Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 208

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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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208. Kairos (7)
We had a problem.
“Um. Um…. Uh….”
Do-ha had malfunctioned.
The issue was that none of us had any intention of fixing him.
“Huh? I’m curious too!”
“De-on… if we’re just looking at the spelling, Demon comes to mind first, honestly.”
The youngest members, armed with innocent charm and pure curiosity,
“Really? What does it mean, Do-ha?”
“Do-ha, the mic. Keep the mic steady.”
Si-woo, who found Do-ha’s malfunction amusing and pressed for an answer,
and Tae-hyun, who meticulously managed the microphone to prevent feedback in the meantime—
“…Oh.”
After confirming even Yoo Gun, whose expression screamed ‘A rap name? That’s so damn cool,’ Do-ha’s pupils trembled violently. The moment his gaze turned toward me, I picked up the microphone and hurled the question I’d been holding back at Do-ha, sitting at the far right end.
“Do-ha.”
“….”
“What does De-on mean, De-on?”
“…?”
“Explain it to the Destiny members, De-on.”
At my deliberately teasing tone, Si-woo and Tae-hyun finally burst into the laughter they’d been desperately holding back, their bodies folding forward.
Realizing there was no escape, Do-ha swallowed hard and picked up the microphone.
The solemnity in his demeanor was such that I could almost picture an 18th-century revolutionary somewhere in medieval times, standing on the guillotine with the resolve of the condemned—that’s roughly the expression he wore.
“De-on is… a rap name I created in eighth grade.”
Oh dear.
The origin itself was ominous.
“My name is Do-ha, and when you write the ‘Do’ character in English, it’s D and O. Using that…. Doha is On the Beat…. So roughly…. When I shortened it, it became D-On… and then….”
“I’ve never seen Tae-hyun struggle with words like this before.”
Eun-chan, sitting next to Do-ha, marveled as if witnessing something truly rare.
Then Yoo Gun, sitting at the opposite end from Do-ha, picked up the microphone to help out, or so he thought.
“What’s wrong, hyung. I thought De-on was Demon minus the M from Music.”
“….”
“…?”
“….”
“…Right, right?”
“Oh dear….”
“Ah, Ha-jin. Please.”
Watching Do-ha’s expression freeze over, my sigh burst out, and Tae-hyun, sitting beside me, nearly wept as he slid down beneath his chair. Even Si-woo and Nam Da-down couldn’t bear Do-ha’s public humiliation, covering their faces with cue cards and their hands respectively, their bodies turned away as they convulsed with laughter.
“No, hyung. I wasn’t trying to tease you…. No, I really didn’t know!”
“But if you remove the M from Demon, doesn’t that ruin it? Music is important….”
“Oh, Demon! So that’s De-on! It has multiple meanings. That’s actually pretty cool?”
“Please stop, you guys….”
Whether the flustered Lee Yu-gun rambled or not, Ju Eun-chan and Dan Ha-ru’s innocent curiosity had killed Lee Do-ha twice over. I found myself sympathizing with Lee Do-ha, whose dark history from his middle school phase—when he’d defined his own identity as demonic—was now being broadcast live to the entire world.
“Do-ha.”
“…Why, again.”
“Cheer up, De-on.”
“….”
“Don’t be embarrassed, De-on. De-on is a perfectly cool name, De-on.”
[System Alert: A real demon, De-on…?]
Calling someone who goes to church a demon—that’s rude, De-on.
I muted Thirteen’s jab well enough and lowered the microphone with a satisfied expression.
Ah.
Now that I’ve had my fun teasing, I feel completely refreshed.
[System Alert: The system is curious how you plan to face everyone at the dormitory after this, De-on….]
Hmm.
…I guess I’ll be sleeping in the living room for a while!
* * *
With Nam Da-down regaining his composure and taking over the hosting duties, Kairos’s showcase returned safely to its proper course. Lee Do-ha, barely holding onto his sanity, revealed the fact that I had helped with this song.
Beyond that, Jeong Si-u participated in writing the lyrics for the B-side track “Wings,” and Lee Yu-gun and Ju Eun-chan contributed to the choreography composition for the title track—we solidified that Kairos was continuing the lineage of Miro’s “in-house produced” groups.
The finale of the showcase, which had run for such a long time, was naturally our debut track, “Over The Night.”
To be honest, after singing the opening lyric “Open your eyes,” my memory became hazy.
Please wait
I’m coming to you now
When I came to my senses, we were already rushing toward the end of the song.
