The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

“Wait guys. Don’t leave and finish listening to me. Don’t act rashly.”

My members were a second away from rushing into the next room and beating Yeon-Hoon up before I stopped them, and they got back to their seats. If I had been even a moment too late, Yeon-Hoon would’ve received quite a retaliation; and that would’ve been very unfortunate for Yeon-Hoon since he didn’t do anything wrong. My members awkwardly got back to their seats but their eyes were still turned towards the room next door.

Though they were forced to stay put; if I wasn’t here, they looked ready to destroy the system’s main body this very instance.

‘It’s understandable.’ I had also swung my fist first hearing that Yeon-Hoon was the system for the first time. The system was an existence that played around with our lives, and my members had gone through numerous regressions under the system’s play. They probably wished to land a good punch on the system’s face if they could, so how could they hold themselves back after hearing that system was drunk and unconscious in the next door room?

“Yeon-Hoon…is really…the system…?”

“Haaa…They say demons have the appearance of angels…His face is really like an angel…”

“Wait you guys. I will explain. Calm yourselves down,” I began to continue. Though I wasn’t sure where to begin, I thought there was nothing for me to hide now.

“First of all, I have full authority over Insight. Honestly, it’s funny for me to say that I even have full authority over it, but the Insight I have is probably the real deal while the ones you all used are the inferior versions.” I thought I should talk about Insight first since it was what I needed to explain foremost before explaining everything else.

Do-Seung revealed a surprising point to everyone at this point. Although I, Woon, and Dong-Jun started their first regression after receiving Insight, Do-Seung didn’t even have something like that.

“I didn’t get that in my first regression. It only gave it to me in my second regression. That’s why my first regression ended quickly without me accomplishing much.”

I had sensed that was the case when I met the second regressor, Do-Seung before.

“It’s probably because you were the first regressor among us. It was the time when the system didn’t have enough data on us, so it probably didn’t know what privileges to give us,” I said. That was the conclusion I came up with for why Do-Seung didn’t gain Insight in the beginning. The ‘surprise missions’ probably operated in the same way seeing that they only came up starting from Do-Seung’s third regression.

Perhaps, we wouldn’t have been able to accumulate all our experiences if it hadn’t been for Do-Seung’s sacrifice.

“We talked quite a bit since the topic of Insight came up. So, what were you saying about gaining authority over Insight?”

The conversation went back to the main topic.

“This Insight is a form of connection that ties us to the system. The system’s role is to control this World, and using Insight, we are able to temporarily intervene and use the system’s power.” I summed up the Insight ability like this. My members appeared to agree with my reasoning and nodded.

“Furthermore, the Insight I have makes it possible for me to trespass into deeper regions than you all. It even allows me to go where the system’s main body is, manipulate the missions the system gives me, and connect your worlds to mine.”

Since this was content everyone besides Dong-Jun already knew, they didn’t appear that surprised. Dong-Jun also seemed to have a good sense of my Insight’s abilities through this world’s Dong-Jun and didn’t look that surprised.

“The important thing here is the space where the system’s main body is.”

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The system’s main body existed in the space that I went to today. I still wasn’t sure whether to call that space ‘the universe’ but there was no other way to better describe it; it was infinitely dark and vast and stretched without limits. Perhaps, it was a universe beyond ours.

“If I go there, all the different worldlines we had lived in are spread out in branches from a single line.” I drew the line I saw with a pen and paper to help with my explanation. The line was a single thread before the truck driver trespassed into the middle lane and the line split into thousands of threads.

“The thickest line among them is my worldline. The reason why it’s the thickest is because I attached all of your worldlines to mine. It’s as if I had twisted you guys’ and my worldlines like threads in a rope.”

My members nodded.

“Do-Seung has 15 strands since he regressed 15 times, Woon 17 since he regressed 17 times, and Dong-Jun 15 times.”

There were a total of 44 universes; and if I included mine, there were 45 universes intertwined with one. Thus, it boasted of a thickness much greater than all the other stands. My members understood everything up to this point without much difficulty. This content wasn’t so hard that they wouldn’t be able to understand it, but it was at this point, Dong-Jun raised a question.

He pointed at the countless other strings I drew on top of the paper and asked, “If our worldlines are intertwined to this one thick strand, what are all these thin ones? I think there must be at least hundreds of them.”

I looked at Dong-Jun in silence. Dong-Jun seemed to wonder why I was suddenly staring at him so intently. Woon and Do-Seung also looked at me the same way.

“Who else could it be if it’s not us?” I said.

My members’ eyes widened more widely than before and reflexively looked to the room next door and stared at the person stretched on the floor, now, drunk.

