Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 354

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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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354. Coming Soon! (2)
As Seo Tae-hyun and I stepped into the 3rd Floor Conference Room, I spotted Jeong Si-u setting up an entire table laden with chicken alongside Lee Do-ha.
“What? Do-ha, you’re here too?”
“Yeah. They dragged me here after practice.”
“The younger members were exhausted after practice and crashed at the Dormitory, and Yoo Gun stopped by his Hometown so he’ll be here tonight—so it’s just the four of us today.”
“Are you treating us, hyung?”
“Want to split it evenly?”
“Thank you for the meal, hyung.”
I flatly rejected Jeong Si-u’s playful Dutch-pay proposal and quickly settled into my seat, chopsticks in hand. As if he’d anticipated this, Si-u chuckled and slid a water bottle—not soda—across to me. The chicken was plain charcoal-grilled without sauce, which suggested this was a compromise born from wanting chicken while being in active promotions.
“What do you want to watch while we eat? This TV has YouTube.”
“But what’s worth watching these days? Seo Tae-hyun, is there anything you want to see? If so, put it on.”
“Then can I monitor our first-week music show direct cam? I wanted to watch it yesterday but couldn’t.”
“…Take your hands off that remote right now. Just eat your chicken.”
“No, you said to watch what I want to watch!”
“I said watch what you want to watch, not what you need to watch. Are you going to hand over that remote or not?”
Faced with Seo Tae-hyun’s unwavering professional spirit—so intense it made me want to spit out my chicken—I let out an exasperated sigh as he pouted his lips with a sharp “tsk.”
Sorry, but your little “tsk” might work on Destiny members, but not on me.
“Ah.”
“What, Do-ha? Is there something you want to watch?”
I was scrolling through the feed with the mouse I’d taken from Seo Tae-hyun, searching for something worth watching, when Lee Do-ha—who’d been quietly inhaling his chicken beside me—lifted his head as if remembering something. I asked if he’d thought of something he wanted to see, and Do-ha furrowed his brows oddly as he continued.
“Come to think of it, isn’t that today?”
“What?”
“Today’s Kairos.”
“The Dream Land episode? That won’t air for a while yet. We just filmed it the other day.”
I answered Do-ha’s comment half-heartedly and hit refresh to update the algorithm.
Just before the page reloaded, Do-ha spoke again.
“No, not that one.”
The timeline updated. As I listened to Do-ha’s response, my gaze was instinctively drawn to a disturbingly familiar thumbnail that appeared at the very top.
【Today’s Kairos S2 ‖ EP.01-2 First Love Missing Case (Part 2) ‖ Here It Is, Everyone’s Dopamine! Kairos-Style Chaotic Fusion Multiverse World—Still Operating Normally! ☆٩(｡•ω<｡)و】
"That weird internet novel multi-fusion multiverse thing episode."
"…."
Right. That was still there.
The follow-up upload to that massive opening salvo—which had slipped my mind amid so many incidents—was dropping today.
* * *
【Last Time!】
Accompanied by a song that had been famous as a Minihompy BGM ten years ago, the content from the previous upload's first part rapidly summarized and flashed by.
-…You, the protagonist, have made an emergency landing.
-…Your punishment is a solo trip to Jeju Island.
-(Screams heard from here and there, and a chaotic wide shot)
【Roughly: The story of how Kairos, having crash-landed in a parallel world with memory loss, wagered a same-day Jeju Island ticket and a pure gold couple's ring to engage in sweet-and-salty couple matches】
White transparent subtitles rolled rapidly across the bottom of the screen. Highlights edited from scenes that had trended on social media passed by, followed by the final scene from the first part—the core moment.
-Let's be honest about everything now.
-I'm the male lead's first love.
-Brother, you're the male protagonist?
【The shocking twist revealed at the end!】
【The hidden secrets of this world are being exposed right now】
With Jeong Si-u and me locked in a tense standoff as the final image, the Today's Kairos title logo was inserted.
I paused the video at precisely that moment.
"…."
"…."
"…."
"…."
The atmosphere had grown remarkably solemn.
I could account for everything I'd done, but the others—where had they been and what had they been up to? They sat there with vacant expressions, mechanically eating chicken. Even Jeong Si-u, the most emotionally detached among us, had nothing to say.
