'Is there no idol accident insurance?'
A single thought suddenly flashed through Sanghyeok’s mind.
Why was there no insurance to prepare for the moment an idol caused trouble? It was an absurd thought.
But it was not a completely ridiculous fantasy. In reality, some idols did take out insurance on parts of their bodies—leg insurance, hair insurance, and the like—in case those parts were damaged or injured.
Of course, most of them did not actually take out that insurance to preserve real value, but advertised it for marketing purposes.
If there were insurance for when idols caused trouble, Sanghyeok would have wanted to sign up for it unconditionally, no matter how expensive it was.
His mind suddenly went back to Raon, who had rushed into the CEO’s office in a panic two weeks earlier.
-CEO···.
-What is it?
-Lee Sion did it again.
Raon had been in such a hurry that even the knock and the explanation had been omitted.
Lee Sion did it again. It was an incomplete sentence with the object missing, but for some reason Sanghyeok understood Raon immediately.
After all, once the subject Lee Sion, the adverb "again," and the verb "did" were all in the same sentence, it was obvious what word had been omitted.
Slide.
Sanghyeok moved the mouse and opened an internet window.
The articles filling the top of the entertainment news section immediately caught his eye.
[UBS Chuseok Special Idol Athletic Championships Sanctioned by the Korea Communications Standards Commission]
"Controversy is growing after the Chuseok special variety program Idol Athletic Championships, which aired on the 15th, received a warning sanction from the Korea Communications Standards Commission.
In the broadcast, the inappropriate remarks and actions of a cast member were socially and ethically···."
[Baseball Talent Stolen by the Idol Industry?]
[Variety That Chases Excessive Stimulation Alone. Where Has the Responsibility of a Public Broadcaster Gone??]
[Injuries Caused by Excessive Scripting, The Production Staff Hiding Behind Idols]
The news section was filled top to bottom with articles about the Idol Athletic Championships that had aired two days earlier, and just looking at it made Sanghyeok’s head spin.
Usually, reaction articles about a program lasted about a day.
If it became a really big topic, maybe two days.
But now the Idol Athletic Championships articles had already entered day three, and there was still no sign of them cooling down.
Click.
This time, Sanghyeok went into one of the internet communities he had bookmarked.
[A Girl Group Member Shouting the Communist Manifesto on Broadcast]
(A picture of Lee Sion clenching a fist and agitating the Blue Team members)
⤷ Are you going to be communist or not?!
⤷ It wasn’t the Idol Athletic Championships, it was an idol uprising rally
⤷ Listening to Lee Sion talk made me weirdly want to pick up a hammer and sickle
⤷ Why does that girl keep getting redder and redder?
⤷ Sion, was White Team really that white team?
⤷ lol fuck, I usually think those broadcast sanctions are bullshit, but this time it’d be weirder if they didn’t give one
⤷ It’s different when Lee Sion does it!
"Haa···."
Even the community boards were filled with posts about the Idol Athletic Championships.
Knock knock.
"You may come in."
Sanghyeok was clutching his head from the headache brought on by reading the community reactions when he heard a knock on the office door.
A moment later, the door opened at once and Raon came in after hearing permission to enter.
"CEO, are you okay?"
"I think I’ll be fine if I take some stomach medicine and a headache pill."
"Would you like some of mine?"
"That’s all right. I still have plenty left from the commercial shoot last time."
The moment he finished speaking, Sanghyeok opened a desk drawer, pulled out the stomach medicine and headache medicine he kept there, and swallowed them down with water in one go.
Remarkably, both products were medicines Sanghyeok himself had modeled for in ads.
'Dongyu Pharmaceutical might be the one laughing.'
It was uncommon, but not unheard of, for an agency CEO to shoot advertisements.
But for those advertisements to be medicine had never happened before.
-CEO, you are exactly the perfect advertising model we’ve been looking for!
-···.
-You just have to look at Miss Sion’s photo while taking the medicine!
And yet Kim Sanghyeok, CEO of KJ Entertainment, had done exactly that unprecedented thing.
From what he had heard, every time Iam caused trouble, Dongyu Pharmaceutical’s stomach medicine and headache pills sold like crazy, so in that sense there really was no one more suited to be the model than Sanghyeok.
After all, he had Iam members constantly causing incidents whenever they got the chance.
"Was everything resolved properly with KOX Entertainment?"
"Yes. I knew the head of planning over there, so I smoothed it over nicely."
"That’s a relief."
"I think they actually see it as having turned out well in the first place."
"Pardon?"
"Apparently the member named Yoon Hyun who got hit by Lee Sion had recently stopped listening to the agency and had ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) been going off the rails a bit, but after that, they’re happy because they say Yoon Hyun completely changed."
"···."
At Raon’s words, Sanghyeok felt like the common sense he knew was crumbling apart.
'Is this even possible with all the luck in the world?'
