Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 421

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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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421. Let’s Go on a Trip! (2)
Tension hung thick in the small conference room.
It had started with Jeong Si-u, who lounged with his chin propped up and smiled so disarmingly that you couldn’t even spit at him, and me, seriously contemplating whether this guy’s life philosophy was to turn existence itself into hard mode.
I’d always thought of contrarians as just Seo Tae-hyun and me croaking away like frogs, but there was someone here who made us look tame.
“Hmm, yes. I see.”
The Main PD found our standoff fascinating and rubbed his hands together eagerly.
Sorry, but I can practically hear the gears turning in that head from here. It was obvious that inside that skull, a hundred and one summer special concepts for roasting this second-year variety show prodigy were floating around.
The Writer sitting beside me, who had been typing away endlessly on his laptop, spoke first.
“What about you, Yoo Gun?”
“…Pardon?”
“Horror versus variety. Which way do you lean?”
The sword’s hilt had turned toward someone who cared about neither horror nor variety—a living embodiment of capitalism whose life motto was “get paid first, ask questions later.” Lee Yu-gun was the kind of guy who’d do a one-man-three-role gig as a haunted house ghost if you paid him enough. The whole haunted house exploration thing? Please.
Lee Yu-gun, who’d been wearing an “what should I eat for dinner tonight” expression throughout the meeting, visibly flustered at the question directed at him and quickly glanced to his right.
“Uh, well….”
At the end of that awkward gaze, he’d see me (older brother 1) silently asking if he wanted to know what real fear was, and Jeong Si-u (older brother 2) subtly pressuring him to pick the right side.
Lee Yu-gun hastily fixed his eyes forward, sweat beading on his forehead as he stammered out words.
“Th-that is… w-whichever gets… higher ratings…?”
There we go. He’d really wracked his brain for that one.
At least he didn’t say “whichever pays more.”
Seeing he’d made a genuine effort, I relaxed my expression and loosened my posture. Lee Yu-gun immediately gulped down water like someone who’d just survived a brush with death. Seo Tae-hyun, sitting across from me, quietly tossed a Choco Pie in his direction as if to say “you’ve suffered enough.”
“Pfft… Ahahaha, ahahahahaha!”
“…?”
Then the Main PD and Writer across from us exchanged a look before suddenly slapping the table and bursting into laughter. When I widened my view, I could see the other staff members standing around or sitting in corners desperately trying to hold back their laughter.
Confused about what was so funny, I watched as the Main PD finally finished laughing and caught his breath.
“Ah, sorry, sorry. Really sorry. But you’re just so cute. Man, you’re adorable, seriously.”
“Haha, oh man, my stomach hurts… Ha-jin, are you easily scared? You don’t look it.”
“…People often tell me I don’t look like what I actually am.”
Easily scared? I’m someone who’s never paid to watch a horror movie in my entire life.
What terrified me wasn’t ghosts—it was my own prefrontal cortex.
My imagination, which had shown boundless creativity since childhood, unfortunately excelled in the realm of fear as well. I don’t get scared from watching horror movies—I’m the type who finds a closed closet door in my own home scarier after the credits roll…!
‘Why should I take money and scream at people in ghost costumes?’
Well, of course if I’m getting paid, I’d do it….
No, wait, scratch that. Even for money, I don’t want to. Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey.
I hastily spat out the thoughts I’d been holding back and made a face of disgust, when the Main PD, who’d been laughing heartily, looked at us and spoke again.
What came next was genuinely shocking.
“Ah… I’m tearing up. Anyway, don’t worry. That question was just small talk to get a sense of your preferences….”
“…Y-yes↗? Ah, ahem.”
Damn these vocal cords.
I awkwardly cleared my throat and took another sip of water, and the Main PD spoke with a bright, hearty tone.
“No, we’re shooting next week already. We’ve already locked down the concept~ We were just asking if there were any games you wanted to try or genres you liked. I didn’t expect you all to share your preferences so enthusiastically~”
“Ah….”
“As I mentioned, today’s gathering is meant to help us get better acquainted beforehand, so please don’t feel pressured and just chat comfortably. We’ve prepared some fun content for when we arrive, so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, absolutely nothing!”
Only then did I remember that our one-night, two-day shoot was less than a week away.
I mean, couldn’t you have mentioned this earlier? Now I’ve wasted energy on a staring contest with Jeong Si-u and completely deflated Lee Yu-gun’s spirits.
I was quietly grumbling to myself about feeling drained for no good reason when Dan Ha-ru, who had been sitting quietly at the far end the entire time, slowly raised his hand and carefully opened his mouth.
“Then… you’re not going to tell us what kind of shoot it is?”
“No, unfortunately that’s a secret. But still, there’s nothing dangerous, strenuous, or difficult about it. Just think of it as coming to have fun~ and bring yourself. We’ll prepare all the clothes and necessities for you.”
The Writer, who had been gazing at us with a warm smile the entire time, answered with a friendly expression. He even reassured us again that it would really just be playing, eating, and doing some light running!
‘Oh… I don’t believe a word of this.’
Everyone knows you should never trust what broadcasting station people say.
But since he was saying it with such a smile, it wasn’t exactly a good choice to openly act like someone in the terminal stages of paranoia. So I had no choice but to continue the meeting with the standard response of “Well, that’s a relief then.”
And….
“Damn….”
The filming day finally arrived.
“Ha, look at these bastards.”
After confirming the existence of an unnecessarily grand and flashy pension on some deserted island and an abandoned building located exactly fifteen minutes’ walk from that pension, I became absolutely certain of one thing.
