Because Biju suddenly sprayed a cola fountain, the table turned into a disaster zone.

“Ah, tsk! My chicken!”

“No! Uwaaaah! Biju hyung, what are you doing right now?”

“Man. I thought today was oddly peaceful, and the chicken gets wrecked at the end.”

While the younger ones and Teen Spirit each threw in a line, everyone who’d flinched at the cola fountain looked down at the table and widened their eyes.

An empty table.

Yeonhu tilted his head.

“What. There was chicken here just a second ago—where did it all...?”

His gaze met mine.

The moment the cola geyser erupted, Junhyun and I had reflexively evacuated the chicken boxes—warm chicken now nestled in our arms.

We nodded with satisfied smiles.

“Heeee...”

Yeonhu and the boys next door stood and applauded.

“Respect, hyung-nim.”

“Damn, you saved it.”

“Figures. Dodging slime at the kids’ awards ceremony wasn’t for just anyone.”

Ri Hyuk and the maknae quietly gave us thumbs up.

We were grinning, united under the banner of Chicken World, when—

“Ah.”

“...Ah.”

So focused on the chicken, we’d stopped paying attention to the person who caused the cola fountain.

He was definitely going to ask whether chicken mattered more than he did.

Bracing for the chilly glare about to fly in, I creaked my head around...

“Hm?”

Biju, face flushed like something had gone down the wrong pipe, met my eyes.

“Biju. What’s wrong?”

“Sir?”

“You look like you just saw a ghost. Is there a problem?”

“N-no!”

Biju shook his head.

“No problem at all. None...”

“You blasted a water cannon out of nowhere—scared me. Thought you were Squirtle.”

“Sorry. I choked while eating chicken.”

He still looked completely rattled.

What is up with him?

I replayed the conversation in my head to deduce, and Biju, watching my face, blurted out:

“I—it was just that ‘RainAlcohol’ was so funny.”

“Why?”

“‘Rain’ is rain, and ‘alcohol’ is booze. ‘Ju.’”

“Aaaah!”

Everyone made impressed noises.

I immediately quipped that in that case I was CowAlcohol, but sadly the reaction was terrible.

Hahyun smiled like an angel.

“Wooju hyung.”

“Yeah.”

“When kimbap dies, where does it go?”

“Kimbap Heaven...?”

“Then when the leader dies, where does he go?”

“That one I don’t know.”

“If you don’t want to know, be careful. Hu hu hu hu...”

We all clapped and burst out laughing.

With the cola incident wrapped, it was back to happily scarfing chicken.

Teen Spirit asked,

“But what did that person win for?”

“Oh. This person?”

I pulled an A4 sheet from the envelope.

The words written there:

[Hu hu hu hu... I watch over you from the dark.]

☆ Mastermind Award

— From debut till now! To (ID: RainAlchol), who has liked and commented on every single NewBlack photo!

Teen Spirit whistled.

“Wow. That’s insane. I don’t think even my mom could pay me that much attention.”

“Look at the award name. I wouldn’t show up to accept either.”

“Fans who win this must have super strong leg muscles. Kicking blankets every night.”

When we showed them our photos with the masked-ball ladies, their attitudes changed.

They wanted to try it, too.

Then Ri Hyuk set down a chicken bone and spoke.

“Honestly, that’s impressive. Is it even possible to like all our photos?”

“Mad respect.”

“Hyungs, I think you’d basically have to be a member...”

“Cough! Cough!”

Junhyun patted Biju’s back as he choked on a piece of pickled radish.

He was acting weird today.

I laughed.

“She’s someone I’m truly grateful for. I think I’ve seen her comments on the café now and then. It helped me a lot when things were tough...”

Biju’s eyes sparkled.

“But since there was no reply, it’s a bit... I wanted to meet her and deliver it in person...”

Biju dropped the chicken wing in his hand.

What?

I narrowed my eyes; Biju, barely nibbling at that wing, asked,

“Hyung. I’m curious about one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“That fan who couldn’t attend the awards. Ms. Rain... Alcohol. How do you give her the gift?”

“Well. We’d need an address to send it...”

“Doesn’t it show in the member info? Like a real name.”

He must really be upset we can’t give it to her. He’s even sweating.

But there wasn’t much we could do.

“Accessing personal data isn’t easy. It’s not something we can just open at will.”

“Thank goodness.”

“Hm?”

“B-because fans’ personal info is precious.”

I nodded.

“It is. Anyway, we’ll email her again. If we get an address, we’ll ship it then.”

“Before you send that, please tell me. I want to write a letter.”

“Tell me, too. Not a letter—I’ll prep a little gift!”

“Maybe a cactus?”

Teen Spirit tossed in ideas as we planned things to send the fan who couldn’t attend.

After a thirty-minute this-and-that meeting—

“Hu hu hu hu hu hu!”

“Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo!”

—while Biju lay on the sofa, eyes closed [N O V E L I G H T] after getting an upset stomach from chicken, the gift for the one absent awardee was complete.

A few days later.

An apartment in Yongsan District.

“What is he sending now...”

Biju’s older sister, Kim Biyeon, narrowed her eyes at a text full of “ㅠㅠㅠㅠ”.

