The Regressor's Ice Is Golden - Chapter 32

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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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032.
※This chapter contains depictions of emotional child abuse. Please take this into consideration when reading.

The next morning, Cha Jin-hee woke from a troubling dream and found herself staring blankly at her bowl of rice.
Her mother’s mood was decidedly foul.
‘What is it this time.’
The restless sleep had been a warning. Something had definitely happened.
She understood the moment her eyes met her mother’s.
That look a parent gives their own child—saturated with irritation, pressure, and loathing.
In other words, a look that screamed, ‘This one really is impossible.’
And then.
“Come straight home the moment school ends. The driver will pick you up from the School.”
“What?”
Her mother dropped the words like a bomb, then finished her meal with deliberate calm.
Cha Jin-hee watched as her mother placed her bowl in the sink and left for work without sparing her daughter a glance.
Only after the entrance door closed did goosebumps bloom across her skin from the nape of her neck to her scalp.
Because she understood.
‘But understand what, exactly?’
How much did they know? How far had they gotten?
At the lightest end, perhaps her hagwon grades weren’t improving, or she’d forgotten her tutoring homework.
And at the absolute worst.
‘Kim Ha-seol.’
Unless she fled the School itself, there was nowhere to hide.
The problem was that today’s only plan had been to go to the Study Hall after school.
Though she supposed that was probably why she’d been ordered home!
So Cha Jin-hee left for School without finishing breakfast.
None of the lessons registered; she wanted nothing more than to vanish into a mouse hole if one existed.
At lunch, she wished she’d get food poisoning and be rushed to the hospital.
And as it always was, a bad premonition never misses its mark.
As soon as School ended, a very familiar black sedan was waiting.
“Yes, welcome, Miss. Hmm?”
The driver glanced at the girl’s face in the rearview mirror.
“Did something happen at School?”
“……No, sir.”
Not another word passed between them for the entire drive home.
Cha Jin-hee found herself thinking of Park Ji-ho, whom she’d seen at School.
How his eyes had widened the moment he grasped what had happened.
‘Hey, you……. Don’t take your Figure Skates out of my house for a while. Want me to set your notebook there too?’
The thing she’d filled with notes while choreographing.
‘……I guess we’ll see.’
Ten minutes stretched like a thousand years before they finally arrived home.
The first person she encountered upon entering was standing at the Entrance…….
“You’re home.”
“Dad?”
Why was he here, when he rarely came home except for business trips and evening drinks?
Before she could even think, the Yellow Notebook tumbled from her father’s hand onto the floor.
“Come inside and tell me the truth.”
Cha Jin-hee picked up the Choreography Notebook with a face gone completely white and stepped into the house.
Her mother and father sat side by side at the Island Table.
She held the Choreography Notebook clutched against her lap.
“Put the notebook on the table.”
“…….”
She had no choice but to comply.
The moment the notebook touched the table, her mother’s question fell like a blade.
“How have you been lately?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“What do I mean. I saw your hagwon teacher, and she said you’re not coming and keep scheduling make-up sessions. And it seems you’ve made a friend.”
Oh God, please.
If they knew that much, the situation was already transparent.
It didn’t matter how they’d found out.
If they were her actual parents, they would have finished investigating her friends long ago.
And now, despite knowing everything, they had deliberately created this moment for her to come clean.
Starting with the main point here would be disastrous.
She needed to muster some nerve.
“Yes. New semester, new school. I made a friend.”
“Your mother looked into that friend. Turns out she does figure skating.”
…….
“And it seems you’re still seeing that Park Ji-ho boy too.”
“We’re not dating.”
“Listen here.”
Her father, who had smiled so warmly at the press conference days ago, now spoke with a vicious edge.
“The problem is you running around with boys without knowing how dangerous the world is. I told you not to see them then, didn’t I?”
Cha Jin-hee decided to stay silent.
