Sports Day
“Is there anyone you’d particularly like on your team? Someone you already know, maybe.”
“Hmm, not sure~.”
“I do know someone, actually….”
Kwon Do-ha’s question about acquaintances brought Lee Jae-jin and Woo Cheong-hee to mind. I’d been so preoccupied I hadn’t even thought to look for them, but they must have made it through. Had the two of them already formed a team?
“Would anyone happen to know Woo Cheong-hee…?”
“Found you!”
Song A-seong had barely opened his mouth when he was cut off again. The voice was a familiar one.
“What? You’re all together?”
A hand shot out from behind me and settled naturally on my shoulder. Speak of the devil.
“Hello.”
I glanced back. Lee Jae-jin and Woo Cheong-hee were standing there together. They’d joined later than I’d expected.
“Han-hee hyung! How have you been?”
“Yeah, good to see you again. Nice to meet you.”
Woo Cheong-hee greeted me brightly. That pure, sunlit smile of his was still just as clear.
“I knew for sure you’d make it, hyung!”
“Woo Cheong-hee….”
“Oh—A-seong! I was looking for you too!”
“Everyone Cheong-hee was looking for is gathered right here. Funny how that works.”
So Song A-seong and Woo Cheong-hee already knew each other.
Well, people always say this industry is small. It’s not that surprising.
Han Min-hyeok counted the growing number of people and pulled a troubled face.
“Hmm~ We’re over capacity.”
“Ah—now that you mention it… that’s six of us.”
“You’re popular, Han-hee.”
Lee Jae-jin grinned and clapped my shoulder. Looking at him, he seemed pretty popular himself.
I locked eyes with the people who seemed to have trailed in after Jae-jin and Cheong-hee. They had their hands clasped, staring at us with desperate hope. I nodded slightly in greeting, then flicked a glance at Kwon Do-ha, who had taken a step back. We’d already agreed to team up, and being on the same team made him easier to observe—there was no other choice.
“Jae-jin hyung, Cheong-hee—I’m sure we’ll get a chance to work together later.”
“Shame, but… yeah. One step too late.”
“We should’ve gotten here sooner….”
Pulling just one person from that group felt awkward, and if we were going to send anyone, it was better to send the two of them together. I caught the eye of the one who’d been staring most urgently from the back. He came running at once.
“Then hyung and Cheong-hee can just team up with me!”
“…?”
“What?”
“Thanks for yielding! Good luck, everyone!”
A boy with bright yellow-dyed hair and a baby face slipped between the others and seized Woo Cheong-hee by the arm.
“Huh? Wait—ah! Ho-su! Let go! I am not teaming with you!”
“Sure~ I know you don’t have anyone else~.”
The yellow-haired boy dragged a struggling Woo Cheong-hee away, and Cheong-hee’s pitiful yelps as he was hauled off like a fish on a hook were so funny I nearly laughed out loud. Friends, I supposed. Song A-seong seemed to know him too, waving a casual goodbye. Everyone around here had wide social circles.
“See you later, Han-hee. We’re heading out.”
I watched Woo Cheong-hee being towed along by the one called Ho-su, and Lee Jae-jin following at an unhurried pace. Then Kwon Do-ha spoke up.
“Well then—would it be all right if I recommended our last member?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“No objections here~.”
It didn’t matter either way. We didn’t have anyone else lined up.
Kwon Do-ha scanned the room, smiled past a few people lingering nearby, and in a blink had brought back one tall young man.
“He was in my group when we took the profile photos. He said he still hadn’t found a team, so I brought him over.”
“Hello. I’m Han Sang-jin.”
“Ah~ You auditioned the same day as me and A-seong—day four, right? Nice to meet you~.”
“Yes, that’s right. Nice to meet you as well.”
“Hello. I heard you sing that day—you were great. Looking forward to working with you!”
Nobody seemed shy; the mood was good. Plenty of social skill in this group. I followed with my own greeting while checking his status window.
A perfect SSR….
In some ways, a perfect SSR—95 across the board—was rarer to see than a UR rank. And on top of that, he was a hybrid with vocal, dance, and charm all evenly distributed.
How did he even pick this guy out?
Out of that sea of people, the one he’d zeroed in on had ridiculous specs. Did he have a status window like mine? I looked at Kwon Do-ha with a flicker of suspicion—then felt Song A-seong staring straight at me from across the way and quickly smoothed my expression. We were on the same team; I couldn’t have A-seong getting weird ideas about Do-ha.
“Teams that are set—please send one representative to write down your roster!”
