Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 230

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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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230. The Ultimate Punishment (1)
This was the Kairos Dormitory.
After dropping a massive spoiler during the live broadcast, I, Kang Ha-jin, and Dan Ha-ru were dragged back by Jeong Si-u in a daze, and we were currently….
“Hold your hands up straight.”
…standing in punishment with our hands raised.
Nobody had ordered us to do it—the moment we entered the dormitory, we both crawled on all fours to a corner of the living room and raised our hands of our own volition. It was our way of showing remorse, something we’d come up with during a lengthy discussion in the car to avoid “salad without meat” and “evening bean rice” for dinner.
The only thing was that when Tae-hyun saw us like that, he simply nodded and told us to keep going.
‘No, wait. I’m still his senior, so why do I listen to him so well? I’m the group leader, aren’t I? I wasn’t even the one who spoiled anything.’
About five minutes passed like this.
Finally growing dissatisfied with the situation, I lifted my head abruptly and protested to Seo Tae-hyun.
“Hey, isn’t this much sincerity worth forgiving…?”
Seo Tae-hyun quietly held up his phone screen. It was a screenshot of the management team and PR team’s group chat in chaos because of our spoiler.
“You got invited to the staff group chat too…?”
“Kwon Wook sent me the screenshot. And is that really what matters right now…?”
“…Dan Ha-ru. Hands up. This is your fault.”
“I really thought the article had already been published….”
At a loss for words, I poked Dan Ha-ru, and he grumbled back as if he’d been wronged.
‘The article was supposed to come out at 6 PM…’ he muttered indignantly, when Lee Yu-gun emerged from the kitchen carrying a pot of stew and revealed the truth.
“The 6 PM article is correct.”
“….”
“Tomorrow evening at 6 PM was the problem.”
“…Ugh.”
Upon hearing Lee Yu-gun’s words, Dan Ha-ru let out a heavy sigh with the most dejected expression and raised his arms even higher.
Then Tae-hyun, finding the situation absurd no matter how he thought about it, began lecturing both of us.
“I mean, of all things! You just had to wait one more day! And you couldn’t even manage that and had to spoil it!?”
“That’s right…. I just needed to wait a bit longer….”
“…Not you! Conscientious Ha-ru!”
As Dan Ha-ru launched a name-based attack with a gloomy expression, Tae-hyun, caught off guard for a moment, barely suppressed a laugh that threatened to burst out and struggled to compose himself. At Seo Tae-hyun’s reaction, Dan Ha-ru, who had genuinely thought he just needed to wait a little longer, lowered his head again with an “Ah….”
Unable to bear watching this, Lee Yu-gun brought out some side dishes and added a comment.
“If Dan Ha-ru had just waited one more day….”
“…Hyung?”
At that terrible pun, Ju Eun-chan, who had belatedly picked up his spoon and followed along, looked at Lee Yu-gun with a betrayed expression. Lee Yu-gun simply winked as if telling him to stay quiet.
The moment he did, Tae-hyun, who had barely been holding back his emotions, finally couldn’t suppress the corners of his mouth rising and lowered his head as he burst out laughing.
“Ah! Hey, Lee Yu-gun! Don’t make me laugh…! I’m trying to be serious right now!”
“He’s laughing at that….”
“His laugh threshold is pretty low. Sometimes he even laughs at rocks.”
“No, no, no! That’s not true!!”
“―Ah!! Stop hitting me already! Your hands are spicy!!”
No matter how much I protested, Tae-hyun, having already laughed his fill and failing to regain control of the atmosphere, suddenly smacked Lee Yu-gun’s back. As Lee Yu-gun, who’d taken a blow hard enough to make a sharp sound, snapped back at Tae-hyun, I quietly lowered my arms while gauging the situation.
Then, signaling to Ha-ru, who was still sighing heavily with his arms raised, to lower his arms as well, Ha-ru cautiously lowered them while keeping an eye on Tae-hyun.
In the end, it was Si-woo who rushed over after receiving Eun-chan’s SOS call and brought dinner, finally putting an end to this chaos.
“Alright, you’ve all had your fun. Sit down and eat.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, hyung.”
