I spread out a mat on a quiet stretch of beach; it wasn’t vacation season yet.
Then I set up a parasol I’d borrowed from a nearby café and nudged Lee Cheonghyeon into the shade.
“Here. Now entertain yourself.”
“Yep!”
When I unfolded the little folding table we’d borrowed with it, the kid took out his laptop on his own.
Every time the sea breeze blew, small waves lapped gently in front of us.
Do geniuses get inspiration just by looking at a view?
Outside of writing my personal statement, I’ve never lived creatively, so I wouldn’t know.
While Lee Cheonghyeon clacked away at the laptop, I did the monitoring I was behind on.
Even on the bass video where my hands had gone stiff from playing after a long while, the fans had left only kind comments. I was grateful.
Thanks to having finished the small stuff on the train, I ended up freer than I expected, earlier than I expected.
By then, Lee Cheonghyeon was focused on the screen to a scary degree.
Whether it was the Pomodoro method or the fact that I’d been dragging him around and making him work everywhere, his concentration had evolved to a level worthy of respect.
If he keeps growing like this, he’ll be able to write a song smack in the middle of a night market without noise canceling.
Anyway, even if I couldn’t help him, I couldn’t very well interrupt a guy working hard at his own job.
I kept my mouth shut and sat quietly, checking now and then whether anything was coming in from the company.
Then my eyes snagged on something.
Right in front of the mat lay a cigarette butt. Of all things, the same brand Manager Nam sent me to buy on errands.
I’d gone to the trouble of bringing someone to a nice place for a creative field trip, and cigarettes? Seriously?
A cigarette standing out white on the sand was hard not to notice.
I tried to ignore it, but once seen, the butt circled my head like Manager Nam’s cigarette smell.
I barely held back a sigh rising from my gut. Then I grabbed my wallet and stood up.
“Want anything to eat?”
“Nope. Are you going to the convenience store?”
“Yeah. Don’t go anywhere. Sit tight.”
“Would I dare disobey!”
I headed straight for a convenience store. I came out with two standard garbage bags and a pair of stainless tongs.
Good. For today, I’m the beach caretaker of this district.
Picking up trash at the seaside was surprisingly rewarding.
Except for regretting that I’d worn a ball cap to keep my face from burning. There’s a reason volunteers wear sun visors.
A few people walking by tossed their trash into my bag even though a trash can was right there—that got on my nerves a bit, but I endured it.
Because the kids who’d been playing in the sand saw me and brought me ten pieces of trash each. It felt like my dead faith in humanity revived.
More than that, there were a ridiculous number of shell casings on the sand. Isn’t shooting fireworks at a beach illegal? I swear I picked up more shell casings here than in the army.
Muttering for a long while, I sprang toward any cigarette butt like a hornet, and I even wandered near someone else’s mat.
Realizing I’d overstepped, I apologized politely and turned to go—when the owner of the mat shouted, “Aren’t you Spark?!”
You seeing this, Spark brats? You’re not nobodies anymore.
They asked if I could sign something, but neither I, picking up trash, nor they, on a seaside outing, had anything like a proper pen.
I had no choice but to ask for their understanding and head back to my spot, dig in my backpack for a few sheets of memo paper tucked in my diary, and return with Lee Cheonghyeon.
While the women admired Lee Cheonghyeon’s face, I put a ballpoint pen in his hand.
So we held a little impromptu signing on the “I’m quitting the company” memo sheets—Ms. Min Joogyeong gave them to me; she said they were leftovers—and once we’d filled two standard garbage bags, the sun was setting beyond the horizon.
When we got back, Lee Cheonghyeon was lying on his stomach, looking at the sea.
“Hyung! I’m not being derelict in my duties, I just needed a moment to think!”
“Who said anything?”
I wondered why he was so jumpy on a vacation.
Well, back when I worked at Hanpyeong Industries, a vacation wasn’t a rest either. I was Manager Nam’s three-minute standby back then.
“If you’ve done your work, then rest doing what you want. Who knows when you’ll get to rest again.”
“Wow, that’s terrifying.”
What’s really terrifying is that you punks might end up resting for life seven years from now. But I’m an adult, so I won’t say that out loud.
“Go dip your feet or something. We’ve got towels.”
“Just watching is enough for me!”
“Low-key.”
Lee Cheonghyeon laughed. If it wasn’t just talk, his face was lit up.
“It’s not low-key. I just checked off a bucket-list item.”
“What, zoning out at the water?”
When I asked back, his expression turned odd. He looked like he regretted bringing it up.
Should I pry, or pretend I didn’t notice?
If I pry, I’ll look like a clueless jerk; if I let it go, I’ll look like a cold fish who doesn’t care about his member.
But if either way is a loss, better to be a little clueless than cold. This team already has one clueless guy in Choi Jeho.
“What kind of bucket-list thing makes you that self-conscious?”
“No, um...”
Scratching his cheek, he averted his eyes.
“...Thinking about it, it sounded privileged?”
“Do you have to factor that in when you make a wish?”
“That’s not it!”
Man. Talking with kids is hard.
“I just wanted to come somewhere like this and lazily watch the sea.”
“How is that privileged talk? Sounds normal.”
I tossed off a reply and sat down on the mat.
Considering how he ran for the mountains when he ran away, this kid might have a habit of restoring his mental state in nature.
