Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 138

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

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138
. A Small Catalyst (10)
Jeong Si-u didn’t answer my question for quite a long time.
And I simply let him be. Sometimes silence becomes the answer.
“…Does it show that much?”
Jeong Si-u opened his mouth again around the time I’d finished a cup of instant ramen and a hot bar by myself, and was now swallowing my second smoked egg along with an ion drink.
Unable to respond with my mouth still full of the dry yolk, I simply nodded at Jeong Si-u.
“Actually, I usually try not to worry about things like that too much… but Seok-i has trouble with it.”
“….”
“I know you and Ha-ru are trying hard to lift the team’s mood. Thanks.”
Jeong Si-u seemed a bit embarrassed.
Even though he hadn’t been drinking.
Whether he was intoxicated by the atmosphere, or by the cool night breeze of this early morning.
He was definitely more relaxed than usual.
And that was….
the same for me, it seemed.
“Hyung.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you… like me to help? With Seok-i hyung’s situation.”
“….”
You see your father in Seok-i hyung.
That’s why it’s difficult, that’s why you’re being careful.
Even amid impulsive emotions, I carefully selected those words and swallowed them down.
But now that I’d heard this much, I couldn’t just pretend ignorance and wash my hands of it.
Jeong Si-u looked slightly surprised at my words. Then, after a moment, he shook his head.
“No, it’s fine.”
“…Are you sure it’s fine?”
“I did have something I wanted to tell you about Seok-i, but it wasn’t that kind of thing. That’s a problem between Seok-i and me, so we’ll have to work it out ourselves.”
“Then what did you want to tell me?”
“Ah, that’s….”
Jeong Si-u paused for a moment. But the silence didn’t last long.
“Seok-i seems to be under a lot of stress for reasons other than me. I thought maybe the pressure about elimination was severe until the second round… but looking at things lately, that doesn’t seem to be it either.”
“Ah. He did seem to go through some emotional hardship during the third round. But the results weren’t good in this joint elimination either.”
“He must be pretty exhausted. Still, since Seok-i feels comfortable around you, I thought maybe he’d open up to you a bit.”
“Well… yeah. I’ll try to probe him about it next time.”
To my ready agreement, Jeong Si-u didn’t say thanks or sorry.
He simply nodded lightly as if he’d expected as much, taking a sip of the coffee he’d bought earlier. The ice had all melted, making it clink softly.
And somehow, that felt like he was trusting and acknowledging me, which made me feel quite good.
Jeong Si-u set the coffee cup with its melted ice back down on the table. And his face as he looked at me was now full of mischief that hadn’t been there before.
“…?”
“Aren’t you uncomfortable around me anymore?”
“…Huh↗?”
Damn, I cracked on the high note.
My head spun from his relentless, unapologetic directness that I could never quite get used to.
“When did I ever say you made me uncomfortable, hyung…?”
“But it wasn’t comfortable, was it? Be honest.”
“Well, it was a little, maybe, just a tiny bit difficult. Really tiny. Just this much.”
“So you’re not denying it.”
I spent a while gesturing with my fingers to emphasize how minuscule it was, then our eyes met and we both burst out laughing simultaneously.
Should we head back inside?
Jeong Si-u asked with a smile still plastered across his face, and I gave a light nod in response.
After tidying up the traces of what I’d consumed, we slowly walked back to the Dormitory together.
During the walk back, we fell into our own thoughts without much conversation.
But that silence wasn’t unpleasant at all.
* * *
However, the very next day.
Or more precisely, just a few hours later.
I came to regret that quiet dawn stroll.
“Hyung, have you been crying…?”
“I want to cry right now.”
Dan Ha-ru poked at my puffy under-eyes. After glancing around cautiously, seeing that I wasn’t stopping him, he began poking here and there with increasing boldness.
My eye sockets got poked, then my swollen jawline and cheeks got jabbed.
Too exhausted to retaliate, I just let him and focused on kneading my bloated facial muscles with a gua sha tool instead.
It was the result of last night’s cup ramen, hot bar, and two eggs.
“Is everyone here?”
“Oh, Si-woo hyung. Seok-i hyung hasn’t arrived yet. He said he’d be done washing up soon.”
