Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 253

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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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253. Touch High! (5)
The first thing I checked was the System.
Without the System’s interference, there was no way such an absurd variety show scenario could have descended upon my hands.
[Confirmed: The System has exerted no influence on the fixed regressor.]
‘…So it wasn’t you?’
Then what was it? Was my luck really in the negatives?
‘No, wait. The footage actually turned out great, didn’t it? That’s pretty good, right?’
While I was standing there bewildered, someone suddenly grabbed my shoulder.
“Ha-jin!!!”
“Ugh—AHHHHH!”
“You’ve got to do variety shows!!!!”
It was Sanchez, thrilled at discovering such a talented prospect.
Watching Sanchez rejoice over finding a new blue-chip talent in the entertainment industry, Ji Su-ho, who had been monitoring from beyond the filming studio, pressed his forehead in exasperation once more.
“H-how could you say something so frightening to a rookie idol who’s making a comeback next week….”
“No, anyway, he’s not singing! He’s not dancing! He’s just doing variety shows and leaving! You’re an entertainer right now, that’s what you are!”
Once he put it that way, I had nothing to say in return.
The real problem was that even I couldn’t explain this trolling behavior—unless I was some kind of saboteur—as anything other than pure bad luck on my part.
I turned to my teammates, who were eyeing me with suspicion, and offered an explanation.
“Listen, everyone on the team? Please hear me out. You might think I’m a saboteur. You might. But if I really were a saboteur, would I have bungled the mission so pathetically? I’m really not. Please don’t be fooled by me.”
Then Dan Ha-ru, who had been preparing to kick the shuttlecock in my stead, nodded and agreed with my words.
“But Ha-jin hyung is right about this.”
“Yeah? Ha-ru, tell them. Tell them Ha-jin is normally not this bad at games, right?”
“If hyung really were a saboteur, I think he would’ve set things up much more subtly and carefully. What just happened… maybe hyung just has incredibly bad luck? Ha-jin hyung really does have terrible luck normally….”
“Then what about the shuttlecock? You’re idols with that physique—you’re telling me you can’t kick a shuttlecock once? Does that make sense?”
To the comedian who asked with an expression of utter disbelief, Dan Ha-ru nodded with absolute conviction.
“Ah, yes. That’s his normal skill level. We’re amazed every time we see it too.”
He was clearly defending me, so why did I feel so uncomfortable?
In any case, with Dan Ha-ru’s defense, the suspicion surrounding me diminished somewhat, but our team now had only one more chance left.
If we failed this time too, we might end up in last place.
In that situation, the Team Leader made a decision.
“Alright then, Ha-jin, you take the step counter. The step counter just needs the numbers filled, so you do that, Ha-ru will stab the knife again, and the rest stays the same. The noona will do the shuttlecock kick. If you mess this up too, Ha-jin, then you’re really a saboteur.”
“If I troll again this time, just bury me here.”
After reassigning the missions one final time, we took our positions with grim determination.
Lee Do-ha, still at the far end, hadn’t even managed to touch his foot to the soccer ball yet.
“…?”
In that tense moment, Lee Do-ha’s expression, which I caught a glimpse of, was subtle.
It was a strange look—as if he’d realized something, or as if he sensed danger—but before I could observe it more carefully, the whistle signaling the start of the mission pierced the air first.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
“We have to succeed this time! We can do it!”
The mission, which began rapidly from the first turn, finally showed real promise of success this time.
I spun around an elephant’s trunk ten times and tossed my shoe into the circle,
shook my entire body and filled up 100 pedometer counts,
effortlessly inserted five knives consecutively into the wooden barrel toy,
and kicked the jianzi ten times with perfect rhythm!
I failed a few times in the middle and had to go back, but I still had plenty of time to spare.
Now all that remained were Lee Do-ha’s soccer ball mission and the group jump rope.
“Let’s go, Do-ha!”
“Do-ha, you can do it!”
Lee Do-ha’s mission was to kick a ball from a designated line and pop the balloons attached to the wall.
Though he practiced taekwondo, he was skilled enough at kicking a ball that he should easily succeed at this…
Bang―!
“…?”
Lee Do-ha kicked the ball with fierce momentum.
The ball that should have flown in a straight line shot up at a right angle instead.
The ball, drawing an unnecessarily massive arc as it soared, landed perfectly in the arms of a certain idol member from the Opposing Team who had been watching us from the side.
“…Why is he acting like that again?”
Unlike me, Lee Do-ha had the feet of a god—there was no way he’d kicked the ball wrong.
While we stood there bewildered, the whistle signaling the end of 100 seconds blew.
Finally, Lee Do-ha, now wearing comfortably oversized clothes with relaxed shoulder fit, turned his massive frame toward us and spoke calmly.
“I am the saboteur.”
“…What?”
“Film me.”
The true beginning of rule-breaking had started.
* * *
Lee Do-ha’s reasoning was this:
-He was uncomfortable because Ha-jin kept performing the saboteur’s role, even though he was the saboteur.
-Though he had deliberately failed the mission because he was the saboteur, he was also uncomfortable because this was another way of betraying his teammates.
-Therefore, by revealing that he was the saboteur and accepting votes after the mission ended, he would negate the personal badge he would receive, paying the price for this failure.
At Lee Do-ha’s bombshell revelation, the Filming Studio fell into complete chaos.
“Wait, how can you reveal that? Is it okay to reveal it?”
“You didn’t say the saboteur’s identity had to be a secret….”
