What does Kim Iwol hate most?
If you ask that, every member of Spark will give the same answer.
Doing things that aren’t idol-like.
Kim Iwol seemed to divide everything in the world into “acts an idol may do” and “acts an idol must not do.”
No—he didn’t just seem that way, he really was that way.
“You little punk, you made a blank face at a fansign?”
“I was just drinking wat—”
“If you weren’t an idol, do you think there’d be anyone in this whole world who would take a dawn bus from Busan to Seoul, wait three hours, then meet you for one hour, and finally tell you to go rest quickly?”
If a single photo of Choi Jeho’s expressionless face went up from a fansign, he would come down on him like a hammer.
“What prop does Lee Cheonghyeon get told to hold for photos?”
“His face works hard.”
“Right, that’s his face working—does that mean Lee Cheonghyeon is working? Are you planning to freeload on your face for life?”
“Why are you coming at me when I’m just standing here!”
He never let his guard down for even a moment in case the members got full of themselves.
And that wasn’t all.
His love for fans was enormous.
“When you post on the official café or SNS, everyone mind your tone. There are only two things we’re allowed to request from fans in the imperative. Wishing them a happy new year, and asking them not to push the person in front of them.”
“Isn’t the second one something you only say at concerts and such?”
“Which is why, apart from then, handle it well on your own.”
He poured enormous care into every single phrase that would be seen by fans.
Kim Iwol never relaxed. At times his stance felt stifling, but he himself lived twice as strictly as what he asked of others, so there was nothing to say in objection.
That is probably also why the members had no complaints about him.
That Kim Iwol had left the members in his care. Told him to make sure they didn’t mess around.
And yet a kid who was still underage—worse, the leader—came asking him to check adult-verification content on his behalf?
Choi Jeho’s mind spun quickly.
But since it rarely worked in that direction, the gears stopped in a few seconds.
Instead, instinctively, he felt this:
If he didn’t crack down on this kid now, he’d get thunderbolts from Kim Iwol when he got back.
And he thought about what Kim Iwol would do in a situation like this. Because Kim Iwol generally handled every situation well.
“He’d talk first.”
Instead of brushing him off with a halfhearted “Don’t drag me into weird stuff,” Jeho pushed himself up to sit on the bed.
Next he chose what to say.
Letting words spill straight out of his mouth had never ended well. He had to be careful.
He wanted to say, “Of all things to ask, are you out of your mind,” but he held back. Then, recalling the way Kim Iwol handled things, he trimmed his words.
After finishing the mental draft, Jeho asked,
“What were you trying to search?”
That was good enough.
Even if Jeong Seongbin had been caught trying to search something weird, he could still say with a clear conscience that he did his best.
He felt both satisfied and conflicted at once.
All the while fretting over how Jeong Seongbin would react next.
But Jeong Seongbin’s reaction was far too bright.
“A hangover cure!”
“What?”
“Iwol hyung is drinking today, right? We wondered if there was anything we could do to help, and they say minors can buy hangover cures. So I was following the related search terms, and...”
He’d followed the search trail, found a product that looked really useful, tapped it, and suddenly an adult verification page popped up. It was so anticlimactic his tension felt silly.
“What the he... I mean, sure. That can happen.”
Jeho shook his head and hastily picked up his words. Then he took the spare phone from Jeong Seongbin and logged in with his own ID.
“So I just have to review it and give you a summary?”
“Yes...!”
Then Seongbin opened his planner. Looked like he was going to take notes.
Unfortunately, Jeho couldn’t summarize anything. The related search terms had led Seongbin down a path unrelated to hangover cures.
After explaining that this wasn’t connected to the information he wanted and steering him back, Jeho thought he could now step away from the elder’s responsibility.
Of course, responsibility doesn’t disappear so easily. Jeho ended up having to accompany Seongbin to the convenience store because he insisted on buying a hangover cure.
For the first time since they’d broken the ice, Jeho wanted to see Kim Iwol.
“Hyung! The video’s up!”
At Lee Cheonghyeon’s shout, everyone gathered around the spare phone in his hand.
On the screen was the thumbnail for Drinking People featuring Kim Iwol.
The upload time was one hour ago, and the title was...
[Seeking the Soju Sweeper... Spark’s Iwol]
...that.
Sorry, but does the title have to trample my rights that hard? I’m rattled.
“Hyung, how much did you drink out there?”
“Ah, just a little.”
Even after I answered properly, Kang Giyeon’s eyes were full of suspicion.
“It’s too small to watch on the phone. Should we watch it on the laptop back at the dorm?”
“All together?”
Jeong Seongbin’s suggestion also threw me. So they all want to watch me put on a drink-till-you-drop show.
Oblivious to how I felt inside, Seongbin smiled innocently and said,
“It’s the first solo variety among our members. We should monitor it together.”
Looking at his pure smile, I thought:
Once you see it, you’ll realize how unnecessary it was for you to buy me five bottles of hangover cure that night.
The video was unusual from the thumbnail.
