| Episode 67. Public Business Registration
When I was young, I often went hungry.
It wasn’t because we were poor. I’d already realized our household wasn’t impoverished when I saw our income bracket for the national scholarship.
It was simply that none of the adults in the house cared about a child having food to eat.
Back then, if even a single snack that a grown man might pick at while watching TV disappeared, or if the ingredients in the fridge decreased even a little, I’d be cursed out like I’d committed every sin in the world.
In those days, the space called “home” was full of things I couldn’t understand.
Why couldn’t I eat when there was food? Why did saying I was hungry get me hit?
No matter how much I agonized over it, the questions went unanswered, and my stomach stayed hungry.
So I repeatedly cooked a cup ramen in secret and snuck down to the apartment recycling area afterward. I kept doing that until I started making my own money and eating meals outside the house.
Since then, hunger had become a word that gave me very complicated feelings. I guess you could say it bothered me.
There wasn’t even an adult here screaming that they were only wasting food, so I felt a little sorry for these guys having to starve this much.
And it wasn’t like they were hopeless enough to eat and then shamelessly lie down without a care.
After thinking for a moment, I glanced over at them and said,
“……Then order one chicken and share it.”
“Huh?”
Jeong Seongbin looked at me with eyes like a startled rabbit.
“Roast chicken, on the condition that you drink water with it instead of soda. If that’s fine, order it.”
“Ah, of course that’s fine!”
I Cheonghyeon, who had regained his energy as if he’d never been gloomy, shouted.
Jeong Seongbin seemed half in doubt, but then began a full-fledged demand survey of chicken brands.
In the end, they scraped together the last of their conscience and ordered exactly one charcoal-grilled chicken. From the place with the fastest delivery.
It was a stark contrast to my coworker, who had sworn he would really cut down on coffee, only to put three packets of coffee mix into his tumbler the very next morning.
While they bustled around setting the table, I opened the chicken box that had arrived first. Then I fairly divided the steaming chicken among five plates.
I was carefully portioning out the cuts when the kitchen suddenly grew noisy.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
When I asked, the guys gathered around the table turned to look at me.
I Cheonghyeon called me in a trembling voice.
“Um, hyung.”
“Yeah. What?”
I Cheonghyeon reached into the plastic bag Jeong Seongbin was holding.
And what came out in I Cheonghyeon’s hand was…… cola.
“They said the owner added it as a freebie, so it feels wrong not to drink it…… What should we do with this?”
“Yeah, don’t try anything.”
And so, with even an unexpected gift in hand, we had a moonlit chicken party.
Ah, I didn’t eat, so I’ll correct that from “we” to “they.”
Still, if I ran along the Han River with them, I did more than enough. I even ran the longest, so that said it all.
That night, for the first time, I had the precious experience of sneaking out to the recycling area with a group instead of alone to throw away late-night snack trash.
And I fell asleep hoping the Spark members weren’t the type whose faces would swell up just from eating a few pieces of heavily salted chicken.
* * *
With just Yu Hansu gone, everything proceeded smoothly. The Spark guys weren’t causing trouble much either, so everything became satisfying.
“Iwol, I heard you’ve had a rough time lately?”
“Thanks to the company being so considerate, I’m okay now…….”
“You went through a lot. Honestly, I didn’t think PD Yu was like that…….”
Except for the fact that it was burdensome to have people pity me from every direction.
Because of what happened with Yu Hansu, no matter what meeting I went into, I always had to receive at least one greeting asking after me before we got to the main point. It was excessive attention.
It was the same in the conference room today.
So many people patted my shoulder and told me to say something anytime if I was struggling. I was so busy bowing ninety degrees and thanking them that I barely had time to lift my head.
After receiving a heap of warm gazes, I returned to the practice room, and I Cheonghyeon immediately looked my way and waved.
“Hyung! Your timing’s perfect. They said our teaser is out!”
“Teaser?”
No wonder it felt familiar.
That line was exactly what I Cheonghyeon had said when Parthe’s debut song teaser came out. Though it felt like ages had passed since then.
“Yeah? How was it?”
“No idea. We haven’t watched it yet.”
As he said that, Gang Giyeon shifted slightly to the side to make room.
“You haven’t watched it? Why?”
“Because we thought you’d be here soon, hyung.”
Don’t tell me this meant they’d waited to watch it with me.
When I glanced around, the guys were busy chattering, “Then should we play it now?” and “Should we watch on the laptop?!”
I didn’t understand. Normally, wouldn’t you want to watch your own debut teaser as soon as possible?
I told them to do whatever they wanted and sat down in the empty spot.
Once the chaotic atmosphere settled, Jeong Seongbin said,
“Then I’ll play it.”
When Jeong Seongbin pressed the play button, the dark screen split open above and below.
Through the gap appeared I Cheonghyeon’s ankles as he ran in mismatched canvas shoes with untied laces.
