Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 222

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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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222. THE BOY (1)
“You’re asking me a question when you already know my answer, aren’t you?”
Keeping my gaze fixed on Thirteen, still hunched within the hologram, I responded to the Entity.
“Just tell me what I need to do. No dancing around it—short and direct.”
The Entity fell silent for a moment at my response.
The space vibrated again around the time the orange sunset shattered against the waves three times over.
[…Very well. I’ll show you what you must do.]
[There’s much to explain, but sometimes actions speak faster than words ever could.]
With a crackling sound, the hologram before my eyes vanished and another system window materialized.
[Clue Viewing Rights for Regression Tracking]
A line was drawn through the Quest reward I’d been unable to use before because of the Returner.
Everything around me gradually turned white, as if bleached away, and I instinctively realized I was about to confront some moment from the past.
[Go and see.]
[That moment when the child gave up on life.]
When my eyes opened again alongside the fading voice, what I faced was….
[So you want to go back? To a moment when you were happy.]
-…Yes.
The “original” Dan Ha-ru—having lost everything, nodding with vacant, unfocused eyes.
* * *
Dan Ha-ru’s first regression was the day the Orphanage Director passed away.
-The weather’s clear today, but you’re bringing an umbrella?
-Just in case. It’s just a precaution. I’ll be back soon!
I’d prepared an umbrella beforehand,
and after earnestly telling the Orphanage Director that I’d be late and to absolutely not come pick me up and to sleep first,
I changed my shoes and called the police on a troublesome drunk customer I encountered at my part-time job.
-Done.
After spending a night where no one got wet in the rain, no shoes were ruined, and no one died,
Dan Ha-ru thought everything was perfect.
That it was all over now. That everything had returned to how it was.
I thought I’d protected my today.
-…Hello?
-Excuse me, but what’s your relationship to the phone’s owner?
Yet the Orphanage Director passed away nonetheless.
It happened by chance while crossing the street.
-Why…. Why on earth….
Just one more time,
-I just…. I just, I….
One last time,
-I….
Just one more time.
I rewound time countless times, yet.
-I…
In every single timeline, Dan Ha-ru could never save the one person he considered family. It was something that happened because he didn’t understand that no matter the reason, the natural cycle of human life and death could never be defied.
-I suppose I’m destined to be unhappy.
Dan Ha-ru had lived his entire life in misfortune,
but it was only in that moment that he truly began to feel the weight of his own unhappiness.
-Excuse me, but what is your relationship to the patient? I need a guardian’s signature.
-…
-Guardian?
-I’m… not family with the Orphanage Director.
-Pardon?
-We’re not… family.
The only person who had driven him to rewind time, the one he desperately wanted to save, was dead—yet Dan Ha-ru didn’t even have the grounds to hold a funeral for him.
The Orphanage Director, who had lost her husband and child in her youth and was pushed to this place with no connections, had operated the orphanage alone all these years before passing away.
Processed as a person with no next of kin, unable to even set up a funeral altar, she became a star in the heavens.
But the misfortune didn’t end there.
The orphanage, now without its owner, was swept up in an unexpected real estate dispute and forcibly demolished,
and Dan Ha-ru, with no money and no connections, couldn’t even protect the orphanage the Orphanage Director had left behind, nor the children.
He discovered lottery winning numbers and earned money, bought stocks and invested everything he had,
and tried every method he could think of to escape this misfortune, yet Dan Ha-ru still couldn’t protect anything.
Instead, the butterfly effects of his own actions only multiplied, and everything spiraled into irreversible ruin.
In the end, Dan Ha-ru had no choice but to return to the ‘very first’ day.
Before everything began,
to that day when his misfortune had started.
-If I’d known it would come to this, I should have thrown a tantrum and begged to be adopted.
Sitting on the beach where the Orphanage Director’s ashes had been scattered, Dan Ha-ru watched the sunset with hollow eyes and thought.
What if I rewound time again, went back to the distant past.
Back to when you and I were simply grateful to be alive, and I threw a tantrum asking you to accept me as family.
Dan Ha-ru thought about it.
He thought, and thought again.
Yet no matter how many thousands of times he considered it, Dan Ha-ru could find no answer.
-…
Then, suddenly, Dan Ha-ru thinks.
-Should I die?
What if I sank deep into the cold seawater.
What if I tumbled off a cliff somewhere deep in the mountains where no one would find me.
Terrifying thoughts wrapped around Dan Ha-ru’s entire body, slowly choking off his breath.
Yet the reason Dan Ha-ru couldn’t die was, ironically, because he was afraid of death.
Death, which he had experienced thousands upon thousands of times, was simply too terrifying.
Dan Ha-ru had lost all hope to live, yet he lacked the courage to die.
[Do you want to be happy?]
The Voice appeared again at that moment.
When Dan Ha-ru had lost everything once more.
[Let’s make a deal.]
The Voice whispered with honeyed sweetness.
[I can give you two things.]
[Happiness and death.]
[I’ll bestow both upon you.]
The terms of the bargain were simple.
[Choose the best ‘day’ you can imagine.]
[Then ‘Dan Ha-ru’ will live that single day eternally.]
-…You mean time stops?
[Hmm. How do I explain this?]
A small snow globe materialized before Dan Ha-ru’s eyes.
Beautiful white snow drifted gracefully over a quaintly decorated home and a family figurine building a snowman.
[You’ll live within this.]
[Repeating that one day when you were eternally happy.]
[Without even knowing you’re repeating that day.]
[To be precise, only a fragment of consciousness remains to repeat the time loop… but you don’t care about that anyway, do you?]
The happiest Dan Ha-ru.
That day where there was no need to worry about tomorrow or regret yesterday.
The price for that day was only one thing.
