A little while ago, the broadcast network launched the Royal Secretariat channel.
There, the brand-new, still green rookie idol group Spark has their clumsy day put on display!
“Oh...”
Lee Cheonghyeon let out a short sound of admiration. I’m not sure that’s a positive sign.
“Mm... Just from that, isn’t it a little too plain?”
“That’s why I prepared this.”
Jung Seongbin’s reaction was similar to Lee Cheonghyeon’s.
I immediately pulled up the next slide.
Under the title “How to give tension to a loose concept,” I’d attached side-by-side a photo of a pure-looking handsome actor in a white tee and jeans and a slick image of Hellas Polo taken from their official website.
“Sometimes when you do this, it feels like you can see the future. How far can you predict, exactly?”
“I can see myself doing a one-on-one with you pretty soon. Stay after the meeting.”
Lee Cheonghyeon shut his mouth right away. Yeah, you don’t like one-on-ones either, do you?
“First I’ll explain this image direction.”
Spark’s foundation is youth. No one would dispute that.
Then why have youth, purity, first love, and the rest held the throne for so long?
“You’ve all heard the line ‘the most local is the most global’ at least once. So what do you think is the most ‘youthful’ look?”
While puzzling over the concept for the self-PR stage, I mulled the dictionary meanings of youth again and again.
Spring, when green shoots sprout.
The young years of life, or its brightest season.
The source of youth is vitality, dynamism, and...
“An extremely pure kind of beauty. I think that’s another way to say youth.”
Beautiful without gaudy ornament. Something you can toss into a field and it still stands out.
Something that reaches anyone, without love-it-or-hate-it baggage!
“And luckily, you’ve got just the ingredients for a youth narrative.”
“What are they?”
“Your faces.”
Skin as spotless as untouched snowfields no one has stepped on.
A smile that’s like a bottle of seltzer on a winter ice day, just by breathing.
A physique that calls to mind a steadfast, solid glacier spread over the cold Arctic sea.
They’re so youthful they look almost blue. Put a single white tee on top and it’s practically an ion-drink commercial.
“It’s also true I chose this route because it’s awkward to ask for a big budget right now.”
With the mess over Yu Hansu and the production team’s embezzlement attempt, the company’s in turmoil, so it’s become hard to stomp our feet and demand money for a one-off stage.
Anyway, that guy is a roadblock in everything. I’m going to get him out of the way, one way or another.
“So it’s like a veteran roamer wandering the map in just a sleeveless tee...”
“I don’t fully get the metaphor, but Seongbin, you understood it right.”
I pointed at the handsome actor’s photo.
“Once in the intro, once in the ending. Show off the faces to a shocking degree and brand into them what kind of team Spark is... That’s my plan.”
Then, from the corner, Kang Giyeon raised his hand.
“No matter what, they’re all idols. Will this face-first attack even land?”
“What?”
What an arrogant comment. I was too dumbfounded to even laugh.
In the past, even in those contextless, senseless music videos produced by Yu Hansu...
≫ So what if the music video is kinda fucked—
There’s a narrative in the face.
...is what people said about Spark.
And now what? You’re worried a face attack won’t work?
“If it were me, Giyeon, I’d use this chance to raise your visual score and figure out a way to make sure people get how much of a treasure your face is.”
Looks like tagging along with Lee Cheonghyeon has warped Kang Giyeon’s aesthetics. I get it, but he’s still cheeky, so I’m making him take two packets of vitamins tonight.
“You get the idol side without me explaining, right? Wear idol-appropriate outfits and do the stage well like usual. But don’t forget—you have to finish fresher than anyone.”
“I get what you’re saying, but what’s this got to do with rookie idols? Isn’t it closer to a pro idol’s on-off?”
Right on cue, Choi Jeho asked a good question.
“Being pros won’t do. I’ll leave it to you and Giyeon to figure out how to ‘sell’ being a bit unpolished, but you must prioritize the rookie-idol concept over everything else.”
“You said everyone’s years in the field are similar. Isn’t it better to make a stage that’s obviously well done?”
“Of course the stage itself has to be done well, like usual. Like I said—you’re ‘selling’ the unpolished look.”
“I don’t really... get what meaning that has.”
“It’s fine if you don’t yet.”
No team is going to gamble on their first broadcast. They’ll pick a familiar song and do the concept they’ve been doing all along.
Amid that, there are two ways for Spark to stand out.
First, do what the others aren’t doing.
Second...
“By the end, we become the identity of Royal Secretariat.”
...you seize the narrative.
A narrative inseparable from the program.
Time raced by, and the first recording day for Royal Secretariat arrived.
After being shut in UA’s basement practice room eating only salad while we rehearsed, we finally saw daylight.
