"Seongbin, when’s our lyric-writing deadline again?"
This was already the twenty-seventh time I’d asked Jeong Seongbin the same question.
"The day after tomorrow, hyung."
Jeong Seongbin answered dutifully yet again. Thanks to him, I could feel doomsday creeping closer by the day.
I wasn’t the only gloomy one.
Even Choi Jeho—the same guy who handwrote a pepper spray how-to for our first fan snack run—looked dead inside.
Rapper Lee Cheonghyeon and semi-rapper Kang Giyeon had turned theirs in ages ago. Jeong Seongbin was doing review passes, and Park Juu seemed to be in the final stretch.
I picked up a crumpled wad of paper Choi Jeho had balled up and tossed on the floor.
"Can I look at this?"
"Do whatever..."
Permission granted like a man who’d given up on life. I smoothed the wrinkles and saw ballpoint lines slashed through with the marks of agony.
[Our lacking Spark and our lacking, the far-to-go lacking Spark]
You punk, just how much do you want to call Spark a bunch of lacking idiots? Your true feelings are oozing right out.
But I had no room to mock anyone.
[Because of you all, Spark could exist
Rejected reason: sounds too much like an award speech
Spark is always by your side
Rejected reason: sounds like an election campaign]
My own notebook didn’t look any better.
The two eldest were absolutely no help to the team. At least within Spark, the proverb about big brothers being better than little brothers did not apply.
While the two “elders” were busting our heads open with worry, our other roommate, Lee Cheonghyeon, came into the room.
"Oh, looks like it’s not going well for either of you?"
"‘Not going well’? It’s not going at all."
He burst out laughing at that.
You think this is funny? Other people’s pain?
"But hyung, you know this too."
He slung an arm over my shoulders.
"What matters for work is deadlines and pressure."
That was something I’d told him when he first started composing.
And now the karma had come back to me.
"Hyung."
His eyes, deep as a blue hole, grew soulful.
His smile was round like a rainbow after rain, and both cheeks rose up as round as organic premium eggs.
"You believe people can do anything if there’s compulsion, right?"
"..."
"Then let’s start with a big brainstorming session packed with thoughts!"
His bright, angelic voice turned into a whip across my back.
For someone who’d come to hound us with an angel’s face, he actually helped me and Choi Jeho seriously.
"It might feel harder because you’re thinking you have to write from zero."
"Fans send you letters, right? Try writing like you’re replying to them."
Taking our star instructor’s advice, Jeho and I poured everything we had into writing lyrics.
The good news was the confessional-booth vibe dropped a lot once we had help...
"No, Jeho. You can’t just write ‘love’ ten times and call that lyrics."
...Scratch that. I need to read mine one more time before showing Cheonghyeon.
Spark’s first fan song, "Third Letter," had a music-video concept of “The Boys We Loved Back Then.”
You read that right. Straight from the storyboard.
"We’re ‘the boys we loved back then’?"
I saw the way Kang Giyeon asked it with a sour face.
Yeah, weird for you too, huh? There’s nothing “lovely” about those mugs, no matter how you look.
"Don’t worry, kids. With your faces, you can pull it off!"
Said the staffer who was buffing and polishing Seongbin’s face to a shine.
Wouldn’t we fit better as the discipline prefects guarding the school gate back then?
There was at least one kid who could plausibly radiate the S in “sweet.” Lee Cheonghyeon.
But his love wasn’t romantic love.
What Cheonghyeon’s face proclaimed was...
"Agape."
Only now the direction of love was reversed.
Look at that face that’s received the affection of all creation. Not only “we of that time,” even the schoolyard itself must have loved Lee Cheonghyeon back then.
"Or should we just go full drama male-lead style like Choi Jeho?"
Jeho, who’s tried every intense style—slicked back, half-slicked—had his bangs down today. The long-awaited “styled, soft-bangs Jeho” for Sparklers had arrived.
Maybe because his forehead was completely covered, he kept ruffling his bangs and then got chewed out by the stylist.
A pure look is great, but we can’t skip physique appeal. I made a bold proposal to the stylist.
"How about we roll Jeho’s sleeves? Showing his forearms will read better."
"Iwol, that’s your take too, right?"
Jeho looked at me with a face full of things to say, but I ignored him.
You’re dribbling a basketball in the MV anyway. Not showing veins while you dribble is a capital crime.
Park Juu got the senior from the art club role. The brown apron and paint stains worked nicely.
"I’m telling you, a little paint on the face sells the retro vibe better."
"Our kids’ faces are perfect untouched. Don’t go slapping stuff on them."
"Don’t you know a touch of imperfection drives people crazy? Not too much or too little—exactly two brush taps on the cheek."
