| Episode 82. Our Company’s All-Purpose Entertainer (1)
At my request for the phone, Choi Jeho hesitantly handed it over.
The moment I brought the speaker to my ear, the furious scolding of a middle-aged woman reached my eardrum.
― That’s what I told you, wasn’t it? I told you to get used to cooking at the dorm! Whenever I told you to learn how to make side dishes from your mother before you left, you wouldn’t listen. I should’ve tied you up in the kitchen and taught you back then.
In no time at all, I found myself listening, as if under a spell, to how well Choi Miho, Choi Jeho’s younger sister, could fry chicken nuggets all by herself, and, by contrast, what on earth Choi Jeho thought he was doing at the age of twenty-one.
Thanks to his mother’s excellent projection, Choi Jeho’s face had turned bright red by the time he heard the entire conversation through the phone.
Beside him, Lee Cheonghyeon had bitten his lips tightly and was taking on the laugh-suppression challenge.
I had to resolve this situation before either Choi Jeho or Lee Cheonghyeon’s face exploded.
I spoke as energetically as possible, so I would come across to his mother as a cheerful, sociable, and polite young man.
“Hello, ma’am! I’m Kim Iwol, and I’m in the same group as Jeho!”
I never thought the day would come when I’d call Choi Jeho by his first name. Kim Iwol, the human being, had thrown away every last shred of his pride.
Thankfully, his mother responded so enthusiastically that I didn’t even have time to feel humiliated.
― Oh, my! Of course I know our Iwol! Did that rotten Jeho dump the kimchi pancake on you and run away?
“Ah, no, ma’am. I’m sorry to contact you so suddenly when you must be busy.”
― What would I be busy with? I’m not busy at all.
And with that, his mother passed down the legendary recipe for kimchi pancakes.
At the same time, she never forgot to scold her immature son every now and then.
― You must have a hard time taking care of Jeho, Iwol. The older brothers are supposed to be dependable, but our boy has never been that way, you know.
― Does Jeho talk much at the dorm these days? I tell him to be friendlier with his younger brothers, but who knows if he listens to me.
Those were the kinds of things she mainly talked about. They came up so often that I began to wonder if they were some kind of magical incantation for making delicious kimchi pancakes.
Still, how could I bad-mouth the person standing right in front of me?
I cheerfully said, ‘Jeho’s doing a great job, ma’am!’
At that, Choi Jeho looked at me suspiciously. Did he think I was saying this because I wanted to?
His mother repeatedly insisted that the pancakes had to be eaten fresh off the pan, then said,
― It would be nice if I could come over and make them for you. Next time, I’ll make them myself.
“No, ma’am. I’m already so grateful that you took the time to teach me!”
“What do you mean, come over while you’re working? If you’re done, get some rest.”
Choi Jeho added gruffly. What a way to talk.
The call ended with his mother telling Choi Jeho, ‘You should try to be at least half as much like Iwol as the way he talks!’
Needless to say, his mother’s recipe was a tremendous success.
Jeong Seongbin’s family’s kimchi, which had been made during kimjang season, played a major part as well. Seongbin had even taken pictures of the kimchi pancakes, saying he wanted to send them to his mother.
‘Everyone’s… pretty close-knit.’
I cleanly finished the kimchi pancake the guys had put onto my small plate, telling me to eat it before it got cold. It was a greasy afternoon.
* * *
What did idols do during their off-season?
It wasn’t any of my concern. I had never once dreamed of becoming an idol.
But I knew what Spark did during their off-season almost pointlessly well.
≫ At this point, did the guys vanish into the earth or something?
There hasn’t been a single sighting.
└ It’s been ten days since the news that they were going to their hometowns… and there’s still no news…
≫ [Sighting] Saw Choi Jeho at a barbecue restaurant today.
He seemed to have come to eat with his family.
I was going to ask him for an autograph, but he looked so pitiful grilling meat while getting scolded from both sides that I just pretended not to notice him…
└ Fuck, you’re a true fanㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
These guys did absolutely nothing. N-o-t-h-i-n-g.
There were sightings when they went around with their families, at least, but among the fans, it was generally accepted that they either went to the practice room or holed themselves up at home.
Not roaming around and doing stupid things? Good.
But I knew how desperately fans starved for tidbits waited for news about the members.
‘Assistant Manager Kim. Have those Spark guys been doing anything lately?’
‘Yes, apparently they were given vacation after finishing their promotions some time ago.’
It was unbearably depressing that, while I hadn’t even received my own vacation, I was reporting on Spark’s vacation.
But the painful conversation didn’t end there.
‘What on earth is a tidbit? My girl keeps whining at the dinner table about how there’s no news about our boys. It’s driving me crazy.’
