Suspicious but Reliable Training (1)
"So Hana and Cheonho already moved into the dorms a few days ago?"
"Yep. The school lets us stay for free anyway, so why waste money on an inn? And honestly, I really hate sleeping in the same room as that bastard Park Cheonho."
"Yeah, even if he's family, sharing a room with your brother does sound awful~."
"It's not just awful, it's torture. He snores like a chainsaw, sets a million alarms every morning and still can't drag himself up on time, so every single day I'm the one stuck waking up at the crack of dawn—"
At some point Han Sora had steered the conversation away and moved on to the subject of Park Hana's dorm life.
The talk had drifted naturally into badmouthing Park Cheonho, and through it Han Sora began to show genuine interest in moving into the dorms early herself.
"Hmm, maybe I should move in early too. My place is so far away that riding the subway up to Seoul every morning is a pain."
"If it's easier for you, Sora, moving in early sounds like a good call. You're practically living at the academy already with all that training lately, right?"
"Yeah, that's true."
"Where's home? Far from Seoul?"
"Ansan way. I just ride Line 4 straight down."
"Ansan? That's at least an hour of commuting every morning."
"Exactly~! And have you seen how packed the trains are in the morning? If you don't get a seat, you're standing for the whole hour. It drains all my energy before the day even starts…."
Not that I was complaining—an exhausted student was that much easier to train. Once the academy semester kicked off in earnest, I'd probably get to see her even more worn out during afternoon sessions. Cheonmu Academy was brutal from entrance all the way to graduation, after all.
Chatting with the heroines like that, face to face, I casually—very casually—placed a single mini hamburger steak onto the tray of the girl sitting across from me.
"Here, Sora."
-Plop.
"Hm? You're giving me this?"
"You've been training since this morning. Load up on protein and keep at it."
"You've been working hard too, Seonho, helping me train all morning."
"All I do is throw buffs on you and fiddle with the training computer. Eat up if you want to keep your energy for the afternoon."
"…Thank you."
Opportunities to raise Han Sora's affection didn't come around often, so it was worth racking up points even in small moments like this.
And doing it this way gave me a natural excuse to toss a word in Park Hana's direction as well.
"Hey, what gives, Lee Seonho! Favoritism much? Give me one too, give me one!"
"Fine, have some."
-Plop.
"Huh?! You're seriously giving me this? Awesome!"
If a couple of cafeteria side dishes could buy the affection of two heroines, I'd happily starve to keep buying it.
-Shwaaaaak!
'Gkeh-haaak!!'
"Hah. Come on, you're supposed to hit me…!"
-Thwip!
'Kkehak…!'
After the lucky chance encounter with Park Hana at lunch, Han Sora and I had thrown ourselves back into archery training.
The afternoon session wasn't all that different from the morning's. Summon a pack of low-tier monsters, then repeat the cycle of culling them—first with my Suggestion applied, then without.
Nothing raised proficiency with an awakened ability like pure repetition, which meant there wasn't all that much for me to do beyond spectate and buff.
-Thwip!
"Nice, Sora! Just two more—stay focused!"
"Whew, hah…."
-Thwip!
'Kkehk….'
By now she seemed to have no breath left for answering, loosing her arrows between ragged gasps.
Whether yesterday's and today's training had actually paid off, even exhausted as she was, she managed to snipe three goblins in a row.
'Gkeh-haaaak!!'
"One left…!"
Goblin Spearman defense, wave of ten. And now the very last one.
It had closed in close enough that she could take an aimed shot instead of a wild volley—but sadly, Han Sora's luck ran out right there.
-Ting!
"Aaah…!"
Her fingers simply gave out, and the bowstring slipped uselessly from her grip, sending the arrow flying off in some random direction.
She fumbled to nock another arrow, but by then the goblin-spearman hologram had already crossed the boundary line of the training grounds.
Training Terminated
"Aaaaah…!! I was so close—!!"
Crumpling to the floor with a cry, Han Sora sounded genuinely aggrieved at failing the ten-goblin defense right at the finish line.
It really was a shame. She'd had a decent run of luck, and of all her training sessions so far, this had been by far her most successful.
Her sniping accuracy had climbed from around thirty percent to what felt like fifty. The long-range hit on her very first shot had even taken me a little by surprise.
'So this is what an original-novel heroine looks like. Her growth rate is on a completely different level from an ordinary student.'
Granted, she was receiving my training support, but raising her accuracy by twenty whole points in barely two days was no small feat.
Sure, that number only applied against Goblin Spearmen, and she'd still have to learn how to handle other monsters down the road—but with fifty percent accuracy, she wouldn't be losing to any of the other students.
One of Han Sora's arrows was far more powerful than two or three sloppy shots from anyone else. The tougher the monster, the more her true value would shine through.
Watching her trace such a smooth growth curve despite having none of the original-novel motivation of chasing after Seo Woojin left me partly reassured—and partly, just a little, anxious.
'If I don't make my move soon, I'll miss my window.'
Soon enough, Han Sora would realize on her own that her skills were improving. She'd figure out that this training was a textbook method for raising her ability.
And that was the problem—the moment she did, my justification for hitting her with Suggestion: Hypnosis would evaporate. Once she felt she no longer needed it, why would she bother with any 'hypnosis training'?
Right now, while she was kicking herself over her frustrating results, was the perfect moment to bring it up.
"Hey, Sora."
"…Oh! S-sorry. Did I get too worked up again…?"
