054. Date (1)
054. Date (1)
She decided to apply a First Love Narrative to herself.
The goal was to improve the quality of the romance depiction — what one might call the highlight of a complete work.
In other words, she decided to hypnotize, or rather brainwash, herself into 'liking Han Si-hu.'
And while in that state, she'd go on a date or something and figure out what romantic feelings were all about! That was her proposal.
...Ah, of course, she'd set up a few safety measures so the hypnosis wouldn't last permanently. A cancellation technique and such.
To begin with, Rinne's buffs and debuffs only lasted an hour at most, so it didn't seem like there'd be any major issues.
So——
"Okay. Ready."
"You already wrote it? The love narrative?"
"Yeah. I just tweaked the story you told me a little, anyway, Oppa."
She'd changed it so that, instead of the nameless Girl, 'Rinne' had been there.
So, in the story, Rinne and Han Si-hu met as children at the Ghost House and shared a few days of love.
Rinne fabricated a distorted narrative, detached from reality.
And then.
[Narrative Granting: Love Narrative - Target: Han Si-hu]
Rinne applied it to herself.
In other words, Rinne came to like me as a romantic interest.
...That was assuming, of course, that the skill had functioned exactly as intended.
Since Rinne liking me was (according to Rinne's one-sided assertion) a narrative with zero plausibility, it was possible the effect hadn't manifested properly.
Even if that weren't the case, a mistake might have occurred during the skill deployment process.
First, I'd need to check her condition——
No, maybe I didn't even need to confirm it.
Because for a little while now, the way Rinne looked at me had completely changed.
Changed how, you ask... well.
Pink-tinged.
Not a passionate, fiery pink.
The pink of a girl fallen in first love — full of shyness and fresh innocence.
Not so much hot pink as soft pink, you could say.
You might think they're the same thing, but anyway, that was the feeling.
Well, whatever the case.
"Seems like it took effect properly?"
I asked her that.
But Rinne didn't answer.
Not because she disagreed with my assessment.
She was simply flustered, having suddenly been asked a question by the guy she liked.
"Hk...!"
Like this.
And on top of that, she seemed confused as well.
After all, this was probably the first time in her life she was experiencing romantic feelings for someone.
As a writer and a reader, she'd surely imagined it plenty, but it was no match for the real thing.
She was startled by that restless, tingling sensation, not knowing what to do with herself.
But if I left her like this, the conversation wouldn't progress.
I needed to help her get at least a little accustomed to this situation, to these feelings.
So.
I reached out and took hold of Rinne's hand.
The Rinne I knew would have immediately sharpened her glare and shaken my hand off.
But this time.
"Your face has gone red."
"Wh-whah...?!"
Oh. It got even redder.
"Wh-what are you doing...!"
Only then did Rinne snap at me.
But there was none of her usual contempt or confidence.
"The effect seems too strong, so I'm helping you adjust."
"I don't need it. Holding hands with you is super disgusting, Oppa."
Hmm.
"Maybe say that after you unlace your fingers."
"Hah? Since when did I..."
Rinne shouted and looked down.
At the edge of my vision, Rinne's small fingers slipped between mine and intertwined tightly.
Not stopping there, they were even wriggling and squirming, caressing the back of my hand.
Had all those movements happened unconsciously? Rinne looked horrified and made a declaration.
"...I have to cancel this. Right now."
"Do you need to? It'll wear off within an hour anyway."
"I don't want to live for an hour with such a horrible feeling."
Rinne snapped that out, then added quietly.
"A-and I've more or less figured out how it feels to like someone."
So she said.
My own thoughts were... well. I doubted whether she'd properly understood it in just three minutes.
Still, whatever the case, if Rinne herself was that firm about it, I had nothing to say.
I had nothing to say, but.
I did want to tease her a little.
"That's a shame. I really liked the way Rinne is right now."
"Urk...!"
At those words, Rinne clutched her heart.
Not stopping there, her breathing grew fluttery, and she even started huffing through her nose.
Eventually, she was outright stamping her feet in place.
Then she started chanting something like an incantation.