Broadly speaking, the incidents Lee Sion had caused at the Idol Athletic Championships could be divided into three categories.
The first was that no matter how much times had changed, it was still clearly dangerous to openly shout things like Operation Soviet or the Communist Manifesto on a public broadcast channel.
As a result, UBS had received a sanction from the Korea Communications Standards Commission.
But—
-It’s fine! The department head personally reported it to the president and aired it, so we were prepared for at least this much.
-···Is that so?
-The ratings were good, so we just have to grit our teeth and endure it.
The UBS side, apparently satisfied that the Idol Athletic Championships had achieved the highest TV ratings among the holiday programs, did not make an issue of it with KJ Entertainment.
That was undeniably miraculous.
After hearing reports from the managers about what had happened at the Idol Athletic Championships, Sanghyeok and Raon had thought it would not have been strange at all if things went badly enough for UBS appearances to be suspended.
And yet for it to pass over this easily.
That was not all.
The second incident Lee Sion had caused was injury.
[Lee Sion First Pitch Strike Full Version]
"(A gif of Axiom member Yoon Hyun getting hit by the ball Lee Sion threw and collapsing on the spot)"
⤷ He’s humiliating men everywhere, how do you get knocked out by a ball thrown by a female idol?
⤷ Is that really a female idol?
⤷ Just an ordinary female idol who beat down seven people barehanded and also took down a knife-wielding attacker
⤷ But seriously I want to measure the speed on that, how does a rubber ball make a slicing-through-the-air sound?
⤷ Sion, rice bag smashing is not smashing people’s skulls
⤷ But what now, the victim group’s fans must be going insane, right?
⤷ Fans of male idols are brutal, Lee Sion’s about to suffer
They were not going insane.
A girl group member—on top of that, a rookie—injuring a member of a mid-career male idol group was the kind of incident that sounded dizzying just to hear about, the kind where you would expect enormous backlash.
And yet there was none.
[Was I the Only One Who Felt Refreshed Watching Lee Sion?]
"I mean, I already hated watching him act slick during every promotion lately, so when he got hit by Lee Sion’s ball and dropped, I screamed without even realizing it"
⤷ So this is how the loach muddying up the group gets punished
⤷ You know this? I was there in person, and cheers broke out in the Axiom fan section lol
⤷ fr?
⤷ yeah, first people screamed because they were startled, then the moment Yoon Hyun dropped they started yelling Lee Sion’s name
⤷ fuck, Yoon Hyun is still Axiom too, aren’t you people way too excited? Lee Sion hit one of our members
⤷ Honestly the over-the-top part is that he fainted, Lee Sion was climbing a flagpole while taking hits from dozens of balls and was still fine
⤷ Other idols all got hit by balls and kept throwing, so Yoon Hyun being the only one to collapse is even more embarrassing
Far from being outraged, Axiom’s fandom was actually cheering Lee Sion on and calling Sion a martyr for hitting Axiom member Yoon Hyun.
"That member must have had a bad reputation."
"That bad?"
"It makes sense. He’s the only one in the group who keeps causing trouble."
When Raon explained that in Axiom, Yoon Hyun had long since been branded by the fandom because of everything from dating rumors to insincere broadcast attitude and halfhearted stage performances, Sanghyeok was finally able to understand why the fandom reaction had turned out like this.
Most decisively, after a recent fan signing where Yoon Hyun had treated fans with silence and an annoyed expression, the fans had completely marked him. Among them, he was apparently not even called by his real name or nickname anymore, but simply by the label YH.
Perhaps because of that, even inside Axiom’s fandom there were no controversy posts to be seen about Lee Sion knocking Yoon Hyun unconscious.
As a bonus, even the agency itself was reportedly pleased, saying it looked like Yoon Hyun had only now finally come to his senses, so there was no one left who would make an issue out of the incident.
"How does she keep causing incidents like that and not once has it ever exploded into a real problem?"
"I still can’t believe it myself."
This was a miracle that went beyond simple good fortune. It looked as though heaven itself was helping Lee Sion’s path forward.
The broadcasting station was overlooking it because even after getting sanctioned by the Korea Communications Standards Commission, it had still won the holiday programming battle, and the agency that had taken damage because of Lee Sion was also overlooking it even though one of their members had been injured.
[Lee Sion Somersault Gif]
"(A photo of Lee Sion quickly springing upward and doing a somersault in midair from atop the collapsing flagpole)"
⤷ So that’s why Sion got tied to a pillar in Three Kingdoms that time
⤷ Is this an idol or a circus performer?
⤷ My parents applauded when they watched that scene
⤷ It’s clearly a hair-raising situation, so why do I feel zero tension?
⤷ That is because the person in question is Lee Sion
⤷ Even if a nuclear bomb went off, I feel like Lee Sion would be fine
Even the third incident Lee Sion had caused at the Idol Athletic Championships—property damage—was only being used online as cheerful reaction gifs.
