Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols Chapter 490 - Future Ambition (1)

In office life, it was quite common for close colleagues to share bits of their daily routines. While it might be rare to find someone who knew as much about their boss’s family affairs as I did, most people at least knew who their coworkers lived with.

 

Among them, quite a few were raising children, and they all shared the commonality of struggling immensely. There were countless issues that arose from having to fulfill the roles of both parent and employee at the same time. For dual-income families, daycare centers and kindergartens were indispensable institutions.

 

The reason I suddenly brought this up, despite UA not even having an in-house daycare, was because…

 

“Daycare volunteer work for a week?”

 

In other words, Spark had been recruited as emergency helpers for a daycare center. Specifically, the very same place we had visited for a variety show recording where we accidentally made the children cry miserably.

 

There was a sad story behind why the daycare center allowed us to film there once more, and for five days at that. One teacher had suddenly needed to return to their hometown because of family circumstances, and while they were gone, another teacher came down with a severe case of influenza.

 

Since she couldn’t come to work for fear of passing the cold to the children, and with another teacher already absent, the remaining teachers were left in a situation where they had to care for two extra classes’ worth of toddlers.

 

UA, completely unaware of this situation, had sent an inquiry asking if a return visit was possible for the purpose of filming self-produced content. In response, the daycare center—which was already worrying about how to care for the kids while being understaffed—accepted the proposal.

 

‘There are still fans who rewatch clips of the daycare visit episode, so the agency probably sent the inquiry thinking it would be good fan service.’

 

If the vacancy were for months, they could have posted a job opening for a contract worker, but for just one week, it was impractical. The remaining teachers would be doing all the hard work while applications were being processed. At this point, rather than just getting footage for the show, my only thought was that we needed to be helpful manpower.

 

If the last visit was truly for filming, this time was closer to volunteer work. UA and the members all agreed on the direction of the shoot. For Spark, who had even been on Survive Life, cleaning and delivering meals were nothing. We also decided to limit the number of members visiting each day so that the already-chaotic daycare wouldn’t become even busier because of us.

 

“Wouldn’t it be better to wear animal mascot heads?”

 

While we were in a serious discussion about who would visit first, Kang Kiyeon suddenly steered the conversation in a completely different direction.

 

“What if we make them cry again…?”

 

The room fell into a somber silence at his words, which pierced right through us. As people who wanted to build a bright and healthy society, we didn’t want to see children’s crying faces anymore. We immediately entered an emergency strategy meeting.

 

“How about paper masks? They’re cute.”

 

“Have you ever worn one? They’re even scarier.”

 

Lee Cheonghyeon’s suggestion was shut down by Choi Jeho. Choi Jeho said—though he didn’t know how the situation turned out that way—he had once cut out a princess mask from the back of a sketchbook at Choi Miho’s request and caused a huge disaster. Miho herself had been fine, but one of her friends, who had been playing with them and was apparently four years old at the time, had been terrified.

 

“They’ll like bears or bunnies! What kid doesn’t like cute animals?”

 

“No, a bunny over 180cm is scary. That’s a direct ticket to the Guinness World Records.”

 

Lee Cheonghyeon and Kang Kiyeon debated fiercely over ways to protect the children’s fragile hearts. Unfortunately, a ‘This is it!’ method didn’t easily present itself.

 

“Refreshingly fruity ‘juice-style’ makeup…”

 

“Joowoo, I don’t think that’s it.”

 

Jeong Seongbin stopped Park Joowoo, who was burning with enthusiasm while doing research. This team already had enough with Banana Center and Mango Fist.

 

The leader was already walking a tightrope somewhere between wine and 100% undiluted grape juice. I felt like I should be praying every day for Spark’s fruit shop to go out of business.

 

Still, we decided to try changing our impressions. No colored contacts; keep the corners of the eyes downward; make the cheeks look lively. It was certain that this shoot would be an opportunity to test the limits of modern makeup technology.

 

Choosing cute embroidered patches to attach to our aprons, we prayed fervently that our young friends wouldn’t cry. Only after adding pale yellow handkerchiefs (kids always get so much stuff on their faces when they eat) to the shopping cart did the emergency meeting end.

 

* * *

 

Until the day of our visit, we trained ourselves to identify tokusatsu heroes just from their masks and studied which vehicles combined to create the strongest robots. Teachers Choi Jeho and Kang Kiyeon worked hard on these specialized lectures.

 

Lee Cheonghyeon left an unforgettable comment about the master lectures and the cramming.

 

“This is harder than preparing for a quiz show.”

 

The students, who had started with absolutely no foundation, fiercely protested as the quizzes became harder each time. However, Kang Kiyeon didn’t budge an inch.

 

“Do you think keeping up with the evolution, transformation, and combination trends of children’s animation is easy?”

 

…Anyway, thanks to this special training, Spark stepped further into the world of subculture. If footage of those tests made it into our self-produced content, I was genuinely worried about what kind of fan-signing props would show up next time.

 

On Day 1, Seongbin and Joowoo were sent in as the advance scouts. The rest of us waited nervously, legs shaking, praying that their aprons wouldn’t end up soaked in children’s tears.

 

Before long, notifications began to pile up in the Spark group chat, which everyone was clutching their phones for.

