Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 320

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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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320. The Moment Everyday Life Is Carved Into Memory (1)
The Production Team determined there was nowhere particularly suitable to hide at the School, so our operational base was decided to be a Snack Restaurant located near the School.
Since everyone had departed at dawn and rushed here without properly eating, we decided to grab something light before the filming setup was complete. I scanned through the menu once, then ordered politely from the Cafe Owner who came to take our order.
“Cafe Owner, we’ll have two orders of tteokramen, two lines of tuna kimbap, one pork cutlet, one jjolmyeon, one bibim mandu, one dolsot bibimbap. Oh, and one galbi mandu and one beef rice bowl too…. What else should we get?”
“Kimchi udon and omurice as well.”
“Yes, yes. We’ll take that, please.”
After finishing the order cleanly, I drank from the water cup Yoo Gun had poured for me, and Tae-hyun, sitting across from me, was watching me with an expression of utter resignation, arms crossed.
“…What? What is it?”
“You said you’d eat light.”
“That’s why I didn’t order tteokbokki or kimchi fried rice.”
“Right. Impressive….”
Tae-hyun gave up as if he had no strength left to argue. It wasn’t like we ate this much every day, and it was about time he got used to it anyway. I drank some water and asked Tae-hyun as if doing him a favor.
“Want me to add one more salad kimbap to your order?”
“Why? I’m going to eat some anyway.”
“You’re eating this? What’s gotten into you?”
“…Tae-hyun, are you sick somewhere?”
The same Tae-hyun who ate exactly ten points of meat at the Upia Concert afterparty and then dieted—he was eating snack food?
Yoo Gun, who had swallowed the water he was drinking at that shocking declaration, turned his head to ask. It was even more unexpected coming from someone who had always been extremely strict about his diet, claiming he gained weight easily and swelled up readily.
“I decided to live a bit more comfortably for a while. It’s my cheating season, a gift to myself.”
However, Tae-hyun, the one who had made the shocking statement, simply answered calmly and began arranging his utensils.
‘Now that I think about it, he grilled and ate meat that night in Gangwon Province too…?’
He even seemed to be the one who brought the barbecue equipment first, suggesting they eat together. Had something changed in his mindset while in Gangwon Province?
In any case, even after his debut, he was someone who had managed himself so obsessively that people around him felt a bit sorry for him, so his decision to ease his mind was something worth welcoming.
Besides, he wasn’t the type to eat so much that it would cause actual problems with his work.
“Right. If you gain weight or swell up, ask Do-ha to help you exercise. It’s pretty effective.”
Si-woo, sitting in front, seemed to think similarly, and with his chin resting on his hand, he laughed languidly and threw out a joke. When Do-ha heard that and immediately lit up, asking Tae-hyun “Want to exercise?”, Tae-hyun reacted with alarm and insisted he’d manage his own body, leading to a conversation where he expressed his exasperation.
“….”
During all that, I noticed Ha-ru unusually quiet, watching the older guys without saying a word. I wondered if he hadn’t fully woken up, but his eyes were still bright—only the corners of his eyes had a strangely melancholic look, the face of the baby rabbit warrior I hadn’t seen in a while.
In other words, it was a face with a narrative to it.
“Ha-ru. Come help me scoop some udon broth.”
“Ah, yes!”
And I had a chronic condition where I couldn’t help but immediately ask ‘what the hell is going on with you this time?’ when I saw a face like that. In movies, protagonists usually watch their colleagues’ everyday conversations with that kind of expression before eventually dying, getting injured, falling ill, leaving, or meeting some other bad ending.
Taking Ha-ru to the corner of the Snack Restaurant where the udon broth container was, I carefully scooped broth into a bowl with my hands while calling out to Ha-ru irritably.
“Sparkle.”
“…Yes, yes?”
“Why do you look like you’re dying?”
Until just before we left, he was excited, saying it seemed like it would be fun—so why did he suddenly have the face of a disaster movie protagonist on the eve of Earth’s destruction?
When I asked so directly, Ha-ru, apparently unaware of his own expression, looked a bit surprised and touched his soft cheeks as he spoke.
“Is my face really that gloomy?”
“Yeah. All wrinkled up.”
“Wait, that won’t do.”
Dan Ha-ru hurried over to the mirror beside the water cooler to check his face. As he examined it from different angles, his eyebrows furrowed deeply before gradually relaxing back into their normal shape.
“It must be from dreaming. I fell asleep hard on the way here….”
“What kind of dream makes your face paler than vegetable juice?”
“Just an old dream. I’ve been having it a lot lately.”
Both of us knew that at merely eighteen years old, Dan Ha-ru couldn’t possibly have “just an old dream” in his life.
Realizing that the dream he spoke of was actually memories of past timelines that Lee Do-ha and Ju Eun-chan had experienced, I deliberately refrained from answering and silently accepted the third bowl of udon broth.
As Dan Ha-ru arranged the bowls I handed him onto the tray with practiced efficiency, he finally opened his mouth again when I gave him the fifth one.
“Hyung.”
“Yeah.”
“What if… I hadn’t made that choice back then?”
“….”