Despite having eaten an entire cup of ramen with me last night, Jeong Si-u appeared looking even more refined than usual, his face showing no puffiness whatsoever.
Right, even a swollen sculpture face is still a sculpture face.
Cha Min-seok was the type whose face puffed up easily too, but it seemed Si-u wasn’t like that.
The world really is unfairly cruel.
‘…Wait. Now that I think about it, I have a skill, don’t I?’
As I was scrubbing my entire face with the gua sha, it suddenly occurred to me that my life genre had the tag #SystemFiction attached to it.
With the 【What Makes Me, Me?】 skill, I could easily reduce facial puffiness like this in no time—so why was I suffering like this?
‘If the swelling suddenly disappears now, it’ll look too suspicious… I should time it carefully and use it right before filming.’
Just then, Gong Seok emerged from washing up, a towel draped over his shoulders, hurrying into the Practice Room.
There was still about an hour before the Production Team arrived.
Jeong Si-u promptly turned on his tablet and showed it to everyone.
“Like we discussed in the group chat, this is the song I want to do together with ‘Where am I’ this time. I worked out the basic structure a bit yesterday, and I think it’s not bad, so I’d like to hear your opinions.”
Then he immediately played a video on the tablet.
It was a video of Jeong Si-u singing with an acoustic guitar in a Private Practice Room with just a mood light on.
“…? Hyung, you didn’t sleep at all?”
“I finished this and then slept. About an hour?”
And yet your face isn’t even swollen?
I really need to stab this guy with a needle once. If no blood comes out and the needle breaks instead, I should report this statue they’re talking about here to the UN so they can confiscate it.
…Or is it NASA?
I only managed to sleep three hours myself, and nonsense was already starting to spill from my mouth.
“Anyway, listen up.”
My father’s unreleased song performed in full once,
and then again as a mashed-up version with existing tracks.
While the roughly ten-minute video played, the team members quietly savored the song Si-woo had prepared. Thanks to his foresight in printing out the lyrics in advance, we could learn the song much more easily.
“….”
I listened to the song with my ears while my eyes observed Gong Seok sitting across from me.
Gong Seok couldn’t tear his gaze away from the lyrics in his hands for even a moment.
Letter by letter. He mouthed the words softly as if chewing and swallowing each one carefully,
and sometimes traced along the lyrics slowly with his finger, lost in deep thought.
“What do you think? I think the lyrics fit well, and it seems pretty good.”
After the video ended, Si-woo asked for our opinions.
He seemed somewhat nervous.
Since I’d already expressed my approval yesterday, I deliberately held back my answer to let Ha-ru and Gong Seok respond with their honest thoughts.
Just as Dan Ha-ru, still glancing nervously at his hyungs, was about to speak,
Gong Seok, who had set down the lyrics, suddenly answered in an unusually loud voice.
“Let’s do this.”
Not “I want to do it,” not “How about we do this?”—but “Let’s do this.”
Everyone froze like stone at Gong Seok’s words, the most proactive I’d seen him since joining Miro.
I know it might seem strange to be so shocked,
but from my perspective, I felt like Sullivan witnessing Helen Keller suddenly open her eyes wide and cry out “WATER.”
So I instinctively looked at Si-woo and nodded as if entranced.
“Let’s do it, hyung. This is something we have to do.”
“The song seems really good. I… the lyrics are so beautiful that I really want to sing it.”
Even though Dan Ha-ru was the type to watch his hyungs’ reactions carefully, he had enough conviction to say what he truly believed. With even Ha-ru’s approval, we were able to decide on the song unanimously.
‘So now the only thing left is the Si-woo’s Father issue?’
I’d thought about it all last night, but no sharp solution came to mind.
When I calculated various scenarios and people’s reactions to every situation, this was ultimately something Si-woo had to decide.
Whether to reveal the existence of “Father” to the world or not.
And if you ask me which of the two I lean toward, it’s the “let’s reveal it” side.
‘Once we debut anyway, stories about Father could leak out in some form down the line. Maybe it’s better to package it properly this time and release only the minimum information to our advantage.’