“Though I just randomly drew a bunch here, there are much more of them in reality. There are probably thousands of them. He said it himself that he stopped counting after passing the thousandth time.”

My members became completely speechless. As they had also regressed a couple of times, they also knew how tortuous and painful each regression was. Yet, Yeon-Hoon had done that thousands of times. Do-Seung’s mouth gaped, and he swiped his face in pure disbelief.

“What was he thinking…how could he do that a thousand times…?”

“He probably found it hard to give up. If it was you guys, would you have been able to give up?”

“…He could’ve passed it onto the next person.”

“Yeon-Hoon is the leader. Considering his personality, it was probably very difficult for him.” Yeon-Hoon wasn’t the charismatic leader-type. Yet, he had a greater sense of responsibility than most leaders. Though he was brighter than anyone else and talkative, he was someone who never really revealed his true feelings and thoughts to even us. He was also someone so persistent that he would do something like this so many times.

“In the system’s perspective, it was probably an unexpected variable for someone to regress over a thousand times. After processing repetitive commands, it probably got an error.”

My members seemed to understand what I was getting at now.

“It was then he penetrated into the system.”

“Borrowing his words, Yeon-Hoon said that it’s like he trespassed into the system after becoming a virus.

“Then, you regressed after that.”

“Yes, since the regressor disappeared, I was chosen as the next one.”

“Then, your full control over Insight was also…”

“It’s what Yeon-Hoon handed over to me. He told me that every time I did something the system didn’t expect, it formed an internal crack inside the system. The bigger the cracks are, the quicker Yeon-Hoon can trespass inwards.”

My members nodded, now understanding why I went through such a different regression from them and how we could finally put an end to this system.

“So then, what do we have to do now? What can we do to make this crack?” Do-Seung asked. Do-Seung hadn’t taken me so seriously when I told him that I planned to put an end to the system before, but after hearing about Yeon-Hoon’s trespassing and how much quicker he could do that by making cracks, he appeared to have changed his mind.

“What’s an action that the system can’t predict? Should I go outside and dance or something?”

“…No.”

“…Ah, okay.”

Though it would have been completely unexpected for Do-Seung to do that, it would have no effect. It couldn’t be a small unexpected variable but one that could directly shake up the system’s main body.

“You guys, do you remember the truck driver who hit us?”

My members instantly froze as soon as the words ‘truck driver’ came out of my mouth. Rage and hate seemed to fill their faces as they spoke.

“How could we forget?”

“I can never forget him.”

“What is that guy doing in this universe? Did he go to jail?”

My members appeared to be curious about what happened to the man. Yet, they all probably didn’t know what the truck driver looked like. Since I survived by myself even before my regression, I knew the truck driver’s face but for my members, they probably only saw a glance of the man at most.

“You saw him, Dong-Jun, not so long ago—when he ambushed us in the parking lot.”

“What?” Dong-Jun’s eyes widened in shock. It seemed he was incredibly alarmed seeing how much his body jutted forward.

“That strange truck driver?”

“Yeah.”

“No…what?” Dong-Jun looked blankly at the ceiling in shock.

“You are saying that the madman at the parking lot is the truck driver? Seriously?”

“What, that’s crazy…that just gave me the chills.”

Woon and Do-Seung were incredibly shocked to hear that someone who should be rotting in prison was just wandering outside and completely fine—furthermore, he attempted to kill me. Yet, there was no time to dwell in that since I needed to reveal another truth.

“There’s also a system attached to that truck driver. Like the system that gives us missions, it’s another system that gives the man a mission.”

“What? What is this about now?”

“System? There’s a system on that man too?”

“Then, there’s a total of two systems?”

“This is so complicated…”

My members appeared to be more shocked than before. I waited for my members to organize the information I gave to them and then, pulled out my main reason for bringing this all up.

“In my opinion, I think meeting that man would be able to create the biggest crack I can. So, please help me find him. I don’t think I can do it on my own.”

The main purpose of this meeting was to ask them to help me find the truck driver to make a major crack on the system.

“Are you saying we should try to capture that man together?”

“Good thing. I wanted to meet him at least once.”

“Should I bring some weapons with me?”

“Do we just have to leave him half-dead?”

It seemed my members misunderstood after I suggested that we search for the truck driver.

“No, it’s the opposite.”

“…Huh?”

“…What?”

“We don’t go to catch the man but for me to get captured. You all just have to help me find him.”

“…?”

“What are you saying Tae-Yoon…”

“Are you saying you will purposely get captured by him?”

We needed to make the biggest crack we could on the system. Thus, the best way was for me to get captured by the truck driver once more, and there was nothing better than that. My members still looked like they couldn’t understand me, but I was determined.