The Suggestion User, Lee Seonho

The moment I dragged my aching body upright, the very first thing that registered was the smell.

A mottled, sticky stench that pressed down on my nostrils like a physical weight. Unable to stomach the disgust, I woke fully — and through the blackout curtains, a thin sliver of light was leaking in around the edges of the window.

"A... aah..."

Realizing I was in some unfamiliar space, somewhere that felt fundamentally wrong, I tested my voice out loud. It came out hoarse, like my throat was locked up — slightly different from my usual voice.

First things first, I needed to get my bearings. I pushed myself up off the bed and yanked the curtain aside, and what greeted my eyes was a nightmarish garbage heap I desperately didn't want to believe was real.

"Whoa, holy shit... what is all this...?"

Had I gotten hammered last night and stumbled into some abandoned building the local high schoolers used as a hangout? Because nothing else seemed capable of explaining this.

Crushed chip bags and cup ramen containers sprawled everywhere, along with dozens of empty liquor bottles — the sight practically forced that kind of speculation on me. Honestly, it was stranger that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠among all this trash there wasn't so much as a single pack of cigarettes.

Determined to figure out where exactly I was, I pulled the blackout curtains fully open and looked outside — and the first thing to catch my eye was a head of pink hair.

It looked oddly natural, too natural to pass off as dyed. I barely had time to register the question before something else surfaced on its own: her ponytail and her outfit looked uncannily like a character from the novel I'd been reading until just recently.

Doesn't she look kind of like Choi Marie...?

To be perfectly honest, "kind of" wasn't even close. Hair color and hairstyle could conceivably be coincidence, but her figure and the way she carried herself in those clothes weren't things a lookalike could pull off.

The instant it clicked that the uniform she was wearing belonged to Cheonmu Hunter Academy, I scrambled up and bolted for the bathroom.

Wait. No way...

Yes, I'd posted that thread on the community forum — but that kind of thing was only supposed to happen inside novels. That was the entire premise.

My legs felt weaker than usual as I dragged them into the bathroom, and there, reflected in the mirror, was unmistakably "me" — and yet not me at all.

"......"

Someone else standing where I should have been standing. Half-convinced the mirror was actually a painting, I reached out a hand — and the "someone" across from me reached out his hand too, perfectly mirroring me.

And he thrust forward a pair of scrawny, stick-thin forearms and a grip that looked like it couldn't crush a paper cup — nothing whatsoever like my original hands.

"Wh... what the hell...?"

Greasy, tangled bedhead. Pallid skin. A wiry, underfed frame that might honestly have been frailer than a girl's — a man, in short, of truly pathetic constitution.

He should have been a total stranger, a man I'd never seen in my life. And yet I knew exactly who he was.

Because this was Lee Seonho — the pathetic minor villain of Surviving the Hunter Academy, the web novel I'd devoured in my previous life.

Surviving the Hunter Academy had been a hobby of mine in my previous life, one I'd followed for quite a long time — though I ended up dropping it midway through the main story when my interest suddenly evaporated.

So why would someone like me, who couldn't even finish the series, remember the face of some throwaway villain who wasn't even the protagonist? Simple. Because back in my old life, I'd written a post about this guy and uploaded it to a community forum.

"...I don't think I actually said anything wrong, though."

From what I remembered, the post got plenty of upvotes and the comment section was pretty receptive. Which probably meant a lot of readers besides me had raised eyebrows at Lee Seonho's ability.

Besides, forums exist for talking about novels in the first place. If the author goes crawling into one of those places on their own and gets their feelings hurt, isn't that on the author?

At any rate, that was most likely the biggest reason I'd turned into this Lee Seonho character. Honestly, it's not like anything else even comes to mind.

A skeletal frame and a gloomy, dank aura. Unkempt, uncombed hair and a scruffy beard from skipping shaves. Look, the world has more than one basement-dwelling hermit like this, sure — but for now, I had to accept that the current me was Lee Seonho.

First I needed to confirm whether I'd really possessed Lee Seonho, so as a test, I tried invoking his ability once.

...Yeah, at this point I'd call that confirmed. There's no way you can conjure a transparent window in midair outside a novel — not in the real world.

Given the circumstances, it was certain that I'd possessed Lee Seonho, a character from Surviving the Hunter Academy. And since I'd gone to the trouble of raising my mana, wasting it felt like a shame, so I applied Increase Vitality directly to my own body.

I needed to get my head on straight anyway if I was going to start moving from here on out.

—Saaah.

"...Huh. Not bad."

