Episode 188. Office Open: Part 2 (1)
“I’m back.”
When I returned after finishing a meeting for the variety show we’d be filming as a group before the drama aired, the guys in the living room came rushing over.
“Welcome back! Give me your bag!”
“Nothing happened, did it?”
Jeong Seongbin asked.
“No, nothing really.”
Apparently, to fit the concept of having the foresight to see the stock market in advance, we were all going to get our fortunes told. I’d never had my fortune or saju read before, so I was looking forward to it.
Although people in the soccer community were calling me “an idol more accurate than the oracle octopus” and “Brother Iwol, please channel the spirits just one more time,” surely the fortune-teller wouldn’t scold me for mentioning ancestral spirits to the members a few times.
“But why were you all gathered in the living room?”
“The second part of our dorm self-content goes up today. We were getting ready to watch it together.”
Because I’d nagged them that the sooner related content was released, the better, they’d decided to upload the video three days earlier than usual.
I remembered that. I did, but……
“Didn’t each of you have things to do?”
As far as I knew, this was not a time when you four could be this free.
Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon had to finish up the choreography for the new song.
Park Juu’s cover song cooldown had come around, so he had to get ready to film self-content, and Lee Cheonghyeon had to start arranging one of the B-sides.
And needless to say, Jeong Seongbin, an exam candidate, was busy.
And yet you dare to gather together and watch MiTube?
I shouldn’t have stayed quiet just to ease these guys’ worries. Even now, I needed to pry the shared laptop password out of them immediately and restore discipline to this group that had grown complacent……
“Our schedules are going well. We’re managing them so nothing falls through, so don’t worry.”
“Huh?”
Jeong Seongbin smiled.
“I mean it. We’ve been sharing a timetable and checking it, and not a single thing has been delayed.”
“You guys made a timetable?”
Did you make it by hand without so much as a single OA certificate among you? When, aside from one person, you’re all fragile high schoolers with nothing but brute strength? Do I need to go to UA and raise hell again?
I was putting my shoes back on, ready to storm out at once, when Jeong Seongbin grabbed my arm.
“No! We suggested that it would be nice to have something like that, and the dedicated team made it for us. They entered everything, too.”
“You told us before not to scatter things across platforms, so we just added a page to the Dotion we already use.”
Lee Cheonghyeon added.
They did their work well, communicated well with the company, and didn’t cause trouble.
‘At this rate, they won’t disband even without me, will they?’
Would I actually be able to watch SPARK’s seventh anniversary celebration live this time? If I thought about it, it was moving in its own way.
But the group running smoothly was one thing, and I still had to get what I needed to get.
“So, what’s the shared laptop password? Isn’t it about time you told me?”
At my words, the guys exchanged glances. The final decision was left to the leader, Jeong Seongbin.
As if he had no choice, Jeong Seongbin said with a smile that looked half resigned to enlightenment.
“It’s 000000. Six zeroes.”
“It was that easy?”
“Honestly, I thought hyung would try pressing it at least once. But you really couldn’t guess it?”
Lee Cheonghyeon’s words wounded my pride.
Kim Iwol, you’ve lost your touch. I may not look it, but I’m someone who even cracked the password on a PC that a resigned employee had locked and left behind.
“I tried the debut date and all sorts of things, but none of them worked. Why 000000, of all things? It’s way too weak for security.”
“The shared laptop barely ever leaves the dorm anyway. And if it’s too hard, Jeho hyung forgets it, so we’d have to stick it under the laptop on a Post-it.”
“You guys badmouth me openly now?”
Choi Jeho’s voice came from the room. The guy had bionic ears. He heard anything about himself like a ghost.
“But SPARK is 6-1=0. So it’s six zeroes!”
Lee Cheonghyeon shouted brightly.
6-1. Not 5-1, and not 5+1.
I’d thought the five of them would do well. But you guys still don’t even have that assumption in your heads.
“……Hyung, what’s wrong?”
Park Juu asked carefully. His gaze was on my face.
“Oh, just…… I’m bad at arithmetic.”
Especially subtraction.
Even more so when it comes to human relationships.
