"You guys need to come out looking even cooler than this...."

"Hyung, that’s the tenth time you’ve said the exact same thing already."

"You were counting?"

"You passed ten ages ago. I just stopped counting after that and rounded it down."

Kang Giyeon replied as I sat there lamenting with my tablet clutched in my hands. Three hours had already passed since I started staring at the photos taken on-site for color testing hard enough to erode the data itself. I was anxiously waiting for the rough cut of the music video to arrive.

For male idols, puberty wasn’t just about getting taller. It was the period where people either had a glow-up or a complete downfall, the time when fans prayed, Please just let our kid grow up exactly the way they are now. That was especially true for idols like Spark, who had already lost most of their baby fat early on and developed defined features from a young age.

Personally, I thought the environment forcing people to maintain their looks before they’d even physically matured was unbearably harsh, but.... that wasn’t the issue I was dealing with right now, so I set it aside for the moment.

Spark—and Lee Cheonghyeon in particular—were practically icons of successful glow-ups, so I wasn’t especially worried. But the faces of Spark after being refined through camera massage and styling were far too precious for me to feel satisfied with merely “they didn’t get worse.” It was maddening that something that beautiful could only be printed on flat surfaces.

Honestly, instead of letting Manager Nam print a hundred pages of securities reports on the company printer, it’d be a million times more beneficial to print Spark’s music video still cuts in full color. At least it’d improve people’s eyesight.

"Doesn’t this already look amazing...?"

Park Juu walked over beside me and asked. Right then, Park Juu’s own photo was displayed on the tablet screen.

This year, Park Juu had dyed his hair a translucent shade of blue. Combined with gray eyes and faintly blue-tinted lenses, it created a color palette reminiscent of a winter lake.

The surrounding area had been dark because we were filming a shadow-heavy scene. Sunlight illuminated only half of Park Juu’s face, creating a mysterious atmosphere.

The photo had come out well enough that neither the polished real-life visuals nor the obscenely expensive set looked wasted. But human greed had no end, which was why I was sitting here tearing my hair out waiting for the power of editing and post-processing.

"...How about looking at Cheonghyeon’s pictures instead?"

Seeing the state I was in, Park Juu quietly swiped to the next image. Lee Cheonghyeon appeared immediately after. The first thing that stood out was the contrast in his hair: bright brown bangs and inner layers, paired with dull, faded green on the outer layers.

The glitter piled generously over his faint blush base makeup and the dangling accessories all lost their presence in front of his facial features. No matter how striking the additional elements were, they still couldn’t outshine his eyes. If we hadn’t blasted the jewelry with enough lighting to create reflections, people probably wouldn’t even have noticed Lee Cheonghyeon was wearing a laurel-crown tiara.

Even so, was I greedy for still thinking it wasn’t enough? No. People were supposed to dream big and desire big things. Throwing tantrums over nonsense was stubbornness, but if there was purpose behind it, it became conviction. I was simply working according to my convictions.

Really.

Really....

"We should’ve tied a lace ribbon around his neck!"

"But we already tested that ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) on-site and decided against it! You said it overlapped too much with an older stage outfit...!"

Park Juu recoiled in horror. I buried my face in both hands and silently wailed.

"It’s over for me now. I need to retire from the front lines. At this rate I might start bringing back outdated cyborg concepts next."

"Hyung."

A calm voice cut off my runaway spiral. Park Juu tapped the screen once more.

"Look at Giyeon."

"..."

The self-loathing raging inside me settled a little. The face in the photo was elevated by makeup that could honestly be called career-best.

The emerald-colored hair suited his skin tone perfectly too. It was the first green-toned hairstyle he’d done in a while since the teal from “MISSION.” Maybe because the color had already proven itself once before, it suited him perfectly again this time.

Brown tones had been subtly layered under his eyes and along his cheeks, giving the overall feeling of a high-fashion photoshoot. If Kang Giyeon hadn’t been an idol, the December cover of Fog magazine would’ve belonged to him.

The harmony with the background was excellent too. Apple trees filled both sides of the dark monochrome set, while lowered brightness created the atmosphere of an old manor or garden. Naturally, we blasted focused lighting directly onto his face. The person practically glowed.

"...Feeling calmer now?"

"Thanks. Juu, you’re my savior."

"Over something this small...?"

"People can be saved by very trivial things."

I swiped backward through the photos and landed on Jeong Seongbin’s solo cut. He’d gone with coral-colored hair and a slight wave.

He kept awkwardly insisting that, as the leader of an idol group, the styling looked too idol-like on him, so I told him to take three hundred mirror selfies until he got used to it.

Colored light filtering through the stained glass covered Jeong Seongbin’s hair and clothes. White and pink light cascaded downward over his shoulders.

I’d sent folders full of references while planning the fake stained glass because I wanted the shadows to look like flowers rippling across the scene, and the final result came out incredibly polished.

