We were practicing right up until the broadcast of Royal Secretariat, Episode 1.
Half of them kept letting their eyes wander, so we had to stop.
“Guys, why have you been spacing out?”
“Are you able to focus right now?!”
Lee Cheonghyeon barked.
“What’s there that would keep you from focusing.”
“It’s our first Royal Secretariat airing today!”
“And?”
“And what do you mean, ‘and’?”
Lee Cheonghyeon parroted me, then let out a deflated laugh.
“You seriously have zero human emotion.”
“Wow, suddenly I’m an android.”
“How are you acting exactly the same as usual? Don’t most people worry about how the edit will turn out?”
“They can’t invent mistakes that weren’t there, and we already know I won’t come off sociable. If you’re curious about the stage, you can watch it when it goes up on MiTube.”
“Wow... so I’m the weird one here, right?”
When Lee Cheonghyeon looked around, Kang Giyeon shook his head.
So I’m the weird one. These punks, seriously.
“Watching the live broadcast won’t change anything. Do you really need to see it in real time that badly?”
“Even if I explain, you won’t get it. Because you don’t have a human heart.”
“Right, so now you’re calling me a wooden puppet who can’t dance.”
“My god. Now you’re even slandering people.”
I don’t know why these weak-mentaled kids keep trying to walk into hellfire on purpose.
I’d planned to watch alone later so they wouldn’t get rattled and ruin the mood.
“Hyung, then how about we lock in and run it clean for just 30 minutes, and after that we watch the broadcast?”
Jeong Seongbin soothed the sulking Lee Cheonghyeon and made a suggestion.
My first thought was, If you’re going to swing up and down over something this small, how are you going to survive... but...
They’re not even twenty yet, and they’re all looking at me with these earnest faces, so I feel like I’m the bad guy.
“If we finish everything we need to in those 30 minutes.”
So soft-hearted.
No matter how much time passes, I don’t think I’ll ever become a strict boss.
We did miss about the first twenty minutes, but Royal Secretariat was flowing in a pretty good direction.
First, there wasn’t much mockery in the live comments.
That’s largely because the show didn’t get much attention at the start compared to other audition programs, but as long as Spark was watching, no reaction at all was better.
Even right now there were guys with their hands clasped, heads bowed, running “prayer meta.” For the sake of their honor I won’t name names.
But there was a clear ripple effect from the lack of general-public inflow.
≫ I love Song Minil [crying]
≫ Our kids are already taking the eldest role [teary] time flies
≫ Parte’s broadcast chops never left, look at that [laughs]
An overwhelming disparity in reactions depending on fandom size.
I could see Sparklers working hard in the replies, but the other groups’ volume attack wasn’t easy to beat either.
While a few groups who appeared first exchanged greetings on screen, I scrolled back through the live comments we’d missed on my phone.
And hit a pretty interesting patch.
≫ Gasp
≫ Gasp
≫ Whoa
≫ No way
≫ ;; wow, insane
≫ Huh?
Barely two-word exclamations were pouring down on a specific section like a midsummer downpour.
Taking advantage of the others being absorbed in the TV, I dragged the play bar on my phone video to the timestamp of those comments.
Up popped Lee Cheonghyeon’s face, massive on the screen. It was a pre-recorded interview clip inserted into the cast-intro segment.
Figures.
Spark’s first appearance—no, the birth of Spark’s top visual must have hit viewers like a truck. With that face, can’t say it’s surprising.
Then a quirky SFX played on the TV.
I looked up to see a few groups chatting with cute, bubbly background music.
A chilly whoosh cut in next, the middle door slid open, and Spark entered to a rather grand BGM.
If you only looked at the screen, we were a bunch of shy-around-strangers types, and then a few hours later we were dashing dudes fresh off some killer winter surfing.
I don’t remember it being that dramatic. Guess there’s a reason people say you have to judge broadcast as broadcast.
The suspicious flow continued until Parte’s entrance.
After a string of other teams bowing deeply to Parte, the shot briefly grazed Spark as we dipped our heads just a fraction, then looked away.
“Gasp...”
Lee Cheonghyeon’s breath echoed through the living room.
“The edit’s provocative.”
I added.
We bowed at ninety degrees when Parte came out, too.
These are kids who spent over a year hearing me say, If you still can’t greet people properly, quit and go home.
I’d seen with my own eyes how well they were trained and how hard they worked on site, so we had zero responsibility here.
They probably slapped in a reaction from when we were listening closely to Yur. Considering the show’s quick-hit format, it’s not even hard to do.
“Are we... getting a villain edit?”
Park Juu asked carefully.
“We don’t even qualify as a villain edit yet, but it could happen. Since we’re up against Parte sunbaenim in the first round, maybe they’re setting the tone early.”
“Isn’t that bad?”
Kang Giyeon’s face went ashen.
“If they do the same trick in the self-PR stage evaluation, we’ll get flamed hard.”
“...!”
“But it’s not like we actually behaved rudely, right? We didn’t deliberately put down anyone who did well. That’s enough.”
