Chapter 11: Monthly Evaluation (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 11: Monthly Evaluation (2)
“Hyung, you look like hell today. You ended up staying up all night, didn't you?”
“Yeah. But I survived thanks to Seong-bin’s help.”
“When did you even find the time to talk to him? Seong-bin Hyung is amazing, right? He’s like a human karaoke machine.”
I completely agreed with Lee Cheong-hyeon.
The songs Jeong Seong-bin had double-checked for me in the early hours of the morning perfectly met my requirements.
Thanks to him, all I had to do was listen to those thirty songs on loop until my ears felt like they were bleeding and make a final decision.
From here, all I had to do was understand the songs, listen to the original and the cover, sing them through, incorporate feedback, check if the feedback was applied, and then sing them through again while checking the feedback...
‘I wonder who the person was that said "starting is half the battle."’
I felt a sigh bubbling up, but I held it back, worried it might dampen the mood in the dorm.
Meanwhile, Lee Cheong-hyeon, oblivious to my inner turmoil, spoke excitedly from the top bunk.
“Oh, right. We need to order breakfast.”
Cheong-hyeon picked up a spare phone. He looked at me and asked, “By the way, Hyung, are you the type to just eat the same thing once you're hooked on it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The jjolmyeon. You’ve been eating nothing but chewy cold noodles for breakfast for over a week now.”
“Huh?”
Now that he mentioned it, he was right.
The trainees' meal routine was identical for everyone. We’d order delivery for breakfast, and then have salads or shakes for lunch and dinner.
The place we ordered from was always the same, too. Come to think of it, my portion had indeed been jjolmyeon for a week straight.
I’d been obsessed with jjolmyeon when I was around twenty, so I’d just been eating it like I was on a trip down memory lane.
Feeling a bit flustered, I cautiously asked Lee Cheong-hyeon, “I thought the newbies didn't get a say in the menu?”
“What are you talking about? You’ve been ordering jjolmyeon ever since you had it on your first day!”
“...Did you happen to ask me, ‘Hyung, are you having jjolmyeon?’ every morning?”
“Yes! And every single time, without even a change in your tone, you just said, ‘Yeah’!”
Only then did I realize why I’d been served nothing but jjolmyeon all week.
Perhaps it was because I had never once gone against Department Head Nam’s wishes whenever he asked, “We’re eating this today, right?”
I had been mechanically saying "yes" to Lee Cheong-hyeon, even though he had been sincerely asking for my preference.
To think I’d been eating nothing but jjolmyeon for such a pathetic reason. It was utterly hollow.
“Should I order something else, then?”
“No. I’ll have the jjolmyeon.”
“Pardon?”
“The jjolmyeon there is actually pretty good.”
At my answer, Lee Cheong-hyeon shook his head a couple of times with a puzzled expression before disappearing from my sight.
It must be a hassle to order like that every morning. I should tell him I’ll take over the ordering starting next week.
While some parts of me, like my taste for jjolmyeon, had returned to how they were nine years ago, other things were different.
The most prominent was my muscle mass.
I had consistently taken care of my body until I graduated from university. Since I didn't want to spend all the money I earned from labor-intensive part-time jobs on hospital bills, staying fit was a necessity, not an option.
After joining the company, my time to exercise gradually decreased, leading to muscle loss, and my current body felt exactly like that.
I might be fine dancing for a few hours now, but it was obvious that without muscle, I wouldn't be able to endure the physical labor ahead.
Since things had turned out this way, I had to secure time for exercise, even if it meant forcibly carving it out of my daily schedule.
Next were the dark circles.
When I was younger, my age probably helped cover them up, but now the area under my eyes was pitch black. No matter how I looked at it, this wasn't the face of a bright twenty-year-old.
It seemed the shadows that had loomed over my skin had followed me all the way back through time.
The muscles I wanted didn't come back, but the dark circles did. Frequent overtime was truly toxic.
More importantly, an idol with skin discoloration... is that okay?
I fiddled with my dry face. It obviously wasn't okay, so I’d have to start taking care of it.
Besides these, there were things that had changed and things that hadn't, based on some unknown criteria, so I had to keep checking them. Pulling the certified copy of the real estate register for my old family home had been part of that.
I felt a bit of despair when I realized that Hanpyeong Industry had already been established.
However, I decided not to obsess over my old company, as I just needed to build a new life somehow.
The only remaining consideration was regarding Spark.
As far as I knew, Spark’s debut date was about two years away.
I had to move this debut forward, no matter what.
My desire to move the debut date was partly driven by a wish to end this current lifestyle as soon as possible.
But there was a more important reason.
‘If they debut in two years, they’ll end up repeating the same trial and error Spark went through before.’
