“Why are you two so quiet? Don’t tell me you were planning to throw punches even though you want to be idols?”

Silence fell over the practice room.

“......”

“Did you want to go into debut already dragging a controversy behind you? Are you both the type to take high risks for high returns or something?”

If that was the case, these two shouldn’t be fighting each other—they should’ve been sitting down with me first.

I was debating whether I should straighten out their minds until concepts and manners were carved into their spines when Choi Jeho asked,

“If you’re not going to stop us, why did you butt in?”

“I wanted to say I hope you’ll change the way you’re talking. You’re both old enough to express your opinions politely.”

At that, both of them clamped their mouths shut.

Knowing their personalities, if they really disagreed, they would’ve snapped back right away, so it felt like they both agreed with me at least a little.

“I want you to have a healthy conversation. Not use the fight as an excuse to vent your anger.”

“......”

“That goes for you too, Choi Jeho. Now that you know Ganggyeon has a problem with you, shouldn’t you just ask him what exactly is bothering him? Let’s not throw away what we learned in ethics class, okay?”

The two of them, hit with a bucket of cold water heavily seasoned with “back in my day,” let out a sigh. A sign their desire to fight had gone down.

‘If all I had to do was stop the fight, I’d leave it here, but...’

≫ Look at our Seongbin, so tired from trying to smooth over the mood that he’s sipping at a cup with not even a drop of cola left with his straw ㅠㅠ Main-dance line, have some awareness—no, actually don’t

└ Spacoolbyeong really living up to their username, fr. The live broadcast atmosphere is a total shitshow and they’re over there squeezing each other and pretending to have a “chill” complex

└ If they don’t at least do some mental gymnastics, how are they supposed to stan these guys lol. I could barely breathe watching that the whole time

└ You say you could barely breathe the whole time but still watched the entire live? Welcome to the fandom ㅋㅋ

└ That mental gymnastics is insane

Even if I set the goal at nothing more than “debut without incident,” I still had to spend at least a year with SPARK from here on out.

In this situation, burying the conflict and pretending not to see it was the same as agreeing to live life walking on thin ice that could crack at any moment.

On top of that, the people locking horns here were the two who fought the most even within SPARK. There was no way to wrap this up by just ignoring it.

“If it’s hard to talk once you’ve cooled down, then at least get help from a third party. If someone else steps in, your head will cool off a bit, right?”

“......”

“You’ve both been living in a group way longer than I have, so it’s probably harder on you, and you’ve probably been holding back a lot with each other too. But you don’t actually want the others to be walking on eggshells, do you?”

At that, both Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon’s eyes turned to Jeong Seongbin’s face, which had gone pale.

This probably wasn’t the first or second time this had happened, and every time, Seongbin must have squeezed himself between them somehow and played mediator. I didn’t even need to see it to know.

“In that case, I hope you both come to a peaceful agreement. I’m going back inside.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“Huh?”

Arms crossed, Choi Jeho looked straight at me.

“You do it. Be the third party.”

No. That’s where you, as the eldest, should at least step up and say, “I’ll do it, I’m SPARK’s honorary mediator,” isn’t it?

I had absolutely zero desire to get involved in their fight.

My social capacity was already at its limit just from seeing SPARK’s faces every day and talking and practicing with them.

Even so, I was trying to calm myself and suggest that they take responsibility and solve their own issues when the system popped up in front of my eyes.

 [SYSTEM] ‘New Task’ has been assigned.

▷ Resolve the conflict between members and remove the bud of controversy (one-time use of bar function available)

▷ Reward: Experience (20), bar function activation

 No, fuck, you want me to resolve a shouting match between kids who are already grown?

When you’ve got multiple sentient beings, obviously you’re going to have clashes of opinion sometimes. That’s just how it is.

What bothered me was that “bud of controversy” part.

I quickly ran through SPARK’s life story in my head.

‘A controversy that could’ve happened between Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon... The attitude controversy was only about Jeho, so that’s out, the personality controversies hit both of them but they weren’t tied together so that’s out...’

No matter how many layers I peeled back, more and more controversies came to mind. Even if I was the most slapdash member on the team, this was a shipwreck level of mess.

I respected both Jeong Seongbin, who had led a noisy group project for seven years straight, and Department Head Nam’s daughter, who must have passionately stanned this chaos factory called SPARK for seven years.

If it had been me, I might’ve dropped my stan card the moment the “ignoring members” controversy hit...

‘This is it!’

It was the controversy that had exploded when, around two years after debut, cameras captured the awkward air between Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon.

If it were between office workers, it would’ve ended after a few rounds of talking behind each other’s backs...

But even though they were in the same group, the distance between Jeho and Ganggyeon, who looked cold and awkward with each other, got exaggerated like a snowball with every new post.

And in the end, things escalated all the way into a personality controversy where the older Jeho, who wasn’t even center, was supposedly looking down on the younger Ganggyeon and creating a razor-sharp atmosphere within the team.

≫ If that’s how he is on camera, I can’t even imagine what he’s like off camera;;; The chill is insane

≫ I mean, seriously, they’re not strangers, they’re groupmates. How can you blatantly ignore someone that much? I’m embarrassed for him

≫ Fans have been shielding him for years saying he’s just shy lol. So this was the end result? I’m fucking disappointed in you, Jeho

└ Nobody else to blame lol. They raised him like this for years and now they’re suddenly “so disappointed” ㅋㅋ Just keep stanning your precious Jeho, whose “poor social skills” you thought were cute

Then the clickbaiters piled on...

