"Are you really sure about this?"

I asked while dumping out an entire bucket’s worth of worry. Park Juu sat on the floor, silently focused on packing his bag.

"My stomach ulcer is completely healed now, okay? I should really be the one going. I don’t even get nosebleeds anymore. I’m totally fine."

To persuade them, I emphasized just how healthy I was too. While these guys had been playing schedule Tetris nonstop, I’d gotten comparatively plenty of rest, so my condition was actually excellent.

Meanwhile, Choi Jeho watched Park Juu stuffing a pillow into his bag and commented without much interest.

"They’ll confiscate the pillow even if you bring it."

"Choi Jeho, could you please shut up for a second?"

Park Juu, who never listened to me, immediately accepted Choi Jeho’s words. Watching him obediently pull the stuffed doll back out of his bag made my head pound. The day had finally come when Choi Jeho’s words were easier for him to accept than mine. The world was ending.

"They edited out a lot of the smaller scenes, but the actual conditions there are way rougher. It’ll even be hard to wash properly."

"Jeho hyung and Giyeon told me a lot already. I’m mentally prepared..."

"What exactly did you tell him?"

"That the bugs are huge."

"You should’ve said they’re big enough to make someone pass out!"

"They’re not that big."

"Could you stop using yourself as the world’s standard of measurement?"

"Kang Giyeon was fine too, though."

"Could you stop using you two as the world’s— ...forget it. Never mind."

I lost all desire to continue talking to Choi Jeho in under thirty seconds. The depressing reality was that conversations like this somehow gave him a high probability of winning arguments.

"...You really don’t need to worry that much."

Apparently remembering the day Choi Jeho showed off that mosaic bag and I nearly foamed at the mouth, Park Juu spoke while zipping up a travel pouch filled with clothes.

"Giyeon said he’d catch the bugs for me..."

"Catching bugs that wander into a limited space is completely different!"

"Should I bring an electric fly swatter...?"

"If they confiscate pillows, do you think they won’t confiscate a fly swatter?"

Even so, Park Juu didn’t lose confidence. I was the only one panicking helplessly.

"Please just give up, hyung."

At some point Jeong Seongbin had walked up behind me. He spoke with a resigned expression.

"I already tried volunteering several times too. It didn’t work."

"You’re busy, Seongbin..."

"It hurts me more to imagine my friend sleeping on dirt ground, Juu."

"So sleeping on the ground is confirmed, huh."

Evil broadcasting station. If they had just let them go in random pairs again like last time, maybe this prehistoric disaster could’ve at least been somewhat diluted. But blinded by view counts, they had stubbornly branded another team with two irreversible dark-history scars. We should count ourselves lucky if Spark’s next concept didn’t become "Rulers of the Deserted Island."

"Don’t worry so much. I’ll mentally prepare myself not to become dead weight..."

"So that’s why you’re packing work gloves right now? Planning to split logs?"

"You find gloves everywhere if you walk around beaches."

"Please."

It had been a long time since I’d wanted to cry this badly. Every sentence out of Choi Jeho’s mouth painted darkness over my vision. The future looked bleak.

"I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep because I’m so anxious."

"Me too."

There wasn’t even a trace of a smile on Jeong Seongbin’s face. In an instant, only our world had collapsed.

"Why’s everyone acting like this! Juu hyung could go and do perfectly fine!"

"Cheonghyeon..."

Park Juu looked touched when, for the first time among the non-deserted-island veterans, someone took his side.

"You’re only excited because you think the funny scenes are gonna increase by 1.5 times."

"Was it obvious?"

"You weren’t even trying to hide it."

Lee Cheonghyeon burst into laughter.

I realized once again that the only person capable of understanding me right now was Jeong Seongbin.

"I told you to monitor Giyeon while he packed. Did you keep an eye on him properly?"

"Kang Puppy does fine when he’s alone. He only gets influenced depending on who he’s with."

Lee Cheonghyeon kept pouring oil into the fire inside me.

I wanted to go to the deserted island. This was the first time in my life I had sincerely wanted to step foot somewhere untouched by civilization. I’d gladly build plumbing systems from scratch on bare ground if it meant sending me into unexplored wilderness.

"No matter how much I think about it, all I can picture is Juu coming back covered in soot."

I’d worked so hard raising him into a visual main vocalist, and now it looked like he was going to come back as a dust-covered Junderella. What was even the point of building his image around mineral water and dawn mountain mist if everything I’d spent over two years cultivating was going to turn to ashes overnight? Textbooks should use this exact situation to define the word "grief-stricken."

"I can seriously do well. I even trained."

"What kind of training?"

I didn’t actually want to know, but I asked anyway.

"Drinking only water for twelve hours, sleeping with mosquito buzzing videos playing..."

And I regretted asking immediately. My worries only multiplied.

"I’ll go catch octopus. That’ll solve it, right?"

"Iwol hyung, you honestly seem like the person least interested in making the group’s image more luxurious."

Lee Cheonghyeon shot me down instantly.

Choi Jeho declared that he needed sleep and kicked us all out. After Lee Cheonghyeon returned to his room too, only Jeong Seongbin and I remained in the living room.

"...Should we tell them to send the whole group after all?"

"No..."

