Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols

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[SYSTEM] ‘New task’ has been assigned.

 

▷ Separate Spark and Yoo Hansoo

 

▷ Reward: Exp(???)

 

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I couldn’t help but clench my fist.

 

The system had just confirmed that debuting successfully while maintaining distance from Han Soo Yoo was possible, without directly kicking him out.

 

Forcing someone away was not an easy task.

 

Now that Yoo Hansoo was officially part of UA, it was highly unlikely he’d get fired just because he was a nuisance. Legally, companies couldn’t fire employees at will.

 

Furthermore, Yoo Hansoo had not made any fatal mistake yet.

 

He just gave off bad vibes, talked too much nonsense, and didn’t seem like he’d work well in the future.

 

It wasn’t enough of a justifiable reason to get rid of him.

 

The fact that no department had a particularly negative impression of Yoo Hansoo, except for the planning team, also played a part.

 

‘If someone speaks like that, he’s definitely caused trouble somewhere before.’

 

Even the manager seemed to fully understand which side was at fault when he relayed the issue of the conflict between Yoo Hansoo and the planning team.

 

And yet, there was still no word from within the company?

 

In a place where rumors would spread before lunchtime if someone had a resignation interview in the morning?

 

Then there was only one thing I could suspect.

 

‘Yoo Hansoo has connections within UA.’

 

There were frequent cases like that at the Hanpyeong Industry,

 

Like the nephew and the director’s younger brother that Manager Nam brought in, etc.

 

It was difficult to talk back to someone with connections or ties to powerful figures.

 

There was no point in causing a big problem with someone you couldn’t send away, so you just had to adjust to the atmosphere to some extent, even if it was unpleasant.

 

‘I don’t know if his connections were established before or after joining the company.’

 

Either way, it was a headache.

 

Kim Iwol, the career legend.

 

After working for so long, I had even ended up rooting out and cutting off these ‘parachutes.’

 

Up until now, all I could do was put up with the annoying things, since I had no choice but to listen to my boss.

 

Being an average employee who couldn’t do anything against the boss also played a role in that.

 

But now, things had changed.

 

There was clear evidence that someone in the company was covering for Yoo Hansoo’s wrongdoings. This provided a legitimate reason to cut him out.

 

Should I make Yoo Hansoo leave on his own? But I couldn’t engage in office politics… My previous dilemmas felt insignificant now.

 

This made the solution much simpler.

 

“PD-nim, Team Leader, I’m really sorry to interrupt during your conversation.”

 

“Kim Iwol, didn’t I tell you not to interrupt when the adults are talking?”

 

“PD Yoo, why have you been so aggressive since earlier? Iwol, what is it. Tell me.”

 

All I had to do was deliver results and get them accepted.

 

In that case, there was only one answer.

 

“It’s not much, but I have some items in mind for the album.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“If the company is still discussing it… I’d like to organize it and make a suggestion.”

 

This was my way of saying: Let’s drop the ranks and settle this with skill alone.

 

* * *

 

Idol albums were as diverse as the characteristics of the group.

 

In Korea, there were dozens of idol groups that debut every year.

 

However, if you were to categorize them into two types based on the nature of the album, you could probably divide them into photo albums and concept albums.

 

First, photo albums. Photo album type included a photobook with numerous pictures of the artist.

 

Next, concept albums. They included a photobook but with fewer photos, and instead incorporated a small amount of merchandise or event-related items.

 

While every fan had different preferences, Spark’s fans particularly disliked the former. The reason was simple.

 

≫ Because the otakus say all the identical photos are beautiful, they literally just filled the album with a million identical photos.

 

≫ What’s the point of including 100 unreleased photos if all the backgrounds are the same?

 

└ I haven’t received the album yet, but are they really the same…?

 

└ Yes, they were all taken in the same studio.

 

└ Huh… I guess I can’t get a refund now ㅠㅠㅠ

 

This was because UA, being strapped for cash, opted for cost-effective shoots, resulting in bottom-tier quality.

 

While newer agencies were packing photos in USB kits and sharing them, UA was stuck doing things that made people naturally say, ‘Sorry, Earth’.

 

Who would want to buy several copies of an album that cost a lot of money and was not worth the price? Especially an album from a rookie group where the chances of getting a fan sign photo weren’t even that high.

 

So, it was all about quality no matter what.

 

High-quality content came from capital.

 

And UA, which had cut costs on outfits and studio rentals, clearly didn’t have that kind of capital.

 

I involuntarily sighed. It seemed I’d have to start the hellish research all over again.

 

* * *

 

‘Assistant Manager Kim, gather some welcome kit references.’

 

Small business… No, medium-sized business owners regularly experienced a period of innovation.

 

When this period of innovation came, the owners suddenly wanted to do something grand as if they were possessed.

 

Like renewing the homepage or reorganizing the organization.

 

Or they wanted to do something they’d never done before to feel like their business was keeping up with the times.

 

The president of Hanpyeong Industry went through a similar period around this time two years ago.

 

Whether it was because he didn’t like the old-fashioned impression the company name gave off or because he was displeased with the rapid rise in the average age of employees due to young staff resigning one after another, the president wanted to create a youthful sensible company culture.

 

These short-sighted remarks of the president were relayed to the brain-dead executives.

 

And then they passed through Manager Nam, who had no brain, and reached me, whose brain had rusted.