That was rare.
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm just wondering who got the penalty."
So he wasn't embarrassed. Right, I should have known.
I quickly nodded and looked at the other two. Seo Tae-hyun appeared genuinely despairing at the prospect of confronting his own dark history, while Lee Do-ha sat there slack-jawed, chewing on chopsticks instead of chicken—they'd clearly done something significant during filming.
I wanted to skip ahead entirely, but after eating a few pieces of chicken, I'd grown merciful enough to hand them the choice.
"So, keep watching or stop?"
Seo Tae-hyun then muttered with genuine distress.
"…We have to monitor it anyway, right? But do we really have to? Do we absolutely have to? The production team probably edited it well enough. There's no rule saying I have to check every single thing I've worked on in my life, is there? Right, brother?"
"That's quite irresponsible coming from someone who was about to monitor direct cam footage just moments ago."
He's starting to resemble me more and more. Nervousness makes him talk.
At this point, I was curious enough about what they'd done that I felt obligated to watch until the end. Before pressing play again, I glanced at Lee Do-ha out of courtesy. The one who'd been chewing chopsticks moments ago had already regained his usual composure and was crunching on pickled radish.
From his expression, curiosity had clearly won out over shame.
"So we're playing it?"
With Lee Do-ha's solemn nod, the video resumed.
After the title logo appeared and faded, the next scene showed….
-…haha.
-?
-This is fun. This is really fun?
Jeong Si-u stared at the message card I'd given him for a long moment, then laughed like some scheming second male lead from a romance manga.
* * *
【2 hours earlier】
The screen rewound in time, showing Jeong Si-u alone after the first impression matching had ended.
-So I just stay here by myself while the others talk?
Jeong Si-u entered the One-on-One Room and glanced around the well-decorated space, pulling out a book placed among the props. As he sat on a purple sofa with his legs crossed in the carefully styled set, the single camera following him reflexively pulled back on the zoom.
-Camera Director: No, don't pull it that tight. I said frame it at mid-shot.
-Camera Director: Ah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to….
A brief scene flashed across the screen showing the camera operators flustered by the sudden onslaught of visual perfection.
Regardless, Jeong Si-u seemed genuinely intent on spending his remaining time reading, turning pages one by one without paying the slightest attention to the staff's commotion.
Had it been Seo Tae-hyun or Kang Ha-jin, they would have made an effort to create some content for the sake of screen time, but Jeong Si-u appeared perfectly serene—a far cry from his opening segment where he'd spouted melodramatic lines.
But it wasn't because he lacked ambition or interest in screen time…
– Damn, he's so handsome
– Thank you for existing
– Oppa, just stay single forever and remain a national treasure, please I'm begging you
– Kang Ha-jin why does he praise his eldest brother's visuals every single day, I get it in 3 seconds
…it was simply because he understood his own face well enough to know that even just reading a book like this would generate content that didn't exist before. The production team clearly understood this too, as they aired a roughly 5-second scene of Jeong Si-u silently reading with a caption like 【Brief Face Appreciation TIME】.
-Production Team: Red Magnolia?
After the brief visual appreciation segment ended, Jeong Si-u's production director finally spoke. Jeong Si-u looked up from his book. His slightly tousled bangs, which had fallen forward from keeping his head down, obscured his light brown eyes until he brushed them back with his hand in one smooth motion—a gesture that resembled the birth of a deity from mythology itself.
-Production Team: Since Red Magnolia failed the partner matching, we're now offering you the opportunity to choose one person from the remaining six and have a five-minute conversation.
Up to this point, existing viewers already knew the rules. They remembered how in a previous round when Jeong Si-u had failed to match, he'd boldly requested a one-on-one with Lee Do-ha, saying "Baby, let's go!"
But the production team's explanation didn't end there.
-Production Team: However, Red Magnolia also has the option to 'give up' the one-on-one.
-Si-woo: …Does being able to give up mean there's another merit to be gained by giving up?
-Production Team: That's correct.
It was the moment a lighthearted youth showcase transformed instantly into a reverse thriller.
Sharp sound effects and a meaningful BGM combined with Jeong Si-u's characteristically captivating expression created a scene that felt like something from a mystery film.
