The pre-meeting video for “New Star Family” was uploaded to the channel at 6 PM without any special promotion or explanation.
And immediately, comments started pouring in, with fans capturing screenshots from the video and sharing them everywhere.
– ZoomZoom (21 minutes ago): Finally, it’s here. I predicted this since the YouTube channel was created. Now we have a variety show to watch every week
– KonjacJelly (20 minutes ago): Han Byul is so cute. It’s like cuteness personified
– Tiger Woods (19 minutes ago): Yeon-woo moments 5:43 appearance / 7:32 drops side dish / 8:58 eyes sparkling… (See more)
– SpongeRiceBobTeacher (19 minutes ago): New Star Entertainment is too good ㅠㅠ Please keep going ㅠㅜ
– ThirstyShinChan (18 minutes ago): He’s so handsome. But I got annoyed seeing my reflection on the monitor when the black screen appeared at the end of the video
Jo Yu-jin, in her second year of being a Wooz member, was lying on her dormitory bed scrolling through YouTube for something interesting after finishing her work-study job during the break.
‘It’s all luxury haul videos. What’s the point of watching when I don’t have money right now?’
Her thumb moved busily, but most of the videos were ones she had already seen or wasn’t interested in.
‘Is the algorithm really analyzing my preferences correctly? They say AI technology has advanced, but why does it only recommend boring videos?’
Just then, as she was scrolling, she noticed a video that had just been uploaded from a channel she was subscribed to.
‘New Star Family? Pre-meeting?’
Tilting her head curiously, she clicked on the video, which started without any explanation, showing Son Jin-yuk sitting in a traditional Korean restaurant.
“What’s this?”
Jo Yu-jin, who had been lying down, sat up on the bed.
As Son Jin-yuk had expected, a caption reading ‘Awkward awkward’ appeared on the video.
Then, one by one, the actors from New Star Entertainment started entering the restaurant.
‘Oh? Could it be…?’
And then, Ryu Yeon-woo walked into the restaurant on the screen.
A caption appeared simultaneously.
– These members are going on a trip. The self-produced variety show “New Star Family” will be uploaded every Sunday at 6 PM.
“Eeek?!”
Bam─.
Just as Jo Yu-jin screamed, the dormitory door opened and her roommate unnie came in.
“What! What is it!”
“Huh? Oh, nothing. I was just surprised while watching YouTube.”
“Geez. I thought a cockroach had appeared in the room or something.”
Yu-jin shook her head, laughing at her unnie’s words.
“There are no cockroaches. We fumigated last week, remember? It’s not that. Ryu Yeon-woo is filming a YouTube variety show.”
“Whaaaat?!”
Her roommate unnie shouted.
It was her roommate unnie, Hong Yu-ri, who had originally got Jo Yu-jin to join Wooz.
===
**
===
The day after the teaser and pre-meeting video was released, the actors boarded a bus parked in front of the New Star Entertainment building.
Seo Ji-eun was the first to board the bus with a lively step.
“Finally, we’re off!”
“It feels like we’re going on a school trip. Byul, you’ve been on a school trip, right?”
“No! It overlapped with the ‘Fiery Blossom’ filming period, so I couldn’t go!”
Jung Cheol-min looked at Han Byul with sympathetic eyes for a moment before nodding.
“That’s how it is for celebrities, I guess. But now you’re going on a school trip with us instead.”
Jeong Soo-yeon boarded after Han Byul, and finally, Son Jin-yuk and Yeon-woo got on.
PD Joo Hyun-seok, sitting in the front seat, turned around and addressed the members.
“Everyone, our destination today is Gapyeong.”
“Oh, Gapyeong is nice.”
“I’ve never been to Gapyeong before.”
Observing the actors’ reactions, PD Joo spoke again.
“We’ll play a few games once we get on the highway, but since it’ll take over an hour to get there even though it’s close, just relax and chat comfortably for now.”
“Okay~”
The vehicle departed.
While the actors were chatting about various things, Son Jin-yuk took out his smartphone.
“Hmm?”
