The game had to be played, and winning first place was non-negotiable. It wasn’t about the prize money—since they’d already missed the top spot in the previous round, this was the best chance to make up for it.
“Pis! Ta! Chi! O! Bagel!”
Min Yu-hyun shouted at the top of his lungs. Across from him, Yoon Do-jae, who had been staring intently at his lips, began mouthing the same shapes as if copying him.
“Sounds like my name, doesn’t it?”
Laughter rippled through the staff.
Yu-hyun’s face turned bright red. He shook his head furiously and bellowed again:
“Pistachio bagel!!”
“Kiss? …Kiss every day?”
“Ugh!”
“What the hell are you even saying?”
Both of them were growing frustrated—Yu-hyun for not being understood, Do-jae for not being able to make sense of it.
Yu-hyun raked his hands through his hair and groaned toward the director.
“Ugh!!! Can’t we pass this one? Pass?”
The director only crossed his arms in an X. No passes allowed. They’d already wasted half their ten-minute limit on this one question.
“Ha….”
Yu-hyun exhaled a long sigh, rubbed at his forehead, then suddenly brightened as if struck by an idea.
“There’s no rule against using gestures, right?”
Before the director could respond, Yu-hyun quickly drew a large circle in the air with his hands, then a smaller circle inside it.
The director froze for a beat, then shook his head with a wry smile. It meant: fine, there’s nothing he could do about it.
With gestures now allowed, the game suddenly became much easier.
Yu-hyun drew a bagel shape, pretended to take a big bite—“Ahm!”—and shouted:
“Bread! Pi! Sta! Chi! O! Bagel!”
This time, Do-jae seemed to catch on. He muttered uncertainly, “Bread? Bagel?”
Yu-hyun bobbed his head so hard it looked ready to snap. Do-jae finally shouted,
“Bagel! Pistachio bagel! Pi! Sta! Chi! O! Pis! Ta! Chi! O!”
“Good, right? Bagel?”
The staff burst out laughing again.
“No, no! Pi, pi, pi!!”
“Pi?”
“Yeah, yeah! ‘Suh’ like in skiing! Suh!”
“Duh? Feed?”
“No, no, no! Ssssss!”
When Yu-hyun drew a “ㅅ” in the air, the director immediately cut him off—writing letters was against the rules.
“Suh!”
But Do-jae had already guessed it from the motion and yelled, “Suh!”
“Yeah, yeah!! Pi-suh! Tah! Tah!”
“Ah!”
“No, no! Tah! Tuh-ah! Tuh-ah!”
“Tah!”
“Yeah, yeah!! Chi! Chi!”
“Ji!”
“No, no! Chi! Chii! Chiiii!!”
“Chi!”
“Yeah, yeah!! Pistachi, oh! Oh!”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, yeah!! Put them together!”
Yu-hyun clapped his hands together to show they needed to combine the sounds.
“Pistachio? Pistachio bagel?”
Correct.
The buzzer rang, and Yu-hyun pumped his fist in triumph. Do-jae gave a small nod, then muttered almost to himself,
“But what even is a pistachio bagel…?”
They managed five answers in ten minutes. Considering how much time “pistachio bagel” had eaten up, the rest had gone fairly smoothly.
The next pair was Beom Do-il and Lee Jun-hyung. Jun-hyung asked the questions, Do-il guessed the answers.
Do-il surprised everyone by understanding Jun-hyung’s pronunciation almost perfectly. They got stuck on the toughest word—[Consommé Pizza from W-Zone]—and ended with six correct answers.
Finally, it was Kang Chi-yu and Hyun Tae-oh’s turn. Tae-oh would be guessing, Chi-yu giving the prompts.
From the very beginning, Tae-oh had no interest in the game itself. He stared only at Chi-yu’s face, so intently it was almost predatory.
Even with loud music pounding all around them, his expression didn’t waver. It was as though even blinking would be a waste of time as his gaze roamed over every inch of Chi-yu’s face.
“R-I-E-G Research Institute!”
“I like you, Kang Chi-yu.”
He didn’t even try to answer properly—just said whatever he wanted. Clearly, this had been his plan all along.
“R! I! E! G! Research Institute!”
“I love you.”
“Hey! Say it right! RIEG Research Institute!”
“Should we get married?”
“Hyun Tae-oh!”
“Would be even better if you let me Imprint you.”
Tae-oh’s eyes curved in a long, teasing smile.
“Director, he’s not even trying to play the game!” Chi-yu snapped.
But the director only gestured for them to continue. Tae-oh’s live confession was far more entertaining than the game.
Chi-yu let out a deep sigh and glared.
“You don’t even want to win?!”
“You want to win?”
Surprisingly, Tae-oh had understood. Chi-yu nodded.
“A whole month of vacation is tempting, right?”
Without hesitation, Tae-oh answered:
“RIEG Research Institute.”
Correct. They moved on immediately.
“A Pair is Born!”
“A Pair is Born.”
This time, his reply came instantly, as if he could hear Chi-yu clearly over the blaring music.
The staff gasped, and Beom Do-il yelled that they should check whether he was cheating with his ability.
He wasn’t.
It was pure concentration—Tae-oh’s unwavering focus on Chi-yu. The bond they had built over more than twenty years only strengthened it.
