| Episode 11. Month-End Evaluation (2)
“Hyung, your complexion’s amazing again today. You ended up staying up all night yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Still, I survived thanks to Seongbin’s help.”
“When did you talk to that hyung again? Seongbin-hyung is incredible, right? He’s like a human karaoke book.”
I agreed with Lee Cheonghyeon completely.
The songs Jeong Seongbin had double-checked at dawn today matched my requirements exactly.
Thanks to that, all I had to do was listen to thirty whole songs on repeat until my ears practically oozed and make up my mind.
From here on, if I just added understanding the song, listening to the original and cover versions, singing it through, incorporating feedback, checking whether I’d incorporated the feedback, then singing it through again, incorporating more feedback, and checking again…….
‘Who was it that said getting started is half the battle?’
I felt like sighing, but I held it in just in case it dragged down the mood in the dorm.
In the middle of all this, Lee Cheonghyeon, unaware of what was going on inside me, spoke excitedly from the top bunk.
“Right. We need to order breakfast.”
Lee Cheonghyeon picked up the spare phone. Then he looked at me and asked,
“But hyung, are you the type to keep eating something once you get hooked on it?”
“What?”
“Jjolmyeon. You’ve been eating nothing but jjolmyeon for breakfast for over a week.”
“Huh?”
Now that he mentioned it, he was right.
All the trainees had the same meal routine.
They ordered delivery for breakfast, and for lunch and dinner they had things like salads and shakes.
The place we ordered from was always the same too, and come to think of it, jjolmyeon really had been arriving as my portion for a week straight.
Around the time I was twenty, I’d been really into jjolmyeon, so I had been eating it with the feeling of taking a little trip down memory lane, but still.
A little flustered, I cautiously asked Lee Cheonghyeon,
“Didn’t the new guy not get to choose the menu?”
“What are you talking about? Ever since you ate jjolmyeon on your first day, you’ve kept ordering only jjolmyeon!”
“……Did you, by any chance, ask me in the morning, ‘Hyung, are you having jjolmyeon?’”
“Yes. And every day, without even changing your tone, you went, ‘Yeah.’”
Only then did I understand why jjolmyeon had been delivered to me all week.
Maybe it was because I had never once gone against Manager Nam’s wishes whenever he asked something like, “We’re eating this today, right?”
I had mechanically answered yes even to Lee Cheonghyeon, who had been sincerely asking me what I wanted to eat.
To think the reason I had been eating nothing but jjolmyeon all this time was something this stupid. It was absurd beyond belief.
“Then should I order something else?”
“No. I’ll have jjolmyeon.”
“Huh?”
“The jjolmyeon there is good.”
At my answer, Lee Cheonghyeon shook his head a couple of times with a somewhat puzzled expression and disappeared from sight.
It must be annoying to order like that every morning. Starting next week, I should say I’ll take charge of ordering.
* * *
Just as my taste for jjolmyeon had reverted to what it was nine years ago, there were parts of me that had gone back—and parts that were not the same as before.
The most representative example was muscle mass.
Until I graduated from college, I had consistently taken care of my body.
Since I didn’t want to spend all the money I earned from physically demanding part-time jobs on hospital bills, maintaining myself wasn’t a choice but a necessity.
After joining the company, I gradually had less time to work out and lost muscle, and my current body felt exactly like that.
Sure, for now I could dance for hours and be fine, but without muscle, it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to endure the physical labor ahead.
Now that things had turned out this way, I had to forcefully carve out time in my schedule to exercise.
Next were the dark circles.
When I was younger, my age seemed to have covered for me, but now the area under my eyes was black. No matter how you looked at it, this face did not look like that of a bright, fresh twenty-year-old.
It seemed the shadows that had fallen over my skin all this time had followed me all the way back through time.
The muscles I wanted hadn’t come with me, but the dark circles had. This was how harmful frequent overtime was.
More importantly, an idol with skin discoloration…… was that okay?
I touched my rough face. Of course it wasn’t okay, so I’d have to manage it.
Other than that, I didn’t know what the standard was, but since there were things that had changed and things that hadn’t, I had to keep checking. Requesting a copy of the register for my previous family home was in the same vein.
When I found out Hanpyeong Industries had already been established, I despaired a little.
But as long as I somehow built a new life, that was enough, so I decided not to obsess too much over my old company.
The only remaining consideration was Spark.
As far as I knew, Spark’s debut date was about two years from now.
I had to move up that debut no matter what.
Part of the reason I thought I had to move up the debut date was my desire to leave this current life behind as soon as possible.
But the most important reason lay elsewhere.
‘If they debut two years from now, Spark will go through the same trial and error they did before.’
Spark, the first idol group UA put out, attracted quite a bit of attention once the outline of their debut started to take shape. It had the feeling of “a new challenge from a ballad powerhouse.”