Son Jin-yuk chuckled as he checked a message.
“What is it, Jin-yuk hyung?”
When Yeon-woo, sitting next to him, asked, Son Jin-yuk showed him his smartphone and said,
“Looks like So-hyeon saw the YouTube video released yesterday. She just texted saying she wants to come along too.”
At that, Seo Ji-eun, who was sitting behind, lit up.
“So-hyeon? You mean senior Han So-hyeon?!”
Seeing that look in her eyes, Yeon-woo nodded.
‘Right, Seo Ji-eun was a Han So-hyeon fan.’
He remembered how at the last awards ceremony, Han So-hyeon was taken aback by Seo Ji-eun’s friendliness, whom he had thought of as a little Han So-hyeon.
Han So-hyeon had agreed to join the agency once her contract period, which had just over a year left, ended.
Just then, Yeon-woo’s smartphone vibrated.
‘Hmm?’
Thinking it might be a message from Han Hae-woon, he quickly checked, but the sender was an unexpected person.
– Jin Yu-han: I have 7 months left on my contract.
‘Hmm…?’
It seemed that besides Han So-hyeon, they would soon have more colleagues.
‘CEO Jung will be pleased.’
===
**
===
As the car left Seoul and entered the highway, PD Joo’s eyes lit up as he looked at the actors.
“Well, everyone, when you arrive at the accommodation, you’ll need to have lunch. We’ve prepared bibimbap for lunch.”
“Oh, bibimbap!”
“I can already feel my mouth watering.”
But PD Joo smiled meaningfully.
“While everyone would be happy eating bibimbap with all the ingredients, unfortunately, you’ll have to acquire them one by one through games.”
Seeing PD Joo Hyun-seok’s beaming face, the actors sighed with expressions that said, ‘Of course, it would be like this.’
“PD, your nickname is the Game Master, after all. Still, this is within our expectations.”
The other actors nodded at Son Jin-yuk’s words.
Yeon-woo’s face darkened at the mention of playing games.
‘They probably won’t do something like Halli Galli here, and I don’t even watch variety shows usually, so I’ll be the weak link.’
However, the game that came out of PD Joo Hyun-seok’s mouth wasn’t the kind of game Yeon-woo had expected.
“Alright, we’ll start with a simple general knowledge quiz. You just need to answer in order, but the questions will get harder as we go along. How do you want to decide the order?”
At the PD’s words, Yeon-woo’s eyes changed.
‘General knowledge? That sounds like something I could handle.’
Naturally, Seo Ji-eun went to sit at the very front.
“I’ll go first!”
Her confident attitude left everyone speechless.
“Th-then I’ll go second!”
In the end, they agreed on an order starting with Seo Ji-eun and ending with Yeon-woo.
“Yeon-woo, you need to answer well. I’ve watched a lot of PD Joo Hyun-seok’s shows, and I know the last question will be some ridiculously difficult one.”
Yeon-woo nodded at Son Jin-yuk’s words.
After agreeing on the order, PD Joo opened his mouth to address the actors.
“Alright, here’s the question for the fried egg!”
Ding─.
Ding─.
Yeon-woo was waiting to answer whatever question came his way when it was his turn, but it never even reached him.
“Ah, I’ve never heard of Reykjavik before. The capital is weak…”
Seo Ji-eun buried her face in her hands and knees.
Even Jung Cheol-min, who thought he was quite knowledgeable, was the same.
“What kind of general knowledge is this? So what’s ‘jungkkeokmma’? Isn’t it Chinese joint-breaking massage?”
“…The important thing is an unbreakable heart.”
In an instant, bean sprouts, sesame oil, and spinach all flew away.
“So, do we only have gochujang and rice left…?”
When Son Jin-yuk asked with a frustrated face, everyone nodded.
Watching the actors, Yeon-woo stroked his chin.
‘Hmm, actually, just mixing rice with gochujang would be fine, but for the sake of entertainment, it might be good to make a move at this point.’
Yeon-woo stepped forward with a serious face.
“Indeed, the important thing is an unbreakable heart. PD Joo, let’s go all in.”