Before reaching the final highlight of the track, I held back the breath that had risen to my throat and cleared my voice.
I planted my feet firmly in place instead of rushing toward each other, and I met eyes with Dan Ha-ru standing across from me.
We Running,
Running Over the Lonely Night
Timed to Jeong Si-u’s electrifying chorus, Dan Ha-ru and I harmonized and delivered the high-note ad-lib together. That was the part we’d barely managed to record after Seo Tae-il, that madman, had written it first and asked “you can do this, right?”—dusting off a skill we hadn’t used in a while.
We will finally,
overcome this lonely night
With Seo Tae-hyun’s wistful voice, our first debut stage came to an abrupt end.
After waiting about three seconds for the ending, the ending BGM flowed out—the signal for us to give our final greetings.
“Thank you!”
“Thank you for coming!”
“See you on our music show~”
“Destiny, we love you♡”
Everyone bid farewell in their own way. I too waved my hand broadly toward the audience, my heart full of reluctance.
“Please be careful on your way out.”
…Time had felt so incredibly fast.
It was a dangerous thought—that I could turn back time again and again just to feel this emotion once more.
* * *
No, cancel that.
“Ha-jin, if I sleep now, my eyes will puff up.”
“You’re going to kill me….”
Time reversal and all that—cancel it, pfft.
From the moment of our debut showcase onward, we became frantically busy. I’d already witnessed how brutally idols lived during my days doing behind-the-scenes filming work at the entertainment company, but this was on another level entirely.
Honestly, even back when I was working as a Production Director, things got similarly hectic….
But at least during the editing periods, I could sit in the office! It’s not like I couldn’t get up…!
[System Notification: …?]
[System Notification: But in the end, you didn’t sleep and worked anyway, didn’t you?]
Shut up, you marvel of civilization! (Not really)
So desperately in need of sleep that I could barely open my eyes, I grabbed Dan Ha-ru’s shoulders as he gently shook me awake and thrashed about.
“Ha-ru….”
“Yes?”
“….”
If you reverse time again after I’ve worked this hard, I’m going to kill you…. I really will….
Actually, I think I’ll die of indignation before I even get the chance to kill you….
[System Notification: The System questions whether, since you’re struggling from being so busy, you shouldn’t actually want to go back to before you were busy?]
[System Notification: ◈▵◈ ?]
‘You’re telling me to erase all that work I did without sleep and send me back to the starting point? That’s like taking the shortcut to the beginning village right before the ending of some pottery game?’
But I couldn’t possibly say such harsh things to the pre-awakened baby rabbit warrior gazing down at me with those innocent, sparkling eyes.
In the end, I swallowed down everything I wanted to say and asked a different question instead.
“…What’s on the breakfast menu?”
“Oh. Tuna kimbap and spicy stir-fried rice cakes! And Kwon Wook said he’d order meat dumplings too.”
What was truly fortunate was that Miro fed us incredibly well.
I suspected that most of our settlement budget was spent on food, given how varied and abundant our meals were.
…Of course, even amid that overflowing food paradise, there was one member who maintained strict self-discipline—a natural-born idol.
“Tae-hyun, are you having salad again today?”
“Ah, yeah. If I eat anything in the morning, my stomach feels off.”
He’s lying. He’ll eat salad for lunch and dinner too.
On one hand, I found Seo Tae-hyun admirable for maintaining such discipline despite his already lean frame; on the other, I felt sorry for him. But since he himself showed no signs of suffering or strain, I hesitated to say anything carelessly.
Seo Tae-hyun hated showing his fans a puffy face far more than he hated missing spicy stir-fried rice cakes right now. Carelessly calling him pitiful would be striking at that professional consciousness of his.
Besides, he had every reason to manage himself so strictly.
“Tae-hyun. Come out for a moment. There’s a radio phone interview—just a quick one.”
“Ah, yes.”
“After the call, let’s take one more sponsored photo shoot in the hallway.”
…He was the member whose individual schedule had exploded the moment we debuted.
“And you got the music show script, right? I know you’ll do well, but let’s prepare thoroughly anyway.”
“Yes, I’ll work hard.”
Seo Tae-hyun nodded at the manager’s words, pointing to the music show script he’d been reviewing just moments before. As I watched him leave the practice room with his manager, I clicked my tongue.
“Wow, that guy’s relentless. Look at all those highlighter marks on the music show script. When did he even find time to read that?”
