Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 353

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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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353. Coming Soon! (1)
In the end, Kairos successfully completed the guerrilla concert at Dreamland that day.
-Do we really have to do this? Honestly, I’m not sure. Work blew up during the day, and it’s been hours since then, yet you’re putting them on stage….
Although the attempted assault by the assailant had been thwarted, some argued for caution given the security breach. Yet the performance went ahead regardless, driven once again by the passionate insistence of the person involved.
-I want to do it.
-Eun-chan.
-They caught the perpetrator. I don’t think I have any reason to back down.
I couldn’t fathom what he was saying, but the youngest members who emerged hand-in-hand long after I’d left were resolute.
More precisely, Ju Eun-chan was. Both of them had been crying—their eyes swollen red—and Eun-chan, his voice nasal and thick, stubbornly insisted on performing no matter what.
-Eun-chan, I’m not saying don’t do it. It’s just that safety is an important matter, so let’s be cautious….
-I’m not trying to be reckless. I know many people have gone through trouble because of me today.
-….
-But I don’t want to hide anymore.
-….
-I don’t want to be swayed by other people’s malice anymore.
It was easy to sense that his words extended beyond just this incident. The fact that he, like me, was gradually escaping from that dark, suffocating corner.
But Ju Eun-chan’s admirable growth and whether the performance would proceed were separate matters.
Following the gift terror incident last time, now today’s attempted assault. Eun-chan had narrowly escaped danger multiple times already.
If we forced the performance ahead and something happened, or if any of these incidents leaked to the press, the fandom would undoubtedly erupt in fierce protest about improper artist protection. It was as clear as day.
-Sigh, alright. I understand for now.
-So….
-For now, I’m saying I understand the artist’s wishes—not that I’m unconditionally allowing the performance. I’ll discuss the specifics with the production team and Dreamland and get back to you. In the meantime, Eun-chan, go change your clothes. If the performance does happen, we’re running out of time.
Still, Kwon Wook nodded in acknowledgment. It wasn’t a definitive yes to the performance, but Eun-chan seemed satisfied with even that much.
And so―.
Sunset University
@SS_university
XX0509 Dreamland Guerrilla Concert
#Kairos #Kang Ha-jin
Today’s live was insane…
(High-quality photo of Kang Ha-jin removing his earpiece and squinting one eye)
Shares 12K Hearts 24K
As mentioned earlier, we successfully wrapped up the Dreamland guerrilla concert.
It was naturally the only possible outcome.
I don’t particularly enjoy making cynical statements like this, but advertising contracts aren’t something you can simply cancel so easily….
That’s why you need to be careful when signing contracts. There was no way Dreamland, the advertiser who’d spent that enormous sum on product placement, would accept the excuse of “we can’t perform because your security is weak and something might happen.”
What company would be crazy enough to spend hundreds of millions to orchestrate negative publicity for themselves? We might be precious to our fans, but to them, Kairos was just a promotional model they’d paid for.
The production team for 【Today’s Kairos】 was in a similar position. Canceling the guerrilla concert, which was the main segment of today’s shoot, meant losing the entire day’s footage. How much would that production cost loss be?
‘If we’d insisted we couldn’t perform, things would have gotten complicated from that point on.’
That’s just how reality worked.
Even when parents pass away, you still get hungry. Even while conducting a funeral, you have to think about the funeral expenses first—this cruel capitalist reality was truly heartbreaking. At least this time the perpetrator was caught and Eun-chan seemed fine, so that was a relief….
‘I’ll have to smile under the guise of a contract even in situations far worse than this. There will be plenty more of those ahead.’
Earning money for someone else really isn’t easy.
I wish I could just wake up one day to find ninety billion won—clean money with no taxes withheld—deposited into my account. Lottery winnings are half taxes anyway.
Now that it’s May, I need to file my comprehensive income tax return too. How much was the fee for the tax firm I hired to handle it? How much will the taxes even be? I’ve never earned this much in my life, so I have no sense of it.
Back when I was eligible for the simplified bookkeeping system with a standard expense ratio, I could self-file on Hometax and get refunds—those days felt simpler, honestly.
‘No, why is my mind wandering off on a tangent again…’
I hastily stopped myself from mentally reviewing my assets—bank balance, savings accounts, deposits, ISA accounts, and subscription savings. There were still more things I needed to monitor.
‘Though not going to university did eliminate student loans, which is kind of nice… or wait, if I’d paid those off, I’d get a tax deduction, so losing that deduction is actually a loss… No, stop, enough.’
Even as I tried to stop thinking, the chain of thoughts, once started, continued endlessly without resolution.
But after living my whole life on a pittance of a salary, suddenly earning big money meant I couldn’t help but think about all sorts of things. Idols have short average career lifespans and unstable income, so naturally the thoughts multiply.
‘I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to earn like this forever…’
It felt cruel to myself to be thinking this way barely two years into my debut, but life requires you to consider the worst-case scenario, doesn’t it? Since Ha-ru was finally getting his mind right, now was the time to start worrying about the future.
If this turned out to be the peak of Kairos’s career graph and we continued on a slow downward trajectory from here, then earning tens of millions of won faster than others right now didn’t feel purely exciting. It meant the income cliff could arrive that much sooner.
‘So I need to do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen.’
Being young and good-looking only works for a few years at most. We’ll keep aging, and every year new, younger, better-looking kids will debut.
