The First Target
'Let's focus. I'm doing company work right now.'
I pushed away the mental image of the female college student in the photo being violated and asked her,
"I have a question."
"Ask me anything. As your guide, I'll answer you with all my heart."
She looked intrigued, as if she was looking forward to whatever came out of my mouth.
"To brainwash this woman, I have to do more than just stamp her with the seal, right? There must be some prerequisite conditions."
Stamping the seal on someone's head would brainwash them.
When I thought about it, it was an incredibly simple task.
Even when I brainwashed Se-ah yesterday, if I'd timed it right, I could've done it quietly without causing any commotion.
Why would the company bother assigning this kind of simple job to me?
Hell, if they grabbed some random person off the street, explained the job, and told them to do it, anyone could pull it off without much trouble.
The fact that they were paying me to handle it meant the task was harder than it seemed.
In other words, there were likely restrictions or conditions the company had set for brainwashing the designated women.
Once my question ended, she smiled deeply.
"Do you think of yourself as stupid and cowardly?"
It was an abrupt question.
I didn't know why she asked, but I answered honestly.
"I suppose so."
"You should fix that mindset. From my perspective, you're still lacking, but you're definitely not as bad as you think you are."
Was that… a compliment?
She laughed, "Aha-ha," clearly amused by my puzzled expression, then continued.
"You're right. Just stamping the seal on the woman on your phone screen won't brainwash her. That's why the company sends employees like you to handle it directly."
"I doubt you'll answer, but I'll ask anyway. Why can't this woman be brainwashed? And if she can't be brainwashed, why bother trying?"
"To be precise, the seal can brainwash her. But there's a condition. Her mind has to be weakened in some way. Not just temporary emotions like sadness or anger, but her mental barriers as a person must be thinned out. The reason we brainwash her is simple. I told you our company exists to control this world, right? But occasionally, there are people like her who can't be brainwashed. We call them Irregulars. From the company's standpoint, Irregulars are very troublesome. You never know when they'll cause problems. You look curious, but I can't tell you what kind of problems they cause."
"That means I'll find out naturally once my rank goes up, right?"
"Aha―. I like how smart you are, Seung-woo. That's right, that's right."
I dodged her hand as she reached out to pat my head.
For the first time, a slightly sulky look appeared on her face.
"Ahem… So I just need to make her experience something unfortunate? Like her family getting hurt, getting dumped, or racking up massive debt?"
Making someone else miserable…
I felt a twinge of guilt, but it was ridiculous to act innocent now after what I'd done to that woman yesterday.
"Right. Another method is to raise her affection level and then brainwash her."
"…Make her like me?"
"If you think you can pull it off."
She gave me a challenging look.
The second method seemed even harder than the first. My appearance was average, and my personality wasn't the type that appealed to women.
"Then how do I know? Whether she's mentally broken enough for the seal to work, or whether her affection for me is high enough. Do I just go by my own feeling? If I stamp her when the conditions aren't met, it'll only make things harder later, right?"
"Don't you see two gauge bars next to the target's photo on your phone screen?"
"Huh? …Oh, you're right?"
"The pink gauge is her affection toward you. The more it fills, the higher her affection is rising. Once it's completely full, you can use the seal. The black gauge next to it shows the target's mental state. You can think of it as the degree of her mental exhaustion. Likewise, once that gauge is full, you can use the seal. You can check both in real time. By the way, the amount needed to fill the gauges varies for each target."
"Like HP or MP bars in a game?"
"Hehe… You quit gaming after that incident, yet you're still using that kind of analogy?"
Even though I'd only learned about her yesterday, she spoke so naturally about my past that I flinched.
Seeing my reaction, she narrowed her smiling eyes and looked at me.
Her gaze made me uncomfortable, so I looked away and fiddled with my phone to distract myself.
Interestingly, the phone contained not only information about the female college student, Lee Ji-ah, but also photos and details about the people connected to her.
Three people stood out the most.
Her younger sister, Lee Ji-seo.
