Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 402

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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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402. Pushing a Tiger Off a Cliff (1)
To cut to the chase: Kairos’s discipline initiative was extraordinarily successful.
Kang Ha-di
@kang_HD
What’s with our firepower lately
Why is it like this I’m scared
Seriously why are you guys like this
Are we some million-strong army or something
It was just a streaming power check
Why why are you doing this
If you keep this up, should I get my hopes up
(Screenshot of Kairos’s real-time ranking climbing.jpg)
This wasn’t something that happened because of a single event.
Summer Wave? No, before that—
Hwangryong Awards? No, before that—
Idol Athletic Games? No, before that….
Countless catalysts had accumulated and layered upon each other, creating the wave we see now. The effects were already visible from the streaming practice sessions designed as a firepower check before the official comeback.
【Kairos’s “Record-Breaking” Comeback Teased? Mini Album 3 Pre-Orders Surpass 600,000 Copies…】
【Ominous Signs… Kairos’s Career High Confirmed as “Record-Breaking”】
【”Record-Breaking” Rising Star Emerges… Kairos’s Intriguing Trajectory】
Every article that emerged seemed to treat the word “record-breaking” as mandatory—as if omitting it would spell disaster. Everyone predicted Kairos’s comeback would succeed, and the visible metrics and numbers were proving them right.
Kang Ha-jin had anticipated and foreseen all of this.
There was only one variable he hadn’t accounted for.
“You need to rest for at least two weeks, possibly a month. No pushing yourself.”
The older doctor shook his head with a firm tone.
Everything felt miserable, but the one glimmer of hope was that the black-and-white bone image displayed on the screen—whether X-ray or MRI—showed no signs of fractures.
And Lee Do-ha, the owner of that skeletal image and the subject of this devastating diagnosis, quietly clenched his fist. An unbearable rage directed at himself began to seep through, but no one could console him.
Because that wasn’t something consolation could fix.
‘Why now of all times….’
Lee Do-ha had sustained an injury.
The silver lining was that it wasn’t a serious injury; the dark cloud was that the timing of this injury was catastrophically poor.
Kang Ha-jin gazed silently at my own heels while simultaneously watching Lee Do-ha’s body flinch, unable to move as he wished. Even without medical knowledge, I could tell that for the foreseeable future, he wouldn’t just struggle with dance practice—even getting out of bed in the morning would be agonizing.
“You’ve had trouble with ankle ligaments before, haven’t you?”
The doctor posed the question with an almost certain tone, as if he could see the answer without being told. As Ji Su-ho and Kang Ha-jin turned to look at Lee Do-ha simultaneously, he hesitated before finally nodding.
“I injured it several times during sports when I was younger.”
“That’s it, that’s it. If you’d simply twisted your ankle in a moment of carelessness, it would’ve been minor. But because of those past injury memories, your body instinctively tenses up the moment you try to place your foot carefully—that’s what happened.”
“…Is that so?”
“You noticed something wrong with your ankle a few days ago, didn’t you?”
“…Yes.”
“So you were careful about it. With water on the floor, you tried to be even more cautious, and the moment you felt something amiss, you instinctively placed your foot in a way to minimize injury. That backfired and caused your lower back muscles to stiffen up as well.”
Lee Do-ha’s official diagnosis was nothing more than “simple muscle strain” and “ankle sprain.”
At first, he limped so severely that he couldn’t walk properly without Ha-jin’s support, but shortly after, he began complaining of pain and numbness in his lower back muscles.
Just as the doctor said, he’d lost his footing while trying to maintain balance on the slippery stage, resulting not only in the ankle injury but also in muscle stiffness that extended from his ankle all the way up to his lower back. The ankle was merely a simple sprain that would heal fine with a few days of rest, but the real problem was his lower back.
Lee Do-ha’s body, already weakened by prolonged all-nighters and overwork, seemed to be crying out for mercy at even the slightest provocation.
“You need to rest. There’s no other way. Don’t move, get consistent physical therapy. And at home, keep applying heat packs and getting massages regularly.”
“So you’re saying activities in his current condition are impossible…?”
“After a few days, it might be possible. But the problem is we never know when he might tweak it again. These things tend to recur easily once you’ve injured them. Since this won’t be a one or two-day thing, wouldn’t it be better to rest thoroughly now and recover completely?”
At the doctor’s blunt assessment, the expressions of the three people in the clinic room grew unusually gloomy.
They were willing to let Lee Do-ha rest as much as needed for his health, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.
The comeback was now just two weeks away.
There were already countless schedules that needed to be filmed in advance to align with the comeback timeline.
