A Blank Slate Regression for the Idol That Lost His Original Mindset - Chapter 517
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Regression Guide for Idols Who Lost Their Original Intent Episode 517
My portrait photo is just a few meters away, but I’m perfectly alive, so you must be confused too, of course. Someone once said that the number one thing you shouldn’t do at a funeral is resurrect.
But I thought it was just 4D memory playback, and now I’m having a one-on-one interview with a friend from my memories, so I’m pretty confused too.
“Can you… see me…?”
As soon as I finished speaking, Gyeon Hajun’s expression became quite uncomfortable.
He can see me, it seems.
I should have spoken informally instead of formally.
So when I was waving my hand in front of his face and we had that text-reading time together, was he intentionally ignoring me thinking I was a ghost trying to take him away? I was seriously contemplating this when
I suddenly stopped at a thought that occurred to me.
This Gyeon Hajun was the same one who shared memories with me and ultimately cut me off first.
Facing the guy I thought I’d never meet again in my lifetime left me speechless. Now that I know the whole truth, what should I say to you? Resentment? Apology?
In the end, wasn’t I the only one who resolved the misunderstanding in the relationship between you in front of me and myself? I unilaterally held onto you who had no memories, recalling the landmines we had stepped on in our past relationship, and using them as a lesson to find the perfect answer this time.
They say memories form a person’s identity, a person’s world.
Then are the Gyeon Hajun in front of me and the Gyeon Hajun who received the project with me different people?
The fact that the latter Gyeon Hajun was also my milestone doesn’t change, but the one who should originally receive all my hesitation, resentment, apologies, and all those emotions derived from before the regression is probably the former, not the latter.
“You…”
As I opened my mouth to say something, Gyeon Hajun shook his head and pushed my back toward the funeral hall, not toward the emergency staircase door.
“If you’ve decided not to look back, just keep looking ahead and go.”
And after telling me the direction I should go, Gyeon Hajun walked toward the opposite side, where the emergency staircase door was.
At that moment, the hallway stretched unrealistically long. As if to tell me this wasn’t reality but just a memory.
Then, in this limited memory world that the system possesses while embracing even others’ memories, that Gyeon Hajun will continue to…
“Hey, Gyeon Hajun!”
With each step I took toward the emergency staircase door, the hallway just kept getting longer.
“Hey!”
Until he opened the emergency staircase door and disappeared, Gyeon Hajun never looked back once. And so I was left alone in the hallway of my funeral hall building.
How much time had passed? The system, which had thrown me into my own funeral and hadn’t shown its face, finally appeared before me again.
[Remaining hazard system 99% removal complete]
“99 percent? You do all this crap and only 99 percent? Hey, you bastard! You show a perfectly living person their own funeral, their own portrait photo plastered there, and you couldn’t achieve 100 percent removal? What about that 1 percent? Where did the 1 percent go?”
[The remaining 1% hazard system has been confirmed to be located in the ‘keyword’.]
[It is now impossible for the remaining hazard system to exert any influence.]
[However, for complete removal, please recall the contract ‘keyword’.]
[According to the contract conditions, this system cannot tell the project subject the keyword.]
Keyword.
It was a word that Cha Yeonho had mentioned once in relation to the system. Cha Yeonho’s keyword was ‘host’, wasn’t it? They said if you find the keyword, all the memories the system intentionally blocked would return.
The mechanism seems similar, but what’s the relationship between you and the hazard system?
[It’s a system born as the flip side of the hazard system.]
[It’s also a system applied by the project subject’s goodwill, many people’s wishes, and your choice.]
Hmm, the birth process is complicated, isn’t it?
Anyway, doesn’t this mean I’m getting everything back because I showed goodwill? Good job, myself. But for the result of showing goodwill, constantly nagging at people is a bit…
“How do I find the keyword?”
[It will naturally come to mind as you search through memories.]
[Condition: You must recognize that the word is the keyword.]
So I still had to keep opening fragments of memories. But having seen my own funeral with my own eyes, it seemed like there couldn’t be any memory more shocking and hard to watch than this. What mental endurance training this is.
“If I recall the keyword, the Gyeon Hajun in this place won’t need to bear my memories anymore.”
[That’s correct.]
With a hollow laugh, I rubbed my face with my palm and muttered, sublimating my guilt into grumbling.
“That idiot, who asked him to bear it?”
[Yes, you did.]
I froze stiffly at the unexpected answer. Huh, it wasn’t something Gyeon Hajun did voluntarily?
“I did? Me?”
[ㅇ]
Shit, I didn’t unilaterally dump it on Gyeon Hajun for revenge, did I? Is that why Gyeon Hajun ignored my messages…
Whether I was trembling with anxiety or not, the system announced in a businesslike tone that it was time to return.
[Returning to the most recently saved time period.]
[Overwriting in progress.]
