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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Monthly Evaluation (2)
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“You look absolutely terrible today, hyung. You pulled an all-nighter, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. But I survived, thanks to Seongbin.”
“When did you even talk to him? Isn’t Seongbin-hyung amazing? He’s like a walking karaoke songbook, right?”
I couldn’t agree more with Lee Cheonghyun.
The songs Jeong Seongbin had double-checked for me at dawn today perfectly matched my requirements.
Thanks to him, all I had to do was listen to a whopping thirty songs on repeat until my ears bled and make a decision.
Now, all that was left was to understand the song, listen to the original and cover versions, sing it through, apply the feedback, confirm the feedback was applied, and then sing it through again with the feedback and confirmation…
‘Whoever said ‘a good start is half the battle’… I’d like a word with them.’
I felt a sigh coming on, but I held it back, not wanting to bring down the mood in the dorm.
Meanwhile, Lee Cheonghyun, oblivious to my inner turmoil, spoke excitedly from the top bunk.
“Oh, right. I need to order breakfast.”
Lee Cheonghyun picked up the spare phone. Then he looked at me and asked.
“By the way, hyung, are you the type to eat the same thing over and over when you get hooked on it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The jjolmyeon. You’ve been eating nothing but jjolmyeon for breakfast for over a week.”
“Huh?”
Come to think of it, he was right.
The meal routine for all the trainees was the same.
We ordered delivery for breakfast, and for lunch and dinner, we had salads and shakes.
We always ordered from the same place, and now that I thought about it, my order had indeed been jjolmyeon for a week straight.
I had been really into jjolmyeon back when I was twenty, so I’d just been eating it, feeling like I was on a trip down memory lane.
A little flustered, I asked Lee Cheonghyun cautiously.
“Don’t rookies get a say in the menu?”
“What are you talking about? You’ve been ordering only jjolmyeon ever since you had it on the first day!”
“…Did you happen to ask me, ‘Hyung, are you having jjolmyeon?’ every morning?”
“Yes. And you always said ‘Yeah’ in the exact same tone!”
I finally understood why I’d been delivered only jjolmyeon for a week.
Perhaps it was because I had never once gone against Department Head Nam’s wishes when he asked questions like, ‘How about we eat this today?’
I had been mechanically saying yes to Lee Cheonghyun, who had been asking me for my order with all sincerity.
To think that was the pathetic reason I’d been eating nothing but jjolmyeon all this time. It felt utterly pointless.
“Should I order something else then?”
“No. I’ll have the jjolmyeon.”
“Huh?”
“Their jjolmyeon is good.”
At my answer, Lee Cheonghyun gave me a somewhat puzzled look, shook his head a couple of times, and disappeared from my sight.
It must be a hassle to take orders like that every morning. I should offer to take over starting next week.
* * *
Just as my taste for jjolmyeon had returned me to my nine-year-younger self, there were other parts of me that weren’t the same as before.
The most notable was my muscle mass.
I had consistently taken care of my body until I graduated from college.
I didn’t want to spend all my earnings from physical labor jobs on hospital bills, so maintenance was a necessity, not a choice.
After joining the company, my workout time gradually decreased, leading to muscle loss, and my current body felt exactly like that.
I could handle dancing for a few hours now, but without muscle, it was obvious that enduring the physical labor ahead would be difficult.
At this rate, I had to force myself to carve out time for exercise, no matter what.
Next were the dark circles.
When I was younger, my age probably covered for them, but now, the area under my eyes was pitch-black. No matter how you looked at it, I had the face of someone who definitely didn’t look like a bright-eyed twenty-year-old.
It seemed the shadows that had fallen over my skin had followed me through time.
The muscles I wanted didn’t come, but the dark circles did. All those late nights at the office were truly harmful.
But more importantly, an idol with discolored skin… is that okay?
I touched my dry face. Of course it wasn’t okay; I needed to take care of it.
Besides these, there were other things that had changed and some that hadn’t, for reasons I didn’t understand, so I had to keep checking. Getting a copy of the property registration for my old family home was in the same vein.
I was a bit devastated when I found out Hanpyeong Industries had already been established.
But I could build a new life one way or another, so I decided not to obsess over my old company too much.
The only remaining consideration was about Spark.
As far as I knew, Spark’s debut was about two years away.
I had to move up that debut, no matter what.
Part of the reason I wanted to hasten the debut was my desire to escape this current life as soon as possible.
But there was a more important reason.
‘If they debut two years from now, they’ll go through the same trials and errors Spark experienced before.’
As UA’s first idol group, Spark garnered quite a bit of attention as their debut took shape, with a vibe like ‘A new challenge from the masters of ballads.’