Her boyfriend, Kang I-jun.
Her best friend, Kim Ha-rin.
As I scanned through their information and photos, an idea came to mind.
If I couldn't brainwash Ji-ah right away, what if I brainwashed the people around her first and used them to break her down?
Since my seal couldn't brainwash men, I could only target her sister or her friend.
The intern seal could brainwash a total of four women, and after brainwashing Se-ah, I had three slots left.
Excluding Ji-ah, whom I was targeting as the final goal, I had two slots to use.
I would use them to slowly corner and break Ji-ah.
"I told you, you're not as dumb as you think."
She spoke to me as I was formulating a plan while looking at the screen.
"I know what you're thinking. But it won't be as easy as you imagine."
"What do you mean?"
"The people around her are also influenced by the target, so they won't be easy to brainwash either. They have gauge bars just like the target. But compared to the target, it'll be much easier to fill their gauges."
In other words, they were like the monsters that always accompanied boss mobs. I held back from saying it out loud.
The difficulty was higher than I'd thought, but it didn't matter.
My goal of brainwashing Ji-ah's younger sister and best friend remained unchanged.
Now I had to decide the order of priority—who to brainwash first.
'First… Kim Ha-rin. Start with her.'
I'd initially considered the younger sister, but after seeing that Ha-rin attended the same university and same department as Ji-ah, I changed my mind.
Brainwashing her first was the fastest route to achieving my objective.
To do that, I examined her information and photos more carefully.
The phone also contained past photos of her.
The first photo was…
It was taken under the setting sun visible outside the window.
She was wearing her school uniform in the classroom, smiling and giving a salute. She gave off a bright impression.
Her personality section in the personal information also described her as bright, positive, and sociable.
I swiped my finger across the phone screen to the next photo—.
"Ugh!?"
A photo of her taking off her clothes in what looked like a changing room appeared, and I was startled and flustered.
It seemed like someone had taken it secretly, but the problem was that her outfit looked like a school uniform.
That meant…
"Worried someone might take it away? Don't worry, this photo was taken after that girl became an adult. Or did you think she was wearing a school uniform just because she had a jacket over her shirt? Your thoughts are a bit dangerous, aren't they?"
The guide leaned her face over the phone screen and grinned mischievously at me.
"Th… thank goodness."
"Aha-ha―!!"
She burst into laughter, apparently finding my startled-then-relieved reaction hilarious.
Feeling embarrassed by her laughter, I continued with my plan.
I'd decided who to brainwash first.
Now, how should I go about it?
"Use this."
Reading my thoughts, she handed me a luxurious-looking fountain pen.
Like the phone, it was one of the six items the company had provided me.
"If you write what you want on paper with this, it will come true."
"Really?"
"Of course it's a lie."
Seeing my expression darken, she clapped her hands and laughed loudly.
"Aha-ha-ha―!!! Being with you is so much fun! Ah… It's really fun, Seung-woo… I like you so much…"
She wiped the tears from her eyes as her laughter subsided.
When I glared at her with a sulky expression, she waved her hand apologetically.
I'd actually believed her.
Logically, it didn't make sense, but after witnessing the power of the Brainwashing Stamp firsthand, I'd thought it might be possible.
It was proof that my common sense had already been twisted quite a bit.
"It won't make your wishes come true. But you can obtain the identity you want. If you change your identity to a student in the same department as the target at her university, it will work. You'd better not get any strange ideas. This can only be used for work-related identity changes."
She was telling me not to think about changing my identity to avoid paying off my debt.
'Just by writing it on paper, my identity changes?'
It was limited to work purposes, but with this, I could become a celebrity or even the president in a single day.
It was something straight out of a movie, completely absurd.
Or maybe it was an item that could only come from a blue mouse's pocket.
With my already distorted common sense, I obediently believed the guide's words and immediately wrote on the paper.
Then—.
I quickly checked the time on my phone screen.
1:30 PM.
"…Shit."
Only an hour and a half left until 3 o'clock.