Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 311

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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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311. So That Spring May Come (3)
The touching reunion was brief. As Tae-hyun and I locked eyes, I was the first to break into a sly grin.
Tae-hyun, bewildered by that cryptic smile, mirrored it with his own laugh. That’s when I, still wearing that innocent expression, suddenly grabbed both his cheeks with my hands.
“…?”
Then I yanked those cheeks with absolutely brutal force.
It hurt like hell.
“Ow! Owww! You crazy bastard!?”
“I told you Gangwon Province was off-limits! Off-limits!”
“Agh! Ahhhhh! It hurts! It hurts!”
As Tae-hyun tried to escape my malicious grip, I kicked off my shoes, climbed onto the wooden platform, and locked him in a headlock. It wasn’t painful enough to cause real injury, but experiencing a headlock for the first time in his life, Tae-hyun shrieked in panic.
“Hyung, are you insane!? I didn’t even want to come here in the first place!”
“Even if Kwon Wook set the GPS, you were the one who grabbed the steering wheel and drove!”
“I said I was going to our house—what business is it of yours!? Ow! Let go, seriously!?”
“If you were going to come, you could’ve at least relaxed! Do you have any idea how much I’ve been stressed because of that red notification that won’t disappear!?”
“What, what red—? What are you even talking about! Kang Ha-jin! Let go, I’m serious!?”
Tae-hyun had no way of knowing that I’d suffered the entire drive to Gangwon Province because of a system notification displaying his status. But I was determined to exact my belated revenge, so I refused to let him go easily.
As a result, Tae-hyun, who’d completely forgotten about the digging he’d been doing moments before, thrashed about trying to escape from me. Soon I felt someone approach and naturally subdue me, prying me away from Tae-hyun.
“Why is this hyung causing trouble all the way out here…?”
“Tae-hyun, get up.”
When Tae-hyun lifted his head, he could see Yoo Gun casually folding my body (literally folding it) and holding me in place on one side of the platform, while Do-ha was helping him to his feet.
Before Tae-hyun could even fully process the members suddenly descending on his hometown, he spotted Ha-ru bouncing excitedly from the distant entrance, sprinting toward us. Beside him were Si-woo, wearing sunglasses and surveying the pension grounds, and Kwon Wook, who’d just finished parking and was tucking his car keys into his bag.
“Wait, why is everyone…? Did you all come together?”
Tae-hyun asked, still dazed, and Ha-ru, who’d dashed from the platform in one breath, answered with a bright, delighted smile.
“We came to pick you up, hyung!”
“….”
“Eun-chan hyung is here too!”
“What?”
Shocked to hear that Eun-chan, who’d been injured in the accident, had come along, Tae-hyun watched as Ha-ru grinned widely and thrust his phone in front of his face. Through the screen, a video call was active, and Eun-chan, dressed in a hospital gown, was waving his hand.
-Tae-hyun hyung!
“Hey, Ju Eun-chan! Are you okay?”
-I’m fine, hyung! I wanted to come to Gangwon Province too, but the doctor said absolutely not….
“Of course not! How could an accident victim just leave!? Who would even allow that!?”
-The hyungs even came up with a plan to sneak me out of the hospital without the doctor knowing, but Kwon Wook hyung caught us, so I couldn’t go through with it.
“What, what…? Sneak out…?”
I didn’t need to hear who the “hyungs” Eun-chan was referring to were. The moment Tae-hyun’s eyes narrowed, he fixed a glare on Kairos’s proud senior line, and they immediately averted their eyes, looking away.
Yoo Gun added a comment from beside him.
“I told you. There’s no one normal here except you.”
At that shameless, confident remark, Tae-hyun finally let out a laugh of resignation.
But resignation is still a form of laughter, and once he’d started laughing, what followed was an uncontrollable stream of genuine, joyful laughter.
It was a smile so refreshing that he couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking about moments before, or what worries had occupied his mind.
-Tae-hyun, come to Seoul quickly.
“….”
-Let’s prepare for our comeback right away. I’ll work hard to improve.
“….”
-We have to take first place again, hyung.
At Eun-chan’s cheerful words, I fell silent for a moment. Then I quietly looked back at Eun-chan through the phone, at the members surrounding me, and at my manager hyung. Kwon Wook, who had joined the group last, spoke with an awkward smile.
“I was planning to come alone, but these guys insisted on coming together and threw such a fit.”
“….”
“Let’s go quickly, Tae-hyun. You have a mountain of schedules piling up.”
As if to prove his point, Kwon Wook took the incoming call and hurried off to the other side of the group, leaving only those words behind.
