Confess and Die
Seduction?
I froze at the system window that had popped up out of nowhere.
I'd never heard of a skill like this.
Pecia stored most of her skills in her card deck, and for anything mental, she simply leaned hard on hypnosis across the board. There was no reason she'd ever need something like this.
Skill details.
The ruler of the amusement park returns everyone to the pure heart of childhood.
Her small, delicate gestures will draw honest thrills from men, and yearning from women.
Her violet eyes will make them whisper of love, and her cherry-red lips will bestow sweet embraces and kisses.
...What the hell is this?
The description was downright lewd. It wasn't something you could grasp at a glance, and it sure didn't tell you how to actually use it. In all my life, I'd never seen skill text this unpleasant and unhelpful.
What bothered me most was that word: (Passive). Passive. Meaning it was always on, right? No turning it off, no turning it on — the effect just fired whenever it felt like it, whether I wanted it to or not.
Thinking about those weird words — lips, love, and the rest — left me thoroughly unsettled.
Ah... now that I think about it...
Those kinds of lines used to show up all the time in the game's system windows.
— Hunter XXX has been seduced.
Lunatics who, despite being pure-blooded humans, threw their lives away for Pecia. They even formed a kind of secret fan club and turned hostile toward the protagonist and human society — everyone from ordinary civilians to A-class hunters. Mental magic couldn't persuade them; the only options had been capture or kill.
At the time, I'd thought it was an incredibly stupid plot device. There was already a faction devoted to the demon beasts, and then this garbage had to spawn on top of it.
But to think they'd been hit by a passive skill all along?
I crossed my arms and clicked my tongue inwardly.
"No wonder you could only kill her early on."
There had been exactly one way to clear the amusement park stage: find the gate early, get friendly with the toys, locate Pecia, and take her out before anything else. Let enough time pass, and the ending was always the same — the hunters wiped each other out long before the demon beasts ever got a chance.
"Um, Purple Bunny?"
"Huh? Oh — yes, yes."
The shock had been big enough that I'd briefly forgotten the person sitting next to me. A blond man with unusually slanted eyes flushed pink across his cheeks as he asked,
"Would you... happen to give me your contact information?"
I shut him down without a second of hesitation.
"No."
"Pardon? Ah... haha! Of course not."
The man, briefly flustered, recovered with a bitter little smile.
"I dared to try a mental attack on Purple Bunny herself... of course you'd hate a slimy guy like me. I just asked once, out of regret. Please don't mind it!"
I had no idea what he was regretting, but I was done with this guy. I'd fixed his absurd situation and cheered him up. The rest was none of my business.
Wait a second, though.
Mental attack?
...
So that was it?
Only then did I realize who this man was — and why he'd been stuck drinking that cheap coffee.
Former Safety Guard, codename Joker. The one who'd tried to put some weird brainwashing on me and gotten it turned right back on him. Failed his mission, then peed all over his employer's face for good measure — no wonder he'd been getting the cold shoulder.
"Pfft."
And here I thought he'd gotten off without any punishment.
It was almost adorable. The Director played it cool while taking revenge like a middle-school girl, and this Joker guy just sat there taking it, completely deflated.
These were supposed to be veteran hunters?
"Hehe... you're so cute."
Then, out of nowhere, the man started writhing in place like he didn't know what to do with himself.
"...?"
What was that disgusting body language?
"Your smile. I somehow thought you had a tsundere vibe, but when you laugh like that, you've got this idol-like charm."
"..."
That line.
Okay, I was actually going to throw up.
It was like the inner monologue of a boy with his first crush had spilled straight out of his mouth — zero awareness of anyone around him, just raw, unfiltered feelings slammed into the open. Normally even if you thought something like that, your brain filtered it before it ever left your lips.
With a sinking feeling, I checked the man's face.
Sparkling blue eyes. Mouth hanging open in a dopey hehe. Both cheeks flushed tomato-red.
This... this bastard. Don't tell me—
I whipped my gaze away from his.
Why dodge?
Simple. If I kept locking eyes with him even a second longer, he was going to lunge in for a kiss. I didn't have the power to read the future, but somehow I was absolutely certain of that one thing.
Goosebumps prickled down my back. Of all the things I never expected — getting looked at like that by a man.
"P-Purple Bunny! Where are you going!"
"Don't follow me!"
I... I'm going to kill him.
If you like me, I'll kill you. You gay bastard!
B-class Hunter Yoo Hanbaek has been completely sedu—
"Oh, shut up. Shut up, you insane status window!"
"Pecia, let's go."
A light tap on my arm — and I nearly jumped out of my skin, scrambling backward.
"Wh-what! Why are you suddenly getting so close!"
Kang Jiye let out a hollow laugh.
"What's with her now? Did something happen?"
"Don't play dumb! You're a lesbian, aren't you!"
Sudden laughter erupted all across the office. Female staff whispering What? What did she say? to their neighbors; a male employee coughing up his coffee. Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto us.
"..."
Kang Jiye blinked several times. Then a chilly smile settled at the corner of her mouth. She gently stroked my hair and tilted her head.
