Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 178

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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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178. The Earth Is Round (2)
‘I always knew this day would come.’
Even though I’d immersed myself in #回冰環 and was now experiencing it firsthand as a #現板物 character, I hadn’t anticipated it would be like this.
From the moment I heard that my personalities were divided, I’d sensed that someday I’d face another version of myself.
‘…I just didn’t expect to meet like this, at this moment.’
‘We’ stood facing each other in silence for a long while. Was calling it ‘we’ even the right way to describe it? The question flickered through my mind, but there was no better way to express it.
That I could access Kang Ha-jin’s past timeline was thanks to Thirteen’s ability, and if that were true, then bringing the two of us together like this must have been his intention as well. He was the one who’d relentlessly chased after me as I fled from myself, even creating Quests to bind me—so it was obvious this moment too had been orchestrated for ‘us’.
I gazed quietly at myself. Very quietly.
‘Younger than I thought… much younger.’
The ‘me’ standing before me was undoubtedly the same as my reflection in the mirror right now, and yet observing myself through a third party’s eyes felt far stranger than I’d imagined.
Since childhood, I’d often been called an old soul, maturing quickly and growing up faster than my peers in many ways. But now, facing myself like this, I looked just like any of the younger siblings I’d grown fond of—a twenty-year-old kid, and it was almost funny.
‘…I really was young, wasn’t I.’
What was I like at twenty?
Not as perpetually gloomy as the past version I’d seen before.
Just… ordinary.
Working part-time while preparing for my college entrance exam retake, saving money to travel with friends, sleeping in endlessly after getting accepted through early admission….
I recalled these memories again and again, turning them over in my mind.
“Did you suffer a lot?”
My first words, breaking the long silence, filled the empty space between us.
“Were you lonely?”
I was lonely for a very long time.
Devastatingly lonely, it seemed.
Looking back now, that’s what it was.
All those moments I couldn’t even properly tell my parents about—they surfaced dimly now, like something rising to the surface of water. I’d thought the pain had faded and new skin had grown over, but the scars remained.
I took a step closer to myself and opened my mouth once more.
“You endured well. You really did.”
If I could go back ten years and meet my younger self, what would I most want to tell him?
The answer to this common question was always something playful—lottery numbers, or telling him to buy Tesla stock.
But now, truly facing the me from ten years ago, what I most wanted to say was….
“It’s okay.”
I simply wanted to comfort the me who had endured and survived until now.
“I can’t promise everything will work out…. But I think I’ve lived well, even so.”
The reason I can now calmly accept the wounds from back then is because I know that younger me endured all of them and grew through that pain.
And now I could clearly see what my present self could offer to that younger me.
“…So this time, I’ll be on your side.”
I regretted my own hesitation, thinking of others who might have been hurt because of me.
Just as the twenty-nine-year-old me had remained in that small bed, somewhere deep in my heart, Kang Ha-jin—alone in that dark, cold practice room—still remained.
“A Kang Ha-jin team without Kang Ha-jin doesn’t make sense, does it?”
As I threw out the joke, a faint smile appeared on the face of the ‘me’ before me.
Before I could even ask what kind of affirmation that smile held, the surroundings turned pure white and my vision blurred once more. I sensed I was waking from a dream and slowly opened my eyes.
Normally, this would be the perfect moment for some narrative like “In a dark room. A familiar ceiling somewhere….” But the instant I fully opened my eyes, I thought otherwise.
“…Huh.”
“Aaaaaaahhhhh!”
“Wh-wh-what?!”
There I was in pitch-black darkness, blinking rapidly, when my eyes locked with Lee Do-ha’s gaze hovering above me—and I screamed loud enough to shake the building itself. Startled by my shriek, Lee Do-ha stumbled backward from his chair and landed flat on his backside with a thud.
As I scrambled to sit up in alarm, a wet cloth slipped from my forehead and fell. Of all the clichéd things to happen, this was peak melodrama.
“You had a high fever. I was just trying to check if it had gone down by touching your forehead.”
