Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 55

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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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55. Various Methods of Dropping a Parachute (2)
So, I had an excuse too.
‘I was always the one behind the camera, not in front of it.’
More than ten years had passed since I quit being a trainee, and I hadn’t properly stood in front of a camera since then. After I’d spent my job-hunting days loafing around and gained a bit more weight, I hadn’t even enjoyed taking selfies.
Dancing and singing—I’d kept doing those, so there was no awkwardness there.
‘But shooting where I’m supposed to look handsome is a different story entirely.’
And right now, my handicap was doubled.
[System Alert: Mental Care System is active.]
[System Alert: Skill usage is currently unavailable due to system update.]
※Applied Skills: 【Speak as You Will】 (LV.6), 【See with Dragon’s Eyes】 (LV.3)
Because of this damned Mental Care system, I couldn’t even express emotions properly, and the 【Speak as You Will】 skill that would compensate for it was unavailable.
‘What’s the point of leveling up a skill if I can’t use it!’
As a result, I was currently suffering from fantasies of retaking my high school graduation photos six hundred times and creating an irreversible dark history for myself.
“Wow… this hyung is seriously struggling.”
“Be quiet, he’ll hear you.”
He can hear you, you bastards.
I didn’t even have the energy to glare at Kim Won-ho and Seo Tae-hyun, who were sitting in front of the monitor unable to hide their shock.
“Come on, come on. Ha-jin, let’s not be too hard on ourselves. Let’s relax, relax and smile naturally. Naturally.”
Photography shoots are ultimately a battle of stamina and time. But since I’m taking up several minutes by myself right now, how could my mind be at ease?
‘Did my way of thinking from my assistant director days stick with me?’
I smiled as naturally as I could in response to the photographer’s earnest encouragement, but that didn’t mean something impossible would suddenly become possible. I glanced once at the trainees loitering around waiting for their turn, and ultimately shook my head.
“Writer, I’ll just pick from what we have so far.”
“What? No, Ha-jin, you can do it!”
“There are many friends waiting behind me, and I feel like I’m taking up too much of your time.”
As I pleaded in an awkward tone, the photographer also seemed concerned about that point and checked the time and schedule with the staff.
In truth, I wasn’t creating an enormous delay compared to the time we’d blocked out. It was just that the shoot was so simple that the guys ahead of me were finishing so quickly that I was being compared to them.
So it wouldn’t be wrong situationally if I threw a tantrum saying this won’t do and took fifty more shots on my own,
‘but taking more shots won’t make the same face look any different anyway.’
I’d never liked photos taken by others to begin with. Of course, I’d want my pre-release face to look handsome, but there’s separate visual content that’ll generate buzz anyway.
“Wow, Si-woo hyung just looks like a pictorial no matter how you shoot him.”
“Look at Ju Eun-chan, he’s insane.”
“Still, you can’t beat someone with experience. Seo Tae-hyun, the staff noona was taking photos of you earlier.”
Those guys would generate enough pre-release buzz on their own, so let’s just gloss over my profile photo and move on.
“Hmm, I still feel like it would come out if we did a bit more. Too bad.”
“No way, I wouldn’t have gotten this much without you, Writer. You’re my savior.”
“…Tsk. Alright then. Good work!”
After bowing repeatedly to the photographer who’d worked hard oiling up this broken robot, I finally escaped that prison-like Photo Zone. As I moved toward where the monitor was for photo selection, the number of spectators had increased.
“Ha-jin hyung, seriously think about this again. Is this really your best? This is a kind of fraud.”
“Hey, how can you say that right to someone’s face?”
“Can you both just disappear? Lee Do-ha, why are you even here?”
“My preparations finished early.”
Lee Do-ha reached up to brush his hair back out of habit, then remembered the careful spray-set style and awkwardly lowered his hand. Having already finished his profile photos long ago, he was now dressed in a personal concept outfit. It seemed designed to showcase his impressive physique properly. From head to toe, he wore sporty athletic wear and even had a basketball tucked under his arm.
‘I’ll admit, this guy’s got decent athletic coordination.’
But why on earth can’t he dance? As I pondered the incomprehensible structure of his body, my eyes met Lee Do-ha’s again—he’d been staring at me intently.
“What? Why do you keep looking at me?”
“…I was wondering if you’d changed your mind.”
“About what?”
“Weren’t you determined to give it your all?”
His voice was filled with such genuine curiosity that I found myself at a loss for words. This guy never even gives me time to put my guard up before he lands a verbal punch.
“Look, I can’t line up everyone just to take my perfect life photo. It’s just a profile picture, for crying out loud.”
“….”
“I’m not giving up, okay? I wasn’t half-assing it. I’m serious.”
“Then that’s fine.”
Lee Do-ha nodded as if he understood. Why does this guy like me so much anyway?
I shook my head in bewilderment, and just then, a staff member called my turn as the photo zone finished with the previous person.
“Next up. Seo Tae-hyun?”
“Yes!”
“Are you serious? Him right after me?”
Might as well commit genocide. This pretty boy with his 82% eye-catching Cherry Boy charm. Who arranged the order like this?
The moment I entered the photo zone, Seo Tae-hyun smoothly greeted the staff and eased the atmosphere. The way he checked everything from lighting to props was far from ordinary. I’d heard he’d done a lot of child modeling work when he was younger—clearly he had the experience to back it up.
‘How did this guy not make it in his past life?’
