A little past 11 p.m., at home.

I was still stuck at my desk, fingers flying as if I were paying for some unforgivable sin by working overtime in my own bedroom.

[~Congratulations on 7 Unfading Years of SPARK’s Flame~]

At least the pink banner file was finally almost done.

Once I finished this, I could sleep.

No more nagging calls from Department Head Nam. No more dozens of “reference materials” piling up in my inbox every single day.

I’d get to start the Chuseok holiday one day earlier than everyone else.

“If he cancels my PTO on the day again this time, I swear I’ll make him the official poster boy of the Ministry of Labor’s interrogation room.”

Because of a certain someone, I had seventeen unused vacation days still sitting there in September.

This time, I wasn’t backing down. My vacation would be protected at all costs.

Muttering a phrase I’d picked up from some online forum, I hammered away at the keyboard.

I don’t know how many times I glanced at the calendar, then went back to focusing on PhotoFlat, then back again.

“...Done. I’m not touching this anymore. Seriously.”

After wrestling with it for ages, I finally renamed the hard-won file to “SPARK_7th_Anniversary_Café_Event_(Banner)”.

All I had to do now was send the email. I hurried to open my browser.

And there they were again, the dazzling faces I was already sick of seeing on the banner itself, greeting me from the home page.

Because “you should always keep up with SPARK’s latest news,” I’d set an entertainment news site as my main page.

These rotten bastards were the phantom thieves who’d stolen my department head’s daughter’s heart, and the very culprits keeping me awake at this hour...

“...What the hell.”

That’s when I saw it.

One single headline, just one little line of text, with the name I’d typed and retyped about twenty-eight thousand times while agonizing over which pink shade looked better.

That cursed group, SPARK, right there in the title.

“SPARK Fails to Survive the Cursed Seventh Year... Group to Begin Disbandment Process.”

“Fuck...”

Everything after that got fuzzy.

I don’t know if I blacked out from sheer rage or just passed out face-down on the keyboard from brutal sleep deprivation.

It’s not like I collapsed from overwork at the office. I passed out from doing fangirl labor in place of my boss’s daughter.

And it wasn’t even at the office, so it wouldn’t count as a workplace accident either.

From one to ten, the whole thing was just absurd. The black curtain falling over my vision felt exactly like my future.

Warm sunlight. A quiet, peaceful morning.

My body felt so refreshed I had no idea how many hours I’d slept.

It was, without question, the best I’d felt in ages. Everything was perfect.

...Except for the wooden plank right in front of my nose.

Was the ceiling always this close?

For some reason the ceiling felt like it was hovering right in front of my eyes.

No way objects should look that much closer than where they actually were. I clearly wasn’t fully awake.

When you’ve been working seven days a week and then pull overtime on Monday on top of that, it’s only natural your brain doesn’t boot properly.

On top of that, I’d just learned that the banner I’d worked on for two weeks was officially useless.

Of course I was exhausted. I couldn’t even remember when I’d made it to bed.

I reached a hand up toward my head to grab my phone and check the time, and a random bit of conversation I’d overheard from the team once drifted through my mind.

“When you oversleep, doesn’t the air just feel different?”

“Oh yeah. Your body feels weirdly refreshed and the sunlight’s all warm.”

“And it’s too quiet. That’s when the cold sweat hits.”

Peaceful air? Check.

Refreshed body? Check.

Quiet surroundings... perfect check.

I’m fucked.

I shot upright like a spring. And almost brained myself on the ceiling that was now, bizarrely, way too low.

It wasn’t an illusion. The ceiling really was lower.

Did my building cave in while I was asleep or something?

I actually found myself wondering if “my ceiling collapsed” was a valid excuse to write on a tardy report as I turned my head.

And then I saw something even more shocking.

Someone was sleeping on the opposite bed, back turned to me, close enough that I could’ve reached out and touched them.

The bed, the floor—everything was cluttered with stuff I’d never seen before.

There was no universe in which this scene belonged inside my place, the cozy little one-person home I’d had ever since I moved out.

Okay, this is definitely not my apartment. Absolutely not.

The more my field of vision widened, the more inexplicable details kept stacking up.

But whatever. If that guy hadn’t broken into my place, that meant I had somehow been dragged into his.

I immediately grabbed the pillow. Time to finally put all those years of pack-mule duty in the company hiking club to use.

I picked my target carefully, gauging a point about a hand’s breadth above the guy’s head— 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

And then there was a blinding flash in front of my eyes. I reflexively squeezed them shut.

When I finally forced them open again, something impossible was hanging in the air.

 [SYSTEM] The request to reuse the life of Assistant Manager Kim Iwol (hereafter, “Party B”) has been approved.

 ...? What the hell is this.

Text. Floating in mid-air.

And not even text that made any sense.

Sure, I try to live an eco-friendly life, but I’ve never once thought about recycling my life.

Was this that eye condition Deputy Hwang said he’d been dealing with?

But I clearly remember—none of the symptoms he listed were, “The approval window for my expense reports keeps flickering in front of my eyes.”

If that had been one of them, Deputy Hwang shouldn’t have been coming to work—he should’ve been submitting his resignation.

