“You look fantastic again today, hyung. You ended up pulling an all-nighter, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. But I survived thanks to Seongbin helping me.”

“When did you talk to that hyung again? Seongbinhyung is insane, right? He’s a human karaoke songbook.”

I agreed with Lee Cheonghyeon completely.

The songs Jeong Seongbin double-checked at dawn today matched my requirements exactly.

Thanks to him, all I had to do after running those thirty songs on loop until my ears leaked pus was make up my mind.

From here on out: understand the song, listen to the original and covers, sing it through, apply feedback, verify I applied the feedback, then sing it through again with the feedback applied and verify again...

“Who was it that said ‘well begun is half done’?”

I felt a sigh coming, but I held it back in case it brought down the dorm’s mood.

In the middle of that, oblivious to people’s pace, Cheonghyeon got excited on the top bunk and said:

“Right, we have to order breakfast.”

He picked up the spare phone. Then he looked at me and asked:

“By the way, are you the type who keeps eating whatever you’re into?”

“What do you mean?”

“Jjolmyeon. You’ve had nothing but jjolmyeon for breakfast for over a week.”

“Huh?”

Come to think of it, that was true.

The trainees’ meal routine was the same for everyone.

Breakfast was delivery, and lunch and dinner were salad with shakes and the like.

We always ordered from the same place, too, and now that I thought about it, my portion had really been jjolmyeon for a full week.

I’d been on a jjolmyeon kick around twenty, so I ate it as a little nostalgia trip.

A bit flustered, I carefully asked Cheonghyeon:

“Didn’t newbies not have menu choices?”

“What are you talking about? Ever since you had jjolmyeon on day one, you’ve kept ordering jjolmyeon!”

“...Did you maybe ask me in the morning, ‘Hyung, do you want jjolmyeon?’”

“Yeah. And every day, without changing your tone, you went, ‘Yeah.’”

Only then did I understand why jjolmyeon had been delivered to me for a week straight.

Maybe because I had never once gone against Department Head Nam’s intent when ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) he asked, “Let’s eat this today, yeah?”

I’d been machine-gunning yeses at Cheonghyeon too, who had been earnestly asking about the menu.

To think the only reason I’d been eating only jjolmyeon was something this stupid. Utterly hollow.

“Then should we order something else?”

“No. I’ll have jjolmyeon.”

“Huh?”

“It’s good from that place.”

At my answer, Cheonghyeon shook his head a couple times with a vaguely puzzled face, then vanished from sight.

Ordering like that every morning must be a pain. Starting next week, I should offer to handle breakfast orders.

Some parts of me had gone back nine years, like my taste for jjolmyeon, but other parts weren’t the same.

A prime example was muscle mass.

Up until I graduated college, I took care of my body consistently.

Doing physically demanding part-time jobs, I didn’t want to spend all my paychecks on hospital bills, so maintenance wasn’t optional; it was mandatory.

After I started working, my workout time dwindled and I lost muscle, and my body felt exactly like that now.

For the moment, I could dance for hours and be fine, but without muscle, it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to endure the physical labor to come.

Given that, I had to carve out workout time even if it meant forcibly slicing up my schedule.

Next, the dark circles.

When I was younger, I think my age covered for them, but now the skin under my eyes was pitch black. No matter how you looked at it, this face did not scream bright-eyed twenty.

It seemed the shade cast over my skin had followed me all the way back in time.

So the muscles didn’t come and only the dark circles did. Frequent overtime was this harmful.

More than that—an idol with skin discoloration... is that okay?

I touched my rough face. Obviously not okay, so I’d better manage it.

Besides that, there were things that had changed and things that hadn’t, by some standard I didn’t know, so I had to keep checking. Pulling the certified copy of my old family home’s register was part of the same logic.

When I realized Hanpyeong Industries had already been founded, I felt a bit of despair.

But if I could somehow build a new life, that was enough, so I decided not to obsess over my old company.

All that remained to consider was SPARK.

As far as I knew, SPARK’s debut date was about two years away. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

That debut, I absolutely had to move up.

One reason I wanted to move it up was the desire to wrap up my current lifestyle as soon as possible.

But the main reason was separate.

“If we debut two years from now, we’ll run into the exact same growing pains SPARK had before.”

SPARK, UA’s first idol group, drew a fair amount of attention once their debut outline took shape—a “new challenge from a ballad powerhouse” kind of vibe.

