Even though the group-name issue was still dragging on, everything else was moving ahead step by step.

Today’s profile shoot was part of that.

For this day I had to crash the moment the clock hit 1 a.m. for a whole week.

On the manager’s orders, Jeong Seongbin had strictly banned late-night work under the reason of “managing every member’s skin condition.”

"Uh, Seongbin. This is reference research, so it might take some time..."

"We’ll handle breakfast ourselves this week, so please sleep now and do it tomorrow morning."

I wasn’t the only one on Seongbin’s special-management list.

"Seongbin hyung, if I write just one more bar of melody, I swear I’ll sleep like a baby!"

"You said that an hour ago. Cheonghyeon, you go in too."

I confess: I got a little cowed by the spirit of a kid who’s still in high school. There was zero room for compromise.

Sufficient, regular sleep, newly won youth, and a professional makeup artist’s touch combined, and my dark circles vanished without a trace.

It was so impressive even Choi Jeho paid me something like a compliment.

"You shouldn’t pull all-nighters. You look better without dark circles."

"Don’t say that where Seongbin can hear you."

I’d pass on overtime, but compared to falling behind on work, overtime is better. Accumulated tasks are a recipe for a headache.

"Sheesh. After seeing you in training clothes every day, seeing you in a shirt—your looks just pop."

"Really? Should I take a selfie or something?"

Even in the chaos the manager and Lee Cheonghyeon were chatting happily.

It’d be nice if they just kept their fun to themselves, but Cheonghyeon ran over to where we were.

"Hyung! Manager says shirts suit us! Let’s take some pictures and keep them!"

"Uh-huh. Go take a hundred of yourself first."

"Why! Let’s take them together!"

"Now’s not the time to ask someone to take pictures with you. Think about preserving your face."

The first time I saw Lee Cheonghyeon’s face, it made a tremendous impact.

Even so, living together dulls the shock of appearances; you adapt—that’s the way of things.

I thought I’d adapted to Cheonghyeon’s face by now...

But a polished, buffed-up handsome face is nothing like a bare one.

I finally understood why fans so desperately long for the holy trinity of hair, makeup, and styling all in balance.

"No way! I look that good? Specifically how good?"

"About eight hundred fifty thousand won per unit area?"

"Why eight hundred fifty thousand?"

"That’s the gold price right now."

"I accept your verdict, sir."

Cheonghyeon lifted a thumb with a moved expression.

Over his shoulder I saw the Video Team’s camera lens pointed this way. I’ll have to ask them to edit that part out.

Telling everyone to sit so we wouldn’t be in the way with all these people around, I barely got out of Cheonghyeon’s striking range when I ran into Seongbin.

"Hair’s done. Makeup’s done."

Looked like he was finished, so I was going to check the others’ status when the necktie in his hand caught my eye.

Our profile photo concept was “neat student ID.”

Surprisingly, clean, proper front-facing idol photos are hard to source. The neatly dressed version even more so.

Our dear fandom had even composited school uniforms and suits onto Spark’s faces like that.

As we start promoting, we can shoot concept-heavy photos every cycle.

But a fresh, youthful ID-style photo can only be captured now.

So we chose white shirts with gray ties. The most basic and clean.

"But if he’s holding that..."

I pointed at Seongbin’s tie and asked:

"Do ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ you know how to tie a tie?"

"No, our school uniforms use clip-on ties."

Knew it. Come to think of it, I probably didn’t know how to tie one when I was in high school either.

Looking around, the two stylists were fighting a war trying to look after all six of us.

In this chaos it felt shameless to call them over just to help with tying ties. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Come here. I’ll do it."

"You know how to tie a tie, hyung?"

"Yeah."

I don’t think I’ve tied one for someone else before, but whatever.

Maybe because it’s the necktie I used to knot even while half-asleep in the mornings, doing it for someone else wasn’t hard.

I even shaped the knot nicely and patted Seongbin’s shoulder.

"Done. If you feel like it later, learn it. It’s not that hard."

"Thanks!"

"Hyung, me too..."

Next to bright, polite Seongbin, Park Juu handed over his tie with both hands. With manners like that, there was no way I could refuse.

If we ever get paid enough on settlements, I’m writing in the handover notes that ties must be clip-ons.

Dreaming of that far-off future, I tied Park Juu’s tie to fit him just right.

The shoot went smoother than I expected.

Starting with Choi Jeho, who must have gotten used to cameras just from shooting one music video.

Then there was Jeong Seongbin, who looked like he’d had three years of camera tests at school.

And Lee Cheonghyeon, who had adapted to cameras quickly even early in our first run.

Park Juu, who keeps an even keel whether a camera’s there or not, was excellent too.

As for me... fake as it is, I’m good at a smile that doesn’t look fake, so I passed both neutral and smiling in one go.

"Basically, as long as Kang Giyeon finishes well."

The five of us trainees, me included, watched with held breath as Kang Giyeon walked onto the set last.

If anything happened, we were ready to all dogpile him and tickle him if we had to.

And yet—

"A bit more of a smile! That’s it, looks natural—nice!"

Kang Giyeon was smiling—faintly, but clearly.

Hard to believe this was the same person whose birthday-vlog cake gaze had circulated as “young boss overseeing a burning at the stake.”

"Do you guys practice smiling at night or something?"

"No, that’s the fruit of self-study."

“Smiling in a way that looks pretty” is harder than you’d think.

