A Blank Slate Regression for the Idol That Lost His Original Mindset - Chapter 568

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

A Regression Guide for Idols Who Lost Their Original Intent Episode 568

* * *

Kim Dobin, who returned from the TTB filming, rummaged through his suitcase and pulled out souvenirs he had brought from Turkey, this trip’s destination.

It felt like 30% were actual items and 70% were food.

“For Hajun hyung who loves desserts, I asked around and carefully selected only the most delicious brands to buy.”

Kim Dobin filled Gyeon Hajun’s arms with desserts and smiled proudly with his characteristic mouth shape.

For Gyeon Hajun, Rev’s famous dessert lover, Kim Dobin would bring back representative desserts from whatever country he filmed TTB in if it was overseas, or regional specialty desserts if it was domestic filming.

It got to the point where Gyeon Hajun felt conscious of Seo Yehyeon’s reaction and told Kim Dobin that while it was nice he brought things back, maybe he could space it out a bit instead of every single time.

For reference, when Gyeon Hajun was noticeably happiest was when Kim Dobin returned from filming in France. For about a week after that, only Kim Dobin’s favorite side dishes appeared on the dining table.

“Turkey is also famous for desserts. But they’re quite sweet.”

Kim Dobin was famous for having elementary school taste buds. He would eat things that were disgustingly sweet to our palates and say they were delicious.

If Kim Dobin, of all people, was saying it was sweet… Seo Yehyeon’s face already showed signs of revulsion.

“That’s what makes desserts worth eating. If you’re looking for desserts that aren’t sweet, why eat desserts at all.”

Gyeon Hajun boasted about his dessert pride and took a bite of a dessert called baklava.

“…”

And he froze right there.

“Hajun hyung, if you can’t eat it, just give it to Eden hyung.”

Ryu Jaehee waved his hand a couple times in front of Gyeon Hajun’s face and said nonchalantly. Am I the leftover disposal unit?

“Why, does it taste bad?”

“No, it’s not that it tastes bad, but it’s so sweet that my teeth ache and my head hurts…?”

“Just how sweet is it?”

Before it could fall into my hands, Seo Yehyeon snatched the baklava from Gyeon Hajun’s hand and tore off a tiny piece from the opposite end of where Hajun had bitten and put it in his mouth.

“Are you an ant, hyung? Can you taste anything eating an ant-sized portion?”

At my sarcasm, Seo Yehyeon nodded with a disgusted expression.

“I can taste it. Even eating this much, the sweetness hits you hard, you know? Even this tiny amount stimulates my tongue with sweetness, so if you ate a whole bite like that, no wonder you’d malfunction…”

I was curious too, so I tried a bite.

“Wow, this tastes like a blood sugar spike. Dobin, don’t bring this to your parents for their health’s sake.”

“Whoa, was it that bad when others ate it? The TTB hyungs also said it had this rotten taste that would ruin your health. I should tell Mom and Dad not to eat it and just give it to hyung instead.”

As soon as Ryu Jaehee tasted a bite, he passed the baklava to me and reached for an americano.

Why do younger members always pass inedible food to their hyung?

The other Turkish representative dessert Kim Dobin brought, lokum, was surprisingly not very sweet, so Gyeon Hajun, who was shocked by one bite of baklava, could finally calm his startled mind and body.

“I deeply felt why people seek out desserts that aren’t sweet.”

Gyeon Hajun said with a face that seemed to have gained deep enlightenment as he swallowed the lokum down his throat.

I’m not sure if it felt relatively less sweet after eating that thing, or if it actually had less sweetness.

He also brought something called kaymak that was like butter, but when we heard you had to eat it with honey, Seo Yehyeon jumped up and the tasting almost got canceled.

“Kaymak might suddenly get introduced on a famous Korean show and become trendy later. Then you might regret today while eating knockoff kaymak made in Korea, thinking ‘Ah, I should have tried that authentic kaymak from Turkey at least once!'”

