Reverse Gaslighting
In Saran's case, she'd already caught Baek Eun-hwa drowning her sorrows alone at an izakaya. Maybe that was why she hadn't pressed me with all that many questions.
At most, she'd asked whether my appointment as a Special Agent had anything to do with Baek Eun-hwa. Nothing particularly detailed. Nothing particularly probing. She left it at that, and we spent the rest of the day like any other — browsing a shop that sold little dolls and miniatures, grabbing a meal. Just passing the time.
But Eun-hwa…
"I never expected you to be acquainted with an Under Hero. Black Viper almost never shows her face in the field. So she was one of the heroes under your care?"
"An Under Hero?"
"Black Viper. Secret heroes of Saran's type. Mid-rank and low-rank heroes might not know, but anyone at A-Class does."
"Ah…"
That actually made a lot of sense. Under Hero. It was a fitting name, really. People who operated as heroes without ever showing themselves on the surface — the kind who worked in secret, deep below the waterline.
"Black Viper is relatively well-known among Under Heroes. You didn't know?"
"Well, I'm just her counselor. It's not like I commission work from Miss Saran. I just talk with her."
"Hmm…"
Unlike the snake, who hadn't seemed particularly bothered, the fox was a different story. Maybe it was because this was the first time she'd met another hero under my care. Before we could talk about anything else, this was the conversation she wanted to have.
Saran and Batori — though the weight of her questions leaned far more toward Saran. Either way, she was digging into the people I'd met yesterday more than any other topic, and she was probing far more thoroughly than I'd expected.
"An E-Class rookie already looking at C-Class in a little over a month… that's fairly remarkable."
"You're A-Class, Eun-hwa."
"That's a separate matter. I was already operating as an unsanctioned hero back in high school, and I started at C-Class the moment I came of age."
"If you put it that way, doesn't that make it even less of a big deal?"
"When you've met as many rookie heroes as I have as an A-Class, growth that fast really is impressive."
Was it? The baby dokkaebi was talented, that much was true. But even accounting for that… was it really something Baek Eun-hwa would go out of her way to praise? I'd never been an A-Class hero myself, so I couldn't say I fully understood. At the very least, she didn't seem to dislike Saran or Batori.
"So… yesterday. You really weren't hurt anywhere?"
"I already told you I wasn't. I never even ran into a villain. I went straight to a bunker. How would I have gotten hurt?"
"Then that's fine. After I deployed and we finished subduing every last villain, you suddenly started saying the strangest things. It startled me."
"Heh. So you were worried about me."
"What, am I not allowed to…?"
"No, I'm glad you were. It feels like you and I are getting closer. I like that."
"…What are you even saying."
Setting aside the fact that Baek Eun-hwa and I were the same age, talking with her like this was genuinely fun. Her personality had a certain… flavor of trouble to it. Calling someone's personality a "flavor" was probably rude, but still.
"…You worry about me all the time too. So it's the same thing."
"Pfft…"
For someone whose looks came off as mysterious and cold, she had a surprising number of cute sides. Get too close and she'd squeak in flustered protest; drift too far and she'd start whimpering after you. That kind of charm.
"Hehe."
"…Why are you laughing like that?"
"Mm… just because it's fun?"
"…What are you even saying."
At any rate, my regular session with Baek Eun-hwa started off with a slightly different flavor than usual.
"……"
"You overworked yourself properly again this week, I see. You actually packed your schedule even tighter than last week. Honestly… I already talked to you about this last week. So why is it getting worse?"
"…It's not like I can just keep turning down contracts…"
"Hmm…"
Honestly. She was an exhausting woman. Setting aside the personality she showed when we talked like this, she was just… pitifully, hopelessly, a doormat. In all the time I'd spent meeting heroes and helping them, cases this frustratingly stuck had been rare. And with Baek Eun-hwa, the fact that she actually wanted to get better only made it more frustrating.
She knew she was struggling. She wanted things to improve. And yet no real action ever followed. I didn't seriously believe she was ignoring what I said. At least when we sat down and talked like this, she seemed a little better than before — just a little.
But the actual problem, of course, was everything she did outside these sessions. Hero work. Public appearances. All of it. The overwork, the burnout — all of it came from Baek Eun-hwa going out into the world and saying yes to every last thing like a doormat, never refusing, just living like that. Of course it was going to be a problem.