At Si-woo’s words that ended the situation, Ha-jin and Ha-ru quickly sensed the mood and hurried to the table, busily setting down their utensils.
Tae-hyun, who was about to say something more, seemed to realize that continuing would ruin the atmosphere, so he obediently closed his mouth. Yoo Gun’s jab to Tae-hyun’s ribs also helped matters.
The sharpest blow, however, came from Eun-chan, who was quietly ladling stew into a bowl.
“Because of the spoiler, Kwon Wook hyung had to rush out earlier to call the Executive Director. We were supposed to eat together originally, but… it seems the article might need to be pushed up to today.”
“…I’m sorry.”
“Honestly, I think moderate spoilers can actually be fun for the fans too. But still, we need to be careful. Our work doesn’t involve just us and Destiny. You understand, Ha-ru?”
“Yes…. It’s so hard because I’m not used to it….”
“It’s okay. Everyone makes mistakes.”
At Eun-chan’s surprisingly mature opinion, all the hyungs at the table turned their gazes toward him. Instinctively shrinking behind Yoo Gun under that burdensome attention, Eun-chan looked up at his seniors with a wary expression.
“…Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Our Eun-chan… you’ve really grown up….”
Tae-hyun’s nostrils reddened as he affectionately patted Eun-chan’s head with eyes full of pride. Seeing his eyes grow misty, Yoo Gun asked in an exasperated tone.
“Why are you crying? You were just laughing a minute ago. Is this puberty?”
“Don’t you find Eun-chan impressive?”
“No, I do find him impressive, but why are you crying? Are you his father?”
“You third-years, stop fighting. Hyung is tired today.”
“…We’re not fighting!”
“We weren’t fighting.”
“Right, then let’s just eat. Do-ha, come over here too.”
Si-woo, who had settled the third-years’ brewing argument with one decisive statement, called Do-ha, who was finishing ladling the remaining rice in the kitchen.
Then Do-ha walked into the living room with large strides, a tray piled high with rice bowls. He set down a heaping bowl of rice topped with beans right in front of Ha-jin.
“…Do-ha?”
Ha-jin’s eyes widened in shock at his same-aged friend’s betrayal as he stared at Do-ha.
Do-ha, who had silently dipped all his rice into seaweed soup, spoke in a calm voice.
“You’re the leader, Ha-jin, so you have to take responsibility for your members’ mistakes too.”
As he dipped his rice into the soup, Ha-jin noticed the corners of his mouth slightly—very, very slightly—curved upward, which was unusual. He pointed accusingly and jumped to his feet.
“You…! Don’t lie, De-on! You’re getting revenge for when I teased you as De-on last time, aren’t you!?”
“…That’s a misunderstanding.”
“What!? What!? You answered late just now, you De-on!!?”
A second war had broken out.
Yoo Gun and Eun-chan saying they weren’t kids and shouldn’t keep fighting, Tae-hyun insisting the hyung bore some responsibility too, Do-ha maintaining complete silence, and Ha-jin crying out about the injustice and demanding protection of the leader’s human rights.
The situation had (as usual) smoothly devolved into chaos.
Si-woo, the only one standing apart from this second war, gazed at his noisy younger siblings with eyes full of things to say, then quietly sighed. He turned to Ha-ru sitting beside him, who was rolling only his eyes while holding his spoon, and spoke.
“Let’s eat.”
“…Yes.”
Perhaps someone had desperately wished for it—
a perfectly ordinary, utterly mundane everyday life.
* * *
Kang Ha-jin returned to his room well past midnight.
After dinner, once the meeting about Upia’s guest stage performance concluded, it was already this hour.
Well, truthfully the meeting itself hadn’t taken that long….
“That relentless Seo Tae-hyun…. Just a harsh Seo Tae-hyun…. A Seo Tae-hyun who resembles Seo Tae-il….”
“….”
After dinner, before starting the meeting, Tae-hyun insisted everyone needed to digest first, so he dragged all the members into the living room and forced them through two hours of calisthenics—which was how we ended up like this.
‘We actually finished that meeting properly today, right?’