Yelling and intimidation weren’t new—she’d learned that if she just apologized, her father would grumble his way past it eventually.
Her mother spoke again.
“So what’s your relationship with this Kim Ha-seol? She barely comes to school because she’s so focused on competing.”
And she narrowed her eyes.
“Did your older sister introduce you to her?”
“……No. I met her at school.”
Her pulse hammered in her ears.
“I arranged her choreography.”
“What?”
“For the international competition preliminary—that friend who won the silver medal. For her short program choreography.”
First semester, those mornings she’d woken before dawn to go to school.
The hours she’d claimed to visit the study hall or her hagwon, coming home late.
The records of communication with someone late into the night.
All of it converged into a single, damning conclusion.
“Her coach helped me. Since I’d quit skating so long ago, he invited me during rental practice so we could work through it together.”
“Why would you?”
Another icy word fell like a blade.
When she lifted her head, her father was already holding up the notebook, his face flushed crimson.
Oh.
“You won’t even study like I ask, you lie, you sneak around—and this is what you’re doing? Deliberately taking up something you quit years ago?”
“Dear, calm down—”
“Are you in your right mind or not!”
Rip!
With a sound that made her skin crawl, countless lined pages scattered through the air.
Cha Jin-hee couldn’t track what was happening; she just stared down at the floor.
Torn pages, wrenched forcibly from the crumpled coils of the spine.
The remains of what had once been called a “notebook” lay scattered across the floor.
“Are you planning not to go to university? Playing around with some kid who doesn’t even have parents isn’t enough? Do you even know who you’re spending time with and what you’re doing?”
“Honey.”
Her father jabbed a finger at his daughter as he shouted.
“Are you trying to drag your sister down? Why would you mess around with her, of all people?”
It was the worst tantrum since she’d introduced Park Ji-ho.
Cha Jin-hee bit down hard on her tongue.
Just waiting for this chaos to reach a lull.
There was no chance to talk back or explain.
He’d just accuse her of being disrespectful to adults again.
So, another thirty minutes or so—
“Are you trying to transfer your ambitions to her?”
……What?
When she looked up, her father was glaring at her as though he wanted to kill her.
“Since you can’t do it anymore, are you trying to live vicariously through her? Dragging down a kid with no parents, dragging down your sister too?”
“Dad!”
Without thinking, Cha Jin-hee bolted up from her seat.
But she still didn’t know how to scream or fight back.
And yet.
“Stop. It’s all my fault—please don’t involve my friends’ families.”
“Friends? What kind of child are you!”
“I’m sorry.”
She understood now: swallowing her pride was the only way to untangle this mess.
“I won’t see my friends anymore. I’ll bring my grades back up. I’ll stay up an hour later and wake up an hour earlier. So please, I was wrong.”
“…….”
Only after her father had settled into his chair with a long, measured breath did Cha Jin-hee collapse weakly onto hers.
Her mother, reading the room, attempted something like a diplomatic intervention.
“Honey, let’s leave it at that. She’s not a bad child—she’ll do better.”
“……Hah.”
Her father exhaled a long, heavy sigh and suddenly reached for the water cup.
The spilled water cascaded down onto the torn notebook, dissolving the paper beneath it.
“Don’t you dare show your face anywhere near that ice rink ever again. Not once.”
Her father set down the cup and retreated into his room, while her mother cast a sidelong glance at her daughter.
That was all. She placed the cup in the sink and slipped away without another word.
Cha Jin-hee was left alone in the kitchen, her will crushed.
She slowly got up from the chair, then crouched down on the floor.
The pencil and pen marks had bled into the wetness, their words now barely legible.
She gathered the soggy fragments of paper one by one and carried them to her room.
Piece by piece, she carefully laid out the sections with salvageable content across a binder and desk, making sure nothing tore further.
Only after turning on the air purifier function of the ceiling air conditioner was the work finally done.
The sun was setting now, and she still had a Hagwon assignment due by tomorrow.
But all she could manage was to wipe away the tears that kept streaming down her face.
She kept wiping until not a single car passed on the road outside.

