Episode 93: Employee Farm Experience (1)
The seven-day hellish OJT concluded without a hitch.
Thanks to that, my proficiencies, which had remained stagnant for some time, underwent great changes as well.
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Performance Evaluation (100)
― Vocal Proficiency: 10(▲)/20
― Dance Proficiency: 9(▲)/20
― Self PR: 12(▼)/20
― Attendance Management: 18/20
― Organizational Adaptability: 11/20
― Cumulative Fatigue: 38%
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My vocal proficiency had gone up, and my dance proficiency had gone up too.
Ever since learning that my nose would get smashed if cumulative fatigue exceeded 40%, I had been meticulously managing it by the single percentage point... but.
‘Why did my Self PR drop?’
After not seeing it for a few days, my Self PR had fallen by 1 point.
I hadn't even known deductions were possible.
I suppose scores for non-technical factors can change, but still.
‘Don't they tell you the reason for the deduction?’
If they do a personnel evaluation, shouldn't they tell you the reason?
The moment I complained inwardly, the system appeared.
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[SYSTEM] A work order from ‘Manager’ has arrived.
▶ Ah, Deputy Kim! I watched your PT, you know? But compared to the other employees, Deputy Kim was a bit…… less noticeable? It's a relative evaluation, so there wasn't much I could do. Sorry, yeah?
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...Complete with a kind explanation.
I was pissed. The fact that the reason was perfectly understandable pissed me off even more. How could I possibly stand out among those formidable members?
It wasn't as if I could step up to protect that one score. An amateur ought to stay quietly in a corner if they want to be less of an eyesore. If someone who doesn't know their place acts up, who knows how much an already angular stone would be hammered into line—I didn't even want to imagine it.
‘Well, at least my skills improved.’
The effect of this dance proficiency increase was somewhat special.
A miracle that suddenly let me perform incredible dances hadn't occurred, but instead, stamina consumption when performing the same choreography had decreased significantly. It seemed unnecessary energy expenditure had been reduced.
The Spark members also seemed to sense that something had changed after those seven days.
You could tell just by how much more happily everyone practiced than usual.
The favorable wind that had begun to blow affected quite a few areas.
‘Hyung! I went to the A&R team today!’
‘Why there?’
‘A brilliant idea suddenly came to me! I wanted to ask if we could make one more revision even now!’
Lee Cheonghyeon, who had received a buff to his creativity, went so far as to remodel the title track right before recording.
‘How about we try putting harmonies into the high note parts as much as possible this time? If the components increase in each section, I think it would feel much richer.’
‘Sounds good. But Seongbin, wouldn't the burden on you and Joo-woo become too great?’
‘Unless we're stacking the harmonies in high notes too, either I or Gang Giyeon will cover it. Or Kim Iwol, you can just increase your part.’
Jeong Seongbin actively offered opinions and even supplemented the melody parts.
‘Then from now, we'll gather keywords for the image change for five minutes. Start!’
‘Dyeing, colored lenses, face stickers…….’
‘Wait, I can't keep up with the typing!’
‘Just memorize it. Lee Cheonghyeon, you're fast at that.’
Though there were more than a few aspects in which I looked down on Spark, this much was certain.
Every single member had become far better at voicing their own opinions compared to before.
Thanks to that, brainstorming had become worthwhile. So yesterday, we had run a nonstop meeting for about four hours.
After attaching and sending the organized contents to the planning team by email, it was already lunchtime.
Just as the manager arrived with salad packs, I closed my laptop and asked,
“Manager! What happened to that self-produced content that was put on hold?”
It was time to film the self-produced content that had been left untouched due to issues involving family matters or the sudden OJT.
From right before to right after the comeback, it would be hard to do work that required a lot of hands-on attention because of the stage performances.
Since the planning team hadn't said anything, there probably weren't any major issues, so I hadn't checked on it separately, but it was about time to wrap up the bigger tasks.
The manager took out a salad pack from the bag with a bright smile and said,
“Ah, that? We're going to a farm!”
Huh?
A farm…… where?
* * *
‘A weekend farm in the city?’
‘They say it's good for the kids' emotional development. So, Deputy Kim, look into it and let me know.’
That was how my connection with the weekend farm began.
For no other reason than having taken charge of handling the weekend farm application, I had to run around buying seedlings to plant in Chief Nam's field, and even go weeding on summer weekends.
On a certain rainy summer day, I even received such a call late at night.
‘You're asking me to dig water channels in the field?’
‘—Yeah. What was it, they said it'd be fine if we dug furrows. Deputy Kim, did you dig them?’
‘Yes, before sowing the seeds, I fully…….’
‘—But this rain doesn't look ordinary. Deputy Kim, go check just once for me. My wife and kid are making a huge fuss saying they need to go see the field.’
