"Hello, listeners of Moonlit Conversations. I’m the last substitute filling in for DJ Polo sunbaenim, Iwol from the group Spark."
Kim Iwol’s voice was even and firm.
A proper pace, clear enunciation, a neat tone.
You could think he was a very tidy DJ. If you only listened to the sound.
But Kim Iwol’s voice was the polar opposite of how he was dressed. Polo couldn’t help wondering where on earth he’d found such a bizarre bracelet.
"Wasn’t his company UA? It’s not like they can’t assign him a stylist, right?"
Unable to assume he’d shown up like that by choice, Polo half-tuned out the self-introductions from the junior group Parte.
The good news was that, eccentric styling aside, Kim Iwol’s hosting skill was outstanding.
Of course Polo had expected him to do fairly well. That’s why he’d recommended a kid he’d met only once as a substitute.
But Kim Iwol easily exceeded what Polo had hoped for.
More than just not relying on the script, he almost never looked at it at all.
"Did he memorize it?"
Polo knew that was impossible—at least in his head.
Scripts didn’t come out a week or two in advance with breathing room, and by the nature of a program where you talk for a full hour, the DJ had a hefty share to carry.
Yet on screen, Kim Iwol’s eyes always aimed at one of three places: the guest who was speaking, the prompter showing comments, or the staff.
And that wasn’t all.
The longer the broadcast went on, the more his strengths showed.
A high level of understanding of the guests. A smooth, unruffled flow.
Even as a first-time DJ, he ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) made sure no one was left out and gave everyone a turn to speak.
And...
"Thanks to the opportunity from Polo sunbaenim, I got to have a good experience despite my lacking skill.
It felt like luck that our group Spark’s first radio was Moonlit Conversations. Starting next week, I’ll return to being a devoted listener of Moonlit Conversations.
Thank you to all the listeners who spent time with inadequate me."
So clean a wrap-up that not only Polo’s fans but even the listeners would have trouble finding fault—enough to draw praise.
Polo ended the replay with a satisfied smile, mind already full of how he’d boast to his leader that his eye hadn’t been wrong.
"Iwol, Polo just contacted me."
The manager, who’d come over to check our break, stepped up beside me.
"From sunbaenim?"
"He said he was really grateful you covered Moonlit, that you worked hard."
He even went out of his way to pass along thanks. Impressive.
Veteran idols really are different. People say highly specialized idols are no different from working professionals.
"I didn’t do anything special. Thank you for letting me know."
I bowed and thanked the manager, and Lee Cheonghyeon cut in.
"You did great! You didn’t make a single mistake!"
"How do you know I didn’t make a single mistake?"
"Because we all had the laptop open and listened!"
"You did something that adorable behind my back?"
Thinking of the five of them huddled together listening to the radio I hosted left me a little uneasy.
Thank god these punks didn’t have personal phones to text the show. If they had, they definitely would’ve sent something.
"More importantly... all together?"
I looked over at Choi Jeho, stretching at a distance.
Then asked Lee Cheonghyeon,
"Does ‘all together’ include Choi Jeho?"
"Yeah. Wild, right?"
Yeah. Wild.
Five of them doing something together meant something. It meant they were willing to do things together even outside of work.
No matter how much drama and trouble Spark had in the past, the fact remained they’d worked together for seven years. And that would’ve been impossible without at least a little bond.
"Looks like they’re slowly building closeness among themselves."
They’d repeat chances like this and end up working together for seven years.
It just had to be my radio show that became the catalyst—that irked me—but I decided to count it as repaying the guys who let me ride their bus.
Besides, they’d been listening well lately.
After working them hard with self-content, the six personal videos turned out fantastic.
f*** f*** Choi Jeho is a menace
Entrancing twenty-something women is his calling
└ Anyone know how to get out of this video... I’m dead serious, I’ve been stuck on this for 40 minutes
Why is Kang Giyeon’s life comic exactly the same as mine
Feels like I’ve found a comrade on the pure-romance-only path
└ And he still stubbornly sides with the second male lead lol Giyeon, I can smell pine resin from the screen
Juu, please just open a YouTube channel
Upload your playlist plz... I’m begging... I mean it
└ I’ve never heard any of these songs but they’re all good... you’re a deep-cut elder of pop
└ I’m a thirty-something who prides himself on knowing pop, and I don’t recognize even half of these lol thanks for the recs
└ Recognizing about half is already amazing...
