Free Web Novel“Welcome!”
As soon as we arrived at the publicity team office, the staff greeted us cheerfully.
“How was Japan? Did it go well there?”
“Yes!”
“Director Yoon said you made a huge splash over there too. Heard you did something on camera again.”
“...That’s a secret.”
I’d done all sorts of things, blinded by the 500,000 yen.
We handed out the gifts to the publicity team staff, and everyone accepted them with happy expressions.
Once the staff returned to their work, we followed Assistant Manager Hong into the conference room.
“Assistant Manager, please take this.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“There were too many people earlier, so we couldn’t properly give you a gift. We brought a bit extra just for you.”
Since she was the staff member exclusively in charge of NewBlack, we’d prepared a special additional gift for her.
“Oh my, thank you.”
She smiled as she accepted the wrapped gift box.
Assistant Manager Hong quietly gazed down at the box, fiddling with it, then looked up at us.
Over her professional smile, a genuine one flickered for a moment.
“Work’s feeling good,” she joked, then left the conference room.
“Can you wait a moment? I’ll go fetch the fanlight!”
“Yes!”
While we stamped our feet in anticipation, Assistant Manager Hong returned with the intern, carrying a gigantic box.
What the—
Why is it so big?
We blinked at the size, large enough to fit an air purifier.
“...It’s huge.”
“The box is really big.”
Is this some Gulliver’s Travels edition?
Before we could fully puzzle it out, Assistant Manager Hong pulled a small box from inside the giant one, drawing our immediate attention.
A black box.
It showed a gradient, fading to a lighter black toward the bottom.
On the front was the NewBlack logo in silver, and on the back our names in English.
Seeing the words Official Fanlight, we were instantly swept by emotion.
“Wow...”
Finally, the long-awaited fanlight appeared before our eyes.
Even seeing the outer packaging made my heart flutter.
“The real fanlight...”
The younger members reacted similarly.
They stood around the table smiling at the fanlight case.
Viju placed a hand at his mouth as though it was beautiful to behold, and Jiho snapped photos from every angle with his phone.
Junghyun rested his chin on his hand, smiling.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
I looked over to see Rihyeok busy typing on his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m recording how I feel in this moment. It’s one I want to remember.”
We nodded. As Rihyeok said, it was a moment we’d want to remember.
Back when we debuted, we used to imagine every day what we’d be like a year later—whether we’d be thriving, scraping by, or barely able to release an album.
Everything had been unknown.
But now, feeling this happy, we could celebrate the birth of our fanlight around our first anniversary.
We exchanged glances and smiled.
The maknae, snapping photos everywhere, tilted his head in curiosity.
“Oh? But the box size is kind of unusual.”
“True.”
I said, “I’ve seen other seniors’ fanlight boxes, and those were much smaller.”
“It’s like a birthday cake box, hyung.”
Ordinary fanlight boxes were slender, but this felt kind of wide.
Assistant Manager Hong quietly smiled as I studied the box and realized its secret.
“Ah, I get it! They matched it to the album size, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh...!”
Only then did the younger members realize too: the height of the fanlight box matched our album.
Lemon Entertainment was most praised among idol fandoms for its unified merchandise dimensions.
All the goods were made to fit neatly on a shelf.
Whenever someone posted online about “merch displays that soothe the heart,” there was a 99 percent chance it was our company.
I hadn’t expected them to apply that standard even to the fanlight box.
“Unified dimensions! I love it...!”
Seeing one of our team blush fiercely with delight, I grinned.
After inspecting the box from all angles and nodding, Assistant Manager Hong asked,
“Shall I show you now?”
“Yes!”
We clasped our hands and silently prayed, “Please let it be pretty!” as she began the unboxing.
At last, she revealed the baton to us.
“Waaaah!”
“Ooh! Ooh!”
“Wow...”
It felt as if heavenly BGM played and a soft-focus filter lay over our vision.
A luxurious handle designed to fit comfortably in the hand.
Above it, a round orb.
Like a NewBlack–flavored ice-cream cone meticulously crafted by the Creator.
And inside was something incredibly beautiful.
“Waaaah...!”
All five of us leaned over the table at once toward the fanlight.
At first we thought it was a tiny sunflower or sun, but now it was clearly a moon surrounded by stars.
A ring around the moon, like sunflower petals, with a star on each.
“From a distance, it kind of looks like a flower, right? The designer reflected Uju’s idea.”
