Assistant Manager Kim Hates K-Pop Idols

For five long years, Assistant Manager Yi-Wol Kim has lived a double life. By day, he toils away at an unremarkable office job; by night—and often through the early morning—he performs the unglamorous duty of “stand-in stanning” for his boss’s daughter, diligently cheering, streaming, and monitoring the every move of her favorite boy band, Spark. It is a thankless, soul-crushing routine that blurs the line between duty and obsession, until the night another overtime shift fueled by Spark-related demands pushes his exhausted body past its limit. He collapses at his desk—only to open his eyes nine years earlier, in the body of his younger self, given a miraculous second chance at life. Yet this fresh start carries a cruel and inexplicable price. To prevent his sister’s impending death, Yi-Wol must do the one thing he despises most: he must join Spark as a debut member himself. Thrust headlong into the glittering but cutthroat world of K-pop that he has spent years resenting from the outside, he finds himself navigating brutal training regimens, relentless schedules, and the suffocating glare of public scrutiny. Between the backstage power struggles, the rivalries festering within the group, and the haunting memory of his sister’s fate, Yi-Wol must forge an identity as an idol he never wanted to be. As he battles his own deep-seated cynicism and the unexpected bonds that begin to form on stage, he must decide if surviving the spotlight is worth the cost of rewriting destiny—and whether a heart hardened by duty can learn to beat in time with the music.