I briefly worried whether everyone had been too exhausted and just rushed through the meeting, but I quickly dismissed that concern.
Seo Tae-hyun, despite having no talent for athletics, had transformed self-management from mere habit into pure instinct—there was no way he’d let a meeting fall apart without notice.
‘Wait, if that’s the case, shouldn’t Seo Tae-hyun be the leader? Was I actually just a figurehead leader while Tae-hyun was the real power behind the scenes?’
While I was reeling from this newly discovered power dynamic, Lee Do-ha, who had come in with me, had been unusually quiet since earlier.
At first I thought he was just exhausted from the workout, but once I noticed his behavior seemed slightly off, I realized his state was genuinely subtle.
Moreover—,
[Colleague ‘Lee Do-ha’s’ current state is— ‘slightly awkward’]
With such an obvious notification popping up, I couldn’t exactly pretend not to see it.
Having shared a room with Do-ha all this time and come to understand his psychology and personality fairly well, I quickly deduced his mental state this time too.
‘He must be feeling sorry about that joke with the bean rice earlier.’
I had actually finished the entire bowl of bean rice placed in front of me at dinner. Considering how much he normally detested beans, it was quite the event.
The truth was, I had been incredibly hungry from the stress I’d accumulated from the album situation, so I wasn’t in a position to be picky about beans or mixed grains….
‘He treats me a bit more gently than I expected.’
Do-ha was the first ‘friend’ I had made since entering Miro, and he had a tendency to be somewhat awkward around me. Of course, that didn’t mean he’d become soft—he still delivered his characteristic brutal honesty and merciless assessments like before….
But it was definitely clear that when it came to ’emotional matters,’ he paid more attention to me than to others. Perhaps that was because he knew I had trauma related to isolation.
In any case, once I realized Do-ha was clearly being considerate of me, I paused to think.
‘It’d be kind of funny to directly tell him the joke was fun so don’t worry about it.’
Direct communication would probably be more effective with Do-ha, but I wanted to use a more refined approach.
Looking at how the members were, there would probably be many more instances like this in the future, and I couldn’t give feedback every time saying ‘that joke was okay, but this one wasn’t.’
After thinking it over, I lay in bed ready to sleep, then opened my mouth while looking at my phone.
“Do-ha.”
“…Yeah?”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow… I don’t think I have any particular schedule.”
“Want to go play some basketball? With Yoo Gun and Ju Eun-chan too.”
At my casual, deliberately nonchalant question, Do-ha seemed to catch my meaning, though a bit slowly but certainly.
Around the time I confirmed the red alert that had appeared in the system disappearing, Do-ha also climbed onto his bed and nodded.
“Yeah. Let’s go in the evening.”
“Okay~ Sleep well. I think I’ll literally pass out the moment I close my eyes.”
“Yeah. Sleep well.”
“If I can’t wake up in the morning, just leave me be. I’m seriously exhausted.”
“Got it. I’ll let Si-woo know.”
Si-woo, being the eldest, had taken on the responsibility of waking up early each morning to rouse the other members.
Officially, it was to send the high schoolers to school and keep everyone on schedule during active periods….
But one day, when Ha-jin witnessed Si-woo delighting in waking Eun-chan and Tae-hyun—who were particularly heavy sleepers—he couldn’t help but suspect that Si-woo simply found it entertaining to watch the members struggle out of bed.
‘Well, I’ve laid the groundwork nicely now….’
After confirming that Do-ha had switched off the mood light beside the bed, Ha-jin opened his Quest window.
In the Quest window he’d grown accustomed to seeing, there was a new entry beyond the Rookie Award and the inaccessible Quest.
The moment the club sighting rumor had erupted, Ha-jin had combed through the system and created this Quest himself.
[Mini Quest Arrived!]
Objective: Clarify the false rumor.
Reward upon completion: Private audience with ‘The Entity’
[Quest completed. Reward is ready to be claimed.]
[‘Private audience with The Entity’—claim now? (Y/N)]
Since Thirteen isn’t here, I’ll have to do this with Thirteen’s superior. Dirty work.
Ha-jin nodded. And soon, he sank into deep sleep.

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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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