When you’re job hunting, your résumé is the thing you end up rewriting over and over.

At the same time, once I started working in HR, résumés became the kind of document I got sick of seeing, and back when I dreamed of changing jobs, it was also the document I tweaked every single day.

But the résumé I was looking at now was something I’d never seen in my life.

 [UA New Trainee] Kim Iwol

Kim Iwol (20 years old / previous age 29)

Work History

― Joined UA via street casting

External Activities

― Assistant Manager, HR Team, Hanpyeong Industries (5th year)

Performance Evaluation (100)

― Vocal proficiency: 4/20

― Dance proficiency: 1/20

― Self PR: 12/20

― Attendance & time management: 18/20

― Adaptability within organization: 10/20

Total EXP: 0

Total Points: 0

 And this was supposed to be my résumé.

My past at Hanpyeong Industries, tough and stringy as an overboiled sweet potato fiber, had been shunted into “External Activities.”

So my career turned into fluff, huh.

More importantly, is that "Dance proficiency: 1" for real? The fact I never got roped into doing a talent show at a workshop was pure providence.

I stared at the EXP and points line, wondering what the hell those were, and a new explanation popped up.

 [SYSTEM] The "EXP–Point System" is now being delivered to Party B.

▷ When you complete "work," you will receive a certain amount of EXP.

▷ When your EXP reaches 100, it can be converted into 1 point.

▷ Points can be added to your proficiency scores.

 What a load of crap.

If doing a lot of work automatically made you good at dancing, executives worldwide would’ve already rounded up every office worker on earth and turned it into one big talent show.

What really caught my eye, though, were the parts that said "New trainee" and "Joined via street casting."

"Joined via street casting?"

February, nine years ago. A street. Idol casting.

I felt like something was on the tip of my tongue.

Right before I started college—someone had stopped me on my way home.

I’m pretty sure I’d been on the phone with my sister when I got a business card.

They’d handed me a card for UA, a company famous for its ballad singers, and said they were putting together an idol group; I remember being seriously confused.

I was so sure they were scammers ripping off another company’s name that I just tuned them out.

It wasn’t even the first time I’d gotten some idol-related business card, so I forgot about it completely.

But apparently, the "me" I was now fell into the branch where I accepted that offer and joined.

"After that, the only male idol group UA debuted was SPARK."

And once again, going round and round brought me back to SPARK. What are the odds.

I had no idea what they’d seen in me to contact me, but as the story started lining up, my thoughts gradually began to move again.

When the blood rushes to your head, even simple things stop working.

I forced myself to calm down and tried to boil everything I knew so far down to the simplest form.

I’ve gone back to nine years ago.

I’ve become a trainee under UA.

If I don’t debut in a six-member boy group, I can’t save my sister.

And if I don’t, I have to join that fucking Hanpyeong Industries again. On a lifetime contract.

The situation was still a shitshow, but at least I could accept it now.

If I thought of it as giving my sister seventy years’ worth of birthday presents all at once, it sounded almost comforting.

And I’d be the one getting my birthday presents with compound interest this time around.

Screw it. I’d grit my teeth and tough it out.

I forced ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ my heart into something like resolve.

Right then, an alarm went off above my head. To be precise, up on the wooden ceiling.

At the same time, Center Emperor Choi Jeho, who’d been sleeping beside me, opened his eyes.

The exact same face from the pre-debut reality show, with a nose bridge that wouldn’t change even after nine years, and that slight frown he always made waking up because of his bad eyesight.

The moment I saw that face I knew far too well—so well it drove me insane—any shred of calm I’d built up evaporated.

In its place, pent-up resentment flooded in.

Could I do this?

Me?

Could I really laugh it up and make a happy debut with those bastards whose faces piss me off just by existing?

My stomach burned. The reflux was definitely flaring up.

"Huh? You’re up right away too, hyung."

At that moment, along with a voice far too bright for morning, a face popped down from the ceiling.

Was it the lighting?

As I looked at those features that seemed to glow with a halo, I was at a loss for words.

The face was so unreal I honestly thought, for a second, that it wasn’t human.

"Don’t tell me that’s Cutie Pretty Visually Lee Cheonghyeon?"