“Then your lives would be very different from now, wouldn’t they?”
It seemed Dan Ha-ru was gradually recovering his memories as the Chosen Regressor, and as his personality integration progressed, he was experiencing a surprisingly delayed adolescence. With so much time packed into his young mind—far more than his actual age—it appeared he was experiencing an overload.
I answered in a casual tone.
“They probably would be.”
“….”
“But does that matter?”
As I placed the final bowl onto the tray, I answered with an unbothered voice. Dan Ha-ru’s eyes widened in confusion as he looked up at me. I playfully ignored his expression and snatched the tray from his hands.
“Think carefully about what I mean. It’s your homework.”
I’m still your mentor, after all. I need to give you at least this much of an assignment to save face.
I simply smiled and turned to leave without hesitation, tray in hand.
* * *
The School Campus in April was in full bloom.
However, unlike the vibrant spring landscape of the campus, Student J, a third-year student at Hae-dae Girls’ High School, was having an exceptionally gloomy day. The preliminary score from the March mock exam she’d taken last month had been a disaster.
“I wish aliens would suddenly appear, conquer Earth, and then abolish the college entrance exam.”
“Immigration might be faster.”
It was lunchtime, when the sunlight was beginning to grow harsh.
Student J was sipping a drink she’d bought from the Snack Bar with a classmate, aimlessly wandering in circles around the spacious School Campus. Looking around, other students were similarly strolling through the school in groups, like trailers following a main vehicle.
Among her third-year classmates, some were even reluctant to waste this lunch period and were doing supplementary studying in the classroom, but Student J couldn’t easily give up this lunch walk no matter what else she sacrificed.
“Will my March mock exam score really be my college entrance exam score? It won’t be, right? Please, no. If I take the exam like this, I’m basically done for.”
Why was life so full of things that never went according to plan?
As Student J contemplated why she had to be born in this era and study for entrance exams, she found meager consolation in the fact that even considering all of Korean and world history, there wasn’t really any era she’d prefer to be reborn into.
Others said that once you became a third-year student, even watching fallen leaves roll across the street brought joy and fun, but for someone three months into being a test-taker, that hardly seemed to apply.
Student J found each day lately to be gloomy and joyless. At just nineteen years old, her remaining life already felt ruined, and tears threatened to spill. When she covered her eyes with her hand, everything went dark. Student J felt even more sorrowful, as if that darkness was her future.
As Student J sighed deeply and pulled up the blanket tied around her waist, her friend spoke.
“Stop it and clear your head. The more you think like that, the more depressed you’ll get. You can do well next time.”
“But what if I do poorly next time too….”
“What, are you just going to keep whining like this? If you’re that anxious, why don’t you just go back to the classroom and study?”
At her friend’s words, delivered with a sharp, sarcastic tone born of accumulated frustration, Student J’s mouth clamped shut. She was aware that she’d been too down on herself, but in her current unstable state of mind and body, it was difficult to maintain a healthy perspective.
In the end, Student J knew she shouldn’t have said it, but the bitter words spilled out to her friend anyway.
“Why do you have to say things like that? You were just complaining about bombing the test.”
“Was it only today? You’ve been harping on about this ever since the mock exam ended. My math grade is even lower than yours—should I just die then?”
“When did I ever tell you to die? You’re really twisting my words.”
“You twisted them first. I’ve given you so many hints to stop talking about it…. You know what, I’m just going in first.”
As her friend trudged into the Main Building with a thoroughly fed-up expression, Student J had to clamp her mouth shut to keep the tears from spilling over.
Just then, the warning bell signaling the end of lunch period rang, and she watched as students and teachers scattered across the School Campus began filing back inside.
In an instant, Student J found herself alone on the now-quiet School Campus.
“….”
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Nothing felt like it was going the way she wanted.
The class bell would ring soon, but Student J couldn’t bring herself to move. She didn’t want to go back to the classroom. She didn’t want to face the awkward tension with her friend, and she certainly didn’t want to sit through another lesson of mock exam answer explanations.
‘This is absolutely the worst.’
So that’s what today was.
The worst of the worst days.
A day when so many things had fallen apart that nothing seemed salvageable anymore.
‘Seriously, when are aliens going to invade? Just conquer Earth already, for real.’
-Ah, ah. Microphone test, microphone test. One two, one two. Can you hear me?
An unfamiliar young man’s voice suddenly echoed across the entire School Campus through the school announcement system.
A rich, mid-range voice that instantly made Student J’s mundane day feel strange and new continued cheerfully.
-Dear students and faculty of Haejin Girls’ High School, whom I love and respect. Hello.
-Effective immediately, at the request of Yoon Hee-young, the homeroom teacher of Class 1, Grade 3, Kairos will be temporarily taking over this school.
“…?”
What is this? Unable to process what was happening, Student J stared at the speaker on the Sports Ground without even thinking to head back to the classroom.
The mysterious voice from beyond the speaker continued.
-Students, please do not rush out of your classrooms right now…
(No, no!)
…Instead, please gather safely at the Auditorium under the guidance of your teachers. That is all!
Aliens—or rather, outsiders—had literally taken over Earth. Or rather, the school.

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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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