If we want to keep earning and living under the name ‘Kairos’ for a long time, we can’t just be pretty and handsome idols. I want to keep doing Kairos at least until Yu-gun and the others get jobs and can live well on their own money—until they don’t need their hyung’s help anymore.
‘And fortunately… I have a really good role model nearby.’
I thought of Yupia, who had recently announced a nationwide and world tour and started work on new projects. Despite most members entering their thirties, they boasted formidable fan power and continued influence—truly remarkable people.
The reason Yupia could keep rising upward despite all the world’s criticism and disputes was partly due to those hyungs’ thorough self-management and their unique individual talents.
But the most crucial thing was really…
“…music, probably.”
The fact that even at their career stage, whether they’re called to university festivals or water bomb festivals, they don’t get called has-beens but instead get “the lineup is insane?” reactions—that’s the power of Yupia’s music.
They have hit songs that the entire public can sing along to, and even for songs people don’t know, once you hear them once, you think “this song is good though?” That’s the kind of music they make.
“…music, huh.”
With a single kick, the chair I’d been sitting in spun around.
A piano and guitar placed in one corner of my small practice booth—my assigned private practice room—caught my eye. They were practice instruments I’d brought to occasionally play for fans during Aibus live broadcasts.
“…”
Music. Music, huh.
It’s not like I’m not working on music. I’m actively participating in helping Do-ha with songwriting and melody development, and I keep poking around Tae-il and Ji-nu’s studios, learning their work methods over their shoulders.
But still, writing ‘my own song’ and presenting it to the world as Kairos’s music was a harder choice than I expected.
“…”
…For now, since Do-ha’s here, I’ll think about it later?
Just minutes after starting to worry about the future, I ended up pushing this difficult problem back under the covers. Having a genius composition machine like Do-ha in the same group really is a blessing. My resolve to keep doing Kairos for a long time was just a bonus.
Besides, there were other problems I needed to solve before even thinking about something grand like ‘Kairos’s music.’
Bad Kids
@BaddieKiz
Posting the Eun-chan video from the Dreamland guerrilla concert we got a tip about
Apparently Wagi was glued to the maknae the whole time during today’s performance lol
The maknae really loves his hyungs so much right now
Kairos’s maknaes are blessed beyond measure
(Eun-chan standing beside Ha-ru, singing with his arm around his shoulder.mp4)
8,293 shares 10,000 likes
That whole Ju Eun-chan scandal and fandom split that had been trending for a while.
I scrolled through the system and slowly examined the related reactions. Ju Eun-chan, who had made up with Dan Ha-ru, seemed so excited that he’d clung to Ha-ru throughout the guerrilla concert, which turned out to be a decent interaction. I could see with my own eyes how the brutal fandom atmosphere had thawed somewhat.
If I dug deeper, I’m sure there would be more comments about them doing it for business, saying they fought and acted distant but then got financial therapy, criticizing them for being too conscious of the fandom… but I didn’t particularly want to check.
After all, there’s no end to such depths, I can’t control it on my own terms, and I’d learned by now that it shouldn’t be seen as the opinion of the absolute majority.
Even if I poured positive energy, I didn’t want to react to responses that twisted it into a negative flow, deliberately tearing others down and eating away at themselves. Like Ju Eun-chan said, I wanted to stop letting myself be shaken by others’ malice.
‘Fortunately, the attack incident doesn’t seem to have spread as a major story….’
After a long meeting with the company, we decided not to publicize the fact that Ju Eun-chan had been attacked. Dreamland and the fan-signing cooperation company wanted that too, and I heard the detective in charge and our lawyers also advised that it would be better.
The company seemed most concerned that if this incident became known again at this point, so soon after the world made a fuss over Ju Eun-chan’s traffic accident, it would damage his public image and increase fandom fatigue.
Since we were heading into a summer comeback soon, we didn’t want negative labels like “attacked idol” attached to us, so all the members agreed to hide the fact as much as possible until the exact trial results came out.
I was worried about the ripple effects when the fans found out, but if we were going to worry them anyway, “we got attacked but caught the bastard and he’s going to prison” would be more effective than hastily saying “we had an accident.”
“Hyung, are you practicing?”
As I was quietly organizing my thoughts, the firmly closed practice room door cracked open slightly. Poking his head through the gap was Seo Tae-hyun, his black hair clip pushing back his bothersome bangs.
I quickly shut down the system and straightened up.
“No, I was just here. Why?”
“Si-woo hyung ordered chicken and asked if you wanted to eat together.”
“Chicken? Sure. I’ll go.”
“Okay, then get ready and come to 3rd Floor Conference Room 1.”
“Nah, I don’t have anything to do. Let’s go together.”
I can never resist chicken.
As the saying goes, even Diamond Mountain is best after a meal—my stomach had started growling from all that thinking. I got up without hesitation and followed Seo Tae-hyun. Just thinking about eating chicken again lifted my mood instantly.
“Hell yeah, free chicken is such a win.”
“Hyung, you really do love chicken.”
“Honestly, if I had just chicken, I could survive alone in this world.”
“No way? If you were left alone in the world, you’d get lonely and end up going crazy talking to that chicken every day.”
“…I want to argue, but now that I think about it, that seems right, so I can’t argue.”
After finishing a successful first week of activities, Seo Tae-hyun, who seemed to have a much lighter heart, and I chatted away as we headed to the 3rd floor conference room where the chicken awaited. My steps felt unusually light today.
…Exactly 30 minutes later.
I had no idea what kind of embarrassing history was about to unfold for us….

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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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