The two-night, three-day trip to Daejeon could be summarized as “intensely healing.”

You’re asking whether “intense” and “healing” contradict each other? I thought so too. But this time I learned that the world apparently contains a concept called resting efficiently.

The moment we woke up in the morning, everyone would empty an entire pot of rice together. After washing dishes and shaking out blankets, we’d go for a walk on the mountain behind the house. We’d quickly sweep through the nearly deserted hiking trails before heading to another restaurant from Jeong Seongbin’s hidden list of favorites—a place famous for barley rice—and finally fulfill the leader’s long-held grudge.

We also visited an arboretum. Sighting posts flooded SNS like mushrooms after rain.

≫ Is Spark filming something?

There’s a professional photographer there and everything

└ Photographer Kim at it again

└ At this point it’s avant-garde art

I personally selected the best shots one by one for the BubblePop uploads.

We also crammed ourselves into one of those tiny photo booths to take life-shot pictures. The moment the session ended, everyone released the breath they’d been holding and practically burst back out of the machine. If I could leave a location review, I wanted to beg them to make the booth slightly bigger.

Looking back, all we really did was eat, hang out, and take pictures.

And yet there wasn’t a second to breathe.

Trying so hard to rest that we never actually got a chance to rest—what kind of irony was that?

“So that’s why all your cheeks are so sunken in?”

Min Jugyeong burst out laughing.

I’d only tried explaining why the kids she’d heard had gone off to relax came back looking half-dead, but she found it endlessly amusing.

“Sounds rough. I’m glad you had fun, though.”

“Manager Daeyeon definitely suffered the most.”

“Daeyeon looked happier than anyone, though?”

She wasn’t wrong. Apparently the grilled shellfish had been that good. When Manager Daeyeon came to pick us up, he looked three times happier than when he dropped us off.

Today’s schedule ended after roughly hearing about our inactive-period schedules and second-half plans. Activities during inactivity... honestly that sounded contradictory too, but whatever.

There was still plenty to do once we returned to the dorm. Unpack, shower, catch up on missed monitoring. Someone in the living room dorm had already connected MeTube and started playing the self-produced content uploaded yesterday.

“Where’s Cheonghyeon? Sleeping?”

“He said he’s studying for exams. Midterms are coming up.”

“Right. That time already.”

I nodded while folding towels. Then a thought suddenly occurred to me. When I looked beside me, I saw Jeong Seongbin and Park Juu pretending not to notice while folding socks.

“You guys aren’t in exam season too?”

“It’s replaced with practical evaluations...”

“You still have midterms for general education classes.”

“......”

“What, you want to repeat freshman year next year because you’re short on credits? Planning to stay in college for ten years? Do you not know tuition prices keep rising these days? You want an article saying ‘Spark graciously declines full scholarships... heartwarming conduct’ to turn, two years later, into ‘Spark perhaps anticipated losing their scholarships... discovered to have grades far below scholarship standards’?”

Unable to endure the nagging, even the main vocalists joined the self-study lineup. Once we seated Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon too—both behind on their workbook assignments—the place turned into a perfect self-study room.

I sat on the sofa under the excuse of supervising them.

‘Meanwhile my own life is on fire.’

Between finding my sister and dealing with the appeal case, my head already felt ready to explode, and then the system poured gasoline on top of it. I’d thought the process was simple: do my assigned tasks well, and my reward would be saving my sister.

But it turned out my sister and reemployment had only been bait, and that the system planned to make me do something else entirely.

Whatever that “something else” was, it had to be important enough for the system to drag me back from the dead and strengthen me over a long period of time to achieve it. A system capable of sending people into the past and erasing and restoring memories had spent all this time tempering me.

Fine. Let’s say my mental health was improving thanks to that. At least I’d recovered enough to stop considering extreme choices.

Instead, my body was turning into garbage.

What was the point of trying to survive voluntarily when it felt like a hole was about to open up in my head? Things were calm now that the storm had passed, but if the Synchronization rate started climbing by another five, ten percent again, who knew what would happen next?

‘So the answer really is to win the grand prize as fast as possible?’

