The Regressor's Ice Is Golden - Chapter 58

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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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058.

There’s a reason the Ice Skating Association’s vulgar epithet could be refined into “the Goddess of Ice.”
Back when figure skating was still a wasteland, they managed every kind of scandal imaginable.
Which is why fans of skating disciplines tend to shift into neutral the moment something happens to an athlete.
With so few athletes as it is, nobody wants to watch someone get falsely accused and crash out.
Especially in figure skating, where many fans have watched the athletes since they were tiny, so it’s hard to let go of that attachment.
Things get different when it comes to incidents between athletes themselves, but given that the other side was the daughter of a chaebol executive, someone could’ve said it like this.
That she was being oversensitive toward a girl spoiled rotten by a major corporation.
The point is, even after I went down with an injury, there must’ve been at least someone who worried about me.
‘But why did it get that bad?’
I furrowed my brow and kept sketching out the timeline.
Having spent my middle school years like that, I must’ve done spectacularly well on my high school entrance exam.
So it’s certain that I didn’t get into college and moved out on my own right away.
How did I live back then?
‘I blew through every penny I’d saved without spending a won and even pawned my skates, dumping it all into a goshiwon.’
Yeah, that’s weird too.
No matter how much the world looks down on high school graduates, nine years just drifting between part-time jobs?
A stray dog on the street would laugh.
‘Expenses only get bigger as you age.’
If I’d scraped together enough from part-time work, I wouldn’t have been satisfied with it.
There were debts to repay, and I needed to eat.
If you asked me to list the realistic job prep a high school graduate would do, there’s plenty—getting technical certifications, studying for the civil service exam, and so on.
But about that, I don’t remember a single thing.
“Ha…….”
That can’t be right.
I slowly leaned back against the chair.
A dull migraine throbbed behind my temples.
Like I’d had a particularly nasty dream.
I slipped out to the Kitchen and drank a glass of water.
Even as the cold liquid went down my throat, my stomach didn’t settle.
Instead, the blood started moving again in my battered head.
At least for now.
‘So what am I supposed to do about it?’
What does it mean that there’s a gap in my memory at this moment?
And what can I even do about it?
‘Status Window.’
I summoned the most suspicious supernatural entity available to me right now.
The blue window that appeared, as always, showed nothing particularly out of the ordinary.
It hadn’t deliberately made me aware at around this time or anything like that.
But then why on earth would my memory just vanish like—
“What’s up…… Can’t sleep?”
“Oh, Coach.”
I rubbed my eyes and stepped aside for Coach Park, who was walking out.
The Coach let out a big yawn and then poured himself a glass of cold water too.
“Can’t fall asleep?”
“……Yes.”
“Can’t be helped—it’s already done, you can’t change it anyway. Wash up and get some rest.”
That’s not why I can’t sleep though.
But Coach Park yawned again, loudly, and shuffled back inside.
Maybe it’s just as well.
If I’d said I couldn’t sleep for this reason, he probably would’ve teased me asking what dream I’d had…….
‘Come on, I need to sleep…….’
Feeling a bit deflated, I set down the empty glass and trudged back to bed.
Besides, I have plenty else to worry about besides my scrambled brain.
There’s the next competition, of course, and I still have to uphold my duties as a student.