I knew he composed himself, but he plays piano this well too ㅠㅠ Cheonghyeon is truly a gem of the idol world
└ I heard Cheonghyeon originally planned to major in classical!
└ I wish he’d cover the b-sides on piano too ㅠ
lol I’ve never seen an idol leader introduce a leadership book this seriously
└ Thought it was a paid ad and got ready to skip, but there wasn’t a single skip ad lol
With the good responses, I almost caught myself smiling the whole time I monitored. Unprofessional of me.
For the record, I read the comments on my video too.
Originally I wasn’t going to, but since I’d be doing more idol activities, I couldn’t ignore feedback.
The thumbnail line “Members’ pore care routine” was too strong not to click
At 3:19 I flinched at the webcell—he’s better at webcell than me
└ "When you’re working, you use webcell a lot."
Why would an idol use webcell a lot lol
Iwol, you’re the first idol to be this honest
└ For real lol when they said TMI dump I thought we’d get anecdotes, but suddenly he’s divulging the dorm utility bill
└ This idol will even tell you the product code of the shared laptop
The comment section was largely favorable. Occasionally there were posts saying they’d come over from the radio.
But as with everything in life, not all of it was positive.
Be honest, doesn’t Kim Feb reek of try-hard concept?
Acting like the brainy member, cringe
Feels like he’s just f***ing sly
└ Agreed lol it’s obvious he’s crafting a character, funny that people think it’s his real personality
└ Even if you just pass by on the KTX, it reads as concept work; only they don’t see it haha
└ Who’s Kim Feb?
└ sk? ce?
└ Why is he Kim Feb
└ You don’t know “see-for-yourself”???? ^^^^^^
└ Try writing the name in English
└ Kim + February first letters
Honestly the kids are just nice so they listen to Kim Feb^^
Shortest trainee period and his skills are sh** but
Good for Feb^^ he gets to coast thanks to the members^^
You saw those kinds of takes here and there.
They think I’m doing a bit. So my working-adult social mask got spotted, huh.
I agree to a point that the kids are nice. They cause trouble sometimes, but it’s not unforgivable.
So I decided to treat that level of comment as fair opinion.
I organized the keywords from the hate in webcell, then closed the laptop.
Then I spoke to Lee Cheonghyeon, who was rolling on the floor wrestling with his composition notebook.
"Any progress?"
"None!"
"Well, confidence is admirable at least."
Lee Cheonghyeon was reworking one of the tracks he’d written before debut.
Having done music for quite a while, he’d built up a decent stash of melodies.
But turning that into a complete song was a different problem, so I’d coordinated with the company and kept Cheonghyeon on a tight schedule whenever practice or filming left openings. Of course, we’d agreed on it together.
To help his musical sense shift more smoothly from classical to idol music, I deliberately designed his self-content as "arrange into a K-Pop piano version."
Not that that alone did it, but either way, his growth was remarkable.
Even as someone utterly ignorant about composing, I found his learning speed impressive.
"Where are you stuck?"
When I asked, he came over to my bed with his notebook like he’d been waiting.
"I’ve locked the bass line, first of all."
"Weren’t you building from the top down last time?"
"The god of bass granted me a revelation... I mean, that’s not it."
He ruffled his hair.
"So, we’re doing an insanely exciting concept, right?"
We were.
Our second comeback, which I’d planned, was two months out in May.
And the title concept was "mischievous youths who love playing more than anything in the world!"
For a moment I flashed back to when I first shared that idea with the guys.
"Hyung... do you need a vacation?"
I’ll never forget the pitying look Jeong Seongbin gave me then.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t me asking to take it easy. It took me an hour to explain what led to that concept, probably.
So I was doing monitoring plus planning and the final consolidation, while Lee Cheonghyeon was composing candidates for the title track.
Watching him struggle more than expected, I wondered if I needed to revise the plan.
Since the system’s goal demanded a long campaign, the last thing I wanted was to push him hard early and make him burn out.
"Right. Is it hard to express?"
"More like... the keywords you gave me don’t land."
"Which part?"
He answered,
"You said if I need imagery, think of kids going wild during Family Month."
"I did."
"But in my house we got workbooks every Children’s Day, okay? It wasn’t that joyful! I don’t have memories of being insanely hyped, but the song has to be hyped, so I feel left out!"
"...What?"
"When all your friends get toys and you’re the only one getting stationery! Like finding out about KidZania but also finding out that was the year you’d aged out! Like going to a trampoline park and hearing there’s a surcharge if you’re in high school!"
Ah, that’s the problem?