But in the entertainment industry, where interest vanishes in an instant if something new doesn’t come out, UA made the mistake of postponing Spark’s debut day after day.
For a whole year, no less. It was a blunder by a company that had only ever managed established singers who might spend years preparing a single album.
Thanks to that, the attention Spark could have received upon their debut completely evaporated.
Because of the excessive media play beforehand, when they finally did debut, the reaction was merely, ‘Oh, they’re finally coming out?’
While UA was deliberating on which way to row their boat, MYTH, one of the two major agencies, debuted a massive rookie group.
From investment capital to promotion, the gap between a major and a mid-sized company was huge.
As the idol generations began to be divided centering on MYTH’s new group ‘Parte,’ who would later become the representatives of the 4th generation, Spark’s position was left hanging in limbo.
≫ Why are there so many posts asking what gen Spark is these days?
Honestly, Spark should be in the 5th gen, but only delusional Sparklers keep trying to shove their faves into the 4th gen.
└ LMAO fr, there’s a years-long age gap.
└ No, Spark is 4th gen. The last spark of the 4th generation. lol
└ Dude, you’re so mean hahaha
└ I can accept .5 gen.
└ LMAOOOOOOOO
≫ But it makes sense they’d want to be lumped in with the 4th gen.
Not only was the 4th gen a golden age, but when they debuted, there was a flood of boy groups, and they all got washed away except for Spark. The 4th gen groups hang out with each other and are all successful lol.
└ I’ve barely heard any stories of them hanging out with other groups. They’re like a deserted island in the boy group world.
└ Isn’t being friendly with other groups unrelated to how many years you’ve been active??
└ The older groups don’t include them, and the younger groups don’t either, so they just play by themselves.
└ Aside from all that, the members themselves just seem to have zero social skills.
└ What are you guys talking about? Stop spouting your baseless theories.
Generations had nothing to do with performance, but it was a very important issue in the idol scene.
In the idol market where getting mentioned even once was crucial, being grouped into the same generation to get their name out there a little more was definitely effective.
The flow of broadcasting also played a part.
A survival program called ‘Idol Dynasty Chronicle’ was launched, which gathered male idols who were easy to manage because they hadn’t been active for long, like Parte, had a decent amount of buzz, and had enough experience to create their own screen time.
For a concept that was supposed to be about fighting with the ranks stripped away, the years of experience were all pretty similar.
Spark, who debuted the year the program came out, obviously couldn’t participate. They had almost no recognition.
And this survival program, ‘Idol Dynasty Chronicle,’ became a massive hit.
As the trend of grouping the bands from ‘IDC’ into one generation grew stronger, and as fandom competition and issues focused on them, Spark ended up in an awkward generational limbo.
≫ You can totally sort out the 4th gen based on the IDC cast.
Wasn’t the generation unofficially sorted out when true-blue 4th gen groups like Parte and All Over appeared on it?
└ Basically the generation decided by the broadcasting station lol
└ Why is everyone getting so worked up over what generation they are?ㄷㄷ
└ For real, if they were fighting over album sales, I’d at least get it.
Compared to before, when they were at least mentioned, after the program’s success, it became rare for anyone to even bring up Spark.
It was a situation where it felt like they were on the verge of a breakthrough, but success seemed just out of reach.
At this point, the groups that had appeared on IDC made a flurry of consecutive comebacks to continue the buzz from the variety show.
If UA had stubbornly pushed forward with Spark’s activities at this time, the outcome might have been different.
However, UA, which was short-staffed and had many artists to support, briefly let go of Spark, who needed more of a push than expected.
Thus, Spark, in their first year of debut, had a hiatus of 1 year and 2 months after only two promotional periods.
This hiatus was the biggest reason why Spark didn’t have many debut fans.
Many fans must have seen the team’s future in UA’s haphazard management. If I were a fan, I would have left the fandom too, seeing such a lack of vision.
Since I absolutely had to make this team debut, it seemed better to eliminate as many potentially fatal elements for the group as possible.
‘I can’t let them have a hiatus without even making a comeback because the company gives up on them.’
Since debuting was the goal, I figured a task related to the debut date would pop up eventually.
This time, it wasn’t words that appeared before my eyes, but an object. It was a green notebook with a thick cover. From its appearance, it looked like a scheduler.
Just then, a part of the Life Whatnot Manual came to mind.
+
▷ Accessories (résumé, scheduler, etc.) are provided for a smooth life reuse experience.
+
Right, it did say they’d provide a scheduler.
The holographic scheduler summoned before my eyes automatically turned its pages without me touching it.
As it reached the monthly pages, monthly calendars with occasional entries flickered past.