But in the entertainment industry, where interest vanishes in an instant if something new doesn’t come out right away, UA made the mistake of putting off Spark’s debut date again and again.
For a whole year, no less. It was a mistake made by a company that had only handled established singers who sometimes prepared a single album for years.
Thanks to that, the attention Spark could have received upon debut evaporated completely.
Because there had been too much media play beforehand, once they actually debuted, the only reaction was along the lines of, “Oh, they’re finally coming out?”
While UA agonized over which direction to row in, MYTH, one of the two major agencies, debuted a huge rookie group.
From investment funds to promotions, the gap between a major and a small-to-mid-sized agency was vast.
As idol generations became divided around MYTH’s rookie group “Parte,” who would later become the representative group of the fourth generation, Spark’s position ended up floating awkwardly in midair.
≫ Why do I keep seeing posts asking what generation SPK is these days?
Honestly SPK should be fifth gen, but only the Sparkool freaks keep forcing their kids into fourth gen
└ fr lol how many years apart are their debut years
└ No, Spark is fourth gen. The last flame of the fourth generation, yep
└ You are seriously mean lolololol
└ I can accept up to 4.5
└ lolololololololololol
≫ But I get why they’d want to be grouped with fourth gen
Fourth gen was a golden age too, but when they debuted, there was a flood of boy groups and everyone got swept away except Spark, yep. Fourth gen groups often meet up with their peers and are all thriving lol
└ I’ve barely heard anything about them being buddy-buddy with anyone either. They’re a deserted island in the boy group world
└ Doesn’t friendship not really have much to do with years since debut??
└ The seniors don’t include them and the juniors don’t include them, so they just hang out among themselves
└ Leaving all that aside, the members themselves just look like they have zero social skills
└ What are the comments above even saying? Stop spewing headcanon
Generation had nothing to do with results, but in the idol scene, it was an extremely important issue.
In an idol market where even being mentioned once mattered, being grouped into the same generation and getting your name out even a little more definitely had an effect.
The flow of broadcasting also played a part here.
A survival program called “Idol Dynasty Annals” was launched, gathering male idols like Parte who were not too senior yet and therefore easy to push around, had a decent amount of buzz, and had enough experience to produce screen time on their own, then making them compete.
For a concept that claimed everyone would strip off their rank badges and go head-to-head, their years since debut were all about the same, though.
Spark, who debuted the year the program came out, naturally couldn’t go on it. They had almost no recognition.
And this survival program, “Idol Dynasty Annals,” became incredibly popular.
As the tendency to group the teams that appeared on “Idol Dynasty Annals”—shortened to “IDA”—into one generation grew stronger, and fandom competition and issues became concentrated there, Spark ended up as an awkwardly misplaced class.
≫ Whether they’re fourth gen can be settled easy by the IDA lineup
Parte and Allover, sacred-bone fourth gen groups, all came out, so wasn’t the generation more or less implicitly settled?
└ Basically the generation decided by the broadcasting station lololol
└ Why does everyone go this hard over something like generations, damn
└ Exactly. I’d at least understand if they were fighting over sales numbers
Compared to before, when Spark had at least been talked about, after the program became a hit, even mentions of Spark became rare.
It felt like if they just did a little more, a path would open up, but success showed no signs of coming easily.
At that point, the groups that had appeared on IDA made consecutive comebacks in rapid succession to carry on their variety-show buzz.
If UA had stubbornly pushed forward with Spark’s activities then, perhaps the result would have been different.
However, UA, which was short on manpower and had many singers it needed to support, ended up taking its hands off Spark for a while once Spark required more of a push than expected.
And so Spark, in their first year after debut, faced a hiatus of one year and two months after only two rounds of promotions.
That hiatus was the biggest reason Spark didn’t have many debut-era fans.
Many fans must have seen the team’s future in UA’s haphazard management. Even if I had been a fan, I would have quit stanning if the vision was this invisible.
Since I absolutely had to debut a team like this, it seemed better to remove as many potentially fatal elements for the group as possible.
‘We can’t have a situation where they take their hands off us, we can’t even make a comeback, and we end up on hiatus.’
Since debut was the goal, I was thinking that a task related to the debut date would probably appear someday.
This time, instead of words, an object appeared before my eyes. It was a green notebook with a thick cover. Judging by its appearance, it looked like a scheduler.
Just then, a part of the Life Whatever Manual came to mind.
+
▷ For smooth life reuse, accessories (résumé, scheduler, etc.) will be provided.
+
Come to think of it, it had said they would give me a scheduler too.
The holographic scheduler summoned before my eyes automatically flipped pages without me touching it.
When it reached the monthly pages, monthly calendars with something written on them every now and then passed by.
The final recorded schedule was the debut date two years from now, which would become the day I achieved my KPI.