In less than four minutes, Tae-oh had already beaten Do-il and Jun-hyung’s record of six.
“Escargots de Bourgogne!”
“……”
But foreign food names were tricky even for him. He hesitated, one sharp eyebrow twitching.
Then Chi-yu remembered. That dish had come up in their childhood.
“That restaurant we went to with my mom and your aunt! The seaside one with the big windows! Remember how you threw a fit about having nothing to eat, so you refused the snails, and your aunt smacked you for making a scene? You remember!?”
“……”
“That snail dish!”
“Snail dish…?”
As Tae-oh murmured, Chi-yu nodded furiously.
“Yeah! I told you it was good, begged you to try just one bite, and you finally did!”
“Escargots de Bourgogne.”
Correct.
He remembered perfectly—because Chi-yu had insisted it was delicious. But Tae-oh also knew it hadn’t actually been about the taste. Chi-yu had only said that to get him to try it once.
Which was why, to this day, that snail dish had never appeared on Chi-yu’s list of favorite foods.
Even the supposed “impossible” section with tricky food names, Tae-oh passed with ease. He cleared all ten questions in under ten minutes.
At 8 minutes, 20 seconds, they completed the round flawlessly.
Chi-yu beamed and gave him a big thumbs-up.
Tae-oh gazed back, his eyes dripping with honey, a lazy smile spreading across his face.
***
The third mission was the senses quiz. Hands tied behind their backs, blindfolded, with an object pressed between their cheeks—they had to guess what it was just by moving their faces.
First up were Beom Do-il and Lee Jun-hyung.
Watching them bound and blindfolded, Min Yu-hyun scowled. He hated the sight of Do-il rubbing cheeks with Jun-hyung, and he hated even more the thought of doing the same with Yoon Do-jae.
But his feelings didn’t matter. The game went on.
The first item slipped between Do-il and Jun-hyung’s cheeks was an ear mic. They rubbed against it furiously, trying to figure it out, until it slipped and hit the ground with a thunk.
Jun-hyung muttered,
“Ear mic?”
“Correct!” the staff shouted.
He looked startled at his own guess, while Do-il let out an impressed “Ohhh.” It had felt like a tough opener, but they nailed it.
The second item was Shine Muscat grapes. Jun-hyung guessed “grape,” Do-il guessed “Kyoho,” both wrong—then both blurted, “Shine Muscat!” at the same time.
The third was a tablet. Since they used it constantly, it was their fastest solve yet.
But on the fourth, a hot bar, they wasted too much time. Their total was three correct answers.
Next were Min Yu-hyun and Yoon Do-jae. So determined not to let their cheeks touch, they kept dropping the cotton swab and burned through their time.
By now, Yu-hyun didn’t care about the prize or the vacation anymore. He only focused on salvaging his image.
Unlike their stiff awkwardness, Hyun Tae-oh and Kang Chi-yu had the opposite problem— They pressed their faces too close.
Chi-yu tried to focus on the objects, but Tae-oh wasn’t interested at all. He only cared about pressing his cheek against Chi-yu’s.
When acorn jelly was slipped between them, Chi-yu recoiled at the slimy, sticky texture.
“What the hell is this?” he exclaimed.
But Tae-oh only grinned and asked, “Chi-yu, did you stick out your tongue?”
The staff burst into laughter.
In the end, Chi-yu and Tae-oh didn’t get a single answer and finished in last place.
The final game was played with all six at once.
Each pair was given a word. If both acted out the same pose to represent it, they earned a point. For example, if the word was “baseball” and both mimed holding a bat, they scored.
Three booths were set up, each holding two players, with opaque partitions blocking their view of each other.
From the start, the energy was chaotic.
Tae-oh kept craning toward the divider to talk to Chi-yu. Do-il tapped on his divider like Morse code to Jun-hyung. Only Yu-hyun and Do-jae stayed still, waiting silently.
Then the director announced:
“When the word is given, you’ll have five seconds before the buzzer. Strike your pose then. First word—Cat!”
Everyone grew serious as they thought through their poses.
Beeeep—
The buzzer rang, and all six struck their versions of “cat.”
Chi-yu placed both hands near his cheeks, curled his fingers like paws, and mouthed a soft “meow~.”
The movement suited him perfectly.
Tae-oh made almost the same gesture, but his clawed fingers looked sharp and dangerous. If Chi-yu was a kitten, Tae-oh was a jaguar. Either way, they matched, earning a point.
Yu-hyun and Do-jae, however, were completely off. Yu-hyun stuck out his tongue and licked the back of his hand, while Do-jae pressed his index fingers under his nose to mimic whiskers.
Jun-hyung did a variation of Chi-yu’s pose, curling his fists into an L-shape—one up, one down.
And Do-il…
Do-il, clearly exhausted from the earlier games, dropped flat onto the floor the instant the buzzer rang. He sprawled on his stomach, propped his head up with one arm, and lazily wagged the other behind him like a tail.
The staff burst into laughter.
Chi-yu, Tae-oh, Yu-hyun, Do-jae, and Jun-hyung all poked their heads out of their booths to stare at him.
Do-il, half his body sticking out from his booth, rested his chin on his palm and gave them a sly grin.