From the Idol Athletic Games to the Summer Wave Festival, Lee Do-ha’s role as Kairos’s undisputed physical main rapper and core fanbase pillar meant his activity suspension was a far greater loss than anticipated.
‘Of course, it would be the same regardless of who it was….’
The fans who had developed strong individual biases through the survival debut had finally unified after a long buildup. Through consistent relationship content and steady plot developments, Destiny had gradually begun to embrace not just their bias but all the members, and this was precisely the moment when the collective consciousness of “scattered, we’re just individual fanatics; united, we’re the awesome fanclub of Kairos, the new generation’s rising top star” had begun to take root.
And of all times, it had to be now.
“…Understood. Let’s start treatment from today then.”
“Yes, I’ll guide you when you leave.”
Among everyone in panic, it was Ji Su-ho who regained his composure first.
He calmly concluded the consultation with the doctor and helped Do-ha, who was sitting, to the physical therapy room. To Lee Do-ha, who lay on the bed with much he wanted to say, Ji Su-ho merely smiled as if it were nothing and patted his shoulder reassuringly.
“You heard him, right? Get plenty of sleep and rest to recover faster. You’ve been so busy with work and practice lately that you barely had time to sleep anyway—this works out. Get some good rest and come back out. Manager Kwon Wook will be waiting.”
“…Yes.”
“Ha-jin, you come out too. We need to step out so Do-ha can receive treatment comfortably.”
Lee Do-ha seemed to want to ask Ji Su-ho something about the schedule or comeback timeline, but Ji Su-ho didn’t give him the chance, pulling Ha-jin out of the therapy room.
Kwon Wook, who had finished checking out and was returning, approached the two of them with a serious expression.
“What did they say? That he’ll recover quickly?”
“They’re saying we should expect at least two weeks… It looks like we’ll need to adjust the schedule.”
“Ah….”
Though his expression showed dismay, Kwon Wook quickly pulled out his tablet and began checking what scheduled events were coming up. What was done was done; what mattered now was what came next.
Yes, what mattered was what came next.
Having remembered this fact, Kang Ha-jin belatedly regained his focus.
“Executive Director, Kwon Wook and I will head to the company first.”
“What? Come with me. Why wouldn’t you?”
“…Do-ha’s going to be mentally devastated when he comes out of treatment. Please help calm him down, sir. I’ll go in with Kwon Wook and think through some alternatives with the other members.”
At Ha-jin’s calm, rational words, Su-ho nodded in understanding. Ha-jin’s eyes hadn’t lost their clarity. If those eyes were to become as dull and lifeless as a moving doll’s, then everything else would have to be set aside to care for Ha-jin’s mental state first….
“Alright, just in case, let’s prepare for the worst-case scenario too. Go in and discuss it with the members.”
“Yes. Please take good care of Do-ha. …Let’s go, hyung.”
…But it seemed like things would be okay.
Ji Su-ho watched Ha-jin’s retreating figure as he calmly left the hospital with Kwon Wook, then let out a short breath and slumped onto the waiting room sofa.
* * *
An emergency meeting was convened with Kairos’s members and the staff members who oversaw their overall activities.
Those gathered around the long oval conference table sat with hardened expressions, each lost in their own thoughts. To maintain security, only the minimum necessary personnel had assembled, and the room was filled with nothing but silence born of worry and concern.
“….”
Yoo Gun, sitting alongside his fellow Kairos members, contributed to that silence as well.
Under normal circumstances, he would have been doing something—comforting his younger siblings who wore worried expressions beside him, or drawing a line with Seo Tae-hyun, who conjured a million possibilities in his head—but he simply couldn’t manage it now.
“…Yoo Gun, are you alright?”
“Huh? …Oh, yeah.”
Unfortunately, Yoo Gun had no room for such composure at the moment.
For the first time, warning lights flickered in the mind of someone who had always laughed things off lightly and found everything manageable. The mere possibility that Do-ha might not be able to participate in this comeback was enough to make his vision go white.
It was a moment that revealed just how much Yoo Gun had unconsciously relied on Do-ha on stage all this time.
‘What if Do-ha really can’t participate in the activities?’
Contingencies.
Yoo Gun, who had been working since childhood, was someone who had painfully learned how crucial such ‘contingencies’ were in handling tasks.
Even to take a single day off from part-time work, you needed a substitute, and in retail, if stock ran low and items sold out, you had to always keep alternative products in reserve.
And now.
Standing in this idol market, which was more competitive than any other market and more merciless in its evaluations than any other job.
‘…A contingency.’
Who in Kairos could possibly replace Lee Do-ha?
Yoo Gun despised himself for not being able to answer that question immediately.
“Thank you all for your hard work―.”
Just then, the conference room door opened, breaking the silence.
