Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 341

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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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341. KIDS DAY! (3)
“Should I just leave them alone?”
“Huh?”
After successfully wrapping up the comeback music show featuring the kids’ styling, we were on our way to the fan sign event venue.
Si-woo, whom I thought was asleep, suddenly spoke to me. I set down my phone and turned to look at him—despite the humiliating 2:8 side part, his beauty remained undimmed, and he was gazing at me with genuine curiosity in his eyes.
“Leave what alone?”
“Ha-ru and Eun-chan. They seem less bothered by it than I expected.”
At his blunt name-drop, I instinctively glanced around the car. Since some members had individual schedules after the fan sign event, we’d split into two vehicles, so the car only held Kwon Wook driving, me, Si-woo, and Do-ha.
After confirming that Kwon Wook was busy on a call and Do-ha was busy sleeping, I finally felt comfortable opening my mouth.
“Kids can be like that sometimes. It’s not like they had a fight or anything.”
“I think Eun-chan would actually prefer if they had fought.”
“But it’s not like we should encourage them to grab each other by the collar and have a brawl like we do….”
“….”
“…I mean, not that we shouldn’t, but, uh, what I’m trying to say is….”
My loose tongue had slipped again with an unguarded remark.
As I hastily clamped my mouth shut at my own unintended confession, Si-woo, who had been looking at me with slight surprise, suddenly burst into loud laughter. The sound was so unexpected that it startled Kwon Wook mid-call, and even Do-ha in the back jolted awake.
Si-woo, a pleasant smile playing at his lips, murmured as if to himself.
“So now it’s ‘we,’ huh?”
“…Huh↗?”
“Never mind. So you’re just going to leave them like that? Until they work it out on their own?”
At Si-woo’s follow-up question, I fell silent for a moment.
I hadn’t planned to do nothing about Dan Ha-ru, the chosen one, for three months, but I also had no intention of doing anything immediately, so it was difficult to answer.
‘Besides, even if I did something… he’d need to be ready to accept it first.’
For someone who believed to his core that this life wasn’t his own, advice or counsel was a luxury. But that didn’t mean I was prepared to help him live his life as the primary personality either—that was a different matter altogether.
So instead of answering his question about whether I’d leave things as they were, I threw a different question at Si-woo.
“Hyung. How did you handle it?”
“…Suddenly?”
“When you realized I had an inferiority complex toward you. You said it before—how long were you supposed to pretend not to know?”
“….”
Since the subject was already broached, I decided to lay it all out. Si-woo fell silent, looking genuinely surprised—as if he couldn’t believe I remembered that. As if he’d forgotten it himself.
But since I had no intention of flustering him further, I quickly shrugged and continued.
“I actually think the situation between those two is similar to what we had back then.”
“What kind of relationship?”
“One where one person admires and envies the other so much that their feelings become complicated, and they end up avoiding any attempt to improve the relationship.”
“Wow, that’s more direct than I expected.”
“But in cases like this, usually the one receiving unwarranted admiration and resentment suffers more, right? So I was curious how you handled it. Honestly, I’m more worried about Eun-chan getting hurt than Ha-ru.”
After delivering an answer that was neither too much nor too little, Si-woo took the blow like a direct hit, slowly turning his gaze away and resting his chin on his hand.
Whether out of frustration or something else, his loosely undone butterfly tie and sculpted profile truly rivaled any male lead from an otherworldly romance novel. As long as Si-woo didn’t suddenly get hit with some aging beam, our group’s average visual score would never decline.
“I felt pretty wronged, actually.”
Just as I was indulging in the ordinary fangirl fantasy of wanting to capture that face in a jeweled cross-stitch someday, the sculpture himself finally spoke, becoming the reincarnation of Pygmalion. His voice, which had grown somewhat serious, carried hints of lingering regret.
“Being someone’s object of admiration is wonderful, but it’s also frustrating in its own way. Even more so when it’s not something I’ve actually achieved myself, but rather something I’ve held in my hands simply because I was born.”
“….”
“If there’s something similar between me and Eun-chan, I think it’s that. But….”
As if recalling something, Si-woo trailed off and turned his gaze toward the window. The dense gray cityscape rushing past felt oddly suffocating.
“Ha-ru must be a different kind of person to Eun-chan. I don’t know what kind of feelings Ha-ru has toward Eun-chan, though.”
“Everyone knows Eun-chan favors Ha-ru.”
“No, it’s not really favoritism….”
Si-woo slowly rubbed his jawline with his fingertips as if recalling old memories. Then, opening his mouth gradually, he offered me a clue about the past of these two people that I didn’t know.
“When Eun-chan originally fell from the Special Class to the General Class. I heard that other kids got jealous of Eun-chan and subtly excluded him from practice.”
“…Ah, yes. I’ve heard roughly about that.”
“From what I know, Ha-ru was the first one to approach Eun-chan wanting to become close back then. I remember Ha-ru joined not long after Eun-chan dropped to the General Class.”
Si-woo added a behind-the-scenes detail—that he used to worry whenever he saw Ju Eun-chan eating alone in the Company Cafeteria, but from some point on, he felt relieved seeing him going around with Dan Ha-ru.
“We weren’t particularly close back then, so I just thought ‘I see,’ but…. Since Eun-chan gets lonely easily, I think Ha-ru must have been more grateful to him than anyone else at that time.”
“You say you weren’t that close, yet you know all these details.”
“Anyway, among the trainees, I was the oldest except for Han Sung-woo. So I had at least that much sense of responsibility as the eldest.”
“Wow, it’s been so long since I heard that name—I got goosebumps.”