As the first idol group produced by UA, Spark received quite a bit of attention as their debut took shape. It felt like a "new challenge from the masters of ballads."
However, in the entertainment industry, where interest vanishes in an instant if something new doesn't follow immediately, UA made the mistake of pushing back Spark’s debut date time and again.
And they pushed it back by a whole year. It was a blunder by a company that had only managed established singers who took years to prepare a single album.
Because of that, the attention Spark could have received at their debut completely evaporated.
Due to excessive media play beforehand, the reaction when they finally debuted was merely along the lines of, “Oh, those guys are finally coming out?”
While UA was busy agonizing over which direction to row, MYTH, one of the big two agencies, debuted a massive rookie group.
From investment to promotion, the gap between a major agency and a mid-sized one was vast.
As the idol generations shifted around MYTH’s rookie group ‘Parte,’ who would later become the representative of the 4th generation, Spark’s position was left in limbo.
≫ Why do I keep seeing posts asking what generation Spark is?
Honestly, Spark should be 5th gen, but Spark-stans are stubbornly insisting on putting their boys in the 4th gen.
└ For real lol. Look at the gap in their debut years.
└ No, Spark is 4th gen. The final flame of the 4th gen.
└ Wow, you’re actually mean lololol.
└ I can accept 4.5 gen.
└ lmfaooooo.
≫ But I get why they want to be grouped with the 4th gen.
The 4th gen was the golden age, and when they debuted, there was a flood of boy groups, so everyone else got swept away and only Spark remained. The 4th gen kids meet up all the time and they’re all doing great lol.
└ I’ve barely heard anything about them hanging out with others. They’re like a deserted island in the boy group world.
└ Does hanging out really have anything to do with debut years??
└ The seniors don't include them and the juniors don't include them, so they just play among themselves.
└ Setting all that aside, the members themselves just look like they have zero social skills.
└ What are the comments above even saying? Stop spouting your headcanon.
Generations had nothing to do with actual performance, but it was a very important issue in the idol scene.
In an idol market where being mentioned even once was crucial, being grouped into the same generation to get their name out there even a little more was definitely effective.
The flow of broadcasting also played a part.
A survival program called ‘Idol Dynasty Annals’ was launched, gathering boy groups like Parte—who weren't that senior, were easy to work with, had a decent amount of buzz, and had enough experience to produce their own screen time—to compete against each other.
Though the concept was to fight without considering their seniority, everyone’s years of experience were pretty much the same.
Spark, who debuted the same year the program aired, naturally couldn't participate. They had almost no recognition.
And this survival program, ‘Idol Dynasty Annals,’ became a massive hit.
As the trend of grouping the teams that appeared on ‘Awangsil’ into one generation grew stronger, and fandom competition and issues became concentrated there, Spark ended up in the position of a misplaced class.
≫ The 4th gen status can be settled by the Awangsil lineup.
Parte and All-over, the true 4th gen royalty, were all on it. Wasn't the generation settled implicitly then?
└ Basically the generation defined by the broadcasting station lol.
└ Why is everyone so obsessed with generations? Jeez.
└ I mean, I’d understand if they were fighting over sales figures.
Compared to how they were at least mentioned before, after the program’s success, it became rare to even see Spark brought up.
It was a situation where it felt like the path would open if they just pushed a little more, but there was no sign of easy success.
At this point, the groups that had appeared on Awangsil made consecutive comebacks in rapid succession to maintain the buzz from the variety show.
If UA had pushed Spark’s activities with determination at that point, the outcome might have been different.
However, UA, which was short-staffed and had many other singers to support, temporarily let go of Spark, who required more push than expected.
Thus, in their first year of debut, Spark faced a hiatus of one year and two months after only two promotional cycles.
This hiatus was the biggest reason why Spark didn't have many debut fans.
Many fans likely saw the team’s future in UA’s haphazard management. Even if I were a fan, I would have left the fandom if I saw such a lack of vision.
Since my goal was to make this team debut no matter what, I thought it would be best to eliminate as many elements as possible that could be fatal to the group.
‘I can't let them fall into a hiatus without even being able to make a comeback because the agency is just sitting on its hands.’
Just as I was thinking that tasks related to the debut date would eventually pop up since debut was the goal...
This time, an object appeared before my eyes instead of text. It was a green notebook with a thick cover. From its appearance, it looked like a scheduler.
Right then, a part of the Life Whatever Manual came to mind.
+
▷ Accessories (resume, scheduler, etc.) are provided for a smooth life reuse.
+
Come to think of it, it did say it would give me a scheduler.
The hologram scheduler summoned before me flipped its pages automatically without me even touching it.
When it reached the monthly pages, calendars for each month passed by, with something written on them very occasionally.