Told to smash the rice bag, Lee Sion had instead smashed the opposing team’s heads, then climbed the flagpole alone like it was a tree and burst Blue Team’s rice bag with a punch.
The moment the rice bag burst, a major accident occurred when the pole broke—apparently because no one had expected it to bear a person’s weight as well—but fortunately no one was hurt.
That was because even while falling, Lee Sion had controlled the direction and brought it down somewhere there were no people.
On top of that, Sion had escaped with a flashy somersault, and astonishingly that very scene had been used in the ending of the Idol Athletic Championships, leaving Sanghyeok aghast.
'The Idol Athletic Championships PD is no lightweight either. To other people, it probably looks like he gave up in despair and just aired everything, but there’s no way that’s what this was. To beat the other stations’ major holiday programs, he definitely placed those provocative scenes there on purpose without editing them out.'
Online, people were joking that even the PD must have given up on editing, but from Sanghyeok’s point of view, this was a meticulously calculated act.
Kim Daehan.
Sanghyeok made a point of remembering the name of the PD in charge of the Idol Athletic Championships.
If it was a PD who used such bold strategies, it felt inevitable that their paths would cross again someday.
"Still, Lee Sion really does guarantee ratings."
"At a time when public broadcast variety shows are gradually losing their power, 21% is an astonishing number."
Besides all the incidents and accidents, this Idol Athletic Championships had had a huge impact purely on ratings alone.
It had beaten the other public-broadcast holiday programs airing in the same time slot, Trot Grand Festival and Have the Last Dance with Me, to take first place in both ratings and buzz.
It was a shocking result that overturned the broadcasting industry’s prior prediction that Trot Grand Festival, with its lineup of famous trot singers, would be the winner among holiday variety programs.
And at the center of it all—
[Ryu Nosebleed, Seo-Flop]
"(A gif of Ryu Ayeon running relay with tissues stuffed in the nose)
(A scene of Seo Ryujin getting piledriven into the sand by Lee Sion)"
⤷ Is this really the kind of program people are supposed to go this far for?
⤷ It’s not just Iam, the other girl groups were all going insane too
⤷ yeah, even LYNX had the youngest member trash-talking the leader in informal speech
⤷ When Kaella stole balls from the members of Kaella’s own group during rice bag smashing, I thought my eyes were broken
⤷ Yuri was sneakily throwing sand during ssireum
⤷ Did the losing team in this sports day get dragged off to some deserted island or something?
It was not Blue Team—no, it was the ripple effect of the insanity Lee Sion had caused.
No matter how much idols these days aimed for a natural image rather than the old mystique, it was still definitely rare to see them trying to beat each other by any means necessary.
How else could the ratings gap between Part 1, which had been the male idol competition, and Part 2, which had been the rookie girl group showdown, have wound up more than double?
Because of that, unlike the old Idol Athletic Championships, where only the standout moments of members from famous groups used to become a topic, this year’s Idol Athletic Championships had many members becoming hot topics to the point people were calling it a massive discovery of rookie girl groups.
For example, in Hansem’s case, after that huge performance in dodgeball, Hansem’s healthy image had apparently stood out enough to land Hansem a sports brand endorsement deal.
"We got ad offers too, though."
"···I think it would be better to decline that one."
"That bad, huh?"
Of course, ad proposals had also come in for Iam, which stood at the center of the buzz, but—
-Pardon? Zero Brand?
-That’s right. Our affiliate is launching a line of low-cost products under the name Zero Brand with all the bubble stripped out, and we’d like Iam to be the advertising model.
Consumers of the world, awaken! What you have to lose are high prices, and what you have to gain is nothing but excellent quality!
Sanghyeok had no choice but to reject the ad proposal for Zero Brand with that shocking copy line.
The shock of the bizarre things Lee Sion had done still had not faded, and if they took on an ad like that right now, it could really become dangerous.
Anyway, thanks to the Idol Athletic Championships, which had stirred up such a major uproar, Sanghyeok and the rest of the KJ Entertainment employees had been out of their minds for quite some time dealing with the aftermath.
Raon had been going around to various companies through entertainment-industry connections built up over the years, expressing apologies, while Sanghyeok had also had to personally visit the broadcasting station and talk things over.
Of course, Lee Sion, the mastermind behind the incident, had naturally had a long and serious talk with Raon after returning to the company as well, but—
-It’s unfair, this is so unfair!!! In a situation where the PD and the filming crew were blatantly rooting for White Team, this was the only way our Blue Team could win.
Because Lee Sion kept protesting the injustice of it all, Raon lost reason once again and started radiating killing intent, and there was even the small incident of Yunsik’s back turning red while trying to stop it.
"I still regret it."
"What do you mean?"
"If I had injured Lee Sion back then, couldn’t I have stopped Sion from going to the jungle?"
"Ah."
And now, two weeks after the Idol Athletic Championships shoot had ended.
Lee Sion was in the jungle.