“Hyung, you go.”
Song A-seong gave Han Min-hyeok a light shove between the shoulder blades.
“Huh… I’m the rep?”
He sounded oddly reluctant, but this kind of thing was cleaner when the oldest handled it.
“Yes, please go ahead.”
“We’re counting on you.”
“…Fine~ I’ll be right back~.”
Han Min-hyeok ambled off with a lazy stride. His legs were especially long and straight, and even the way he walked looked like a model’s.
After he left, we made small talk in front of the camera that had drifted closer. Looking around, it seemed every team had one assigned to them.
“A sports day, huh? Is that why they fed us so well?”
“Mm, maybe. Hopefully the events aren’t too brutal.”
“Hyung, you’d do well at whatever they throw at us.”
While my teammates chatted easily about what events they hoped for, I snuck a glance at my daily mission, which had been ticking up little by little. A yellow bar rose and fell like it was testing the waters.
Secure Screen Time at the Sports Day
☐ Progress: — (10/100)
🎁 Success: Roulette Draw ×1
💀 Failure: Dance −1
A bit of light chatter in front of the camera, and the bar that had been blinking yellow flipped to green. The mission window locked in at 10. Yellow meant room to grow; green meant it was locked in?
While I was still piecing the system together, five pull-up bars rolled into view in the distance, lined up in a row.
“…?”
Pull-up bars?
“Of the twenty five-person rooms prepared in this lodging, half have two bathrooms—but the other half have only one.”
Right before the sports day began, they announced that half of the hundred trainees would be living in rooms with a single bathroom. If the MC noticed the half-crushed looks on everyone’s faces, he gave no sign of it as he cheerfully pressed on.
Making his first appearance today, the program MC was Cheon Tae-rim—a famous singer and actor everyone recognized on sight. He had the image of an all-around entertainer who could do anything, and he was popular for how unpretentious he came across. Watching the contestants suffer, MC Cheon Tae-rim wore a thoroughly pleased expression. That classic as long as it’s not me look.
“The people standing with you right now will be your roommates and your teammates. So! To build camaraderie with your roommates—and, while we’re at it, to decide the fate of your bathrooms—sports day! Let’s all give it everything we’ve got!”
“This group is our roommate group?”
“No way!”
People had thought these were just teams for the sports day. No one had realized they were also assigning who you’d share a room with. Panic rippled through the hall. Somewhere in the distance, a loud scream went up. It sounded like Cheong-hee’s voice.
Regardless of how the contestants reacted, the sports day started without hesitation.
“And the first event is none other than the alpha and omega of bodyweight training—pull-ups!”
Five pull-up bars stood gleaming in a row at the center of the auditorium. Yeah. I’d seen this coming the moment the bars rolled in.
“One person per team per event! No doubling up, so talk it over carefully and pick your representative!”
“….”
They told us to choose a rep, but our team fell into total silence. I was no exception.
Pull-ups. If this had been me at twenty-four, maybe—but at nineteen, I had no confidence. I’d only started properly building my back muscles with a bar at twenty-two.
Even if I tried to work every trick I knew, pull-ups were such a pure physical exercise that technique meant nothing without the muscle to back it up. You needed calluses on your hands, too.
I might manage a few, but not many—that much was obvious. For screen time, I needed a more reliable event.
“Would it be all right if I went?”
“Oh~ That would be great.”
Han Sang-jin, who had been quiet until now, stepped forward. Everyone clapped. Even at a glance, his shoulders and back were broad—the body of someone who trained.
In clothes he looked reasonably lean, but if you watched closely, the muscle showed with every movement. And Han Sang-jin delivered exactly as expected—no, better.
“Ah, beautiful! Han Sang-jin! Fifteen! Sixteen! Seventeen! He’s got room to spare! Incredible!”
“Huu.”
Three groups went before us, and then it was D-group’s turn—the last. The contestant from Team 17 next to Han Sang-jin tried desperately to keep up, but stalled at fifteen. Han Sang-jin kept going alone. The best anyone in Groups A through C had managed combined was fifteen, so he was already in first—and he still looked comfortable.
And he’s doing them dead-hang. No kipping at all….
“Whoa, how many is first place doing in perfect form?”
“Forget idols—shouldn’t this guy be at the national training center?”
Everyone else had been swinging and thrashing to force the count up before dropping off. Han Sang-jin raised the number slowly, with flawless form. As the count climbed without stopping, spectators’ jaws dropped. The perfect technique alone made it a pleasure to watch.