But thanks to Kim Dobin’s characteristic logical-seeming yet illogical nonsense, we were able to safely try the kaymak as well.

Just in case, I had Kim Dobin recite all the names of the desserts he brought this time, but unfortunately lokum, baklava, kaymak, and the rest didn’t seem to be bug keywords like “audi.”

Well, there’s no way the cold, merciless-looking dark mode Kim Dobin I saw at the funeral would have brought back Turkish desserts to share amicably with me.

Though if you think about it that way, it doesn’t make sense that pre-regression Seo Yehyeon brought audi and ate it with me as drinking snacks at the dinner table either.

“Dobin.”

When I called Kim Dobin seriously, he responded with a completely unafraid expression.

“I get scared every time hyung calls me like that. It always feels like ‘let’s go have fun composing’ is going to follow.”

To trigger a bug through memory, I need to recreate the conversation and situation from that time exactly.

Recreate the past with Kim Dobin who neither fears nor feels awkward around me? It would be faster for me to recover all my memories than for the current Kim Dobin to become dark mode Kim Dobin.

Besides, the old me used to call Kim Dobin “Doby.” The past nickname itself was a huge barrier.

No, damn it. If I call him Doby knowing full well Kim Dobin hates that nickname, what does that make me?

I had no choice but to look for a compromise.

“Okay, from now on, let’s have a conversation assuming that I’m calling you Doby.”

“Huh? You’re going to call me Doby? Come on, hyung. You know I hate that nickname.”

“No, I mean. I’ll obviously call you Kim Dobin, but when you answer me, imagine that I called you Doby and respond accordingly.”

“Huh? What the hell does that even mean?”

The first attempt ended before I could even try due to Kim Dobin’s brain issues.

Looking at Kim Dobin gazing up at me with clear, innocent eyes, I suddenly wondered if I should make the same request to dark mode Kim Dobin.

Would he have understood better? Not that I want to see the current Kim Dobin become dark mode.

Triggering bugs through conversation seemed wrong, so I decided to try a second attempt at recreating the past using hints from scenes I saw in Seo Yehyeon’s bug.

“Hey, Dobin.”

“Huh, didn’t you say you’d call me Doby from now on?”

Thanks to Kim Dobin’s response, I received looks from the other three as if they were looking at the world’s biggest trash.

“When did I! I told you to convert it in your head, when did I say I’d call you Doby!”

“What the hell is he even saying?”

“It seems like Eden hyung’s goal is to simultaneously create a self-deprecating situation and a situation where he stresses out Doby hyung.”

Seeing that even Seo Yehyeon couldn’t understand, it wasn’t just Kim Dobin’s brain that was the problem. It was too high-level a request that you’d need to be at Ryu Jaehee’s level to understand.

“Write the sheet music for 【All Right or Night】 by today. Including the lyrics.”

Surely in the 5th round memory the bug showed me, I said I had received sheet music from Kim Dobin and Ryu Jaehee too.

‘Previously, Kim Dobin and Ryu Jaehee also came with my song codes asking me to make this song. They obviously looked like they had memories, so I wondered what they’d do, but that’s all they could think of. It was fucking disappointing.’

So I’m trying to revive memories from that time, whether it was the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th round. Just like I inferred from the 5th round memory conversation that I received sheet music from Kim Dobin, I can get hints this way too.

And Kim Dobin brought me the sheet music just five hours after I gave him the mission.

When Kim Dobin handed me the 【All Right or Night】 sheet music, my heart briefly raced with tension, but anticlimactically, nothing happened.

Maybe because the sheet music is too professional unlike back then…? Did Kim Dobin also handwrite it like Seo Yehyeon back then? Surely the Kim Dobin of that time wouldn’t have learned composition. He was focused on dancing, which was his specialty.

Or maybe what Kim Dobin brought back then wasn’t “All Right or Night” but a different song? There would have been quite a few songs I gave to other groups back then.

