Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 183

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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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183. The Earth Is Round (7)
The letter, written in Kang Ha-jin’s own hand, began like this.
First, I apologize that my first letter to you concerns my shameful past.
The Destiny fans, observing Ha-jin’s handwriting in the letter, could easily discern how carefully he had composed it.
Kang Ha-jin’s penmanship had already been revealed through Miro Maze, and he typically wrote in a cursive style. He could write properly if he tried, but usually he would dash it off carelessly due to fatigue and laziness—an explanation that always followed like an excuse.
However, I felt that to the Destiny who believed in me and waited until the very end, it was I myself who must speak directly about all of this, and so I took up the pen.
Yet the handwriting in Kang Ha-jin’s letter this time was straighter and more refined than ever before.
It was such a neat letter that it was evident at a glance he had written each character with care, so much so that one could understand the contents simply from his handwritten letter alone, without needing to read the transcribed text.
And so, Kang Ha-jin conveyed his story through his words.
I will not deny that I was someone who hurt others.
There were times I wanted to run away using my youth and inexperience as an excuse, but I am well aware that I had no right to wield that clumsiness and inadequacy like a blade.
It seems I was an angular person to those friends.
I did not realize that someone was being chipped away by my rough edges.
I acknowledge and reflect upon the fact that because of this, I inflicted great wounds on someone and caused my fellow trainees to feel oppressed and humiliated.
Ha-jin calmly admitted his flawed past and apologized. He never denied that he had been the perpetrator.
Yet no one reading the letter could cast a stone at Ha-jin.
Just because the Earth is round does not mean we were all born round from the beginning.
All stones are born with angular edges. They simply become smoother as they roll and roll.
When I first learned of the exposé post, I had many concerns. However, it was ultimately because of you, Destiny, that I made the decision to tell everything truthfully.
For the sake of Destiny who supported and believed in me, I decided to reveal everything and set the facts straight, and fortunately, with the help of those around me, I was able to provide you with more detailed circumstances from that time.
Through this letter, I also extend my gratitude to all those who came forward to help me.
An apology, reflection, and gratitude.
Ha-jin’s letter was so clean it could be said to contain not a single unnecessary word.
Despite its length, the Destiny fans who read through to the end with unwavering focus suddenly realized the letter had reached its final page.
Destiny.
I confess that the time I spent at KD Entertainment was truly unbearably difficult for me back then.
However, I used that time as nourishment to become a better person and to grow.
Though I was alone back then, the fact that I am now surrounded by so many Destiny, kind members, and good people fills me with endless joy and happiness.
I am no longer lonely. So please don’t worry too much.
Do not be sad, and do not ache in your hearts. If you do, it only hurts me more.
“Ah, I must be crazy….”
Park Sang-ah, Park Sang-yul’s older sister, sat at her desk in her room reading Ha-jin’s cafe on her phone, and for some reason felt tears welling up, so she furrowed her brow with all her might. On her desk was displayed a fake photocard containing Ha-jin’s first autograph, preserved in a holder.
Park Sang-ah tore at the tissue box beside her desk and quickly wiped away her tears, then refocused her eyes and finished reading the letter.
My promise to become a Kang Ha-jin you can be proud of remains unchanged.
I will continue to strive to become someone who develops and grows further.
I extend my gratitude once more to Destiny for believing in me and waiting for me, and with that, I shall conclude this letter.
On a day not so far from now.
I will return to you with good news under the name Kairos.
Thank you for reading to the end.
Kairos Kang Ha-jin.
P.S. You are still a source of pride for me—Destiny. I’ve decided to walk alongside you in your wonderful journey, along with my parents, the members of Kairos, and the company.
I extend my gratitude to the members who came together so readily and to all the company staff.
So, truly, goodbye.
At the end of the letter was a donation receipt showing that both Destiny and Kairos had each contributed 5 million won to the Youth Violence Prevention Foundation, totaling 10 million won. Considering they were still pre-debut trainees who hadn’t even received their settlement payments yet, it was an astronomical sum.
“Oh my god, this is incredible. I need to share this with Yoon Hye-ji right now, this is insane, I’m serious.”
Park Sang-ah saved Ha-jin’s letter—her ultimate bias—to her phone repeatedly, then sent it to her friend in the same class who was Seo Tae-hyun’s ultimate bias and Ha-jin’s second bias. Along with it came the determination that all those bastards who trash-talked Kairos were finished now.
