Episode 170. Customer Appreciation Event
“Seongbin, when was the lyrics deadline again?”
It was already the twenty-seventh time I’d asked Jeong Seongbin that exact same question.
“The day after tomorrow, hyung.”
Jeong Seongbin answered diligently once more. Thanks to that, I could feel doomsday drawing closer with each passing day.
I wasn’t the only one feeling depressed.
Choe Jeho, who had personally handwritten instructions for using the self-defense spray during our first reverse fansupport, was practically wearing a death mask too.
Rapper Lee Cheonghyeon and semi-rapper Gang Giyeon had finished their submissions long ago. Jeong Seongbin was in the middle of reviewing his, and Bak Juu seemed to be nearing completion as well.
I picked up a crumpled ball of paper Choe Jeho had thrown to the floor.
“Can I look at this?”
“Do whatever you want…….”
Permission fell as though he had given up on everything. When I smoothed out the crumpled paper, traces of anguish scribbled in ballpoint pen were revealed.
[lacking spark and lacking far-to-go spark and]
You punk, how much do you want to say these guys lack spark? Your sincerity is leaking out line by line, isn’t it?
But it wasn’t time to criticize someone else.
[Because you were all there, SparK could exist
Rejection reason: Too much like an award speech
SparK is always by your side
Rejection reason: Too much like an election campaign]
Because my notebook wasn’t much different.
Only us two eldest hyungs were completely useless to the team. At least when it came to SparK specifically, it seemed the saying “there’s no dongsaeng quite like his hyung” didn’t apply.
While the two hyungs were banging their heads together in agony, another roommate, Lee Cheonghyeon, entered the room.
“Oh, looks like both of you are pretty stuck, huh?”
“‘Pretty’ stuck? It’s not coming out at all, not even a little.”
Lee Cheonghyeon giggled at my words.
Is it funny? Is someone else’s pain funny?
“But hyung, you know too.”
Lee Cheonghyeon wrapped his arm around my shoulder and said,
“What’s important for work is the deadline and the pressure.”
It was what I had said to Lee Cheonghyeon when he first started composing.
That karma was coming back to me now.
“Hyung.”
Lee Cheonghyeon’s eyes, deep like a blue hole, sent a profound gaze.
The corners of his mouth were round like a rainbow stretched across a clear sky after rain, and his cheeks rose plumply like organic special-grade eggs.
“Hyung believes that as long as there’s coercion, people can do anything, right?”
“…….”
“Let’s brainstorm from scratch with lots of thought!”
Lee Cheonghyeon’s bright voice became a whip lashing my back.
Considering he had come to torment me with an angel-like face, Lee Cheonghyeon actually helped Choe Jeho and me quite diligently.
“It might be harder because you’re thinking of writing something from zero.”
“The fans send us fan letters, right? Think of it as writing a reply to them.”
Listening to our ace instructor’s words, Choe Jeho and I poured our entire beings into writing lyrics.
After receiving help, the confessional feeling had diminished considerably, which was a relief if nothing else…….
“No, Jeho hyung. Writing ‘love’ ten times doesn’t make it lyrics, okay?”
……Never mind. I should read it over once more before showing it to Lee Cheonghyeon.
* * *
The concept for the music video of SparK’s first fan song, “The Third Letter,” was “The Boys We Loved Back Then.”
You didn’t read that wrong. I read it exactly as written on the storyboard.
“We’re ‘The Boys We Loved Back Then’?”
I saw Gang Giyeon asking with a disgruntled face.
Yeah, you’d think it was strange too. No matter how I looked at it, not one of your faces had any loveliness to it.
“Don’t worry, kids. With your faces, you can pull it off just fine!”
A staff member bustling about said so while shooing Jeong Seongbin’s face away.
Um…… wouldn’t the student discipline committee guarding the school gate back then suit us better?
There was at least one guy from whom you might feel the “L” of love. It was Lee Cheonghyeon.
But that love wasn’t the romantic kind.
What Lee Cheonghyeon’s face represented was…….
‘Agape.’
Except now the direction the love flowed had reversed.
Look at that face, which has received all the affection in the world. The sports field back then probably loved Lee Cheonghyeon too, not just us.
‘Or should we push him in the drama male lead style like Choi Jeho?’
Choe Jeho, who had pulled off all kinds of intense styles from curt undercuts to half-curt styles, had his bangs down today. It was the “styled covered-hair Jeho” that the Sparklers had been wishing for.
Perhaps because it felt awkward having his forehead completely covered, Choe Jeho kept messing with his bangs. Then he got his ass chewed out by the stylist.
It was good that he looked more innocent, but we couldn’t leave out physical appeal either. I boldly made a suggestion to the stylist.
“Wouldn’t it be better for Choe Jeho to roll up his sleeves? I think it’d be better if his forearms showed.”
“Iwol, you think so too?”
Choe Jeho looked at me with an expression full of things to say, but I ignored him.
You’re going to be dribbling a basketball in the music video anyway. Not showing your tendons while you dribble is practically a crime.
Bak Juu took on the role of a sunbae in the art club. The brown apron and paint stains harmonized well.
“Wouldn’t it feel more artistic if there were paint stains on his face too?”
“The kids’ faces are most perfect when left alone; you can’t just paint something on them.”
