea’s small business owners.

As if to prove my faith, a car glided toward us from the road in the distance.

When the car neared our Dormitory, it turned off its headlights and switched to eco mode, crawling along slowly.

A perfect covert operation. That person’s a pro.

Hyun-seok Son and the owner exchanged a few words through the bars, and soon, food began to pass through the large gap in the fence.

Once all the goods were delivered, the owner got back in his car.

The headlights blinked briefly.

— (Thank you)

Just in case, I pulled out the flashlight I’d brought.

·(Bye)

A flawless, clean deal. Thank you, sir. Please collect payment from Woo Manager.

Hyun-seok Son grunted and struggled as he tied the food to the rope, and Jo Seha and I carefully pulled it up.

There was so much food, we had to haul it up several times, but eventually, everything made the climb.

Grin

Looking down, I saw Hyun-seok Son, drenched in sweat, giving me a thumbs-up with a big smile.

Excellent work, soldier.

Hyun-seok Son started heading back to the Dormitory, and Jo Seha and I cautiously left the compartment as well.

“Ugh… I can’t see…”

“Careful.”

With so much stuff, it was hard to move quietly.

This was the final stretch. But it was the hardest part.

Dodging rustling bags and peeking past stacks of pizza boxes, we managed to move forward.

“We’re almost there…!”

We reached the corridor with our Dormitory, and now our team’s room was right in front of us.

At that moment—

“Haram…?”

A now-familiar voice called out. The trait that had been quiet for a while began to stir again.

“…Seo Chanul. Do you realize how late it is? What are you doing out here?”

“…You’re one to talk.”

Seo Chanul replied in a tone of disbelief.

“Well, that’s true.”

I laughed it off casually.

“If a staff member catches you with that…”

“Five chickens.”

Seo Chanul’s nagging stopped dead.

“If you let us pass right now, I’ll give you five chickens.”

I shook the bundle of five chickens in my left hand.

Seo Chanul seemed to ponder for a moment, then spoke up again.

“…And five pizzas.”

“………”

When I hesitated, Seo Chanul’s eyes flicked toward the pizzas Jo Seha was carrying.

“Wow. Ruthless.”

“Says you.”

I glared at Seo Chanul, but there was no room for negotiation.

Seo Chanul took a third of the food from each of us and headed back to his own Dormitory.

“Ha… Haram.”

Jo Seha looked at me as if his world had ended.

“It’s fine.”

I expected this much.

“I ordered fifteen of each, just in case we got caught.”

Bribing NPCs is a basic tactic in this kind of game. Didn’t you complain earlier that I was ordering too much?

“………”

With a look of sudden realization, Jo Seha hurried after me.

We’d dodged trouble once, but there wouldn’t be a second time. We couldn’t afford to lose any more food.

Thankfully, we made it to the Dormitory without running into anyone else.

Knock knock—

I tapped on the Dormitory door.

Creak—

The door opened cautiously.

I squeezed my body through the narrow opening.

“Whew—”

We’d finally made it.

In the dark room, I could feel countless eyes on me.

“Okay, guys—”

Kicking off my shoes, I walked inside.

“I brought chicken.”

The rule is eternal: the person who brings good food is always the good guy.

Now, let’s eat and have a little talk, shall we?