I never really know who should be removed, or how to fill the space when someone leaves.
So I want 6-1 to be 5. So there won’t be any need to add anything else on.
* * *
The timetable that had been created in Dotion was clean and easy to read. The members wouldn’t need to check things off themselves either; the manager had agreed to confirm everything at once.
‘At this point, we need another manager too.’
Manager Chanyeong’s burden had already grown because I was going out for external shoots. The more SPARK’s activities increased, the harder it would be for one manager to cover everything.
If it were a job posting, I could write one incredibly well, but I’d decided to cut back on company work unless it was necessary. So for now, I left that aside.
Just then, with perfect timing, news went up on the official account.
≫ @spArk_official
Leaving already?
Since you’re here, eat dinner before you go!
Let’s hang out a little longer.
We’ll show you lots of fun things.
[SPARK] 2X10XX Come Visit Our Dorm ep.2
“The video’s about to go up.”
“You’re right. Jeho hyung, come out! Let’s watch our self-content!”
Lee Cheonghyeon made a fuss as he called Choi Jeho.
Choi Jeho obediently crawled out of the room again.
……I still feel a little awkward around him.
Whether I felt uncomfortable with him or not, Choi Jeho pushed up his glasses with an impassive expression and sat down at the end of the sofa where he always sat.
I sat on the floor at the diagonal end farthest from Choi Jeho. Park Juu, whose assigned seat had been taken, wandered for a bit before settling into my old spot.
“Where did it leave off last time?”
“The room tour.”
“Then it really ended exactly halfway.”
Just as Kang Giyeon pointed out, after SPARK’s self-content opening video ended, a short “Last Video Recap” showed us eating breakfast, exercising, and exploring the rooms.
“What did we…… do after that?”
Choi Jeho muttered to himself in a voice that said he couldn’t remember.
Kang Giyeon answered him as if he had reached enlightenment.
“We did a lot of weird things.”
“We did?”
There was no way stylish, quiet, coldly handsome idols like SPARK had done such things. Maybe he was mistaken about something.
The screen showed 2 p.m. In the living room, laundry for six people was piled up like a mountain. It was because we’d taken all the clothes off the drying racks to hang up freshly washed laundry.
On the monitor, SPARK sat in their respective places like people at a laundry site in a folk painting and started folding clothes.
『Iwol: Shouldn’t we throw away this early-morning soccer club towel? Who brought this?』
『Giyeon: Chanyeong hyung (*SPARK’s manager).』
『Iwol: Let’s tell Manager-nim and throw it out. At this point, as a matter of decency, we need to let it go.』
Under my face as I looked at the towel, which had dried rough as tree bark, a caption appeared: “Kind idol Iwol, who even considers the feelings of towels.”
Several of the guys couldn’t hold back and burst into laughter. Apparently, seeing my kindness glorified was quite funny.
『Cheonghyeon: Animal socks keep showing up lately. Whose are these?』
『Juu: Sorry, they’re mine…….』
『Cheonghyeon: I’m not criticizing hyung’s taste! I just thought they might be too cute for our dorm. I think cute is already covered by cutie pretty visually Lee Cheonghyeon.』
The screen caught me once again. Beneath my icy expression, a new caption appeared: “Iwol (21 / saved a member as cutie pretty visually).”
“Is this a special about me that I was the only one who didn’t know about?”
“No way. Hyung’s performance just stood out too much.”
“Stood out? I didn’t do anything, but I keep appearing.”
How unfair. My chest felt tight with frustration.
『Cheonghyeon: You can tell Jeho hyung’s clothes just by the size. Hyung, what size do you wear?』
『Jeho: Me? About 100, I think.』
『Giyeon: 100? I don’t think so. Doesn’t Lee Cheonghyeon wear 100?』
『Seongbin: I once heard the stylist noona say you wear 110 to 115.』
『Giyeon: When on earth are you talking about when you say 100?』
『Juu: Isn’t that from high school……?』
『Iwol: Don’t go shopping for clothes by yourself.』
There was another issue besides Choi Jeho’s top size. A scene aired of black T-shirts and towels having been run together in the washing machine, with lint flying everywhere.