After a moment of contemplation, Jeong Si-u lifted one corner of his mouth beautifully and answered.
-Si-woo: Then I'll give up.
-Production Team: …You won't regret it?
-Si-woo: Well, right now we've only just met and formed first impressions, so there's no real reason to call someone and discuss anything. I think I'd regret more not finding out what the special privilege is.
Jeong Si-u, who possessed a bulldozer personality despite his appearance, laughed as if regret were a foreign concept and shook his head.
At Jeong Si-u's choice, people began retracing the story from the previous episode. Now that they thought about it, they'd definitely heard the rule that a solo player trapped in isolation could choose one person for a one-on-one conversation, but there had never been a scene of Jeong Si-u talking with anyone after the first impression matching ended.
They'd assumed it was simply an editing issue due to time constraints, but there was actually a secret hidden here. The Destiny fans now became detectives, beginning to write down their own theories.
– Whoa so the special privilege from not doing the one-on-one is the hint message Ha-jin got???
└ Seems like it
– But wait, the only ones who became solo were Ha-rang and Si-u, right? The others kept changing their choices so their younger siblings could be matched
└ Oh so they knew about this and were trying to monopolize the hints?
└ So it wasn't the eldest brothers' consideration for their cute younger siblings, but the dark masterminds' scheme to isolate them and hoard all the hints???????????????? This is insane
– Nah but they didn't monopolize the hints, the winning partners from the mini-games also got one hint each
└ Yeah that's right so when Si-u told Ha-jin to pick between Do-ha or Ha-ru, it's probably because those two got the most hints from the mini-games, it just didn't show in the edited version but the kids are probably already circulating plenty of hints among themselves
– Wow but the hints are strong, they're basically just telling us what roles everyone has
I wonder what hint Si-woo got that made him say it was fun… I'm barely holding back the urge to fast-forward right now…
Just as people had speculated, what was handed to Jeong Si-u for declining the one-on-one opportunity was an identical message card to the one Kang Ha-jin had received.
-Si-woo: …?
-Production Team: It's a hint about this world and your true identities.
At that very moment, the BGM that had been building subtly throughout suddenly reached its climax. As Jeong Si-u accepted the card and displayed a smile worthy of a dark mastermind, the secrets of the one-on-one participants that hadn't been revealed in the previous episode were finally unveiled.
【That strawberry milk-flavored one who failed the second matching and, like Si-woo, gave up on the one-on-one room to obtain a hint】
Ha-jin likewise appeared to learn about the one-on-one room privilege in his next turn, and briefly confirmed the earlier hint about 'the male protagonist's first love' through editing.
The two, now aware of the privilege's existence, deliberately monopolized the solo position for themselves, sometimes receiving hints, and sometimes calling other partners to gradually collect fragments of truth. They also displayed meticulous tactics in extracting information from other members who obtained hints by winning mini-games.
【The two of them knew that each other had received one-on-one room hints!】
Thus, naturally, the reason why the two had only looked at each other without actually making selections until now was also revealed.
Excluding the first impression matching where they genuinely chose others for entertainment, the two actively orchestrated situations so that while their counterpart would be paired with someone else, they themselves would remain solo. Yet whenever another member faced the crisis of becoming solo instead, they unhesitatingly changed their own choices.
Given that they were each other's sole ally and only check, the combination name 'Kairos's Puppet Masters' was truly fitting.
-Si-woo: Ha-jin, do you believe this hint is 100% true?
The flashback ended, and the perspective returned to the present moment.
In the one-on-one room, with the hint card placed between them, Si-woo and Ha-jin stared at each other with palpable tension. As Ha-jin's eyes widened in confusion at Si-woo's cryptic words, Si-woo quietly withdrew his own hint card from his pocket.
-Si-woo: No, I should rephrase the question….
The hint card held in Si-woo's pale, delicate hand was placed over Ha-jin's card. A close-up captured Ha-jin slowly lowering his gaze to read the message written on that card.
【Is your name truly 'Jeong Si-u'?】
-Si-woo: 'In this world'…. Are you really 'Kang Ha-jin'?
This was a powerful question that would shake the foundations of this secret-laden world.

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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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