"Don't be fooled, Rinne... Oppa is a loser... He's narrow-minded and an idiot, a pointlessly stubborn moron... There's not a single reason to like a guy like that...! B-but he is kind of handsome... Urgh...! Get a hold of yourself, Rinne! The fact that that human looks handsome right now is just an illusion created by the skill...!"
It seemed she was trying to suppress the emotion screaming 'I love you so much, Oppa ♥' with reason screaming 'Han Si-hu is a loser you must not like.'
While I was left feeling regretful, thinking did she really have to hate it that much, Rinne grabbed her pen on her own.
"Fine! I'm canceling it!"
For reference, Rinne had a Spell Formula that could instantly dispel any buff or debuff she had cast.
The so-called 'It Was All a Dream' narrative.
By overlaying that narrative, all the various effects that had been applied became nothing more than a story within a dream and vanished.
She seemed to be planning to use it this time too, to erase the love narrative involving me.
This was truly a shame for me.
I'd finally gotten to see Rinne in a state where she was a docile girl who meekly listened to my every word, and now we had to part ways after just a few minutes.
I really didn't want to part. I didn't know about a lifetime, but I wished she'd stay like this for an hour or so.
Perhaps my feelings reached the heavens.
"...What."
Rinne, who had long since finished composing the Spell Formula and was concentrating on using the skill, let out a flustered voice.
"Wh-why won't it cancel...?"
What was this now?
"It won't cancel?"
"Th-that's what I said...!"
Rinne answered, still unable to look me straight in the eye.
I was dumbfounded.
"Is that possible?"
"I don't know what's going on either..."
Rinne started to speak but stopped, letting out an 'Ah' of realization. As if she had reached an epiphany.
And indeed she had.
"...Now that I think about it, from the start I embedded the Cancellation Technique within the Spell Formula itself. I set the skill to deactivate immediately once a specific condition was met."
Rinne said.
She explained that she normally didn't insert a Cancellation Technique like that when using a skill.
The reason she'd deliberately inserted it this time was simple.
She had included it as a kind of automatic kill switch in case the brainwashing became so strong that she refused to deactivate it herself.
But that very thing was the problem.
However, the Cancellation Technique applied at the outset had gained priority, making it impossible to cancel the effect until the original "specific condition" was met.
"What is this 'specific condition'?"
I asked.
But Rinne didn't answer right away.
Instead, her face redder than ever before, she began to hem and haw.
Only after wasting several minutes like that did she give an answer that was utterly absurd.
"...A kiss."
Excuse me?
"What did you say?"
"A k-kiss, I said. Dummy."
"With who?"
"Who else...!"
Well. I could understand that from context.
The part I truly couldn't understand was why she had set that kind of condition in the first place.
On that point, Rinne also gave a sheepish answer.
"How would I have known. That it would turn out like this."
"But still, come on."
There was no need to set it specifically as a kiss.
Thirty squats, or maybe a successful backflip — something like that would have been enough.
Why, of all things, had she set it as 'this love ends with a kiss'?
To my probing, Rinne shouted as if I were being dense.
"You don't get it...! The ending of a first love narrative is obviously a kiss...!"
That damn over-immersion had led Rinne to ruin once again.
"Then we'll have to wait until the duration ends."
"Tch."
Rinne clicked her tongue.
Then she grumbled at me.
"Go outside, and when I call for you, come back then. I don't want to keep looking at your face in this state, Oppa."
"You should be the one leaving. This is my private room."
"No. You go out, Oppa. That's an order."
...Had she really come to like me?
I was about to ask that, but I stopped. Because Rinne, who had been about to kick me out of habit, the moment her eyes met mine, turned bright red, then demurely straightened her posture.
I didn't know to what degree, but her romantic interest had clearly heightened.
Being considerate of Rinne in that state was probably part of a Commander's virtue, too.
It was only an hour, anyway.
"Alright. I'll be in the command center, so call if anything happens."
Rinne didn't answer.
One hour later.
No, one hour and then another hour later.
Rinne came to me, insisting that her feelings of love toward me had not disappeared.
***
I sat facing Rinne again.