Sanchez, standing beside me, nodded with a rather serious expression, accepting the reasonable provocation.
“Now that you mention it, that’s true…. You’re right, you didn’t say it had to be secret. We’ve been feeling this pressure that whenever someone is called a saboteur, it has to be hidden, but maybe we’ve been broadcasting under a huge prejudice all this time.”
“I want to be a truthful saboteur to my teammates.”
“Do-ha has presented a new paradigm to the saboteur variety show industry. I’m really grateful, yes.”
“It’s an honor.”
Let me say it again—Lee Do-ha is Kairos.
Which means I don’t understand that guy either.
‘Can we really just broadcast whatever happens like this?’
The Team Leader seemed to want to continue the conversation about Lee Do-ha’s bombshell revelation, but due to time constraints, the next team’s mission challenge had to proceed. As a result, we had to return to the waiting area without further discussion.
The moment we sat down, Dan Ha-ru grabbed Lee Do-ha and asked.
“Hyung, are you really the Saboteur?”
“Yeah.”
At his honest answer, Dan Ha-ru fell silent, lost in thought.
Meanwhile, the relay missions from the other two teams proceeded in rapid succession.
Watching the game progress so smoothly and quickly compared to our team, I felt a bit embarrassed.
“It was originally supposed to be this easy difficulty….”
At the Team Leader’s murmur, I quietly averted my gaze.
“Oh, Hui-an, be careful!”
“Ah, I’m sorry…!”
Turning around at the loud voice, Storm Header’s youngest member, who had been brimming with enthusiasm since the opening, was covering his mouth and continuously apologizing toward the Production Team.
Looking at what happened, it seemed he’d kicked the ball a bit too hard while trying his best, and it had gone flying toward the Production Team.
‘He doesn’t need to be that scared.’
From the moment we rented this spacious gymnasium and set up a ball-kicking mission, the Production Team must have been prepared for this level of action.
However, this member Hui-an seemed unable to read the atmosphere of the scene well, probably due to the pressure of appearing on public broadcast and the burden of wanting to do well. I could even see his teammate Sanchez doing his best to establish a character and ease the tension.
‘Was he the same age as Eun-chan, or the same age as the third-year students….’
Being still young, it was natural for him to be overflowing with enthusiasm yet clumsy in his actions. In fact, our members were adapting abnormally well to this situation.
“Come on, let’s give our Hui-an a round of applause!”
“Fighting~!”
“You can do it, you can do it!”
Sanchez prompted the applause to lighten the mood. Since this kind of reaction at this timing was a shortcut to getting a one-shot, I clapped while drawing out the maximum response I could manage.
“…?”
But Dan Ha-ru, who would normally have made a fuss alongside me, was unusually quiet.
When I checked what he was doing, he had a thoughtful expression and was timidly just tapping his palms together. Then he quickly returned to his normal expression and forced a smile.
‘This is 100% something happened.’
Did that Storm Header youngest member step on his foot while we were changing clothes earlier?
In any case, bringing something that happened behind the camera to in front of the camera was absolutely not a desirable attitude.
I naturally reacted and lowered my head, whispering to Dan Ha-ru.
“Dan Ha-ru.”
“…Yes?”
“Whatever you’re thinking about right now, I’ll listen to everything when we go home, so focus on the recording for now.”
“…Ah. Yes. I’m sorry.”
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be something serious enough to shake his mental state, and Dan Ha-ru quickly returned to his usual self.
The turns passed quickly, and soon it was time for each team’s ‘Saboteur Identification’ as our team ended up in last place in the first game.
“So we’re voting for Do-ha?”
“He personally bet on himself getting voted for and failed the mission, so we absolutely have to vote for Do-ha.”
“I will humbly accept my fate.”
Our entire team voted for Lee Do-ha. It was the obvious result.
With this, we were able to earn a total of 3 Mission Badges.
Mission Badges are awarded with 9 to the 1st place team, 6 to the 2nd place team, and 3 to the 3rd place team, while the Saboteur takes the exact opposite based on team ranking. Among them, the person who receives the most votes as the Saboteur automatically gets –3 from their received votes.
‘There must be a reason why they’re having us earn individual badges instead of just team points….’
While I pondered the game rules lightly, the second game was already beginning.
This time it was also a ‘Sports Day’ mission—one person from each team would step forward, slip into a tube connected by a rubber band around their body, and quickly pull out the flag in front of them in a typical test of strength competition.
The problem was our team’s roster.
‘The only people who can actually contribute are me and Lee Do-ha?’
The two fixed panelists were famous even in their daily lives as being paper-thin siblings, and while Dan Ha-ru was average by comparison, the idol members on the other teams happened to have unusually impressive physiques.
If we came in last place in this mission too, our team would be at an absolute disadvantage regardless of broadcast time.
‘It’s not like winning is the goal, but it’s still a matter of pride—getting completely steamrolled is annoying.’
The cooperation of Lee Do-ha, who was a saboteur in every way, was absolutely essential.
The Team Leader grabbed Lee Do-ha’s shoulder.
“Do-ha. If you make us come in last again, we’re definitely going to film you. Then you’re automatically minus 3, got it? Do your best, okay?”
It was a good attempt, but not an excellent threat.
Because….
“No. I’ll do my best to lose again this time.”
“…?”
“It’s much more advantageous for me if the team comes in last and I get voted out than if the team wins first place.”
…That bastard had already done all his calculations.
The saboteur Lee Do-ha’s GG declaration.

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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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