“…Oh, yeah. Thanks. Sorry for screaming.”
“No, I startled you. I’m sorry.”
We were about to launch into an unnecessary apology battle in the middle of the night.
I simply nodded at Lee Do-ha and thought to myself.
‘Does my life really need to be this much of a sitcom?’
Just moments ago, I’d been in such a tender, melancholic mood—like castella cake, soft and wistful.
“Give me back my emotions….”
“Huh?”
Creator, please. Just unify the genre of my life.
* * *
“Your fever was 38 degrees.”
After things settled down, Lee Do-ha insisted it wasn’t time for me to get up yet and gently laid me back down on the bed. When he placed the wet cloth—wrung out thoroughly and firmly—back on my forehead, the cool, refreshing sensation that spread through my body made it clear I was genuinely ill.
“Since you’re not coughing or anything, it seems like it’s just from stress and exhaustion. Take some medicine and get some good rest today.”
“Yeah. …Thanks.”
I offered an awkward expression of gratitude, and Lee Do-ha simply returned to his own bed across from me without bothering to respond.
With the wet cloth resting on my forehead, I rolled my eyes around to survey the room. It looked like they’d done some kind of renovation work in the past few days—the acoustic foam that used to be there was gone, replaced by clean silk wallpaper. Most of Lee Do-ha’s production equipment that once occupied one entire wall was nowhere to be seen.
Normally, I would’ve just nodded and moved on.
But today, perhaps because I’d felt a bit lonely earlier, or maybe it was the early morning melancholy, I suddenly wanted to talk to Lee Do-ha.
“Lee Do-ha, are you asleep?”
“…No.”
“Did you put away all your equipment?”
“Yeah.”
“Where to?”
“I moved it back to the Company studio.”
“The old one?”
“No. They assigned me a new room in the New Building, so I moved it there.”
“Ah.”
The conversation paused there for a moment.
I briefly recalled Lee Do-ha’s cramped, ant-hole-like studio that used to be at the old Company.
After blinking a few more times, I spoke to Lee Do-ha again.
“Lee Do-ha.”
“Yeah.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me anything?”
At those words, Lee Do-ha fell silent for a moment.
Then, after a brief pause, his drowsy voice cleared and returned with distinct precision.
“Want me to ask?”
Turned around by his question directed at me, I fell silent this time.
Accepting my silence as affirmation, Lee Do-ha asked me again.
“Is it all true? Everything written there?”
“…Half of it’s true, half of it isn’t.”
I rested my arm beneath my head and gazed up at the empty ceiling, slowly recounting my past to Lee Do-ha.
It was long and tedious, yet Lee Do-ha listened to every word without much reaction. Whenever I glanced back thinking he might have fallen asleep, he’d shift his body as if to signal he was still awake.
“Anyway, that’s why…. It’s hard to really defend myself. This kind of thing only gains public sympathy if you deny it outright, right?”
“….”
Even after my entire story ended, Lee Do-ha said nothing.
This time I really wondered if he’d fallen asleep, so I reached for a wet towel and turned my head to glance back, when Lee Do-ha’s second question cut through the darkness.
“Want to meet those people in person?”
“Those people?”
“The ones who trained with you at KD Entertainment.”
It was a characteristically unexpected curveball from Lee Do-ha.
Meet them? What for? Grab them by the hair and fight?
After hesitating briefly, I opened my mouth.
“Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it until just now.”
“….”
“But maybe that would be better. I’m curious what they were thinking when they posted something like that.”
Could it really be called a post meant to make me suffer? After all, if I revealed the truth about being ostracized, the poster would go down too—wasn’t it just a game of chicken where both sides lose? Did they hate me enough to accept that risk? Or did they simply convince themselves they were the victims?
Those questions lingered with me. Besides, whenever conflict arose, I preferred to meet face-to-face and lay bare our true intentions rather than exchange messages or posts. It was simply my nature.
