Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 429

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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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429. A Haunted Experience
Let’s Go on a Trip!
(6)
Is This Difficulty Level Real?
I thought we were doing some casual late-summer horror special, but this is basically a full-scale blockbuster horror film production.
“Oh! Water, water…!”
But there was no time to be surprised.
The moment we entered the room, a sensor activated, and water began slowly filling the tank where Si-woo was trapped.
“Shim Yak-hae, do you really have to go this far!?”
Unable to call him the Main PD, I shouted at the current broadcast’s greatest villain, and whether it was my imagination or not, the water rose faster. Si-woo, who never seemed like he would do something like this, began crying out while gripping the iron bars suspended above him!
“Guys, your hyung is done for! I’m done for!”
And our responses to our eldest member varied greatly by group.
“S-Si-woo hyung, wait!”
“Eun-chan hyung, try pulling that lever first!”
“This one? Oh, it turns!”
Seeing our sky-like eldest hyung actually trapped in a prison cell, even stomping his feet, the action-oriented youngest members seemed quite shocked and immediately latched onto the puzzle without knowing how to solve it, while
“Wow… the cognitive dissonance is insane.”
“Is that hyung not a spy? No matter how I look at it, he seems to be enjoying being trapped…”
“Si-woo hyung? That’s definitely possible.”
We three cowards—myself included—couldn’t believe our sky-like eldest hyung’s tearful expression and immediately fell into habitual suspicion.
And then—
“Hey, is now really the time to say that!? Help quickly!?”
Just one gangster cherry maintaining composure and attitude amid this chaos.
Watching Tae-hyun calmly control the youngest members and us three cowards while displaying an unexpected intellectual side, I became more and more convinced that Tae-hyun was the pillar of our group.
‘Everyone who didn’t debut Tae-hyun in the previous life, those who didn’t, those who debuted him but couldn’t promote him—you all need to raise your hands and reflect.’
Anyway, there was no time. We had barely thirty minutes left until midnight, our escape deadline. Whether Si-woo was a spy or not, getting him out first was more important.
I quickly examined the devices making up the room.
No matter how much Touch High was the flagship program feeding QBS, they couldn’t throw astronomical amounts of capital at a short-form project like this. So this was likely a device that looked terrifying on the surface but was actually quite simple to solve—a cost-effective trap.
As I nodded, the confused members quickly gathered around me. I began analyzing the operating principles the youngest members had been testing and slowly finding a way to break through.
“Look, while you’re pulling these two levers, the laser disappears. Then you just need to go inside that strange structure and solve a total of three puzzles. From what I can see, something like a hint seems to appear on that monitor in the middle.”
“Then someone needs to guard that monitor.”
“Right. We need to divide our roles well.”
So what mattered was speed—pure speed.
While two people held the levers, the remaining four just had to dash over and cooperatively solve the puzzles in order—a simple principle. And simultaneously, it was a trick that couldn’t be solved unless I had saved all five of them.
‘Well, actually I only saved Yu Gun, but…’
Anyway, I’d raised them sturdy and reliable enough to escape on their own (?)
With such shameless thoughts, I quickly assigned roles. Once everyone knew the mission, distribution was fast.
“The youngest members pull the levers. You have the most strength. Tae-hyun, your voice is loud, so guard the monitor at the Control Center in the middle, and give a quick signal if the youngest members’ strength seems to falter.”
“You hyungs are going to do it?”
“Why, don’t you trust us?”
“…Just a little?”
Seo Tae-hyun swept his gaze across me and the Lee Brothers, his eyes betraying more than a hint of anxiety. His expression looked decidedly worse than “just a little” worried, but there was no time to dwell on such details now.
“Hey… you guys?”
“Oh, hyung, wait a moment. We’re thinking about how to rescue you right now.”
“Right, got it. I’ll cheer for a swift rescue. But there’s a monitor here too.”
“Since we don’t have much time left, we need to hurry and head down to the First Floor… yes?”
“And something’s being displayed here in real-time.”
So that pitiful expression and bouncing feet from earlier were all an act. Jeong Si-u, who had been gripping the tall prison door with one hand while waving the other frantically at us, suddenly revealed unexpected information.
As everyone turned to stare at the prison cell where Jeong Si-u was held with startled eyes, he slowly traced the text appearing on the monitor with his gaze and read the contents aloud.
“I’ll tell you a few rules.”
The mere text transformed instantly into a convincing villain’s ultimatum the moment it met Jeong Si-u’s voice. Had that same vocal delivery accompanied his earlier moment alone with Sanchez, it would have been chilling enough, yet his tone carried a dignity that wouldn’t have felt truly frightening.