‘How do I…… move this date forward?’
Honestly, if they were going to urge someone else to debut, shouldn’t they guarantee at least a little autonomy?
I touched the [Debut Date] section, which was about 730 days away.
‘Huh?’
Then the text area was selected. Just in case, I tried moving the debut date to the box for the day before, and a notification appeared.
+
[SYSTEM] Would you like to change the “Debut Date”?
▶ Yes / No
+
‘It worked.’
My fist clenched on its own. Now we didn’t have to keep steeping old content like a tea bag for one year and two months!
I selected the debut date again, and this time I kept turning the date forward.
The date, which had been moving without obstruction, stopped moving once I went back about one year. Considering various factors, it seemed the practical limit of how much I could move it up was one year.
‘Even one year earlier is something.’
As long as Spark could debut early and build up their weight class, I didn’t care. In terms of skill, those guys were already complete idols anyway.
When I placed the debut date on the earliest possible date and selected “Yes,” a new notification appeared.
+
[SYSTEM] “Party B” will be notified of the “Precautions.”
▷ If the existing schedule is altered excessively, corresponding penalties may occur.
▷ Even if the schedule is moved forward, the frequency of incidents slated to occur remains valid, and their timing will be adjusted according to the altered schedule.
▷ If the schedule is postponed, the need for attendance management will be raised, and restrictions will be imposed on activities.
+
In simple terms, it meant not to change the schedule carelessly.
It meant that if there were problems that were supposed to happen over two years, they would all erupt within one year instead. No wonder things had been going too much my way.
If the whole universe had been helping me enough to consider my situation in the first place, it wouldn’t have forced me to do something like become an idol.
Still, just from looking at this, it didn’t seem like there was anything that would cause me any great loss. I had already lost my student status and my home, so there were no more disadvantages for me to receive.
The only thing the current me could lose as the price for moving up the debut was youth.
But if my youth were taken away, achieving the goal of debuting as a rookie idol would become difficult, so my identity wouldn’t immediately return to being twenty-nine.
If it was going to happen anyway, it might be better for it to happen sooner.
Without hesitation, I checked the box saying I had fully understood the precautions and agreed to the contents.
Now all that remained was escaping my status as the world’s strongest stiff dancer.
If it doesn’t work, make it work. Never had the words management recited like a broken tape hit home as much as they did today.
I looked with satisfaction at the new debut date, shining brilliantly at less than D-370.
And in the not-so-distant future, this choice would be recorded as the stupidest choice of my second life.
* * *
After doing nothing but practice until I wilted like blanched spinach, the day of the month-end evaluation dawned.
At the same time, today was also the fateful day that would decide whether I earned a passing score and gained 30% experience, or got cut from UA and had my life end altogether.
“Hyung! You’re nervous today…… Wait, I guess you’re not! Judging by your face!”
“I look that way?”
“Yes. You look truly at peace.”
Lee Cheonghyeon gave me a thumbs-up.
I was past the age of getting nervous over something like an evaluation.
I recalled the past I had gone through in the vocal practice room, which could not be remembered without tears.
When I’d seen it in Lee Cheonghyeon’s vlog where he sang while playing the keyboard, the vocal practice room had looked like a little space belonging only to a musical genius, but once I entered it, it had degenerated into a coin karaoke room with the lights off.
There, I spent painful hours facing my own raw voice alone. It was the process of entering the barren idol world, where things like echo microphone effects did not exist.
Thanks to that, I grew by undergoing the ascetic practice of listening to my completely uncorrected voice every minute and every second. It was a miserable time.
For reference, since I’d heard that the voice I heard and the voice others heard were different, I also recorded myself and listened to it. I was afraid it would show up in my dreams.
After spending such difficult days, evaluation day had arrived.
Usually, at times like this, what came wasn’t tension but the sense of liberation that it was finally over.
I was stretching to wake myself up when Lee Cheonghyeon, who had finished getting ready to go out, was putting on his shoes by the entrance.
“Do you have somewhere to go?”
“A morning walk. I’ll go and then head straight to the practice room!”
Lee Cheonghyeon answered energetically.
If it was a morning walk on evaluation day, I had heard about it on the radio before.
It was a story about how Lee Cheonghyeon walked a lap around the neighborhood every evaluation-day morning with his same-aged friend Gang Giyeon, who got very nervous.
I had thought it was a rare friendship in this harsh modern society.
“Watch out for cars. Be careful not to let the biting wind touch your skin. Don’t forget, you must value your face above all else.”
“Yes, hyung-nim!”
“Isn’t that greeting a bit weird?”
“What’s wrong with my greeting?”
“Never mind…….”
Choi Jeho, who had been picking a fight for no reason, stopped nitpicking after my counterquestion.
Honestly. He must still be half-asleep.