I couldn’t speak for a very brief moment.
Even at a glance, the back in the mirror looked like it had a long story behind it.
From between the shoulder blades down to the middle of the waist, a huge diagonal tear, and the spots that hadn’t healed cleanly were gaping wide open.
At this level some people might find it gross.
Then Seongbin’s reaction made sense. It looked more than capable of showing through a T-shirt.
“It’s really... big.”
I hadn’t known my back had gotten to this state.
I’d touched the scar while showering, but so much time had passed since the injury that I hadn’t paid it any special mind.
And the dorm bathroom was so cramped there wasn’t space to angle my back in the mirror anyway.
More important was why a scar I’d kept neatly under control had turned into this.
If the fact of the injury hadn’t changed but the shape of the scar had...
XX, is my sister really alive and well?
No matter how I looked, it felt like the sister who handled the emergency in the middle had vanished.
I immediately checked my sister’s status registered with Welfare Service.
▷ Relation: blood
▷ Health status: good
▷ Psychological status: poor
▷ Other: on duty
What mattered more was whether I could keep trusting this system.
It shredded a man’s back like a rag and thinks it can fool me with a few lines of text?
Since there was nothing I could do, I’d hold it in for now, but if I catch it lying, just watch. I’ll crack my own head open, head to the afterlife, and filibuster a one-on-one with you, System.
“Hyungs, are you still changing? They said we have to head out now!”
Lee Cheonghyeon shouted from beyond the door.
I told Jeong Seongbin I’d hide it well and go out, sent him ahead, and put on two T-shirts layered.
In the past, Spark almost never did outdoor activities.
I remember the prevailing opinion being, what’s the point of letting kids who can’t even chatter in an indoor studio loose outside.
They did show up now and then on athletic programs, but mixing with lots of people must have been terribly awkward for them.
The problem being that “lots of people” included their own members.
But now, things are different.
After being ridden hard day and night, these punks personally realized and awakened to how grave a sin it is to stand mute in front of a camera.
As a result...
“I don’t know if I should say this, but our hyungs’... presence is no joke.”
“What do you mean by that, Lee Cheonghyeon?”
“I mean you guys look like you’d be amazing at field work. Solid. Super solid.”
“That’s true.”
“You look solid too, Giyeon...!”
“Huh?”
...nobody’s mouth would take a rest.
Even so, they hadn’t forgotten the warning not to overlap audio, and their timing as they cut in on each other was perfect.
Watching them yammer at full blast, I sidled over to our MC, Jeong Seongbin, who’d been pushed into a corner, and murmured:
“Seongbin, they’re too loud. Should we prop them up in the field as scarecrows?”
“Please don’t joke like that... you really sound like you’d do it...!”
Come on. Can’t I even joke.
Maybe he thought I really would plant the members upside down in the field, because Seongbin quickly brought the room to order.
“First thing to do now that we’re in the countryside. Prepare lunch!”
At his words, everyone clapped energetically.
Prepare lunch.
With these punks, in the great outdoors?
In that case there’s nothing to debate.
“Let’s make scallion pancakes.”
There’s no choice. We have to go with something you can’t mess up.
“Scallion pancakes, yes. And what else should we make?”
“With our skill level, just finishing the scallion pancakes in one piece will be a success, Cheonghyeon.”
I set a hand on his shoulder and smiled as I said it.
My eyes were smiling, but I meant it.
If I pick any two at random and tell them to go pull scallions from the field, one of them will definitely bring back onions and the other water dropwort.
Stubbornly ignoring the pitch-black future I could already see, I kept smiling and asked:
“Could we... get stuff like pancake mix or salt?”
“You can get as many supplies as you like through games with the production team.”
The PD answered.
Just then, an ominous conversation reached my ears.
“Seongbin hyung, do scallion pancakes even need salt? Don’t you usually dip them in soy sauce?”
“Maybe he wants it for something else. Right, Jeho hyung?”
“I kind of think we put it in when we made kimchi pancakes last time... Lee, did we use salt then?”
“Didn’t we use sugar? Does it vary between salt and sugar depending on the ingredients?”
I asked with a mild smile:
“PD.”
“Yes.”
“How many... ingredients could you give us?”
We’re probably going to need a lot.
Making scallion pancakes for six was extremely rowdy.
“Are scallion roots supposed to look like this? Is it because it’s organic?”
“That’s an onion, Jeho.”
Starting with single-celled Choi Jeho, who, living up to expectations, pulled up an undergrown onion.
“Didn’t we say we have to build a hearth?”
“Wait, Giyeon. If we don’t want to do the work twice, we have to carefully pick the location with the members’ movement paths and the wind in mind.”
Lee Cheonghyeon going full brainpower on this kind of thing, and Kang Giyeon tearing down the single row of bricks he’d barely stacked, saying you’re right.
At this rate we’d be eating lunch in the afternoon. Around... five.
At least the Seongbin and Juu team being quiet was a comfort.
Right, there are five people. The balance of the world requires that at least one of them has cooked outside before...
“Hyung, how much do you peel to say scallions are trimmed?”
“Iwol hyung, the cupboard has three kinds of soy sauce. Which one should I bring...”
...
What even...
Next time I really hope the production team takes these guys not to a farm volunteer shoot but to something like Boy Scouts. A one-day cooking class would be even better.