These guys are endlessly baffling. I watched Seo Tae-hyun’s shoot for a bit longer—he was getting “bravo” calls from the first shot—then turned to leave.
“I’m heading back.”
“What? Aren’t you picking your photos, hyung?”
“No matter what I pick, they’re all duds anyway.”
Ten shots, ten failures. What’s there to choose from?
“Kang Ha-jin.”
“…?”
“Come talk to me for a second.”
Han Sung-woo grabbed me in the hallway as I was heading back to the waiting room. He must be pretty rattled to come looking for me first.
I nodded obediently and followed him. Han Sung-woo had apparently already scouted the location—he smoothly led me past the set hallway and pushed me into an empty waiting room.
“How much do you know?”
“Well, quite a bit. Want me to recite it all?”
“Damn it. Don’t be a smartass before I really stomp you.”
“Wow, you’re really defensive, hyung. What am I being a smartass about?”
I deliberately acted insufferable. Han Sung-woo exhaled heavily, looking exasperated, then crossed his arms. His posture was distinctly defensive.
I straightened up from where I’d been leaning against the wall. Han Sung-woo, who was about a head shorter than me, took a step back.
“…What do you want?”
Finally, the real question. I looked down at Han Sung-woo with the most irritating expression I could muster.
“But hyung, you really do have backing, right?”
“What?”
“I mean, you’ve got such good backing, so why haven’t you debuted yet? That’s what I was wondering.”
I shrugged with a bewildered expression and laughed.
“Honestly, it’s not that impressive backing, is it? I mean, if it were that impressive, I’d ask you to give me a ride on the bus too….”
“….”
“Didn’t seem like it.”
“Don’t mess around. You want to get cut like the other kids?”
“Haha, what can you do about it, hyung? You hate Ju Eun-chan, but you couldn’t cut him either, right? His family’s too impressive.”
“….”
“This isn’t some survival show run by a broadcasting station. What’s going to change just because you’ve got one PD backing you? Oh, maybe you’ll get better editing? Well, whenever you appear once, I appear once too, right? We’re basically in a complete rival dynamic.”
How’s that feel? Stung your pride?
“Well, I’m a bit frustrated about losing the battle… but we won the team battle in the end. Ah, but hyung was really underhanded.”
Annoyed?
“If we win the team battle, the top-ranked kids maintain their positions, so you deliberately gave us the team battle, right? Because it’s better for you to have lower-ranked kids climb up temporarily than for Ju Eun-chan to become Wings Rank.”
You want to just crush me, don’t you? Irritating, isn’t it?
“Well, I guess….”
You want to break me down by any means necessary, don’t you?
“That’s the only way to win. Can’t help it.”
I looked down at Han Sung-woo standing before me, his face twisted in seriousness, and smiled brightly. Then I casually passed by him and patted his shoulder.
“Work hard, hyung. I’ll pretend not to know.”
I desperately hoped my provocation would make Han Sung-woo’s eyes flip.
* * *
Left alone in the Waiting Room after Ha-jin disappeared, Han Sung-woo couldn’t contain his rising fury.
“Damn it!”
He kicked over the chair beside him with a bang, but his anger still wouldn’t subside.
“That worthless bastard!”
So it was all that guy’s fault. Ever since Kang Ha-jin arrived, nothing had gone right!
“The Executive Director got screwed and now we’re stuck doing this damn survival show….”
Originally, he was supposed to pick a few kids for the debut lineup and leave Miro with the Executive Director, then smoothly follow the debut route at the new Entertainment Agency.
‘The fact that Ju Eun-chan was in that debut lineup sucked, but once we debuted, I was just going to milk him for what he’s worth and dispose of him anyway!’
When he asked to be transferred to a different agency instead, his Father issued a stern command.
-Do you know how much loss I’ve suffered because of that bastard Son Hyung-gu!?
-You need to lay low for a while. If you really want to do this entertainment thing, produce results there somehow.
-What’s so great about doing something like that and performing worse than other kids.
Everything started going wrong from then on. He just wanted to debut with some plausible justification and live comfortably as a successful male idol, but nothing was easy. And Han Sung-woo was very displeased with this situation.
Han Sung-woo made a phone call in anger.
“PD, are you messing with me right now?”
-Hey, you! I told you not to call right away like this!
“Is that the problem right now? You should’ve just eliminated Kang Ha-jin completely!”
Though Han Sung-woo vented freely at the person on the other end of the line, Yoon CP, who was considerably older than him, couldn’t say a word. He had received substantial under-the-table money from Han Sung-woo’s Father in exchange for looking after his son.
—I barely managed to let you win. That was the best I could do! Anyway, you won.
“Fine, then find out what the next mission is.”
—What?
“You can’t even do this? You couldn’t get a single title track in advance and now you’ve made a mess of things?”
—No, that bastard Seo Tae-il should’ve been more thorough with security….
“So you’re saying you can’t do this either? Then what exactly can you do, PD?”
—Ah, ah. Fine, I get it. There’s a script meeting this week, so I’ll go check and let you know then.
Faced with the young master’s increasingly unreasonable attitude, Yoon CP ultimately backed down. Han Sung-woo hung up the phone the moment he got his answer, completely disregarding the other person’s demeanor or feelings.
“That bastard Kang Ha-jin….”
—Work hard, hyung. I’ll pretend not to know anything.
Ha-jin’s voice echoed in my mind—that smug laugh mocking me.
‘Work hard to win?’
Who said I couldn’t? Han Sung-woo’s teeth ground together with bitter determination.

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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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