* * *
As light gradually returned to my vision that had been nothing but pitch-black darkness, I slowly blinked my eyes.
A familiar ceiling came into view. As soon as I realized which ceiling it was, my spine went cold and cold sweat began to form.
I definitely blacked out in the studio, but I don’t understand why I’m seeing the ceiling of the duplex dorm living room when I open my eyes.
Should I be grateful that they brought me to the dorm instead of taking me to the hospital when I wouldn’t wake up, or should I be worried?
I was truly happy to have returned safely despite the vicious hazard system’s attack and errors. Of course I’m happy. I don’t have to rebuild five years of narrative again.
The award trophies decorating the very top of the display cabinet in the living room were still there. This definitely means it’s the time period I built up.
But there’s always another mountain beyond the mountain.
I was at a loss for how to explain why I had been unconscious for at least 6 hours, at most a day, without waking up no matter how much they tried.
This is even a supernatural reason. Only Kim Dobin would accept this at face value.
“Damn, this is killing me…”
As I lay there muttering what sounded like a lament, Ryu Jaehee suddenly stuck his face right above mine.
Maybe because the face of 28-year-old Ryu Jaehee I saw at my funeral was more deeply etched in my memory than the 17-year-old youthful face of Ryu Jaehee I’d seen endlessly for a month, I didn’t particularly feel any sense of unfamiliarity or nostalgia.
“Eden Hyung!”
Ryu Jaehee’s face, which I expected to be covered in tears, was completely dry without a trace of moisture. Just like Kim Dobin’s face when he came to my funeral.
So there was no reason to misunderstand that something was wrong with me. Thanks to that, I could breathe a sigh of relief.
“Why did you sleep for so long! Even when we told you to wake up, you wouldn’t open your eyes and just kept counting time!”
Seeing him nagging away as soon as I opened my eyes, it didn’t look like I’d have to sweat from interrogation.
Phew, I almost made it onto the list of comatose idols alongside Cha Yeonho.
“How many hours did I sleep?”
Having just returned from living a month in the past, my sense of time was completely off.
“When we went, Hyung was fast asleep. So we don’t know how many hours you slept before we left, but you’ve been sleeping for about five or six hours since then.”
It felt strange that that month of time was only about six to ten hours here. I wonder if the past I changed was properly applied.
If I were to describe my feelings about meeting our members again after a month, who had become familiar to me-
‘You’ve all grown up well.’
They were definitely much younger during debut, but why do their style and faces look so much better now?
Maybe it’s because I’ve been jumping through time too much, I rubbed my throbbing forehead and sat up. But why are you all gathered together even though you know I was sleeping? Anxiously.
Tap, Seo Yehyeon lightly hit Gyeon Hajun. Gyeon Hajun, who looked completely reluctant, reluctantly opened his mouth.
“The kids and Yehyeon Hyung say your studio is kind of strange.”
Could it be because of the déjà vu writing…? Maybe I should have just lied and said they took medicine that improves vocal ability instead of keeping making them faint? That medicine actually does exist though.
Since I felt guilty and couldn’t bring myself to ask or actively deny it, Seo Yehyeon stepped forward directly, apparently frustrated by Gyeon Hajun’s scaled-down explanation.
“Listen seriously. There’s definitely something strange attached to your studio. So it’s like… how should I put this. It seems like something evil is attached to it.”
Words that sounded like something Kim Dobin would say were flowing from Seo Yehyeon’s mouth. For a moment, I doubted whether I had really returned to the right timeline. Did they drop me in some strange parallel universe?
“Youngest Member! Just how much of a fuss did you make that even Yehyeon Hyung is acting like this!”
“No, four of us had the same experience right now! So we’re trying to check if you, who spent the longest time in that studio, experienced the same phenomenon as us, but you won’t even think about getting up!”
Seo Yehyeon must have been quite frustrated as he kept pounding his chest.
“Hyung.”
Kim Dobin called me with an unnecessarily serious face. Seeing him like that reminded me of Kim Dobin at my funeral, but that Kim Dobin had a dark atmosphere from the start, fundamentally different from this otaku youngest member.
“Do you happen to have strange memories of us systematically and rationally carrying out 【One Chance】 follow-up song activities?”
Of course I do. I’m the one who happily changed it by overwriting.
But calling it ‘strange memories’ really bothered me. If it was overwritten, shouldn’t this be accepted as the original memory?
“Then what do you remember?”
“We were a complete mess back then. Don’t you remember? Oh no! Eden Hyung must be contaminated too!”
Kim Dobin’s external scream and the internal scream in my heart overlapped perfectly.
System, come out! System! You said you’d overwrite it!
Why are these guys treating the perfect memories I righteously corrected as strange memories while firmly believing the chaotic memories are the original ones?
Of course those chaotic memories are the original memories! But still!
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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