The person who showed up was someone unexpected.
‘Assistant Manager Ahn?’
Assistant Manager Ahn from the marketing team had come to see them. His arms were full of bottled drinks and snacks.
The members sitting by the door immediately sprang to their feet and split up the load between them. Since the assistant manager from earlier hadn’t returned, he was probably somewhere getting chewed out by Manager Nam or Team Lead Jo.
“I came to bring you something to drink. They said filming hasn’t started yet.”
“Thank you!”
At Hanpyeong Industry, they ordered the cheapest possible snack set every month from an office snack supplier. Assistant Manager Ahn seemed to have gone out of his way to pick the widest variety of cookies he could from the selection.
And if Kim Iwol’s memory was right, around this time Assistant Manager Ahn and Manager Nam still held the same rank.
Assistant Manager Ahn and Manager Nam had joined the company at around the same time. Up until they became assistant managers, their promotion speeds had been similar.
The difference started when Manager Nam began seriously engaging in office politics.
At Hanpyeong Industry, it wasn’t uncommon for higher-ups to deliberately nitpick employees they disliked and block their promotions over trivial matters.
The treatment became even more coercive toward employees in difficult circumstances. Things like breaking someone’s pride with comments such as, “You think there’s anywhere else that would take you?” happened often enough.
Assistant Manager Ahn had been a similar case. Manager Nam, backed by upper management and shielded by the excuse that he belonged to HR, would casually make remarks like, “Assistant Manager Ahn doesn’t really work overtime,” and every year nonsensical performance evaluations would come down.
Then the marketing team manager quit after endless internal conflicts, and everyone agreed there was no better candidate for the position than Assistant Manager Ahn.
The CEO made the absurd decision to leave the manager position vacant. At the same time, he assigned Assistant Manager Ahn alone to handle the entire transition process.
It was classic labor exploitation. Pile managerial responsibilities onto someone without increasing their pay.
The contrast with Manager Nam’s own career path was stark. When the HR team manager was promoted to head of the Management Support Division, then-Assistant Manager Nam had immediately become team manager. Team Lead Jo had received his own title in much the same way when Manager Nam became head of the Management Support Division.
Even while effectively doing a team manager’s work, Assistant Manager Ahn’s path upward into the higher-ranking division manager position remained blocked, and no one officially acknowledged him as management. The bizarre situation continued all the way until Kim Iwol joined the company and became an assistant manager himself.
If the disparity had been obvious enough, people normally would have at least kept quiet about it.
But Manager Nam was shameless.
He openly bragged about how well he knew which powerful people to side with, and what he’d done to coworkers who had once been his peers while riding that power upward.
And yet Assistant Manager Ahn never left the company.
Nobody knew whether he simply wanted recognition from the company that looked down on him, or whether there were unavoidable circumstances keeping him there.
But one thing was certain.
‘He’s wasted on Hanpyeong Industry.’
Anyone who knew Assistant Manager Ahn said the same thing.
Kim Iwol did too.
Even toward employees from other departments — even toward the subordinate of a man who constantly made trouble for his own work life — Assistant Manager Ahn had always been kind. He was always worried about Kim Iwol being ground down under Manager Nam. He’d told him more than once that he wished things weren’t like that.
...And the reason he had deliberately called Kim Iwol late that night, right before he died, was probably because he’d been worried about him too.
Kim Iwol had only learned that Assistant Manager Ahn had been the caller on that final phone call when he revisited the memory data while acting Cheon Yunseong’s ending scene.
At the time, Park Juu’s situation had been too urgent for him to think deeply about it.
Only after everything settled down did the realization hit him belatedly. Assistant Manager Ahn had once offered to buy him a meal and exchanged contact information with him, but they had never once contacted each other privately.
The timing had been strangely coincidental.
The sight of Assistant Manager Ahn — someone who didn’t even belong to HR, yet still came to take care of visitors — overlapped with the image of his phone screen continuing to ring until the unanswered call finally turned into a missed call notification.
“Good luck with the filming.”
Assistant Manager Ahn bowed politely and left the conference room.
Kim Iwol found it hard to take his eyes off the closed door.
Filming didn’t take long.
If anything, it wrapped up smoothly.
When they drew lots to divide the roles, Kim Iwol ended up pulling the “department manager” role — whether by coincidence or inevitability, he couldn’t tell.
As a result, throughout the entire shoot, he unleashed every toxic boomer boss line imaginable with enough sincerity to squeeze blood from a stone. Thinking of it as a rehearsal for facing Manager Nam, he spent the whole recording stabbing at his juniors like a hedgehog covered in sharpened toothpicks.
His performance as a living, breathing power-tripping superior — beyond merely caricatured — received rave reviews from both the members and the staff.
Praise without honor suited it perfectly.
After checking whether they’d secured enough footage and confirming how much rental time remained, they filmed miscellaneous extras and selfies they might or might not ever use later.
Once they finished checking everything one last time and the equipment crew started packing up, Kim Iwol took off the props first and began organizing them when the office door opened.
“Oh my, Spark!”
A voice unpleasant enough to sour his mood instantly.
That shameless attitude of barging in whenever he pleased without separating work from personal matters.
“It’s an honor to meet you!”
He recognized him without even looking.
Manager Nam.
His stomach twisted.
