Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 560

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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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560. In the Chaos (13)
Jeong Si-u was the Youngest Member.
A world where this was the official setting actually existed?
‘What kind of horrifying world is this…?’
At first, Ju Eun-chan couldn’t believe it even seeing it with his own eyes.
World, don’t lie to me.
Our Si-woo had always talked back to everyone his entire life—he was never the type to call anyone his senior.
[Why did Kairos’s Jeong Si-u withdraw?]
Looking into it, if he was the visual and main vocalist of the Youngest Member line,
wouldn’t the Entertainment Agency have given him hundreds of millions,
or rather, kept him even by paying hundreds of millions in breach of contract fees?
Looking at the debut stage, his vocal tone harmony with Dan Ha-ru seems pretty good too.
– The agency must be incompetent….
└ Yeah
– If the agency had known that, Kairos wouldn’t have collapsed
– They say he’s from a good family, so his parents must have withdrawn early lol
However, unfortunately, this world deceived Ju Eun-chan twice over.
This place was a world built entirely on ‘lies’, and in that lying world, Jeong Si-u was truly the Youngest Member!
Youngest Member! Twenty-six years old! Same age as Ha-ru!
Debuted at sixteen, withdrew at seventeen, cut off contact at eighteen, and dropped out at nineteen!
And for ten years since, he’d done nothing of note, just wasting away his days as a complete layabout!
‘This is absolutely ridiculous.’
That bastard, whoever this Returner was, had clearly made an excessive move to torment Ha-ru.
It was nonsensical that our Si-woo had become the Youngest Member who had to call the other members his seniors, but it was even more nonsensical that such a person had spent ten years doing nothing and just drifting in and out of hospitals as a complete idler.
‘I mean, considering Si-woo’s family wealth, it’s not entirely impossible in reality…!’
Regardless, this made no sense! It just didn’t!
Our Si-woo isn’t that kind of person! He’s not!
After debuting, for some reason he’d become a dopamine addict obsessed solely with pleasure (according to Ha-jin’s analogy), but even so, Si-woo was a self-improvement-oriented person who had never once neglected his responsibilities.
There was a reason fans called the senior line of Kairos the “workaholic trio”!
But then….
“Get out before I call someone to throw you out.”
A crumpled, filthy sweatshirt, training pants with stretched-out knees, bare feet in slippers.
With a face like his, it almost looked like a billionaire’s homeless aesthetic, but it was certainly an outfit that would be unthinkable for the ‘real’ Si-woo.
But no matter how fake this world was, they wouldn’t have fabricated Si-woo’s clothing preferences as well.
“….”
Eun-chan’s gaze naturally shifted to Si-woo’s hands.
Though his fingertips had developed calluses from playing guitar, Si-woo’s hands were generally soft and well-maintained. He’d always prioritized moisturizing and caring for his hands due to his piano-playing habits.
But now, the hands before his eyes were not like that.
His hands were deeply cracked, raw, and scarred.
And perhaps, the cause was that loose wet towel now held in Si-woo’s hands.
Eun-chan lifted his head confidently and spoke the words he had carefully prepared.
After all, he had come fully prepared today to avoid being driven away so pathetically like last time.
“I don’t want to.”
“…?”
At Eun-chan’s firm response, Si-woo’s brow furrowed noticeably.
Meeting Si-woo’s eyes—which held not a shred of affection—was quite painful, but I could endure it. Because right now, I was the older brother, not Si-woo.
That’s what being an older brother truly meant.
Someone who could do anything for their younger sibling, even things that were difficult or seemed impossible.
“I… ah, no. I didn’t come here today to see you, Si-woo.”
“…What?”
“Young Master!”
As Si-woo tilted his head at Eun-chan’s confident declaration, someone came rushing out from the hospital corridor with an awkwardly formal title, perfectly timed.
A man in a white shirt with sleeves rolled up approached Eun-chan with a delighted expression. Si-woo, along with everyone nearby, turned their attention to the surprising title, and Eun-chan’s ears flushed crimson red.
Regardless, the man with a hearty laugh patted Eun-chan’s back repeatedly and continued speaking.
“Ha ha. Well, I had my suspicions when Director Joo Eun-seok called, but you really came, Young Master? What brings you here? Ah, I’m about to cry?”
“Uncle, please stop calling me that….”
“What do you mean? How else am I supposed to call you if not Young Master? Are you Hong Gildong or something? Can’t I call you Young Master?”
“You could just call me Eun-chan….”
Eun-chan, embarrassed by the formal title being rattled off like a motor, glanced nervously at Si-woo and the nurses while his face withered away.
His older brother’s acquaintance and his father’s company employee had a family member admitted to this hospital, and while his brother was going to visit them, Eun-chan had volunteered to go instead, which was fine until now….
Eun-chan suppressed his embarrassment and turned his gaze back to Si-woo.
Whether fortunately or unfortunately, Si-woo’s eyes remained in the realm of indifference. Eun-chan appealed his purpose to Si-woo with a fairly confident expression.
“See? I really came to visit someone in the hospital today. Not you—this person.”
….
“So don’t worry about me too much, and just do what you need to do.”
Actually, I came to see my older brother.
I was so worried about my brother struggling alone here that I had no choice but to come.
The unspoken truth rolled around in my mouth like a marble.
But Eun-chan kept his mouth shut. He knew that no sincerity would ever reach Si-woo as he was now.
“…I don’t care what my brother does.”
Si-woo’s indifferent voice echoed dryly, his agitation having subsided in the brief moment.