“What good is that. No one will know.”
Choi Jeho tossed in a line.
It matters to me, at least. If you act proper only when people are watching and act like trash when they’re not, that’s the bigger problem.
And I already wanted distance from Parte anyway. If the station’s pushing it like this from the start, I’m honestly grateful.
But understanding it in your head and how it feels in your gut are different things. I spoke to the kids who’d gone stiff.
“Don’t worry. Even if someone gets dragged, it’ll be me the most.”
“Huh?”
Jeong Seongbin turned toward me.
“I only praised Verion and docked points from the other teams, remember? You guys didn’t say much, so there’s nothing for a villain edit to latch onto.”
“You steered that conversation on purpose back then?”
“Giyeon, ads are over.”
When I changed the subject, Kang Giyeon scowled. What, you think I did it because I want to be called Spark’s top MC?
The mood had dipped a little, but there was one more thing to nail down.
“Even if we do get a villain edit, even if the sentiment skews negative, don’t forget what we agreed to pursue. It’s fine to get along with other groups, but we keep our distance from Parte.”
“I’m going to die young because I can’t communicate with you.”
Lee Cheonghyeon made a face and turned his back to me.
After the ads, the rest of Royal Secretariat’s intro and the self-PR stages continued.
The show runs an hour and ten minutes, but only three stages aired. Spark’s stage was dead last, so the only real screen time we got was the pre-interview and our first entrance.
Episode 1 ended by cramming all the remaining self-PR stages into the preview.
If they’re editing like this from the first episode, it’s begging to be labeled a boring show. I get they wanted tension, but that only matters once rankings really start shifting.
If you want people to watch the next one, it would’ve been better to tease the moment where I say, “I’ll mark all four teams Down except Verion.” Mosaic Verion and you’d have an instant flame war.
At this point, it feels like kicking off the outrage myself was the right call. You only get cursed out if you have buzz.
Having seen what I needed, I told the members to go to bed and herded them to their rooms like a flock of sheep.
Then I stayed up reading the rising wave of defensive comments from each fandom.
As expected, after the first broadcast, certain groups’ buzz volume showed a meaningful rise.
The standout, of course, was Parte.
Right after the stage, the brand and price of the outfits Parte wore for their first performance became a huge topic. They wore pricey stuff.
Must be nice. Meanwhile, Spark will be wearing single-layer volleyball uniforms I paid for with money I don’t have, and they’re only now shipping. Thanks to that, everyone’s building arm muscles like their lives depend on it during breaks.
Beyond some group’s luxury clothes and another group’s forced controversy, there was a dust-up directly tied to us.
Minil ran his mouth in a paid message after the premiere.
Mean. 1
[Did you watch Royal Secretariat??]
[Aw [teary] you saw that scene]
[We’re okay lol we were so nervous on entrance we barely saw anyone else]
[If you get upset over stuff like this it never ends! You know that, right???]
He was slick with his wording.
The guy was basically giving the impression that not only «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» were they snubbed by juniors, but things like this were going to keep happening.
Thanks to that, inside Parte’s fandom, Spark became “the thug group who half-assed a greeting and did their own thing when even the most senior team bowed nervously on entrance.”
A lot of viewers try to take broadcasts as broadcasts. Plenty of the general public know shows like this come with malicious editing and issue-manufacturing.
It’s not manipulation, and production almost never gets punished for villain edits, so it’s been the norm for ages.
When a controversy breaks, “Let’s wait and see for now” tends to be the response, for those reasons.
So I wasn’t planning to respond to a certain level of villain editing.
But once a cast member opens his mouth, the story changes.
From that point on you get the flood of lines like, Would our kid make things up? He’s a rookie who has to mind the network—why would he run his mouth for no reason...
I hadn’t planned to make fans anxious this early over something this petty. It didn’t sit right.
All I could do was drop a note in the messenger...
Iwol
[We all watched the show together!]
[We really do greet people properly, so please don’t worry too much. Think of it as editing for fun!]
[Thank you so much for staying up late to watch the live broadcast with us.]
...That was about the extent of it.
Even the screencaps our fans uploaded—“This is why you need to hear both sides!”—weathered digital erosion until people were saying, “You call this an excuse? lol.”
“If this keeps up, our fans’ feelings are going to take a beating.”
“Then let’s not do things that make them upset.”
“We can’t just go around spouting sweet nothings and become a stepping stone for other teams.”
I dragged you from clean spring water into a place ruled by editing and forced narratives—if we come out with nothing, then what was it for? We need gains to match what we lose.
“Enough. Let’s practice. We should show them something good.”
I stood and patted Lee Cheonghyeon on the shoulder.
They might grumble among themselves, but the moment I say “Let’s practice,” they get up on their own. At least their mindset is still solid.
And so, today too, Spark was about to leap harder than anyone and dive into prepping the first round... or so I thought.
“Hyung, can you try that move one more time? With the expression.”
That did not happen.
Watching me, Kang Giyeon’s face was hardening—just like the first time I showed a dance at UA.