To bring this up, it would probably be easier if it were just Si-woo and me alone, but what excuse could I use to pull him away?
I glanced at Seok-i and the other one, who were still reading the lyrics with sparkling eyes and replaying Si-woo’s video.
Then, our timid one (Seok-i, I’m sorry hyung) asked Si-woo something with a hopeful expression.
“Um, Si-woo. You said this was… a song your father wrote, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, I know it might be rude to ask, but… if it’s okay with you later, I’d really like to meet them.”
“…Ah. That’s…”
Oh no.
At Gong Seok’s words, Jeong Si-u’s expression swiftly clouded over with discomfort.
As several seconds passed without an easy answer, the perceptive Gong Seok quickly brushed away his own feelings and waved his hand dismissively.
“Ah, that was too much pressure, wasn’t it? Sorry. Or, um, could I at least pass along a message…? The lyrics just feel like they’re comforting me so much right now. I really wanted to convey this feeling to them…”
“No, it’s not that. It’s not about pressure or anything like that…”
Jeong Si-u cut off Gong Seok’s words hastily, his face troubled.
I already knew the truth about Jeong Si-u’s Father, but I couldn’t let that show.
So I simply kept Younger Sibling—who was practically glowing with nervous anticipation—beside me, gently stroking his head to keep him from getting too tense or scared.
Since Jeong Si-u hadn’t asked me for help in his relationship and conversation with Gong Seok, the two of them needed to work through this themselves.
That remained true even if the subject of their conversation was Jeong Si-u’s late Father.
‘That hyung is the type who can figure things out and decide what to say on his own anyway.’
If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he won’t.
If it seems okay to share, he will.
If through this song he wants to tell the world about his Father,
then Jeong Si-u needs to be even more certain about his own stance on this topic.
I’m not sure if Jeong Si-u is thinking the same way I am,
but either way, he opened his mouth.
With one hand resting on the acoustic guitar case he’d brought for today’s practice.
“…He passed away before I joined the Company.”
“Ah… Oh, I’m, I’m sorry. I—”
“No. I didn’t tell you. And Seok-i, what do you have to apologize for?”
“…”
At Jeong Si-u’s words, Gong Seok clamped his mouth shut.
Looking as though he’d committed some crime, ready to dig himself into a hole, Jeong Si-u glanced at me—his eyes seeming to ask me to do something—but I just shrugged and pointed my chin back at Gong Seok once more.
If you’re going to commit to something, you have to see it through.
At my firm non-verbal response, Jeong Si-u let out a small sigh, then seemed to think of something before speaking to Gong Seok again.
“…But I can still pass along your message.”
“…?”
“Next time I visit where Father is, I’ll definitely tell him about you. I think Father would be really happy to hear there’s a friend who found comfort in his song. Thank you.”
“Could you really do that…? The lyrics really do feel like they’re meant just for me. I think I’ll remember this song for a really long time.”
Gong Seok couldn’t hide his excitement, pouring out words rapidly with a bright expression I hadn’t seen from him before.
Watching him, I felt tears welling up, so I pinched Dan Ha-ru’s cheek without reason.
Unable to cry out in pain because of the sparkling atmosphere the hyungs had created, he just looked up at me with a face that said, ‘How could you do this to me!?’ His expression was so funny that the tears seemed to recede a bit.
While the younger ones were doing slapstick comedy on the side, the hyungs were finishing a scene straight out of a youth drama.
“Would you maybe want to come with me to visit Father later? If you’re okay with it, of course. It’s Seoul, so it’s not that far. Father’s never had a fan besides me… Oh, is it too early to call you a fan?”
“Huh? No, no. I’m a fan. I think I’m going to be a fan. Did you write other songs?”
“Yeah. I’ll play them for you later if you’re interested.”
“Thank you. Having a father like that… I’m really proud. Envious, even.”
“…Yeah. I’m proud too.”
There was the faintest hint of moisture in Si-woo’s final answer.
Watching that exchange, where both of them seemed to have lifted a weight from their shoulders, I reflected.
It seemed that Si-woo’s choice regarding the ‘father reveal’ was already…
something that didn’t need to be discussed separately.

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

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