Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 169

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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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169. The Butterfly Effect (4)
-So… I signed the contract today.
“That’s great. You’ll do well. Lime is a solid company.”
Listening to Kim Won-ho’s noticeably more relaxed voice, I pushed the ground with my slippered feet. The swing creaked and swayed backward before coming to a stop.
-But everyone here is younger than me. They all have these round, baby faces. It feels kind of awkward.
“Then you just need to be the boss. Perfect fit.”
-Wow, the boss, huh? You sounded like a real tough guy just now.
“Want to see what happens when a tough guy cuts ties with you?”
I was glad I’d called him right away after belatedly discovering the strange SOS text Kim Won-ho had sent me days ago. Through Won-ho, I’d heard updates about Jae-young, Seok, and even Yun Tae-hee, the youngest of the hopeless trio. Learning all of this made me realize just how much had changed.
-When do you guys start?
“Well… we’re on vacation until next week anyway. There’s a lot to sort out. They told us to take it easy and rest up, thinking of it as our last vacation of the year.”
-Wow, already sounds intense.
“It’s your future.”
-Is that a curse?
“A prophecy.”
We chuckled through the pointless banter, and I kicked at the sand with my foot.
Sitting on the swing at the Playground in Front of House—the place I always came to when my thoughts grew heavy—I glanced up to see the sun setting between the buildings.
I squinted at the crimson sunset for a moment. Kim Won-ho was still chattering away on the other end of the line.
-A week will go by in a flash… I should really make the most of it.
“…Yeah. If it goes by that fast, that’s the best case scenario.”
-Huh? What did you say?
“Oh. Never mind. Let’s grab dinner before your vacation ends.”
Damn. I’d let my inner thoughts slip out loud.
Without meaning to, I’d spoken my true feelings aloud, and I hastily changed the subject. Straightforward Kim Won-ho didn’t question it, immediately responding with “Yeah! When’s good for you?” as if ready to set up dinner right then and there.
I threw out a day and time, exchanged brief pleasantries, and ended the call.
Well, it was fine that I’d set up dinner for the last day of his week-long vacation, but…
“…The real question is whether that appointment will even happen, Won-ho.”
I sighed the words out and turned my gaze toward the culprit that had brought me back to this playground.
A blue window floating in the empty air.
Unlike usual, the blue window—which normally carried Thirteen’s familiar, sloppy presence—now bore no trace of that, instead plastered with menacing yellow letters spelling “Warning” in multiple places.
[System Alert: Evidence of timeline abuse regarding another individual (Yoon Ki-seok) has been confirmed.]
[System Alert: Penalty settlement has been completed.]
[System Alert: Penalty 【The Butterfly Effect】 has been assigned.]
[System Alert: A new incident 【The Butterfly Effect】 has been added to the fixed returner’s timeline.]
[System Alert: An incident with comparable ripple effects to the abused timeline will occur on the fixed returner’s timeline.]
It was time to settle my karmic debt.
* * *
This morning, the moment I opened my eyes, this penalty window appeared—the price for accessing Yoon Ki-seok CP’s past to eliminate him and Han Sung-woo.
Not only had I pressured Thirteen into forcibly showing me Yoon Ki-seok CP’s past, but I’d also recklessly copied items that would serve as evidence. That had been classified as “timeline abuse,” and I’d ended up receiving this penalty.
‘I mean, if someone with this kind of ability could just casually go into anyone’s past and ruin their lives like that, Earth would be destroyed in an instant.’
Due to my actions, Yoon Ki-seok and Han Sung-woo found themselves cast out from their workplaces, living lives distinctly different from the previous timeline. The same applied to Kim Won-ho and Sarin, but it seemed the critical distinction lay in whether they had wielded their abilities as Time Management Authority members or not.
There was a clear difference between actions born from human free will and digging through someone’s past with the intent to ruin them, so I had steeled myself to some degree….
“Still, how can things be this fair?”
I nearly cried out about the absence of protagonist buffs, but then I remembered that the protagonist of this unjust world wasn’t me—it was Dan Ha-ru—and I regained my composure.