Jeong Si-u calmly continued reading through the remaining text.
“First. Each time the water here rises by one level, hints about a spy will appear on this monitor. Do we have a spy today?”
“Ah, well… just keep reading for now.”
“However, if the water rises above a certain height, the sensor that opens the prison door may malfunction, so don’t waste time.”
I knew it would come to this.
This secret room had so many mechanical devices that the kinds of clues we’d found on the lower floors didn’t exist here. Without perfectly deducing the answer yet, we desperately needed those hints.
‘We don’t have time to search through the First Floor to Floor 4 again, so this is essentially our last chance to get hints.’
But if I got greedy, there was a real risk we wouldn’t be able to free Jeong Si-u.
Hints or a person.
While I deliberated, Jeong Si-u continued reading the next sentence.
“Second. The water rises by one level every three to five minutes. All hints obtained through this method are truthful.”
“….”
“Third.”
“….”
“….”
“…?”
Jeong Si-u’s smooth voice stopped at “third.” At first, I thought the typing wasn’t finished, so I waited, but after quite a long silence, I looked up to see him gripping the prison door tightly, his lips pouting as if something displeased him.
“What is it, hyung? We don’t have time.”
Even now, the water was filling and time was slipping away. I urged Jeong Si-u forward by pointing at my wristwatch, and he, wearing a peculiar expression as he stared at the monitor, reluctantly opened his mouth.
“Um, third.”
“…?”
“…It’s not necessary to escape with all members.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“That’s what it says.”
Leave the members behind and bolt alone?
The fans who were enjoying this would be clutching the back of their necks and setting the community ablaze right now.
I was about to wave my hand to signal him to stop reading, but Ju Eun-chan, the destruction king already 150% absorbed in this situation, beat me to it.
“That’s not an option. We have to escape together, all of us.”
Then Lee Yu-gun, who had been sitting in a cynical slouch, seemed to lose strength in his legs as he rested his chin on his hand and replied flatly.
“No, well…. It might not be absolute. Anyway, if there’s a spy among us, it could be rational to leave one dangerous person here for the sake of our quick and safe escape.”
“But what if that person isn’t the spy…!”
“That’s why I’m saying—if the spy is confirmed, then that method exists. You raised your guard when we first met, didn’t you?”
“Still, still… how could we abandon a group member? I don’t like that.”
“If that member is the spy who designed all of this, we can’t take them out of the building anyway.”
Ju Eun-chan fell silent at Yoo Gun’s counterargument. The kids had been trapped here for nearly two hours, and their immersion in the scenario was practically otherworldly possession-level. The atmosphere had turned so tense so quickly that I thought if this were a real situation, disaster would have already struck.
I quietly shifted my gaze to Lee Do-ha. It was a silent question—what do you think? He seemed to understand the meaning perfectly, pushing himself off the wall where he’d been leaning with his arms crossed, and opened his mouth.
“I… partially agree with Yoo Gun’s opinion. There’s no guarantee the spy is actually one of our members.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this world is influenced by Shim Yak-hae’s spirit, so I’m thinking one of our members might actually be Shim Yak-hae in disguise. The only person who could design this situation and put us in trouble right now is Shim Yak-hae.”
Lee Do-ha, who had just as much otaku sensibility as I did, had gone ahead and injected a possession-setting into this world.
Ju Eun-chan, who had been consistently advocating for leaving with all the members, seemed shaken by the hypothesis that ‘our member might not actually be that person’—I could feel his eyes flicker with uncertainty.
‘Right…. So that’s why all those protagonists in hunter stories, horror stories, martial arts stories, and other worlds drenched in bloodshed always found brilliant solutions in situations like this and gave readers that refreshing satisfaction?’
I suddenly felt sympathy for the countless protagonists from the works I’d loved.
“Guys.”
“…?”
It was Dan Ha-ru, standing in front of the right lever, who broke the tense standoff.
Dan Ha-ru’s finger slowly pointed toward the prison cell where Jeong Si-u was trapped. Everyone’s gaze shifted to the water tank below it.
“It’s already filled one section.”
The water level that had been rising gradually had already reached the first mark.
At the same moment, a cheerful sound effect rang out from Jeong Si-u’s monitor: “Ding-dong!” The first hint about the spy had arrived.
Jeong Si-u, lifting his head slightly to look at the monitor, twisted his expression in a peculiar way once more.
“Huh?”
“What is it, hyung?”
“Hmm…. So it’s like this?”
Jeong Si-u, who had been smiling meaningfully, read the first hint in a perplexed voice.
“‘He’….”
“….”