His looks were impressive enough to blow the memory of our horrible karmic tie out of my head for a moment.

Seeing that face, I almost felt like I could forgive UA for selling full-body mini acrylic stands of him for 23,000 won a piece.

Even though, in the end, that guy was still the bastard who came back from his first long vacation sunburned to hell, making the retouching level go up to "extreme."

You really do live and see it all. That face actually exists in the mortal world.

The way his soft, rounded eyes, nose, and mouth came together but somehow gave off a chilly aura—that mystery was exactly what made Cutie Pretty Visually Lee Cheonghyeon’s face so striking.

"Jeho-hyung’s a razor-sharp early riser too. I really like our dorm’s lifestyle habits! The maknae is satisfied!"

He was disgustingly cheerful from the crack of dawn.

Center Emperor Choi Jeho, meanwhile, looked like he couldn’t care less what this guy was saying.

"Hyung! We eat breakfast at the practice room. Let’s get ready to head over first!"

Cutie Pretty Visually Lee Cheonghyeon climbed down from above while kindly explaining.

Just how many more days was I going to have to keep listening to these voices that made my ears crawl just hearing them? The world went dark.

An hour later, I was standing inside UA’s building with the future SPARK.

UA, the company that cast me, was an agency long known as a prestigious house of ballads.

Most of the singers under UA had at least one hit ballad to their names.

Then, for some reason, UA suddenly announced they were entering the idol market.

The space UA half-assedly threw together for trainee training was exactly where I’d ended up: the basement practice room.

SPARK’s fans called this place "UA brand basement prison."

≫ A rookie group with only two songs out and their hiatus is a year and two months lol just say you don’t want to make money lol

└ The kids must be pissed too. They debuted and then got shoved straight into storage for no reason

SPARK’s hiatuses were insanely long.

At one point there were even rumors that their sentence got extended every time a new scandal broke out.

For the record, this place wasn’t unfamiliar to me either. I’d seen it to the point of nausea when I took screenshots over and over to check their perfectly synchronized choreo in dance videos.

Standing there, feeling the familiar shittiness, I suddenly felt someone step up beside me and speak.

"You’ve only just joined, so it’s already overwhelming, right? Since this is your first time as a trainee, hyung, I’ll start by giving you a simple rundown of our practice routine."

This was Jeong Seongbin, the mental pillar who would one day become SPARK’s leader.

To me, mental pillar Jeong Seongbin was a very filial member.

In that rough-looking crowd that was SPARK, he was the one who looked the softest, so I’d memorized his face pretty quickly.

Mental pillar Jeong Seongbin explained the time the trainer-hyung usually arrived, along with various UA rules. His orientation skills were top-tier.

"If he got put in charge of new recruit training, that’d be his true calling..."

I was quietly impressed by his gentle, clear diction when mental pillar Jeong Seongbin suddenly sprang a question on me.

"Do you have any other questions?"

"No. Thanks for the explanation."

I answered in a hurry, afraid he’d realize I’d been spacing out, and his expression turned a little odd.

"Um, hyung. Didn’t you say we’d drop honorifics starting yesterday?"

There was a detail like that?

Judging by the way mental pillar Jeong Seongbin, who should’ve been way more senior than me as a trainee, was still speaking formally, it looked like the pecking order here went strictly by age.

Conservative organizational culture isn’t my thing. As someone whose natural habitat is the very bottom of the ladder, that kind of structure made me deeply uncomfortable.

"I guess it’s... just still a little awkward. If you’re okay with it, you can talk comfortably to me too."

"Okay."

I hated using age as an excuse to talk down to people I’d just met. But I didn’t want to get nagged for nothing, so I went along.

Thankfully, mental pillar Jeong Seongbin didn’t latch onto the issue any further.

"Then shall we start with stretching?"

With those terrible words, mental pillar Jeong Seongbin got up.

The time had come for me to sweat it out, working toward the same goal as my mortal enemies from hell.

I want to go home.

I want to go home so badly it hurts.

The words I used to carve onto my heart every day back in my office worker days rose up on their own.

And then my vision went white.

Okay, I don’t want any more manuals, thanks.

 [SYSTEM] A work directive has arrived from the "Person in Charge."