I fell silent for a moment. The members couldn’t know what thoughts were running through that head of mine, but they simply waited, allowing me to fully feel the emotions of someone who thought deeply and felt things intensely.
Unlike the other members who had been together through difficult times, I had endured those moments alone in this place. It was a small gesture of comfort toward me.
“Seo Tae-hyun.”
After a short time had passed, I called out to Tae-hyun with a smile, having barely escaped Yu Gun’s restraint after pleading with him. The system window showing Tae-hyun’s emotional changes continued to update before my eyes.
“Do you remember what I said when I first came to pick you up?”
The moment he heard those words, Tae-hyun nodded without hesitation. He hadn’t forgotten a single word of that conversation.
As if I’d expected that, I leaned back and raised my eyebrows.
“I meant every word of it.”
Tae-hyun looked at me. As the familiar face overlapped with the familiar scenery, a familiar memory surfaced in his mind without missing a single detail.
-I voted for you.
-You’re good at what you do. I envied you a lot when I watched you.
Only then did Tae-hyun feel his mind clearing a little. I continued my words firmly with a smile, my tone carrying not a trace of jest.
“I believe in you.”
“….”
“There’s not a single thing you’ve achieved that wasn’t because of your own skill.”
I was someone’s star.
I was shining.
Those moments when I couldn’t even be certain of myself seemed to float up again into the night sky. As the gray haze that had clouded my heart began to lift little by little, I let out another laugh.
“I mean, that’s what I’m saying.”
“….”
“I didn’t come here because I wanted to run away. Why do you keep treating me like a fugitive?”
At my words spoken in exasperation, relieved smiles appeared on the faces of the other members.
The wind was blowing so fiercely, yet at some point I realized I wasn’t cold at all. It was because the members standing around me were naturally blocking the wind.
Only then did I truly understand.
Unlike before, when I had to endure everything alone, I was no longer by myself.
And that was… quite a comfort.
“Guys, if you’re done talking, let’s head out now. If we wait any longer, driving on the mountain roads at night will be too dangerous.”
Kwon Wook, who had finished his call, approached the group and spoke. Ha-ru expressed regret that the place was so nice it felt wasteful to leave right away, but since my pension was located quite deep in the remote areas of Gangwon Province, it would become difficult to leave if it got any darker.
Throughout the drive to the pension, Yu Gun, who for some reason couldn’t make eye contact with me and stood there awkwardly, tapped my leg with his knee.
“…? What. Why are you starting something?”
“Haven’t you packed yet? I’ll help. Let’s go inside.”
“Ah….”
But Tae-hyun’s reaction seemed oddly hesitant. Even though we needed to leave soon and he should have been packing, he just stood there looking troubled and fidgeting. Si-woo, catching onto his behavior, removed his sunglasses and asked.
“Tae-hyun, what’s wrong with you?”
“Well… it’s just….”
Tae-hyun’s lips moved repeatedly as if he were wrestling with something, his expression screaming ‘What do I do about this?’ As everyone’s attention focused on him, he shook his head and spoke in an awkward tone.
“I can’t go right now.”
“Why?”
Just then, an unfamiliar ringtone echoed from somewhere.
It was the Pension’s business phone that Tae-hyun had been gripping tightly in his hand all along.
As a crisp Gangwon Province wind cut through the warmth of the Kairos members, Tae-hyun laughed helplessly and held up the phone.
“The pension is fully booked today. I have to watch the place.”
Whoooosh—Bang!
With an enormous sound, fireworks shot up from somewhere behind them, blooming into beautiful sparks that embroidered flowers across the night sky.
‘…Beautiful Gangwon Province nights are incredibly busy even in March, aren’t they?’
We really have no luck with touching developments anymore.
Ha-jin, now resigned to this absurd turn of events, laughed and grabbed his throbbing temples with both hands.
It was a historic moment—Kairos’s first schedule after resuming activities was being assigned to work at a Gangwon Province Pension.
* * *
“Owner, could we get some charcoal… huh?”
P, a returning student who had finished his military service and was back at university, had come on a one-night, two-day trip with his military peers to celebrate the start of the semester.
He had stepped into the Pension Management Office to get charcoal for grilling barbecue, but he had to pause when he saw a young boy sitting at the counter—someone different from the owner he’d seen during the day.

“Oh. You’re here to pick up charcoal? Just write your room number and name in the ledger there, and you can grab it from over there.”
“Ah, yes….”
The boy sitting at the counter, who had been doing something, noticed him first and greeted him with a friendly smile. P hesitated for a moment, but without much thought, he grabbed a bag of charcoal from where the boy pointed, then wrote his room number and name in the ledger.