Every time I achieved a KPI, the system revealed another tiny piece of information. That was the only thing I had left to rely on.

Still.

“Are you guys actually studying?”

“Cheonghyeon, want to study over here too? Jeho hyung sighs once every three minutes, but concentration-wise it’s not bad.”

“Giyeon, I know your page hasn’t changed this whole time...”

I really had to take these idiots and aim for a Daesang that even seven-year idol group Spark had never managed to win.

And not just reach that glorious position—stay there too.

On top of that, the system had...

 [SYSTEM] A work directive has arrived from “Manager.”

▶ Kim Assistant Manager is still far away.

 ...completely shaken my assumption that the Daesang would be the final KPI.

Then after my sister’s accident was undone and my reemployment invalidated, what exactly would I still need to do?

Would there still be work waiting for me even after repaying everything?

‘What a headache.’

Meanwhile, the system bastard itself had recently shut its mouth and gone into hiding. Whenever my mental state was shaky, it loved scraping against my nerves nonstop. But the moment I deliberately tried digging into it, this was what happened.

I’d never seen a mysterious superior type in my life, so I hoped it would realize on its own that its character design was fundamentally flawed and come back out. System, you’re a perfectionist, aren’t you? Learn from Director Nam and start oversharing even when nobody asks.

I grumbled internally, but in reality there was nothing I could do.

Yeah, seriously—even winning a Daesang depended partly on sheer luck. What was the point of worrying about the future after winning one? I needed to stop drinking kimchi soup before it was served and focus on surviving first.

“What’s with Kim Iwol’s expression?”

“Perhaps he still regrets giving up acting?”

“Aren’t you idiots supposed to be studying?”

At my words, Choi Jeho and Jeong Seongbin immediately buried their eyes back into their papers with faces like dying men.

God, my head...

No. Jeong Seongbin told me not to say things like that. From now on, I should say:

God, my future...

After the short break came a flood of practice.

High-intensity training on the level of pre-comeback rehearsals repeated every single day.

The reason was simple.

The full staff for the encore concert had finally been assembled.

“Cheonghyeon, want to rest a little first?”

“No. I sacrificed my midterms for this concert. I can’t half-ass it.”

“I distinctly remember hearing something similar before...”

During periods like festival season or year-end events, schedules became overwhelmingly busy. Since the end of last year, Spark had been running at maximum gear nonstop. It wouldn’t have been strange for any one of us to collapse, but everyone clenched their teeth and kept themselves disciplined.

That didn’t mean we only practiced grimly, though. During breaks, we’d gamble drinks or hold random massage coupon lottery events.

In my defense, I really had intended to buy the drinks myself. I had enough shame left as an adult not to fight the kids in exploding-barrel roulette games just to freeload beverages.

But Jeong Seongbin stubbornly refused to let my card leave my wallet. Apparently our self-produced content lacked entertainment value. Since endless footage of practice was objectively boring, I had no choice but to surrender.

To summarize the ending: Choi Jeho paid.

We also rearranged the units.

The title “encore concert” naturally implied the same format as the previous concert, but in an era where online concerts had become mainstream, simply recreating the earlier version felt pointless, so we decided to add some variation.

After drawing lines around trying to create combinations we’d never shown before...

Seongbin ― Giyeon

Jeho ― Cheonghyeon

Iwol ― Juu

...we ended up with some rather unusual units.

These were combinations we saw easily in private or backstage, but never ones that would normally perform dedicated stages together.

The moment Jeong Seongbin and Kang Giyeon got paired up, they immediately pressed their heads together to brainstorm concepts. Meanwhile Lee Cheonghyeon clung to Choi Jeho while rambling about things like “a space tour with a giant metal robot.”

As for me and Park Juu...

‘Guys.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re really going with this concept?’

‘Yep. Please give us leather jackets.’

‘Clothes with holes in them are good too...!’

...we decided to awaken the soul of heavy metal.

Park Juu asked what I wanted to do, so I simply ran wild with it.

The only person who realized this stage suited my tastes rather than Park Juu’s the moment he heard the song title was Jeong Seongbin. Spark’s karaoke machine remained alive and well.

‘You’re singing too, hyung.’