Kwon Wook entered with a serious expression, a tablet and diary tucked under his arm, and Ha-jin followed alongside him, his face unreadable.
Yoo Gun glanced at Ha-jin. He wanted to glean some hint from his face, but Ha-jin’s flawless features revealed no clues easily.
“Manager, where is Do-ha…?”
The moment Kwon Wook and Ha-jin took their seats, Tae-hyun, who had been worried about Do-ha the whole time, shifted forward and asked. Kwon Wook answered him with a faint smile.
“It’s not a major injury. But they say he needs to be monitored while undergoing treatment for at least two to four weeks, so we’ll need to come up with some countermeasures on our end.”
“Ah, so….”
“Right, Tae-hyun, hold on. First, let’s go over the schedule I’ve organized on the way here.”
Tae-hyun, who was about to say something more, quietly nodded at Kwon Wook’s skilled direction and sat back down. Kwon Wook mirrored his tablet screen onto the conference room TV and explained which of Kairos’s upcoming two-week schedule could be postponed and which could not.
As the collaborating staff members raised their hands and offered opinions one after another, the seemingly packed calendar gradually became organized.
“So let’s keep ‘Today’s Kairos’ on schedule, and for the rest, contact the production teams and let us know once you get their responses. ‘Sarin’s Etiquette’—we probably won’t be able to move that recording schedule, so we’ll have to proceed as planned….”
Since there were still two weeks until the comeback, Kwon Wook was adjusting the schedule on the premise that Do-ha could participate in activities as much as possible.
“Now then…. From here on, what the members think becomes important.”
However, there were inevitably things that couldn’t be postponed, and soon the final agenda that everyone had been avoiding surfaced.
“I hope Do-ha can participate in some way, but just in case he can’t… we should probably prepare a six-member stage setup as well. How do you think we should prepare for it? The Executive Director said he’s leaving this entirely up to you all.”
At Kwon Wook’s words, the members began exchanging glances with their mouths shut. Ha-jin, who usually stepped up first in such situations, remained silent and lost in thought.
It was Si-woo, sitting across from Yoo Gun, who broke the silence.
“We should split it up, right? Among the kids right now, Eun-chan has the smallest part, doesn’t he? Having Eun-chan and Ha-jin split it up a bit would be the best arrangement, wouldn’t it?”
“Ah, yes. That’s true, but….”
Not particularly due to aftereffects from the accident, but for various reasons involving choreography sequences and the impact of parts, Eun-chan, who had received the smallest part, nodded perceptively.
Yoo Gun knew that Eun-chan was watching his reaction, but he couldn’t offer any particular response. Unless he confidently declared right here that he would take on all of Do-ha’s parts himself, he couldn’t voice any dissatisfaction about not being selected as that contingency.
“Well, but there’s something that bothers me about the last part of the sub-unit section. It’s a ping-pong exchange between Eun-chan and Do-ha, but Ha-jin also has some ad-lib doubling, so….”
“What kind? If it comes down to it, just pass it to me. I can handle ad-libs just fine.”
“The choreography transitions are going to be a headache too. There’s a lot of parts structured as Do-ha’s solo appearances, and changing all of that would….”
The meeting continued among the members and staff, excluding Yoo Gun.
Yoo Gun found himself pathetic for not uttering a single word during that meeting, yet he felt a small measure of relief in this atmosphere where no one readily brought up his name.
Even knowing this was a shameful escape, Yoo Gun chose silence.
Becoming a “synergy” for Lee Do-ha and actually replacing his absence were entirely different matters. Besides, there was no guarantee that everyone in this room would agree if he raised his hand and volunteered.
No one had singled out Yoo Gun, yet he felt as though he’d been driven to the edge of a cliff.
“Alright then, let’s organize this step by step from the beginning. First, when we make the entrance, the large screen….”
“Why?”
“…?”
And in this room right now, there was someone ready to push Yoo Gun off that precipice.
“Why take such a roundabout, difficult path when there’s an easier way?”
Ha-jin, who had kept his mouth shut the entire time, set down the pen he’d been holding and lifted his head.
When he turned cold, his gaze became sharper and more resolute than anyone else’s—and now it pierced directly toward Yoo Gun.
No, it impaled him.
In that moment, Yoo Gun felt Ha-jin’s gaze like a blade driven straight through him.
Ha-jin never averted his eyes from Yoo Gun’s stare, and he calmly pronounced the decision he had made.
“Just have him do it. It’s not like our group doesn’t have a rapper.”
Yoo Gun, earn your keep.
I need you right now.
With that expression on Ha-jin’s face, Yoo Gun lost any place left to run and found himself plummeting over the edge of the cliff.

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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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