‘Come to think of it… isn’t there someone in our class? A kid being isolated?’
As Park Sang-ah continued chatting enthusiastically with Yoon Hye-ji about Ha-jin and their classmates, she suddenly remembered a quiet, unremarkable classmate. After drifting away from the friend group they’d hung out with at the start of the semester, they’d missed their chance to join any circle and now walked alone.
“Hmm…”
Park Sang-ah pondered for a moment.
She gazed back and forth between Ha-jin’s letter and donation receipt on her phone, and the signed photo card of Ha-jin carefully preserved across from her, lost in thought.
She wanted to become the “source of pride for Destiny” that Ha-jin spoke of.
‘Should I ask them tomorrow if they want to grab lunch together? Ugh, but what if they reject me? That would be so embarrassing.’
Still, I should try asking! If they reject me, well, what can I do?
With that resolve, Park Sang-ah returned to her bed with a satisfied heart and lay down.
She’d originally sat down to study, but after reading Ha-jin’s letter, her fan heart was so overflowing that she felt she needed to review the Miro Maze stage performances.
Searching for a compilation of Ha-jin’s legendary stage performances on AiTube, Park Sang-ah smiled peacefully for the first time in a while.
* * *
That evening, when Kang Ha-jin’s letter was uploaded to the official fan cafe.
At the Kairos dormitory, a belated move-in party was in full swing.
“Do we have to call it a move-in?”
“Why? It’s the day we moved into the dorm, so it’s a move-in, right?”
“…It just sounds weird.”
Looking at the A4 paper taped to the living room wall, Ha-jin felt a chill run down his spine.
No, but the phrase “Congratulations on Kairos’s Move-In” was a sentence that would make any South Korean man—whether he was scheduled for military service, had already enlisted, or had been discharged—break into a cold sweat. It felt exactly like entering a training camp.
“Hey, no matter how I look at it, move-in isn’t right. Let’s change it to something else. How about debut? Debut instead.”
“We’re still far from debut.”
“Ah, we’ll do it eventually anyway.”
“Then we’ll celebrate it when the time comes.”
“Tsk! You brat! You keep not listening to your grandfather!?”
“Here comes the old man again, seriously.”
When Ha-jin grew furious at Seo Tae-hyun, who kept talking back to him, Tae-hyun shook his head with an enlightened expression. Eventually, Ha-jin removed all the A4 papers as he wished, wrote different words on the back with a marker, and only then did he sit down quietly, satisfied. Yoo Gun, carrying food from the kitchen to the living room, muttered upon seeing this.
“Looks like he’s really enjoying being treated like a grandfather.”
“What, you got something to say?”
“Oh, your ears are sharp.”
Lee Yu-gun responded nonchalantly even to Ha-jin’s rebuke. Then he set the tray down on the dining table and promptly disappeared back into the kitchen.
At this, Ha-jin grumbled that both of them saw him as easy prey, but Tae-hyun, sitting beside him, simply handed him a balloon and hand pump without a word.
“Grandfather, stop complaining and blow up the balloons faster. You’ve only done three in thirty minutes.”
“Sigh… making an old man work like this…”
“Tsk… Making an old man work like this…”
“Yes, next you’ll be twenty years old.”
As Tae-hyun naturally cut off Ha-jin’s grumbling, Ha-jin had no choice but to work diligently at inflating balloons with the hand pump. Truth be told, since this party had been postponed purely because of Ha-jin himself and was only now being held belatedly, he’d been complying without complaint whenever the members asked him to do something.
It was just that phrase… that was so terrible I had to put up a brief resistance.
In the end, Ha-jin abandoned the grandfather cosplay and settled obediently onto the living room sofa in a squat, activating his balloon-inflating machine mode.
“Hyung, hyung. If inflating balloons is too tiring, should I do it?”
“We can handle the decorations with Do-ha hyung too…. We’re really good at blowing up balloons!”
“Yeah? You want to do it?”
As Ha-jin grumbled and picked up a balloon, Eun-chan and Ha-ru, who had been running back and forth between the kitchen and living room, approached with gleaming eyes.
At the younger members’ offer to willingly take on the tedious decorating, Ha-jin was about to readily hand over the balloons and hand pump to them. That’s when Tae-hyun, who was hanging a balloon Ha-jin had made on the wall, firmly shouted from the other side.