Once again, Rinne couldn't endure my gaze. Her face flushed pink, then she furrowed her brow hard, angry at herself, then covered her face because she didn't want to show that scowl — back and forth.
And by the time she was showing such reactions, two hours had already passed since she had applied the love narrative to herself.
In other words, it was well past the usual duration that Rinne could maintain a buff.
"Wh-why..."
Rinne asked, on the verge of tears.
I also found many aspects puzzling.
I checked the Narrative Granting manual, but it clearly said her buffs were not supposed to last for two full hours.
Nevertheless, if there was something I could guess——
"Could it be that you're unconsciously continuing to apply the love narrative?"
"...Unconsciously?"
"Yeah. Like that time you gave yourself the Writer's Block Disease."
Back then, Rinne had fallen into the thought that she couldn't write, and without realizing it, she had kept applying a debuff to herself stating she 'couldn't write.'
Unable to write because of that debuff, Rinne trusted her own ability even less, and based on that misjudgment, she applied the debuff again.
Could the same phenomenon be occurring right now?
Whatever the case, Rinne had fallen into a state of liking me.
The desire to keep liking me was endlessly triggering the Narrative Granting.
Literally like first love.
A state where, even if you want to stop in your head, you just can't.
"Then what do we do?"
"We can probably do it the same way as last time."
Back then, the moment Rinne had gained enough confidence to overwhelm the Writer's Block Disease, she had been able to escape the vicious cycle.
Similarly, to escape her romantic feelings for me, if she could come to dislike me enough to overwhelm those feelings, that might work.
"Fucking impossible."
Rinne stated firmly.
"Right now, Oppa, I have no confidence that I could genuinely dislike you no matter what you did."
"Even if I spanked your butt?"
At my words, Rinne sank into imagination for a moment.
Then, her face bright red, she said.
"...I wouldn't really dislike that either."
Is that so.
In that case, there was only one method.
Fulfilling the 'specific condition' that Rinne had set thoughtlessly.
Once the hypnosis was released, she wouldn't unconsciously reapply it afterward.
"A-are you telling me to kiss you right now, Oppa?"
"If you don't want that either, then just live like this."
Honestly, I didn't care either way.
If I had to say, I'd actually prefer she just lived like this. Rinne right now was unprecedentedly gentle, after all.
At the very least, she was better than the previous Rinne, who would start kicking me at the drop of a hat.
That's what I thought, at least.
"...I'd rather die than live like this forever."
Rinne seemed to find it utterly disgusting.
So. To escape the feeling of liking Han Si-hu, whom she found utterly disgusting, she would kiss him.
Rinne chose to adopt a solution that could be called contradictory at first glance.
She chose to adopt it, but.
"Wait. Right now is a problem."
"What do you mean, right now is a problem?"
"I don't want to kiss here, now, in this kind of situation...!"
So saying, Rinne began to interrogate me in turn.
"Would you want to do it if you were me, Oppa? It's not just any kiss; for me, this is my first kiss in my entire life. To sacrifice my precious first kiss without a shred of romance, out of a sense of duty, and that too in a musty man's room to a guy like you...! It's unthinkable!"
Who would want to do it.
And for that matter, did a kiss in this kind of situation even count as a first kiss? Usually, it's a no-count, isn't it?
"Gaaah! That attitude is the worst! How is it a no-count! It's a proper, close-contact smack between my lips and a male human's lips! I'd be losing my lip virginity! We'd have to live the rest of our lives knowing the feel of each other's lips!"
Hmm.
Now that I thought about it, she had a point.
Then what was I supposed to do?
Seeing my genuine confusion, Rinne quietly added.
"...Take me on a date."
"A date?"
"Yeah. And we'll have lots of fun together... and then."
In an incredibly cool place.
In an incredibly romantic situation.
When her heart, distorted by hypnosis, was no longer the issue — when her reason could accept kissing me.
"Then I want to have a proper first kiss."
Rinne made that request.
So, well.
Round and round it went, and we decided to go on a date.
Just with the ridiculous condition of 'making Rinne genuinely fall for me' attached.