With each of them taking a steaming slice of toast, their preparations for school were done.

Even in the chaos at the shoe rack, where they somehow managed to find their own shoes and put them on, they clutched their toast like it was a national treasure. I saw them off with a farewell.

“Watch out for cars, watch out for your faces, don’t do anything stupid, and make sure you look diligent.”

At that, Kang Giyeon muttered with a sulky face,

“Seriously, even my parents don’t nag as much as you do.”

Do they? I wouldn’t know; I’ve never been nagged by both my parents.

“So what? Is our dear Mr. Kang Giyeon saying he’s not going to watch for cars, not going to cherish his face, and is going to do dumb shit?”

Having missed his window to argue back, he grumbled that that wasn’t what he meant at all.

I patted the shoulder of the kid who had to drag himself to school at the crack of dawn and said,

“Giyeon.”

“What.”

“I don’t tell you to go study hard, do I?”

“......”

“Just come back without doing anything stupid. Got it?”

Then I gave him a gentle smile. Kang Giyeon shuddered at my display of kindness.

With my sendoff wishing them a healthy, uneventful day, the three high schoolers left the dorm. It was a noisy morning.

“So you’re saying you toasted bread?”

At exactly eight, his usual wake-up time, Choi Jeho got up like a ghost and came out, asking.

I answered as I set some slightly cooled toast on a plate.

“Yeah. I made extra while I was doing the kids’ toast. Want some?”

“Yeah.”

Since he’d already passed the GED and had no need to go to school, Park Juu was calmly eating the toast he’d already been issued.

Even earlier, on his way out, Lee Cheonghyeon had muttered, “I’m so jealous of Juu-hyung......”

“High school, huh. Those were the days.”

“You talk like you graduated, like, ten years ago.”

How’d you guess that, kid.

Afraid the system would decide I’d leaked information related to regression without my consent and hand down some punishment, I pretended not to hear what Choi Jeho said and let it pass.

While I was quietly watching their reactions and chewing my toast, for some reason, Park Juu joined the conversation.

“......Hyung, what were you planning to do after you graduated high school?”

“Huh?”

“You said you’d never been a trainee before......”

I was going to go to college.

The college I should have gone to but couldn’t.

This kid, back in the SPARK days too, used to be called the hidden king of reading the mood; his knack for striking a nerve was a work of art. Thanks to him, I felt like I was about to cry in the middle of eating bread.

Because of the system, I was the only one in a tight spot. It wasn’t like I could just say, I did go before, but somehow I can’t in this life.

Not knowing how big a wound he’d just poked, the two of them, Choi Jeho and Park Juu, just stared at me blankly.

If you’re going to make someone lie, at least give them a sample answer they can actually use.

For someone like me, who’s no good at making things up or lying, this kind of situation was cruel.

I thought for a moment, then chose to answer in the vaguest way possible.

“I went back and forth about whether to go or not, and in the end I didn’t.”

“......Why not?”

“Couldn’t pay the tuition.”

Of all things, why did I have to get regressed after the tuition payment date?

I bit into my toast with all the directionless rage I had, and the expressions of the two sitting across from me looked strange.

They looked like people who’d asked something they really shouldn’t have.

“Why are your faces like th—”

Ah.

Did they seriously think I couldn’t pay because my family was poor?

I hesitated about three seconds over whether I should correct that misunderstanding, then gave up.

To begin with, the money I had right now was all borrowed from my sister, so it wasn’t exactly wrong.

Even if I had regressed before the payment date, stormed out of UA, and dumped all my money into registering for school, with my childhood home gone, I’d just end up commuting to college while sleeping on the streets.

Ever since I came back to the past with nothing but the clothes on my back, my degree had become a kind of Schrödinger’s diploma.

I thought of the diploma that had left my side and the total savings I’d scraped together by suffering like a dog at Hanpyeong Industries. Did you really have to take all of it to feel better.......

Of course, I had zero confidence in explaining this whole mess step by step while keeping my secret. I wasn’t obligated to, either.

‘Fine. I’ll just say I’m fully armed with the hunger mentality or whatever.’

While I was swallowing that bitter resolve, even Choi Jeho, of all people, glanced at me with an awkwardness I’d never seen before and said,

“Uh...... hang in there.”

Encouragement from Choi Jeho.

Of all people, that Choi Jeho, cheering for someone when there wasn’t even a camera on.

Even Department Head Nam’s daughter, his hardcore fan, had probably never seen such a rare sight. The world was really worth living in, if only to see things like this.

 [SYSTEM] ‘Hidden Task’ has been completed.

▷ Content: Have a personal conversation with a teammate

▷ Reward: EXP (10)

▷ Cumulative EXP: 10

▷ Cumulative Points: 0

 That wasn’t all. Apparently the system wanted to promote harmonious trainee life as well, because a hidden task had been completed all on its own.

I was already busy building my skills, and now I had to foster team bonding too.

No matter how important communication is in an organization, my EXP was staying in the same place while my to-do list felt like it had doubled.

The high schoolers returned one by one in the afternoon.

Naturally, their point of return was the practice room.

As soon as he came back and washed his hands, I handed a handkerchief to Lee Cheonghyeon and asked,

“Did you get back safe? Face is intact?”

“Of course. I’ve returned without a single scratch!”

“Your mindset is in the right place. Excellent.”

“Hyung, aren’t you a little too obsessed with the safety of our faces?”

He cracked a pointless joke.

Clearly, he still had no idea how many commercials he’d be shooting with that face.

For the sake of repaying UA, who were spending money investing in me, I decided I’d have to take out an insurance policy on each member’s face before debut.

“But when you’re in school, when do you practice?”

“Seongbin-hyung and Giyeon go just enough to meet the minimum attendance days. Arts high schools give you a bit of leeway for schedules.”