***

“……Really?”
Park Coach stared in shock as he handed back the phone.
I’d written out a summary of my late-night call with Cha Jin-hee.
“How could they—how could they do that? I’ve heard rumors that family’s stubborn as they come, but this is—this is insane…….”
Park Coach muttered curses at the TK Conglomerate Family under his breath, washing his face with his hands.
I had nothing to say either.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
The over-the-top parents you see in melodramas at least had reference points—models they could be based on.
But setting that aside, I genuinely had no idea where to even start.
Taking her call last night from a pay phone when I was half-asleep and exhausted had been its own nightmare.
‘The other side is a major conglomerate family.’
Even with ordinary families, it’s dangerous when outsiders try to report things or interfere.
And this was a household with money for lawyers—if we weren’t careful, her athletic career could be destroyed without a second thought.
“What about your friend? What are we going to do, oh Kim Ha-seol…….”
Tell me about it.
I rubbed the back of my head, thinking hard.
For now, at least.
‘This won’t seriously interfere with running the season itself.’
I’d already memorized the Short Program and Free Program choreography, and if there’s a Gala Show, I can just use the Novice program from before.
The component scores I’d confirmed in the Selection Competition protocol were reasonable.
The PCS—the Program Component Score that evaluates skating skill, program maturity, and artistic expression through choreography.
For someone choreographing for the first time, the level was quite solid.
Especially with the Step Sequence hitting level four.
Since Park Coach is here, Cha Jin-hee’s absence won’t really be a problem this season anyway.
But here’s the thing.
“……People already know it’s not your choreography.”
“Yeah, seems like it.”
The longer someone had been watching figure skating, the higher the chance they’d noticed.
Each choreographer’s signature style and quirks inevitably seep into their work.
No matter which athlete receives the choreography.

-Who the hell said Park Coach was babying that kid? lmaooo
-I mean, it’s not easy to change this much… it’s actually crazy that Ha-seol’s stamina can keep up
-Someone check if there’s a XXXX in Park Coach’s hair
-Does Park Coach usually put in this much detail…?
I went to watch a Selection Competition, saw the Choreography once, and came back. He really did all of this alone…?

“Coach, we still have time before the EMS Registration for the Thailand competition, right?”
“……About two days.”
I held my interlaced hands beneath my chin with grave determination.
“I always knew a day would come when I’d have to explain who I worked with on the Tangible choreography. But I never expected it to come this soon.”
“Tell me about it.”
Coach nodded with the same solemn air.
“First, we’ll need to get in touch with her. School started again.”
“Yes. She has about a week left at the Athletes’ Village.”
“Right.”
The one place where Cha Jin-hee’s parents’ influence didn’t easily reach.
Though these days they even filed noise complaints to the school, there was no help for it now.
Songgol Middle School restricted cell phone use, so there was no real opportunity.
The afternoon ground training ended just as the middle school dismissed.
I sent Park Ji-ho a text first.
Letting him know what had happened last night.
[Looks like you’ll need to keep passing along news about her from school, senior.]
Then I waited in silence.
She wouldn’t be able to call from her own phone, so she’d have to use a payphone near the school.
When five o’clock came, the call arrived from a payphone number, just like that night.
I answered it with solemn resolve.
“Listen carefully from now on. I’m going to put your name down as the choreographer for the Thailand competition.”
“What?”
“But there’s a problem with that. As soon as your Short Program ends, everyone might start digging into your background. After all, you have a history as a skater yourself, and your family is your family.”
“……Yeah.”
So I hoped she’d give me a positive answer.
“Do you have the confidence to make a name for yourself as my choreographer?”
The Returner’s Ice 32
E-book Release Date | 2026.06.05

Author | Korkaroli
Publisher | Heo Heung-beom, Park Geon-won
Publishing House | Potent

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Phone | 02-6320-8500
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List Price | 100 won

© Korkaroli 2026

This e-book is protected under copyright law.
This e-book has been published under contract with the author, and unauthorized reproduction, distribution, sharing, or transmission is prohibited without written consent from both parties.

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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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