[In exchange, give me your life.]
-….
[I cannot become a living being. But I can wear your hollow ‘shell’ like a mask.]
After a moment of contemplation, Dan Ha-ru nodded.
-…Alright.
-But I have a condition.
[Tell me.]
-I want the me who lives that ‘day’ to forget everything.
The Orphanage Director’s death, the suffering, what that day I’ll be living truly is.
At his words about wanting to forget it all, the Voice’s mouth split into a grin.
[Agreed.]
[I’ll make sure ‘Dan Ha-ru’ lives knowing nothing.]
And so, Dan Ha-ru fled from his own life.
The beginning of a false existence.
* * *
Fleeing from life, Dan Ha-ru entered a time loop to create that ‘single happy day’.
Crafting ‘perfect happiness’ was never easy.
Not merely finding some moment of some day to be ‘most joyful’—every memory that composed him in that instant had to shine with happiness.
Moreover, the internal injuries accumulated through countless regressions had rendered him so fragile that he couldn’t bear even the slightest misfortune.
[I’ll change your ‘setting’ for you.]
[Then wouldn’t life planning become a bit easier?]
The Voice supported Ha-ru in this way, utilizing the timelines he had abandoned or lost to help modify ‘Ha-ru’s life’.
Ha-ru first constructed a family.
He changed the Orphanage Director’s child—who had supposedly died long ago—to a ‘living’ setting, and established himself as his only son.
[Of course, there’s no way to resurrect the dead.]
[But ‘the setting that it’s so’ is possible.]
Having obtained a new family in this way, Ha-ru continued to shift through timelines.
Whenever even the slightest misfortune threatened to befall him, Ha-ru regressed.
Whenever anything deviated from his wishes, Ha-ru would rewind time or skip ahead.
There was only one criterion for moving between timelines.
It would be the day before his twenty-sixth birthday—the day the Orphanage Director passed away.
Never once experiencing the first day of being twenty-seven, Ha-ru drifted through countless spans of time.
Yet despite experiencing so many lives, he remained hollow.
-You know what?
[Yeah, tell me.]
-…What about something like that?
[An idol?]
The decision to become an idol stemmed from a trivial catalyst.
-It’s cool. Everyone loves you. They remember you.
-…They tell you they love you.
【Our brightest star, happy birthday】
Those words were written on a birthday advertisement for someone hanging in a Subway Station.
Ha-ru gazed at the colorful sticky notes plastered above that advertisement and the orange flowers left behind by fans, and such thoughts took shape within him.
-Just, once in a while….
-Once in a while, I want to shine like that too.
A life where, before thousands of people, one asserts one’s existence with intensity while basking in the spotlight.
A life receiving love and support from countless people.
A life with steadfast companions who would stand beside you through anything.
A life dressed in beautiful clothes, ascending a magnificent stage, simply burning away one’s youth.
Whether fortunate or not, I had always sung well since childhood. Dancing came naturally to me as well.
Before, I hadn’t even had the leisure to cultivate such talents and skills, but now I did.
I thought that this time, pursuing the ‘dream’ people spoke of wouldn’t be so bad.
-And….
Ha-ru was still afraid of death.
Once I determined ‘the happiest single day’, my ‘self’ would disappear, and only my consciousness would remain, repeating that eternal day.
And that, in turn, meant my own death.
So Ha-ru harbored one rather foolish thought.
-Idols usually say it, don’t they? That they wish this moment could last forever.
-…Wouldn’t I end up facing a moment like that too?
In my youth and beauty, spending my most radiant and glittering moments,
I’d eventually grow terrified of a future where this youth fades, my popularity withers, and the world forgets me.
-Then perhaps I could face each eternally repeating day with greater joy.
If I could preserve myself forever—young, beautiful, radiant, glittering, and happy.
Surrounded by people who love me,
Beneath the starlit glow of cheering lightsticks,
With colleagues who share everything together,
In a moment where I could pour out my passion until sweat falls like rain.
-I want to experience a day like that too.
[As you wish.]
And so Dan Ha-ru decided to become an idol.
After several ‘corrections,’ he became a trainee at Miro.
But since he was writing an entirely new timeline that had never existed before, it wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped.
-Tae-hyun!
-Oh, Ha-ru, hello. Going to see Eun-chan?
-Yes!
There, Dan Ha-ru met many people.
Among them were those suffering from the side effects of the timelines he’d repeated countless times.
Seo Tae-hyun, who had failed his idol debut during the time Dan Ha-ru had rewound, making that failure a ‘fixed event’,
And Ju Eun-chan, whose repeated timelines of being ostracized by others had made him instinctively shy and fearful of people.
The fact that he’d grown closest to these two first after joining Miro surely stemmed partly from the guilt he’d buried deep within his heart.
Beyond just these two, Dan Ha-ru was already changing the lives of far too many people.
Even the lives of those on the opposite side of the world, unknown to him, must have been affected by his return.
But what of it?
-I just…
Exhausted by every irreversible moment, Dan Ha-ru simply chose to close his eyes.
-I just wanted to be happy.
Closing his eyes to the world that had abandoned him,
Living solely to create that ‘single day’ he desired.
It was while living with such thoughts that Dan Ha-ru met the person who would turn his world upside down.
-If there’s ever something difficult to talk about, just ask me to go to the vending machine. Then I’ll at least buy you a drink.
-I have a younger sibling, actually. When I saw you earlier… I thought of my brother and felt a bit off.
-Ah, maybe I’m overstepping? It just seemed like something hard to talk about with the kids inside.
The first ‘adult’ to extend a hand to Dan Ha-ru’s world besides the Orphanage Director.
That was Dan Ha-ru’s first impression of Kang Ha-jin.

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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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