When the lights came up, Spark was standing there in the school uniforms from the music video we had just watched.
The venue filled with over-the-top reactions from people way too immersed.
“Our first fan song—how is it, everyone?”
“Freaking love it!”
One loud Sparser blurted it out and then clapped a hand over their mouth. Everyone fought desperately not to crack up.
“We were shaking so hard backstage. We kept worrying, what if the reaction’s bad?”
Kim Iwol said it with a face that looked like he hadn’t been nervous at all. Nerves, my foot—he’d obviously been eagle-eyeing the fan section the whole time.
Following Jeong Seongbin’s emcee cue to sit and chat about the fan song, Spark took their seats again.
With only three minutes to touch up, there was no fixing makeup; the members who’d worn intense looks—Choi Jeho and Park Juu—looked just a little mismatched with the uniforms. That, in its own way, was hilarious, so Won Chaehee diligently caught it on camera.
“There’s a reason the title of our new track is ‘The Third Letter,’ right?”
Kim Iwol °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° opened. Jeong Seongbin picked it up smoothly.
“As you can tell from the lyrics of ‘Flowering’ and ‘With List,’ we write every song as if the listener is a Sparser. It’s our first official fan song, but as a message to Sparsers it’s our third—so that’s why we chose this title.”
I’d never once thought about it that way. People say Spark’s famous for loving their fans; it was surprising to learn they’d kept that energy from debut.
Jeong Seongbin continued by praising the team’s composer.
“Once again, Cheonghyeon really worked hard on this one, everyone.”
“It’s a fan song—no such thing as ‘worked hard.’ I had a blast making it!”
“Sure looked that way.”
Kang Giyeon’s comment only made Lee Cheonghyeon’s sincerity shine brighter. Maybe because he’d watched the moment of release land with his own eyes, Cheonghyeon was riding an obvious high.
“From what I saw, someone else did the heavy lifting.”
Giyeon glanced sideways as he said it. Kim Iwol and Choi Jeho both looked away in turn. I had a feeling we were about to get a very interesting tidbit.
Cheonghyeon took the mic again.
“Sparsers all know this, but our older guys aren’t exactly gifted at writing.”
“Even when we do give-back letters...”
Everyone nodded at Park Juu’s line. Only late-to-the-party fan Won Chaehee—who didn’t know deep trivia like that—could only roll her eyes around.
“But this time we decided each person would write their own part’s lyrics, right? Our hyungs suffered so much~.”
“You look awfully happy about it, Cheonghyeon.”
Kim Iwol smiled brightly. There was a deep shadow at the corners of his eyes.
“They did go a little hard.”
“...You kept putting ‘lacking’ in the lyrics and turned all of us into the ‘lacking’ Spark.”
As if venting pent-up grievance, Kang Giyeon and Park Juu took turns reproaching Choi Jeho.
“Despite that, it’s amazing they got it done to this level. Why won’t anyone understand me? Now this cute, pretty, gem-like Cheonghyeon is getting upset.”
“Yeah, I’m the one at fault.”
Even their so-called “no-days-off tiki-taka” between Lee Cheonghyeon and Kim Iwol started to look adorable in Won Chaehee’s eyes.
Now there was only one thing left that Won Chaehee could decide for herself: who to choose as her ultimate favorite. And that one thing was something no one would know until this fan meeting ended.
After watching “Flowering” live in school uniforms, plus a few covers of trending songs, it was time for Q&A.
According to the program, a standee board was brought out, covered in Post-its where fans had handwritten questions.
At Jeong Seongbin’s suggestion to pick and read them one by one, the members swarmed the board. The first to choose a question was Kang Giyeon.
“From ‘FrontRowScreamsFor6Seconds’: ‘Any plans to switch roommates?’ it says.”
“Come to think of it, we’ve never switched, have we?”
Choi Jeho tilted his head.
“We did back then—Giyeon and I swapped. Before that, you and Giyeon were in the same room.”
“Were we?”
He looked like he had zero memory of it. Remarkable chill, in more ways than one.
“If we switched... it could be fun.”
From the back, Park Juu murmured like a baby hamster. Everyone—even Spark themselves—focused on what he’d said.
Even at a glance, Park Juu wasn’t the most outgoing type.
If even he was fine with switching roommates, it pretty much proved Spark was a group where everyone got along.
The fact that the members knew each other well came out in the discussion that followed.
“But Jeho and Juu need separate rooms. Juu can’t sleep if there’s any light.”
“I bought a sleep mask—I’m fine...!”
There was Kang Giyeon, who carefully kept track of his roommate’s habits, and Park Juu, willing to put up with Jeho’s poor night vision...
“Anyone who rooms with me or Lee Cheonghyeon needs to be hard to wake.”
“You and Cheonghyeon could just sleep on time. Speaking as a human being, I say you have to be asleep before sunrise.”
There was also Jeong Seongbin, scolding Kim Iwol and Lee Cheonghyeon with a smile for their obliterated sleep schedules.
“What combinations do you want to see, everyone? If you say it now, the company might actually assign the roommates!”
Cheonghyeon hustled all the way to the edge of the stage, busy trading answers with fans. Requests poured in like “make the youngest two roommates” and “split into early birds and night owls.”
“If you split it like that, I’ll need to use two rooms.”
When famously short-sleeper Kim Iwol answered, shouts came from all over telling him to just go to sleep like a normal person.
There were plenty of other questions besides the roommate thing. Sometimes the topic came from something that wasn’t even a question.
