UA’s end-of-month evaluation is conducted in the order of who did well in the previous one.

Because I had no evaluation record, I was assigned the very last slot.

It was my first time taking part, but I already knew who had likely placed first in last month’s evaluation.

"Shall we start with Juu, then?"

It was Park Juu, the one who would become SPARK’s main vocal.

From debut, Park Juu had a rather peculiar character.

≫ Sings well dances well nice face good personality what on earth is there this guy can’t do 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

└ If you dropped him in the middle of COEX Starfield Library, I feel like he wouldn’t find his way home

└ Isn’t that too harsh on our dummy ㅠㅠ

└ How about lowering that hand covering your mouth and speak

└ (smiles)

The chill in his aura and the languid impression he gave off at the same time was a kind of atmosphere you rarely see in a nineteen-year-old boy.

Among SPARK’s lot of stubborn punks who would rather die than leave something unsaid, Park Juu’s position was to watch the members with an even, unruffled expression.

In idolland, even if you’re diligent about reactions, if you get pegged as not proactive, you’ll get dragged.

For the first year after debut, it looked like Park Juu wouldn’t be able to escape that kind of controversy either.

If his singing had stayed at the level of “decent, nothing special,” that is.

『It was a night when everyone took out the liquor they’d been saving.......』

Park Juu started singing along to a famous band number anyone who’d held a band instrument even once in school would inevitably have heard.

Even inside the strong band sound, Park Juu’s voice shone.

What’s there to call “technique.” Not missing a single note like that is technique.

For the record, his English pronunciation was perfect. It was one of his go-to songs.

He was jaw-dropping even in practice, but when Park Juu gave it everything, all you could do was be amazed.

He finished neatly and bowed, and the teachers didn’t hold back with the praise. The President sitting in the middle looked thoroughly satisfied too.

Naturally. If I were his direct senior, I’d already have soaked three tissues with tears by now.

"Juu is really outstanding. I think you’ve improved even more since last time. You feel it yourself, right?"

"...Thank you."

"He’s got a knack for picking songs that fit his own tone. Song choice is a skill too, and he’s got basic good sense."

The feedback on Park Juu afterwards was wall-to-wall praise.

But the ending wasn’t entirely warm.

"From now on, I’d like you to practice more conceptual tracks. Like I said last time. Got it?"

"...Yes."

"Good work. Next is Jeho, right?"

As he switched with Choi Jeho, a faint bitterness flickered across Park Juu’s face.

Is it a matter of taste.

For someone who looks like a bundle of cotton, Park Juu’s taste in songs was quite different from his appearance.

The guy is a rock band music maniac with hardcore rock spirit running in his marrow.

But you could only see Park Juu singing rock while he was active in cover content—and even that wasn’t until SPARK hit their second year.

The reason he put aside the rock he loved so much for a while became known on a livestream one day.

Juu, could you cover a RoseD song......? I like RoseD too, but if I’m going to cover it, I need to practice. I can’t quite capture the old feel....... I think it’s because I changed my singing style.

Park Juu wrapped it up saying he’d practice hard and give it a try.

And sure enough, a few months later he posted a video covering that band’s classic.

But the day never came when Park Juu sang the songs he loved onstage—or in front of people.

Considering the insane concepts SPARK used to run, the reason wasn’t hard to guess.

It didn’t match the idol image UA was going for.

Unlike when you prepare to be a solo singer, once Park Juu switched his path to idol trainee, the styles of songs he could sing would have been far more limited.

On top of that, Park Juu was the member who could hit the highest notes in the team. It’s obvious the company wouldn’t easily allow him to sing something like rock, which chews through your vocal cords.

With a face wilted like blanched spinach, I glanced at Park Juu sitting next to me.

Even to me—the guy who used to strain to pick out his faint voice and write captions for fan videos—his complexion looked a little pitiful.

While Choi Jeho was getting his audio file ready, I spoke low enough for only Park Juu to hear.

"I like that song too."

"...?"

"You’re really good. I enjoyed it."

Looking plainly perplexed, Park Juu suddenly lit up at my words. Granted, that’s by Park Juu’s usual eye-glint standard.

Haven’t you heard “you sing well” to the point of being sick of it?

Turning the reaction over in my head, I soon found the answer.

No one in SPARK shared Park Juu’s taste in music.

It occurred to me that, for someone who sings every day, having no colleague whose taste aligns with yours might be pretty lonely.

The assignments from Choi Jeho, then Jeong Seongbin, then Lee Cheonghyeon were all excellent.

In its own way, UA was incredible for having put debut off for the next two years with members who could deliver this level of completion.

"Next, Giyeon."

At the sound of Kang Giyeon’s name, Lee Cheonghyeon mouthed, “Fighting.”

I, too, waved a fist with a bit of teacherly loyalty.

"Hoo."

Kang Giyeon drew a small breath.

To get right to the point, Kang Giyeon’s assignment was good.

