Suspicious but Reliable Training (2)
-Thump, thump, thump.
At the Academy's Archery Department Training Grounds, the hypnosis training had begun at Lee Seonho's suggestion.
Even though she had agreed to the training herself, Han Sora couldn't shake off her fear at the thought that her consciousness might vanish at any moment.
Stay calm, Han Sora. You're the one who asked for this in the first place.
Thanks to Lee Seonho's help, her archery training, which had stalled for so long, was finally starting to come together. She'd also built up a sense of trust in him before this—by her own reckoning, he was someone reliable. And this was training he was proposing, so surely nothing could go wrong.
With that thought, she hesitated a little before meekly offering her head to him.
"Just relax. An hour or two will pass and it'll be over before you know it."
"...Yeah."
Because she trusted that he wouldn't do anything strange.
With that thought in mind, Han Sora carefully leaned her head toward Lee Seonho—and, with a sensation of mana flowing into her, she lost consciousness just like—
Condition: Hypnotized
"........?"
No—she hadn't lost consciousness at all.
Her mind was perfectly clear. About as clear as when she'd received his buffs before. The only difference was that it had gone from Artemis's Soul to Hypnosis.
Just as Han Sora opened her mouth, wondering whether the buff hadn't applied properly—
"Took hold nicely. How do you feel?"
"......."
At the sight of Lee Seonho already fully convinced that she was hypnotized, Han Sora's mouth snapped shut.
If she'd actually fallen under hypnosis, that would be one thing. But what was the right response when she hadn't, and the other person believed she had?
She briefly considered honestly admitting she wasn't hypnotized—then decided this was actually a good opportunity instead.
Right, maybe this is for the better.
If she pretended to be hypnotized like this, she could find out exactly what Lee Seonho would do while she was under.
Even if only so she could keep joining his training with peace of mind going forward, she needed to verify once just what this 'hypnosis training' actually entailed. That way, she could keep participating while trusting that he wouldn't do anything bad to her.
...And in the unlikely event that he tried to grope her body while she was genuinely under, she could stop him well enough anyway.
"Sora? I asked how you're feeling. You're hypnotized, right?"
"...I'm, hypnotized."
"Good, that's a relief."
...It's fine to do this, right?
It was her first time faking hypnosis, so she didn't really know how to act. But judging by Lee Seonho's reaction, she figured this was probably the right approach.
"Then let's start training. Pick up the bow and get into your stance first."
"Okay."
The moment she obediently took up the bow in her left hand and an arrow in her right, settling into position just as he'd said—
-Shuuuk.
"Unh...?"
Standing behind her, Lee Seonho stealthily pressed his body against hers.
Winning over Han Sora required taking things slowly.
No matter how hypnotized she was, pulling a Cha Eunju—confessing and embracing her on day one—would be a losing play.
That trick only worked in the first place because the other person was Cha Eunju. Han Sora still had her guard up around me.
-Shuuuk.
"Unh...?"
After wrapping my body around Han Sora's from behind as she held the bow, I caught her right hand with my right and her left hand with my left, each in my own grasp.
"From now on, I'll be adjusting your form personally. Keep it up as consciously as you can."
"......Okay."
All under the pretext of holding the stance for a hypnotized Han Sora.
This way, I could enjoy natural skinship, and once the hypnosis was 'over,' she wouldn't think anything of it. Sure, she'd feel some embarrassment at how much of her body was pressed against a man's—but that was manageable.
As for how someone like me, with zero actual archery knowledge, was supposed to correct Han Sora's form? Easy. I just used the 'self-buff' I'd applied to myself.
Suggestion: Artemis's Soul
※ Target: Lee Seonho
Artemis's Soul naturally produced the single most correct stance for lining up a shot.
With our bodies overlapped like this, if I settled into position as though I were the one drawing the bow, Han Sora's body would end up mirroring my exact stance.
In other words, since she was genuinely moving in a proper form, this actually helped her to a real degree. Honestly, the effect was probably better than a cycle of receiving and releasing a suggestion—rather than reconstructing a remembered stance from her time under suggestion, she'd simply be holding the correct form from the very start, continuously.
Not that I was applying hypnosis to grope her or anything. But the compensation had to be rock-solid regardless of the process.
So that later, intoxicated by those rewards, Han Sora would know full well her body was being touched—and be unable to refuse.
"Ten Goblin Spearmen. Move along with me as I move, and just hit them."
"...Got it."
"Then, here we go."
The moment the training program began, ten holographic Goblin Spearmen appeared.
With my hands gripping hers, I pulled back as though drawing the bowstring, and Han Sora, matching my movements, aimed at a goblin some fifty meters away.
"Draw a little more. And angle it slightly upward."
"...Okay."
"Good. Loose, now."
-Fwiiiing!
Han Sora obeyed my instructions to the letter and carefully released the string.
Her arrow traced a near-flat parabola and punched straight through the skull of an approaching Goblin Spearman.
-Thwack!
