“Wouldn’t shade 21 be too dark for Iwol?”

“If we go brighter, his features will blow out. Not good.”

“Hmm... should we vary the makeup by set?”

Three professionals circled me and launched into a heated debate.

I still wasn’t used to the experience of having products I’d only ever heard by name applied to my face. For a twenty-nine-year-old office worker, this level of attention was overwhelming.

On top of that, all three looked dead serious, as if there were some problem with my skin tone.

To my eyes, shades 17 through 23 looked identical, but the staff’s brows refused to unclench. How could I not be self-conscious in this environment.

“If it were only brightness, fine—but Iwol has a slightly pale cast... Iwol, you’re not sick, are you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

At my answer, the staffer beamed with relief.

Then they thumped my face an incredible number of times with a sponge-like thing.

This feeling—my second time since the profile shoot—still wouldn’t grow on me.

How many more makeups are waiting for me between now and debut. My heart pounded in more ways than one.

The power of a makeover was staggering on multiple fronts.

First, Choi Jeho.

He had the role of “rough but kind of cute,” so he got the flashiest style among us.

As if he’d pawned his tie and forgotten two top buttons, and with hair flamboyantly waxed—plus dyed a dark gray.

Do high-schoolers use wax these days? I just had “hair” for three straight years, so I wouldn’t know.

By comparison, Jeong Seongbin gave off the neat class-rep vibe.

Unlike the other five you’d hate to meet in the hallway, he had at least a hint of warmth in his face, so they dyed his hair deep brown.

If we’d gone light brown, it might have been too soft for the “cold exterior, lukewarm inside” student concept, so the darker tone was chosen—a good call.

Park Juu received a special sky-blue knit vest.

Because that’s the color of his birthstone. Fans don’t miss even tiny differences like that.

Even to my eyes—numb to whatever Spark wears—Juu in a knit looked good.

My prediction: when the MV drops, we’ll see rough comments like “Park Juu rocks that knit like hell.”

They even blasted his hair with a dryer for that tousled look, and the final result was quite nice. He looks exactly like a kid caught sleeping and shooed to the back of class.

Lee Cheonghyeon looked normal at a glance, but kept flashing little off-kilter touches.

Like a student with his tie tip tucked into his pocket, or wearing loud paint-pattern socks with a dark uniform. For the drama scene, we’re even going to smudge ink on his sleeve.

He even flat-out dyed his hair purple. Because of his MV role, he went past unusual into an absurd mad-scientist look.

Look closely, and unlike the free-spirited Cheonghyeon, Kang Giyeon was dressed suffocatingly proper.

Shirt buttoned to the throat, tie snug—paired with that edgy face, the impression was striking. We even put a black mock-neck underneath.

Since Jeho already had the delinquent-face-in-wild-outfit slot, we tried the opposite direction here, and it was brilliant.

As a bonus for Cheonghyeon and Giyeon, I added one of Cheonghyeon’s beloved friendship items.

As pre-discussed with the Planning Team, I attached matching straps—cute little plush shapes—to a belt hole on Cheonghyeon and a bracelet on Giyeon.

I summarized everything up to this point and sent it to the Planning Team, which fulfilled all three of those “Advice to Improve Stage Quality” leech-like action items.

Once all six finished makeup and changed into gray-toned uniforms arranged to fit each personality, the real shoot began.

We’d drilled the choreography in the practice room until our shoe soles wore down.

And after an all-nighter of tearing my hair out, I’d chosen a shooting location so perfect that even the System would hand over EXP without a gripe.

So, like the recent recording, this MV shoot would also go smoothly.

...That’s what I naïvely thought. A complacent judgment.

“Hold the shoot for a moment.”

At the director’s words, the set fell silent in an instant.

After three takes back-to-back, my breath was in my throat, but I couldn’t even exhale loud.

Managers and crew had all clustered around the monitor to study the footage with grave faces.

What’s wrong?

Did our center-finding practice come up short so the axis tilted?

Or is someone still too stiff-faced?

Or else...