‘Unable to endure the military-like hierarchy, a boy group member stages a mutiny,’ ‘The idol whose treatment of his members caused controversy... To do this to your own teammate?’

...Videos like that ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) ran wild.

The algorithm had pushed them so hard that I still remembered the fake thumbnails perfectly, with Jeho and Ganggyeon glaring at each other like they were about to kill each other.

And all of this happened, unfortunately, right when mentions of SPARK had started to spike noticeably.

In other words, this wasn’t supposed to be the time for that to surface yet.

‘Why is this blowing up already?’

It was true that Jeho and Ganggyeon had kept an unusual distance right before debut.

So timing-wise, this was an issue that shouldn’t have blown up until at least two years later, four if you factored in how long it would take to become an actual issue.

No wonder Seongbin’s mental state had suddenly gone off the rails.

At that moment, the warning I’d seen not long ago came to mind.

 [SYSTEM] ‘Party B’ is being notified of ‘Cautions.’

▷ If the schedule is excessively altered, corresponding disadvantages may occur.

▷ Even when the schedule is moved forward, the frequency of planned events remains in effect, and the timing of their occurrence is adjusted to the new schedule.

 Fuck, I was the one going for high risk, high return, not these kids.

Realizing all of this was my karma made my stomach burn. I think my head hurt a bit too.

‘As shitty as this is, what’s done is done.’

With time already in short supply, it was better to squeeze even the time I could spend regretting things into searching for the best-possible response.

I worked my brain as hard as I could to find something positive in the current situation.

Like everything else, even this had its upside.

‘Considering UA handled it so badly later that they basically threw gasoline on individual fandoms, it might be better to prevent it in advance.’

Watching Jeho’s fans and Ganggyeon’s fans get shredded was a lot worse than this.

Of course, all of this was on the assumption that I could actually prevent the incident from happening.

I really should have applied to transfer into a manager position. If not that, then at least become UA’s in-house confessional operator.

“Guys, I don’t think practice is the important thing right now.”

“What?”

“Can everyone sit down? We need to talk.”

Emergency. This was truly an emergency.

None of us knew who had brought him or when, but even Park Juu was there as we sat in a circle in the middle of the practice room.

“I don’t think this is something that needs to be blown up this big.”

Kang Giyeon voiced his dissatisfaction.

He’d lost his temper and snapped, but he’d been trying to smooth it over in his own way; then Jeho had poked at it without reading the room, and it looked like I’d set it on fire, so he was annoyed.

“I said I wanted you to have a healthy conversation. Until your head cools off, you’re on speaking ban, Ganggyeon.”

So I decided to just shut his mouth for now. When you’re pissed, even good words come out twisted.

“Okay, Jeho. What about what Ganggyeon said bothered you?”

“...I wouldn’t say it really ‘bothered’ me.”

He tried to slide out of it, so I smiled and asked nicely, for everyone’s sake.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d be honest, if only out of respect for the effort the four of us are putting into sitting here to hear your side.”

At that, Jeho flinched.

He didn’t have any friends, so casual, honest conversation with someone his own age was probably awkward for him. I understood.

“He acts like he finds me annoying.”

“What?”

The moment Jeho spoke, Ganggyeon reacted.

With the angle they were sitting at, facing each other, their gazes clashed in midair, sending off visible sparks.

They really were members whose group name fit them perfectly.

I kept my tone as calm as possible so Jeho wouldn’t go on the attack too.

“Did Ganggyeon ever say with his own mouth that you get on his nerves?”

“He’s never said that, but...”

“Then why do you think he finds you annoying?”

“Do you really have to hear it said out loud to know when someone doesn’t like you?”

In other words, he’d read Ganggyeon’s nonverbal signals.

This part was unexpected. Jeho was famous for being the guy who lived his life without caring what anyone else thought.

It was possible that his personality had changed after becoming an idol, but watching him day in and day out, eating and sleeping under the same roof, I hadn’t seen much difference from the way he looked on screen.

‘Someone like that paying this much attention to someone else... that’s pretty unexpected.’

Meanwhile, the one who’d suddenly become the guy who’d been going around shouting, “I hate you,” with his whole body to his teammate, Ganggyeon, had an odd look on his face.

“For all that my life has been short if it’s short and long if it’s long, there’s one thing I’ve learned.”

“You lived exactly the same life I did.”

I’ve got nine more years of wear on me than you, you punk.

“In my experience, rather than guessing at someone else’s feelings based on my own standards, it’s more helpful for continuing a conversation to explain why I’m angry.”

“I felt like he was trying to make it obvious from a hundred meters away that he hates me, so I laid out the board and told him to say it straight. Is that good enough?”

“I don’t hate you.”

Just when the conversation was about to overheat, Ganggyeon stepped in to explain.

But it was hard to take that at face value. His expression was really bad.

“We just don’t get along. And I have no intention of trying to make it work.”

He was firm.

“Can I ask why you ended up feeling that way?”

At my question, Ganggyeon hesitated for a moment, then answered.

“Because that hyung also has no intention of trying to make it work with anyone.”