But in showbiz, if something new doesn’t come right away, interest vanishes in a flash, and UA made the mistake of postponing SPARK’s debut.

By a whole year. The misstep of a company that only handled established singers who could spend years on an album.

Thanks to that, the attention SPARK could’ve gotten at debut evaporated completely.

Because the pre-debut PR had been overdone, when they finally debuted, the reaction was basically, “Oh, those guys are finally coming out?”

While UA fretted over which way to row, MYTH—one of the two second-tier agencies—debuted a major rookie.

From investment to promotion, the gap between a big and a mid-size company was huge.

As the idol generations came to be divided around MYTH’s rookie group Parte—who would later represent the fourth generation—SPARK’s footing floated in the air.

≫ Why are there so many posts nowadays asking what Fourth generation is?

Honestly Fourth generation should be fifth gen, but the Spark-cool disease people keep cramming their kids into fourth gen

└ fr lol the year gap is huge

└ No, SPARK is fourth gen, the last flame of the fourth gen, yup

└ wow you’re really mean lol

└ I can accept .5 at most

└ lmao lmao lmao lmao lmao

≫ But I get why they want to be grouped into fourth gen

Fourth gen’s a golden age, but when they debuted it was a flood of boy groups, everything got swept away and only SPARK was left, yup yup. Fourth gen groups meet peers a lot and everyone keeps winning lol

└ Never really heard rumors of them sucking up to anyone; they’re an isolated island in boy-group land

└ Doesn’t clique stuff not really correlate with years?

└ If the ones above don’t include them and the ones below don’t include them, they just play by themselves

└ Leaving all that aside, the members themselves just look super unsocial

└ What are the replies even saying, stop posting headcanon

Chart results had nothing to do with generation, but in idolland it mattered a lot.

In a market where even getting mentioned once matters, being grouped with the same generation and getting your name out even a bit more definitely had an effect.

Broadcast trends also played a part.

A survival show called “Idol Royal Annals” launched, gathering male idols who weren’t too senior—easy to manage, moderately buzzworthy, and seasoned enough to make their own screen time, led by groups like Parte.

For a concept that claimed “take the ranks off and fight,” their years were all about the same, though.

SPARK, who debuted in the year the show aired, of course couldn’t go on. They had almost no recognition.

And that survival program, Idol Royal Annals, became a massive sensation.

The tendency to lump the groups who appeared on “ARoyalAnnals” together as one generation got stronger, fandom competition and buzz focused there, and SPARK became the awkward intake.

≫ You can totally define fourth gen by the ARoyalAnnals lineup

The trueborn fourth gen like Parte and All Over all showed up—wasn’t the generational sorting basically settled implicitly?

└ So basically the broadcaster decided the gen lol

└ Why is everyone this obsessed with generations, damn

└ Right, at least fight over sales, that I get

Compared to when people at least mentioned SPARK before, after the show’s success, even mentioning SPARK became rare.

It felt like one more push and they’d break through, but there was no clear sign of success.

The groups that had appeared on ARoyalAnnals kept making comeback after comeback, riding the variety buzz.

If at that point UA had stubbornly pushed SPARK’s activities, the outcome might have been different.

But UA, short on manpower and with many singers who needed support, let go of SPARK, who suddenly needed more push than expected.

And so, in their first year after debut, SPARK had only two promotions, then hit a one-year-and-two-month hiatus.

The lack of debut-day fans for SPARK was largely due to that hiatus.

A lot of fans must’ve seen the team’s future in UA’s slapdash management. If I’d been a fan, I’d have left the fandom too with that little vision.

Since this was a team that had to debut no matter what, it seemed best to eliminate as many fatal elements as possible.

“We can’t be hands-off and end up unable to make a comeback and fall into a hiatus.”

Since the goal was debut, I figured tasks related to the debut date would pop up sooner or later.

This time, instead of letters in front of my eyes, an object appeared. A green notebook with a thick cover. It looked like a scheduler.

Just then, a part of that “how to reuse a life” manual came to mind.

 ▷ For smooth life reuse, accessories (résumé, scheduler, etc.) will be provided.

 Right, it did say they’d give me a scheduler too.

The hologram scheduler that appeared in front of me flipped pages automatically without me touching it.

On the monthly pages, every so often a monthly calendar with something written on it would pass by.

The last recorded schedule was the debut date two years later, which would be my KPI completion date.