“...”

My first ever late start, after a flawless attendance record.

A stranger, fast asleep and tucked under a blanket like he owned the place.

And now some kind of floating text show unfolding in mid-air in someone else’s house.

I knew exactly what you called this kind of situation.

This is one hell of a crazy dream.

The second I realized this wasn’t me being late for work in real life, I relaxed. I lay back down and pulled the blanket over myself.

Right then, my vision flashed white again.

I was about to complain about the damn light when another message appeared—one I couldn’t just ignore.

 [SYSTEM] A work directive has arrived from “the Person in Charge.”

▶ Assistant Manager Kim, you’re going to debut with this intake’s batch of kids. This is a really great opportunity, you know? One day you’ll definitely thank me for this. Don’t forget Upper Management has high hopes for you.

[SYSTEM] Party B’s KPI has been designated as “Debut in a six-member boy group.”

 “Person in Charge,” my ass.

There are exactly three things in this world I absolutely can’t stand: one is immediate family, one is my boss, Department Head Nam, and the last is responsibility. I’m built to be a bottom-rung grunt, not management.

Even the system’s tone sounded exactly like Department Head Nam. I almost thought he’d come back from the dead.

Oh, right. He’s still very much alive and kicking.

Even if this was a dream, sending a fake message pretending to be my boss first thing in the morning was unforgivable.

I don’t care how scummy the industry is, there should be a minimum standard of human decency. I ought to report this as phishing.

And what was that? Debut in a boy group?

Get the fuck out of here.

This was a full-blown nightmare. I would’ve honestly preferred cracking my forehead on the ceiling and seeing the light that way.

My long, bitter history with idols started when I was a brand-new hire.

One week after I joined the company, back when “ex-Team Leader Nam” hadn’t yet been promoted to department head, he asked me this:

“Kim Iwol, you know your way around PhotoFlat, right?”

Back then, I didn’t yet understand the sacred truth that anything you can do, you should always claim you can’t.

So I committed the fatal mistake of saying, “I, uh... actually have a certification.”

My life has been completely fucked ever since. From that day on, I became Department Head Nam’s official errand boy.

And the errands he assigned didn’t stop at actual company work.

If his precious daughter’s favorite idol group, a boy band called “SPARK,” went on the radio, I had to type out full transcripts.

If they did a livestream, I had to capture stills frame-by-frame, then design cup sleeves that would be used at so-called birthday cafés and place bulk orders with the printers.

Every time SPARK’s promo cycle kicked off, I had to deal with tasks I’d never even heard of before, eyes popping out of my head.

It was the beginning of an idol-fan life that destiny had not written into my birth chart.

“I seriously don’t get why she’s paying other people to do this stuff. Watching you, Kim, it looks like she could just learn how and do it herself at home.”

“Ha ha... It actually takes a lot more time than it looks, sir.”

“I told her that. Said she doesn’t know the value of money. Oh, by the way, she wants you to change the banner you made yesterday.”

“Sorry? Sir?”

“She says it can’t just say ‘Emperor Choi Jeho.’ It has to say ‘Center Emperor Choi Jeho.’ Get it to my inbox by one o’clock.”

By the time I’d spent six months as the personal GIF-making machine dedicated to his daughter’s favorite member—SPARK’s center, also known as “Center Emperor Choi Jeho”—

the dear young lady had grown from a solo stan of Center Emperor Choi Jeho into a full-group SPARK stan.

She said she was only about Center Emperor Choi Jeho.

Said she could only see Jeho.

The world might as well have been ending.

Because the number of GIFs I had to churn out multiplied by five, and I officially collapsed into the role of a living, breathing GIF factory. My life force drained at record speed.

Of course, it’s not like I just sat there and obediently did every little thing they threw at me, either.

At some point I started thinking, Is this really what being an office worker is supposed to be? Am I seriously doing all this crap? So I asked people around me.

Once I heard that, no, I did not have to do all of it, I tried telling him “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can take on any more of this” in about a hundred different ways.

All that got me was nitpicked to death.

“Iwol, what is this even supposed to mean? Why can’t I understand a single thing you wrote?”

“Did you have Manager Cho review this before you submitted it? Go get Manager Cho. Now.”

Four times a day, he’d demand confirmation. Eight times a day, I’d curse him out in my head. Six times a day, I’d have to bow my head and apologize.

I hung on by my fingernails under that man, refusing to do fangirl work, right up until the day he got promoted from team leader to department head on the backs of his wrung-dry subordinates.

That’s when I finally waved the white flag.

And then those goddamn SPARK bastards—the ones who’d turned my life into a living hell—suddenly announced their disbandment.

Right when I was being forced to prep a 7th-anniversary support project.

As if I didn’t already want to claw my eyes out whenever I saw the word “idol.” These soulless, lawless pricks.

I didn’t need a mirror to know my eyes were bloodshot. I could feel the pressure in my eyeballs climbing in real time.

To steady myself, I started mentally reviewing my “Things I’ll Do After I Quit” list from item one, in order.

“Mmm...”

I was trying hard to calm down when the guy on the opposite bed shifted.