“No way! Don’t give that to them.”
“…? Why? The kids want to do it.”
“No, no. Ju Eun-chan, Dan Ha-ru. You two just go to the kitchen and help Si-woo hyung.”
“The kitchen’s too cramped, there’s nothing to do!”
“We decorated at the last bonding party too!”
“Yeah, the kids want to do it, so why are you being like this.”
Despite the resistance from Eun-chan and Ha-ru, who had Kang Ha-jin on their side, Seo Tae-hyun shook his head with determination.
And with his arms crossed, he dropped a single statement.
“Don’t you remember when you guys broke the curtain rod while hanging balloons back then?”
“Ah.”
Ah, that.
Ha-jin, whose memory was jogged by something he’d heard vaguely before, closed his mouth.
But Tae-hyun’s counterattack wasn’t finished.
“You two were competing over who could blow up balloons faster, and Eun-chan got so much blood rushing to his head from oxygen deprivation that he collapsed. Kwon Wook hyung almost called 119 that time.”
“No…. We have a machine for this now anyway!”
“So I gave you the pump, and this time you competed over who could blow up the biggest balloon, and Ha-ru burst eight balloons. Because of that, I had to go back out and buy new balloons.”
“W-we won’t do that this time! We’ll just quietly blow up balloons…. Right? Ah, Tae-hyun hyung.”
“I left you two alone after you promised to quietly inflate balloons, and when I came back, you were playing soccer with the balloons I’d blown up and crashed into each other and fell over.”
By that point, Kang Ha-jin could no longer tell who was scarier—Seo Tae-hyun or the younger members.
Tae-hyun was scary with his verbal beatdown, but the younger ones who’d created so many episodes from just one balloon were even scarier.
“Th…. I’ll just blow up the balloons myself. I’ll work hard at it. L-look at this. I’m tying the grandfather balloon well, right?”
Kang Ha-jin decided to simply work hard at inflating balloons.
Firmly believing that was the path to everyone’s peace.
“This is the last one. Now let’s eat.”
“Do-ha hyung. Si-woo hyung said to tidy up and come.”
“Yeah, I’ll just clean this up and head over.”
Shortly after, along with the million balloons (an exaggeration) that Kang Ha-jin had mechanically produced one after another, Kairos’s first dormitory move-in—or rather, inauguration party—began.
Even though they’d only heated up the side dishes already packed in the refrigerator, it was already a feast. Ha-jin was grateful that Miro wasn’t a company that obsessed over weight management.
“Do-ha hyung! Come quick.”
“Yeah, I’m done.”
Once Lee Do-ha, who had finished tidying up the kitchen after the commotion from heating the food, gathered in the living room, all seven members were finally in one place. Ha-jin subtly gauged the atmosphere and carefully broached a topic with Jeong Si-u, who sat in the seat of honor.
“Why don’t you say something, hyung?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you’re still our oldest member.”
I’d been thinking Jeong Si-u might become the leader of Kairos, so it seemed like the best scenario if he could lay out the company’s situation plainly for us.
But today, the strikingly handsome Jeong Si-u seemed to have other ideas.
“Right. Then since I’m the oldest, I’ll pass the torch to you, Ha-jin. You say something.”
“…What? Me? Why me?”
“Give me a reason? I could probably come up with about ten of them.”
“No, no. I’ll just do it myself.”
Right, I’d forgotten for a moment—he was a scary hyung too.
I could already anticipate those ten reasons without him spelling them out, and I opened my mouth without bothering to hide my slightly unfamiliar, awkward feelings.
“Well… um. First, I’m sorry we have to face something so unfortunate right before our debut.”
Even as I tapped my fingers habitually against my thigh, I spoke from the heart.
“Honestly, we haven’t known each other that long, so I’m grateful you all said you’d trust us without hesitation.”
Relaxing my shoulders, I smiled brightly at the six pairs of warm eyes looking back at me.
“Let’s stay together for a long time—Kairos, fighting!”
“”Fighting—!!””
Perhaps I would never see the round shape of Earth with my own eyes in my lifetime, but I had rolled across that round Earth again and again until I finally found my people.
Ha-jin found himself hoping, quite suddenly and even after a long time had passed, that we could all smile at each other like this.

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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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