The last recorded event was the debut date, two years from now, which would also be my KPI achievement date.
‘This date… can’t I move it forward?’
I mean, if you’re going to force someone to make a group debut, you should at least grant them a little autonomy, shouldn’t you?
I fiddled with the [Debut Date] section, which was about 730 days away.
‘Huh?’
The text box became selected. On a whim, I tried moving the debut date to the box for the day before, and a notification popped up.
+
[SYSTEM] Would you like to change the ‘Debut Date’?
▶ Yes / No
+
‘It worked.’
My fist clenched on its own. Now I don’t have to rehash old content like a used teabag for a year and two months!
I selected the debut date again and this time, I kept turning the date backward.
The date, which had been moving back without any issues, stopped moving after about a year. It seemed that, considering various factors, the practical limit for moving it up was one year.
‘A year earlier is better than nothing.’
As long as Spark could debut early and build up their strength, I was fine with it. After all, these guys were already complete idols in terms of skill.
I moved the debut date to the earliest possible date and selected ‘Yes,’ and a new notification appeared.
+
[SYSTEM] ‘Notice’ is being issued to ‘User.’
▷ Drastically altering the existing schedule may result in corresponding disadvantages.
▷ Even if the schedule is moved up, the frequency of scheduled events remains valid, and their occurrence will be adjusted to the new schedule.
▷ Postponing the schedule will raise the need for attendance management, and restrictions will be placed on activities.
+
In short, it meant don’t mess with the schedule carelessly.
It meant that any problems that were supposed to happen in two years would now be crammed into one. I should have known things were going too smoothly.
In the first place, if the universe was helping me enough to consider my situation, it wouldn’t have forced me to become an idol.
Still, just looking at this, it didn’t seem like I would suffer any major losses. Having already lost my academic record and my home, I had no more disadvantages to receive.
The only thing my current self could lose in exchange for moving up the debut was my youth.
But if my youth was taken away, it would be difficult to achieve the goal of debuting as a rookie idol, so I probably wouldn’t suddenly turn twenty-nine.
If things were going to blow up anyway, it might be better for them to blow up sooner rather than later.
Without hesitation, I clicked the checkbox confirming that I understood all the notices and agreed to the terms.
Now, all that was left was to escape being the world’s most uncoordinated dancer.
If it can’t be done, make it so. The words the executives used to repeat like a broken record had never resonated with me as much as they did today.
I looked satisfyingly at the new, brilliantly shining debut date, less than D-370.
And this choice would soon be recorded as the stupidest decision of my second life.
* * *
After practicing until I was as wilted as blanched spinach, the day of the monthly evaluation dawned.
It was also the fateful day that would determine whether I would pass and get 30% of the experience points, or get kicked out of UA and have my life end.
“Hyung! You don’t seem… nervous today! Looking at your face!”
“Do I look that way?”
“Yes. You look incredibly peaceful.”
Lee Cheonghyun gave me a thumbs-up.
I suppose I was past the age of getting nervous over evaluations.
I recalled the past I’d endured in the vocal practice room, a memory that couldn’t be revisited without tears.
The vocal practice room, which had looked like a music genius’s small sanctuary when I saw it in Lee Cheonghyun’s vlog of him playing the keyboard and singing, had degenerated into a darkened coin-operated karaoke room the moment I stepped inside.
There, I spent agonizing hours alone, facing my raw voice. It was the process of entering the harsh world of idols, where there were no such things as echo microphone effects.
Thanks to that, I grew by enduring the torment of hearing my completely unedited voice every single second. It was a miserable time.
For the record, I’d heard that the voice I hear and the voice others hear are different, so I even tried recording and listening to it. I was afraid it would appear in my dreams.
And so, after enduring such difficult days, the evaluation day arrived.
Usually, in times like these, it’s not nervousness but a sense of liberation that comes with the end.
As I was stretching to wake up, Lee Cheonghyun, who had finished getting ready, was putting on his shoes at the entrance.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“For a morning walk. I’ll go straight to the practice room after!”
Lee Cheonghyun answered energetically.
A morning walk on evaluation day—I’d heard about it on the radio.
It was a story about how Lee Cheonghyun would walk around the neighborhood with his friend of the same age, Kang Giyeon, who got very nervous, every evaluation morning.
It was a rare display of friendship in this tough modern society.
“Be careful of cars. And be careful not to let the biting wind touch your skin. Don’t forget, you must prioritize your face above all else.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Isn’t that greeting a little weird?”
“What’s wrong with my greeting?”
“Never mind…”
Choi Jeho, who had been needlessly picking a fight, trailed off at my question.
Honestly. He must still be half-asleep.
