| Episode 43. Promoting Workplace Camaraderie (2)
Once you become an office worker, especially a low-ranking employee, there’s something you’re very likely to end up doing.
‘Ms. Iwol, where did we decide to have the company dinner today?’
‘Team Leader Jo recommended a barbecue place, so I made a reservation there!’
‘Barbecue? Ha, seriously. My clothes are going to reek.’
From booking company dinners, reserving chicken restaurants for welcome parties, choosing locations for company outings, to planning hiking courses so the executives could stamp their way through the 100 famous mountains.
In the past few years at Hanpyeong Industries, there hadn’t been a single event I hadn’t booked.
And that bastard Department Head Nam—apparently, when I wasn’t the one making the reservation, he ate barbecue just fine.
I’d thought I’d been tactless for choosing a barbecue place and apologized about thirty times.
+
[SYSTEM] A ‘new task’ has been assigned.
▷ Secure a music video filming location
▷ Reward: EXP (varies depending on the condition of the filming location)
+
‘I’ve never secured a filming location before. What am I supposed to do?’
Apparently, this system intended to hold me responsible for every single thing I’d changed by coming back to the past.
If this wasn’t picking a fight because I changed the song, then what was it?
The first background that came to mind, and the easiest option, was a school, but the phrase “varies depending on the condition of the filming location” bothered me.
It seemed that things like location selection and direction also counted as part of a producer’s abilities.
‘Usually, I think they filmed in at least two places, outdoors and an indoor studio… Do I have to take all of that into account too?’
I had always believed in the power of experts.
Why were experts experts? Because they were good at that line of work.
So I couldn’t understand why, when there were people who were good at their jobs, I had to be the one doing this. I was an expert in purchasing office supplies, for crying out loud.
The bigger problem was that in college I’d only worked part-time jobs, and after getting employed I’d only worked overtime, so I had no memories of going around to places.
If I’d at least wandered around here and there, I might have had some kind of feel for it, but all I could think of right now were memories of how there were a lot of good restaurants near Hanpyeong Industries.
‘It’s too late to start pounding the pavement now.’
Those sweet few days when I’d thought I might actually get some sleep at night were over as of today.
Just imagining myself scuba diving in the sea of information until dawn made me so happy I felt like crying.
If I had to start anyway, it was better for my well-being to start even a little earlier. Work was the kind of bastard that came looking for you without caring about your circumstances.
And so, two hours after I’d lain down to sleep, just as I was about to get out of bed, a familiar alarm rang above my head.
It was Lee Cheonghyeon’s alarm.
The alarm was turned off in an instant. Soon after, I heard Lee Cheonghyeon struggling to get up.
“Why did you set an alarm for this hour? It’s five in the morning.”
In case Lee Cheonghyeon had set it wrong, I asked in a low voice so Choi Jeho wouldn’t wake up.
But the answer that came back was, “I didn’t set it wrong.”
“My exam period is coming up soon… I was going to study and then go to school.”
“What?”
Without me realizing it, the high schoolers’ exam period had already come right up to our doorstep.
* * *
Until I was in high school, I spent a considerable amount of time studying.
Aside from eating, washing, and sleeping, I pretty much did nothing but study.
There were many reasons I studied so hard.
Because in our country, people still tended to place importance on academic background.
Because when I was concentrating, I wouldn’t notice even if there was yelling at home.
Because if I got grades good enough to receive a scholarship, I could go to university.
By sheer luck, I was able to receive rewards far beyond the effort I put in. I had received a lot of help from my older sister, but in the end, I managed to leave that house.
So I didn’t regret the time I’d spent doing nothing but studying, nor did I remember it as a painful period.
After graduating from university, I lived a life far removed from studying.
‘I’m sure that was the case.’
I thought as I looked at the student squad sitting clustered together in the living room, workbooks spread open in front of them.
‘How did things end up like this?’
After we’d gotten out of bed together at dawn like good friends, Lee Cheonghyeon spent an hour studying in the living room while I spent that time searching for music video filming locations.
Then Lee Cheonghyeon started clutching his head.
‘What are you doing?’
‘There’s a part I don’t understand. The answer guide is at school, so I can’t check it right now either.’
Luckily, it was a problem at a level I could solve, so I roughly explained the solution to him. Then Lee Cheonghyeon asked if he could ask me questions in the future whenever there was something he didn’t know.
A few days passed after that, and now that the exam date was imminent, the students had decided to hold a full-scale study session in the living room after practice.
Together with me.
‘Wait. Why me?’
‘You said to tell you anytime we needed you.’
‘Did I say that?’
Jeong Seongbin, Lee Cheonghyeon, and Kang Giyeon all had different weak subjects, so I had no choice but to sit in front of the low dining table where they were gathered.
The silver lining was that the knowledge from when I’d been preparing for entrance exams still remained.
Jeong Seongbin and Lee Cheonghyeon, who managed their grades, only asked me things from time to time, and Kang Giyeon was…
“Giyeon, I think your pen stopped moving?”