‘It usually means new information or announcements about celebrities…’
‘Then, Assistant Manager Kim, gather up a few of those, organize them, and send them to my email. You don’t need a lot. Just about three per member.’
I had been ordered to find out what the fans themselves couldn’t find out about the members, all because the daughter in question seemed depressed.
A fan of an idol who felt lonely because her favorite idol had gone completely silent?
That could happen. It was because she cared about the person she liked, after all. It was an entirely natural phenomenon.
But a superior who ordered a subordinate to compile idol news for his daughter, who was lonely because her favorite idol had gone completely silent?
Wasn’t that a crime worthy of the harshest punishment, without further consideration? And the target was Spark, who had hidden beneath a rock like hermit crabs?
Furious at how lax the Republic of Korea’s legal system was, I had to swim through the sea of information armed with nothing but a mouse. Until three in the morning that day.
Still, having learned the virtue that too much promotional content was better than none at all, I had talked to the company and arranged for self-produced content to be released consistently even during their off-season.
“Hah…”
I let out a hollow laugh as I read the content proposals the guys had written and submitted.
Name: Choi Jeho
Content: Dance medley of four songs
Name: Park Juwoo
Content: Cooking vlog
Name: Kang Giyeon
Content: Learning the choreography for Hellas’s new song
That was the state of their proposals.
I had generously told them to write down just the fucking name and content. And they couldn’t even do that properly?
Where had they left the song list? And Juwoo, you can still only make bracken namul.
I might not have a perfect understanding of the fans’ feelings, but they wanted to watch you guys dance. They probably didn’t want to learn how to dance from you idiots.
Lee Cheonghyeon’s proposal was very slightly better than the other three.
Name: Lee Cheonghyeon
Content: Making a Mini Rube Goldberg Machine! (The fans showed a lot of interest!!!)
The problem was that it didn’t seem like something that could possibly fill twenty minutes.
If you have the skills to make a mini Rube Goldberg machine, design a kit and hand it over to me. I’ll put it in the fan club membership merchandise.
Of course, there was also one guy who had written his proposal diligently.
Our reliable-but-not-really, kind-hearted leader, Jeong Seongbin.
But his proposal had a fundamental problem.
Content: Reading Today’s News (One each from society, world affairs, IT, and so on)
‘One hundred percent, even Seongbin’s fans would fall asleep watching this.’
I knew why Jeong Seongbin was interested in things like this.
Because he had pursued a different path instead of focusing on basic education during his adolescence, he had seen many idols suffer controversies over their basic academic abilities.
Perhaps afraid that he might end up in the same situation, Jeong Seongbin never neglected his studies. If anything, he was the type to seek out all kinds of current-affairs knowledge.
But that didn’t mean I was going to approve this topic.
If he established an image of being smart from the beginning, he could lose that entire image later with just one slip of the tongue.
There was knowledge he would naturally acquire as he grew older, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give him the image of being knowledgeable in many fields then.
So, after looking through all five proposals, what did I think?
‘All I could think was, We’re fucked.’
I’ll admit it. As an act of repentance for having forced only my own ideas on these guys all this time, I had intended to let things slide this once.
My mental state had become considerably rougher after being blindsided by the system, and my guilt was fragile, so I hadn’t dared force them to do anything.
At most, I’d planned to bring along a bottle of water on the day they went to film their self-produced content and wait on them.
But what was this? The five of them dancing, picking bracken, and reading manuals?
“Guys.”
“Yes?”
“Each of you, go to your room, grab a notebook, and come back within one minute.”
There was no way I could stand by and watch them waste space in MiTube’s data centers with content like that.
You’d better know you’re not sleeping tonight.
* * *
“Hey, I came up with fourteen already. Why isn’t it enough?”
“No, it’s not enough. Come back with twenty.”
Choi Jeho frowned and went back. He seemed to mutter something under his breath, but it was probably a curse, so I wasn’t curious.
I had all five members seated around the table and was relentlessly squeezing ideas out of their brains when the dormitory phone rang.
Unfortunately, those idiots had been sentenced to remain in their seats until they came up with twenty ideas, so I answered the phone.
“Yes, this is Kim Iwol.”
The caller was their manager.
― Ah, Iwol? How do you always manage to have such perfect timing?
It wasn’t that I had perfect timing. I had simply been working these guys hard.
‘The planning team said they were starting preparations for the next album, so is it them? Or the video team?’
I wondered which team was calling for me today and silently waited for him to continue.
But what came next was completely unexpected.
― Iwol, you’ve received an offer to appear on a radio show!
What?
― They specifically asked for you. What do you think? You’ll do it, right?
No, who exactly is “they,” and why did they specifically pick me…?!