Manager Nam excelled at flattering people when he needed something from them. Kim Iwol could easily imagine him deliberately waiting until the filming was over, when everyone would be in a good mood.
And for something like this, he’d never send someone else in his place. Who knew how much more he could squeeze out if he handled it personally? No way would he entrust such an important task to a subordinate who was “too rude to treat the boss’s daughter’s problem like his own.”
A stale, predictable man who never once deviated from expectations.
A narrow-minded piece of work even in his younger days.
Kim Iwol’s instincts kept attacking Manager Nam with wave after wave of disgust.
“So? Did filming go well?”
“Yes, thanks to you.”
Ignoring Manager Daeyeon’s greeting, Manager Nam walked straight toward them.
Then he grabbed the members’ hands one after another and started chatting them up.
“My daughter is a huge fan of Spark...”
There it was again.
Goosebumps crawled over Kim Iwol’s arms.
Manager Nam’s hand reached toward him—
“Which member does your daughter like?”
—and stopped.
Choi Jeho had stepped in first, shaking Manager Nam’s hand as he asked the question.
“She likes the older members. Think you could take a few pictures on my phone? The kid talks about Spark nonstop at home.”
“Sir, because of spoiler prevention, we’re not allowed to let outsiders take photos.”
Manager Daeyeon hurried over to stop him.
Manager Nam didn’t care in the slightest.
“Who’s an old guy like me gonna spread it to? I’m only showing my daughter. Besides, this kind of thing — can’t the people involved just use their own discretion and take a few?”
He still had the same habit of half-listening and brushing off the words of people he didn’t consider important.
The same attitude of doing whatever suited him while never considering anyone else’s circumstances.
Treating regulations like toilet paper came as a bonus.
Honestly, Kim Iwol welcomed the fact that the man had apparently always been a bastard even before he personally knew him.
Otherwise he might have felt bad about blowing up in his face later.
“If she likes the older members, then I guess that includes me too?”
Kim Iwol stepped forward with a bright smile and took Manager Nam’s hand in a handshake.
Apparently deciding Kim Iwol was easier to talk to than Choi Jeho, Manager ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) Nam enthusiastically slapped his arm while rambling on and on about his daughter’s love for Spark.
“In that case, we should do something for her. If our CEO finds out, we’ll get in trouble, but I can secretly take a few photos for you myself.”
“What kind of company controls even something like that?”
“Tell me about it. We’re suffocating over here too. But I’ll even record a video for her instead!”
The Spark members stared at Kim Iwol strangely as he joined Manager Nam in complaining.
Only Manager Nam looked excited at the thought of bringing idol videos home to his daughter.
Kim Iwol asked politely,
“Would there happen to be somewhere quiet where outside noise doesn’t carry very well? We’re short on time if we need to re-record multiple times, so it’d be better if as little background noise got mixed in as possible, right?”
“Young people know best about this kind of thing. There’s a quiet spot right next door. Let’s go.”
Choi Jeho looked like he was about to cut in, so Kim Iwol quickly glanced around and stomped on his foot.
The guy shut his mouth immediately.
Kim Iwol laid out every condition necessary for filming to Manager Nam.
A space blocked from outside view.
Completely enclosed so outside sounds wouldn’t carry in.
And the assumption that they needed to use their short amount of time as efficiently as possible.
Given all that, there was only one place Manager Nam would think of.
The office they had passed on the way here, now reduced to a supply room.
“Come on in!”
Manager Nam boldly led Kim Iwol into the small storage room inside the supply room.
This attached room had once been used as a break room too.
Except on days when supplies were being delivered, the storage room rarely got opened. Hanpyeong Industry wasn’t the kind of generous company that regularly replaced employees’ electronic devices.
Frequently used items were stacked around the room in unopened boxes, and whenever requests came in for replenishment, HR employees carried them out to different departments, restrooms, and break rooms.
Which meant the only people who normally came here were HR employees — and even they didn’t come often.
Still, the odds of someone entering the supply room were never truly zero.
There were always exceptions.
For Manager Nam — currently Assistant Manager Nam — there still existed HR team managers and department heads outside his sphere of control.
And despite repeated notices, there were always employees who secretly slipped into the supply room to take items anyway at least once every quarter.
So it was only natural that Manager Nam chose the most sealed-off location within the supply room itself.
That dusty storage closet — packed with old stock and broken equipment that nobody threw away simply because it “felt wasteful” — had been selected for exactly that reason.
Manager Nam switched on the light.
The bulb flickered weakly before illuminating the storage room.
Dust floated visibly through the air.
When Manager Nam waved his arm around, the dust swirled before slowly settling again.
The metal shelves that had looked rusty enough to give someone tetanus just from touching them when Kim Iwol first joined the company still had their paint intact at this point.
“So? Is this good enough?”
Manager Nam asked.
Good enough?
More than enough.
Kim Iwol had spent years coming in and out of this place. There was hardly a better location.
“It’s perfect!”
Kim Iwol smiled brightly.
Then he mentally reviewed everything he had prepared.
Writer, PD, I’m sorry.
Just this once, I’m going to borrow Cheon Yunseong without permission.
I’ve never acted that outrageously rude in my entire life.
I’ll do my absolute best not to disgrace the role, perform it flawlessly, and quietly return him afterward.
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