‘Just bring yourself, they said. Just yourself…!’
This is definitely a horror special, damn it!
* * *
I should have caught on when they put me on a boat heading to an island for what was supposed to be a “light one-night, two-day” shoot.
But I was too preoccupied with seasickness during the journey, cycling through sleeping, waking, lying down, and vomiting to pay attention.
“Water… water….”
“Do-ha hyung, why is Lee Yu-gun like that?”
“He had motion sickness the whole way here.”
“I mean, both Kang Ha-jin and Lee Yu-gun. Why are the people who look like they’d be least affected acting like that?”
Seo Tae-hyun, a born entertainer who had been traveling since childhood to mountains, seas, valleys, and fields wherever he was called to film, muttered in bewilderment.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to live a life plagued by motion sickness!?
…I wanted to retort, but my stomach was in such a state that I closed my half-open mouth. Then Seo Tae-hyun, who had been patting Lee Yu-gun’s back a couple of times, approached me and held something out.
“Here, hyung, put one of these in your mouth.”
“…? What is this?”
“Lemon candy. Rinse your mouth with water first and then eat it. You need something refreshing to get your mind back, from experience.”
“Oh, okay…. But shouldn’t you be carrying plum or cherry candies rather than lemon based on your image? There’s something about you handing me lemon candy that feels like a certain brand ambassador showing up in full costume….”
“You don’t want the candy?”
“I only ever eat lemon-flavored candy. Lemon candy is the way to go for vitamin replenishment.”
I barely managed to grab Seo Tae-hyun’s wrist as he tried to take the candy back for making a joke. Sorry, but without this I literally can’t film right now, okay?
As I gently pried open Seo Tae-hyun’s clenched fist and popped the candy out, he shook his head as if observing a research specimen and spoke.
“You’re the type who’d have your mouth floating in the sea even after death….”
“Cut me some slack. I’m in a weakened state right now.”
“You’re not planning to have your mouth and tongue weaken separately, are you?”
“Fortunately, they seem to be holding up until I die.”
“Stop talking, just stop. Ah, come on, snap out of it! We’re starting filming soon!”
Yeah, I want to as well….
Thinking about the horror experience that would almost certainly find me once night fell in a few hours, even this sour lemon candy tasted like metal on my tongue.
I rolled the lemon candy Seo Tae-hyun had given me around in my mouth while slowly surveying this location they’d dropped us at for the filming site.
After venturing deeper into the mountainside of this sparsely populated island, we’d arrived at a pension that had a valley flowing along its left side and a sprawling open field stretching out on the right. Truth be told, while it was called a pension, it felt more like a private villa—a neat and spacious accommodation.
I had no idea how the production team had managed to scout out a place like this, but judging by the scale of the sets and equipment hastily set up around us, I could roughly piece together what was coming.
‘They’ll have us play in the valley while the sun’s up, exhaust us with exercises in the open field, then run us through all sorts of missions to gather material for a self-cooking competition, grill some barbecue, and then under the guise of helping digestion at night, they’ll put us through a courage test in that abandoned building over there.’
Wow, that’s two episodes of variety show wrapped up. So it’s a two-week run this time too, huh.
I couldn’t decide whether to be thrilled or despairing about the fact that our peaceful daily life would be followed by a mountain lodge of horrors, and our suffering within that lodge would air over two whole weeks.
Did this production team lose all their sense? Why are they preparing such a clichéd summer horror special when summer’s already over?
‘No, maybe I’m just getting ahead of myself….’
An abandoned building or two could easily exist on a remote island like this, right? There’s no law saying we have to go inside every abandoned building we find. Maybe it’ll just be a fun and exciting one-night, two-day rural village experience?
As I was psyching myself up and about to bite down on the lemon candy, Jeong Si-u, who’d been quietly exploring the area with Dan Ha-ru, suddenly appeared behind me and whispered softly.
“Well, how do I put this….”
“….”
“It’s got that perfect desolate vibe for ghosts to show up?”
“Aaah, seriously! No! Don’t do that! Don’t say things like that!”
“What? It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“When you say it, it feels like everything will actually come true!?”
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? You’d be able to ward off ghosts and stuff.”
“Lucifer’s a fallen angel too!?”
As I screamed with genuine conviction, our eldest brother—who boasted an unrealistically beautiful appearance that made it seem like he could handle being either an angel or a demon on the spot—burst into laughter as if he found my panic genuinely amusing. Seo Tae-hyun, listening from the side, shook his head with an air of enlightened resignation.
“Everyone, gather around and receive the team blessing~!”
In the midst of all this, Kwon Wook, who’d been having some conversation with the production team, called us over loudly. Next to Kwon Wook, the Stylist was stacking seven jumpers on her arms.
With seven baseball-style jackets piled on top of each other, the volume was easily the size of her own body, yet the Stylist didn’t budge an inch and distributed the clothes to us with her other hand. As I received my jumper, I caught a glimpse of her forearms—her muscles seemed to be getting more defined with each passing day.
“Is this the team blessing? This is our group uniform.”
“Right.”
The jumpers the Stylist had distributed were varsity jackets we’d had made back when we first debuted.
These varsity jackets, commonly seen as university club jackets, were today’s team outfit….
“Exactly. Your concept for today is that, apparently? A university club that came on a trip together to build camaraderie for the new semester.”
I see, so that’s the concept….
And from that peaceful trip, the university student friends would unfortunately either never return or face some life-altering incident…?
With such detailed setup that wouldn’t be out of place as a standard horror movie opening, I extinguished the last glimmer of hope and crunched down on the remaining lemon candy in my mouth.

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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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