| Episode 66. New Year’s Wish (2)
This was how the sudden talk of going to see the sunrise had come about.
Lee Cheonghyeon had gone to someone else’s room for a moment because there was something he wanted to borrow from Gang Giyeon, and there he found Bak Ju-u enjoying some healing time while watching videos of temples.
The two got along well because neither of them had any sharp edges, and, as they often did, they sat side by side, taking a keen interest in each other’s activities and chatting.
Sitting shoulder to shoulder and watching videos on a single tiny spare phone—tours of Korean temples, finding nature in the city, and so on—the two were led along by the algorithm all the way to “Top 10 New Year’s Sunrises You’ll Regret Missing.”
The New Year’s sunrise, glowing bright red and said to herald the beginning of an entire year, left a powerful impression on Bak Ju-u, who apparently did not go out much, and Lee Cheonghyeon, who had done nothing but study throughout his childhood.
Now, with their debut just around the corner, it would be nice if they all went to see the sunrise together.
How wonderful would it be to strengthen their teamwork while admiring a magnificent view together!
The two thought so. And just like that, they ran to their leader, the one with decision-making authority over the group’s activities.
When Jeong Seongbin heard the story, he apparently agreed that it was a really good idea. Gang Giyeon had said he would go if all the members went.
“…What did Choe Jeho say?”
“Jeho hyung said it sounded good!”
“He did? You’re not joking?”
“Yes. He said he’s been feeling stiff lately, too.”
Lee Cheonghyeon’s words were nothing short of shocking.
Choe Jeho was willing to participate in a group activity that wasn’t even work-related? And the reason he wanted to go was that he wanted to loosen up his body? Apparently even all the dance training up to now hadn’t been enough for a guy who danced every kind of dance imaginable.
While I was still dumbfounded, Lee Cheonghyeon openly began trying to sell me on the idea, showing me a picture of the temple.
“How about this place, hyung? They say it’s a little over two kilometers. Isn’t that manageable?”
That kid thought two kilometers in the mountains was the same as two kilometers on level ground.
All of a sudden, I found myself wishing that this young friend would try collecting all 200 stamps from the Famous Mountains challenge. I’d tell him to give it a shot next time.
In any case, if everyone wanted to go see the sunrise, we had to avoid the temple Lee Cheonghyeon had chosen. The view there wasn’t very good.
‘Seeing the New Year’s sunrise really does require luck.’
Manager Nam had dragged me around for several years, but I had never once seen a sunrise that made me think, This is the one.
Thanks to that, I had to descend the mountain carrying Manager Nam’s cup noodles and thermos, my shoulders ready to burst, while my already-ruptured eardrums endured three hours of him cursing my rotten luck and asking how I could have come so many times without seeing a single sunrise.
To keep this young soul from getting hurt, I explained beforehand how much seeing the sunrise depended on luck, and how we all knew that there was actually no difference between the sun that rose on December 31 and the sun that would rise on January 1.
Lee Cheonghyeon answered:
“If the sunrise is that hard to see, and we go this time and see it for the first time? Then that would be amazing, right, hyung!”
That’s not how it works. It doesn’t just show up exactly when you want it to.
My chest felt tight, like I was chewing on a piece of hardtack that had frozen solid. We hadn’t even started hiking, and I was already tired.
The one saving grace was that I would be going with the younger generation, who were used to searching for things online.
They were young, so unlike Manager Nam’s crowd, they would take care of what they needed themselves. At the very least, I wouldn’t have to scour shopping malls for information on hiking poles.
As expected, Jeong Seongbin and Lee Cheonghyeon had already started searching the internet for hiking gear and trails.
“It’s winter, so it’ll be really cold, right? Does anyone not have a scarf?”
“I only have sneakers for practice. It’d be a little weird to go into the mountains wearing practice sneakers, right? We aren’t going somewhere high, so would Converse be okay?”
Perhaps they took my silence as permission, because the boys were tremendously excited.