***

The school had grown quiet now.
There was a time when the presence of two students advancing to the Grand Prix Finals had set the place buzzing, but now no one gave it a second thought.
Truly, these middle schoolers were children of the age of short-form videos and social media.
Thanks to that, classes and the school day had unfolded in surprising peace compared to back then.
Only I drew the occasional sidelong glance from other students—the one who’d botched the Challenger Competition—but at this point, it barely registered.
“But seriously, what’s wrong with you? Did you not sleep last night?”
“Ah…….”
Cha Jin-hee, whom I’d met during lunch, wielded her chopsticks with a rather pitiful listlessness.
For a middle schooler, she had some genuinely spectacular dark circles.
“I was doing academy homework…….”
“Don’t lie. You brought homework materials to the rink yesterday, so what’s this?”
“Tch. Well, half of that’s true, I guess.”
“What was the other half?”
“Ugh, never mind.”
From the irritation in her voice, it seemed best not to press further.
I got up for a moment and brought her some cold water.
After downing it in one go, Cha Jin-hee finally started spilling the whole story.
“……Everyone’s saying your form has gone downhill and, you know, other stuff.”
“Ah, I see.”
“And they’re not even the ones competing.”
To summarize what came pouring out after that in an irritated rush: she’d spent the entire night arguing online with people badmouthing me, and then crashed.
That’s what she was saying.
“They’re completely crazy. There are things you should say to someone and things you shouldn’t. What do they mean my form’s gone? It’s ridiculous.”
“……My form actually has dropped a bit, to be fair—”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I poked at my rice half-heartedly, then offered a thought.
“I appreciate it, but don’t waste your energy on that stuff. Besides, you’re literally about to dip radish kimchi into mayonnaise right now.”
“Huh?”
Cha Jin-hee realized what she’d picked up and hurriedly set the radish down in disgust.
How out of it did someone have to be to reach that level?
“And you know, you’re not really one to talk. Why are you dipping chicken nuggets in kimchi broth?”
“Oh.”
I quickly set down the soggy piece I’d been holding, shaking it off like a cat flicking water from its fur.
In any case, we decided to drink some cold water and pull ourselves together.
“You’re… sure you’re okay, right?”
“I’m fine, I’m telling you.”
But regaining my full abilities would take time.
I’d keep training, but landing the Combination Triple Loop and the Euler Flip would likely be difficult for a while.
“I’m guessing I might try them at the next competition to see if they’re doable.”
“Mm, yeah.”
Cha Jin-hee sighed heavily and busied herself with her chopsticks.
She’d done figure skating herself, so she understood how brutal changes to your body could be.
At times like this, all you could do was hold onto your everyday routine.
“……Let’s finish eating and get to practice.”
“? You said you weren’t going to the rink until after school ends today.”
“This is different practice.”
The normal duties of a middle schooler.
In our case, that meant preparing for an English conversation lesson as part of the Free Semester System curriculum.
Cha Jin-hee’s eyes grew even more hollow with despair.
“Ugh, I just want to go home.”
“Hang in there.”

“Hello, everyone~!”
The native English speaker entered the classroom with the English teacher.
It was a performance assessment, so there wasn’t really any actual class to sit through.
‘Only the ones who need to finish their assignments go out into the hallway anyway.’
You just had to go stand in front of both teachers and talk enthusiastically in English about a topic you’d submitted in advance.
Naturally, Cha Jin-hee’s and my topic was figure skating.
During our allotted three minutes, we went through an episode from one of my Grand Prix Series competitions.
The native English teacher was clapping her hands and beaming.
“That’s so awesome! when is your next game?”
I smiled softly, mentioned the preliminaries for the upcoming Winter Games, and drifted back into the classroom.
“……I’m done for.”
“Yeah?”
Cha Jin-hee looked like she’d aged a decade in an instant, her desk nearly tipping over before she slowly lifted her head again.
Then she pulled out a problem set she’d brought instead of her textbook and began paging through it.
“Cram school homework?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wake me when you’re done.”
Today’s reserved practice time was scheduled late anyway.
Cha Jin-hee slipped off her athletic jacket, and I collapsed onto her desk in her place.
A body that had flown across the country and spent hours on the highway the day before surrendered to sleep almost instantly.

