Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 302

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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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302. Phantom Pain (1)
[Issue ‖ Timeline of the Boy’s Supremacy Manipulation Scandal Currently Exploding.jpg (512)]
1. The Incident Begins
【’Boys Who Will Change the World Are Coming’… NTV Boy’s Supremacy ‘Season 2’ Production Confirmed】
【’The Return of Cherry Boy’… Kairos Seo Tae-hyun, Emerging as MC Candidate for Boy’s Supremacy Season 2】
【Shim Ho-won Challenging ‘Boy’s Supremacy 2′ Again? Agency States “Unable to Comment”】
【’Who Is the Second B-light’? Why Boy’s Supremacy Season 2 Is Highly Anticipated】
Late February saw articles announcing that NTV was preparing Boy’s Supremacy Season 2.
While rumors circulated about MC and cast members from related parties, an article emerged mentioning Kairos Seo Tae-hyun as an MC candidate.
>> This is where the first question arose.
Boy’s Supremacy already has derivative groups composed of Boy’s Supremacy finalists:
‘B-light’ and ‘B-liver’
.
Seo Tae-hyun did gain popularity as Cherry Boy in Boy’s Supremacy, but ultimately
was eliminated
in the finals.
So why would Seo Tae-hyun be mentioned as MC, leaving the derivative group members aside?
Some fans raised questions, but without solid grounds, the matter was brushed aside.
2. The Incident Develops
【Personal SNS Capture Post from Boy’s Supremacy Eliminated Contestant】
Then, the other night, a post appeared briefly on Ham Sae-byeok’s (Boy’s Supremacy Season 1 eliminated contestant) personal SNS before being quickly deleted.
To summarize simply:
‘I received appearance offers for both Boy’s Supremacy 1 and Season 2, but declined them. The reason was that I felt everything in Boy’s Supremacy 1 was rigged from the start.’
I’m
For reference, Ham Sae-byeok ranked 24th overall in Boy’s Supremacy
and was a skilled competitor who made it to the semifinals, with a decent personal fanbase.
For some reason, after being eliminated from Boy’s Supremacy, she left her agency entirely and withdrew from entertainment industry activities.
>> Fans of Ham Sae-byeok who saw this began questioning whether there had been manipulation during the Boy’s Supremacy filming process.
>> Fans rewatching the worn-out Boy’s Supremacy frame by frame began discovering strange inconsistencies.
(…)
4. The Incident Reaches Its Peak
And
yesterday evening
, a staff member who was part of the Boy’s Supremacy production team posted anonymously
evidence of Boy’s Supremacy 1 manipulation.
(Capture of production team group chat containing conversations about editing manipulation and ranking manipulation.jpg)
(Program composition sheet and script for authentication.jpg)
Posted as a conscience confession, but currently
deleted by administrators
.
Looking at this here
-The production team intentionally controlled screen time for cast members
-There were cast members the production team deliberately pushed
-There was discrimination among cast members in interviews and personal content
-There was a cast member who should have been eliminated but was advanced anyway due to buzz
These four facts were exposed, and currently Ntv has issued a statement denying all allegations.
But here, people are saying that the last one—’the cast member who should have been eliminated but was passed’—might be Kairos Seo Tae-hyun.
In fact, during Boy’s Supremacy’s broadcast, Seo Tae-hyun was considered the cast member with the best buzz
After narrowly being eliminated in the finals, he immediately joined Miro Entertainment
> Last year on Ntv’s in-house survival show ‘Miro Maze’, he debuted in first place
> Currently active as MC for Ntv’s A-Countdown, and the main PD for A-Countdown was a director during Boy’s Supremacy Season 1
> And now he’s being considered as an MC candidate for Boy’s Supremacy Season 2
With all this, suspicions arose that ‘Seo Tae-hyun is receiving preferential treatment as an Ntv PD pick’.
