All of Spark showed up to this concept photo shoot with something held between their teeth.
Jeong Seongbin had a pen, Kang Giyeon had a mask strap—one loop hooked on his index finger and tugged, making a killer picture—Park Juu had a syringe cap, Lee Cheonghyeon had a plastic card, and Choi Jeho had a leather glove.
Last of all, Kim Iwol had a lipstick cap between his teeth.
I will say it again.
Kim Iwol had a lipstick cap between his teeth!
His black comma fringe cast a shadow over his face. Because of the case’s thickness, his mouth was parted a little wider than the others, and a grayish shade fell at the corners of his lips.
The glossy black case was painted red on the inside. In an otherwise dark photo, that red patch became the point that grabbed your eyes.
≫ Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick? Kim Iwol lipstick?
└ Everyone calm down, let’s talk about lipstick like adults; we’re all lipstick here, and only talking about lipstick like this feels blatantly bait-y, so let’s just lipstick.
└ I’m scared in here
what do you mean Kim Iwol lipstick?????
≫ Has Kim Iwol lost his damn mind
≫ Thing to check when the new album drops: the producer credit
You’re never leaving now. You’ll be buried at UA.
└ But what if it’s only Iwol’s name again......?
└ Then UA dies
≫ Spark’s last concept photo is out!
Iwol-ah,
Iwol-ah...... the world is so dangerous these days......
If you do a concept like this and older women carry you off, what are you going to do, seriously
└ Honestly at this point Iwol listed himself on a classifieds app to get carried off; older women are innocent
≫ Snow-white, bloodless skin with red lips + black hair + suit = high-intensity bam bam
My kid is showing the dignity of an adult member; I’m dying of pride, fuck
≫ Ah fuck I’m dizzy
I hate that I can only own this digitally
└ I wish they’d just release this as a photocard...... I want to buy a toploader and decorate it with lipstick
└ Wow, is your education strap three meters long?
└ It’s 214 meters
≫ I have zero clue what the concept will be, but I do know I have to buy the album
UA really knows how to sell...... no teaser line and they still made me buy it
≫ The photocards look promising
Can I look forward to them? I’m going to.
And so Baek Haewon found himself endlessly waiting for Spark’s new song and music video to drop.
Even the brief taste of the title track in the recently released highlight medley had sounded so good.
The vibe was quite different from Spark’s usual songs, and that, if anything, raised the fandom’s expectations.
A hint that something big was coming. The lift in her chest was real.
Please, let the outfits go insanely hard. Please, not a bargain-basement set.
While she was praying every prayer except calling down rain, her phone alarm went off.
Spark’s new song MV had been released.
A dark conference room with only drum beats and electric guitar laid underneath.
With Jeong Seongbin seated at the head, the left row has Park Juu and Lee Cheonghyeon; the right row has Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon.
At Kim Iwol’s hand gesture on the dais, the beam projector lights up.
A man’s photo, a brief profile, and the line “Needs protection from threats due to internal whistleblowing” appear on screen.
Jeong Seongbin, twirling his pen, leans back. The chair’s backrest tips slowly.
The pen tip tapping paper gets a close-up, then Seongbin’s fingers snap the cap off.
Over the guitar, the scratch of a fountain pen layers in.
Black ink bleeds from the nib, and as the word 『MISSION』 is scrawled across the paper in a slashed hand, the camera cuts in a blink.
『I want it—the last person
standing by your side
to be me』
In a techwear-style jumpsuit, Kang Giyeon sits on the hood of a black import.
With one knee raised, the hem rides up to show crisp ankle-hugging combat boots and the line of his leg up the calf.
‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck.’
Baek Haewon considered pausing the MV. But considering it was a luxury.
『Hold your breath and wait』
No sooner does the line end than the group choreography hits.
Everyone in gray suits with black accents.
Leather harnesses with silver-bright hardware.
And......
『The moment
you call me』
......exposure on Kim Iwol that looks like it might blow his mind.
Baek Haewon slams the space bar, then laces her fingers and rests her forehead on them, breathing deep.
She even stares far away for a second. She can clearly read the title of a self-help book on the very top shelf that she can’t remember why she bought. So it isn’t her eyesight.
‘I think my heart is going to burst.’
What on earth is she supposed to do with this rush?
She wants to scream right now. She wants to yell to her colleagues at Handsome Hunter, “Aaaah, Spark just did a thing, everyone!”
But she can’t. She hasn’t even watched half of the MV yet.
‘Don’t go blow up the timeline without me, friends......’
Praying hard, Baek Haewon calmly drags the play bar forward. She clearly needs to start again from jumpsuit Kang Giyeon.
And seeing Kang Giyeon again, he really is incredible. A tight belt, glossy boots. Not a single thing is lacking.
Then the long-awaited group choreo returns.
First, the star of the part and the one who handles the song’s opening, Kang Giyeon wears a tight black halter-neck knit with a matching gray suit.
Every time he throws his arms out for the moves, the tips of his collarbones show sharp under the lights.
In his slicked-back teal hair with not a stray wisp, silver piercings glitter. The piercings linked by a fine chain sway and jingle with his head tilts.
His same-age teammate Lee Cheonghyeon wears a similar suit but different innerwear. His inner is a mock neck. A rigid harness cinches over it.
Park Juu’s outfit doesn’t look far off from Lee Cheonghyeon’s.
But Baek Haewon’s trained eye instantly catches the flash of pale skin peeking above his closed jacket.
‘He’s got a crop top under there!’
In her head, she cusses UA to hell. You put him in a crop top and then hide it? Taste-clueless bastards.
Then she flips and praises UA to the skies.