“What about you?”

“My school doesn’t cut us any slack. But my school’s close, and Giyeon’s is far, so if you factor in commute time, it kind of evens out.”

Sure enough, right next to us, Kang Giyeon was stretching with a very regretful expression.

“You guys should at least have time to sleep. I’m worried.”

Then Kang Giyeon replied,

“Hyung, you practice every night too.”

“My growth spurt is pretty much over, so I’m fine.”

“Well, I mean...... they say some people still grow even after they go to the army.”

That’s their story. You’re not going to grow.

Kang Giyeon’s height hadn’t changed at all after debut. That was something he had personally admitted, with his own mouth.

‘You’re asking if I ever had a growth spurt? Sparkler...... we agreed not to talk about our heights, remember’

‘Is Ganggyeon being a little too genuinely bitter right now? This is killing me.’

‘My height’s been the same since either my second or third year of high school.......’

‘Giyeon-ssi, you’re not crying, right?’

In other words, right now was when Kang Giyeon needed to make his last dash.

If he blew through his golden time in such a critical period by staying up day and night, things weren’t going to end well for him.

I’d always wondered what he was going to do if the other members kept growing and he didn’t.

With sleep this scarce, it would be weirder if he did keep growing. Considering their diet of basically bread and salad, it made even more sense. Who knew where they’d sold off all their protein.

‘If possible, I should try to secure some time when the kids can actually sleep...... If that doesn’t work, I’ll at least have to make them drink milk together in the mornings.’

Was debuting idols always something that required this many factors to think about?

I didn’t know, but there was no denying that being able to do something was far better than not being able to do anything at all.

That night, it was only after I’d walked through the early spring night air with Kang Giyeon and bought two cartons of low-fat milk that I could finally head back to the dorm.

‘I should’ve just applied for a career change to manager instead of idol.’

It was a night full of regret.

And that regret would soon fully blossom.

For a while, my schedule was pretty stable.

These days my day went......

7:00 Get up and toast bread for the high schoolers (+ make sure Kang Giyeon drinks low-fat milk)

8:00 Eat breakfast and get ready to go practice

9:00–24:00 Practice and everything that comes with it

00:00–00:30 Wash up while reflecting on the day’s clumsiness

00:30– Future planning, SPARK revival plans, etc.

......and that was it. Extremely simple. Sometimes I made them French toast too, and they really liked that.

Preparing for the next end-of-month evaluation was going smoothly as well.

Thanks to my vocal proficiency going up, I’d at least developed a feel for what exactly was lacking and where when I sang.

If I combined the issues I’d found with the routes I’d reverse-engineered for the training the members must have received up until now, I could more or less predict the feedback I’d get by the next evaluation.

All that was left was to pick a song that could best show how the feedback I was going to get had improved, and that part also got resolved cleanly.

Because SPARK’s human karaoke songbook, Jeong Seongbin, listened to my conditions once and then came back the next day with twenty songs ready to go.

I’d only brought it up on a whim because he seemed really guilty over the times I’d toasted bread, but still.

‘There are fewer songs than last time, huh?’

‘It’s a lot of work to listen to them one by one. I narrowed it down more on my side, thinking about your taste based on the last list and the song you sang at the end-of-month evaluation...... Would you prefer to have more options?’

‘No. You’re a genius.’

And that was how preparation for the evaluation started moving full steam ahead.

Now all I had to do was upgrade my dancing from runaway train to something like a steam locomotive.

For the record, my goal with dance was simply not to derail.

“You really have no talent for dancing.”

“A month after you join a company is always when you’re at your most useless.”

“What kind of analogy is that supposed to be?”

Barely a moment after I’d vowed not to derail, Choi Jeho lifted my elbow. Looks like the angle was off again this time.

Sure enough, his criticism came immediately.

“If you look in the mirror, you can see the angle’s wrong. Hasn’t it settled into your body yet?”

If my body could do parallel processing on that level, I wouldn’t be suffering like this in the first place.

I missed Kang Giyeon, who was strict but at least taught me from a more human perspective than Choi Jeho did.

“You should at least be able to do one cover dance so you have something to say when you go into your interview.”

“Interview?”

“Our company does personal interviews at the start of the month. With the CEO, the manager, and the management team.”

Buddy. If something like that exists, shouldn’t you maybe mention it a bit earlier?

An interview with the CEO sounded nothing short of horrific. There’s nothing as unproductive as ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) a meeting with a person in power.

Right on cue, the system flared brightly between me and Choi Jeho and popped up a new task.

 [SYSTEM] ‘New Task’ has been assigned.

▷ Content: Have first interview with the CEO

▷ Reward: EXP (10)

 If I shifted my focus away mid-conversation, rumors might start going around that I was seeing things.

I skimmed just the main points as fast as I could, then looked back at Choi Jeho and asked,

“What do you usually talk about when you go in?”

“They don’t really say much. Just whether you’re doing okay as a trainee and whether you’ve been doing well lately.”

That’s fucking important.

Do you have any idea how exhausting company life gets once you’re branded as someone who doesn’t fit the organization?

‘Well, it’s not like he’s the type to care about that stuff.’

I thought back to my last interview with Department Head Nam.

He’d gone on about how he’d been really talking me up to upper management, and how because of that he felt like everyone was staring at him and it was killing him.

And then, to top it off, he ended by asking me to hurry up and finish that banner his kid had requested. That whole interview had been a one-man talk show.

I just hoped UA’s CEO wasn’t expecting anything from me at all.

And on top of that, I desperately hoped that even if he did have a kid at home who was an idol fan, he wouldn’t be the kind of senseless human being who dragged that into the workplace.

Whether or not Choi Jeho’s words had been some kind of foreshadowing, a few days later, individual interview times were announced for all the trainees.