“Is there any way to move... this date forward?”

If you’re going to urge someone else to debut, at least guarantee a bit of autonomy.

I put my finger on the [Debut Date], about seven hundred thirty days out.

“Huh?”

The text area was selected. On a hunch, I moved the debut date one day earlier, and a notice popped up.

 [SYSTEM] Do you want to change the ‘Debut Date’?

▶ Yes / No

 “Got it.”

My fist clenched by itself. Now I wouldn’t have to steep the old teasers like a teabag for a year and two months!

I selected the debut date again and kept rolling the date forward.

Dates flipped smoothly, but once I tried to push it back a year, it wouldn’t move anymore. Considering various factors, the practical limit I could move it forward seemed to be one year.

“Even one year earlier is something.”

If SPARK could debut early and level up their weight class, I didn’t care. They were already finished-form idols in terms of skill anyway.

I dropped the debut date on the earliest possible day and chose “Yes,” and a new notice popped up.

 [SYSTEM] ‘Party B’ will be notified of ‘Cautions.’

▷ If you excessively change existing schedules, corresponding disadvantages may occur.

▷ Even if you move a schedule forward, the frequency of events slated to occur remains valid, and their occurrence times will be adjusted to match the changed schedule.

▷ If you delay a schedule, attendance management may be required, imposing constraints on your activities.

 In plain terms: don’t mess with the schedule carelessly.

If there are issues slated to arise within two years, they’ll just erupt within one. No wonder things were going too much my way.

If the whole universe were kindly accommodating my situation, it wouldn’t have forced me to do something like being an idol in the first place.

Even so, just from this, it didn’t look like I’d take a big hit. I’d already lost my school record and my house; there weren’t many more disadvantages left to take.

The only thing I could lose in exchange for moving up the debut was youth.

But if they took my youth, I wouldn’t be able to achieve the goal of debuting as a rookie idol, so my identity wouldn’t suddenly revert to twenty-nine.

If it’s going to blow anyway, maybe it’s better to blow early.

Without hesitation, I checked the boxes that I had fully understood the cautions and agreed to the contents.

Now the only thing left was to stop being the clumsiest creature alive.

“Make it work if it doesn’t.” I’d never felt the executive mantra, like a broken tape, hit as hard as it did today.

I looked with satisfaction at the newly gleaming debut date—now less than D-370.

And this choice would soon go down as the dumbest one in the second record of my life.

After practicing until my breath collapsed like blanched spinach, the day of the end-of-month evaluation dawned.

At the same time, it was the fateful day that would decide whether I earned a passing score and got 30% EXP, or got cut from UA and ended my life too.

“Hyung! Today you’re not... nervous, are you? Looking at your face!”

“Do I look that way?”

“Yes. Your heart looks truly at peace.”

Cheonghyeon gave me a thumbs up.

I really was past the age to get nervous over evaluations.

I recalled the past in the vocal practice room—a memory I couldn’t revisit without tears.

In a vlog where Cheonghyeon played keyboard and sang, the vocal room looked like a little space for a musical genius; when I walked in, it turned into a dark coin karaoke.

In there, I had a painful time facing my raw voice alone. It was my induction into the barren idol world where there’s no echo mic effect.

Thanks to that, I grew while enduring the penance of hearing my completely uncorrected voice every single second. It was brutal.

For the record, since “the voice you hear and the voice others hear are different,” I tried recording and listening back. I was scared it would show up in my dreams.

After those hard days, the evaluation day arrived.

Usually at times like this, you feel relief that it’s finally over rather than nerves.

As I stretched to wake up, Cheonghyeon—already fully ready to go out—was lacing up his shoes by the entryway.

“Going somewhere?”

“A morning walk. Then straight to the practice room!”

He answered with pep.

A morning walk on evaluation day—I’d heard that on the radio.

It was a story about how, for his same-age friend Kang Giyeon who gets really nervous, Cheonghyeon would take a lap around the neighborhood with him every evaluation morning.

A rare friendship in our cutthroat modern society.

“Watch for cars. Don’t let the skin on your face get hit by cutting wind. Don’t forget—above all else, prioritize your face.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Isn’t that salute a bit weird?”

“What’s weird about my salute?”

“Never mind...”

Picking a fight for no reason, Choi Jeho started to latch onto my counter-question, then let it go.

Good grief. Guess he’s not fully awake yet.