“Oh, you say you want to go all in?”
“We’ll bet our gochujang. In return, I’ll answer five questions.”
“Five questions by yourself? You know if you lose the gochujang, you’ll only have plain rice left, right?”
PD Joo’s eyes sparkled.
After all, what did it matter to actors who were watching their diet if they had bibimbap ingredients or not?
He sensed that Yeon-woo was deliberately raising the stakes to create more entertainment.
However, there was someone who was serious about the bibimbap.
“Hey, Yeon-woo. We can’t lose the gochujang. How can we eat plain rice?”
Jung Cheol-min, who was far from watching his diet, had his stomach growling even now.
Yeon-woo grinned while looking at Jung Cheol-min.
“Teacher, don’t you know me? I never lose.”
At that moment, PD Joo, reading the timing, jumped in.
“Alright! The actors’ team bets the gochujang, and the production team bets all the ingredients. Let’s have a showdown! Here’s the question right away.”
Holding the cue card, PD Joo’s eyes sparkled as he asked.
“What is the capital of the Republic of Fiji, an island nation in eastern Melanesia, Oceania?”
“Suva.”
Seeing Yeon-woo answer mechanically as soon as the words fell, Son Jin-yuk shook his shoulders.
“That’s correct, right?! You’re not just cursing, are you?”
How could he not know?
He had been undercover for months to catch the leader of a Ponzi scheme-type cult who had fled to Fiji, and had even been on the verge of a shootout near Nadi International Airport.
At that moment, PD Joo, who had been looking back and forth between the cue card and Yeon-woo, opened his mouth.
“…Correct.”
After that, he answered two more questions correctly in a row.
Now there were two questions left.
Suddenly, the writers busily pulled something out and handed it to PD Joo.
Seo Ji-eun, who had some experience with variety shows, saw this and raised her hand with wide eyes.
“Hey! Aren’t the PD and writers cheating right now?!”
But Yeon-woo smiled.
“It’s okay. Cheating is also a skill in gambling. Let’s see what they’ve got.”
“Right now, it feels like we’re seeing Pierre Choi instead of Ryu Yeon-woo…”
After checking the cue card handed by the writer, PD Joo’s eyes lit up with a triumphant expression.
‘Honestly, this difficulty level is crossing the line. I should make him get it wrong and then just provide the gochujang and spinach.’
And then PD Joo opened his mouth.
“Even if you’re poisoned with cyanide, which is well-known as a deadly poison, there’s a way to detoxify if you have time to act. It’s using this…”
But before the question was even finished, Yeon-woo opened his mouth with a calm face that didn’t change color at all.
“It’s sodium nitrite. There’s also a method of injecting sodium thiosulfate.”
“……”
While PD Joo was silent, Son Jin-yuk opened his mouth.
“Sodium what…? I can’t even understand the question.”
When PD Joo looked at the cue card, it said the answer was sodium nitrite.
He didn’t even understand what the thio-something Yeon-woo mentioned was.
“…Uh, that’s correct.”
“Wow. What is it? Do all Korean college students know this much?”
“Well, even high school students learn chemistry, after all.”
Son Jin-yuk tilted his head.
“Aren’t you in liberal arts? Wasn’t it economics?”
“Ah, it’s just a hobby…”
At Yeon-woo’s words, Son Jin-yuk shook his head.
However, for Yeon-woo, knowing how to deal with all kinds of poisons was just common sense among common sense.
‘Among them, cyanide is a classic among classics. It should be considered retired from active duty already.’
In this bus, only Yeon-woo nodded as if it was obvious.
At that moment, PD Joo pulled out the cue card at the very bottom and spoke, not giving up.
“Ah, there’s still one question left! There’s a black hole model that doesn’t rotate or charge, calculated from the metric named after this person. Among black hole models, it forms a spherical symmetry…”
“The answer is Schwarzschild. Karl Schwarzschild.”
PD Joo, who couldn’t even finish reading the cue card, hung his head.
“Correct…”
“Indeed, bibimbap feels incomplete if even one ingredient is missing.”