Those dense arm muscles, pumped and impossible to hide even under a sky-blue sweatshirt, drew pure admiration—and Han Sang-jin rising and falling in that state seized every contestant’s attention at once.
“Yes! Team 16! Contestant Han Sang-jin! Twenty-one! Twenty-one! Outstanding. An overwhelming first place!”
“Thank you.”
“And with that, first place Han Sang-jin, joint second Ahn Do-hyun and Im Su-han, and third Kim Yo-han—the first event comes to a close! Ah~ that was amazing!”
He bowed with a composed face, accepted the gold badge, pinned it to his clothes, and walked back—and in the vulgar sense of the word, he looked cool as hell. A first place that was both effortless and absolute.
That raw, side-by-side comparison cranked the heat of the sports day up another notch. Whoever had been halfheartedly dragging their feet at the words “sports day” was gone; in the events that followed, contestants threw themselves in like maniacs. Just that one opening match had been enough to light their competitive fire.
And those badges look way too good. I want one.
After the first event, the little trophy-shaped badges handed out by rank—gold, silver, bronze, all of them—were surprisingly pretty. Thinking about wearing one pinned to a sweatshirt for the entire lodging period, they were also a perfect way to stand out from the other contestants.
Anything that could make you even a little more visible among rivals was something you had to chase.
“Ah, Contestant Woo Cheong-hee! He’s bouncing nonstop! So fast! Is that a fish that crawled onto land? That thrashing bodywork—this is no ordinary kid!”
“Contestant Song A-seong! Matching Woo Cheong-hee’s pace! He’s incredible too! Both of them are seventeen, is that right? Pure fighting spirit overflowing!”
The sports day raged on. Second event: sit-ups. The previous group had somehow set a monstrous record of seventy-two in one minute—and still the teenagers didn’t tire.
Song A-seong and Woo Cheong-hee were on Teams 16 and 17 respectively, so they ended up competing side by side in the same D-group. Both of them flopped up and down like mad. Their energy was ridiculous.
“Ah, Contestant Han Min-hyeok. What’s got him so happy? He’s laughing! Laughing so hard he’s splitting his sides!”
Han Min-hyeok, who’d been grinning from the moment he sat in front of A-seong to hold his feet, burst into dying laughter every time A-seong bounced up. A-seong, furious, kept doing sit-ups while glaring daggers at him.
Next to them, Lee Jae-jin—holding Cheong-hee’s feet—looked just as dumbfounded, snickering under his breath.
“Everyone gets along so well….”
“…?”
Han Sang-jin, sitting beside me, gave me a puzzled look. Teasing like that was only possible if you were close, wasn’t it? Either way, out of that chaos Song A-seong and Woo Cheong-hee came back side by side with silver badges. Joint second. Seventy-two had been out of reach, apparently—but sixty-eight wasn’t nothing.
A-seong was kicking at Min-hyeok, claiming he’d lost the gold because of his hyung. See? They get along fine.
“Next event! The hundred-meter dash!”
“I’ll take this one~.”
Han Min-hyeok slipped past A-seong’s foot and shot forward. A-seong scrambled after him, lost him, and came back seething.
With that kind of reaction speed and pace, he’s easily ranking material.
There was no time to even cheer. Twenty runners took off at once, and the race was over in a blink. Han Min-hyeok came back with a gold badge.
“….”
Gold, silver, gold across three events. Was this team’s specs just too high?
I couldn’t stop the corner of my mouth from climbing. Halfway through the sports day, a few teams had started to stand out. Team 10 with bronze-gold-bronze; Team 16 with gold-silver-gold; Team 17 with silver-silver-silver. Team 15 had silver and bronze as well—overall, a handful of teams were monopolizing the badges.
Even so, gold-silver-gold is overwhelming.
The only ones left in our group were me and Kwon Do-ha. That Do-ha had good athletic sense was already well known from the filming of Great Journey four years ago. He’d said he started taekwondo in first grade, hadn’t he?
Secure Screen Time at the Sports Day
☐ Progress: — (30/100)
A glance showed the gauge had already climbed to 30, even though I hadn’t done a thing yet.
Teammate buff, maybe.
When it came to racking up screen time at a sports day, placing high was still the best method.
“All right—this next event is!”
At MC Cheon Tae-rim’s gesture, the heavy curtain hanging over the stage of the auditorium drew back, revealing a massive structure. Thick mats laid out below, and ropes dangling high overhead—both seared themselves into my vision.
“None other than! Six-meter rope climbing!”
The enormous setup that emerged from behind the curtain looked nearly eight meters tall once you counted the lower platform.