"Last night I went live from the company conference room and did a clarification stream.
I know that’s not the usual playbook. But after weighing everything, I decided this was the best option.
If I left it to UA, they’d just repeat what they’ve always done with Spark’s past controversies—fail to clarify anything and only make the mess bigger.
And in the entertainment world, once you clarify one thing, people nitpick the next and the next. A single written statement wasn’t going to calm anything down.
Dragging an ugly incident out is disrespectful to Royal Secretariat, which I’m currently appearing on.
So I prepped thoroughly and spent a full hour proving I’d done nothing wrong, and...
"Wouldn’t it be better to give college another shot?"
"You’re telling me to quit now and take the college entrance exam?"
"That’s not what I mean. Don’t you think you’ll regret it?"
...Choi Jeho, a few others, and some folks at the company started pressuring me: “It’s not too late—try for college again.”
So this is how they pretend to care while showing me the door. And here I thought they’d decided to keep me around.
I expected public curiosity to cluster around spicy keywords, but I didn’t think people around me would get swept up too. Why are you falling for clout someone else stirred up to drag me?
And would I not regret it? I regret it the most. It kills me.
≫ I knew you were smart, Iwol,
S University... by regular admission...
But losing it because # Nоvеlight # of money... ha
└ The chat literally froze the moment that came up. Unreal.
≫ I’m happy our boy never got special treatment, but losing S University is just too big.
≫ XX I’m the one going crazy with frustration.
He earned that private study-room access with grades and got dogpiled with baseless hate.
Over what, exactly.
≫ If money was tight, doesn’t the national grant cover it?
└ For freshmen, the national grant pays out after you’ve paid tuition. You have to front the tuition first, and he couldn’t.
└ Both parents work—so why couldn’t they pay?
└ 1) Not every salaried worker makes 4–5 million won a month. 2) He said he got zero financial help and moved out the moment he turned twenty. Period.
≫ Typical_idol_CSAT_report.jpg
└ You can’t argue with straight 111111.
└ Leaving energized.
└ Leaving energized 22.
...No. I take it back about me regretting it the most.
I accepted my fate early, but the fans agonized over my situation like it was their own.
A nation united by entrance exams—touching, really.
"Even if I tried again, it wouldn’t matter. My guessing luck was on fire that day."
"Hearing you say it like that makes it sound not like a joke..."
"It’s not a joke."
All the luck in my life got spent on CSAT day. Wishing for that kind of miracle again would be shameless.
Besides, even if I went back to college, I’d probably end up with a GPA in the low twos again.
I’d juggle part-time jobs and classes, lose both résumé and grades, then apply to Hanpyeong Industries—where they promise 35 million won entry-level to humanities grads—and ruin my life all over again.
It’s not that I have zero lingering attachment.
If anything, saying I have “some” attachment doesn’t begin to cover it.
College admissions were the first real result I ever achieved. The first time I tasted hope that I could actually do something.
How could I be fine with losing that. I just accept reality because it’s irreversible now.
"Didn’t you say you went to S University? Then Deputy Kim should be able to handle this alone, right?"
"Deputy Kim sure is book-smart and useless. You’d better go back to school."
...I got sick of hearing lines like that. Damn it—he never chipped in a penny for my tuition; why was he nitpicking every little thing?
I should’ve gotten the asset-management license and gone to a securities firm, even if it meant taking on debt.
But thinking about how most of Hanpyeong’s employees were highly educated, I’m not convinced another company would’ve treated me differently.
Anyway. Things with Parte weren’t fully smoothed out yet, but at least no one was publicly trashing Spark or me. That was enough.
"More importantly, we have something else today."
The submission deadline for the Position Battle lineup to Royal Secretariat was today.
Round 3 on Royal Secretariat is a Position Battle.
Each group selects representatives for vocal, dance, and rap, sends them out, and then two groups’ reps are paired at random to form a temporary unit.
It’s a 2:2:2 matchup; the audience votes decide 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and those placements grant bonus points in the final Round 4.
Up to now we pushed ourselves to the limit to secure Round 3 production funds.
Having won 1st in Round 2 and gotten the budget, I didn’t want to burn energy on Round 3.
Spark isn’t exactly favored to win the whole show anyway, and my top priority is the members’ safe, healthy growth.
Survival programs demand a ridiculous amount of stamina. You have to prepare the entire A-to-Z of a stage in a short window, which means stretching practice hours as far as they go.
If we could get support across planning, arrangement, and choreography, the workload would be lighter—but UA has no such capacity.
So the six of us have literally ground our bones to get this far.
At this point, it wouldn’t be strange for someone to collapse. We need a reset before that happens.
"Giyeon, you didn’t go to orthopedics last month or this month, right? Hand off the dance position to Choi Jeho and get manual therapy this round."
"I’m fine. It doesn’t really hurt."
"Once Random Play Dance shows up, you’ll skyrocket anyway. Don’t worry and go."
"Who said I was worried about that?"
I teed up his screen time in advance and he’s got a lot to say. I had zero intention of listening and let it pass in one ear and out the other.
"Then the vocal position...?"
Park Juu asked.