“Is it because I’m in the mix, so the picture looks weird compared to before?”

As I ran through every possibility, the manager’s eyes turned my way.

“Guys, come here a sec.”

We edged up to the monitor at the manager’s call.

The director played the last take.

A face darted in and out—mortifying... No, that’s not it.

“...The lip-sync isn’t matching at all.”

“Iwol, you see it too, right?”

I did.

None of Spark had ever practiced lip-sync in their lives, and focused so hard on “hit your marks and dance!” that we just flapped like fish.

Lines were in full swing, but mouths were clamping shut early all over the place.

The track clearly had us all singing the chorus together, but the lip shapes were each their own thing.

In a world where people cap MVs every 0.1 seconds and make slow-mo gifs to share—if lips this free-form get released?

≫ What has one body but six mouths?

└ Spark

└ Correct. Your prize is the Lip-Sync Clip of the Year

└ Is that really a prize?

I don’t need to see the video to know. We’ll get a humiliating nickname like “group-dance idols (except the mouths).”

This was entirely my fault for forgetting that Spark’s debut MV in the past was an emotional ballad.

Back then, we all sat and just mouthed along, so it never got this bad.

You can’t suddenly master lip-sync on site, so in the end we had to shoot the MV belting live with veins popping.

All I can do is pray the Video Team captures it well.

After an MV shoot that abused our throats even worse than recording, UA kicked off the album planning.

Of course, planning wasn’t easy either.

Because Yoo Hansu came back bristling with venom.

“So... you’re saying the debut album should have three versions?”

“Yes. Three concepts—Before School, In Class, After School—to show the flow of a day.”

Looks like he at least studied the school-youth concept this time, but not a chance.

Who releases three versions at debut? And at a small label.

If it were you, would you want to buy three copies from rookies whose faces and names you still don’t know?

And he was actually proud because he’d come up with three ideas.

Apparently he doesn’t know the basic truth that the less capable should keep their hands off the work to help everyone else.

It was a moment that confirmed I wasn’t wrong about needing to kick him out.

While I seriously pondered how to peel him off this project, his mouth did not stop.

I wasn’t the only one tuning him out.

The Planning Team—who had to work with him directly—had no light left in their eyes.

From what I’d heard, they were fighting their own war with him.

“The Planning Lead and PD Yoo argued?”

“That’s what they say. Since both have done hands-on work for so long, their differences don’t narrow easily.”

I didn’t need to hear the next part the manager swallowed.

“More like one side is forcing nonsense and the other is blocking it...”

What would he know of the front line.

When I rammed a plan into the Planning Team and got through it, first, the company didn’t have a proper proposal on the table yet.

Second, my age bracket and trainee position wrapped my actions in “youthful trainee’s drive.”

But when a third party who hasn’t even grasped the history barges into an active project and /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ starts ordering peaches and pears—

That goes past proactive and reads as reckless.

So of course, to the team that’s been doing the work, Yoo Hansu is going to rub the wrong way.

Compared to them, I was the one doing him the courtesy of “listening.” Be grateful, man.

In the bleak air, the PPT we’d been ordered to polish overnight slid by without a soul paying attention. My chest ached.

Sensing the room’s dead eyes, he stopped and said:

“Everyone, you are listening to me properly, right?”

Tone-wise, he could spar with Choi Jeho and not lose.

Still, if nothing else, I’ll praise his refusal to let go of the mic even when he’s terrible at the job. That kind of shamelessness isn’t common.

“PD, what exactly did you mean by that just now?”

The Planning Lead didn’t hide her displeasure. He fired back without backing down.

“It’s just—everyone’s so openly unmotivated. In a mood like this, how is the person presenting supposed to feel like doing it?”

A stare-down of three-seconds-to-dogfight flared between him and the Planning Lead.

I hurriedly dropped my eyes to the keyboard I’d used to flip slides.

And then the room filled with the Planning Team’s cutting sarcasm and Yoo Hansu’s blunt retorts.

That’s when it happened. The System appeared over the keyboard.