‘So he’s a cafe employee.’
A young cafe employee at such an old pension. Was he the owner’s son?
While entertaining these idle thoughts, P finished writing in the ledger and handed the pen back. The boy with purple hair wearing a white baseball cap accepted it with a gentle smile.
“If you have trouble lighting it, we can set it up for you—just call the front desk. We’ll clean up after you’re done, so just make sure to sort your trash properly. You can read the instructions here.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
Wow, he’s incredibly handsome.
His face was pale, and though the cap partially obscured his features, his eyes were noticeably large even from a distance. The face seemed vaguely familiar, but if P had ever known someone with such features, he surely wouldn’t have forgotten. Without giving it much thought, P turned to leave the office with the charcoal.
That’s when he collided with someone entering the office.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Ah….”
Wow, he’s incredibly tall.
The moment they collided, the man immediately set down the boxes he’d been carrying in both arms and checked on P’s condition. It wasn’t a hard collision, so it didn’t hurt much, but P was more startled by the way this adult man looked down at him from such a height.
“I couldn’t see ahead… Are you alright?”
“Ah, yes, yes. I’m fine. Really.”
The man in black-framed glasses and a black mask had a very fierce and intense appearance, quite different from the gentle boy from before. Was he also a cafe employee? From behind P, the boy’s sharp, nagging voice rang out like a whip.
“Hyung, didn’t I tell you to carry one box at a time? What’s with this pointless competitive spirit? What if the customer had gotten hurt?”
“No, no. I’m fine….”
“And whose fault is it that we’re doing loading and unloading work this evening? This guy? We need to move everything from that warehouse. …Are you sure you’re okay? If you’re hurt anywhere, we should….”
“No, really, I’m completely fine.”
P had only meant to grab a bag of charcoal and leave, but somehow he’d ended up caught between the boy in the white baseball cap and the man in black-framed glasses, and sweat was pouring down his face. Just as P was panicking, unsure when to make his exit, another person forcefully opened the office door and entered.
“Tae-hyun hyung! Where should I put this?”
“Ugh….”
“Put it over there on the right. Do you see where the charcoal is stacked?”
“Yes!”
A blonde boy with at least five large bags of charcoal stacked on each shoulder entered the office with a serene expression.
‘That looks incredibly heavy….’
Yet the boy seemed completely unbothered as he passed by P, even cheerfully greeting him with “Oh, hello there!” as he went.
‘It doesn’t seem like such a big pension, but there are so many cafe employees…?’
And they’re all incredibly handsome.
Faced with such unrealistic beauty across the board, P even entertained the amusing thought that perhaps while he’d been in the Military, aliens had invaded and somehow raised the average appearance of South Korean men.
“Huh? Where are the other hyungs?”
“The Neighboring Restaurant was short-staffed, so I sent Do-ha hyung and Yoo Gun. Kwon Wook hyung is sleeping at the Staff Dormitory since he needs to drive.”
“Ah. Yoo Gun hyung seems like he’d be good at restaurant work.”
“He’s apparently making peacocks out of fruit appetizers right now.”
“…Peacocks?”
“Yeah. They’re hiking club guys, so when they’re in a good mood, they just throw money around.”
“Oh my. Our Yoo Gun’s going to make a lot of money. Let’s buy some sweet potatoes at the Rest Stop with that.”
Whatever was happening, it seemed like quite the fascinating situation was unfolding at the neighboring restaurant. P, who had unconsciously eavesdropped on the cafe employees’ conversation without even realizing it, finally came to his senses. Now that he thought about it, he shouldn’t be lingering here—he needed to get back and start the fire for grilling the meat.
“Tae-hyun, isn’t the hot water coming out here?”
Just as P was finally about to leave the office, his path was blocked by someone entering. A man who had apparently just finished washing stepped inside, dressed casually in a white short-sleeved shirt and gray sweatpants, his head covered with a white towel. He lowered the towel with one hand and lifted his head.
“Oh, Si-woo. You need to adjust the settings inside the room—I guess I didn’t turn it on properly. You’re already done washing?”
“Yeah. It’s been a while since I did a cold water rub-down, and it feels refreshing.”
…What kind of human was this?
The moment P laid eyes on the man’s face—an appearance and presence that defied description—he gave up thinking altogether.
‘What is this place? It’s so damn strange. So damn unsettling. Why are all these guys so incredibly handsome?’
What kind of place is this…?
P’s pupils began to tremble uncontrollably as he clutched a bag of charcoal tightly to his chest.

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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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