That Annoying Guy (3)
"H-hypnosis? Hypnosis, you say…?"
It was Lee Seonho's claim that Han Sora, who gave no answer to his words, was under hypnosis.
Seo Woojin had found it hard to believe at first — but before long, he had no choice but to believe it.
"Hey, Han Sora! Is this for real?!"
"……"
"Is— is what he's saying true?! Han Sora!!"
"……"
Her silence held firm, giving no reaction whatsoever to his words, exactly as if she were truly under hypnosis.
There was no other explanation for it. Unless, of course, Han Sora was deliberately ignoring him — but she had no reason to pretend to be hypnotized and shut out someone she'd known for over ten years.
"Told you it's no use. Sora's under hypnosis right now, so she won't respond to anything except my commands."
"You— you little bastard…!! What— what the hell are you doing to Sora right now!!"
There it is — his true nature finally showing. Figures. There was never going to be a decent guy among the Support Department crowd.
Even the one who'd been acting all reasonable on the surface — turns out Han Sora's body was what he was after all along.
Having settled on that conclusion, Seo Woojin let the hostility in his heart toward Lee Seonho swell bigger and bigger.
"It's not anything strange — it's training. Archery training performed under hypnosis."
"Don't make me laugh!! There's no such thing as training like that!!"
"Well, it exists whether you like it or not. It's a training method where you let the body move while under hypnosis so it memorizes the correct shooting form. There's no need to get so worked up. Calm down and—"
"Don't lie!! You put Sora under hypnosis so you could do something twisted to her!! I'll kill you!!"
Seo Woojin screamed himself hoarse, worked up to the extreme, looking ready to lunge at any moment.
And Lee Seonho, in stark contrast, remained composed, trying to carry on a rational conversation. The two of them could not have been more different.
Even though Han Sora couldn't see the situation due to her posture, she had no trouble piecing together what was happening from the sounds alone.
Wh-what do I do…? Should I just say I was faking the hypnosis and stop this…?
Two men fighting over her… the phrasing felt a little off, but regardless, the cause of it all was the two of them firmly believing she was under hypnosis.
Truthfully, all she had to do was reveal that she wasn't actually hypnotized, and the whole thing would probably be resolved. And yet she couldn't help but hesitate.
Seo Woojin's arrival had made an already-difficult truth even harder to admit — and then there was the record of her having told Lee Seonho, just a little while ago, that she'd rather receive the hypnosis training than any other kind.
That could very well be taken to mean she preferred training that involved a certain degree of bold physical contact, and so the words wouldn't come easily. And while she stalled, the war of words between Lee Seonho and Seo Woojin was escalating past the point of no return.
"Seo Woojin, I get that you don't like me because I'm in the Support Department, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't look at me through such a distorted lens. This is, first and foremost, training for Sora's sake — and Sora consented to being hypnotized."
"You're— you're the one who tricked Sora into hypnosis and now you're doing something twisted to her!!"
"You're the one being unreasonable. Sora's not an idiot — do you really think she'd let herself get hypnotized if I forced it on her? Physically speaking, a Support Department guy like me is hopelessly outmatched by her, you know.
And if I were really planning to do something twisted to her, I'd have picked somewhere private where no one could find us. Not the training grounds, where anyone could walk in at any moment — like right now."
"I— I don't know! How am I supposed to know about any of that! A- anyway, leave Sora and get out of here! Now!"
…From Seo Woojin's perspective, he'd said it to protect Han Sora — but depending on how you heard it, it was the perfect statement to be misread in a very different direction.
A smile formed inside Lee Seonho's mind as he calmly parried the man's flailing logic.
"What are you talking about, Seo Woojin? Sora is under hypnosis right now. If I leave, she'll stay frozen in this state for a good while. So you're telling me you're the one who wants to stay behind alone with her and do something twisted?"
"Th- there's no way that'd happen!!"
"And let's say you're right. Say I really did hypnotize Han Sora to do something twisted to her, just like you claim. Then wouldn't the logical first step be to tell me to release her? Why is it that you've never once said that — and instead just keep telling me to leave her and go?"
"Stop twisting my words!! I— I'm just trying to protect Sora from a bastard like you!!"
"……"
Perhaps his intentions themselves weren't malicious — but from the position of the one listening, the speaker's own credibility inevitably shaped how those words landed.
For Han Sora, listening to the two of them go back and forth, there was no helping the way her heart leaned toward one side of the argument.
It was a conversation between Lee Seonho, who had shown nothing but dependability from the moment they first met, and Seo Woojin, who in ten long years had never once shown her a single thing that could be called helpful.
Even as Seo Woojin's stock plummeted in Han Sora's inner ledger, Lee Seonho simply continued to calmly, methodically push him out with words alone.
"So — if I just walked away right now, and you were left here alone with Sora… could you explain yourself?"
"…Explain what?"
"From Sora's perspective, you'd be the guy who showed up out of nowhere the second I vanished mid-training. Anyone looking in from the outside would think you chased me off and sabotaged her training. You think you could shoulder that?"
"…Th- that's not training anyway! You were doing something twisted to her!"
"I already told you — it's training she consented to. Under hypnosis, her conscious mind recedes and she can only hear my voice, and she loses her memory of the time she's under. I explained all of it."
"…Th- that doesn't matter! Whatever 'training' it is you're doing to Sora, I will never accept it!"
"Like I said — and who exactly are you to decide what gets accepted and what doesn't?"
The tone was different now. Lee Seonho's voice dropped low, and the atmosphere of the conversation shifted with it.
He had kept up his easy, affable voice even with Seo Woojin until now — but as his voice settled into a low register, the whole exchange took on a subtly different edge.
"Wh- what do you mean, who am I…? I'm just…."