— Don’t be shocked, just receive it! I’ll come pick it up later, so just let it into the house for a bit.

There was a strange urgency in the message.

Apparently NewBlack had run a fan event and somehow his name got attached to it.

Too embarrassed to receive it in his own name, and their parents would notice if it went to their house, so he was sending it to his sister’s.

“Well, it can’t be anything weird.”

Biyeon slipped on her sandals and opened the front door.

And the smile on her lips faded faintly.

“...”

Their eyes met.

“Th-this is...”

Her pupils trembled.

‘What even is this?’

In the hallway stood a very unusual thing, not quite human, looking her in the eye.

At the bottom: a goat doll in battle armor.

Above that: dolls of the NewBlack members. Like stacked Lego blocks, each sat piggyback on the next’s shoulders.

At the bottom, a Junhyun doll with a warm smile; above him, the Wooju doll waving brightly.

At the top, the Biju doll with a ribbon met her gaze.

“...”

“...”

Was it her imagination, or did the doll just avert its eyes, sheepish?

While she stared blankly at the doll tower and the various bundles—

[beep-beep]

The door across the hall unlocked; the neighbor lady stepped out.

“Oh my?”

Her smiling eyes bent at seeing Biyeon, then widened at the dolls.

“Oh my my!”

“...”

“What is this? Oh dear, what is... what’s all this?”

“Right...”

She tried to play dumb, but unfortunately her little brother was a member of this national idol group.

“This one’s that damned black goat... Wooju, Biju, Junhyun, Ri Hyuk, Jiho... My. NewBlack dolls.”

“You know them all.”

“My son’s a real fan. Oh my.”

The neighbor looked at her with a friendly, approving gaze.

“Did 801 like NewBlack too?”

“Yes. A little.”

“Doesn’t seem like just a little...”

“I just got them as a gift.”

And then—

as Biyeon awkwardly smiled and started to take the dolls down, a mechanism inside whirred to life.

The maknae’s ringing voice chirped cheerfully.

“Hello! Ms. RainAlcohol! Thank you so much for becoming our fan!”

“You didn’t come to the 1st Souffle Awards we held, so we’ve come to you like this!”

“Tan-tarara-ran~!”

“If you don’t come out, we’ll storm in~ kung-jjajak kung-jjak~!”

Biyeon pressed her temples.

“For you, a song~” boomed a recorded voice letter from NewBlack.

In time, the Junhyun doll smashed the cymbals—tang tang tang tang!

The Wooju doll tooted a little fife—piririri.

The neighbor lady’s eyes slid back to Biyeon.

“...”

“It’s not what you think.”

“...”

“I’m really not that level of super fan.”

Biyeon was worrying about the rumor that was about to spread—

that 801 was a diehard NewBlack fangirl—

“Um.”

She looked up; the neighbor lady had sidled close.

A little “come closer” gesture, like sharing a secret.

When Biyeon leaned in, the whisper came:

“0619?”

It was the passcode her brother had taught her; the reply came out before she knew it.

“0718...”

“Knew it.”

A soft chuckle.

“Actually, not my son... I’m the NewBlack fan.”

Her face shifted into “Hail Hydra,”

as if to say, “Souffle are everywhere,” with a spooky little smile; then she put on her usual warm face and raised a fist.

“Fighting.”

“F-fighting.”

Biyeon raised a fist back, awkwardly, under her neighbor’s admiring gaze.

After the neighbor got into the elevator and descended,

Biju’s sister stood alone, smiling into the distance.

“Biju...”

What on earth are you doing out there.

Smiling at the thought, she felt something odd in her palm.

Like the neighbor lady had pressed something into it earlier.

“Huh?”

A candy NewBlack endorsed sat in her hand.

‘Is this a covert ops cell or what.’

Thanks to her brother, the sister was experiencing all kinds of things, in every sense.

“Thump-thump?”

“Dugeun-dugeun~!”

This week was the thrilling Souffle Week.

The 4th Souffle Week.

From Wednesday—the day Souffle turned 1,000 days old—through the following Tuesday, we planned to hold events with fans.

Since it was 1,000 days, this would be the biggest Souffle Week ever.

Big enough that we wouldn’t appear on music shows in the first week, just for Souffle Week.

A bit of a shame, but also with upsides.

“Next week we get into first-place nominees, take the trophy, and then go straight into the concert—perfect.”

“Never taken the No. 1 trophy right out of the gate before.”

Of course, that also meant we had that much prep to do.

Fan events plus concert prep—we were busy.

And after the concert, the world tour schedule started right away in Berlin the following week.

Through Berlin and Paris, then Mexico and Dallas, USA the week after.

And so on, weekly tour dates.

Plus one more—

— “NewBlack nominated at the U.S. Billboard Awards... ‘Collaboration Category’.”

We’d been nominated for the Billboard Music Awards in May.

Given the success of “Blue Moon,” the collab with Hailey Blue from last year, it wasn’t a surprise.

The issue was...

“I can’t say the odds of winning are high.”

Our TF lead laid it out.

“By the numbers, you should win. But the U.S. current is weird this time.”

“Why?”