The night before Park Juu’s elf allegations were shattered to pieces, we tossed and turned in bed endlessly, exchanging things like, "Seongbin, are you awake?" and "Hyung, you’re not asleep either?" until morning arrived with both of us still wide awake.

"Giyeon, be careful not to get hurt. Juu, make sure you always pay attention to what you eat."

"Yes."

"Okay..."

"If Choi Jeho hands you trash to cover something with, check its condition first every time. Make sure there aren’t holes, mold, weird smells. Got it?"

I practically grabbed each one of them by the cheeks and forcibly injected survival common sense into their brains. The moment they realized what it meant for me to personally touch their faces, their eyes widened and they listened with compulsory focus.

"You should just tell them to stay away from me entirely."

Choi Jeho started picking a fight from behind us. He had slung on a bag that looked light as a feather.

"That’d honestly be ideal."

"Hah."

Even for Choi Jeho, I still gave several sincere warnings.

Please don’t try chopping logs barehanded again. One time was already more than enough. Fans cropped your hands from the concept photos because they wanted to see how big they looked, so imagine if the thorns stuck in them got zoomed in too...

I shouted like I was coughing up the last of my blood, but Choi Jeho’s face showed absolutely no sign of taking me seriously.

Jeong Seongbin came carrying armfuls of motion sickness medicine, Cheongsimhwan, allergy medication, and more. Then he stuffed two separate bundles into Park Juu and Kang Giyeon’s bags.

"They said basic medicine is allowed, so take these. I already checked whether they’re permitted through customs too."

"I haven’t taken Cheongsimhwan in a pretty long time. We can leave this out..."

"There’s a psychological difference between having it and choosing not to take it versus not having it at all. If it gets heavy, just ask Juu to carry it."

"It’s fine. This much is okay."

After Jeong Seongbin explained it, Kang Giyeon obediently accepted the bundle. There was also a notebook inside the bag that Lee Cheonghyeon, who had a morning class, had distributed earlier before leaving. I had no idea why he gave them those.

The time to say goodbye arrived far too quickly. Once all those giant idiots gathered around the shoe rack, the entryway felt completely packed. With physiques this suited for surviving in the jungle, it was ridiculous that I still couldn’t stop sighing.

"Safety first, safety second, and broadcast screentime third. Don’t forget."

"Yes."

"Okay...!"

"Why do your answers sound so halfhearted?"

"Enough already. We’re going."

"Yeah, yeah."

With a final wave from Choi Jeho, the three of them set off on their long journey. Jeong Seongbin and I stood side by side on the balcony, trying to guess where exactly the van was passing through in the underground parking garage by now.

"I’m not asking for much. I just want them to come back looking human."

"Since Juu’s going with them, I don’t think those two will run wild like last time. They have similar personalities too, so maybe they’ll actually get along surprisingly well..."

"You don’t sound confident in your own words either, do you?"

"..."

Jeong Seongbin couldn’t argue back.

We fell silent.

But wait a second.

The three of them... had similar personalities?

At that moment, something I’d briefly overlooked surfaced in my mind. The MBTI types they’d written down for each other during one of our self-produced contents started blaring warning sirens in my head.

"Seongbin."

"Yes, hyung."

"Weren’t all three of them introverts...?"

Spark’s introverts were famous for being uniquely bizarre...

A harsh wind blew in through the open balcony window. It felt like a late cold snap had arrived both at the dorm and in Spark’s future.

Until the deserted-island team returned, cold winds swept through the dorm. Everyone shivered nonstop while praying the island team wouldn’t create any more Stone Age incidents.

(Lee Cheonghyeon was probably shaking because he was trying not to laugh.)

Fortunately, the trembling dorm team didn’t come down with any colds.

"Hyung, we’re back..."

Because Park Juu and the others returned looking even more tattered than burlap sacks dragged down a sled hill thirty times by children. My rage shot straight to the top of my head so intensely that I didn’t even feel cold anymore.

"I told you I wasn’t asking for much, just stay human while you’re there! What the hell did you even do?! Why do you people forget civilization and revert to the primitive age every single time you go to an island?!"

"Hyung..."

"I told you to become sparks, not charcoal briquettes! It’s enough that there’s fire in the group name already, so why do you keep burning holes into your clothes?! If you’re gonna destroy them like this, why even wear vests at all?! I couldn’t even bear to look at the airport photos!"

I wanted to collapse onto the floor and sob.

After all the effort I’d spent scrubbing and polishing them up for public release, they’d gotten dragged onto some horribly organized home-shopping program where they were fried, thrown around, and coated in flour and chili oil like human ingredients.

What had all my efforts until now even been for?

How meaningless my dream of turning Choi Jeho into an airport fashion icon had been!

I restrained myself to merely clutching my chest for the sake of maintaining adult dignity, but then Choi Jeho told me to leave my heart alone already, which doubled my blood pressure. Without exaggeration, I wanted to tell him that eighty percent of the reason my heart was overworked was because of him.

Park Juu tried explaining that they only looked like this on the outside, and that the deserted-island trip had actually been more fun and manageable than expected. I truly wanted to believe him.

But the moment a pair of work gloves with only two left-hand gloves and a scorched metal plate emerged from Park Juu’s bag, I lost all rationality.

I don’t remember what I said afterward, but I definitely remember realizing, once I finally came to my senses, that three whole hours had passed.