‘Me too?’

Park Juu took an uncharacteristically firm stance, which meant hellish vocal training got added to my schedule as well. My vocal cords felt on the verge of tearing apart trying to keep up with a vocalist who apparently had no limits, but I decided to accept it as fate.

The second concert ended to tremendous acclaim.

The reactions were excellent too.

≫ First concert vs encore concert

What’s Sparklers’ pick?

└ Nothing beats the emotion of the first concert, but the encore concert was pure endorphins

└ First concert because I couldn’t go to the encore and I’m insanely jealous

└ Emotion = first concert / Fun = encore concert

≫ AAAAAAAAHHHHH the first concert DIDN’T HAVE THE EMPEROR FOX UNIT

How can you just drop this with zero warning~~~!!!!!

└ I thought the sexy ranking had already been settled with the eldest-hyung unit but then this sexy rap barges in... I’m happy

└ Choi Jeho and Lee Cheonghyeon performing a rap battle over me? Is there any Sparkler capable of resisting this?

└ I opened the video to listen to the song but I keep finding myself increasing the resolution instead

└ Performing Cheonghyeon is seriously legendaryㅠㅠ how does a barely-twenty-year-old guy possess this level of talent

≫ Jeong Seongbin covering his forehead should be illegal

If he lowers his bangs he should be fined 500 each time

Thank you, Giyeon~!

└ Massive gratitude from the entire front lineㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└ Forehead-out °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° Seongbin is SUCH a man.

└ And Kang Giyeon showing up with covered hair instead deserves praise too

└ We kept calling them our warm handsome guy and maknae so I didn’t realize before, but after seeing previews I finally understood... the leader of a cold-beauty group and a naturally intimidating delinquent face aren’t roles just anyone can pull off...

└ Leather gloves and shoulder holsters turned me into exploded fireworks.

≫ Am I at an idol concert or a rock festival?

└ Mihun-nimㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ what’s happeningㅋㅋㅋ

└ Please look forward to the Angel Clayz unit stage review... I believe in Sparkler loyalty...

└ Don’t wait for me, I plan to faint in three seconds

└ The moment I heard Kim Iwol came out in a black muscle-fit shirt I knew you’d end up like this

≫ .

.

.

The long-awaited Breaking

A world of rock lunatics brought to you by genuine rock maniacs

When I saw the leather pants, combat boots, and dangling chains I thought “ah, they really committed to the visuals,” but the song itself was even crazier

Smoky makeup suited both of them so well. The only smoky makeup I knew before was panda-eye eyeliner smudges, but today I learned beautiful smoky makeup exists. Maybe it’s because I come from the generation that drew eyeliner with mechanical pencils

└ The generation that drew eyeliner with mechanical pencils...?

└└ [Author] What? Am I funny to you too?

└└└ ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ holy shit scaryㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└ Did those two keep the smoky makeup for the rest of the stages too???

└└ Nopeㅋㅋㅋ they removed it and redid their makeup during the other unit stages

└ Kim Iwol is genuinely fascinating. How is this the same person who screamed watching his castmates on a deserted island

≫ I love everything about this photo

(photo)

└ The white bass... sweat on the jawline... pale skin... veins... fingers... shine on the boots... the lighting...

└ Somebody please permanently strap that bass to Kim Iwol’s shoulder, I’m begging you

└ I already knew Park Juu’s high notes were insane but Kim Iwol’s low register was completely unexpected. Kim Iwol please use your lower range too instead of always giving all the low parts to Jeho

≫ Spark concerts look interesting

I’ve never gone to an idol concert before but this seems fun

└ Tons of clips are going aroundㅋㅋ but unless you get fanclub presale, ticketing is brutal

The excitement generated by the concert footage, the addictive songs, the word-of-mouth buzz—Spark’s stages drew reactions from every angle.

And the attention of people who couldn’t get tickets but still refused to give up seeing them live...

≫ Spark May festival calendar (final version as of XX date)

└ thx

└ thx

└ Can outsiders enter the newly added locations?

└└ Yeah, I’ll add explanations

└└└ thx, blessings upon you

...turned toward public events open to everyone.