Lately we’d been going to the practice room at dawn and coming home at midnight, so the only things we saw were stars. Honestly it felt like Again Hanpyeong Industries all over again.
Still, maybe because I let them sleep properly and pushed them to work out hard, their faces were in another league.
Complexions matter. Today’s stage is all or nothing without these kids’ faces.
I, too, cut off monitoring for a few days to focus on getting my own color back.
There was no dramatic change, but judging by how the staffer’s tapping under my eyes lost force, it wasn’t for nothing.
To top it off, the ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) system popped up after ages and...
▶ Deputy Kim, why are you doing things I didn’t assign? Nothing to do? Want me to give you more?
“Hyung, what do you think the studio vibe will be today?”
Sitting next to me, Lee Cheonghyeon slung an arm over my shoulder and asked.
“Moderately fake and nice. We’ll get a few side-eyes. And we’ll be the only pure summer boys among a sea of flashy outfits.”
“Ugh, I shouldn’t have asked!”
Then don’t treat a person like a fortune-telling octopus.
And you should have seen this coming. It’s obvious without looking.
Sure enough, from the moment we stepped in, the looks aimed at us were odd.
A kind of preemptive show of force. But when they’re doing it with sparkly faces, it’s not that threatening. If anything, maybe we should be the ones apologizing for showing up dressed like total slackers.
And it’s not like Spark has ever staged a mutiny or done back-talk anywhere. We’ve got nothing to feel guilty about, so we can be confident.
We bowed our heads energetically and politely to the seniors who’d arrived first, then took our seats.
Finally, when Parte swept in and took all the attention, the six seats were full.
In a space this big, there are roughly fifty men. Even if I try not to, I keep thinking about the army.
I was recalling my old barracks in my head when the giant LED lit up.
When the cast walked in, the board had flashed each group name. Now a new word appeared: “MC.”
Then the middle of the screen split wide open.
“Huh?”
“Whoa!”
And from behind the board, someone walked to center stage.
“Nice to meet you, Royal Secretariat contestants. I’m Hellas Yur, your MC!”
He was the leader of Hellas, MYTH’s top output—a boy group under MYTH that was wildly popular until a few years ago.
The idol’s fate—self-management—showed in his neat face and the perfectly tidy lines of his clothes.
“MYTH’s reach... isn’t a joke.”
Even as I bowed ninety degrees with the members, I was thinking how far MYTH might have gotten involved in Royal Secretariat.
When every other show got their hair yanked over vote-rigging scandals, Royal Secretariat alone stayed clean, so it won’t be score manipulation.
Maybe they intervened only up to the pre-stage of deciding the cast. There isn’t a single team here that can beat Parte and its fandom head-to-head.
“I’m excited to write a new history with you. I’m sure you’re also wondering what kind of stages lie ahead.”
The hosting flowed like water from there.
With the MC coming from a company that also has contestants, it would feel silly to argue fairness, considering Yur’s poise.
Thanks to Manager Nam, I’ve had my own feverish assistant-manager stan phase, but Spark has always been my real subject of observation. That’s why I didn’t even know who Royal Secretariat’s MC was, since Spark hadn’t been on it.
If I’d known we’d be tied to a specific group this often, I should’ve read entertainment news more diligently.
I was just thinking that next time we go on Mr. Polo’s radio, we’ll probably talk a ton about Royal Secretariat, when—
Yur, who’d been making eye contact with the cast one by one as he spoke, met eyes with me.
It makes sense that our gazes crossed—he was greeting everyone. But still—
“Didn’t he just smile in a weird way?”
If there were a license for reading expressions, I’d pass level one with room to spare. No way I misread a change that clear.
Before I could stay puzzled, Yur’s gaze moved on.
Can’t be helped. If I’ve been marked, I shouldn’t leave the waiting room for a while.
Program details were briefly introduced by Yur.
Nothing special.
Among the glut of survival shows, they just brought in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty concept for differentiation; at this stage, Royal Secretariat didn’t have any particularly special idea.
If there was anything of note, it was their big declaration that they’d block overseas voting in order to deliver a true K-idol duel.
Once the program got big, apparently they missed the voting revenue, because in season two they quietly opened overseas voting under the name of cultural exchange by embassies.
At least in season one, that didn’t happen.
This was also why I dragged Spark onto Royal Secretariat. Since the production itself was excluding the overseas market—which usually favors the group that debuts earlier—it became the perfect environment for Spark, the pure baby of the bunch who doesn’t know the ways of the world yet.
There were other bits, like awarding an Eosa-flower badge to any group that took first each round.
I wondered if pinning that to your chest wouldn’t look a bit odd, but I didn’t bother saying it out loud.
Only after that long, long program explanation ended did the curtain finally rise on the self-PR stages.
