The first shooting day of “In My Office” dawned.

Call time was 9:00, but I didn’t want to get stuck in rush-hour traffic, and I wanted to get a feel for the set early, so I left ahead of time—and ended up arriving two hours early.

“Iwol, you’ve got loads of time. Want to wait in the car?”

“No, thanks. I still have a lot to learn, so I should get moving. I’ll head straight to set!”

So I was ambling around the area, careful not to get in anyone’s way.

I’d never seen a drama shoot before. The vibe was pretty different from a music-video set, which I found interesting.

“They built this set well.”

They’d rented an empty office from an existing company and filled it with props, but the props had real signs of wear. The props team must’ve worked hard.

I stood by the wall sneaking glances, and the director’s expression gradually turned ominous.

He kept pointing back and forth between the paper in his hand and the partitions, suggesting something was seriously wrong.

“Wait, the install team did it like this and just packed up?!”

His shout cracked across the floor. Every eye turned to him.

“Did they even look at the layout? God, these idiots are unbelievable.”

He raked his hair hard. No one dared ask what was wrong.

Beside him, the assistant director, peering at what looked like the seating chart, also went grim.

“If we call the install team now, how long till they get here?”

“Even if they come right away, it’s rush hour... They might arrive on time, but they won’t finish the work by call.”

“Actors are all here at nine—does that make sense? These aren’t newbies. How do you even make this kind of mistake?”

They were already discussing calling the install team back in.

I watched for an opening, then quietly asked a staffer who had just stepped away from the cluster around the director:

“Excuse me—did something go wrong?”

She glanced around and whispered.

“It’s our male lead’s desk. It’s been placed completely wrong.”

“His desk?”

“There’s a specific spot where the team lead’s station is supposed to go, but the installers copied the layout from the office next door. Meaning they didn’t look at our plan.”

On a set where the camera has to run back and forth a few dozen times in one space, that’s a big problem.

Still—couldn’t we just move the desk to where it’s supposed to be? It didn’t sound that hard.

“Should we move it now, then?”

Over there, someone else was proposing they rearrange the tables.

There were plenty of able bodies around; moving a few tables and sorting props would be brutal in two hours, but doable.

But the director didn’t sign off.

“Just move the desk and that’s it? What about the LAN lines! All that’s been cased in molding. You want to rip it all out and start shooting? Or do you plan to show the lead’s computer losing internet every scene? You [N O V E L I G H T] think viewers don’t pause and zoom on that stuff?”

Bottom line: the in-floor internet lines were off-limits. Fair—unlike furniture, the cabling is a separate contractor.

But there weren’t many computers. If it’s just popping LAN cables into ports, then...

“Hello, Director. Sorry to butt in.”

“Iwol? Why are you here so early?”

“I figured the rookie shouldn’t be late. If moving Team Lead Ji’s station solves it... could I handle it?”

He gave me a strange look.

“Well, it would, but... that’s not exactly simple right now. We’ll need a meeting...”

“It’s just—I think I can do it. I’ll be careful with the work. May I try to tidy it up?”

Skepticism flickered in his eyes.

Fair. Time was tight, and to everyone else I’m a twenty-one-year-old kid trying to jump in.

“I appreciate the enthusiasm, but there’s a lot intertwined here. We prepped the lines so they wouldn’t snag on cameras or actors’ feet. If we tear that up, it gets ugly.”

“Understood. I’ll keep the lines managed.”

“I’m sorry—what?”

I had exactly two lines in episode one.

I’d gone to hair and makeup at dawn for those two lines. After the shoot I still had to go draft fan-meeting ideas. Even squeezing every minute, I was short on time.

So taking a delay because we were calling installers and rearranging tables? Hard to swallow.

I brought in the backpack I’d been hauling around since the Do Younghwan audition and set it on the floor.

Then I pulled out a fistful of cable ties.

I put on the work gloves I’d kept since the day we lit charcoal in a drum, and started peeling up the floor molding—only where necessary.

If this were a real office, we’d have to keep the IPs straight and match numbering.

But this was a small shoot.

A few PCs weren’t going to collide, and nobody was doing real work; they just needed connectivity.

Which meant we could skip changing the entire desk layout and jury-rig the lines.