A natural, bright smile makes the viewer happy too, but even smiling idols have to think about how they’ll look.

If there’s even a hint of awkwardness, you get attacked for a forced smile.

But you can’t just smile constantly either. If your smiling face doesn’t match mainstream beauty standards, malicious comments will show up with nasty freeze-frames.

I’m no idol, but I once sent Manager Nam off with a smiling “Enjoy your lunch,” and got raked over the coals because my eye corner twitched, so I get it.

It was just that my eye area was fried from working without even drinking water.

Anyway.

For Kang Giyeon—who was the stiffest of us, especially in front of cameras—to smile so easily was really something.

We stared holes in the screen monitoring, then surrounded him when he came back after wrapping his shoot safely.

"Giyeon, the photos came out great!"

"They were really good."

"Come on, it’s just one photo..."

If it were me or Cheonghyeon, he’d have gone, "What. Go away," but for praise from Seongbin and Park Juu he got adorably flustered. Kind of annoying.

"They say once you’re out in the world, there aren’t many people who praise you. So enjoy it now, Giang!"

"Who said that?"

"Iwol hyung."

"From what I can tell, that hyung is on his second life. His thinking is polluted by the mundane world."

"Unless you want etiquette lessons from the hyung polluted by the mundane world, knock it off, both of you."

Mundane or not, I was curious. How had this block of wood suddenly learned an idol smile.

But the answer that came back was simple.

"I practiced."

"When?"

"Just, you know... whenever there was a mirror around."

Of course. Even the head instructor would be moved by that attitude.

"Effort never betrays you"—there’s not a single thing wrong with that saying.

What bothered me most, unexpectedly, was the group photo.

I experienced cognitive dissonance at the fact that I had to be in between these five.

In my head I could still see Spark walking the red carpet at the year-end awards.

I thought I had steeled myself for the comparisons from the moment I decided to drag them down and debut with them at the start.

But standing next to a lineup that glitters, my face wilted all by itself.

To brace for this, I’d already sent in the composition when I proposed the profile photo concept. A layout with me at the very end.

That way, after I leave, they can just crop the edge.

I resolved that I’d stand on the far edge for group photos from now on.

"I’ll make a separate five-member version in Photoshop later and back it up."

Leaving a new task in my heart, the profile shoot ended successfully.

How should I put it. It was a very strange feeling.

"Now that we’ve taken photos, it really feels like we’re debuting, doesn’t it? I was so excited I couldn’t sleep last night."

"You still have to sleep. That’s how you grow taller."

"Look at this hyung killing the mood again."

It was hard to believe Lee Cheonghyeon had once run away under the pressure; he bounced back fast.

He chattered nonstop—eating watermelon with one hand and working through an English worksheet with the other.

I looked at today’s worksheets in front of me and thought:

"At my age, doing problem sets—yeah, that’s plenty real enough, you punk."

In my teens I couldn’t afford private cram workbooks, and now at this age I’m doing them. I was moved.

"Cheonghyeon, let’s focus during the time we set for studying."

"Knew you were going to say something."

After getting a word each from Seongbin and Giyeon, Cheonghyeon finally shut his mouth and started on his portion of the homework.

In keeping with global trends, idol groups have at least one or two members in charge of foreign languages.

Plus, when it comes to English, there’s this idea that everyone should at least be able to manage basic greetings.

That’s why we were gathered in the dorm living room at 10:30 p.m. doing English worksheets.

We couldn’t cut much from the practice schedule, so once a week we meet a teacher one-to-many for class, and on other days we have to do the assigned homework load.

Honestly it wasn’t hard. Up until job prep I’d been studying TOEIC Speaking.

But the feeling was another matter.

After twelve years of studying what others told me to, and four years of studying something that didn’t fit me, I’d finally escaped—only to be dragged back to a desk. Feels like death, this.

I do get the need. All the English phrases I remember are business English.

An idol who tells overseas fans on a live stream, "Thank you for making the time to attend."

I don’t know much, but I’d definitely be rumored as a weirdo.

Still, I can’t complain. Even Lee Cheonghyeon, who can free-talk in English, comes out to the living room under the pretext of studying together with the members and is studying harmony theory.

Thanks to that, Cheonghyeon put his excellent English to use as the personal tutor for model student Jeong Seongbin with burning academic zeal.

"Cheonghyeon, when did you learn English?"

Maybe his focus had bottomed out, because Choi Jeho put down his mechanical pencil and asked. I was just thinking you’d held out for a while.

"This is all skill honed at an English kindergarten."

"Just going to an English kindergarten gets you to free talk?"

"There’s mandatory education after that in a steady stream, hyung."

Cheonghyeon gave a smile that looked burnt pure white.

No need to spell out how miserable that can feel.

"Iwol hyung... you could hold a conversation too, couldn’t you?"

"I can only answer what I know. Too many scripts were drilled into me."

"For that, you said ‘Please issue a receipt’ with suspicious precision."

"You all should memorize that no matter what. If you spend money, documentation is mandatory. Got it?"

No sooner had I said it than I remembered staffers who, while filing for dinner and transport, pleaded that they couldn’t get receipts.

Or they’d upload receipts but leave out their account number, or the payout amount wouldn’t match what they’d written...

"Thinking like this all the time is bad for my mental health."

I really ought to learn some kind of meditation for finding peace soon. My body and mind are way too run down.