“No wonder it’s so pretty! Our fanlight, oogoo.”
“...”
“...Sorry.”
I bowed deeply under the younger members’ scornful looks.
Assistant Manager Hong laughed.
“You said the moon had five petals because you five are around the soufflé.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“That’s why there are five stars.”
“I see.”
Just then Rihyeok glanced closely, as if noticing something.
“But the circle isn’t a perfect circle—its curve is a bit...”
“That’s right.”
“...?”
“Face-on, it looks like a moon, but from an angle, it’ll look like a soufflé pancake.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Yes. The designer also reflected Viju’s idea.”
Like dogs sniffing something, we all leaned our chins on the table.
“It’s real!”
“It really is!”
From an angle, it indeed looked like a double-stack soufflé pancake around the moon.
A concept of a soufflé at the center with five stars orbiting it.
“It’s so pretty...”
“How did they make something like this from our bizarre design?”
“I know, right? They really made it from our rough draft?”
“Yes.”
Assistant Manager Hong replied, “The designer compiled all your ideas to make this.”
“Wow... Truly professional.”
We’d contributed ideas like contestants at the world’s most useless invention contest.
But this... was like a flower blooming from rotten soil.
We praised the designer for nurturing that sprout.
“We need to pay the designer a ton.”
“...We already paid a lot.”
“This is what my dad ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) always said about the power of money.”
The fanlight was truly luxurious.
Second only to our Deok-soon grandmother in beauty.
We admired the fanlight, full of the designer’s touches, when Junghyun peered at the orb’s surface.
“Assistant Manager, what are these specks on the outside?”
“Oh? Really! There are smudges here!”
“Are they defects?”
“Kim Junghyun, don’t rub it with your fingernail. It’s not yours.”
“Yes...”
He looked puzzled, staring at the tiny speckles—like snowflakes or crystals—plated on the orb.
Assistant Manager Hong cast a knowing smile and called the intern.
“Turn off the lights for a moment.”
“...?”
“Assistant Manager, why suddenly—”
Once the lights were off, she explained, “I need to show you this with the fanlight on.”
“Ah.”
“We reflected many of Rihyeok’s ideas in the performance specifications. The brightness can be adjusted in multiple stages.”
With a click, she turned on the fanlight.
“Wow!”
“I just turned it on, guys.”
“Waaaah!”
“...”
Assistant Manager Hong laughed as she held up the glowing fanlight. We raised ours like torches, marveling.
“You asked what the specks are, right?”
She then shone the fanlight onto the wall at the lowest brightness.
As she adjusted the angle, the speckles cast light-and-shadow patterns on the wall.
Like a constellation lamp.
“Huh...?”
A round moon, with small stars scattered around it—like a night sky fashioned from shadows. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
At first glance they looked like smudges, but with the right angle, it became a night sky.
“Waaaah...”
While we stared in wonder, Viju raised his hand.
“It’s beautiful. But what does it mean?”
“The designer thought it’d be nice to include the night sky along with the moon and stars. It has special meaning for you.”
“This?”
We tilted our heads, then narrowed our eyes gazing at the shadowed night sky on the wall.
Assistant Manager Hong smiled.
“June 19, 2014. The night sky on the day you debuted.”
Silence fell.
Our hushed gazes turned to the shadow on the wall.
“How is it?”
“....”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s not just that we like it...”
We answered with smiles, “It’s the best.”
“I really love it.”
At the mention of June 19, we and the younger members stared at the wall-shadow, committing it to memory.
After a while, Rihyeok asked, “But the luminosity seems too weak. At this level, you can’t even use it as a book lamp.”
“Oh. Of course not. That was the weakest setting.”
“What about the normal brightness?”
“Uh, hold on... Junseong, how do you adjust it again?”
The intern showed her smartphone to Assistant Manager Hong, explaining it.
“Oh, that was the weakest brightness. For normal brightness...”
And at that moment—
Whooosh!
A blaze of light burst out.
Assistant Manager Hong’s smiling face was suddenly washed out in white.
Before we could react, the wave of light struck us.
Like in movies when a bomb goes off and a character vanishes in a flash—that was us.
Everyone covered their eyes.
“Aaah!”
“My eyes! My eyes!”
“Feels like we got hit by a stun grenade!”
“Sorry, guys! Oh no! My eyes... Junseong!”
“I can’t see either! Assistant Manager...!”
That incident gave rise to ‘Eye-Blinding’ as a candidate name for our fanlight.