『Iwol: Anyone know where the lint roller (*tape cleaner) is?』
『Juu: I know……! Wait a second!』
I couldn’t believe they’d kindly added the official name there like that. I felt even more humiliated. This really did seem to be a special about my embarrassing moments.
Only after all the laundry was folded did SPARK begin scattering one by one to their own spaces.
The first to enter his room was Choi Jeho. Watching a b-boying video with earphones in was exactly how he usually looked.
Around the same time, Kang Giyeon crouched in front of the manga bookshelf and spent some time deep in thought. Then, as if he had made a firm decision, he chose one book and headed to his bed.
“Giyeon, I told you not to crouch like that.”
“It’s a habit……. But I’ve cut down on it a lot lately.”
“Do better. Think of your legs as SPARK’s legs.”
While Kang Giyeon on the screen stretched SPARK’s two legs out and began reading manga, Park Juu carried his pillow out to the veranda and beat the dust out of it.
Then he returned with a satisfied expression, straightened his bedding, stared at Kang Giyeon, and asked.
『Juu: ……Giyeon, do you want me to dust your pillow for you?』
『Giyeon: What? No, I’ll dust mine myself.』
『Juu: I was going to do it while I was dusting mine. You keep reading your book……!』
Then Park Juu took Kang Giyeon’s pillow in his left hand and Jeong Seongbin’s pillow in his right, went out to the veranda, and beat the dust out with tremendous power. It was hard to tell whether he wanted to beat out the dust or explode the pillows.
“……Did you two do something wrong to Park Juu?”
At Choi Jeho’s question, Jeong Seongbin and Kang Giyeon couldn’t answer right away. It was because they had seen the pillows that looked ready to burst at any moment.
Fortunately, Park Juu actively explained that he held no ill will toward his roommates.
Jeong Seongbin organized his schedule at the dining table, and Lee Cheonghyeon worked on music.
And I……
『Iwol: The bathroom…… I should clean the bathroom.』
『Cheonghyeon: Hyung, leave that alone. I’ll do it later!』
『Iwol: Then give me something to do!』
……wandered endlessly because I had nothing to do.
A caption appeared again beneath my hollow face.
『Iwol (21 / recovering diligently)』
Now even UA was pressuring me not to work. In such an embarrassing way, at that.
I wanted to die of shame, but the fans liked it, saying it felt real.
≫ Aside from the amount of laundry, this is just my house
The sight of the whole family gathering to fold laundry is way too familiar
└ @@: Mom, these socks don’t match. What do I do?
└ @: Put them aside. The other one’ll show up when we run the next load~
└ LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL and then it really does show up
└ You have to run the lint roller over all of that once, okay~?
└ Ugh, Mom, I told you to unfollow me
≫ Choi Jeho wears 115 tops???????
└ SPARK’s tallest member Choi Jeho wears 115 tops?????
└ SPARK’s tallest center emperor Choi Jeho wears 115 tops??????
└ SPARK’s tallest center emperor face-that-would-ruin-a-family-meeting super-huge troublemaker Emperor Jeho wears 115 tops??????????
≫ What is up with the maknae line knowing even each other’s top sizes?
Sometimes I’m so curious about just how far your friendship goes
≫ Park Juu looks like a silent gunman from the snowy plains, but his forearms are so solid that they make a person feel f***ing strange things, and the fact that it only shows when he’s beating pillows, of all times
└ Juu’s top 3 veins: neck when singing + temples and forehead when hot + forearms when beating pillows [NEW!]
≫ Why does Iwol get so anxious when he has nothing to do?
If you have no work, then rest, Iwol……
└ They turned our kid into this much of a workaholic…… UA, wake up
It seemed this reaction came because SPARK hadn’t shown much of their raw selves before.
But what came after this was even fresher. Fresher than freshly caught sashimi.
『Cheonghyeon: Hyung, my soul is about to overflow right now, so play air bass for me.』
『Iwol: Do you need mouth accompaniment?』
『Cheonghyeon: Of course.』
For some reason, SPARK’s music playtime, which made me wonder why it hadn’t been edited out, appeared in the video in full.
Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols