The mood wasn’t bad—up until the meeting to prepare for the first round.
As seniors who’d debuted a few months earlier, Parte had put out a fair number of albums. Minis, singles—the works.
Unlike Spark, who had only one mini and one single to our name.
They had more options, and we had concepts we’d already reviewed in anticipation of being on Royal Secretariat.
Our only worry was where, in the kingdom of concepts—especially Parte’s songs armored in lavish capital—we could shove youth in.
At least until the manager walked in with the budget sheet.
“This is the available budget... right?”
“Yeah. That’s what it is.”
“Not for one stage... you mean for the whole program combined?”
“...Yeah.”
I read the numbers slowly again.
I checked carefully in case a comma had drifted or a digit had dropped and only the total was wrong.
Nothing changed. There was no money—like, truly no money.
Faced with an amount absurdly smaller than expected, I opened my mouth with effort.
“Manager, is the company prepping another idol group or something?”
“It’s not that. Actually... the # Nоvеlight # company is running an internal audit. Every other department’s approvals are tougher too.”
In short, after signs of an embezzlement attempt between Yu Hansu and the production team lead were exposed, UA started a sweeping review of expenditures.
Even so, this budget made no sense. Even if Spark alternated between Royal Secretariat and local festivals every other day, we’d still come up short.
Spark hasn’t crossed break-even yet, sure, but UA isn’t the kind of company that invests this little.
Something was off. My head wouldn’t accept it.
That was when the system—annoyingly popped up a few days ago—returned.
▶ Deputy Kim, do you think the company pays your commute so you can run around doing pointless crap? If you want to do whatever you like, go start a business. Why are you here?
[SYSTEM] Notification to “Party B”: Internal Policy Violation.
▷ “Party B” has a Duty of Fairness to use gains from information asymmetry fairly.
▷ If behavior overly diverges from the original timeline, it is deemed a breach of the Duty of Fairness by “Party B.”
▷ Depending on how much “Party B’s” actions altered history, penalties leveraging “Party B’s” environment may be applied.
[SYSTEM] Notice of Penalty to “Party B” for Internal Policy Violation.
▷ Content: Reduction of UA-provided available budget
▷ Reason: Participation in “Royal Secretariat”
Who dies if Spark goes on Royal Secretariat? Does the flow of the heavens shift?
Tearing up the album we were going to release anyway is fine, but if we do something we hadn’t done before, we get smitten by lightning?
I could feel the blood rush to my head. My eyes burned.
If you wave a vague, arbitrary yardstick and tie my hands and feet, what exactly am I supposed to do?
I can’t say I’ve understood the system up to now, but this part—I couldn’t understand its intent at all.
“Iwol, what’s wrong all of a sudden?”
The manager asked me as I stared at the air in silence.
I bluffed that I was just thinking for a second and looked back down at the budget sheet.
If the penalty leveraged my environment, that means the system exploited my move against Yu Hansu to make this look natural.
I was complacent.
I knew the system could interfere beyond me, yet I thought as long as I kept my mouth shut and acted, nothing major would happen.
If it can so easily influence thoughts and realize them, how easy would it be to let my sister die, or to steer me right back to Again Hanpyeong Industries?
My vision went dark. For the first time since the day I got younger, a wave of helplessness rolled over me.
Even so, an ant has to work, helpless or not. I couldn’t just lie there.
I needed countermeasures. And a wholesale plan change.
Sometimes I wish a day had forty-eight hours.
Right now, I wish it had four hundred eighty.
We had two weeks until the first round.
Originally, we’d pick song and concept in a day or two, develop on day three, do a mid-check at the one-week mark, and then all six of us would tear up the stage at the end...
All shot to hell.
From the moment I saw the budget, I didn’t sleep a wink and fused with my laptop. Thanks to that, Jeho baked the toast yesterday and today.
“Phew...”
“You okay...?”
While I was cooling my head, staring at the ceiling, Park Juu came into the room.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Did the kids go to school?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s go practice too.”
Even with nothing decided to practice, having to go practice rubbed me the wrong way—and the bad luck didn’t stop there.
Three minutes after I set foot in UA, I ran into Yu Hansu loitering in the hallway.
If you’ve made the whole company vibe go to shit because of yourself, have the sense to keep out of sight.
He really has a talent for getting under people’s skin from one to ten.
I muttered to myself that Korea is a Confucian society and bowed politely to him, and half my stamina vanished. I wanted to chuck everything and go back to the dorm.
Still, maybe fate isn’t all cruel—we managed to settle on an item with advice from the planning team. “Friendly competition.”
We chose Parte’s third single title, “Desire,” a song themed around the craving for a holy relic.
They all came out in uniforms with epaulets and capes, swore a knight’s oath before a huge statue, swung their swords, and marched forward—a music video with a visually massive impression...
We, meanwhile, couldn’t afford so much as a straw epaulet, so one-up-their-outfits was off the table. We focused on reinterpreting what Spark would desire.
What has value in competition?
If you’re a fun-loving grinder charging toward first place, the value you pursue is victory. We made that the main keyword.
Next was the means.
How would we show victory?
Nothing beats sports for something familiar to everyone that shows sweat, competition, and yet isn’t dark. So the overall concept became sports.
So what do we want to say with this stage?
The answer could be defined in a single line.
Fight fair, win, and claim honor.
All five signed off on that message. Up to there, great.
“We don’t have the money.”
We even set a grand goal of founding the Blaze High School volleyball club, scaled to our headcount—but money was the problem.
Unless we bought six identical uniforms from the same vendor listing on the Carrot classifieds app, there weren’t many ways to save.
You don’t have to wear expensive clothes on stage, but that only applies when the clothes still look like clothes.
If we sent them out in neon-lime tees just because they’re a volleyball club, people would roast us that even the neighborhood morning volleyball club dresses better.
And it’s a competition show—you can’t just slap generic uniforms on them.
I sighed.
There was a way out.
Personal funds... would do it.
I just fucking hate to spend them.
After the prepayment for Manager Nam’s package tour, I swore I’d never process personal expenses again.
And this money truly has no promise of coming back!
I’m the one who dragged them into the show, and the budget shrank because of me—there’s no way I can say, “Let’s just make do with what we’ve got!”
Before the market closed, I went straight to the manager, got my phone, and sold a few shares that were doing nicely.
Once the cashable balance was withdrawable, I could probably buy about half the items on the list.
Manager Nam’s daughter ought to see me like this. What a shame.
▶ Deputy Kim, are you secretly rich? Must be loaded, huh? What did you say your parents do?
Watching a teammate grow is a joy.
A teammate’s growth means our team’s workload goes down.
But not every growth is necessarily a net positive.
“I kept talking with Jeho. It really feels like this time you need to be in the middle a lot.”
Today, the guy I trusted—Kang Giyeon—pulled me out of my comfy outskirts seat.
“What makes you say that?”
I hid my bewilderment and annoyance and asked.
These punks must have found out our budget shrank because of me and are taking revenge.
Put me up as a shield for a head-on clash with Parte, then saddle me with the dishonor of a fight we didn’t even fight well. The plan’s so meticulous I almost admire it.
Oblivious to the storm inside me, Giyeon was matter-of-fact.
“You know the section where we adapted volleyball moves mid-choreo? I kept watching, and no one but you sells that feel.”
“Yeah?”
To me it looked like everyone danced well, but to his eye, the realistic edge mattered more.
“If you slide to the side, it’s kind of like... a teacher got roped into the kindergarten recital and is standing at the end.”
“Just curse me out properly, Giyeon.”
But I got what he meant.
It just so happened almost no one in Spark had played volleyball, so the only person with experience—dragged around in college or the army—was me.
I’d already suffered having to demonstrate janky motions between the dance line. I didn’t expect to be in for worse.
You can’t refuse if it’s to raise the stage quality, but I felt uneasy.
It might be way better if the five of them handled planning, arrangement, lyric edits, and choreo creation and I squeezed into the gaps—but instead it looked like my territory was expanding while I was wedged in there.
“Everyone learns formations fast... Let’s practice together a bit more first. If it still seems better for me to be center, I’ll shift for real then.”
I answered obliquely and sent Giyeon back to Jeho. And I prayed—if there is a god, especially a god of volleyball—that in the next few days one would descend into one of the members’ bodies.
Maybe because even my impure wish got read, the god of volleyball didn’t descend by the deadline Giyeon and I had set.
One day, as we kept grinding practice, feeling abandoned by the world—
Royal Secretariat started airing.
