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It’s a freezing morning, and the loud music blaring takes Jiwon back to the grueling filming days of 2 Days 1 Night season 1. A little more sleep would’ve been nice, but a filming schedule was a filming schedule, and they needed to get to work.
One by one, the members drag themselves out of bed and into the front yard, where a smiling Na PD awaits. Jiwon’s long learned not to trust those smiles, knowing they mean nothing but trouble. Thinking about how Na PD seamlessly tricked them into coming to the filming site at the crack of dawn pained him enough.
“Good morning everyone,” Na PD says, sounding too cheerful for the morning. The members are in various states of consciousness, squinting at him. “It’s breakfast time, but of course, as you all know very well, nothing comes free.” This earns a collective groan from the members.
“Couldn’t you just let us eat in peace for once? I mean, the whole point of Three Meals a Day is to give us stuff to cook,” Jiwon grumbles. Both the staff and Na PD chuckle, to his chagrin. “I don’t know if you’ve figured it out, but we’re combining the concepts of New Journey to the West, Three Meals and Winner Over Flowers,” Na PD says matter of factly. Jiwon narrows his eyes at Jaeduck, thinking about his wish, but he decides not to press it further.
“Here’s the breakfast mission. We’re going to do the ‘Guess the Person’ quiz,” Na PD continues, holding up a familiar stack of A4-sized paper. “As long as you all get it right, you can get all ingredients to make budae jjigae. However for each wrong answer we’ll take away an ingredient. That includes the gas cooker.”
Suwon groaned. “We really need the gas, Jiwon hyung. The firewood is too much work,” to which Jiwon replied with a glare, “So get yourselves together, you jerks—” Na PD gestured to the staff to make sure his little tirade was censored— “or else we won’t even get rice to eat.”
“Shall we begin?” Na PD cut in, to avoid any possibility of a bloodbath on the first morning. The members turned back from their bickering, nodding and gesturing impatiently.
Needless to say, having a “Guess the Person” quiz first thing in the morning is a disaster. King Sejong and King Taejo are mixed up, one of them confuses Park Sodam with Kim Goeun, and someone fails to recognize the lead actress of The World of the Married, earning a series of loud, heated warning about netizen comments from the others.
As time crawls, it seems as if their chances for getting to have a hearty breakfast are dim, until they’re shown pictures of 80s and 90s figures. When they finally clear the round, they cheer as if they’d won the Olympics, jumping around wildly though only having woken up half an hour beforehand.
The prize for their efforts is white rice. “It’s better than nothing,” Jaeduck says cheerfully. “Hyung, get the big pot,” Suwon calls to Jaijin, who’s already walking off to whoever knows where. Meanwhile, Jiwon tasks himself with gathering the firewood.
They manage to get a fire going after some effort, since it rained the previous night. Whether fortunate or not (this was debatable), the fire was quite large, producing a lot of smoke. Jaeduck, who had tasked himself to fan the fire, scrunched his face into a pained expression.
“Gosh—” he chokes, “The fire’s too big.”
“He’s on fire,” Jiwon raps sadly. “The smoke goes higher…” Jaijin’s roaring laughter echoes through the air, nearly busting the eardrums of everyone present. Suwon starts cheering and waving his hands as if at a concert.
“You all could at least try to help,” Jaeduck whines, still fanning the fire and coughing, while the rest of his members continue rapping Jiwon’s song, though off beat.
Na PD didn’t know whether to laugh or massage his temples in frustration. This was going to be an excruciatingly long three days.