"Our little... Purple Bunny. Why the sudden nonsense? People are going to get the wrong idea."
Only then did a scrap of sanity return to me.
"Ah, that was... s-sorry."
"Have you finally graduated to full-blown delusion? Do you think the entire world is in love with you?"
"No..."
"Watch yourself."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Looks like the kid's a bit worn out. Director, we'll be heading out now."
Kim Hansoo hurried over at once.
"H-hey, hang on a second. Just a quick word alone with Purple Bunny—"
"No. It's not related to the operation anyway, is it?"
"That's not— at the very least I should get a contact number for later—"
"You can tell me instead."
Kang Jiye coldly peeled the clingy Kim Hansoo off us, slung an arm around my shoulders, and marched us out of the office.
The moment we got home, I was interrogated about what had happened. Given how many incidents I'd caused lately, any sudden weird behavior put her on high alert. In the end, I had no choice but to answer.
It was an experience I never wanted to recount to anyone — but I at least needed to know how to handle this going forward.
For the record... hypnosis didn't work on her.
"Isn't that obvious?"
I'd privately hoped for something like Just kill him, then, but fat chance. Kang Jiye furrowed her brow like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Think about your face. Of course men are going to flock to you."
"What's 'of course' about it! That gay guy likes me!"
"And what's weird about that? Men are just like that. A woman gets even a little close and the green light flips on — boom, they're all over you. Some of them claim they fell for you just from watching you walk by."
That's because your face is devastating. There's no way every man acts like that toward just any woman.
"He was already down in the dumps, and then you kindly brought him coffee on top of it. Game over. You already seduced him — what's he supposed to do when you tell him not to fall for you?"
I bristled and shot back,
"H-he shouldn't fall for me! All I did was try to fix the problem! That filthy sodomite!"
Kang Jiye sighed.
"Why is 'sodomite' even coming up? A guy liking a cute girl like you is completely normal, isn't it?"
"Th-that's..."
"Sure, he was skinny and a little greasy-looking, but you can't judge people by their appearance. If you don't like him, just turn him down. Don't go rating his looks and hurting his feelings for no reason."
Somehow I'd become an appearance-based bigot.
But I couldn't exactly say That's not what I meant, because without that angle, there was no explaining why I'd called the guy gay. I'd have to spill the whole past-life, soul-swap, possession story — and that was a secret I had to keep for the rest of my life.
So I sat there like a mute who'd swallowed honey and endured Kang Jiye's moral lecture. She seemed to think that because I was an alien... no, a demon beast, my sense of ethics was underdeveloped.
Where did this all go wrong?
I was stuck living in Pecia's body, sure — but I had zero memory of ever giving men permission to fall for me. I was barely getting used to wearing skirts. This was not okay.
There was no way this was my fault. There had to be a cause somewhere...
I started thinking hard.
Why had I gone to the Hunter Administration and ended up talking to that man in the first place? I'd been living quietly at Auntie's house. Someone attacked Auntie's place. It was a hunter. Turned out to be brainwashing. Hmm.
"Ah. Right. So it wasn't my fault after all."
"Hm? Where are you going, little one?"
"I'm just going to make a salad real quick."
"A salad? ...Ugh. You hate getting lectured so much you start saying weird things. Come back early!"
"Yes, ma'am."
Somewhere in the West Sea.
"Korea? Weren't we heading straight for the Japanese archipelago?"
The members of the international mafia Gate of Valhalla were in an uproar. Their course had been changed without warning, and a full-scale alert had been issued on top of it. Worrying about an attack in the middle of this vast open ocean was an order that made no sense at all.
"Something's gone wrong, apparently. Our idiot brothers botched the operation."
"Botched? What's there to botch? You stick a knife in a few boats and you're done."
They had the power granted by the Plant Queen, too. And with orders to take revenge on their enemies, there shouldn't have been any will to resist.
A cold look settled over the unit captain's face.
"That's exactly what's strange, isn't it? We may have been found out."
"The Queen's existence? Don't be ridiculous."
"Of course they wouldn't have pinpointed us specifically. Either way, the order is to tighten security. There's always a one-in-a-million chance."
"In my opinion... wait, what is that?"
Every head in the group snapped toward the sky.
A sound like something cutting through the wind in formation — and then the night sky began to blaze with brilliant, multicolored light.
A member with a magnification skill narrowed his eyes for a closer look...
"...!!"
His face went white with horror.
"D-deploy the barrier! It's a bombing run!"
"A bombing run!? ...Damn it! Got it!"
But the man who'd moved to raise the barrier stopped dead in his tracks. He trembled, then started swatting at empty air with his hands.
"Heh... hehe. Butterflies. Butterflies."
"......!? You lunatic! What are you doing!"
Another member rushed over after him — and fell into the exact same state.
And then...
Crimson fireballs and yellow lightning. Blue chunks of ice and green toxic gas. Hundreds of trump cards, each loaded with elemental magic, rained down onto the deck.
KRRAAAACK—!!!!!!! BOOM!!! KABOOM!
"GRAAAAAAH!!"
"AAAAHH!!"