"You're fine. But there's something I want to ask you."
"Something you want to ask?"
"I was wondering how you'd feel about training a slightly different way. The way I see it, you need to fix your form before you focus on volume."
"My, my form…."
Having read the original novel, I already knew that Han Sora had never been able to afford professional form correction because of her family's circumstances.
But framing it this way would make me look like I had genuine expertise in archery too. After all, the person most keenly aware that her form was flawed would be Han Sora herself.
"Does it show that much? The bad form, I mean?"
"It looks fine at a glance, but there are little things here and there. Like, when you transitioned from the ninth goblin to the tenth earlier, your arm position…."
I wasn't actually pointing out anything strange—I was just spitting out whatever happened to come to mind. Naturally, Han Sora knew far more about archery than I did.
But in the end, the person who holds the reins in a conversation between two people isn't the one who actually knows more—it's the one who makes it look like they know more. That's just human nature.
Establish credibility first, and from then on you could spout complete nonsense and people would nod along as if it were profound. There was no helping it.
"…Those moments added up to some pretty inefficient movement, I think."
"Hmm… you might actually be right about that…."
"Don't take my word as gospel, though. Everything I know is secondhand—unlike you, I never had formal training."
"No, no, it's fine. Honestly, I never got proper formal training either. You're probably right, Seonho."
"Right. Anyway, that's why I think it's great that you're training to track a monster's movement with your arrows, Sora, but correcting that distorted form matters just as much."
"…Yeah. You're probably right, Seonho."
After reaming out her form like that, I played humble on top of it—and now Han Sora genuinely seemed to regard me as something of an archery expert.
Right now, with her trust in me at its peak, was the one and only window where her guard had come down.
"Which is why I think you'd need a somewhat different kind of training to fix your form, but… it's a little delicate to explain."
"Delicate how? What kind of training is it?"
"It's called 'hypnosis training.' You'd receive my training while under hypnosis."
"……What? H-hypnosis…?"
…There it is—the wariness creeping back in. This much was an unavoidable cost of doing business.
Even Cha Eunju had shown fear at the mere mention of hypnosis training; Han Sora was bound to react even worse.
"Not 'hypnosis'—'hypnosis training.' If I just say hypnosis, it sounds like I'm planning to do something sketchy to you, doesn't it?"
"…W-well, yeah, a little."
She knew perfectly well how skilled I was with mental-type buffs, and her whole body language was screaming suspicion.
Not that the 'sketchy things' she was imagining in her head were, of course, exactly what I'd be doing. Though killing off that suspicion first would take some careful groundwork.
At Lee Seonho's sudden mention of 'hypnosis,' Han Sora's heart began to pound.
He had said hypnosis training, not hypnosis—but the word itself was inherently a little frightening.
Ordinarily, hypnosis referred to the kind of magic that seized control of a person's mind and stole their memories, so no matter how trustworthy the mouth it came from, a certain guardedness was only natural.
'Hypnosis training… is something like that really necessary?'
Well, if Lee Seonho said so, it probably was.
He'd spent both yesterday and today earnestly supporting her training; he wouldn't have suddenly made a pointless proposal out of nowhere.
And everything she'd seen of Lee Seonho so far had been a person considerate of others, always ready to sacrifice himself in dangerous situations.
Even if the offer seemed strange, there had to be a good reason for it—so Han Sora coaxed herself into accepting that logic.
…Of course, agreeing to this mysterious 'hypnosis training' with zero actual information was an entirely separate matter.
"So this hypnosis training thing—how exactly does it work?"
"…First, I'd apply a buff called 'Hypnosis' to you. While under the buff, you'd temporarily fall into a state where you follow my commands."
"…I-I see."
"And after the hypnosis ends, your memory of everything that happened will be erased. The sensations of what you experienced would linger in your subconscious, but you won't remember exactly what took place."
"……."
Dangerous.
Even hearing it described once, the buff sounded far too dangerous. Used wrongly, it meant Lee Seonho could literally take control of her body.
Granted, recalling everything she'd seen of him so far, he was plenty trustworthy. Even so, willingly handing over complete control of her own body was not something she could accept with an easy heart.
'I'm sure Seonho wouldn't do anything weird, but….'
That was only a gut feeling, though—she couldn't fully trust it.
If she ended up being groped in strange places while under hypnosis, it would be mortifying. She wouldn't remember it, sure—but that was exactly the problem. Not knowing what had happened would only make her imagination run wilder afterward.
"So how exactly does this 'hypnosis training' work?"
"The best way to fix bad habits burned into your body is to separate your consciousness from your flesh and train them apart, so that's the method I'd use.
When you think with your head, your body keeps trying to slip back into its old patterns. So we'd temporarily detach your consciousness and correct your body into the proper form directly."
"…Is-is it really necessary?"
"If you don't want to, you don't have to. I won't force you. I'm only suggesting it because it's the fastest, most effective way to correct bad habits written into the body."
"The fastest, most effective way…."
One week remained until the entrance ceremony.
To prove herself worthy of the burdensome title of 'valedictorian admission,' she needed to overcome her weaknesses as soon as possible.
It was a little suspicious, sure. But it was supposedly the fastest way, and he didn't seem to be pressuring her into it at all.
…And besides, out of all the friends she'd made at the academy, Lee Seonho was the one she trusted most.
"Th-then… maybe we could try it once, just as a test…?"
And so, with those thoughts in her head, Han Sora cautiously accepted Lee Seonho's proposal.