That’s exactly the problem. I’d planned to go.
I wanted to give the main vocals a break, but with all the noise lately, it’s become awkward.
"Didn’t you say you were thinking of going?"
"I did, but now I’m not sure... I’m wondering if me going is actually a good idea."
As I hesitated, Jeong Seongbin thought for a moment and said:
"What about sticking to the plan and having you go, hyung?"
"Me?"
"Yeah. You must have had a picture in mind from the start."
It’s not that grand; I just wanted you guys to rest.
"You’ll do great. I trust you."
I don’t know...
No matter how I look at it...
≫ I’m telling you that XX just wants screen time.
He probably bolted vibranium plates onto his face.
≫ ???: Ah, you can’t let topicality pass lol
...that’s what I’ll hear.
Still, I’m riding their coattails; I can at least make this kind of sacrifice play. Time to show off these steel vocal cords I’ve honed.
"Then the only one left is rap," Jeong Seongbin said.
Officially, this team has only one rapper: Lee Cheonghyeon. I know Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon both took some rap training, but they’ve never shown it in public.
After burning white-hot through Round 2, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Cheonghyeon to go out and rap again this time...
"If it’s rap, obviously I should go!"
Cheonghyeon’s eyes lit up. He even clenched his fists.
"We also need to plan the final performance track. Considering the songwriting, wouldn’t it be better to rest this round?"
The final round requires a brand-new song. Since that takes time to prepare, the show announced it alongside the Round 3 format.
I reminded him about the final in case he’d forgotten.
But Cheonghyeon stood firm.
"Hyung, remember how we cut all the rap parts in Round 2?"
"Yeah."
"So I suffered singing for the first time in forever, right? Juu chewed me out and I cried buckets, right?"
"Did I...?"
Beside us, Park Juu looked deeply wronged, but Cheonghyeon didn’t care.
"I’m crazy good at rap, so I must’ve been dying inside, right? Sighing nonstop, right? That pent-up craving to rap must’ve stuck like a grudge, right?"
"..."
"And if you don’t send me to a rap battle, I’ll be upset, right? I’ll cry, right? My eyes will be so puffy I’ll have to hold ice packs on them through the final rehearsal, right?"
"Enough. I’ll send you."
"An excellent choice!"
He gave a thumbs-up. We’d only just picked participants and I was already exhausted.
A few days later, the partners for our hard-won picks arrived.
My luck with teammates has never been great.
In high school, kids who hadn’t lifted a finger would try to tack their names on whenever it was time to review the student record. In college, I mostly learned how worthless a human conscience can be.
With too many part-time hours, I needed to choose and focus. Thinking I shouldn’t make anyone else pay for my schedule, I always chose group projects—yet in four years, not once did my teammates choose to take the load.
And the military?
Even there—where everyone is supposed to suffer together—there was invisible buck-passing.
Just when I thought I’d finally escaped group life, I landed at Hanpyeong Industries.
A team leader who stole my output for his promotion; a dysfunctional organization; and Chief Nam, who handed me a paper cup and said modern sailors have it easy while I was bailing water out of a sinking ship with a bucket...
And today, I get new teammates.
I swallowed hard and headed to the third assigned room.
Steel yourself, Kim Iwol. You’re used to crappy group projects.
Do not, even for a second, think you can have a humane collaboration now!
Deep in my chest, tears welled up.
I opened the door and...
"Huh?"
"Gasp—it’s Iwol!"
"Hello!"
Verion was there. Three of them, even.
After we exchanged warm greetings, the Verion members froze up, awkward.
Great—am I the social MC again, overflowing with friendliness? That’ll only fuel the “screen-time-hungry” accusations.
Can’t be helped. They’re much younger than me; I’ll be patient.
"Did you hope for a different group and end up with me instead?"
"No!"
"I really wanted to share a stage with Spark at least once!"
Whether or not that’s sincere doesn’t matter. What matters is that the air doesn’t go dead.
"And Iwol, you don’t have to be so formal with us!"
One of Verion’s vocal line—who also doubles as their center—Yeo Seongchan, even encouraged me to drop my speech level.
When I said it wasn’t right to speak casually to seniors, Verion shot back that Korea respects seniority by age. In the end, we agreed to both drop the formalities.
"I’ve really wanted to do a stage with you, hyung. What are the odds?"
"With me?"
When I asked back, Yeo Seongchan nodded hard.
"Yeah! Since it’s the vocal position, I figured Seongbin or Juu would come out and thought it’d be tough, but..."
"Seongchan, zip it!"
Another Verion member frantically stopped the runaway train. Guess Verion hasn’t finished the “watch your mouth” training yet.
Seeing them already watching my reactions, I grinned.
"Seongbin and Juu are secret weapons, so I kept them hidden."
"Wow... you really do have a plan for everything!"
Even with plans, this show’s destiny is to flip them at the last minute, but sure.
There wasn’t anything else we needed to do today. The whole shoot was just paired units getting acquainted and chatting a bit.
"I wonder which groups Jeho and Cheonghyeon got matched with."
While I listened to Verion gush—“This part of Spark’s stage was so cool!”—I worried about my two members’ team-draw luck.