The last recorded schedule was the debut date two years from now, which would be the day I achieved my KPI.
‘How do I... can I not move this date forward?’
In all fairness, if they’re going to force someone to debut, they should at least guarantee a bit of autonomy.
I fiddled with the [Debut Date] section, which was about 730 days away.
‘Huh?’
Then, the text area was selected. With a hopeful heart, I tried moving the debut date to the box for the previous day, and a notice appeared.
+
[SYSTEM] Would you like to change the ‘Debut Date’?
▶ Yes / No
+
‘It worked.’
My fist clenched involuntarily. Now I don't have to recycle old content like a tea bag for a year and two months!
I selected the debut date again and this time, I kept winding the date forward.
The dates, which had been moving back without a hitch, stopped moving once I had gone back about a year. It seemed that, considering various factors, the practical limit for moving the time forward was one year.
‘Even a year earlier is better than nothing.’
As long as Spark could debut early and build up their presence, anything was fine. They were already a group of guys who were complete idols in terms of skill, anyway.
After placing the debut date on the earliest possible day and selecting ‘Yes,’ a new notice appeared.
+
[SYSTEM] ‘Party B’ is being notified of ‘Precautions.’
▷ Excessively changing the existing schedule may result in corresponding disadvantages.
▷ Even if the schedule is moved forward, the frequency of scheduled events remains valid, and their timing will be adjusted to fit the changed schedule.
▷ Delaying the schedule will raise the need for attendance management, imposing restrictions on activities.
+
In short, it meant don't mess with the schedule recklessly.
It probably meant that if there were problems meant to happen over two years, they would all explode within one year. No wonder things were going too well.
In the first place, if the entire universe were helping me enough to consider my situation, it wouldn't have forced me to do something like being an idol.
Still, looking at this, it didn't seem like I would lose much. I had already lost my academic records and my home; there were no more disadvantages I could suffer.
The only thing the current me could lose as a price for moving up the debut was my youth.
But if my youth were taken away, it would be difficult to achieve the goal of debuting as a rookie idol, so my identity wouldn't immediately return to being twenty-nine years old.
If things were going to blow up anyway, it might be better for them to blow up early.
Without hesitation, I clicked the checkbox indicating that I understood all the precautions and agreed to the terms.
Now, all that was left was to stop being the strongest clumsy person on Earth.
If it doesn't work, make it work. The words the management used to chant like a broken record had never resonated with me as much as they did today.
I looked satisfyingly at the brilliantly shining new debut date, which was now less than D-370.
And this choice would be recorded in the near future as the stupidest choice of my second life.
After practicing until I was as limp as blanched spinach, the day of the monthly evaluation finally dawned.
At the same time, today was the fateful day that would determine whether I would earn a passing grade and gain 30% experience, or be kicked out of UA and have my life end.
“Hyung! You don't look... nervous today! Looking at your face!”
“Do I look that way?”
“Yes. You look truly at peace.”
Lee Cheong-hyeon gave me a thumbs up.
I was past the age of getting nervous over something like an evaluation.
I recalled the past in the vocal practice room, a past I couldn't remember without tears.
The vocal practice room, which looked like a small space for a musical genius when I saw it in Lee Cheong-hyeon’s vlog where he sang while playing the keyboard, had turned into a dark coin noraebang the moment I stepped in.
I spent a painful time there, facing my raw voice alone. It was the process of entering the barren idol world where there was no such thing as an echo effect.
Thanks to that, I grew while performing the penance of listening to my completely uncorrected voice every second. It was a disastrous time.
For the record, I heard that the voice I hear and the voice others hear are different, so I even recorded it and listened back. I was afraid it would appear in my dreams.
And so, the evaluation day arrived after spending such grueling days.
Usually, at a time like this, a sense of liberation that it’s finally over comes before nervousness.
While I was stretching to wake myself up, Lee Cheong-hyeon, who was already fully prepared to head out, was putting on his shoes at the front door.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“A morning walk. I’m going to go straight to the practice room after!”
Cheong-hyeon answered energetically.
I had heard about morning walks on evaluation days on the radio.
It was a story about how Lee Cheong-hyeon would walk around the neighborhood with his same-aged friend Kang Gi-yeon, who got very nervous, every morning on evaluation days.
I had thought it was a rare friendship to see in this harsh modern society.
“Watch out for cars. And be careful not to let the biting wind hit your skin. Don't forget, above all else, you must prioritize your face.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Isn't that greeting a bit weird?”
“What’s wrong with my greeting?”
“Never mind...”
Choi Je-ho, who had been picking a fight for no reason, stopped nitpicking my retort.
Good grief. He must not be fully awake yet.