But I couldn’t keep my eyes closed for even ten minutes before I had to wake up.
Someone’s voice had practically slapped me awake.
“Where did my notebook go?!”
The problem was that I recognized the voice.
I pushed myself up slowly to find Cha Seo-hee, face flushed red, spinning around to scan the room.
The other students nearby were stammering out their own eyewitness accounts.
“So you’re talking about that yellow spring notebook, right? The thick one.”
“Yeah. I left it in this classroom, so why isn’t it here?”
From what I gathered, her training notebook—the one where she’d recorded all her practice sessions—had vanished.
It was definitely valuable to an athlete.
It contained all the information about her performance level that season, after all.
But there was no yellow spring notebook on any of the desks in this classroom.
‘I heard her class had English here.’
Still, there was a complication.
A student from another class tried to offer a gentle explanation.
“Seo-hee, I mean, this is the Subject Classroom System, right? Are you sure you left it here? It could be in another classroom.”
“Yeah, think about it again. What class did you have today—”
“I know I left it here! Nobody took it, so it has to be here somewhere!”
Oh, this was turning into chaos.
Soon enough, Cha Seo-hee and the others began methodically opening desk drawers, hunting for the notebook.
“Here, check this desk drawer for a second.”
I showed them the empty drawer and glanced over at the seat beside mine.
Cha Jin-hee, having finished her own desk inspection, was visibly irritated but had earbuds in and kept her eyes on the problem set.
Her determination not to get drawn into this mess was obvious.
‘You’ve got your own troubles.’
So I was about to lay back down when—
“Ha-seol, do you know anything? You’re a figure skater too. If you took a look, you might recognize what it is.”
What kind of person are you?
I lifted my head and looked back and forth between the kid who’d asked and Cha Seo-hee.
Beside the bewildered student, Cha Seo-hee was starting to tear up.
“What?”
“My notebook is gone. My training notebook.”
“You still haven’t found it?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure I left it here!”
I wanted to tell her to stop being so annoyed—because right now, I was the one feeling it.
Anyway, the gist of what they were saying was this:
“Could you help us look for it?”
I gritted my teeth and held back everything I wanted to say with my eyes.
Instead, I did the math quickly.
If I said yes, and if I said no.
The latter looked like a minefield to anyone, but the former was just as treacherous in its own way.
If I found it, she might still accuse me of something. Who knows what’d come out of her mouth.
Whether her parents would do the same was debatable, but they had more than enough potential to be that unreasonable. God, no.
‘Could this actually be deliberate?’
When I didn’t answer right away, Cha Seo-hee whined again.
“Come on, help me look for it. I feel like we’d find it faster if you were with us.”
“Seriously, now you’re just making me wait and wait.”
In the end, Cha Jin-hee yanked out her earbuds in exasperation.
“Look, you’re the one who lost it—shuffling from classroom to classroom like this is what the School Subject Classroom System means. It’s not my fault you can’t keep track of anything. Don’t you see you’re dragging everyone else down? The Performance Assessment still isn’t even finished.”
“What?”
“Exactly. Right now there are people out there actually in the middle of their assessments.”
Fine—whoever it was, I’d just gained another relief pitcher.
Thanks to them, the pressure on the other students eased up a bit.
“For real. You think you’re the only one being assessed? That person hasn’t even memorized all the text yet.”
“What’s she even doing right now?”
So I’d simply poured oil on the fire, nice and gentle.
“Look, we are who we are, and this assessment matters way more to the others than it does to us. Are you showing them even a fraction of the consideration that would come from helping find the notebook?”
I narrowed my eyes and stared at Cha Seo-hee, her jaw clenched tight.
“Don’t force your priorities on other people.”
The Regressor’s Ice Rink in Gold Episode 58
E-book Publication Date | 2026.06.05

Author | Korkarolli
Publisher | Heo Heung-beom, Park Geon-won
Publishing House | Potence

Address | [04783] 10F, 8 Yeonmujanggil 11, Seongdong-gu, Seoul
Phone | 02-6320-8500
Fax | 02-6320-8585

UCI | G720:N+A101-20260514092.0058
List Price | 100 KRW

© Korkarolli 2026

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

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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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