Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols

When you became a working adult, especially a junior employee, there was a high probability you’d be assigned certain tasks.

 

‘Mr. Iwol, where did we decide to have the company dinner today?’

 

‘Team Leader Cho recommended a barbecue place, so I made a reservation there!’

 

‘Barbecue? Ugh, great, my clothes are going to smell.’

 

From booking the venue for a company dinner to reserving a chicken restaurant for a welcome party, choosing a location for a company outing, and even planning hiking courses for the executives’ goal of conquering 100 famous mountains.

 

For the past few years, I’d been the one handling all the arrangements at Hanpyeong Industry.

 

And yet, Manager Nam, that jerk, had no problem gobbling up meat when I wasn’t the one who made the reservation.

 

I remembered apologizing about thirty times, thinking I was inconsiderate for choosing a barbecue place.

 

+

 

[SYSTEM] ‘New task’ has been assigned.

 

▷ Secure a location for the music video shoot

 

▷ Reward: Exp (varies depending on the condition of the filming location)

 

+

 

‘I’ve never scouted a filming location before, what should I do?’

 

It felt like this system was holding me responsible for everything I’d changed since returning to the past.

 

If this wasn’t the system picking a fight with me for changing the music, then what else this could be?

 

The first thing that came to mind was a school, as an easy and accessible location, but the part about ‘varies depending on the condition of the filming location’ bothered me.

 

It seemed that factors like location selection and production directing would be included in the evaluation.

 

‘Normally, they would have filmed in at least two places, outdoors and in an indoor studio… do I have to consider all of that too?’

 

I had always believed in the power of experts.

 

Why else would someone be considered an expert? Because they were good at doing their job.

 

I couldn’t understand why I had to do this when there were professionals who were much better suited for the job. I was an expert in purchasing office supplies for goodness sake.

 

The bigger problem was that even as a university student, I only did part-time jobs, and after getting a job, I’d been working overtime and hadn’t had a chance to go out much. 

 

If I had at least wandered around, I might have had some ideas, but the only thing I could think of right now was that there were a lot of good restaurants near Hanpyeong Industry.

 

‘I have no time to go out and scout locations right now.’

 

The sweet days of getting some decent sleep at night for the past few days were over today.

 

Thinking about diving into the sea of information until dawn made me want to cry with joy.

 

Since it was a task that needed to be done, it was better to start as early as possible. Work was something that came knocking without regard for my circumstances.

 

After lying down for about 2 hours, wanting to sleep, a familiar alarm went off above my head.

 

It was Cheonghyeon’s alarm.

 

The alarm turned off immediately. And soon after, I heard the sound of Cheonghyeon struggling to get up.

 

“Why did you set your alarm at this hour? It’s 5 in the morning.”

 

Just in case Lee Cheonghyeon might have set the alarm wrong, I asked in a low voice, careful not to wake Choi Jeeho.

 

But the answer I got was, ‘I didn’t set the alarm wrong.’

 

“I have exams coming up soon… I was going to study and then head to school.”

 

“What?”

 

Before I knew it, the exam period for high school students had crept up.

 

* * *

 

Up until high school, I spent a significant amount of time studying. 

 

Aside from eating, washing, and sleeping, studying was all I did.

 

There were many reasons why I studied so hard.

 

Because in our country, there was still a tendency to value academic background.

 

Because if I focused on studying, I could block out the loud noises at home.

 

Because if I achieved grades good enough for a scholarship, I could go to college.

 

By some stroke of luck, I received rewards that were far greater than my efforts. Although I received a lot of help from my sister, in the end, I was able to leave home.

 

So I didn’t regret the time I spent just studying, nor did I remember it as a painful period.

 

After graduating from college, I lived a life far removed from studying.

 

‘Or at least, I thought so.’

 

I thought as I watched the students sitting in the living room, huddled together, opening their workbooks.

 

‘How did things end up like this?’

 

After getting up from the bed in the morning, Cheonghyeon spent an hour studying in the living room, while I spent time searching for a music video filming location.

 

Then Cheonghyeon started scratching his head.

 

‘What are you doing?’

 

‘There’s a part I don’t understand. The answer key is at school, so I can’t even check it right now.’

 

Fortunately, it was a problem I could solve, so I roughly gave him the solution. Cheonghyeon then asked if he could ask me questions whenever he didn’t understand something.

 

Several days passed, and now that the exam date was approaching, the students decided to have a large study session in the living room.

 

And somehow that included me.

 

‘Wait a minute. Why me?’

 

‘You said we could talk to you whenever we needed help.’

 

‘Did I say that?’

 

Jeong Seongbin, Lee Cheonghyeon, and Kang Kiyeon all had different weak subjects, so I had no choice but to sit at the table with them.

 

It was a small relief that I still retained some of the knowledge from my own exam days.

 

Jeong Seongbin and Lee Cheonghyeon, who were managing their grades, occasionally asked me questions, while Kang Kiyeon…

 

“Kiyeon, your pen seems to have stopped moving?”