He was practically soulless.
He seemed to manage the questions from other subjects somehow, but once he reached math, he was completely knocked flat.
Thanks to that, I had to stop looking up my fifteenth abandoned school and give Kang Giyeon an educational-broadcast-style math lecture.
After fully drawing on my experience of juggling multiple tutoring gigs, Kang Giyeon’s pen began to move little by little.
With me even drinking the ion drink Park Juu had poured into a cup for me, it really felt like I was giving a tutoring lesson.
“Hyung, how did you end up thinking of becoming an idol?”
Lee Cheonghyeon, who was taking a breather while drinking, asked me.
In the distance, I saw Park Juu flinch as he was about to put juice into the fridge.
Right, that kid thinks I became an idol instead of going to university because I couldn’t pay tuition.
I deliberately raised my voice and asked back as if it was nothing.
“Why are you suddenly asking that?”
“Just because. You seem good at studying too, so I wondered what made you get interested in becoming an idol after graduating high school.”
That was actually the part people had been curious about when it came to Lee Cheonghyeon.
As a child, he had done classical music, and when he got older, he had been preparing to enter a gifted high school, only to suddenly become an idol trainee and enroll in an ordinary humanities high school.
But I couldn’t exactly answer Lee Cheonghyeon with, “Yeah, originally I wasn’t interested even as much as an ant, but there was no other way to combine filial piety with changing jobs.”
As if putting into practice the wisdom of our ancestors that you can’t spit in a smiling face, I smiled brightly, pointed to a fresh page he hadn’t solved a single problem on yet, and said,
“Cheonghyeon, is that important right now?”
“Of course studying is more important, hyung-nim.”
Whether Kang Giyeon looked at us like we were having a grand old time or not, Lee Cheonghyeon began focusing on his worksheet again. In a way, it was a remarkable ability to concentrate.
Watching Lee Cheonghyeon solve the workbook at a frightening speed, as if he had never been chatting at all, I thought,
‘Should I prepare an answer in advance about how I came to become an idol?’
This was a question that could come up again anytime, anywhere.
For now, I had avoided answering by joking around with Lee Cheonghyeon, but saying “I was cast” as an excuse wouldn’t be enough, since I was practicing so fiercely it was embarrassing to show other people.
‘Good thing I didn’t get tongue-tied.’
I never imagined my experience working with Department Head Nam and politely responding to all kinds of nonsense would come in handy in a place like this.
Back then, after about a year, words to smoothly steer conversations away started coming out of me like an answering machine.
At least until then, I believed I could handle the various situations coming my way with quick thinking.
It was truly a complacent thought.
* * *
When you live long enough, you come to learn that things you couldn’t even imagine in your own world actually do exist.
Like good bosses, or professors who don’t assign much homework.
I had things like that too.
Things I had “never once had,” like a company that provided lunch as part of employee benefits, or a younger sibling.
And included among those was a “good guardian.”
Some people say discord within the family remains in their minds for a long time and torments them, but my case was a little different.
‘We were so cold we couldn’t sleep, so Mom said we had it too good and kicked us outside. Don’t you remember? It was the middle of winter.’
‘I don’t remember any of that.’
‘Wow, I’m the only one who lost out. How do you forget something even after getting frostbite?’
If anything, I was the type who barely remembered things properly.
All I remembered was how indignant my older sister had been, since unlike me, she remembered things from our childhood in detail.
I met countless adults in society too.
But they were teachers or bosses, not “guardians.”
So throughout my life, I had never seen an adult who shared an emotional bond with someone my age.
“Your parents are coming?”
In that sense, Jeong Seongbin’s parents, who were apparently going to visit the dorm soon, would be the first type of adult like that I would ever meet.
“Yes. When I told them our debut was confirmed, they said they wanted to at least make us something delicious.”
“Whoa! Seongbin hyung’s parents are coming?”
From what I heard, Jeong Seongbin’s family had visited the dorm from time to time before and filled the fridge for them.
I… I hadn’t prepared myself mentally yet.
If I’d had even a friend, I might have gone over to that friend’s house and at least met their parents.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t that sociable of a person.
At this point, the closer the day of the meeting came, the more nervous I became.
Even among adults, the etiquette you show to professors, doctors, and executives differs slightly, doesn’t it?
Although my family home had been such a mess that it raised a hooligan like me, Jeong Seongbin’s household was the one that had raised Jeong Seongbin.
It would be a disaster if I unknowingly acted improperly in front of people from that kind of family. They say people never know their own mistakes, don’t they?
What if I unknowingly did something that violated social norms and then…
‘I won’t acknowledge my son debuting with a good-for-nothing like that, even if I have to die first!’
‘Please trust me and leave it to me just this once, Mother!’
…a situation like that happened? It would be a disaster.
‘I have to keep my wits about me.’
Since returning to the past, this was the second most bewildering moment I had faced after being confronted with the situation of having to become an idol.