“Don’t you know that a little imperfection drives people crazier? No more, no less—just two brush touches on the cheek, exactly.”
The person in question, Bak Juu, was at peace, but the makeup staff around Bak Juu were burning up.
I too was of the “SparK’s faces are most beautiful when left alone……” faction, but since I had no real expertise in the first-love department, I stayed silent.
Then from afar, the textbook definition of first love walked over with heavy footsteps.
“Hyung, are you ready?”
A gentle smile. A neat school uniform. A rare analog watch filling his wrist in this era where everyone wore smartwatches.
It was an image befitting the only man in SparK born in spring. As expected, Jeong Seongbin, you really monopolize all the tenderness in this team, don’t you.
On the other hand, as for me…… I won’t bother looking myself over. I knew I wasn’t exactly cut out to be someone’s first love.
Gang Giyeon wasn’t in a much different boat than me.
Did he buy piercings with the money he made selling his necktie? There he was, wearing small ear cuffs on his earlobes—well, since Gang Giyeon’s ears weren’t pierced, he couldn’t wear actual piercings. Had bandages wrapped around a few of his fingers too.
And yet, there he was, clutching a pair of wired earphones and an MP3 player preciously in one hand.
“What was your concept again?”
I asked even though I knew the answer.
Gang Giyeon answered without resistance.
“That kid in the rearmost corner of the silent classroom.”
“Your historical accuracy is impressive.”
When I offered him praise, Gang Giyeon’s expression clouded over.
Just how explosively beautiful would this music video turn out to be? I looked forward to it.
* * *
Work doesn’t disappear even when it decreases; just as the fan song was nearing completion, the fan club issue came crashing in.
For a typical idol, when creating a fan club, the fandom name and light stick should normally be revealed at the same time.
But for UA, there was a massive barrier called Yu Hansu.
That bastard had revealed the fandom name simultaneously with his debut to stop the company from dragging its feet, so the only thing left now was to make the official fan club kit and light stick.
Actually, the fan club kit itself hadn’t been easy either. The ID card and rolling paper were fine, but aside from those, it was too obvious that the composition was poor value.
“I think the proportion of paper goods is too high. This will definitely spark talk about unit price, and I don’t think we should let words like ‘poor value operation’ come from the mouths of fans who joined the fan club because they love SparK.”
So I put everything on hold. Since I tossed it to Jeong Seongbin, who knew idol culture a bit more broadly than me, he would take the lead in improving the composition.
In addition, since UA had very little experience officially releasing goods, we were going to put out SparK official goods too.
When I saw the first lineup and the design drafts…… truly…… I had no words. UA was notorious for being terrible at putting out goods.
Perhaps because a dedicated team had been formed, they looked somewhat better than the goods I had purchased through proxy before.
But that didn’t mean they were “pretty goods.”
“I agree that Cheonghyeon’s face is basically a jewel just hanging there.”
“Yeah, and?”
“I don’t think the fans would want a giant Cheonghyeon-face keyring hanging from their backpacks.”
At its core, idol merch was all about the satisfaction it provided and whether it could pass as an everyday item.
Just slapping photos on things and calling them goods? They’d definitely get torn apart all night on community forums for being a lazy cash grab.
So in the end, I came out pitching: “I happen to have a great idea just for this~”
Fortunately, the dedicated team caught on quickly, and starting from the second lineup, lists that wouldn’t get them cursed at began coming up.
Up to here, it was all good.
The problem was that UA was trying to pull the heinous stunt of limited-quantity sales.
“Undisclosed total quantity and first-come-first-served sales?”
I swore I almost fell over backwards. How furious had the Sparklers been in the past over UA’s behavior like this?
≫ Damned goods, I want to buy them but they won’t sell, dammit
≫ I have money, why can’t I buy……? Please take my wallet……
≫ Are you brainless? It sells out in 30 minutes every single time, so why do you only post apology notices after every sold out? A goldfish has more learning ability than you, dammit
≫ Limiting quantity because you don’t want leftover stock is so pathetic. Please trust your idols just a littleㅠㅠㅠ I totally get that you hate losing even a single penny, so please increase the stock, you XXX
These people didn’t know. How much public anger limiting the quantity of official goods invited.
Of course I understood the company’s desire not to lose money. But what was the point if it hurt the fans’ feelings?
So I went and laid myself out on the floor of UA in protest.
“There’s a wonderful method called pre-orders in this world, team leader.”
“But Iwol, if there ends up being leftover stock……”
“I know a cheap warehouse for storage. I’ll reserve it all. So please, just no limited sales!”
“You don’t have to reserve it, so just get up! Why are you lying on the floor like that!”
“SparK gets the praise while the fans do all the suffering, but the companies take all the money! Who are those goods even for!”
I knew full well that since the fandom wasn’t large enough to run factories at full capacity, they couldn’t rashly mass-produce. But shouldn’t they at least let everyone who wanted to buy do so? Especially since they were an entertainment company dealing with fans.
After going through this whole process, many thoughts came to mind.
I thought about it while sitting on the edge of my bed, and I pondered it sitting at the kitchen table.
And then a sad conclusion was reached.
I guess I’ll just have to keep working from now on…… was what I thought.