But it fell well short of what he showed in the practice room. Even considering he couldn’t show off his specialty, dance, because he’d taken a few days off for an ankle injury.

If even a non-expert like me could tell, it must have been sharper in expert eyes.

And more than anyone, it looked like Kang Giyeon himself knew it best.

"Giyeon."

"Yes."

"We all know what you’re good at."

His shoulder twitched slightly. He must have known what would come next.

"But unless you do well in the test too, we can’t call it your real skill."

Because it wasn’t wrong, it would hit Giyeon harder—and it was also the sort of line ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) that would lodge deepest in a perfectionist’s brain.

"You can relax and do it. Among your peers, there aren’t many who can dance like you and sing too."

"Yes, thank you."

"Good work. Let’s do even better next time."

You could practically see each warm word being engraved into Kang Giyeon’s bones.

Face stiff, he sat down, and Lee Cheonghyeon went to town scruffing his hair.

As far as I know, Giyeon’s habit of getting nervous in crucial spots was going to last quite a while. In a What’s In My Bag video, he pulled out four different kinds of Cheongsimhwan.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about Kang Giyeon.

"Now, Iwol, shall we do what you prepared?"

I had bigger problems.

If I didn’t want to get cut by UA today, I was the one who had to snap to attention.

"This is your first evaluation—was it hard getting ready?"

Maybe because I was the new hire, there was some ice-breaking this time, unlike with the other members.

It’d been a while since I’d been on the receiving end of consideration instead of playing the one who loosens people up.

"Everyone helped me a lot. Thanks to them, I’ve got at least a little confidence."

"For ‘a little,’ you’re not showing any signs of shaking."

"I’m very nervous on the inside."

Maybe they took it as a joke, but the teachers laughed.

I’m dead serious. If I get cut here, I’ve steeled myself to tramp around every intersection in the entire country and sleep outdoors until my sister appears.

I prepared as much as I could. If I just show what I’ve built up, that’s me doing the best I can.

And up to now, I’ve never made a mistake in situations like this. Because I work not to make them.

"I prepared 『By the Window』."

The three teachers sitting lined up in front of me looked surprised. Only the President looked pleased, like it was a favorite.

Reasonable enough. As a ballad with a bit of age on it, 『By the Window』 wasn’t a song a lot of people my age listened to.

The would-be SPARK members, except for Jeong Seongbin, had the look of hearing it for the first time.

"A wide spectrum is a good thing. Let’s hear it."

At Teacher Oh Eun’s cue—the one who taught vocals—I started the backing track.

As the lyrical music flowed, I steadied my breathing and focused on the song.

『I thought for a long time.』

Sung by a male singer in his late thirties, 『By the Window』 is a song packed with raw regret for time you let slip without even noticing.

Thanks to the gentle progression typical of ballads, you don’t need Korean-style high notes or jaw-dropping technique to sing this.

A song that draws plainness in sound, and a song whose rise and fall and close are clearly structured.

To give the impression you “sang this properly,” your diction and vocal production can’t crumble.

The basics we learned in vocal class over the last three weeks.

I’m confident when it comes to truly internalizing what I’ve learned.

Thanks to ears sensitive enough to tell Department Head Nam’s condition just from his voice, I could, at the moment each note came out, match pitch like wringing it out one by one as if I were striking keys on a piano in real time.

It was the same with working out an evaluation攻略.

I was sick to death of building scoring criteria at Hanpyeong Industries. Three years living as the HR team’s dog, and you learn to recite HR appraisal lore from the reference file in your head.

Apply that, and you can also reverse-engineer what algorithm they’ll use to set the scoring criteria.

Pull the keywords from the assignments given in class, group them by item, and make a score sheet. It was a method I often used during exam periods back in school.

I’d bet my brick phone the error rate between the scoring sheet I predicted and the real one would be under five percent.

Once I’d found the problem, I focused on the items that would go into the scoring criteria. Even if I couldn’t get bonus points, the strategy was to avoid deductions.

Of course, there were hard parts too. Chief among them, tracing out a calm emotional line to fit the sentimental lyrics.

The gap between my shaking hands and the song that should be coming from a freshly twenty-year-old exterior—I could feel it even without looking in a mirror.

So after reflecting class feedback, I devoted the second-most time to understanding the song.

I probed deeply into what I truly regret.

What I most desperately regret in life is joining Hanpyeong Industries. But if I sang with that heart, it would obviously turn into a dirge full of social criticism and satire.

Instead, I recalled the time past when the open recruitment process I’d completed through two weeks of all-nighters and overtime got scrapped by Department Head Nam’s one line: “I don’t get it.”

The work hours gone to waste, and the related tasks left like dregs.

The moment when the deadline was right in front of me and the progress on the work snapped back to zero percent.

『It vanishes, leaving me behind. Everything—.』

I poured into the song the hollow, empty feeling of a man who suddenly feels it right at the verge of success, raw and unfiltered.

I confess. I almost cried singing.

『—The wind dies down.』

And so the nearly four-minute song came to an end.

Without a single mistake.