“They don’t seem to like you advancing. At first it felt favorable, but after your Kids’ Choice appearance, the current started shifting.”

“How?”

“That you’re growing too fast.”

They’d meant to use SNS firepower for a quick boost like rocket fuel and then toss it—but our fandom scale exploded so fast their steps got tangled.

“Honestly, there were one or two more categories you could’ve been nominated in, and they just changed the criteria.”

“Wow, I thought only our country did that—guess U.S. award shows can be petty too.”

“So basically, they just don’t want to give us a trophy.”

Pettiness in award shows seems universal.

Anyway, there were categories where we fit by the numbers, and it looked like they’d even changed the yardstick.

“Well, if they give it, we’ll take it. If they don’t, that’s that.”

Calling it discrimination would be murky.

More like a domestic market trying to keep out foreign acts.

— “Knock knock. Please open the gate.”

— “No!”

— “We’re not many. Just open the gate...”

Like locals locking the city gate against a foreign army, even if it numbered only a hundred thousand.

Honestly, just being nominated for a collab category was a net gain for us.

In the current phase of building name recognition, the more exposure, the better for our strategy.

As we took in Billboard news, updates on Coin’s numbers poured in too.

— “NewBlack ‘Coin’ hits 10 million views in just 5 hours... NewBlack: ‘Shocked? We’re shocked too—huh-ACK’”

— “Japan’s Oricon chart, NewBlack dominates... JP netizens ‘Looking at the charts, thought I landed in Korea,’ wry smiles”

— “[Intl Desk Field Note] Changing Saudi ① A NewBlack ‘Coin’ billboard appears in the capital... ‘Huh?’”

A Coin album billboard went up in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia—an unbelievable sight.

“There are kids in Saudi too.”

“R-right.”

Even “Dokkaebi”’s metrics were amazing.

Coin was posting much higher marks than that.

Did it really carry the aura of a 19th-century gold coin?

I heard the CEO had been dreaming lately of bathing in a golden tub.

“Uwaaaaaah!”

“What?”

“Now I can picture it.”

“Picture what?”

“The CEO.”

At the maknae’s ruckus, the hyungs closed their eyes.

Floating in a gold tub, chuckling amid rising steam...

“Uwaaaaaah!”

“Wang Jiho, get over here. I’m going to erase you.”

“My mind feels contaminated.”

We shook our heads to erase the imagery.

Anyway.

News kept coming that Coin was doing well in Japan, Southeast Asia, Australia, and more.

No need to obsess over the U.S....

“Did you see this?”

Ri Hyuk held up his phone.

“What is it?”

“Coin. It got onto the Billboard Hot 100.”

“Already?”

“...Apparently?”

The chart week starts Friday, and we’d come back Monday—midway through the counting window. Not a week we should chart.

Like a 100-meter race where the other runners started five seconds earlier and were already sprinting.

But—

“It happened.”

Ta-da!

The Souffle did that.

“We’re really in, guys.”

“It’s real?”

A song dropped at the tail of the count sat at No. 93; I blinked.

A 100-meter dash done in three seconds.

In my head, Souffle sped a sports car filled with Coin across the 100-meter track.

“...”

“...”

While others ran for a week, we charted at 93 by Wednesday.

We met eyes and then smiled.

“Maybe we should obsess a little.”

“Well...”

Ri Hyuk smiled primly.

“I think it’s okay to obsess a little.”

“Right?”

“Right.”

Then we all burst out with happiness-full smiles.

“Uhihihihihi! We got on Billboard!”

“Uhehehehe!”

“Hahahahaha!”

The three new managers nearby quietly moved farther away.

Around the same time.

Crowds were gathering along the river, including at Nanji Hangang Park.

[4th Souffle Week]

With flags fluttering everywhere, Souffle wandered from spot to spot, trying different booths.

They tried a VR device where you could see NewBlack.

They bought chicken skewers glazed with “NewBulBae” sauce and let the drippings fall.

They took photos in front of giant mini-me member dolls.

“Ha, heaven. Heaven...”

“So this is Souffle Land for real.”

“Feels like a music festival.”

To mark 1,000 days of Souffle, NewBlack and Lemon Entertainment had opened a Souffle festival.

It looked like lots of non-fans as well.

NewBlack songs like “Fireworks” and “Masquerade” played joyfully in various spots, and many had already spread mats along the riverbank.

“They must be waiting for the fireworks.”

“Should we wait too? It’s still a ways off...”

The highlight was the fireworks.

In keeping with the “Fireworks” theme—we were doing actual fireworks—people were cramming the opposite bank, too.

All civilians.

“It’s like an all-people smelt festival...”

Not bad.

Just the fact of throwing an offline fireworks show for fans made me happy. At this point, we naturally accepted and adapted.

The only real pity was that the members couldn’t attend.

With an open space like the river, the police judged the crowd would be uncontrollable if NewBlack showed up.

So attendance would be by video.

“Oh? It’s time.”

As Souffle phones buzzed—

“Honored Souffle.”

“Waaaaaaaaa!”

“At last, our time has come.”

On the event screens, the NewBlack members’ faces began to appear, Big Brother–style.