My poor Thirteen had received disciplinary action under the charge of “abuse of administrative authority” for the sin of not being the protagonist’s system. Beyond just the penalty, I couldn’t properly communicate with Thirteen for a while. Facing the cold, businesslike system window after so long, I finally realized just how much Thirteen had been softening the system’s edges all this time.
Normally, I would have quietly accepted such a penalty as the price for gleefully destroying someone else’s life…but instead, I threw a bit of a fit and started thinking of countermeasures.
“Our tender-hearted returner must have braced themselves quite firmly for regression….”
The penalty was none other than “an event with comparable ripple effects to the timeline I had abused.”
I hadn’t heard the full details of what happened to Yoon CP afterward, but it seemed that roughly speaking, he’d faced discipline at the broadcasting station and had a falling out with Han Sung-woo’s father, which caused various complications.
‘Unlike when I was an ordinary person, I have much to lose now.’
Considering the pattern so far, there was no way Dan Ha-ru would simply stand by and watch me fall into ruin.
Therefore, if I failed to properly prepare for this penalty, it would be a 100% regression.
I sat quietly on a bench in the playground (the swing had been stolen by a neighborhood kid) and began methodically calculating the possibilities. It would be easier if I had a clear objective like “prevent Lee Yu-gun from leaving!” but since I had no idea what kind of incident would occur, it wasn’t easy to think of how to handle it.
“Red hyung!”
“…?”
With a vague sense of unease, I tilted my head back to gaze at the darkening sky, when a bold voice beside me called out to me confidently. Curious, I lowered my head to see the little kid who had stolen my swing earlier clutching one side of my pants leg and grinning brightly.
“What. I let you have the swing. Go play on it.”
“Um. But. The swing, if you, like, push it, like, this way! It’s more fun?”
“….”
“If hyung does it, it’d be the best….”
The little kid, who had been enthusiastically swinging his short arms in exaggeration, suddenly became solemn and twisted his body shyly.
“What. You want me to push the swing?”
“Yes!”
At my blunt response to his obvious scheme, his eyes immediately sparkled and he nodded eagerly.
Now that I thought about it, why was this kid out at the playground alone without a guardian.
No matter how much people said the neighborhood was old enough that everyone knew each other, the child was still oblivious to the dangers of the world.
I rose from the bench and crouched down in front of the little kid to meet his eye level. Then I firmly grasped his small, soft shoulder—small enough that half of it fit in my hand—and spoke.
“Kid. What’s your name.”
“Park! Sang-yul! That’s me.”
“Sang-yul? You’re Sang-yul?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, Sang-yul. I’m Kang Ha-jin. But you shouldn’t just talk to strangers like this and be so cute and all. Did they teach you at kindergarten to be careful of bad men?”
“They did!”
“It’s only because I’m a kindhearted guy with a warm heart that you’re safe, but what if I had bad intentions and just took you away? What would you do then? If someone says ‘let’s go to the supermarket and I’ll buy you ice cream,’ what should you do?”
“The supermarket is our house though?”
Ah. So he was the supermarket owner’s son.
I made a mental note to tell his mother when I got home that she needed to give the supermarket owner’s youngest son proper safety education. I led this bright-eyed little one toward the swing.
“Anyway, listen. If a stranger does that, you run away immediately. Understand? You don’t need to say ‘no,’ ‘I don’t like it,’ or ‘go away.’ Just run away unconditionally and find your mom and dad. Got it?”
“Yes! Is hyung a bad man?”
“Fortunately, I’m not even a man yet, and I’m not a bad per—. No, I’m not a bad person. But you still shouldn’t blindly trust me either. Have you ever seen me before?”
“Yes!”
“Right, have you seen… have you?”
“Hyung, I saw you on TV!”
Oh my. So it was Destiny.
At the appearance of our youngest viewer, I found myself bowing naturally. Whether it was Sung-yul or Seon-yul or Sung-ul (…) anyway, I gently settled the little one onto the swing. After confirming he had a firm grip on the handles, I pushed him slowly so he wouldn’t feel afraid, and a delighted giggle burst out.
“…There. As long as you’re having fun, that’s what matters.”
Our rabbit warrior is just as bright as you are. I have no idea why that guy is such a simpleton.