There were more than one or two things in that short exchange that bothered me, but I deliberately didn’t intervene.
Seeing the sunrise had nothing to do with the KPI of making them into idols.
Why should I volunteer to take care of them outside working hours…?
“Gang Gyeon, are you going to wear a padded jacket?”
“It’ll get warmer once we climb up. Let’s dress lightly.”
Wait. Did I just hear the two youngest having an insolent conversation?
“We can just bring hand warmers.”
“There’s nowhere to throw away trash in the mountains, so why bring so much? Lee Cheonghyeon, you don’t get cold that easily anyway. Just dress appropriately.”
“What do you mean, dress appropriately? Do you all want to catch the flu? Do you want to perform your debut stage in front of a pharmacy?!”
A shout burst out of my mouth before I knew it. The members widened their eyes and looked over at me.
What am I going to do with you, you future frozen pollack who don’t even know how cold a winter mountain can be…?
* * *
At dawn on January 1, we all climbed the snow-covered mountain under our manager’s supervision.
I could feel the air, cold enough to cut through flesh, even through the padded jackets our manager had lent us. My breath fogged the air before my eyes.
“Wow, if I hadn’t listened to Iwol hyung, I might have frozen to death….”
Lee Cheonghyeon, heavily armed with a neck warmer, thermal underwear, and hand warmers, rubbed his forearm as he spoke.
Of course. Did you think we’d only have to wait an hour or two for the sun to rise?
Standing still for several hours on a pitch-black winter mountain was no ordinary task. Separate from physical stamina, you had to fight the cold as well.
Worried that the precious vocalists’ throats might suffer in the chilly wind, I continuously supplied them with warm honey-ginger tea I had heated from the dorm.
The crampons I had ordered immediately after the sunrise idea first came up were fastened to their shoes.
In the end, I had also researched and personally ordered hiking poles, placing one in each of their hands.
Was it overkill with the equipment? Compared to having someone sprain an ankle in the mountains right before debut, being overprepared was a hundred times better. From now on, I might as well just sign up for a hiking equipment shopping site.
“When will the sun come up?”
Gang Giyeon asked. His gloves were covered in snow, as though he and Lee Cheonghyeon had gone off to build a magnificent stone tower.
“Soon. You even built a stone tower because you said you were going to make a wish when the sun rose?”
“Lee Cheonghyeon insisted that if we made two wishes, both would come true.”
How innocent.
But the world doesn’t work that easily. I prayed every day for Hanpyeong Industries to fire me, too, and that never came true.
Just as I was about to lose myself in memories of the hundred-day prayer I had once offered, Choe Jeho, who had been sharing fish cake broth with our manager, called out to us.
“Hey, isn’t that the sun coming up?”
“Hm?”
No way.
A proper sunrise was harder to see than people thought.
Even a slightly cloudy day could hide the sun behind the clouds and let the sky grow bright without anyone being the wiser.
Besides, no matter how clear the weather was, it was still too early for the sun to be visible.
“Oh, it really is!”
“Hyung, come quickly…!”
Jeong Seongbin and Bak Ju-u called out to us loudly. A faint vermilion sunlight was falling across their faces.
I had told them not to strain their throats in the cold.
I had also told them not to run in the mountains, yet Lee Cheonghyeon and Gang Giyeon were racing over to where the other members were.
They all seemed to need some serious education.
But before that—
“How is it, Seongbin hyung? Aren’t you glad we came?”
“Yeah. It’s really amazing. Isn’t it, Ju-u?”
“…Yeah. I’m glad we came.”
“Jeho hyung, you’re the oldest, so make a wish on behalf of all of us.”
“Why do you always pick on me, Gang Giyeon? Make Kim Iwol do it.”
Amid the crowd marveling at the rising sun, I spoke to the boys grumbling among themselves.