 

The task given to me was to create a welcome kit as part of the ‘Great Operation to Recruit Young Employees.’

 

As my clients included the mouths of Manager Nam and about 20 other people, the demands were, naturally, endless.

 

‘It shouldn’t cost too much, but it shouldn’t look cheap.’

 

‘Put in something the younger generation likes. Don’t they like stuff like that? Characters?”’

 

‘Assistant Manager Kim, the director is asking if we can just rent VR equipment.’

 

It was just a bunch of nonsense. I still felt dizzy when I thought back on that time.

 

Following their demands, I worked hard to find something reasonably priced yet not too cheap-looking, something sleek and even a bit retro.

 

What was it again? I’m sure it was…

 

“Gasp!”

 

I woke up from my dream, gasping for breath.

 

In front of me was a laptop with its screen turned off and a crumpled notebook.

 

I vaguely remembered searching for the album components. My back ached because I fell asleep face down.

 

It was a good thing the other members didn’t come out to the living room during the night.

 

If they had seen the shadowy figure of a man slumped over the dining table, there would have been quite the commotion in the middle of the night.

 

When I moved the mouse, the laptop light came back on. The file I was working on before I fell asleep was still open.

 

‘Welcome kit.’

 

I didn’t remember what item I had chosen at the time.

 

By the time I had organized and presented my ideas, the president had already shifted his focus to solid management.

 

I didn’t know how much it had to do with internal management, but I still vividly remembered getting chewed out for not printing the welcome kit report on the backside of scratch paper

 

But this time it was different.

 

In order to send Yoo Hansoo away, I had to bring an item that UA had no choice but to accept and commercialize.

 

Since I had dared to step in without any prepared ideas, I had to bring something substantial to back it up.

 

I blinked my heavy eyes a few times and checked the time on my laptop.

 

There was still about an hour left before the students woke up.

 

I stretched, pressing down on my elbows, and refocused on the laptop screen.

 

* * *

 

Soon, the presentation day that no one was looking forward to arrived.

 

As if to say there was no rule saying I had to just sit back and suffer, the planning work was wrapped up smoothly after some straightforward tasks.

 

At the same time, the skin under my eyes, which had cleared up briefly during the music video shoot, became dark again.

 

My appearance must have been quite rough, as Kang Kiyeon even spoke to me last night.

 

‘Are you staying up all night again today?’

 

‘Staying up all night? I am getting two solid hours of sleep.’

 

‘You said you had something in mind. But it takes this long?’

 

It was taking that long because I didn’t actually have any ideas.

 

With Yoo Hansoo and the planning team on the verge of tearing each other apart, saying, ‘I’ll start preparing now!’ would obviously get me nowhere, so I lied. This was why people shouldn’t lie.

 

Still, thanks to all my hard work, I came up with a pretty decent plan.

 

If the junior who had taught me the three major mayo had been here, I would have been able to get an objective evaluation. What a pity.

 

The atmosphere in the conference room where I entered with my USB was so different from when I first entered UA.

 

How could anyone have a pleasant expression when a certain villain was spewing nonsense?

 

The deep frown etched into the Planning Team Leader’s face, as if chiseled in with a sculptor’s knife over the past few months, was pitiful to witness. It was a case study that could be included as a photo reference for ‘Why companies should hire good people.’

 

I looked at the CEO who was slightly upset because there was no progress despite hiring more staff, the planning team who wanted to wrap things up soon, and Yoo Hansoo who was glaring at me with his arms crossed.

 

If it had been like usual, I would have started by saying something like ‘Thank you for giving me a chance despite my shortcomings’, but now there was no time for that.

 

I cut it short and got to the point.

 

With a PowerPoint slide depicting an old, dusty box hidden in a school storage room, waiting to be discovered by Sparkler.

 

* * *

 

What was the best approach to capture both the ‘desire to buy’ and the ‘fan loyalty’?

 

The answer for the former was quite clear.

 

Make it either broadly appealing or incredibly rare. Either one of the two.

 

It was like either making delicious bungeoppang that everyone liked, or making a giant carp candy that no one necessarily sought out but everyone wanted to try at least once.

 

On the other hand, the realm of fandom was a different matter.

 

The way the fandom operated might seem obvious in some ways, but the more I looked into it, the more I couldn’t figure it out.

 

Even the Manager’s daughter was the same way.

 

She said that Choi Jeho would look good with whatever, but when I attached a photo of Choi Jeho wearing a fluorescent orange vest as his civilian clothes, she didn’t forget to say, ‘Please take that damn vest off!’.

 

It wasn’t just her. At least all the fans of Spark that I had seen were contradictory.

 

There were many fans who said they wanted to see the members crying tears of joy after winning first place, but when the boys’ eyes actually welled up, they’d cry even harder, telling them, ‘Don’t cry, guys!’ in the most positive kind of contradiction.

 

There were also fans who saved up money, eagerly awaiting a comeback, only to say, ‘Ah… Honestly, this comeback is kind of disappointing,’ once it finally happened.

 

After all my years of being a proxy fan, this was how I’d translate their mindset:

 

‘I’ll accept everything so long as it’s still normal, so please think it through before you release it!’

 

That was why I prepared it.

 

A concept that mixed the nostalgic school days everyone’s experienced with something no one had ever seen before…

 

Namely, ‘Sparkler’s Special Secret Box Discovered in a Hidden Corner of the School’s Clubroom’.