Was he one of the “kids from this intake” the system mentioned?

What kind of sins do you have to commit in your previous life to end up with a punishment like this—debuting as an idol in a group with a middle-aged guy like me? That poor kid’s fate had to be just as cursed as mine.

I was actually about to spare him a little sympathy—dream or not—when his sleeping face turned toward me.

To my shock, I recognized him.

Bold, defined features and thick brows.

Sharp jawline and long, slender neck.

It was a face that had been burned into my corneas; there was no way I wouldn’t recognize it.

Because it was the exact same face Center Emperor Choi Jeho had back when he was younger—the man who’d kept me from sleeping properly for over three years as Department Head Nam’s daughter’s ultimate bias.

SPARK is showing up here?

And of all people, him?

The same bastard who once forced me to go back to the office after I’d already gone home, just because I’d missed retouching a single photo?

His mug was right there in front of me? I’d be acquitted even if my eyes rolled back in my head.

My whole body burned like I’d lain on an electric heating pad. Definitely stress-induced illness.

But calm down. This is a dream.

Grabbing a sleeping guy by the collar and yelling, “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been archiving your Insta, and you go and wipe the whole feed, are you insane?” wasn’t going to change anything.

Only someone who’d been blackmailed by their boss into staying at the office until 9 p.m. to scrapbook someone else’s posts would understand that pain anyway.

But the rage boiling up inside me was beyond my control. It felt like fury had been carved into my spinal cord.

Don’t tell me the other four are all SPARK members too...?

It was a five-member group. Add me and that made the six members the system kept talking about. The numbers lined up way too perfectly.

If I could get a hold of Department Head Nam’s daughter right now, there’s one thing I’d love to ask her.

The same person who once swore to me that “5–1 equals zero.”

I’d like to very politely ask her how much she thinks 5+1 makes.

I regretted not closing my eyes before seeing that ridiculous message with every fiber of my being.

And I violently rejected the reality in front of me.

If it was SPARK, I was out.

If it was Center Emperor Choi Jeho, I wouldn’t do it even if he locked me in a hotel suite and fed me nothing but room service while I worked.

Debut with the guys who only managed to smile three times during a two-hour livestream, when I had to capture fifty smiling screenshots per member?

Yeah. Not happening.

Did the universe actually hear the sound of my heart slamming shut?

The text floating in front of me vanished, only to be replaced by a new line.

 [SYSTEM] A work directive has arrived from “the Person in Charge.”

▶ They say kids these days only work as much as they’re paid, huh? But that’s not how life in a company works. Still, I’m not that stingy with evaluations. Our Assistant Manager Kim can get paid exactly as much as he works. Sounds good, right?

[SYSTEM] Due to Party B’s failure to achieve the final KPI, “HR Penalties” have been designated.

[SYSTEM] For achieving Party B’s final KPI, “Performance Rewards” have been designated.

 From top to bottom, every sentence made me want to punch someone.

Did it really think I’d fall for that?

I won’t deny that my life so far has clearly been soft enough for a system like this to underestimate me.

After all, the moment I put up with all of Department Head Nam’s bullshit, I basically chose the path of suffering with my own two feet.

But I’m not about to let myself be branded a premium-grade pushover even in my dreams.

I was about to jab my fingers into my own eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at this crap anymore, when my vision flashed again.

What came next was nothing short of shocking.

 [SYSTEM] “HR Penalties” will now be disclosed.

▷ Forced reemployment at Hanpyeong Industries, with post-resignation job transfer restrictions

▷ Permanent loss of eligibility ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) to receive final performance rewards

 So essentially, I’d be forcibly rehired by my old company.

That shithole Hanpyeong Industries, again.

This was the place where if you told them the bathroom was out of toilet paper, they’d tell you to wait until the supermarket’s next discount period.

And I’d have to go back there whether I wanted to or not?

On top of that, they were saying that if I quit again, they’d restrict my ability to change jobs.

They might as well have said they were going to dump a bucket of coal ash all over my career.

Spend the rest of my life at that godforsaken company until retirement?

No way in hell. There’s a reason my single greatest life regret is submitting a résumé to Hanpyeong Industries.

No, fuck that. The real mistake was logging into the job site that day at that exact time.

It took me a moment to process the second part of the explanation. My brain wasn’t working well after flipping out over the Hanpyeong thing.

“Final performance rewards”...?

Who cared what the rewards were. I already wanted to die just thinking about being rehired.

I genuinely believed there couldn’t possibly be a worse situation than this.

At least, until I saw what came next.

 [SYSTEM] “Final Performance Rewards” will now be disclosed.

▷ Nullification of your older sister’s death (blood relative) and a chance to see her again

 The chance to see my sister again, two years after she died, was being tossed at me under the cheap label of a “reward.”

Nullify my sister’s death?

Apparently my ninth-year bad luck was hitting hard. Either that, or all those nights I spent wishing Department Head Nam would go straight to hell had finally backfired on me.

Honestly, it felt less like I’d wandered into dreamland and more like I’d dropped straight into hell.

—

KPI: Key Performance Indicator. A core metric used to measure performance.