Whether it was the effect of the Suggestion skill, or simply the fact that I now had hard proof I'd become Lee Seonho, my mood wasn't half bad.

If I'd known I was going to transmigrate, the original protagonist might have been a touch more appealing — but objectively speaking, there was no denying that Lee Seonho's ability itself was the superior one.

Sure, the guy came bundled with flaws — the creepy appearance, the trash-tier stamina, the whole package. But his ability, on its own merits, was genuinely as good as a cheat.

Despite being a villain, he never even grasped the full potential of the power he held. The extent of his ambition was handling a single sidekick girl, tops. Frankly, as a reader, there were more than a few times I nearly died of frustration watching him.

The reason I dropped the series in the first place was that right up to the end, he never used his ability properly and got exposed by the protagonist anyway. If I'd been in his shoes, I doubt I'd have folded to the hero so pathetically.

"The real question is how far into the story we are right now."

Going by the state of this apartment, I'd guess we're on break? If school were in session, Lee Seonho would have hit Cha Eunju with Suggestion and made her clean this place already.

The first semester of third year would be the worst-case scenario. Right before the second semester of second year would still be fairly problematic. But before the first semester of second year — at that point he hadn't yet done anything truly villain-worthy, so there'd at least be some room to work with.

At minimum, I need to avoid antagonizing the protagonist's faction if I want to survive.

Best case would be a point where neither of us even knows the other exists. If I absolutely couldn't avoid getting tangled up with him, I'd have to keep relations as friendly as possible.

That said, as someone with my eye on the protagonist's heroines, I knew a confrontation would come eventually — but that was a problem for future me.

Figuring out today's date seemed like the single most important task, so the moment I powered on the smartphone, I felt a wash of relief at the most recent text message waiting on the screen.

...So the main story hasn't even started yet.

Checking the date confirmed it — roughly a month remained until the first round of exams. Which meant that, having possessed Lee Seonho anyway, it was time to start knocking out the to-do list one item at a time.

...Starting, of course, with clearing out this garbage dump of a room.

The deep clean I'd expected to take at least two days was, thankfully, finished in about ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠half a day.

Most of what filled the room was junk destined for the trash anyway, so I simply hauled it all out without bothering to sort anything. The fact that today happened to be recycling day at the apartment complex helped considerably too.

Thanks to the Cleaning Addiction suggestion, I somehow managed to power through everything — hauling out the trash, sweeping and mopping the floors, scrubbing down the bathroom — all while feeling a strange, inexplicable sense of enjoyment. Then, with that oddly pleasant warmth still humming in me, I released the suggestion I'd placed on myself.

"...Phewww."

Right. So this is what it feels like when a suggestion ends.

It had been described a few times within the story through Cha Eunju, but this was my first time experiencing it firsthand.

While under a suggestion, you simply feel that the action in question is something you naturally ought to be doing. To put it in terms of the suggestion I'd just cast on myself, it reached the level where cleaning felt effortlessly, organically enjoyable.

Even after the suggestion lifted, the memory of that time remains tinted with the same pleasure — so there's no lingering disgust, only the satisfaction of having completed a deep clean by my own will.

That said, since the memories do remain, it feels subtly different from outright hypnosis... if I had to describe it, it's closer to the sensation of "pretending to be hypnotized."

...Which meant, quite obviously, that I couldn't use this ability to openly bed the heroines. Not that I could find heroines willing to sit back and accept a suggestion in the first place — and even if I did, everything done under it would stay burned into their memory, plain as day.

For an attempt to even be possible, the relationship would need to reach the point where she'd shrug it off with something like, "Well, I wanted to do it anyway, so whatever"... which made it clear that relying on the ability alone and getting cocky was a genuinely dangerous path.

Bottom line: before I can even try anything, I need to get reasonably close to the heroines somehow. And even if a suggestion lands, I'd have to start with light skinship at first and gradually lower their guard.

Forcing it with a heavy expenditure of mana was technically possible, but the duration would shrink and the effect would grow feeble — hardly worth it.

So step one: get close to the original story's heroines.

The easiest by far would be Cha Eunju, who was functionally Lee Seonho's underling even in the original — but at this point in time, the shut-in Cha Eunju who almost never left her house would be nearly impossible to meet...

First, then — let's start with Choi Marie.

I knew Choi Marie's workout course inside and out. I'd simply loiter along the same route and make sure I got noticed, however I had to manage it.

Because unlike the Lee Seonho of the original story, I had no intention of exiting the stage without so much as bedding a single sidekick.