"What, are you Sora's boyfriend? Or her family? No? Then why do you keep butting into things between me and Sora?"
"I'm… S- Sora's childhood friend…."
"So what? What does that amount to? You're not her boyfriend, you're not family. You're nothing to her except someone she's known a long time. Whatever way Sora chooses to train with me — what business is it of yours?"
"…I- it's still wrong, this whole—"
"I'm getting tired of explaining things one by one to a guy who acts like a child. Your entire premise is wrong from the start. Whether I'm here seriously training with Sora, or doing whatever perverted fantasy plays out in your head — as long as it's consensual, it's none of your business, isn't that right?"
"…Wh- what…."
"Sora and you are both adults now, capable of thinking for yourselves. You've graduated high school — you can't keep handing your judgment over to other people forever. Sora wanted this. She agreed to let her body be moved under hypnosis by me, of her own will.
If she hadn't trusted me, she would have refused the offer — or she would have told me to only do it in front of other people. And if you were really such a reliable childhood friend, she'd have asked you from the beginning to come watch and make sure I wasn't doing anything untoward. Wouldn't she?"
"……"
"And if you're still not satisfied, then fine — stand right there and watch whether I do anything twisted to Sora or not. I promised Sora I'd train her, so I don't want to waste any more time. Watch me yourself, and judge for yourself whether I'm doing something wrong."
With the changed atmosphere, Lee Seonho delivered it like a flat, final notice — and so Seo Woojin could do nothing but stand there blankly and watch the two of them train.
"We'll pick up where we left off, Sora. Get your stance."
"…Okay."
"This time we're aiming for the target on the front right. When I give the signal to release…"
-Thwiiiiing!
'Khh—!!'
They'd set him up like nothing more than a piece of scenery, and now the two of them trained on, pressed close together front and back.
If she'd at least missed her shots, he could have blocked it all — declared it proof that the whole thing was a lie. But the two of them kept firing, flawlessly, with stances stripped of any excess.
…As if they were determined to prove to him, specifically, that this was serious archery training.
"……"
The longer Seo Woojin stared at the two of them, unable to find even a single thread to pick at, the deeper he sank into gloom.
"…Damn it."
All he could do was quietly slip past the two of them, absorbed in their training, and walk out.
Back home, Han Sora had soaked the day's fatigue away in a hot bath, and now lay on her bed, lost in a tangle of thoughts.
Most of them centered on the hypnosis training she'd received from Lee Seonho — and on Seo Woojin, who just had to show up at that exact moment.
Why does Seo Woojin always have to pop up right then and make a mess of things…?
Did he have nothing better to do than crash her training sessions at their peak? If he actually had something to say, he could have come in the morning.
Thanks to him, her training time had been cut short and she'd apparently soured Lee Seonho's mood, and that left a bad taste in her mouth. The guy was helping her out of simple goodwill, and she kept dragging him into pointless conflict.
Truthfully, today too, all she'd needed to do was skip the confrontation entirely — just have herself woken up and ask for an explanation. But no, he'd flat-out refused to let her be told, right to the end.
He had asked whether anything had happened while she was under hypnosis, and Seonho had brushed it off with "nothing much." Whether it was because lying simply wasn't in his nature or not, it had been fairly obvious.
"Honestly, that boy… Seonho's too nice for his own good."
She understood he was only saying it because he worried she'd be upset if she knew the truth — but still, he could have told her at least that much.
It stung a little, the thought that maybe he didn't trust her enough for that yet — and yet, at the same time, it made her quietly happy that he'd go so far as to spare her feelings over something so small.
Seo Woojin, by contrast, had come all that way today only to pick at Lee Seonho and stick his nose into a matter that had already been settled between her and Seonho by mutual agreement.
He hadn't been this pathetic before — weak, sure, but not like this. Maybe having someone like Lee Seonho standing nearby just made the comparison unavoidable.
"Haah… so tired~. Seriously~."
Maybe it really would be better to just shake Seo Woojin off for good. If he kept hovering around, it'd only keep making Seonho uncomfortable.
Until now, she'd felt she couldn't just look the other way — he was her childhood friend, after all — but lately, his attitude had been getting on her nerves more and more.
At their very first meeting, he'd nearly driven a wedge between her and Seonho. Maybe she, too, would have soaked in his prejudices and ended up looking down on the Support Department the same way he did.
Even today, the entire time he'd been talking to Lee Seonho, he'd done nothing but corner him with prejudice and delusions about the Support Department.
He'd always been nothing more than a childhood friend to her — she'd never thought of him especially warmly — but the Seo Woojin of late had grown genuinely harder to stomach with every passing day.
'He'd force himself on me while I was under hypnosis,' he'd said.
Frankly, it wasn't as though she'd never once wondered whether something like that could happen. But whatever the case, Lee Seonho was genuinely serious about nothing but helping her train — he wasn't the type to lay a single finger where it didn't belong.
Blindly slandering a man who'd done nothing wrong was, no matter how she turned it over in her head, an ugly thing to do.
'Still… so Seonho has worries of his own, after all.'
'Once the friends who've grown stronger than me leave my side, I might end up alone someday' — that was what he'd said.
Compared to the composed, grown-up front he showed the world, it was a surprisingly endearing worry. She could understand him thinking that way, being in the Combat Support Department and all.
"Well~ as long as you don't leave even when I get stronger — as long as you keep staying by my side — that part's easy~."
She'd already received help from him that no amount of money could buy. Would staying really be so hard?
It wasn't as though people would drift away from Lee Seonho's side just because it wasn't her — but still, you never knew.
And so, deep down, Han Sora made herself a quiet vow: that at the very least, she would never abandon him over something like a department label. She would stay by his side, always.