“It’s not easy, not easy at all…”

“Why? It should definitely be perfect sheet music. If this is wrong, then hyung’s sheet music is wrong too. I wrote it looking at the sheet music hyung wrote.”

At my lamenting groan, Kim Dobin casually confessed the truth. No wonder he drew it so damn fast.

“Hey, Dobin. Don’t things like this appear in the novels or manga you read? Keywords… what do you call them. The most important words in life? Forgotten words? Anyway, methods for finding things like that.”

“I’ve heard a lot that words or sentences you carelessly pass over are the most important ones – that’s a common trope.”

“But why don’t you ask me why I’m asking such anxiety-inducing questions? You don’t think this is about me, do you?”

“I’m kind of wondering. Back in our debut days when I suspected hyung was a regressor, hyung turned it around and really gave it to me… wait, what is this unfamiliar memory? What is this déjà vu similar to the one-chance incident?”

Hey, System, come out! How exactly did you handle the aftermath!

[The System gave sufficient warnings about overwriting.]

[It was the Project Subject’s choice to cause confusion by deliberately changing and overwriting the past.]

I held my forehead watching Kim Dobin make a fuss about how something wicked had invaded not just my studio but even the dormitory. Geez, finding one memory is really difficult.

* * *

Our last music show schedule for this activity on M Countdown.

“Today’s 1st place promise is, um… we’ll spoil the DTB episode 2 outfits that air tomorrow during the encore stage.”

Thanks to the preview being thoroughly covered with mosaics, viewers’ curiosity about my episode 2 fashion had grown considerably.

-We’ve seen the water tiger Pennywise too, so what more could there be that’s so shocking they covered it with mosaics

-Typical attention-seeking behavior lol 10000% chance it’ll turn out to be nothing special when you actually look into it

└The opponent is Yoon Eden who wore a chest-revealing shirt followed by a crop top

Well, there were reactions like this too-

There were tons of reviews after the 1st preliminary round, so why can’t I see any reviews for the 2nd preliminary round?ㅠㅠㅠ I’m dying of worry about what’s going to come up nextㅠㅠ

-Could the Explicit teaser have been a red herring? Cute-Fresh-Sexy?

-Since there was a mosaic, I have no choice but to mentally prepare myself again… Eden is clearly appearing as a judge, but why am I more nervous than during DTB 4…

Daydream’s reactions seemed to be half curiosity and half worry.

M Countdown was the same Wnet program as DTB, and since the broadcast dates were exactly one day apart, it was a music show perfectly optimized for DTB spoilers.

I didn’t care about those who couldn’t accept idol Yoon Eden and their curiosity about episode 2’s costumes. They could just watch when spoilers got uploaded on YouTube.

I grabbed the microphone handed to me by the MC who came for the 1st place candidate interview and confidently stated the 1st place promise I had prepared.

After performing as the final act, it was finally time for the 1st place announcement.

“The glorious 1st place winner of M Countdown’s third week of June is…! Congratulations, 【Double or Nothing】!”

Having received the 1st place trophy alone several times now, unlike the first time, I didn’t fumble around but skillfully held the trophy in one arm and the microphone in one hand as I delivered my award speech. I was fortunate that the spoiler costume I had roughly brought along didn’t go to waste.

Standing alone on the encore stage, I lightly draped a durumagi coat—a modern reinterpretation of hanbok—over my shoulders.

This should be enough of a DTB costume spoiler, right?

* * *

-Hanbok? That’s not bad at all???

-Actually it looks cool, so why did they even put a mosaic on it? I guess it really was just for attention ㅋㅋㅋ

-There’s a dragon embroidered on the durumagi coat, so could that navy blue mosaic mean Blue Dragon animal pajamas?

-Durumagi… durumagi tissue… bathroom… bleach… rockstar? Is it a rockstar concept

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————