 

[22-Year-Old Metal Marble Park Joowoo]

[+1]

[+1]

[+2]

[+1]

[+4]

[+1]

 

[Me]

[Must be break time]

[What’s with the numbers?]

 

[22-Year-Old Metal Marble Park Joowoo]

[It’s the number of babies we made cry ;ㅅ;]

 

[Cutie Pretty Visually Lee Cheonghyeon]

[What happened during the +4??]

 

[Mental Pillar Jeong Seongbin]

[Joowoo focused really hard while listening to a kid’s presentation and accidentally stared too intensely…]

 

It was a declaration of total defeat. The ‘soft and squishy, juice-bursting’ makeup was of no use. To a child, how scary must these telephone-pole-sized ahjussis with colorful hair have looked?

 

Dark clouds loomed over our future. According to the two of them, they were only accepted after joining storytime and reading picture books to the children.

 

“The kids probably don’t remember us, right?”

 

“Would the kids we saw back then still be there? Don’t they usually go to kindergarten once they reach a certain age?”

 

“This place has classes up to age 7, so some kids are still there, but they’ve mostly forgotten us. There weren’t many kids in the specific class we were in charge of anyway,” 

 

Jeong Seongbin answered with a smile. Then, he looked at me and said.

 

“There was one friend who remembered you, hyung.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“He asked if the teacher with the pale face wasn’t coming. I told him you’d be here on Wednesday.”

 

I discovered the identity of that friend on Day 3 at the daycare, where I visited with Kang Kiyeon. Amidst the children crying and running away after being attacked by the visuals of me and Kang Kiyeon—following Day 1 (Seongbin & Joowoo) and Day 2 (Jeho & Cheonghyeon)—one small head stood firm.

 

“Hello.”

 

“Jaeyoon?”

 

It was Jaeyoon—the unusually quiet child. Jaeyoon even placed his hands neatly over his stomach and bowed politely. Surprisingly, Jaeyoon and his classmates were graduating this month and would enter elementary school in March.

 

“Jaeyoon came early every day and waited to see the Teacher.”

 

The daycare teacher spoke, placing her hands on Jaeyoon’s shoulders. Jaeyoon nodded silently.

 

“I’m glad we got to meet before you graduate. Right, Jaeyoon?”

 

I knelt down in front of Jaeyoon to match his eye level and asked. Jaeyoon was still a child of few words, but he nodded even more enthusiastically than before.

 

* * *

 

Coming to the daycare for a second time, I finally understood why the children had cried so much when they saw us on the day of the first shoot. It was the faces, but more than that, there weren’t many kids who came to the daycare with a joyful heart in the first place.

 

If it was hard for adults to wake up in the morning to go to school or work, how could it be easy for kids? Many didn’t want to separate from their parents, while others simply wanted a day off to play. Because of this, half of the kids arriving were already in a bad mood from the morning.

 

So, instead of acting loud and making their sharp nerves even more stimulated, Kang Kiyeon and I decided to play the role of cautious shadow assistant.

 

The children who hadn’t even cared whether someone else took their puffy jackets when they arrived gradually became interested in us after greeting their friends and playing with toys for a while.

 

“How old are you, ahjussi?”

 

“You have to call him ‘Teacher’!”

 

“How old are you, Teacher?”

 

Thanks to the teacher’s reliable support, I even received an undeserved title.

 

“I’m twenty-four.”

 

“That’s super old.”

 

“Are you friends with this one?”

 

One child called Kang Kiyeon ‘this one’ while pointing at him. ‘You have to call him Teacher!’ could be heard again. It was true that teaching someone was a matter of repetition and patience.

 

“Yeah, we’re friends.”

 

“We are?”

 

“Just for today. Let’s not overload them with too much new information.”

 

And so, we became one-day limited friends. The newly formed Fake Friends Unit spent free-play time cleaning up endless toys and distributing morning snacks.

 

The snack consisted of Korean rice castella, milk, and a single strawberry. Coming from a group capable of destroying an entire basket of strawberries in ten minutes, I briefly wondered whether children were secretly dieting.

 

The remaining snacks went to the one-day teachers and the staff. I fed Kang Kiyeon two cups of milk and only ate the one strawberry allotted to me.

 

It wasn’t that I didn’t drink the milk because there wasn’t enough for us. I was just managing myself since I had to be active. I could have eaten more strawberries or castella if I wanted to, but I held back.

 

However, it seemed it didn’t look that way in the eyes of the children. Jaeyoon brought over his castella, which he had taken a bite of, and held it out to me. It seemed that while his friends were eating, he took a bite himself, noticed me only eating a strawberry and walking around with a handkerchief looking for a child dripping strawberry juice, and came straight to me.

 

Even after I explained that Teacher had already eaten two bowls of rice at home and was completely fine, Jaeyoon kept hovering nearby. When I finally asked him to share just a little bit of the bread, half of the palm-sized bread broke off and came to me. I had a hard time declining it.

 

The situation was no different for Kang Kiyeon. He performed the feat of taking a sip of milk given to him by a girl with pigtails—who remembered the deep bond she had formed with Teacher Kang through a previous magical girl series—using a highly exaggerated motion.

 

The true labor began with the outdoor activities. It was a task we hadn’t experienced during the previous shoot, and it was the time that the advance team had unanimously described as the most chaotic.