Chapter 174. Penalty (5)
The world that had been flashing white soon turned completely white, and when I opened my eyes again.
-So…. I signed the contract today.
I was sitting on a familiar playground swing.
‘What’s going on?’
Did I return? Have I regressed again?
To grasp the situation, I stood up from the swing and looked around. Then, from the other side of the phone, I heard Kim Wonho’s voice calling out to me.
-Hyung? Are you listening to me?
“Yeah, yeah…. Hey, Wonho. Sorry, but can I call you back later? Something urgent just came up.”
-What are you talking about, hyung? That’s not it.
If I really had regressed, the first thing I needed to do was find Dan Haru. With that in mind, I was about to hang up the call when Kim Wonho responded with a strange answer, his voice distorted as if it were breaking.
-It’s good. You’ll do well. If it’s Lime, the company is fine too. …that’s what you should say.
“…What?”
[Retry!]
And then the flashing returned.
Before long, when I opened my eyes again.
-So…. I signed the contract today.
I was once again sitting on the swing.
* * *
After similar events repeated about five times, I had to admit that I was stuck in some ridiculous loop.
‘Forget the number ticket, I’m going to kill that damned regressor.’
I tried every possible way to escape this loop, but no matter what I did, the message [Retry!] would appear, and I would return to this swing. By this point, it was impossible not to realize that this wasn’t the usual ‘regression’ but rather a prank by the regressor.
[Retry!]
Once again, I found myself back on the swing. Without hesitation, I hung up on Kim Wonho and spoke to the air.
“Hey. Stop this nonsense and come out.”
[Retry!]
“If I had a weak mental state that could be broken by this, I’d have gone crazy a long time ago. Stop messing around and come out.”
[Retry!]
“Fine, whatever. If what you want is to spend eternity here swinging with me, go ahead.”
I bet you were hoping I’d start crying and begging to be let out. Not a chance.
I settled down properly on the swing, deciding not to care whether this guy reset the situation repeatedly. Then, suddenly, countless [Retry!] messages filled my vision.
“Yeah, not happening.”
Go ahead and try a hundred times, you bastard. Do you think I’ll give in?
I had already experienced an infinite loop during the previous Lee Yugeon incident. Besides, since this wasn’t even reality, there was no reason for me to be scared of this guy.
When I didn’t react even after a long time, a new message finally appeared above the red [Retry!] screen.
[Dolbi Ball k2cu1est]
Content: Stop interfering with me.
Reward for acceptance: Return to the real world.
“Screw you.”
The moment I saw the regressor’s quest, I lightly flicked him off with my middle finger.
And then the world flipped again.
But this time, it wasn’t the tedious playground swing.
I was observing the empty playground from afar, as if I were a camera in a spectator’s perspective.
“…Sangyul?”
A small neighborhood playground where I felt like I knew every piece of graffiti on the play equipment.
There was only one person moving in that wide playground.
It wasn’t me, but the neighborhood kid, Park Sangyul.
Judging by how everything looked exactly the same as the day we met, it seemed like the timeline was that day… but why wasn’t I there?
While I was puzzling over this, I saw Park Sangyul, who was waiting alone for his sister, energetically climbing up the slide. Just as I was wondering what this was all about…
“This is insane…!”
I saw Park Sangyul, who had been climbing the steps, slip and fall from the high play equipment. I wanted to rush over and catch the falling child immediately, but I was frozen in place as if I were tied down.
Unable to bear watching the child fall, I squeezed my eyes shut, and as my vision darkened, bright red letters appeared once again.
[Dolbi Ball k2cu1est]
Content: Stop interfering with me.
Reward for acceptance: Return to the real world.
If you refuse the quest:
-The timeline of ‘Kang Hajin with Park Sangyul’ will be erased.
“…Ah, this crazy bastard.”
I could almost hear the sound of my reason snapping, but I had to struggle to maintain my composure.
Calm down, Kang Hajin. If you waver here, you’ll just be playing into his hands.
But realizing that his previous blow had landed, the regressor continued to threaten me in the same manner.
[Dolbi Ball k2cu1est]
Content: Stop interfering with me.
Reward for acceptance: Return to the real world.
If you refuse the quest:
-The timeline of ‘Kang Hajin with Park Sangyul’ will be erased.
-The timeline of ‘Park Sanga safely meeting Park Sangyul after school’ will be erased.
-The timeline of ‘Kim Wonho joining Lime Entertainment’ will be erased.
…
The regressor kept piling on more hostages.
By now, endless illusions and hallucinations began to overlap before my eyes.
Park Sanga, screaming as she saw her injured brother after arriving at the playground.
Kim Wonho, wandering aimlessly after being eliminated from the finals, searching for a part-time job as I had seen in some possible future.
The increasingly numerous penalties eventually culminated in a single sentence.
-The timeline of ‘The Chosen Regressor Kang Hajin’ will be erased.
My mind was suddenly filled with a flood of thoughts.
Was this a bluff? Or was it a real threat?
