Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 555

—————

This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

—————

555. In the Chaos (8)
“If that’s really the situation… we have to stick to the original plan.”
Ha Tae-jin answered calmly from his silence.
He meant they would find the Hidden Room as Void had originally instructed and activate the emergency escape system.
“You’re saying you’ll do what Void wants? What if that’s a way to escape with Void, not us?”
“That’s why I added the condition. ‘If that’s really the case.’ If we’re truly on Void’s side and that’s how we win, then that’s what we have to do.”
“Even if Void is a threat dangerous enough to endanger humanity?”
“That’s exactly why we need to find out what the truth really is.”
No matter what the result turned out to be, the goal was to clarify the team’s objective and seize victory.
Ha Tae-jin, who had just delivered a line worthy of a cold-blooded leader in a war film, suddenly exuded an actor’s aura for the first time in a while.
[System Alert: Whoa… (b˙◁˙ )b]
[System Alert: The System just marveled at how that looked like a scene straight out of a real movie.]
But this bastard, ever since earlier, really…?
‘Hey, whose system are you anyway.’
[System Alert: Huh? (｡・ω・｡)?]
‘Never mind, let’s drop it.’
I’ve lived a long time, but this is the first time I’ve been scratched by a system.
Feeling oddly irritated, I crossed my arms and fell silent, but Nam Sa-ra seemed to interpret my silence as agreement and hurriedly voiced her opinion.
“I… I’m against it.”
Nam Sa-ra opened her mouth with a slightly trembling voice, gripping the paper envelope she’d been holding in her arms the whole time with both hands as she continued.
“It’s not like we don’t know anything… The documents here show that Void is so dangerous it forced the entire research facility to shut down.”
“So, it’s not that we’re unconditionally going to release Void….”
“We’re already uncomfortable with being used as bait to take control of the research facility, so how can we trust Void enough to release it?”
“That’s why we need to confirm things precisely first. What if we can only survive if Void survives? What if that emergency escape system really is our way out?”
“No, I’d rather look for another way. If we blow up the research facility the original way, there’s definitely some method for us to escape safely too. And if….”
“…?”
Nam Sa-ra, refusing to yield even to Ha Tae-jin’s counterargument, trailed off mid-sentence.
Judging by her expression and demeanor alone, she seemed to have forgotten this was a broadcast filming location with around two hundred cameras rolling.
Her eyes, which clutched the paper envelope containing classified documents so tightly it crumpled, had begun to glisten with moisture.
“I… if the only way to stop Void is… if the only way is for us to explode together here… I’ll do it that way to stop it….”
“…? Are you crying, noona?”
“No, no, why, why? Why are you crying? Why, why?”
“You guys can… I’m really going to do it.”
“No, noona, noona? Why are you, are you cry-crying…? Huh?”
Damn, my voice cracked.
But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
Two grown men, each standing at one hundred eighty centimeters tall, were at a loss for words at Nam Sa-ra’s tears, which had been so spirited until now.
I mean, it’s not like we’re actually going to die here, so why is she suddenly crying at this moment? And the way she kept telling us to escape seemed genuinely sincere.
“No, noona. If the only way is to blow it up, then Ha-jin and I can’t escape either and we all die together. Why do you keep telling us to go somewhere? If we’re going, we go together.”
“Sniff, Ha Tae-jin, are you a T…?”
“Why do you say something so romantic—living together if we live, dying together if we die—in such a hopeless tone?”
“Me? I? No, no. What I meant was…. Let’s find a way together…. No, sister. We’re not dead yet, right?”
“I don’t know, I think I got too immersed. Ugh, this is so frustrating. That damn artificial intelligence X bastard….”
Even as she fumed, curses tumbled from her lips.
Nam Sa-ra, who seemed to have finally burst from the fatigue and exhaustion that had accumulated throughout the entire shoot, continued sniffling for a while longer. With the tissue I’d brought from the corner of the restaurant, she wiped her face clean, yet even in doing so, she didn’t forget to angle her body so that her half-smudged eyeliner was visible directly to the camera.
Proving that she was a born comedian even in this situation, she looked at me with panda eyes.
“Ha-jin, what about you…?”
“Huh?”
“What are you going to do, *sniff*?”
One panda eye with heavily smudged eyeliner and one unnecessarily soulful actor’s gaze turned toward me simultaneously.
Nam Sa-ra with her panda eyes seemed ready to burst Void even at the cost of death, while Ha Tae-jin with his melodramatic gaze looked determined to achieve his goal even if it meant destroying humanity itself.
“M-me?”
And as for me—
Whether it was Void or whatever, I was someone who didn’t really care as long as the ending was the kind that would make viewers so over-invested they’d explode and churn out about fifty viral posts per second on the internet.
‘Honestly, if I’d known it would come to this, I think it would’ve been fun if I’d deliberately failed in the first test and set up a confrontation scenario with Ha Tae-jin from the start….’
But since I couldn’t say that, I was thinking about what I should say to satisfy both of them adequately.
-The third test has ended.
-Total survivors: nine.

