| Episode 31. Runaway Hunt (1)
Ms. Min Jugyeong, who had called me in, asked if I had ever done presentations when I was a student.
“Presentations?”
“Yeah. Have you done any before?”
Of course I had. I’d done them until I was sick of them.
I could do a simple report-style presentation for four hours with a smile on my face.
But the current me shouldn’t be able to do that.
On the surface, I was nothing more than a fresh-faced twenty-year-old who had neither joined Hanpyeong Industries and given PTs there, nor given presentations in college.
I hesitated, pretending to be troubled, and answered.
“Not particularly.”
“I suppose so. Earlier, that proposal you gave me, Iwol—I showed it to the CEO right away since he’d stopped by the Management Division.”
The speed at which she submitted a draft for approval was faster than the KTX.
UA even had a CEO who read documents this quickly, so what had Department Head Nam been so busy with that he wouldn’t even accept a vacation request? Anger surged inside me.
But Ms. Min Jugyeong had done nothing wrong. I swallowed my resentment and smiled as hard as I could.
Unaware of how I felt, Ms. Min Jugyeong continued.
“And then the CEO said he’d like to hear you organize it and talk about it yourself.”
“Me, personally?”
“Yeah. What do you think? If you try it, it might turn out to be a surprisingly good experience.”
I’d done presentations hundreds of times, but not once had they ever been a good experience.
To me, PTs were nothing more than a collaboration between stress and nausea.
Still, if I was being given an opportunity, I had to take it.
For the current me, even agonizing over it was a luxury.
“Yes, I’ll do it. Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. You only have to explain what you came up with, so you don’t need to decide every little detail. As for a PPT…… it’d be nice if you had one, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t. I’m thinking of scheduling the meeting for sometime next week. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine.”
I had already gathered references while coming up with the concept.
Since I’d finished organizing the content, making visual materials wouldn’t be a problem.
Once I’d received the email address I had to send the file to in advance and an account for the NS program, all business was concluded.
One week remained until the PT. I had to settle it within that time.
And my specialty was pulling all-nighters.
I began racking my brain over how to grind down my time to make the best materials possible.
‘No matter what happens, I’m avoiding the frozen-dead lawn fairy tomb.’
I steeled my resolve. My shoulders felt heavy.
* * *
My “Avoiding the Lawn Fairy” project began immediately that night.
Lee Cheonghyeon asked me a question.
“That’s all well and good, but shouldn’t you do it while getting some sleep?”
He’d finished composing, so it wouldn’t have been strange for him to rest for a few days, but Lee Cheonghyeon was endlessly wandering around the living room.
“When you’re twenty, you’re at an age where you can chew rocks while pulling all-nighters.”
“What are you even saying, hyung? You sleep way too little!”
If you were me, would you be able to sleep when we were all about to become ghosts of frozen-dead grass?
If I were going to die from pent-up rage, that would be one thing, but I didn’t want to freeze solid and ascend to heaven.
“Where did you learn how to make stuff like this?”
Lee Cheonghyeon threw out a random question.
Says the guy who handled that composition program, dizzying just to look at, with effortless clicks and taps.
I didn’t have time to take my eyes off the monitor, but I did my best to give him a kind answer.
“When you live long enough, you learn how to do everything.”
“That’s insane.”
To be precise, you just needed to spend four years as the bus driver in group projects…… but the kids didn’t need to know that.
A few days later, the day of the decisive battle dawned.
In a UA conference room, I ended up giving what was probably around the four hundred fiftieth PT of my life overall.
No one here would be expecting much from me anyway, so the pressure was low.
There was a trap in that, unlike what I’d been told beforehand, people from every department had come in.
Still, since it was only a presentation to share the item, the surface-level PT ended in twenty minutes.
After the presentation ended, I habitually prepared myself to fire back at snide remarks.
But no one said, “Did you think we made time to listen to this crap?”
Instead, the CEO made me a counteroffer.
“Iwol.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you the proposal format, so do you want to try writing it up properly?”
Excuse me?
For a moment, I wondered whether these listeners had actually paid attention to the presentation.
Assuming they had, the fact that there were no questions about the content meant there wasn’t anything particularly problematic.
In other words, even in their eyes, my idea had enough realistic potential to be turned into a business project.
“Yes, understood.”
Decision-making without a single curse word.
A conference room where no one raised their voice!
To someone trained at Hanpyeong Industries, it was a questionable flow of events.
Still, it seemed I had succeeded in giving them the impression that it was worth trying.
It was a pretty decent result.
* * *
“Could everyone stay behind for a moment?”
After Kim Iwol left the conference room, the CEO stopped the people who had attended the meeting.
The CEO’s voice was excited. The atmosphere in the conference room was the same.
‘It makes sense.’
Min Jugyeong had expected it to some degree from the first moment she saw Kim Iwol.
That he was quite unusual compared to his peers.
‘I didn’t think he’d have talent in PTs too, though.’
She had only ended up attending the planning meeting because she had passed along the proposal Kim Iwol had given her, but it had been a surprising experience.
“How did it sound to you? I thought it was good.”
The CEO asked about Kim Iwol’s PT.