‘Could I really do this? If I ask Thirteen nicely, couldn’t he track down whoever wrote it?’
Or I could sue for defamation based on false facts… but wait, that would imply everything in the post was true, which would destroy my reputation. So I’d have to claim it’s all fabricated… but some of it actually happened, so I might get backlash instead….
Lost in thought as I considered various options, Lee Do-ha asked once more.
“Want to meet them?”
“But right now I don’t have contact information or anything…. Or wait, can you find anyone these days if you really try?”
“I have it.”
“Have what?”
“I’m telling you, I have the contact information for the person who trained with you at KD Entertainment.”
“…What?”
What kind of development was this?
Caught off guard by Lee Do-ha’s words, I lifted my heavy body upright with a start.
Following my lead, Lee Do-ha sat up as well, turned on the mood light beside the bed, and showed me a contact from his phone.
【Lee Hyun-il (Raon Practical Music Academy)】
And that name was indeed someone I knew.
“Actually, I went out earlier to meet him.”
“Him…. Why would he…? How do you know him?”
“We’re not directly acquainted. I knew him through a younger sibling’s friend back when I attended Practical Music Academy for a bit. He wanted to contact you, but since he had no way to reach you, he went around asking until word got back to me.”
“Lee Hyun-il wanted to contact me?”
“Yeah. He says he has something to tell you. And he also knows who wrote that exposé post.”
He knows who wrote the exposé post?
Caught off guard by this sudden information, I looked back at the phone.
Lee Do-ha’s phone indeed contained call logs and messages exchanged with Lee Hyun-il.
“I figured I should ask you first, so I told him to wait. We need to be sure whether he actually knows your situation well, or if he’s just meddling while pretending to know something.”
“…Lee Hyun-il does know about what happened back then. He was part of the same circle—we practiced together often.”
Recalling Lee Hyun-il, I laughed at myself ruefully.
“When he first joined, he had a hard time adjusting, so I helped him out a lot. But after that incident, he wouldn’t even acknowledge knowing me. So this is… unexpected, honestly. I wonder what he wants to say now.”
Suppressing the sting of betrayal and injustice that threatened to surface, I lifted my head and met Lee Do-ha’s eyes.
“I should still meet with him, right?”
“If it would help you.”
“Then I’ll need to tell the company first thing tomorrow.”
I transferred Lee Hyun-il’s contact information from Lee Do-ha’s phone to mine, then handed the phone back. Then, suddenly, an impulse struck me.
“Lee Do-ha.”
“Yeah?”
“Will you come with me? To meet him?”
“…Me?”
Lee Do-ha tilted his head in genuine bewilderment, repeating the question back to me.
I rubbed my legs with empty hands, a hint of embarrassment in my voice.
“Just… having a friend there might make me less nervous, you know?”
“….”
“…Or whatever. If you don’t want to, forget it.”
This guy always takes forever to respond at moments like these.
I half-expected Lee Do-ha to come back with some textbook answer like, “That’s not really it, Ha-jin. Isn’t this your own battle to overcome?”
I was about to quickly drape a cold compress over my eyes and lie down when that bear finally gave me his answer.
“Okay. Let’s go together.”
“….”
“I’ll contact the company.”
“…Sure.”
The fever hadn’t completely subsided, so the moment I lay down on the soft blanket, I drifted back to sleep within moments.
Whether it was because I fell asleep so quickly and deeply, or because I’d been having nothing but sweet dreams lately, I experienced the most blissful sleep without dreaming at all.
I slept so well that when I woke up the next morning, I actually wondered, “Wait, was that conversation with Lee Do-ha in the early morning actually just a dream?”
“You’re up?”
“…Yeah. Did you sleep well?”
Fortunately, I had clear evidence that the early morning conversation was reality, not a dream.
[System Alert: ‘Lee Do-ha’ is responding to you. (Response Rate: 87%)]
I still didn’t know why, but…
Lee Do-ha no longer felt awkward to me.
That alone was enough to make my morning feel refreshingly clean.

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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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