With a few cable ties clenched between my teeth, I bundled lines and my mind drifted back.

To the days I bought electrical tape to wrap bare wires by hand, and got roped into re-molding the floors every time we moved offices.

Thinking back, I must’ve been out of my mind to do all that.

Because the previous cable management was clean, we only needed to shift two or three work desks. I crawled back under a table to bundle the stray cables, then taped the molding I’d lifted back down.

Finally, I kicked along the molding to check it wouldn’t pop loose. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

“Director, if we finish it like this, will it work? If you confirm the position, I’ll move the props!”

He stared for a beat, then nodded.

Told you it wasn’t a hard problem.

Beaming, I moved props onto the new setup. Then I got told—first by a staffer, “Iwol, stop working and go wait, please!” and second by my manager, “Iwol, sit until someone calls you!”

“So? You went and worked again?”

Lee Cheonghyeon sounded exasperated.

“What was I supposed to do? The shoot was about to get delayed.”

“They say drama shoots eat time, and wow—no joke.”

“My point exactly.”

For once, I agreed with him. I’d been on set all day, and my entire contribution boiled down to two lines: “Deputy, here’s the file you asked for,” and “For now, I think it’s safe to say we can kiss going home on time goodbye.”

For the record, Ha Seomyeong repeated the ad-lib she’d thrown at the table read—on set, exactly the same. My heart barely survived.

“Hyung, you’re playing an office worker, right? A stockbroker?”

“Yeah. Why? Doesn’t fit?”

“No, it fits so well it’s weird.”

“What is that supposed to mean...”

He shook his head, pulling out his planner, and behind me he added:

“But seriously, it is weird.”

“What is?”

“You. Why doesn’t the office-worker look feel strange on you at all?”

My heart almost stopped.

Cheonghyeon, meanwhile, was unbothered.

“You’re not the type who’d want to act polished and professional. It’s more like... you were an office worker already.”

“Did you forget I’ve been training with you since I was twenty?”

“That’s why it’s weird.”

I tried to lighten the mood, but he chose the strangest time to get serious.

“Is it like... you admired office workers? Or was that your dream?”

“No way.”

In high school it was a dream, but there’s zero admiration left. I want to slip free of companies and even the national insurance net and live alone.

“Come to think of it, for someone who knows so much about us, you say almost nothing about yourself.”

That stung. From their perspective, there were definitely moments I seemed to see right through them.

“Got questions for me?”

“Plenty.”

“But you’re not asking.”

I flipped to a bookmarked page in my planner. I’d jotted fan-meeting ideas somewhere around here...

“Because I don’t think you’ll answer.”

...My hand stopped.

I looked over at him, sprawled on Choi Jeho’s bed with a laptop. He didn’t look away.

Even so, I couldn’t say, “If you’re curious, ask.”

“See? You can’t bring yourself to invite the questions.”

He knew exactly where my head was.

“But hyung, if there’s stuff that’s hard at work—say it.”

“...Out of nowhere?”

“You handle everything for us anyway.”

He shrugged.

“So talk to the members about your work. Keep the balance.”

With that, he turned back to his screen. He looked a little sheepish, maybe a little shy.

I pretended not to notice and left the room with my planner and a pen.

In the past, I’d been to exactly one Spark fan meeting.

Back then, UA was obsessed with over-the-top identity checks, and since I treat personal data like a treasure, I refused to borrow the section chief’s daughter’s account for proxy ticketing... so that happened.

That day, I’d never in my life been looked at that much. People worried I’d feel left out and handed me free sticker packs out of kindness—I remember that.

So the fan meeting itself—how was it?

No need to ask. Boring as hell.

Choi Jeho stared into the void, Park Juu kept his gaze nailed to the floor, Kang Giyeon talked nonsense, and only Lee Cheonghyeon charged ahead like a runaway horse.

If I’d been Jeong Seongbin, I would’ve called them all to the green room afterward and said, “If you hate being idols this much, pack your bags.” Seongbin, you are never allowed to leave this team.

“They at least try now...”

How do we give Sparklers the best fan meeting possible?

The big strategy meeting for that is today, in the beloved, hated basement practice room.