Could the regressor actually have such power?
This guy was the one who had given Dan Haru the authority to infinitely regress, after all.
Moreover, didn’t Thirteen once say that when all of this was over, I would have to choose whether to delete or preserve the personality of ‘The Chosen Regressor’?
Recalling the time management privileges that Thirteen had once explained, I stared at the red quest window in front of me.
‘Stay calm, Kang Hajin. Nothing has happened yet.’
This is just an illusion.
Even as I tried to reassure myself, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the blood was draining from my body.
To gather some information, I decided to try talking to the regressor bastard.
“Hey, loser.”
No, that’s just picking a fight.
Considering I had set out to draw him into conversation, my current state of mind was clearly not in a good place.
Without a shred of hesitation, I displayed the bad attitude I was harboring, thinking I had nothing to lose and decided to provoke him outright.
“Are you hiding behind text again because you’re afraid I’ll tear you apart with words like last time? Typical system tactic. Always resorting to this kind of crap because you can’t win fair and square.”
I spat out the words with a voice dripping with sarcasm, but the red letters in front of me didn’t budge. Nevertheless, I didn’t stop my provocation.
“Go ahead, delete it, you bastard. Do you think I’ll be scared? I already know you’re the Chosen Regressor Dan Haru, and I’ve roughly figured out what your plan is. If I disappear, Thirteen said he’d chase you to the ends of the universe and beat you to a pulp. Honestly, if I disappear, it’s not Kang Hajin that’s gone, it’s just me. I’m not afraid to lose myself, you bastard.”
I didn’t even know what I was saying at this point, but the words flowed effortlessly from my mouth.
Meanwhile, I was piecing together the fragments of information in my mind like a puzzle. I was thinking about the most sensitive triggers that would provoke a reaction from the regressor bastard and contemplating the current situation.
“You’re trying to become human, right? Living as a time manager, you’ve come to envy the human world? But time managers can’t take on any form of life, can they? So, what’s your plan?”
The empty space finally trembled slightly.
For a brief moment, a glitch appeared in the red letters, confirming my suspicion that this was the chance to shake him. I spoke whatever came to mind.
“I don’t know how you’re planning to become human, but to do that, you’d have to give up your time manager privileges. But if you’re no longer a time manager, you won’t have the power to delete my timeline or act as you please. So, what are you really? And how did you even grant Dan Haru the ability to regress?”
Come to think of it, it felt similar to when I first encountered this bastard.
He didn’t say, ‘I’ll regress you,’ but rather something like, ‘I’ll borrow the timeline of the Chosen Regressor.’
‘Wait a minute. I think I’m starting to understand something.’
It seemed that the nonsense filibuster I had started to provoke the regressor was actually beginning to take shape. Despite feeling a bit flustered, I tried to maintain a poker face, putting on an S-grade performance to conceal my emotions.
A multitude of thoughts swirled in my mind, causing the space to tremble.
Even as I felt like I was going to throw up from nausea, I braced my legs to avoid collapsing.
“At least one thing is clear. You’re scared of me meeting the Chosen Regressor.”
Before I knew it, the space had filled
with darkness.
The sensation of floating in that vast, empty, and hollow space was the worst.
“And yet, you can’t directly harm me. Why is that? It seems like you can manipulate time, but you always leave some kind of gap.”
I thought of Dan Haru.
Dan Haru repeated regressions because he was unhappy.
The more he regressed, the more unhappy he became, and unable to bear the immense weight of the regression, he completely separated his original personality from the regressor personality.
However, after meeting me, Dan Haru became attached to this timeline, which became a significant obstacle to the regressor bastard’s plan.
The regressor wanted Dan Haru to remain forever lonely and unhappy.
Only then would Dan Haru continue to regress endlessly, creating countless severed timelines, and the gap between his original personality and regressor personality would widen.
As I reached that conclusion, a very large picture finally formed in my mind.
“You… plan to take over Dan Haru’s body, don’t you?”
At that moment, the entire space shattered.
[As expected.]
[You’re too dangerous to leave alone.]
And once again, I was sucked into a different space.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, I saw a ceiling that was even more familiar than that tedious playground, yet still strange.
“…This place.”
Sunlight streaming in so brightly through the full-length windows that it would wake you up at dawn, and walls neatly decorated with my favorite point colors.
I lay alone on a small, narrow square bed.
“…This is our house.”
To be precise, ‘the house we’ll move into in a few years.’
Having returned to that unforgettable day at twenty-nine, I quickly sat up.
Just as I was about to figure out what was going on, I noticed someone standing opposite me.
“Dan Haru?”
Dan Haru, with his thin, bright hair, was wearing a white shirt and black pants as he approached me.
But when I saw the red gleam in his transparent brown eyes, I knew that although it was Dan Haru, it wasn’t really Dan Haru.
“Hello?”
“…Yeah, like hell it’s a nice day, you crazy bastard.”
Now it’s possession, not just regression?
The absurdity of the situation made me grit my teeth.