Currently, both B-light and B-liver members have firmly stated they have no intention of commenting on this
And Miro, Seo Tae-hyun’s agency, is also remaining silent
If this gets bigger, it seems like police investigation could actually happen, but I’m not entirely sure
5. Conclusion
-Boy’s Supremacy manipulation possibility: YES
-Seo Tae-hyun Ntv PD pick suspicion: YES
-B-light and B-liver manipulation benefit possibility: YES
Judge for yourselves
After reading the summary post without skipping a single character to clearly understand the situation, this was my impression.
“They’re really tearing him apart.”
I’ve never seen anything quite so absurd.
Amidst vague allegations where nothing was properly proven, only Seo Tae-hyun became a clear target, taking direct hits from all the arrows being hurled at him.
Even more blatantly than those B-light and B-liver guys who actually debuted through that survival show.
Why?
‘Because he’s doing the best right now.’
It was natural that Seo Tae-hyun’s every move was being analyzed. Among the Boy’s Supremacy alumni, he was the most actively working right now.
Some B-light members had started solo activities, but their results were disappointing, and while B-liver members were doing relatively well, many said they got completely crushed by us and Lanion at the end of this year.
In short, they weren’t worth criticizing.
Perhaps because of that, the comment section that followed was filled entirely with people tearing into Seo Tae-hyun alone.
– Wow, but if this is real, that’s seriously creepy
People who know would all know about SMH’s NTV pick, right…? Even back during Socheon, there were talks on sites like Gall saying it seemed like the PD had a pick for them… I never imagined it would lead to actual ranking manipulation though lol…
– Honestly, whenever Cherry Boy was making a fuss, I thought it was just that level? But manipulation is shocking
└ 2 Honestly, I didn’t understand why people liked them so much either lol
“Damn… I feel like the world is messing with me.”
└ I did think he had some buzz factor? But now I’m wondering if it was all just manufactured hype
– If that’s the case, shouldn’t we suspect Miro Maze of manipulation too? Seo Tae-hyun 1st place<
└ Author: ㅇㅇ I’m trying to write a novel. But isn’t it too tight for a novel?
– Anonymous2: Why are you writing such elaborate nonsense if he came from Miro they would’ve debuted him under Endway lololol what were they doing letting him rot for 3 years with no individual activities before debuting him in a survival show?
└ OP: I think Seo Tae-hyun might’ve been too young to debut under Endway, maybe they were thinking ahead for the next generation? Just speculating
– Anonymous3: But like… it does sound plausible though Miro probably should make a statement
└ Anonymous4: It was weird that he suddenly went to Miro but I’m not sure I’m staying neutral for now
└ Anonymous5: 2222 everyone’s just full of suspicions my head hurts
“This is driving me insane.”
My head felt like it was splitting open.
Stringing together only the fragments of information visible on the surface created a bizarre picture completely different from the truth. It was absurd enough that they were pretending to know things based on posts with not a single accurate detail, but scrolling down, I saw quite a few comments that were gradually being swayed by these posts, which made me feel even more unsettled.
Unable to find an end to the endless content, I finally closed Lee Do-ha’s laptop with a sharp snap.
“So, what about the company? They’re not handling this?”
“According to Kwon Wook, the Executive Director is currently contacting NTV to figure out exactly what’s going on. We’re sure everything else is false, but we don’t know what happened during Boy’s Supremacy either.”
Lee Do-ha answered while rubbing the back of his neck, his face full of exhaustion. Then Lee Yu-gun, who hadn’t even been looking at the laptop with an irritated expression, added his words in an angry voice.
“Of course it’s bullshit. What is he, some kind of PD’s favorite? In the first place, during Boy’s Supremacy, Cha Min-seok or whoever went instead of him, and he only joined Miro because of him anyway.”
I agreed with Lee Yu-gun’s words as well.
To begin with, the idea that Seo Tae-hyun’s popularity during Boy’s Supremacy was media play was a bit of a stretch. If that kind of popularity could be created through media play, the South Korean influencer market should have collapsed long ago.
‘Where in the world is there a PD’s favorite where a single episode’s entire screen time is just 5 seconds of someone chewing dumplings?’
This was a fact you could discover just by finding a few cut videos of Seo Tae-hyun from each Boy’s Supremacy episode.