“Ah, it’s over.”
Right on cue, an announcement came through ending the third test.
The tense atmosphere that had enveloped the entire restaurant shattered in an instant, and the mood cleared. I didn’t miss that timing—I snapped my fingers and pushed myself up from leaning against the table.
“How about we do this? If the losers are chasing the survivors anyway, staying bunched up as three people might actually be dangerous.”
“So? You’re saying we should split up?”
“Sister and you check the third and fourth floors together, and since I’m a pretty fast runner, I’ll go to the first floor and basement alone. Then we’ll meet up again on the second floor where the office was earlier.”
“Do we really have to split up? Wouldn’t it be better to stay together? Or you and Tae-jin go together. I might just slow you guys down, you know?”
Worry clouded Nam Sa-ra’s eyes.
To reiterate, we were currently filming, and this was ultimately just entertainment.
The moment something went wrong with any one of us, Kwon Myung-eun watching from outside would immediately call cut, and then all of this would be nothing more than an expensive escape room set, no more and no less.
“….”
Yet Nam Sa-ra was genuinely worried about me.
If I were to tell her that this remarkable immersion and expressiveness, this attitude of not just playing things for laughs despite being a comedian, was what earned her the Best Female Entertainment Award of the year in the original timeline, what kind of reaction would she show?
“Sister.”
Toward Nam Sa-ra, who still thought of herself as a supporting sidekick propping up the stars, I flashed a playful smile.
“I’m not going to die.”
When I spoke those words like a promise—the same ones I’d left behind during the pre-shoot—Nam Sa-ra’s expression changed subtly. She became serious, as if she’d made a decision, and nodded firmly while clenching her fists.
“Got it. So we’re really meeting again on the second floor, right? You understand? Tae-jin, if it seems like I’m becoming a burden, just leave me and run away immediately, okay? Got it?”
“If that happens, I’ll pick you up and carry you. Just like Ha-jin did last time.”
“No, seriously. I’m being genuine, sister. I really don’t want to burden you all with something like this.”
“I get it, I get it. Hey, Ha-jin. Go on, hurry up. This sister is really going to cry at this rate.”
Ha Tae-jin laughed and waved his hand dismissively at me.
I nodded and stuffed the snacks I’d spread across the table back into my pockets. Though I did show some generosity by leaving a few pieces for Ha Tae-jin and Nam Sa-ra.
Once I’d finished preparing to leave, I slipped one of the blueprints into the inner pocket of my coat and gave the two of them a final reminder.
“For now, you two search for other survivors and gather some information. Like Tae-jin said, we need to figure out for certain whether we’re really on Void’s side or if we’re just being used by Void.”
“I took a quick look earlier, and it seems pretty likely that the Hidden Room is on Floor 4 too. We’ll investigate that while we’re gathering information. That’s okay, right, sister?”
“Yeah, we need to know where it is anyway. …So what about you, Ha-jin?”
I popped a strawberry yogurt-flavored lollipop into my mouth. The sweetness clicked and clacked against my teeth, spreading throughout my mouth.
“I’m going to dig deeper into the dropouts. What their purpose is, how they’re eliminating us—things like that. And…”
I recalled what the dropout team had said earlier as they passed through the restaurant.
They were definitely looking for Son Je-u.
“It seems like Zeus has something—a Key. Since he disappeared in the basement, I’ll search that area and try to find him. If you two happen to spot Zeus, could you ask him what he knows?”
“Yeah, of course we should. Oh, and…”
“…?”
Ha Tae-jin, who had been nodding, seemed to remember something and hesitated as he approached me.
Wondering what it was, I stepped closer to Ha Tae-jin, and he made a small noise with his hand to keep it off the microphone, then whispered to me in a low voice.
“If you happen to run into him, go easy on him for my sake, okay? He’s not someone who’s completely unreasonable.”
“…?”
So that was it—Son Je-u was still on his mind because they were senior and junior from the same Entertainment Agency.
Before filming, he’d said Son Je-u wasn’t stupid despite being cunning, but now asking me to go easy on him suggested he’d been carefully observing how Son Je-u had been treating me while we were together.
‘So he really is a good senior to his people, huh.’
Well, what Son Je-u had done didn’t really affect me much, and honestly, his interference was cute compared to what other star-syndrome cases pulled. If I wanted to deepen my relationship with Ha Tae-jin in this timeline, it made sense to grant this kind of favor.
“Ah, well…”
I coolly nodded at Ha Tae-jin in response. I even made sure to flutter my clothes so the microphone wouldn’t pick it up.
“Depends on what he does.”
“…Huh?”
“I’ll think about it based on how he acts.”
But then again, what does it matter.
Once I return to the original timeline, it’ll all reset anyway.
“I hold grudges, you know.”
“…”
Ha Tae-jin and I do work together pretty well, and Son Je-u is annoying, plain and simple.
“Well, I’m heading out then? Let’s meet on the Second Floor in three hours!”
Leaving Ha Tae-jin behind with a dumbfounded expression, I moved forward with a cheerful farewell.
This brutal Kwon Go-sa-jik Survival Program was already entering its final act.

—————

This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

—————