I answered their questions one by one and handed out cotton work gloves.
“What are the gloves for?”
“I’ll do the cooking, so just go gather firewood.”
And as I watched their backs recede toward the mountain path, I lamented internally.
This is what we get for feeding them too much salad.
Let them cook a few meals for themselves. See what happens.
It’s not like I can make anything amazing either, so I can’t talk.
I scrubbed the lid of the big cauldron that had been ostentatiously set on the porch and thought.
Then Kang Giyeon came up and asked:
“Are you going to cook the pancakes on the lid?”
“Yeah. I think it’s better than a frying pan.”
“Then should I scrub it?”
“I have to oil it too, so I’ll do it. The hearth? Is it done?”
“Lee said to leave it to him.”
A glance into the yard showed Lee Cheonghyeon smashing all the bricks he’d stacked, going, this isn’t it.
“Giyeon.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t run away to me. Go back and stack the hearth.”
“...Okay.”
After I’d scrubbed the lid for a good while, a workshop at Hanpyeong Industries came to mind.
“Nothing beats barbecue at a workshop. Right, Chief Jo?”
“Oh, absolutely. Didn’t the Director prepare all the charcoal and stuff too. We’re just along for the ride. What do they say these days? We caught the bus, right?”
It was that tearful workshop where I made the reservation, did the shopping, grilled the meat, and poured the drinks, so I still don’t know who supposedly put us on that bus.
Back then too, while Director Nam and Chief Jo drank until they keeled over, I was out here scrubbing a griddle like this.
If you ask what my favorite part of that workshop was, I can answer with confidence. Scrubbing the griddle.
As I recalled that beautiful memory, strength naturally went into the hand holding the scouring pad.
While I was drying off the freshly cleaned lid, Park Juu came over to me next.
He held out a giant basin full of batter and asked:
“Hyung, is this consistency okay...”
“Yeah. Who made the batter? Nicely done.”
“Jeho hyung.”
Even if he flailed, I guess the experience of making kimchi pancakes didn’t vanish. A great leap forward.
Even after I gave the okay, Juu didn’t head right back, and squatted down beside me.
Then he pointed at the scene of Cheonghyeon and Giyeon shouting and building the hearth with their mouths.
“Hyung, do you know how to start a fire in a place like that?”
You’re worried too, seeing how those guys are carrying on, right?
I patted his shoulder so he could relax.
“Of course. Just trust me.”
Because I can start a fire and even cook rice in a cauldron.
Relax and go fetch the cooking oil.
After many twists and turns, the scallion pancakes turned out excellent.
Maybe because they were just off the griddle, they were delicious.
After filming the eating scene, we didn’t forget to cook one for each staff member too. When I sat back down to fry more, the kids started bringing ingredients on their own.
Every now and then, Lee would get frisky and say the griddle was wide so he wanted to try making a rabbit-shaped pancake, but since it was for broadcast I let him do what he wanted.
He botched a flip and one of the rabbit ears ended up short, but it still tasted good.
Filming stayed busy afterward too.
While the rock-paper-scissors losers, Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon, did dishes side by side, I went grocery shopping with Jeong Seongbin after winning a supermarket voucher from the production.
In the meantime, whatever they were doing, Park Juu and Lee each offered up a shuttlecock and a badminton racket to the trees.
It was so blatantly grabbed by the branches that I thought it was a hidden camera for a second.
Weeding the garden plot, a foot-volleyball match with the production, writing rolling papers, and just like that the day in the mountain village drew to a close.
But that didn’t mean the day of entertainers who’d come to film was over.
I thinly sliced cucumbers that Choi Jeho had picked from the garden at noon, and neatly placed them on the faces of the Spark punks who had surely been tormented under the blazing sun all day. No matter how I look at it, I should have been staff, not an idol.
“Hyung, I’ll put them on your face, so you lie down too.”
“It’s fine, nobody get up. Every time a cucumber falls, think of it as my hard work falling with it.”
I’d just gotten Seongbin to stay lying down, when Lee sprang up from far off.
“Hyung, I suddenly have something I really want to do.”
At the same time, cucumbers pattered off Lee’s alabaster face.
That Lee, do you know how much care I put into °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° slicing those.
But the cameras were still rolling. I swallowed my anger and asked:
“What is it?”
“Truth or Dare. I know it might be cliché, but coming to a place like this and not doing it would be a shame.”
So you dropped my blood-like cucumbers on the floor just to say that. You could have suggested it while lying down.
The fans will probably love it. Idol fans tend to want to know things where you go, you’re curious about that?
Director Nam’s daughter was like that too.
Fine, Jeho’s height and weight and favorite shoe brand, I can accept. But she wasn’t satisfied with that.
I don’t know what’s so compelling about the fact that, one spring day in May, Choi Jeho ordered extra-large black bean noodles with cream shrimp at a Chinese restaurant, but I remember hearing that she really liked that bait I dug up for her.
Truth or Dare sounds like it’ll yield stories more fun than that. And if not, we can just squeeze them out.
“I’m in.”
Even Park Juu, of all people, raised his voice in support of Lee’s idea.
I was trying to recall if Truth or Dare was popular among the younger ones, when Juu’s eyes sparkled and he said:
“I, uh, never got to go on things like school trips. I haven’t had many chances to do stuff like this...”
No, Juu.
When you put it like that, how are we supposed to say no.