“Enough. Make your wishes before the sun fully rises. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”
At my words, the three below Jeong Seongbin closed their eyes. All three except Gang Giyeon even clasped their hands together.
I went over to Choe Jeho, who was standing beside them with his arms crossed, and asked:
“Why aren’t you making a wish?”
Choe Jeho responded with an expression of disgust.
Figures. Since you came along without a fuss, I thought you wanted to make a wish, too.
Choe Jeho alternated his gaze between my face and his younger brothers making their wishes, then closed his eyes and stood at an angle, as if he would at least play along.
I borrowed our manager’s phone and took a picture of the five boys standing in a line with their eyes closed, making wishes as they basked in the morning sunlight.
And while they made as many wishes as they wanted, I quietly watched the sun rise.
A wish.
A wish, huh.
The only proper wish I had ever made in my life was that I wanted to quit my job.
But to commemorate seeing a sunrise for the first time on the mountain I had climbed so many times, I made a different wish for the first time—one that wasn’t about quitting.
‘Until we meet again, I hope noona is happy.’
…That was my wish.
Sure enough, no sooner had I made it than Lee Cheonghyeon came running over and asked:
“Hyung! What did you wish for?”
“I wished that none of you would go off-key during the first broadcast.”
“Gasp… I should’ve wished for that, too.”
And so, I descended the mountain through the snow with the five troublemakers I would have to part from when the day my wish came true finally arrived.
* * *
As long as you didn’t skip dance practice for several days at a time, there was no way you would suddenly be unable to dance something you had once performed well.
Naturally, the goal of dance practice right before debut wasn’t to make up for the parts they couldn’t do, but to raise the overall level of completion even further.
Singing was similar. So was practicing how to look at the camera, and their team chant.
If everything else was simply reinforcement intended to help them show an even better side of themselves, there was one thing with an entirely different nature.
“Seongbin hyung, could we eat dinner a little early today…?”
“Giyeon, are you hungry…?”
The lifelong homework of idols: dieting.
The members of Spark were fairly thorough when it came to self-management.
Their self-management had never gone off course in the past seven years. Even in the article photo announcing their disbandment, their jawlines had remained sharp.
That also meant they had always maintained themselves in peak physical condition.
Until now, Gang Giyeon had at least been allowed to eat dinner with chicken breast because he needed to grow taller, but with debut now right around the corner, he had to eat nothing but greens, no excuses.
Beside him, Lee Cheonghyeon wore the expression of someone who had already lived his entire life. He should have been grateful that, thanks to me, he at least had the option of exercise plus dietary control.
“I want chicken… Fried chicken…”
“Then I want pickled radish….”
Beside Lee Cheonghyeon, who was craving chicken, even Bak Ju-u, whose appetite normally approached zero, was muttering something strange.
I approached the two wilted cabbages and said:
“You can eat chicken and exercise more afterward.”
“Do you know how many calories are in chicken?! An hour or two wouldn’t even come close to making up for it all!”
“Good, you know that. Then endure it.”
“Seriously, hyung, if someone stabbed you, an icicle would come out instead of blood.”
Even while grumbling, Lee Cheonghyeon immediately got up from his seat.
‘It was about time they hit their limit.’
They were young men in the prime of their appetites. It was absurd to expect them to secretly abstain from even a single snack.
With Teacher Bak Ju-u, who ate everything unseasoned, and Gang Giyeon, whose motto had to be “Ghosts who die after eating look the best,” stationed in the group, they must have managed to hold back until now by watching one another.
Even I could barely remember the last time I had eaten jjolmyeon.
The sauce at that place had been really good, too. What a shame.
“Eating less and moving around more does make me hungry.”
Jeong Seongbin gave an awkward smile.
This was serious. The fact that a boy who rarely voiced complaints had reached the point of saying this meant he was hungry enough for his stomach to be sticking to his back.
Then Jeong Seongbin scratched his head and smiled.
Looking at him, I suddenly remembered my childhood, when I had been hungry every single day.