Then a thought struck me.
Right. He’s the son of a well-off family.
Then “privileged talk” makes sense.
“What. You thought if you said you’ve never set foot on a white sand beach because you were yachting every summer, I’d go, ‘Wow... listen to privileged Lee Cheonghyeon’?”
“No! That’s...!”
“Really not?”
“...”
“Why worry about that? It’s not like you ever needled me for never having tried a yacht.”
More than that, I was honestly curious whether he really had been on a yacht. Do rich people actually ride those during vacation season?
Seeing the curiosity all over my face, Lee Cheonghyeon pulled back, looking reluctant.
“Cheonghyeon.”
“What.”
“Did you really ride a yacht every summer?”
“How am I some chaebol third generation?! Why is the practical one acting like this.”
He scolded me for watching too many dramas.
Then he explained he wasn’t even a “gold spoon” to begin with, but I’d once seen past rankings that put him in a “rich-kid idol Top 13,” so it didn’t really land.
“The opposite. This is my first time coming this close to the sea.”
“Yeah?”
“My parents don’t like going places for fun. On trips, where we go is always fixed. Libraries, museums, exhibitions.”
“So you spent scholarly vacations.”
“When I was playing piano, we went to other places too...”
“Don’t tell me you went to recitals.”
“Of course. Thanks to that, the sea I saw at the closest distance was the one I saw during takeoff at Incheon Airport.”
Grumbling, he kept stealing glances at me.
I guess he thinks bringing this up less than a month after talk came out about me getting beaten at home is a kind of flex.
“So. Now that you’re here, do you like it?”
I asked, looking at him sitting with his knees together before I knew it.
“I like it. My mind’s at ease, and the view’s great!”
“Then good. Next time, come with the other kids too.”
“Why are you trying to slip out? If we come, we all come together!”
“I’ll sit that out. I’m at the age where it’s more fun to check what the local real-estate prices are than to play.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
He snorted.
But I’m serious.
If the day comes when you visit the sea again, I hope you do it with Spark, not me. And don’t just come back with your faces sunburned like before.
For hours, we faced the sea breeze and had a deep conversation about music.
All the deep remarks came from Lee Cheonghyeon and I just replied, but if words went back and forth, it’s a conversation.
Talking about Spark’s musicality, the members’ vocal colors and growth {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} potential, and the catharsis of pop music, we talked until after sunset. Thanks to that, we got to see the night sea.
While Lee Cheonghyeon showered first, I read the updates in the Spark group chat—it was just that everyone had gotten home—and opened my laptop.
I was going to post on the fan café, but the category where members leave one-line notes was rapidly refreshing.
I wondered if some sighting had popped up...
≫ Iwol, did you go to Busan with Cheonghyeon??
≫ Guys, tell us your Busan trip review lol
≫ Holding my breath until the producing line’s travel vlog drops (Day 1)
...It was about us. You guys really went straight home.
Scrolling through the posts the fans had left, I found a link to the original sighting.
≫ Saw a celebrity for the first time in my life
(With proof)
I was zoning out at the water in Busan with a friend when someone started walking the beach picking up trash
We were like, that’s nice~ then looked closer and the face was seriously sooooo handsome
The two of us kept going, hey, isn’t he a celebrity?? Looks like an idol yeah yeah and tried to guess who, and it was Iwol from Spark!
We were searching on our phones to figure it out when he ran toward us
We both went oh fuck is he gonna tell us not to film T_T we didn’t film T_T T_T like that
But he’d come to pick up a cigarette butt... awkward
He apologized for coming too close. Good manners
We worked up the nerve to ask for an autograph but there wasn’t any paper and he asked us to wait a sec, then dragged over another member whose face was glowing
Both of them were wearing those snug arm sleeves so it was kinda funny anyway
They signed for me and my friend but the memo paper was lol
(I’ll hide my name!)
We asked if they bought it and he said they just use what the office staff hand out lol
Then they thanked us for recognizing them and went back to picking up trash, it was all like a comedy sketch
└ How are they in real life? Judging from concept photos, he looked handsome
└ Feels like rinsing your eyes with mouthwash—eyes feel minty
└ Understood instantly
└ The memoooo lol
└ He went “this is all I’ve got” and handed it over and my friend and I burst out laughing T_T lol
You couldn’t get a more detailed account. There was nothing but stuff to be embarrassed about, and yet they saw us kindly; I could only be thankful.
Since activities were over, there was nothing in particular that needed extra looking after.
I finished sorting everything I’d prepared for the “With List” project, even the unnecessary materials, and that was all the work I’d planned.
“How long has it been since things were this uneventful.”
Work ending.
A foreign sensation. It’s been a very long time since I felt this, not since joining Hanpyeong Industries.
“Hyung, why did the vibe suddenly get so mellow?”
“Does it look that way?”
“Yeah. The dissonance is no joke.”
Maybe I looked that unsettling, because Lee Cheonghyeon hurried me into the bathroom to wash up.
Strictly speaking, I’m not even halfway to hitting the KPI yet.
If my guess is right, a signal related to that will arrive soon.
At least until then, I can probably take one shower with an easy mind.
I took an amazing shower and came out...
“Hyung, you might want to check the group chat right now?”
...The signal I felt was coming had arrived.