Chief Nam, who couldn't let a single drop of water touch his wife's or child's hands, thus drove me out into the pouring rain.
‘Chief…… I've cleared all the water channels and am on my way back.’
‘—Yeah, yeah, thanks for the hard work!’
‘—Honey, are you sure we don't need to go? What if all the peppers fall over?’
‘—No, it's fine. I contacted the farm, and they said the staff there checked everything.’
‘—In this rain? Running a farm must be tough…….’
I desperately wanted to scream to the wife worrying from afar that her husband had driven me—a Hanpyeong Industries employee, not a farm worker—all the way out here.
I had thought the dirt on my hands back then would be the last of it.
“Hyung, these are yours.”
I took the pants Gang Giyeon held out with resignation. The pattern was very gaudy.
“Who picked these again?”
“Joo-woo hyung.”
Our Joo-woo found a uniform pretty well on his own, huh. He even managed to find pants that fit farm work perfectly.
Perhaps sensing my gaze mixed with pride and agony, Park Juu glanced at me and asked,
“Hyung…… if you don't like them, would you like to switch with mine?”
“No, I like them.”
I didn't want to appear as a twenty-one-year-old adult male who would steal his younger brother's spiraea-patterned pants just because he didn't like the cosmos pattern on camera.
Right then, Choi Jeho, who had finished changing, burst out of the next room.
“Hey, is this the right length?”
With exposed ankles.
The hem of the black pants covered in peony drawings fluttered limply above Choi Jeho's ankles.
“There probably aren't many refrigerator pants that fit your height either, are there?”
A person should have a conscience.
Just in case, I'd brought a pair of long socks, which I took out of my bag and handed to Choi Jeho.
“Wear these. Unless you want to catch a grass rash.”
“Grass rash?”
“It exists, that kind of thing.”
I was even kindly advising him to pull his socks up over his pant cuffs if he didn't want bugs getting in when a staff member's voice came from outside.
“Spark, we'll start filming in ten minutes!”
“Ah, yes!”
Oh no, I hadn't changed a single thing yet.
The cameras were all covered for changing clothes, so I felt safe stripping off the t-shirt I was wearing.
And as I bent down to pick up the group shirt I'd received earlier—
“Hyung!”
Jeong Seongbin called out to me urgently.
As I tried to turn my head toward the sound, Jeong Seongbin beat me to it.
Jeong Seongbin turned my body so my back faced the wall, then asked in a voice so small I could barely hear it,
“Hyung, why is your back like that?”
“My back? What's wrong with it?”
Thinking a bug might have landed on me, I reached behind my back. I didn't feel any itch at all.
But Jeong Seongbin had turned deathly pale, not knowing what to do.
“No, it's…...”
What the hell.
Did I suddenly grow a dragon tattoo out of nowhere?
Was the system going to say something like, ‘Deputy Kim, is such a tattoo appropriate for a company employee? That's an attendance deduction!’ later?
My head throbbed.
Jeong Seongbin led me, temporarily frozen, into the next room. Perhaps because everyone was too busy changing, no one paid attention to us.
Jeong Seongbin closed the door behind us and spoke carefully.
“Hyung, on your back, there's a…… really huge scar…...”
“A scar? Ah, I thought it was something else.”
The moment I heard the word ‘scar,’ my thoughts branching out in countless directions halted instantly.
Of course I had a scar.
The one I got when I fell running away to avoid getting hit as a child.
Unfortunately, my back was torn on the corner of a dining table, and the skin was shredded to pieces.
‘But it's not big enough to call enormous, is it?’
It had definitely been a large wound at first.
But thanks to my sister arriving home right then and taking me to the ER, the wound was stitched up immediately.
My sister nagged me, saying people would be scared of a huge scar on a burly man's back, so I'd even undergone scar removal surgery as a student.
‘If he hasn't had many chances to see my scar before, I guess he could be surprised.’
And since it was our first time changing clothes together, he might have been more flustered.
I spoke to Jeong Seongbin as nonchalantly as possible.
“I got it from falling wrong when I was little. It got a lot smaller as I grew.”
“Smaller? This?”
“You're exaggerating. Even so, by now it's just something like a slightly thick straight line.”
“Yeah. It wouldn't show with clothes on, so I never really mentioned it, but do I have to cover scars for broadcasts too? Like tattoos.”
“I'm not sure about that, but, hyung…... at this size, it might show through a white tee?”
“It's not that bad. As long as it's thick enough, white clothes should be enough to……”
……I replied, but something felt off.
No matter how strong Jeong Seongbin's nature was to cherish and love his colleagues, wasn't this a bit much?
Getting this worked up over a mere scar instead of a dragon tattoo?
I went to the mirror in front of the room and stood with my back to it.
Then I turned my head slightly to check the mirror.
“Huh?”
Wait.
Why is my back like this?