If Jeong Seongbin weren’t an idol, he should’ve been the centerpiece photo at a wedding expo—

Wait a second. Wouldn’t the problem be solved if I just made all of them work multiple jobs?

Choi Jeho’s already a model, so he’ll probably go shoot something else somewhere anyway.

Living up to his “Emperor” nickname, that bastard had dyed his hair entirely gold. All the panic over avoiding tacky blond hair felt meaningless now, because the real gold color suited Choi Jeho absurdly well.

And that was all thanks to carefully calculating saturation and brightness like we were planning a semiconductor nanoprocess in order to avoid “the bleach color least suited for Koreans,” then adding accents with other colors midway to keep it from looking dull—

Ah. The screen turned off.

"You’re still staring at the photos?"

Lee Cheonghyeon, passing by, shook his head in disbelief. He added that it was impressive. Judging by his expression, though, it definitely wasn’t a compliment.

"The battery efficiency must be pretty good. Nice tablet."

"There’s nothing better for work."

I set down the powered-off tablet and stretched.

At this point, I had to accept reality. Even the final-final music video shoot was over now.

PD-nim, I’m trusting you.

"The rough cut is here!"

The newest member of Spark’s dedicated team, Ra Yoon, delivered the breaking news. While Pyeong Daeyeon messaged Im Chanyeong to come upstairs to the office, Min Jukyung reserved a meeting room.

For the past few days, the tension within Spark’s dedicated team had been sky-high. With the new year, Kim Iwol—the true power figure of Spark’s dedicated team, the team’s producer, an idol by day but honorary employee working himself to the bone by night—had developed a new type of obsession.

Kim Iwol’s fixation on beauty was as unmatched as his artistic sense itself. At times, the staff seriously wondered whether the only thing inside Kim Iwol’s head was:

How do we make Spark look even more like their real-life selves?

Even without hedgehog lenses, Spark’s visuals were excellent. There was no way they wouldn’t feel proud of idols who stood out anywhere they went. And knowing how desperately the members worked to maintain that made them even more admirable.

So whenever someone tried to say, “Our kids already look amazing enough!” Kim Iwol would come charging over with fire in his eyes. Nobody knew where he learned them, but every time his wording changed while remaining equally persuasive.

This madness of Kim Iwol’s had become about three times worse since the end of last year. There was only one thing Kim Iwol wanted.

Something cool and beautiful.

Absolutely the best possible.

The entire dedicated team realized Kim Iwol’s eyes were even crazier than usual, so everyone threw themselves into comeback preparations day and night.

If we fail the image transformation now, the entire next year becomes difficult.

Kim Iwol’s chilling warning filled the entire team with tension. By the time groups reached this stage in their careers, plenty of them attempted image changes. The data alone made that obvious.

But the importance of when to do it, how much to invest, and the precise reasoning behind it—those were elements that existed outside the data itself. Kim Iwol grasped those things more sharply than anyone else.

Always.

There had been a time when Min Jukyung believed geniuses were people with overwhelming talent, like Park Juu or Lee Cheonghyeon....

But these days, she occasionally found herself thinking:

There are definitely geniuses like Iwol too.

...because while Kim Iwol was undeniably competent at work, there was also something about him that transcended ordinary professional ability.

Even if he himself didn’t seem aware of it.

Anyway, the rough cut that UA’s unusually talented employee Kim Iwol had been desperately waiting for all week had finally arrived.

Everyone on the dedicated team swallowed dryly as they gathered in the meeting room. Im Chanyeong, who had observed Kim Iwol from the closest distance, was practically clasping both hands together in prayer.

"Ra Yoon, was there anything unusual in the email?"

"No!"

Ra Yoon answered.

That alone was reassuring. Whenever an email started sounding apologetic, things usually didn’t end well.

"The rough cut’s here?"

Even CEO Yoon Hyunju arrived at the meeting room. She forcibly pushed the staff back down when they tried to stand and greet her.

"What greetings? You all look half dead."

"Haha...."

"They said the shoot went well on-site, didn’t they? If the result isn’t good enough, we can revise it. We built the schedule with enough room."

Yoon Hyunju encouraged the staff with the generous attitude expected of a CEO. The employees, who knew exactly how hellish client revision requests could become, swallowed tears internally.

Please let everything end in one try this time. Otherwise neither we nor the studio are making it out alive intact.

Min Jukyung opened the downloaded file. The video length was fine, and the thumbnail had turned out even better than requested.

But even if those had problems, they were areas easy enough to fix. What mattered was the actual content.

Whether from overtime fatigue or nerves, Min Jukyung’s fingers trembled slightly as she clicked play.

A moment later—

"I’ll share the video with the members right away!"

With unanimous approval achieved, the shared drive link was immediately sent into the group chat.