The negative emotion that had flickered in his eyes moments before now felt almost like a relief, and Si-woo’s pupils, having erased all emotion from his face in an instant, never lingered on Eun-chan again.
Si-woo walked past Eun-chan with an emotionless gait.
“Young Master? Shall we go?”
“…Ah, yes.”
Following the man’s guidance, Eun-chan reluctantly moved his feet.
The brightly lit hospital corridor felt unusually dark today.
* * *
Eun-chan had hoped that the man’s family might share the same hospital room as Si-woo, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Si-woo was in a private room.
However, fortunately, since the rooms were directly across from each other, Eun-chan could occasionally catch glimpses of Si-woo moving in and out of his room while visiting the man’s family.
“I, um, this is… no, Director Joo Eun-seok asked me to deliver this to you. He also said he hopes for your swift recovery.”
“Oh my, you shouldn’t have brought all this… Thank you so much.”
Either way, since I’d come to run an errand for my older brother, I had to fulfill my role as an errand boy.
Eun-chan, who had brought drinks and a fruit basket and bouquet of flowers laden in both hands, squeezed the hand of the patient’s mother—the man in the hospital gown’s guardian—as he spoke.
“I’ve been hospitalized for a long time before, so I know how it is. Even when it’s hard, you need to move around frequently and eat well. Hospital rooms don’t have good ventilation and you don’t get much sunlight, so if you just lie there for too long, all sorts of unwanted thoughts start creeping in.”
This came from genuine experience.
In fact, though I hadn’t told my older brothers, in the original timeline, Eun-chan had to be hospitalized for quite a while due to a traffic accident, and those days lying in the hospital room had been incredibly difficult.
Lying in that uncomfortable hospital bed, staring up at the blank white ceiling, unpleasant thoughts would crawl slowly across my vision like insects.
“By the way, young master, how do you know that rose young man?”
“Pardon?”
“The rose young man—the one we met in the lobby earlier.”
The man, who had neatly organized everything Eun-chan brought, handed him a drink and added his words.
“Oh, we call him the rose young man among ourselves. Because he always brings roses to his hospital room.”
“My older brother… no, you know Si-woo?”
“Of course. There’s no one in this ward who doesn’t know that young man’s story. It’s both pitiful and admirable. Mom knows too, right? In the private room across from here. Why, he’s so handsome, but there’s no life in his face, so Mom was worried about him.”
“Ah, the rose young man. Yeah, I know, I know. Oh my, that situation is really…”
Both the man and his mother clicked their tongues simultaneously, their expressions turning sorrowful.
Lowering her voice so no one else would hear, the patient’s mother murmured with a pained expression.
“He’s so young, but it’s such a shame. Even I find these few days like this so difficult, but that family has been hospitalized, discharged, and had surgery for ten years…”
“Is it the father and son living together?”
“Yeah. The son and father live together, and since the father’s in that condition, the son can’t go anywhere and just keeps living at the hospital like that… Both of them are so pitiful when you see them.”
“The father must be in pretty bad condition if they’ve been coming and going from the hospital for ten years straight.”
Eun-chan’s expression hardened like stone as he listened to their conversation.
It was information I had already learned while investigating the members’ backgrounds, but hearing it relayed through someone else’s mouth made Si-woo’s tragedy—which I’d only read as text—feel like it was crashing down as reality.
This ‘false world’ that had cornered me into a narrow room was also dragging my oldest brother deeper into the darkest shadows.
“I ran into him briefly in the break room before and we talked a bit. Apparently his condition keeps getting better and worse. They said it wouldn’t be strange if he took a turn for the worse tomorrow.”
“Oh my, even so, if he’s been fighting the illness for ten years… How well he must be enduring it for his son’s sake. Mom, you have to stay strong for me too, okay?”
No, that wasn’t it.
Eun-chan, listening to their conversation, shook his head silently.
This wasn’t some touching story of a patient enduring through sheer willpower.
I knew the truth.
For Si-woo, his father’s death was such a profound trauma.
And yet, as time passed after that, I watched how he gradually overcame that fear, bit by bit.
“Yeah. I really hope that family recovers well too.”
So this was a curse.
A curse that kept Si-woo eternally trapped beneath the fear of death.
As long as this false timeline persisted, Si-woo’s time would remain forever frozen on ‘the day before his father’s death’.
“…I should get going now. I have another schedule to attend to.”
“Ah, yes, yes. Please go ahead.”
“Thank you for coming today. I’ll enjoy the fruit.”
“Yes, I hope you recover soon.”
Eun-chan carefully rose from his seat. As he offered a respectful bow to the two people seeing him off, he caught sight of Si-woo emerging from the hospital room across the way, drying his hands.
Their gazes met briefly in the air, but Si-woo withdrew his eyes without the slightest hesitation or reluctance.
Before Si-woo completely vanished from his sight, Eun-chan opened his mouth urgently, his voice loud and clear enough to carry beyond the hospital room.
“I’ll…!”
“…?”
“I’ll come again, I promise.”
“What? No, why would you trouble yourself to visit again….”
“No, I will come again. …I’ll see you again, I promise.”
“…? Well, sure. Yes, that would be nice. We’d appreciate that.”
Leaving the bewildered pair behind, Eun-chan fled the hospital room. Turning his head toward the direction Si-woo had disappeared, he caught sight of his receding figure walking far down the corridor.
Whether he had changed clothes or not, the Si-woo in the short-sleeved shirt draped with a loose outer shirt carried cigarettes and a lighter in his hands—things the original Si-woo would never have touched.
“…I’ll come again, hyung.”
Just wait a little longer for me.
Eun-chan murmured his resolve, his fists clenching tightly.

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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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