“‘He’ was born in the height of summer when the sun blazes fiercely.”
And among Kairos members, only two were born in summer.
“So…. it’s either me or Tae-hyun?”
Jeong Si-u’s intrigued laughter echoed softly through the secret room.
* * *
The impact of the first clue, which had narrowed the suspects from five to two with just a single sentence, was enormous.
“So, so what do we do now? If Si-u hyung is really the spy…. The trap itself could be a trap from the start, right?”
“On the other hand, if Seo Tae-hyun is the spy, we could rescue Jeong Si-u and lock Seo Tae-hyun in that prison instead.”
“No…. No, I’m really not! I’m really not, me!?”
“Then it’s that hyung?”
“I was stuck here bored for two hours, and now I’m being accused of being the spy?”
“…What about waiting for one more section to fill and securing another hint? The fewer risks, the better.”
“We don’t have time for that. We’ve got less than thirty minutes left. If we’re going to get Si-woo out, we need to do it now or we’ll be too late.”
Dan Ha-ru’s firm response brought silence back to the group.
But it was short-lived—the rapidly rising water level left no room for silence, and the members quickly began voicing their opinions again.
Once the water reached a certain height, the sensor on the prison cell door might not function properly, so if they wanted to attempt anything, now was the only opportunity, just as Dan Ha-ru said.
“No, I’m telling you I’m not! I freed Do-ha and found all the hints myself. Why would I do that if I were a spy? I could just sit back and watch you and the hyungs panic and do nothing!”
“…Ah, now that you mention it, that does seem plausible.”
“That’s… a fair point, I think.”
Faced with Seo Tae-hyun’s strong rebuttal, the Lee Brothers—who had been receiving Seo Tae-hyun’s protective support for the past two hours—furrowed their brows and showed signs of wavering. As Seo Tae-hyun’s suspicion faded, the members’ gazes naturally shifted toward Jeong Si-u.
“I just found out there’s a spy, so I don’t really have much to say about it….”
Jeong Si-u, now lounging against the prison bars as if he owned the place, shrugged his shoulders. With an air of ease, he tilted his head and continued.
“If I were the spy, wouldn’t I have escaped beforehand instead of being locked up here? I’ve been bored out of my mind for the past two hours.”
“…But we can’t know that for sure. You could have been wandering around with bandages the whole time and just came back to the prison when we arrived.”
“That would be difficult. This room was connected to the room where I and Eun-chan were, so we would have noticed if Si-woo had done that. And there doesn’t seem to be any other secret passage here.”
Dan Ha-ru countered the suspicion Lee Yu-gun raised.
In the end, the conversation went in circles and got nowhere. The members, realizing that without any more concrete clues everything was a fifty-fifty gamble, fell silent on their own.
And in that urgent situation, I thought to myself.
‘What does Shim Yak-hae want?’
More precisely, what picture does the production team want to capture through ‘Shim Yak-hae’?
There are too many mechanisms for this to be a simple spy hunt. If they just wanted to play a thief-catching game, they could have done it easily with an MT concept.
‘MT….’
The fact that they chose an MT concept in the first place was another question mark.
If they simply needed a reason for fourteen people to come out to the mountains, it would have been much more convenient and economical to keep everyone as one group instead of splitting into two teams and doing it all at once.
Yet the production team deliberately split us into two teams and even set up identical scenarios in two separate buildings—absolute madness.
I didn’t think the end result of such an insane scale would be just a simple spy hunt.
“Dan Ha-ru, Ju Eun-chan.”
I finished my thoughts.
It wasn’t certain, but a picture that seemed entertaining from a broadcast perspective had come to mind.
“Grab the lever. Everyone else, get ready to solve the puzzle. The water’s gotten pretty high, so roll up your pants legs.”
“…You’re letting Si-woo out?”
“Hyung! I’m telling you I’m not the spy!”
“If Tae-hyun really is the spy, there’s a risk in putting him in charge of the control center….”
The members immediately responded to my decision.
I quickly cut off their words and continued.
“No, I’m not locking up Seo Tae-hyun.”
“Then… what do you mean?”
“If you’re not locking up Seo Tae-hyun, there’s no point in opening the prison, right? It’d be better to just get down quickly.”
“I’m not leaving Si-woo locked up either.”
“…?”
Receiving the bewildered gazes of the members, I quickly removed my shoes and socks and rolled up my pants legs. With a hint of admiration for Coordinator Noona’s foresight in dressing me in comfortable pants that could get wet, I stepped into the water tank first.
Checking the remaining time on my watch, I entered the water tank ahead of everyone else.
“Spy or not, we’re taking everyone with us.”
That was the decision I made.

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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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