“I honestly thought…… it was good.”
“Me too. I was worried it might be too cliché, but after hearing it, it’s better than I expected.”
The employees answered while flipping through the proposal.
The concept Kim Iwol had presented was the most standard kind of “youth.”
In the music video he had envisioned, Spark started with a scene where, thanks to their rough, flashy atmosphere and appearance, they could easily be mistaken for delinquents.
Compared to the pure winter boys the company had been preparing, it was a drastic concept.
On top of that, school uniforms and youth.
These were elements anyone could easily think of, so they could easily come across as “cliché.”
Even more so because a major rookie group based on a mythological worldview had been revealed just last week.
Considering the recent market trend, they couldn’t ignore the impact of a concept.
But Kim Iwol’s choice was the most “Spark-like.”
At the same time, it had an original side as well. Thanks to the very small twist inserted at the end.
There was no way the company would refuse a choice that could best show the team.
No one disagreed that it was an item that considered not just visuals, but also their tendencies, public image, and more.
“The proposal alone was good, but the presentation was top-notch. He really is twenty, right?”
“Then he graduated high school this year? That’s no joke.”
“It’s really rare to see a kid that age with that much guts and brains. So, on that note.”
The CEO closed the proposal from Kim Iwol that he had been examining from various angles and spoke.
“What do you think about developing him on the producing side?”
From this point on, the Artist Management Team had no choice but to get involved.
Having grasped the situation, Min Jugyeong hurriedly sent a message to her team leader and opened her diary with an excited expression.
* * *
After the proposal presentation ended, I returned from the conference room and had been practicing for a while when the system popped up.
+
[SYSTEM] “Hidden Task” has been completed.
▷ Details: Be acknowledged as a producing member
▷ Reward: Experience Points (5)
▷ Cumulative Experience Points: 70
▷ Cumulative Points: 0
+
So they told all the staff to stay behind.
Looks like they had a very fun meeting without me.
With this, Spark had satisfied all the conditions necessary to rise as a self-producing idol group.
A perfect structure had formed, with me joining as a producing member, Lee Cheonghyeon composing, and Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon creating choreography.
Once the lineup was this complete, from the company’s perspective, there was no way they wouldn’t aim for a self-producing idol group.
‘Transferring jobs to become a manager is even more out of the question now.’
At this point, I felt like I had to think about preparing for my old age after debuting and then leaving the group.
My career, which had already turned to water, was now blurring like fog.
Or maybe it would be good to think about what certification to get.
If possible, I should study something productive. For example, coding, or coding, or something like coding.
‘Then is Lee Cheonghyeon’s song going to become the title track?’
From the start, the concept had only had the image of winter boys, without any particular item attached.
At UA, they hadn’t even begun discussing that they needed to receive songs for Spark.
So unless the CEO or someone on the Planning Team received a flash of inspiration, there was a high chance Lee Cheonghyeon’s song, to which I had even attached a concept, would be selected.
‘And on top of that, the song came out good enough for anyone to hear.’
If that was the case, even for the sake of marketing our self-producing ability, Lee Cheonghyeon’s song would become the title track.
Sure enough, soon our manager……
‘They said you might debut with Cheonghyeon’s song?’
……relayed those words to us.
It wasn’t definite, but those words alone seemed to motivate the four Spark bastards in their own way.
Wait.
Four?
We were one head short.
I immediately turned my head and checked the surroundings. One small head was nowhere to be seen.
“Lee Cheonghyeon still isn’t here?”
“No.”
“Why? He always comes exactly on time.”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say he’d be finishing late today.”
Kang Giyeon answered. Lee Cheonghyeon also didn’t have a cell phone, so there wasn’t really a way to contact him.
This felt bad.
As a connoisseur of bad vibes raised on reading the room at Hanpyeong Industries, I could guarantee my premonition wasn’t good.
“He’s not the type to skip practice. He’ll be here soon.”
“I think so too, but……”
Choi Jeho spoke indifferently, just as usual.
But recently, I’d seen a little too much of the deep darkness inside you guys.
If something happened, how could I possibly not be anxious?
Still, they said that during their trainee days, Lee Cheonghyeon had mostly been in charge of lightening the mood, so I decided to believe the stories about the past.
Maybe he had made the ridiculous mistake of leaving his bag in the classroom.
I worked hard to run my happy circuit.
If you wished for it desperately, it would come tr—
+
[SYSTEM] “New Task” has been assigned.
▷ Details: Secure a debut song
▷ Reward: Experience Points (10)
+
What the hell is that now?
Secure a debut song? If things keep going like this, the debut song will be decided automatically.
‘Is it telling me to buy the rights from Lee Cheonghyeon in advance or something? How mercenary.’
I hadn’t fully grasped all the issues related to song rights yet, but……
My anxiety grew stronger and stronger. For some reason, it felt like two hardship flags had been planted in my back.
“Um…… hyung.”
Sorry, Juu. Could you not call me right now?
It’s because there are nothing but ominous feelings in every direction.
“Lately, Cheonghyeon has looked like he’s had a lot on his mind sometimes. Do you think something might be going on……?”
“……”
Damn it.
Where the hell did that little shit run off to?