The lights came back on in the conference room.
“....”
“....”
We sat there looking shell-shocked.
Rihyeok rubbed his eyelids with his hands closed; I kept blinking—spots still swirling.
“I can’t shake the afterimage.”
“Me too, hyung. Something’s floating in front of my eyes.”
Viju reached out as if trying to grasp the phantom spots.
Junghyun once said you can erase them by staring at each spot, but it didn’t work for me.
I blinked and turned my head.
“You okay? Both of you?”
“Y-yeah...”
The two staff members nodded vacantly. I’d seen the intern fumbling for the light switch by the wall earlier.
The younger members muttered in daze.
“What kind of brightness is that...”
“I thought my eyes would freeze! I was waiting for the normal brightness, and then suddenly—whoosh!”
“If it was strong enough to damage Junghyun’s corneas, you know it was too much.”
“But why is it so bright?”
“Wait a sec... you said you wanted the specs to be Rihyeok’s idea...”
At the maknae’s words, all our heads turned simultaneously.
Rihyeok, still rubbing his eyes, opened them sleepily and frowned.
“...What.”
“It was you.”
“You said Rihyeok influenced the performance specs. This is your handiwork, right?”
“No, I...”
We began to reprimand Rihyeok.
“Rihyeok, we asked you to make a fanlight, not an industrial floodlight.”
“At this rate, we can’t even do concerts.”
“I don’t think I can even do music shows.”
It was true. At that brightness, cheering with these in hand would be chaos.
After pre-recordings, the fan manager would tell the soufflés, “Close your eyes now, folks. Once things calm down, we’ll let you out row by row!”
Concert reviews would read, “All I saw was their lights—I couldn’t see anything else.”
Junghyun nodded.
“When I was little, I went to the harbor with my dad, and the lighthouse there felt like this.”
“Everyone calm down. This can’t be right...”
As Rihyeok denied it, Assistant Manager Hong returned to her normal self and added,
“Rihyeok’s right. That was maximum brightness.”
“Ah...”
“I meant to switch to normal brightness but pressed max by mistake.”
“See? I told you it was max.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, in a silent “apologize now” gaze,
“Even max brightness is the same, though.”
“Yeah. Why should maximum brightness even be that strong?”
“It could be useful in unexpected disaster or emergency situations. Hopefully nothing like that happens, but later this fanlight might...”
“Fanlight might?”
“Save someone’s life.”
For a moment I almost believed it.
“But why should a fanlight do that?”
“There’s no rule it can’t.”
“....”
I was at a loss for words. No matter how odd it sounded, there was a strange logic, so I let it pass.
We listened to the rest of the specifications—mostly technical details—and Rihyeok seemed satisfied.
“It’ll go into production soon. We’ve gathered internal feedback and will finalize before release.”
“Oh, we have a few points.”
While we examined the fanlight—comments about strap length, overly high brightness, etc.—she took notes diligently.
“Got it. I’ll discuss these with the manufacturer. Anything else?”
“When will it be released?”
“Soon. We plan to launch it when recruiting Soufflé 2.”
“I can hear it. I can hear the fans coming.”
At the maknae’s quip, we all laughed.
Clutching our fanlight boxes to our chests with smiles, Assistant Manager Hong struggled to pull something else out.
“Assistant Manager?”
“...Just a moment. Ugh, this won’t come out.”
From that huge air-purifier-sized box, something suddenly sprang forth.
With a grunt, the intern and Hong struggled together. I nodded at Junghyun.
Our big guy strode forward and yanked it out like uprooting cabbage.
“Oh...!”
It emerged like a giant sweet potato.
“Oh...?”
It felt like the Lion King BGM was playing.
Junghyun held it with both hands like Simba holding something precious, and we stared in horror.
“That’s....”
We were speechless.
Assistant Manager Hong herself burst into laughter.
“This...”
“A fanlight?”
“It really looks like a fanlight.”
It was almost identical to the fanlight we’d seen—except for its size.
About a meter long.
Like the torch relay flame carried by the Olympic torchbearer—something Junghyun needed both hands to hold.
He looked at what he was holding and said,
“Wow.”
That single word summed up everyone’s feelings.
What on earth was this?
It was so surreal that we could only look for someone to explain.
“What...what is this?”
“Heh heh. Heh heh heh.”
Hong chuckled for a long moment before saying,
“This... was made to fully reflect Rihyeok’s original performance specs. They said you need this size for it to be possible. It was a mock-up joke in the planning meeting but...”