The man in question, Park Juu, was serene, but the makeup artists around him were on fire.
I, too, am of the “Spark faces look best left alone...” faction, but I’ve got no credentials in first-love studies, so I kept quiet.
Then from a distance, the Platonic ideal of first love came walking over with steady steps.
"Hyung, are you ready?"
A gentle smile. A neat school uniform. And on the wrist, a rare analog watch in this age where everyone wears a smart watch.
The only guy in Spark born in spring, with a classically masculine image. As expected, Seongbin, you’re carrying all the tenderness of this team.
Meanwhile, I... I won’t even look at myself. I know I’m not exactly built to be anyone’s first love.
Kang Giyeon wasn’t much different from me.
Either he’d used tie money to buy piercings, or—since he hasn’t actually pierced his ears—he’d clipped a tiny faux stud on the rim. He’d put bandages on a few fingers.
And still, he held a wired earbud set and an MP3 player like treasure in one hand.
"What was your concept again?"
I asked though I knew the answer.
He replied without resistance.
"That quiet kid in the very back corner of the classroom."
"Excellent period accuracy."
At my praise, his expression went faint.
I was genuinely excited to see how explosively handsome this MV would turn out.
Work never disappears; at best it shifts. As the fan song wrapped, the fan-club issue hit.
For a typical idol, you’d reveal the fandom name and light stick along with launching the fan club.
But UA had the massive wall named Yu Hansu.
Because we’d unveiled the fandom name at debut specifically to block his shenanigans, the only things left were the official fan-club kit and the light stick.
Honestly, even the kit wasn’t easy. An ID card and rolling paper were fine, but beyond that it screamed cost-cutting.
"I think the paper-goods ratio is too high. The unit-price talk will definitely start, and of all people, we cannot have folks who like Spark enough to join the club calling it a ‘bang-for-buck’ operation."
So I put everything on hold and tossed it to someone with a broader grasp of idol culture than me—Jeong Seongbin. He’d spearhead improvements to the contents.
At the same time, despite UA’s limited experience releasing official merch, we decided to roll out Spark official goods.
When I saw the first lineup and roughs... I had no words. UA has a reputation for truly awful merch.
Maybe because they’ve built a dedicated team now, it at least looked better than the stuff I used to proxy-buy.
That doesn’t mean it was “good-looking merch.”
"I agree Cheonghyeon’s face is jewel-like even just hanging on a wall."
"Right, and?"
"I just don’t think fans want a giant Cheonghyeon-face keyring dangling from their backpacks."
At the end of the day, idol merch lives or dies by how much it scratches the itch and whether you can pass in public.
Just slapping a photo on an item and calling it merch? The communities will roast you all night for phoning it in.
So I pulled the classic “I happen to have a great idea~” routine and sold them on it.
Thankfully, the dedicated team caught on fast, and by the second lineup we started seeing lists you wouldn’t get dragged for.
So far, so good.
The problem: UA wanted to do that heinous limited-quantity sale.
"Not disclosing total quantity and doing first-come, first-served?"
Not kidding, I almost fell over backward. How many times have Sparklers fumed over these UA antics.
≫ I’m trying to give you my damn money for your damn merch and you won’t sell it, what the hell
≫ I have money, why can’t I buy...? Please, come empty my wallet, I’m begging you...
≫ Do you have brains for decoration? It’s sold out in 30 minutes every time—why do you keep posting apology notices after every sellout? Even a goldfish learns faster than you, seriously
≫ Doing °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° tiny limited runs just so you don’t hold inventory is clown behavior. Please trust your idol ㅠㅠㅠ I know you hate losses, okay, but increase the run, you clowns
They don’t get it—how much public anger you stir up by limiting official goods to a bare minimum.
I know companies hate taking a loss. But what good is that if you hurt fans?
So I went and staged a little lie-down protest on the UA office floor.
"There’s this wonderful thing called pre-orders, team lead."
"But Iwol, what if we end up with excess stock..."
"I know a cheap warehouse. I’ll reserve it all. Just—please—no limited-quantity sales!"
"You don’t have to reserve anything—get up first! Why are you lying on the floor!"
"Spark does the performing, fans do the suffering, and scalpers make the money! Who is that merch for, then!"
I understand we can’t recklessly mass-produce when the fandom isn’t big enough to keep factories humming—but at minimum, everyone who wants to buy should be able to. We’re in entertainment; our customers are fans.
After going through all that, I had a lot on my mind.
I thought while perched on the bed, and I thought at the kitchen table.
And I arrived at a sad conclusion.
I’m just going to keep working... forever.