So much time had passed that people seemed to be collectively remembering only the scenes that left an impression and mistakenly thinking ‘Seo Tae-hyun had a lot of screen time.’
Besides, Miro Maze was originally a project I planned to push out the former Executive Director and his parachute-dropped son, so there’s no way it could be related to this incident. On top of that, it was me who got Seo Tae-hyun, who had quit everything and run off to Gangwon Province, to participate in Miro Maze!
‘I went all the way to Gangwon Province myself and sweet-talked him into coming, and if I let NTV steal that credit, I’d be the one who got screwed!’
The ‘Project: Make Seo Tae-hyun a Successful Idol’ that neither the Boy’s Supremacy production team nor Miro could accomplish—that was my Achievement, no matter what anyone said.
Throughout the entire timeline, it was me who made Seo Tae-hyun, who had always abandoned his dreams and left the entertainment industry, soar to where he is now, and just because of this one rumor, all that credit and narrative was getting completely destroyed?
“Ugh, the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get….”
The problem was that I couldn’t think of an appropriate statement to address this.
If Boy’s Supremacy had truly given Seo Tae-hyun some kind of manipulation benefit he didn’t even know about, that would be the worst case scenario. And even if that wasn’t the case, there were far too many confidential matters mixed in to cleanly resolve these questions.
‘To expose this, I’d have to explain that Cha Min-seok was involved in everything from participating in Boy’s Supremacy to joining Miro… but there’s no way Rene would allow that.’
Currently, Lanion was doing fairly well overall, but among them, the one sweeping up fans indiscriminately—muggles, fanatics, everyone—was the visual center, Cha Min-seok. There was no way Rene would let someone like Cha Min-seok get dragged into such a massive issue and become the subject of gossip, and moreover, it was questionable whether Cha Min-seok himself would cooperate.
‘If I’d known this would happen, I should’ve been more careful back then…!’
Is this why people say life goes in circles? Ha.
But even if Dan Ha-ru went crazy right now and suddenly rewound everything, sending the timeline back to the past, I had no intention of smiling brightly at Cha Min-seok and saying, ‘Let’s build a good relationship now for that day that might never come.’ And Seo Tae-hyun wouldn’t want to reveal his past connection with Cha Min-seok either.
‘Sigh. Stay calm, Kang Ha-jin.’
I took a breath to steady myself, then looked at Dan Ha-ru sitting across from me.
“Dan Ha-ru.”
“…Yes, yes?”
“If you rewind time again, you’re seriously dead.”
Just to be safe, I drove the point home firmly. Startled by my rough tone, Dan Ha-ru’s eyes widened as he fluttered both hands and shook his head.
“No, I won’t! Even if I wanted to, I can’t now!”
“Really?”
“Yes, yes. …Well, to be precise, if I did it, I think I could do it again, but, anyway, I’m not going to!”
“What do you mean ‘I think I could do it again’? If you’re not doing it, then you’re not doing it.”
“It seems like it takes time for the ability to completely disappear… But I’m really not going to do it, okay? I really won’t anymore!”
“…Fine, whatever. I’ll trust you for now.”
As I looked at Dan Ha-ru nodding earnestly with a skeptical gaze, he seemed to lose his spirit under that stare, his shoulders drooping as he made a pitiful expression.
I’d noticed it since the last time with Touch High—it seemed we’d been too lenient raising him. Was he really so discouraged over just this much?
‘Though I don’t really plan to be strict with him going forward…’
Thinking that, I asked Lee Do-ha, who was patting Dan Ha-ru’s head with an expression similar to mine.
“So, where is Seo Tae-hyun right now and what’s he doing? Kwon Wook was supposed to bring him here, wasn’t he?”
“Ah, about that…”
Lee Do-ha then withdrew his hand from patting Dan Ha-ru’s head and answered with an awkward expression.
“He’s in Gangwon Province.”
“…Where?”
“Gangwon Province. He went down to Uncle’s Pension.”
This fresh Cherry Boy ran off to Gangwon Province again!?
At this rate, we’re going to end up filming a nationwide tour documentary.
An exasperated sigh escaped from my lips 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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