How did they know that showing it this sneakily is exactly what drives people insane? Taste-savvy bastards.
Jeong Seongbin seems bundled tight in a three-piece, but slits in the jacket sleeves and trouser hems expose wrist bones and ankle bones whenever the moves shift. Maybe because the rest is covered, the round bones look extra pronounced.
Didn’t Kim Iwol say at a fan meeting: they won’t even think about a sexy concept until the younger members have IDs and the ink is dry.
‘Was that him saying the older members would shoulder the sexy concept?’
Take Choi Jeho standing right behind Kang Giyeon, for one.
A bare-body harness.
A bare-body harness.
It’s so shocking she keeps muttering it. A bare-body harness.
For a single jacket button to handle, Choi Jeho’s body is far too solid. Every time he moves, the bare skin under the jacket is wide open. Whether they oiled him, his abs reflect with a soft sheen.
His finish is insane. Once again, Baek Haewon feels, to the marrow, that her vocabulary is inadequate.
A darker gray suit than the younger members’ is already high intensity. Add a leather harness that runs from the choker down along the chest line and......
How did this MV pass review? Is the idea that if you just button the jacket, even this Choi Jeho can be released as all-ages?
It’s so absurd she’s getting a headache. She has discovered for the first time that humans can suffer from being too happy.
And the one who beats all the members for shock point number one: Kim Iwol.
Baek Haewon hits play. As soon as Kang Giyeon’s part ends, Kim Iwol appears like before.
Dressed to absolutely kill.
She freezes the video again. Not even two seconds in.
As if hypnotized, her hand flies to her mouth. To maintain the last dignity of a human being, her instincts scream that she has to cover her mouth right now.
Like Choi Jeho, he’s bare-bodied, but Kim Iwol’s skin tone is extremely pale.
Maybe for that reason, instead of a harness under the cropped jacket, he wears a silver body chain. She had missed that detail earlier, blinded by the fact he was bare.
Even after he’s set everyone’s eyes sparkling, apparently Kim Iwol still isn’t satisfied. How else do you explain baring his back to the world like that with zero fear.
With his back to the camera, every time he dances the jacket flips up and drops back down. When shadows settle over the erector spinae, Baek Haewon’s heart drops with them.
And when he faces forward, it’s no better. She’d heard he’s strict about diet and training, but who could have imagined the muscles would be carved like that.
Mom, our group’s top vampire is a six-pack pretty boy...... Baek Haewon feels like she might faint.
What makes her the most furious is that wickedly decadent back tattoo.
Why a tattoo on a model idol like Kim Iwol? Do they want to see how scary feral Sparklers can get? And on the broad white back of a 183-centimeter giant you ink a bouquet? I haven’t even done anything good lately, so why do I keep getting gifts?
She jumps to a search portal. She hammers away to find the flower that seems to ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) rule Kim Iwol’s back. But with more than four minutes of MV left, she has to go back.
Once I finish the MV, someone will have tracked down whatever’s blooming on Kim Iwol’s back. Trusting her comrades, Baek Haewon focuses on watching again.
The scene returns to the conference room.
The projector shows a man with his eyes covered being forced into a car.
『All the way to the stage
I’ll escort you—
match my steps;
I’ll be waiting』
Dressed like a third-generation chaebol, Jeong Seongbin pulls a black file from between elegant books.
He unfolds the papers from the file across a solid wood desk, and a massive blueprint appears.
‘So it’s a story about rescuing a threatened man.’
Using a forged ID, Lee Cheonghyeon enters a building and scans the lobby with a loose face among people getting off work.
His POV is edited like CCTV footage and feeds to the laptop that Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon are watching on the roof.
While the featured member’s solo cuts intercut with the main story, the Spark members split to their assigned zones.
After Park Juu jabs a syringe into the neck of an employee in the control room and drops him, Lee Cheonghyeon comes in and kills power to every CCTV camera.
On the signal, Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon, waiting in the dark, breach from the building’s exterior into a high-floor office. Smashing through the city night, the two herd a man who looks like the target.
Meanwhile, under a clear sky at a container-crammed port, Kim Iwol comes on screen.
From behind a container, a crosshair seems to line up on Kim Iwol like someone aiming a gun at him.
The moment the trigger pulls—
Thud!
With the sound of something bursting, the screen blooms red like it took a hit from a paint round.
The stain is wiped away by a gloved.......
『There’s only one objective—
to be the one left
by your side.』
......hand with a smile, belonging to Kim Iwol.
Perched atop fallen men, Kim Iwol flips and pops a magazine with practiced ease.
Looking at the magazine smeared up with lipstick, he twirls the lipstick he pulled from his pocket around his fingers.
Kim Iwol heads back the way he came.
An open container and boxes of lipstick labeled “For Export” spill across the background as he passes.
At last, Kim Iwol faces the man who’s still blindfolded and tied up, stranded at the port.
‘A movie. This is a movie.’
Her glow over the heartwarming rescue lasts only a moment.
What seemed to end beautifully—with flawless group choreo and Park Juu exiting under a cloud of sleep gas—suddenly turns a corner.
Under a dim dawn sky, a trashed executive office is revealed.
The big shots threatened overnight are on the phone everywhere, faces twisted with rage.
Then on the laptop screen that Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon are watching from the rooftop, footage appears of the man they thought Kim Iwol had saved—still tied up.
At that instant, the boxes surrounding the man burst into flames.
‘Don’t tell me the twist is that Kim Iwol was the mastermind?’
Please. Spark is one! You taste-clueless UA bastards!
Baek Haewon is up in arms.
But right before she can grab the monitor—
The song cuts out. An artificial rest.