How can I stop Dan Ha-ru’s regression?
Even as I mechanically pushed the swing, my mind refused to let go of thoughts about Dan Ha-ru and the penalty.
In that brief moment of distraction, my hands tensed without my realizing it, and the swing lurched with a creak and swayed.
“Oh no, Sang-yul!”
The little one, who had gotten so excited he was wiggling his bottom, tumbled right off the swing.
I quickly grabbed the swing to stop its momentum so the child wouldn’t get hurt, then rushed toward the little one.
I couldn’t fathom how many thoughts and emotions flooded through me in that brief instant.
What if this is the penalty?
What if this child, who has nothing to do with me, gets seriously hurt because of my penalty?
If that’s my karma, how am I supposed to handle it when I can’t even regress?
My heart plummeted from the top of a skyscraper to the basement as I rushed toward the child―,
“―Ta-da!”
…the little rascal simply popped up with a grin on his face and struck a victory pose.
A very cheerful one at that.
“Hey, you’re not hurt? You okay?”
“Yep. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing cool about it. I told you to hold the handles tight and keep your bottom planted!”
It was my mistake, but alarm made my voice rise first.
As I brushed the sand off the child’s clothes, I checked multiple times to make sure nothing was scraped or gouged on that delicate skin. Fortunately, the sand I’d so diligently piled in front of the swing earlier seemed to have cushioned the fall—he didn’t appear to be seriously hurt.
“You… if you keep playing like this and fall and get hurt, that’s really bad. You need to be careful.”
“But Sang-yul’s sister plays like this all the time.”
“She doesn’t fall and tumble off every single time, does she?”
“Our sister pushes way harder than you do.”
“…Still, it’s just, like, isn’t it dangerous? Come on.”
“But, um, last time, I fell. And then, um, I bled here.”
“See, that proves it’s dangerous.”
“But, but, so, here, I bled and everything, and I cried.”
Park Sang-yul, the youngest son of the supermarket owner, paid no mind to my words and stubbornly continued his story.
As the eldest son of the Kang family with no fewer than seven younger cousins, I knew all too well that small talk from little ones like this absolutely cannot be interrupted until they finish saying what they want to say. So I simply settled down in the sand and decided to listen to him.
“So you cried? Because it hurt?”
“Yep. My sister, um, held my hand.”
“Your sister’s nice.”
“Yep. So Sang-yul likes his sister.”
“So it was all just bragging about your sister.”
A hollow laugh escaped me as I watched the little one proudly display his affection, boasting about how much he loved his sister.
Yet even amid that amusing exchange, I found myself unable to shake the memory of our sunfish from my mind.
“…That’s just it. Even when you fall like this, you just need to get back up.”
Why was that so difficult for him?
If just one person had been there to hold his hand, that kid could have gotten back up just fine.
“Hey, Park Sang-yul! Come here!”
“Oh! It’s sister!”
Lost in thought, a shrill voice pierced through the distance like a scream.
Park Sang-yul, with his miraculous 5000% resilience, had been playing with my hair in my arms, but at that voice, he callously abandoned me and rushed toward its source. Soon after, I heard the ‘sister’ scolding her younger brother sternly.
“Why are you out here alone! Didn’t I tell you not to come to the playground by yourself?”
“I was waiting for you, sister!”
“Why would you wait for me? You should just stay home. Ugh, Mom really… If you go around with people you don’t even know like that, what would happen? I’ve told you so many times not to do that.”
A repeat offender—our youngest Destiny member.
I was relieved that safety education seemed thorough, and I stood up. It seemed I’d startled her, so I figured I should explain myself as a neighborhood young man living in the house next to the playground.
Turning around, a middle school student in uniform holding Park Sang-yul locked eyes with me. I tried my best to compose a benevolent and harmless expression, but the moment she saw me, Park Sang-yul’s sister went pale as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Um, I live in the white house here. I’m not a bad person or anything…”
“…Ha, Ha-jin oppa?”
Huh?
“Sister! The older brother in your room!”
Park Sang-yul pointed at me with a bright smile.
…Ah. So this was Destiny.
A cool breeze swept between us as we stood facing each other on the playground.

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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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