Seo Tae-hyun had taken on the role of new MC for A-Countdown alongside our debut. According to Ji Su-ho, the reason we’d secured such an impressive set and excellent conditions for pre-recording at A-Countdown had something to do with the perks of having a rookie MC on board.
That pre-recording at A-Countdown was happening tomorrow morning.
It would be our first music show stage and our first chance to meet fans since the showcase.
“Tae-hyun was reading through that thing all night yesterday. I even helped him run lines.”
“So you didn’t sleep either yesterday?”
“No, I helped him out for a bit and fell asleep pretty quickly. But Tae-hyun looks like he basically pulled an all-nighter.”
“Isn’t he pushing himself too hard…?”
At my roommate Jeong Si-u’s testimony, my internal ‘overload detection radar’ started blaring loudly.
Lee Yu-gun, who’d been dozing off with his arms crossed beside us, cracked open one eye with interest at those words. It was Jeong Si-u who quickly cut through that heavy atmosphere.
“He’s not forcing himself. He just said he’s too excited to sleep, so I left him alone. Being an MC on a music show was his dream, after all.”
“Is that so? …Well, you probably handled it right.”
“What kind of image do I have in your head anyway, Ha-jin?”
I don’t know. A god?
[System Notification: But you go to church…?]
‘That’s just a figure of speech.’
Regardless, it was clear that Seo Tae-hyun was obviously pushing his body to its limits, yet I wasn’t the type to just collapse and sleep while someone else was struggling like that.
See?
Lee Yu-gun, who’d been listening in on our conversation while pretending not to care, was just as concerned as I was. But once Jeong Si-u said it was fine, he crossed his arms again and went back to sleep.
“Hey, that’s unfair though. Hey, Sparkle. Why’d you wake me up but not Yu-gun?”
“Yu-gun hyung doesn’t get puffy eyes even when he sleeps.”
“And me?”
“You puff up even from a little sleep, so before important shoots I was told to wake you up if you fell asleep!”
“By who?”
“By you!”
“By me…?”
“Yeah. You really emphasized it yesterday in the car.”
Did I?
I had nothing to say about becoming a human alarm of my own making, so I just closed my mouth.
I was dying of exhaustion and couldn’t sleep anyway, so I just lay there counting ceiling patterns while using Dan Ha-ru’s leg as a pillow. Just then, the practice room door opened and Ji Su-ho walked in.
“Hey, everyone.”
“Hi~”
“We’ve got the self-cam shoot later, right? Let’s wait for Tae-hyun to finish one more thing and then head out together. I came by because there’s an announcement I need to make before you all move out today.”
Startled by Ji Su-ho’s arrival, I quickly sat up from where I’d been lying down, but he gestured that it was fine. Still, I couldn’t listen to someone of his stature while lying down, so I leaned against Ju Eun-chan who was beside me.
Ji Su-ho, who’d been writing something on his tablet PC, looked up and adjusted his glasses.
“You know Tae-hyun’s first day as A-Countdown MC tomorrow, right? Debut, inauguration, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, since you guys also have your debut stage tomorrow, A-Countdown reached out asking if one member could serve as a special co-MC with Tae-hyun.”
“Ooh~”
“Usually we’d get this kind of request a week in advance, but the Production Director suddenly got the idea yesterday that it would be nice. Well, it’s a good thing for us either way.”
That guy had been the same way during the Yupia first-place acceptance last time, and I wondered if he always came up with these spontaneous proposals like this.
Still, since he keeps coming up with new ideas while looking out for the cast, I suppose that’s something to appreciate.
“Anyway, that’s why one of you needs to do it. Who wants to? The Production Director seemed fine with anyone, but he did mention he’d prefer someone who has good chemistry with Tae-hyun, and since it’s a music show MC role, it’d be great if they’re naturally shameless and good at being cute.”
At Su-ho’s words, I quickly ran through candidates in my mind.
Jeong Si-u would probably have the better visuals, and Ju Eun-chan might be the chemistry fans prefer?
Dan Ha-ru had the cute music show MC quality, but thinking about the bickering dynamic, Lee Yu-gun didn’t seem like a bad option either. Lee Do-ha felt like a casting choice going for the unexpected factor….
[System Notification: …Returning Regressor.]
[System Notification: Would you stop thinking for a moment and look around?]
“…? What, what is it?”
…Why are you all staring at me?
Caught off guard by the sudden barrage of gazes, I hiccupped involuntarily.

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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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