“The CEO saw it, huh.”
“Yeah.”
We pictured the scene in our heads.
“The CEO thought making this version would be fun, so we made two.”
One stayed in the CEO’s office, and the other was ordered to be given to us.
“A truly one-and-only fanlight.”
“So this is the version with all the specs I mentioned?”
“Exactly.”
I said to the ecstatic Rihyeok,
“Rihyeok, can you even lift that?”
“As if I couldn’t... Aaah!”
“Pfft! Haha!”
It turned out he couldn’t.
We laughed for what felt like ages. The sheer absurdity of the object was too much.
It was less a fanlight and more a siege weapon.
If photos of this hit the internet, people would react, “Is this for real...?”
I decided I’d have to show it to the Soufflés during our fanlight review.
“It’s self-powered too.”
“Oh...!”
Turning a small crank on the end, the lights flickered with a whirr.
“Hahaha!”
Everyone except teary-eyed Rihyeok burst out laughing.
It was every man’s—or every child’s—dream fanlight.
During the 30-minute performance test, even Hong and the intern watched in curiosity.
Only after nearly half an hour of “Oh!” and “Waaah!” did the meeting finally end.
“Alright. We’ll see you again when filming the fanlight review video.”
“Yes!”
“And don’t play too rough with that huge... baton.”
We shook our heads at her.
“Come on, Assistant Manager. Are we babies or what?”
“Right. The fans say our performance is very mature.”
“Okay then. See you.”
We waved to Assistant Manager Hong and the intern as they left, their faces calm and adult.
One, two, three... ten seconds silently counted down, and Junghyun peeked out with an OK sign.
“They’re gone?”
“They’re gone.”
We jumped up, faces full of excitement.
“Let’s do this. Let’s do this.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
“Ow, my shoulders are tense.”
A&R Team Deputy Seo Pil-geun rubbed his stiff shoulders as he walked down the hallway.
“Maybe because Uju’s back in Korea... why do my shoulders feel so tight...”
He tried to be careful not to bump into them as he walked.
—Hahaha!
“Aah!”
From somewhere, Uju’s laughter sounded like a wicked witch’s cackle.
Deputy Seo, pressed against the wall without realizing it, spun his head around searching for the sound’s origin.
‘The conference room?’
Laughter from the NewBlack members drifted from the large meeting room.
—Try again, Junghyun. Again!
—Lumos!
At that moment, a flash as bright as the whole world lighting up burst from the conference room—along with raucous laughter.
—Hahahahaha!
—Kyaa!
—Teheehee!
The brightly lit corridor went dark again.
—This time do the Statue of Liberty pose! Statue of Liberty!
—Statue of Liberty... hmm, not Junghyun. Hyung! Uju hyung, you do it.
—Wait a moment.
Then, with “Welcome to New York” in Uju’s voice, the room flashed again, followed by applause and giggles.
“....”
What on earth was happening? Deputy Seo had no clue.
He wanted to open the door and ask, but shook his head.
‘I mustn’t get involved. It’d mean work.’
He desperately fled.
【 thenewblack.official has started a live broadcast. Watch it now! 】
On phones nationwide, SNS notifications popped up, and the Soufflés’ eyes widened.
‘It’s them...!’
Lemon Entertainment had already announced that the members would go live today to introduce the fanlight.
With hearts pounding, the Soufflés tuned into the live broadcast.
“Huh?”
Pitch black.
The screen was completely dark.
Though the broadcast had started, all the Soufflés saw was darkness and tilted their heads.
–Broadcast error?
–Guys???
–???
–What is this
–say hello to brazil!
–Why is it so black
Just as they wondered, the camera angle spun around, as if the person holding it was searching in the dark.
When the Soufflés watched with “...?”, a flash lit up the distance—and someone appeared.
All five members emerged into view.
‘What, what is this?’
Following Sun Woo-ju, who clutch ed the gigantic torch, the NewBlack members walked forward.
They tried to strike model-like poses, but the lighting was off—only their lower faces were lit, making them look like ghosts playing with a spotlight.
No, rather...
–They’re apparitions
–They’re phantoms
–Feels like a Legend of the Blue Sea scene
–Is it Halloween in Korea??
–Guys, I’m crying, folks..
–Film student here. Looks like a show about human duality.
–They look like yokai;
Though they thought they looked cool, somehow the five of them looked like specters.