Next came Choi Jeho’s hand, which paused while putting wire cutters into a bag, then picked up a hammer and put that in too.
After that, Park Juu’s back and shoulders appeared, wearing a backpack as he stood still in front of a fire extinguisher at a large mart. A noisy instrumental played in the background.
Immediately afterward, Jeong Seongbin’s eyes filled the screen as he read something with intense focus.
Then the scene changed.
Gang Giyeon dumping out the can/bottle collection bin in the recycling area behind the school, and my hand tearing pages out of a notebook in a dark space and throwing them on the floor, passed by in turn.
The moment Jeong Seongbin appeared again and inserted a key into the padlock hanging on a storage room door.
The screen blacked out with an effect as if it had abruptly cut off.
Soon, with a crackling sound like a match being struck, a small white drawing of a flame appeared on the black screen, then scattered like ash and disappeared.
“Oh…….”
Along with I Cheonghyeon’s quiet exclamation, the guys groaned and moved away from the small phone.
They all must have been nervous. They’d monitored it so much on set, and yet here they were reacting like this.
“Still, it really is different once it goes through a professional’s hands.”
It was exactly the mood I’d intended. With this, my trust in professionals rose once again.
“What do you think, Iwol hyung? Does it feel like it came out the way you imagined?”
Jeong Seongbin asked cautiously.
“Yeah. It’s appropriately ambiguous.”
“Huh?”
“I mean it came out exactly according to plan.”
Putting it nicely, you could call it a classic teaser featuring rebellious characters.
By showing only parts of their bodies, it highlighted both mystery and visual beauty, and the harmony of the sound was excellent too.
Putting it badly……
≫ I came after watching Jang Junhu’s music video haha I’m cheering for Jeho!
≫ I came after seeing the profile photos, but which scene exactly is I Cheonghyeon’s cut……? Cheonghyeon, please show us your face. I watched it three times and I still don’t know where you are…….
You could say it was a teaser that wasn’t particularly impactful. The extreme decision to remove the group dance scenes probably played a part too.
“I’m going to read the comments for a bit and then join you, so everyone start practicing first.”
“Can’t we just look together and then practice?”
“I’m pretty sure I told you, Gang Giyeon, that you’re banned from monitoring.”
Was he trying to get his self-esteem chipped away before debut?
I drove the guys to the front of the mirror and sat down in an empty corner. Then I placed the laptop on my thighs and slowly scrolled down.
As expected, there weren’t many comments related to the teaser.
It wasn’t like there had only been one or two music videos in the idol market depicting wandering adolescent youth.
Especially in a market where intense concepts were trendy these days, it was even more difficult to draw attention with a pure-hearted concept.
If this teaser made people expect that kind of ordinary music video, then it was a great success.
“This is actually more surprising.”
I reread a comment I found while scrolling down.
≫ Guys, you’re finally debutingㅠㅠㅠ Everyone, please give lots of love to Spark, the visual feastㅠㅠㅠㅠ Lots of interest and support, please!!!
Kim Iwol♡Choi Jeho♡Jeong Seongbin♡Park Juu♡I Cheonghyeon♡Gang Giyeon
Since the press releases had gone out, I’d expected there to be a few people who’d marked down individual members.
But I hadn’t thought anyone would go this far to leave a comment for a group whose only publicly known information so far was six ID photos, and it wasn’t even clear how much they had been retouched.
On top of that……
“Why does my name have to be at the very front?”
I fiddled with my name attached in front of Choi Jeho’s.
The order the commenter had written our names in was by age and birthday. They must have compared the birth dates registered on portal sites one by one.
The oldest hyung of Spark that I knew was Choi Jeho. Naturally, the fans’ chant always began by calling Choi Jeho’s name.
Maybe that was why a comment that didn’t start with Choi Jeho felt incredibly unfamiliar. Like a comment aimed at something foreign that wasn’t Spark.
Guilt rippled through me and passed by.
How was I supposed to deal with the complicated emotions that came every time that happened? That, too, was homework.
“Is this at least better than getting stuck in the middle and then awkwardly disappearing later?”
With my left thumb, I lightly covered my name.
Then, so it wouldn’t look strange to anyone, I pressed down and rubbed over my name as if wiping dust off the screen.
≫ Guys, you’re finally debutingㅠㅠㅠ Everyone, please give lots of love to Spark, the visual feastㅠㅠㅠㅠ Lots of interest and support, please!!!
♡Choi Jeho♡Jeong Seongbin♡Park Juu♡I Cheonghyeon♡Gang Giyeon
“……Yeah. This is right.”
A dry laugh slipped out at the familiar sight. Was it because of the heat? My fingertip stung.
After checking all the few comments there were, I turned off my phone and stood up.
“Visual feasts, can I come in now?”
“Of course!”
Still, I would have to think about it.
About what three-syllable word would sound natural to put into the fan chant where “Kim Iwol” had once been, after I eventually left.