Honestly…
"Eun-hwa. I fully intend to help you as much as I can, but if you keep going like this… it's hard on me too, frankly."
"……I know."
"If you know, then you need to act on it. Your workload going up from last week to this week is not something that should be happening, is it?"
"…I'm sorry."
"Yes. I think this particular instance does call for an apology."
Was talking her through it — persuading her, over and over — just not enough? I'd thought a full week of rest, letting her actually feel what rest was like while I worked on convincing her, would have helped at least a little. Apparently it hadn't been enough.
What do I do. What should I do.
I didn't know Baek Eun-hwa's past in perfect detail, but I knew well enough that gaslighting was more dangerous than most people imagined. My own ability was hypnosis, after all. I didn't know exactly what kind of gaslighting that mother of hers had put her through, but judging by the fact that she was still like this well into adulthood, the woman must have been an even worse human being than I'd guessed.
"…Ah."
And then, thinking it through, I realized it. The key to solving Baek Eun-hwa's problem. It clicked.
"Eun-hwa. You don't have any more appointments today, do you?"
"…Why?"
"Just… if you had somewhere you needed to be, or something like that, it might get inconvenient."
"……?"
The most important piece of Baek Eun-hwa's problem was the gaslighting her mother had subjected her to since childhood — the thing that had turned her into the kind of doormat who accepted every job that came her way, until even an Awakened with a ridiculously durable body ended up worn down in both mind and flesh.
So then… what if I gaslit her right back?
I even had hypnosis as an ability. I could do something well beyond the level of ordinary gaslighting, and persuading people was a job I was more than familiar with. Of course, as I'd already resolved, I intended to keep the hypnosis to a minimum with Baek Eun-hwa. But using it when the situation called for it was only natural.
"Mm… honestly, I feel a little bad about always giving you the hard words, the bitter ones, the lectures. How about we just talk normally today? Questions and answers, back and forth."
"…If that's all it is."
"Heh."
I wasn't going to pretend gaslighting wasn't a problem. It was something close to psychological abuse, the kind of thing that did real damage to a person. But if someone had already been gaslit, and you applied an opposing gaslighting on top of it… wouldn't that be like multiplying a negative by a negative?
It wasn't as though I was going to do anything terrible to her afterward. I wasn't going to extort money from her, or do anything weird with her body. I was only going to shift her thinking a little. As far as I was concerned, this was actually a pretty good approach.
And so.
"…I don't usually keep the lights this dim. It feels a little strange."
"Does it? I use mood lighting at home all the time… though I suppose in a house this big, mood lighting might actually be a bit inconvenient."
I made the atmosphere as comfortable as I could. Same as when I used hypnosis — I dimmed the lights in Baek Eun-hwa's house and shut out every source of noise. I wasn't planning to use hypnosis today. But for a conversation that was supposed to be genuine, a quiet, settled atmosphere was always going to work better than somewhere loud and flashy. And Baek Eun-hwa's own presence leaned that way to begin with.
"Eun-hwa. How did you spend your time working this week?"
"Just… busily?"
"Don't put it like that. Little anecdotes from work, things that weren't even a big deal. Just tell me about them normally."
Not the dining table — a small one. A little round table just big enough for a couple of cups and a few plates. We sat there and started talking. Though, for the record, the cups on the table weren't filled with fragrant tea or coffee. Just cola.
"Mm… ah. There was a meeting at the Association on Monday, and a lot of the A-Class heroes actually showed up for once. People who never attend that kind of thing."
"Once you hit A-Class, people really do stop doing much work, don't they? They only turn up for media events. Almost never for anything that stiff. And their deployments drop off a lot compared to the ranks below them."
"Yes. So it was a little… absurd, honestly. We've had so many meetings. If those people were capable of attending, why had they never done it even once?"
"Heh. I can imagine."
There was nothing wrong with just talking about ordinary things. This and that. Listening to Baek Eun-hwa's stories in far more detail than I usually got to, I picked up on a few things about the hero industry that I'd never considered — even working in it myself. Most of it was told from the viewpoint of someone at the very top of the industry, but mixed in among those stories were ones that felt strangely familiar.
Baek Eun-hwa's words were, for the most part, the daily life of someone at the peak of the profession. And yet somehow they were laced with the bone-deep exhaustion of a bottom-rung employee, which I found a little funny.
It probably would have been funnier if she hadn't been one of the heroes under my care.