Si-woo had naturally dropped the formal address when speaking to Han Sung-woo, who was older than him, and no one had ever made an issue of it. Hearing the name of the source of evil, the seed of malice, the root of wickedness—Han Dre-mot—for the first time in a while, I genuinely got goosebumps on my forearms, not as an exaggeration.
In any case, the story of Ju Eun-chan and Dan Ha-ru’s first meeting that Si-woo told me gave me plenty to think about. Especially if I consider the possibility that Dan Ha-ru’s willingness to become close to Ju Eun-chan might have been the will of a rebel rather than a bright spark.
I nodded and fastened the suspenders I’d loosened earlier. We were almost at our destination.
“I’ll keep that in mind, regardless.”
“Keep what in mind?”
“That you actually do have that sense of responsibility as the eldest, hyung.”
“Did I not seem like it?”
“You seemed to be in full entertainment mode, so it was hard to tell….”
Si-woo let out another cheerful laugh at my casual joke. It didn’t seem like the kind of laugh that came from being upset, so I laughed along appropriately. I also remembered to wake Lee Do-ha, who had fallen asleep again in the back.
“Oh, hyung Kwon Wook. What’s left on our schedule this week? Excluding music shows.”
“Nothing special this week. Next Tuesday, you guys have one Youth Sniper busking.”
“Where is it this time?”
“I don’t know. Kwon PD said it’s a secret? No matter how much I asked, he wouldn’t tell me.”
What are those tough guys planning this time….
The moment I heard that Kwon PD said it was a secret, cold sweat automatically broke out down my back. Suddenly, the terrifying profile shoot with the surprise camera from the first self-con filming flashed through my mind. For some inexplicable reason, anxiety gripped me, and I shook my legs nervously, urging hyung Kwon Wook on.
“It’s not like we’re going somewhere weird, right? Eun-chan just got discharged not long ago, so please take it easy on us….”
“When you throw yourself into something, you charge at maximum 200km/h, but sometimes you suddenly hold back at strange moments.”
“Call it survival instinct.”
You haven’t experienced Kwon PD. That’s a person who threw a camera out of a 12-Story Building just to get an interesting shot….
As someone who got thrown out of a 12-Story Building tied together with that camera, this wasn’t exaggeration—it was genuine trauma.
[System Alert: What on earth happened…?]
‘Do you know how I felt when I got chosen just because I’d done rappelling training in the Military?’
Even now, just thinking about it makes my teeth grind and my bones ache. That person who made me jump five times in a row for camera angles while doing a bungee jumping survey for an idol reality show….
[System Alert: Isn’t that basically overwork under the guise of a survey? The System expresses shock!]
[System Alert: (((( ;°Д°))))]
I couldn’t resist—I’d already done eight rounds myself.
[System Alert: !?! (Дﾟ≡ﾟДﾟ) ?!!]
[System Alert: (Realization)]
My former boss led by example in even the most trivial matters.
That’s precisely why I wanted to work harder and learn more, even as the grind wore on me….
‘…Enough. What’s the point of dwelling on the past?’
It was all behind me now—things that would never happen again. Memories like these, left only with me, left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I could only drain my water bottle in frustration.
After tossing the empty bottle into the trash bag in the car, I exited slowly under the guidance of the security team. Fans were already lined up with their professional cameras, ready to capture our arrival at the fan sign event.
“Everyone, be careful and head straight to the waiting room. Just give the fans a proper greeting. This road is narrow—if the fans get too excited, there could be an accident.”
“Yes―.”
With Kwon Wook’s final warning, the car door closed. Immediately, flashes erupted, camera shutters clicked, and fans called out our names from all directions. By now, I’d grown accustomed to the cheers, and I waved back warmly as Lee Do-ha, Jeong Si-u, and I made our way safely into the building.
“Have our other members arrived yet?”
“Ah, yes. They arrived about ten minutes ago and are waiting in the waiting room.”
I asked the security team escorting us about the whereabouts of the remaining members, and the tall guard with an earpiece nodded and answered. The way he was tensing up and using formal language just because I’d spoken to him suggested he was relatively new to the job.
I wanted to tell him he didn’t need to be so stiff, but I knew that beginners needed that tension to avoid making serious mistakes, so I kept quiet.
Besides, given my age, if I told him to relax, there was a chance he’d take it as disrespect instead.
“―Ah, but….”
“…?”
It was the guard who spoke again. As if remembering something, he let the words slip out before he could stop himself, then glanced back at me and the members before checking his senior’s expression and falling silent once more.
“Ah…. Never mind. I was just confused about something…. This way.”
“Yes, thank you.”
It was an awkward ending, but pressing him further about what he’d meant to say would’ve been awkward too. Jeong Si-u, who’d been listening to the exchange, seemed to have the same thought—our eyes met at the same moment.
‘If there’s a real problem, it’ll come out soon enough.’
If it were serious enough for us to know about, Kwon Wook would’ve already reported it.
With that thought, I opened the waiting room door―.
“…?”
“…!”
My eyes met Dan Ha-ru’s—those wide, startled eyes. He looked like he’d been trying to leave, his hand reaching for the doorknob, his body tense with urgency.
Before I could even ask what was happening, Dan Ha-ru grabbed my arm with a pale, panicked face.
“119!”
“…What?”
“119! Hurry! Someone, please…!”
“Why are you suddenly talking about 119….”
Beyond Dan Ha-ru’s desperate expression, the scene inside the waiting room finally came into view.
Ju Eun-chan sitting on the floor, Seo Tae-hyun holding him tightly, and Lee Yu-gun staring at us with an equally shocked expression….
“…Is that blood?”
…Droplets of blood scattered across the floor and gift boxes overturned in chaos.
At the sight of the waiting room in complete disarray, my entire body went cold—far colder than before.

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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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