At the sight of the clean hit, I could feel Han Sora carefully clenching her fist.
She probably wanted to show her joy, but doing so would give away that she was faking her hypnosis, so she'd swallowed it down.
Well, at least now she'd understand that I'd put her under hypnosis in earnest, for the sake of serious training.
"Nice work. From here on, no more step-by-step calls—I'll only signal when to release. Follow my arms and keep firing in sequence."
"...Okay."
From the second goblin onward, I moved her arms by the grip alone—no instructions on form, no release commands. For training to actually take root, what mattered wasn't carefully taking down each target one by one, but transitioning smoothly between targets and firing in continuous succession.
She needed to internalize the results of the training in her body, which meant I couldn't let this part go to waste.
-Fwip! Fwiiip!
Arrows flew at the goblins in rapid succession, carried by smooth, natural movement.
Since I was half-controlling her body, it wasn't the cleanest form imaginable—but her sniping accuracy still sat at around seventy to eighty percent.
Enough to take down ten Goblin Spearmen without much trouble—exactly the wall she'd failed against when she'd tried it alone earlier.
"Hah, hahhoo..."
As she breezed through the training course, I looked at Han Sora, flushed with excitement plain enough for anyone to see.
Granted, her body had been half-controlled by me—but this was her first genuinely meaningful result without Artemis's Soul. She'd seen with her own two eyes that she could produce results even without a buff. Of course she was worked up.
I knew her past—years of suffering because of her accuracy—so nothing about it surprised me.
...Though she was still suppressing even that joyful expression as much as she could, so as not to reveal that she was 'faking hypnosis' around me.
"Good work. How's your stamina holding up?"
"...A little tired, is all."
"It's your first day, so let's keep it simple—two more sets. You've got the stamina for that much, right?"
"...Yeah."
After that, I didn't attempt anything strange—I simply joined her training in earnest, as though I really were instilling proper form into the body of an unconscious Han Sora.
"Whew, hooooh..."
-Shuuuk.
"......."
I did take advantage of a moment when she was focused on her training to press our bodies a little closer together, though.
Late that evening, at Han Sora's home.
After washing away the sweat she'd poured out in training and changing into her pajamas, she lay on her bed in her room, replaying the day's events with Lee Seonho in her head.
He really didn't do anything weird at all. Just trained, seriously, the whole time.
She'd trusted him, sure—but she hadn't expected him to focus on the training with not even a shred of self-interest. When he'd first taken both her hands from behind, she'd been a little startled, but that was all. After that, he'd gone so far as to check on the 'condition' of her supposedly unconscious body while earnestly correcting her form.
Quite the opposite, in fact—she felt almost embarrassed to remember having suspected he might try something. Shame, too, for not having trusted him with her whole heart.
"Ughhh, now I just feel guilty toward Seonho..."
I should've just done it without showing any hesitation. Now it looked like I'd gone and nursed pointless suspicions for no reason.
Or I should've said from the start that the hypnosis buff hadn't actually taken hold.
Because she'd chosen to stay silent and observe his behavior instead, the picture had gotten awkward now, even if she did come clean. If he asked why she'd pretended to be hypnotized when she wasn't, or why she'd kept the act up until the very end, answering would be downright mortifying.
Which meant today's events would stay unspoken forever—and that she'd just have to keep carrying this guilt inside her chest.
Still... it definitely seemed to work.
It was the first time she'd ever shot that well without a buff.
It was thanks to Lee Seonho adjusting her form from behind, admittedly—but either way, the process had made it far easier to remember the correct stance.
It seemed better to keep doing the 'hypnosis training' going forward. Even if it unfolded a little differently from what Lee Seonho intended, the fact that it helped was beyond doubt.
...And no matter how certain she was that Lee Seonho held no romantic feelings for her, doing that kind of training with their bodies pressed together while fully sober was a little embarrassing. Pretending to be under 'hypnosis' made it easier to bear, at least.
"Although... thinking about it now, I'm kinda getting a little annoyed~."
Love her or not, she'd grown up hearing 'you're so pretty' everywhere she went. The fact that he could look at her and feel not even a flicker of desire was, honestly, a bit of a blow to Han Sora's pride.
Sure, she knew Lee Seonho had another pretty friend around him—Cha Eunju. Even so, what she'd experienced today had felt so utterly free of any distance between a man and a woman that it stung.
Is it really because of her chest...?
She pictured Cha Eunju's bust—impossible to hide even under thick clothing—then immediately looked down at her own body.
She couldn't say she had none, but it was a chest that couldn't be called large even as a compliment. She remembered how, at the amusement park the other day, she'd caught herself unconsciously comparing her own chest against Cha Eunju's and Kim Isabel's.
If that was truly the reason he kept his distance, it would be a little sad. It would feel like being turned down before she'd even confessed.
Not that I'm trying to get in Eunju's or Isabel's way or anything...
Swallowing that strange, lingering feeling of something left unsatisfied, Han Sora went a long while unable to fall asleep.