A photo of me smiling and the MC looking aghast were placed side by side like a skit.
Thanks to that, I came off like some bright-eyed madman. Mortifying.
The suspicious editing started from the entrance.
“Mr. Iwol, you’re really tall, huh? Our street stall isn’t going to collapse, is it?”
“When I saw you on video you didn’t look this tall...”
“Oh, did you see the video with Jeho? That friend is so tall that when we stand next to him we all look small.”
“For today’s shoot, let’s agree to never stand up from our chairs. And from now on, we won’t book anyone over 180 centimeters. Okay?”
Maybe because of lens distortion, my height looked door-sized, and with the MC’s exaggerations for energy and the flustered staff’s lines, it was edited like “a giant human who came to the street stall.”
When the potato chips came out as the snack, there were “huh?” sounds all around.
“Hyung, do you really like potato chips?”
“Why? Does it sound like a lie?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat snacks.”
Lee Cheonghyeon pointed out.
“I was managing. And after moving into the dorm I had no occasion to drink.”
“You’re barely eating on the show either.”
“Right, I usually ate with dried seaweed.”
“Wow, reality’s even worse.”
Only after I explained I couldn’t exactly feed the MC only seaweed did Lee Cheonghyeon nod in understanding.
“You said you started training late. What did you originally want to do?”
“I hadn’t settled on a specific job, but I was interested in business administration and thought about majoring in it.”
“That suits you. Are you good at handling money, then?”
“I’m not bad, but there’s a teammate who’s basically a human calculator, so I leave it to him.”
See? Look how much I talked about you guys.
Human calculator by surprise, Lee Cheonghyeon smacked my thigh.
He griped that this hyung was being ridiculous, but to me he seemed more ridiculous.
Up to this point, it was still human.
They edited my making somaek without spilling a drop and one-shotting soju without any change of expression like I was some master sommelier, which was a bit much, but better than being boring.
The problem started with the footage after the system dropped the short-term task.
The screen went black, then short white captions appeared.
“But then,”
“We didn’t realize,”
“this man’s drinking capacity...”
Then came my glass being refilled without a moment to dry and me downing it in quick succession without a ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) breath, all at 2.5x speed.
The MC’s widening pupils, the staff murmuring, the growing pile of empty bottles, and me drinking on, unbothered by anything...
Anyone would think I looked strange. Even I felt alien watching myself.
There were exceptions. The students sitting on the floor just looked “fascinated.”
Only Choi Jeho, sitting on the edge of the sofa, wore a sour expression.
“Hyung, are you a good drinker?”
Jeong Seongbin asked. He’d never drunk before, so he couldn’t gauge it.
“Just average.”
“What do you mean average. You drink like a fish.”
So I tried to wrap it nicely, and this punk Choi Jeho threw a tackle.
Funny. You don’t even drink, so why pick a fight.
“They went heavy on the editing because it’s a show.”
“If so, why aren’t the frames cut?”
“Hyung, I think you drink better than my uncle...”
Lee Cheonghyeon had another nitpick, and Park Juu dragged an elder into it.
Is this monitoring? If you’re going to tear me apart en masse, why call it monitoring. Call it a hearing.
The peak came when the MC approached carrying a straw.
“Mr. Iwol, this won’t do. It’s too hard for me to keep refilling your glass.”
“I’ll pour for myself and drink!”
“No, how could I do that to a guest. I’ll stick a straw in for you instead.”
Then he stuck a straw into a fresh soju bottle and handed it to me. He probably thought it would make a funny shot.
What I thought at that moment was,
“If I finish this, it counts as one more bottle!”
I was giddy over being able to add exactly one more bottle. Looking back now, I just seem out of my mind.
So the screen showed me gripping the bottle with both hands so I wouldn’t drop it and sipping soju through a straw.
With the word “happiness” on either side of my face and little blossom effects bubbling up, everything was bizarre.
No wonder the title called me a soju sweeper. I could cry.
“There are days when alcohol just goes down well... and that day was one of them. Drinking a lot isn’t a good thing, so don’t bring up anything pointless on other shows.”
When I said it like an excuse, the guys nodded.
But all my excuses were in vain.
In a society where capacity can be a point of pride, the clip of me blowing a bottle with a straw lit the fuse.
“...A Drinking People Iwol episode comment compilation?”
I’ve made compilations of other people’s comments, but I’d never seen a compilation of comments about me made by someone else.
The channel that posted it wasn’t even a Spark fan account.
It seemed to be a channel that clipped only the high-reaction parts of variety and compiled comments, and seeing my face on something like that unsettled me. Is this how the system raises self-PR points?
“Do I watch it... or not...”
After agonizing, I chose not to watch.
But my resolve meant nothing. That night, Lee Cheonghyeon wedged himself onto my bed and shoved the video at me to watch together.
“Hyung, a comment compilation went up this time—did you see? I was going to watch it during the break earlier, but I waited so I could watch with you. Touched, right?”
I’m so touched my snot’s running, you brat.
What we watched was just... a grand festival of Kim Iwol’s public humiliation.