 

—was practically out of it.

 

He seemed to be solving the problems of other subjects well, but when it came to math, he had completely given up.

 

As a result, I had to stop browsing for the fifteenth closed school and give Kang Kiyeon a math lecture in the style of an educational TV broadcast.

 

I drew on all my experience from my tutoring days, and eventually, Kang Kiyeon’s pen began to move again, albeit slowly.

 

With Park Joowoo cheering him on and giving him an ion drink, it really felt like I was giving a private lesson.

 

“Hyung, why did you decide to become an idol?”

 

Lee Cheonghyeon asked me as he took a break and sipped his drink.

 

From a distance, I saw Park Joowoo, who was about to put the juice back in the fridge, flinch.

 

Ah, right, he was still under the misunderstanding that the reason I didn’t go to university and became an idol was because I couldn’t afford the tuition.

 

I deliberately asked in a loud voice, pretending it was not a big deal.

 

“Why do you ask?”

 

“Just curious. Hyung, you seem good at studying too, so I was wondering what made you interested in becoming an idol after graduating from high school.”

 

That was actually something people were curious about regarding Cheonghyeon.

 

He had studied classical music as a child and was preparing to enter a special high school for gifted students, but then suddenly switched tracks to become an idol trainee and enrolled in a general high school.

 

But I couldn’t exactly tell Cheonghyeon, ‘No, I originally had no interest at all, but there was no other way to fulfill my filial duty and switch careers at the same time.’

 

I smiled brightly as if practicing the saying of the wise that you can’t spit in the face of a smiling person, and pointed to a new page that had not been solved yet.

 

“Cheonghyeon, is that important right now?”

 

“Of course, studying is more important, hyungnim.”

 

Ignoring Kang Kiyeon who looked at him with a face that said he was such a smooth talker, Lee Cheonghyeon started to focus on the test paper again. His concentration was amazing.

 

As I watched Lee Cheonghyeon solve the test paper at a scary speed as if he hadn’t been chatting, I thought.

 

 ‘Should I have prepared an answer in advance about the reason I became an idol?’

 

This question could come up anytime, anywhere.

 

For now, I managed to dodge it by joking around with Cheonghyeon, but considering how seriously I was training, it would feel embarrassing to just say, ‘I was scouted.’

 

‘Good thing I didn’t get tongue-tied.’

 

I never imagined that all those years of dealing with Manager Nam and responding politely to all kinds of nonsensical comments would come in handy here.

 

After about a year of working there, I found that I could automatically deflect conversations like an answering machine.

 

Up until then, I believed that I could solve various situations that would come up in the future with my own improvisation.

 

In hindsight, that was a naive assumption.

 

* * *

 

As you go through life, you come to realize that things you could never even imagine in your own world do, in fact, exist.

 

Like a boss who treats you well or a professor who gives you less homework.

 

I had those kinds of things too.

 

Things that I ‘never had’ in my life—like a company that provided lunch as an employee benefit or a younger sibling.

 

And this included ‘good parents.’

 

Some people said that family conflicts stayed in their minds for a long time and tormented them, but for me, it was a bit different.

 

‘Do you remember when we couldn’t sleep because it was cold and Mom kicked us out because she got sick of us? It was the middle of winter.’

 

‘I don’t remember any of that.’

 

‘Wow, I’m the only one who suffered then. How can you forget that, especially after you got frostbite?’

 

On the contrary, I was the type who hardly remembered anything.

 

I only vaguely recalled my sister being frustrated that she could remember childhood events in such detail unlike me.

 

In society, I encountered many adults.

 

But they were teachers or bosses, not ‘guardians’.

 

So I’d never met an adult who shared an emotional bond with someone my age.

 

“Your parents are coming?”

 

In that sense, the upcoming visit from Jeong Seongbin’s parents to our dorm was going to be my first encounter with this kind of adult.

 

“Yeah, they said they want to cook something nice now that my debut is confirmed.”

 

“Wow! Seongbin hyung’s parents are coming?”

 

From what I heard, it seemed Jeong Seongbin’s family had often visited the dorm, bringing food to fill the refrigerator.

 

I… I’m not mentally ready yet.

 

If I’d had any friends, I might have visited their homes and met their parents.

 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.

 

At this point, as the date of the meeting approached, I grew more and more anxious.

 

Even among adults, the etiquette you would show to a professor, a doctor, or an executive was slightly different.

 

Although my own family was a mess and raised me to be a ruffian, Jeong Seongbin’s home was the one that raised Jeong Seongbin.

 

If I unknowingly acted inappropriately in front of someone from that kind of family, it would be a serious problem. After all, people were said to be unaware of their own mistakes.

 

If I unknowingly did something that went against social norms…

 

‘I swear on my life, I won’t let my son debut with someone as unfit as you!’

 

‘Please trust me just this once, Ma’am!’

 

…if something like that happened, it would be a disaster.

 

‘I need to stay sharp.’

 

This was the second most unsettling moment since I returned to the past and faced the situation of having to become an idol.