“From ‘SparkSexyDanceStraightPunch_Day1386’... wait a sec, who used this nickname?”
Without really looking, Jeho had grabbed one and then, reading the handle out loud, belatedly tried to identify the mysterious “straight-punch master.”
“We haven’t even hit one year since debut and it says day 1,386...”
“Sparkler fireworks give off light, right? And light is the fastest thing in the world. Even time is slower than a Sparkler’s light.”
“Isn’t that only true in a certain physical framework?”
By now SparkSexyDanceStraightPunch had devolved into “if you throw straight punches fast enough, can you break the limit of time?”
Before the conversation could spin totally out of control, Jeong Seongbin cut it off; even so, Kim Iwol and Lee Cheonghyeon promised to take it up later, which was... something.
“Next is from ‘PuddingThatDidn’tSet.’ ‘Will Spark do a sexy concept?’”
Leader instincts. I knew he’d pick a classy question. Won Chaehee fired off a rapid burst of shutters at the commendable Jeong Seongbin. The screams around us were about as loud as when the fan song started.
“Jeho already did sexy once. On Royal Secretariat.”
“What they want is the team to do a real sexy concept during full promotions.”
“Hm.”
At Kang Giyeon’s answer, Lee Cheonghyeon nodded like he was weighing it seriously.
Right then, Kim Iwol—seated at the end of the table—sprang up and shielded the members behind his back.
“Guys, no way. We’re not doing sexy yet!”
“Why not!”
“Why not!”
“They may look like this, but they’re still kids! Let their ID cards come out and the ink dry before we even think about it!”
Kids, he says. He knows their team’s average height is over 180 cm and still—what a magnificent statement.
Won Chaehee gave a sincere round of applause for Kim Iwol’s porcupine-dad moment.
Faced with Iwol’s firm stance, the fans hesitated. Sure, if you only look at their faces, our boys can bring frost in summer and block a doorframe just by standing in front of it—but at their age, “hotdog boys” fits better than “hot guys.”
“Then have the older ones strip instead!”
Someone yelled it. If I had to guess, I’d say it was the straight-punch master up front.
And Kim Iwol took the suggestion pretty seriously. He seemed to think it was a reasonable middle ground.
He ran his hands—almost like he was measuring—over his upper arms and chest through the uniform shirt. Then he strode over to Choi Jeho, did the same, and, with a look of newfound conviction, slung an arm over Jeho’s shoulders.
“Jeho.”
“Yeah.”
“Your abs are still there, right?”
He asked with the kindest smile in the world.
“You’re trying to make me the only one who shows skin again, aren’t you?”
Judging by the way he bristled, Jeho had a prior history with this.
Looking at him, Kim Iwol gave a fond little smile.
“The fans are asking for it.”
“...”
“So: everyone! When Jeho’s a bit more grown up, we’ll give the sexy concept a try!”
Kim Iwol’s bold promise drew heated cheers.
But isn’t he already more than enough? At this point, I realized my brain wasn’t functioning properly.
There were some relatively normal questions, too.
“Here’s one: ‘If you compared the Spark members to animals, which animals would they be?’ That’s adorable!”
It’s the most overused question on the stone slab of idol life, but Lee Cheonghyeon was entertained.
“Start from the oldest? First, for Iwol...”
“Panda.”
“Eagle.”
“A hissing cat.”
“I get the rest, but why an eagle?”
Choi Jeho, Lee Cheonghyeon, and Kang Giyeon answered almost simultaneously.
When Kim Iwol asked, a bit put out, the proposer—Cheonghyeon—explained.
“Eagles have a field of view around 340 degrees. You’ve got eyes in the back of your head.”
So that’s that. Who knows how much he actually observes his members.
Choi Jeho became an anaconda. Kim Iwol asked, “Is an anaconda okay as an idol’s symbolic animal?” but the idea didn’t pass. I fully expect a flurry of Jeho fan art with snake scales on his face any day now.
Jeong Seongbin became a Jindo dog—because there’s no dog more trustworthy. Iwol tried to cram in everything from retrievers on down in the middle there, which was odd, but in the end Jindo won.
Park Juu was a chinchilla; Lee Cheonghyeon—a harpy eagle (Kim Iwol insisted); and Kang Giyeon—a black panther.
Quite the lineup. The room suddenly felt like a National Geographic special, but hey—it was an educational moment that taught us Spark is a lot more off-the-wall than expected.
“We’ve got two eagles; that okay? No interspecies turf war?”
“They live in different habitats, so it’s fine.”
Even the eagles signed a peace treaty. A beautiful sight.
Just as the wild Q&A was wrapping up—
“There’s a sketchy question here...”
Squatting down, Park Juu peeled off a Post-it stuck at the very bottom.
“‘What’s the password to our dorm laptop?’ ...it says?”
“Huh?”
A question with no handle—and clearly not written by a fan—had made it into the pile.
—
Profile
Name: Lee Cheonghyeon
Birthday: January 31
Birthplace: Seoul
Height: 178 cm
MBTI: ENFP
Nicknames: Cutie Pretty Visually, Hyun-pretty (pun on his name), Gold Face, Human Firework
Likes: composing, rap, piano, watching cooking vlogs, reading
Dislikes: recitals, tests, being late
Motto: You only live once—live it joyfully!
Favorite food: traditional set-course meal
Preferred scent: aquatic family
Music genres he enjoys: opera, pop, hip-hop
Favorite sport: baseball
Body part he’s confident about: eyes
My personal habit: if something catches my interest, I automatically try to memorize it