▶ You know how, as part of company welfare, we hand out points, right? Starting today, if you do a good job, you’ll be able to earn some. There aren’t many places that take care of you like this, you know? Anyway, Assistant Manager Kim, you’re lucky. Don’t waste them on something stupid—use them where you really need them.

 Although, if we’re talking material rewards, that’s a different story.

The fact it wasn’t cash but points was annoying, but from the receiver’s side, you squeeze whatever you can get.

Could we please just change that tone, though? Every time I see it, half my motivation disappears.

Still, it was a good deal for someone in no position to be picky. Especially with my dance proficiency scraping the bottom.

"Do I have to beg for work to get some?"

The idea of me asking for work felt deeply wrong. Normally, if I just sat still, the work would come flooding in on its own.

I briefly debated whether I should kneel in the direction the letters were floating or just bow my head.

Thankfully, I was spared the humiliation of begging for extra tasks on top of being forced to debut.

 [SYSTEM] "New work" has been assigned.

▷ Complete one basic move

▷ Reward: EXP

 One move, I could probably manage, right?

Surely they’d given me something doable with a dance proficiency of 1. I steeled myself.

And I can say with confidence: this was the single dumbest decision I’d made in recent memory.

Do you have any idea how much Korean idol groups, coming from the so-called K-pop powerhouse, actually practice?

"Fuck, fuck...!"

I didn’t. Which is why I felt like I was going to die now.

Ignorance really is a crime. I couldn’t explain the hardship and adversity I was going through as anything but punishment.

"Kim Iwol, I told you to turn left."

"Turning isn’t the problem right now. Just be honest, hyung. You’re mixing up your left hand and right hand, aren’t you."

I’m not that bad, for god’s sake.

But wait—didn’t I just turn left?

"How can someone be this clumsy?"

"This isn’t clumsy, this is creaky. If your limbs are going to move this freely on their own, your brain’s going to go on strike by tomorrow."

Center Emperor Choi Jeho, the group’s main dance member, and King of Cuteness Kang Giyeon were discussing the situation with deadly serious faces.

Watching the two guys responsible for the stage’s level of completion, I suddenly remembered a forum post I’d seen.

≫ But for a shit company like UA, didn’t they pull together a crazy strong lineup? There’s not a single member who’s a weak link in terms of skill lol

To show the public lots of fun sides of them, we’ve added one clumsy guy. My chest ached.

Center Emperor Choi Jeho, who had a strong individualist streak, didn’t seem particularly bothered by this mess.

On the other hand, King of Cuteness Kang Giyeon, who’d long been famous for his perfectionism, never once took his cold eyes off me.

For someone like me, who got motion sick just from staring at SPARK’s photos for five seconds, this was the ultimate torture.

After I’d rampaged through the practice room like a broken runaway train, King of Cuteness Kang Giyeon’s gaze sharpened. The killing intent bristling off him was as sharp as the corners of his eyes.

If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s reading SPARK’s eyes.

Sure enough, he spoke in an icy voice.

"Hyung."

"Yeah."

"Don’t even think about going back to the dorm tonight."

For a moment, I remembered something a junior at work who liked idols had said, eating a triangle kimbap in the break room with dead eyes.

She’d asked if I knew what the three great "mayo" were.

If I remember right... was that when an article came out about her fave idol skipping a fan meeting because he was "sick" but then getting caught at Kangwon Land?

Aside from "tuna mayo" and "Oppa, don’t do everything you want-ma(yo)," I’d forgotten the third one, but this "don’t go back to the dorm-ma(yo)" from King of Cuteness Kang Giyeon had a decent kick to it too.

Who knows how many times I repeated those unnatural movements.

"Oh. You got it."

"Do it again, quick. Before you forget."

The moment Center Emperor Choi Jeho’s flat approval and King of Cuteness Kang Giyeon’s zero-rest-time okay sign came down, my vision went white.

I thought it was the signal I was about to pass out, but it was the system. The stubborn bastard.

 [SYSTEM] "Work" has been completed.

▷ Reward: EXP (20)

▷ Total EXP: 20

▷ Total Points: 0

 Twenty? Twenty?

After all that fucking suffering?

My limbs were shaking.

I was speechless. Clearly, I’d been taking these "abnormal phenomena" way too lightly.