Peanut Allergy Is the Worst Weakness
Baek Yeoul once told me that until middle school, Seo Gaeul had been such a model student she never once let a single curse word pass her lips.
A model student and Seo Gaeul? It was hard to picture when I looked at the girl who threw tantrums every single day, but if I considered that she’d been putting on an act the whole time, it made a strange kind of sense.
The important part was that her pristine, ladylike façade had been spectacularly shattered once before.
It happened during a middle-school field trip in their second year. The kids, including Baek Yeoul, turned off the lights in the dorm and ambushed her. Just a typical childish prank, apparently. But the moment they pinned her down and started tickling her sides—
“Aaaack, fuck!”
A thick, filthy curse had burst out of the supposedly pure and elegant Seo Gaeul. I could easily imagine how the entire room froze solid afterward. The scene played so vividly in my head that I felt like I’d been standing right there with them.
In short, Seo Gaeul was catastrophically weak to tickling.
“Everyone has weaknesses. What matters is how you endure them and overcome them. This training is part of that process.”
In a ruined world, being ticklish was an incredibly fatal flaw. It ranked right up there with peanut allergy, the weakness once voted worst in the world by the greatest middle-school graduate of all time.
Which was why I planned to completely eradicate the girls’ weaknesses during these ten days of suspension.
“Seo Gaeul, you ready?”
She had been sitting cross-legged, taking deep breaths. At my question she opened her eyes and shot one right back at me.
“You’d better not go back on your word. If I endure fifteen minutes without laughing, you will grant my wish. Promise me you’ll keep it.”
“I, Ha Namjin, the true Alpha Male, uphold my promises, contracts, and chastity with iron resolve. Even if you all cry and beg, I won’t break them.”
“Who the hell is going to cry and beg? And who the fuck cares about your chastity?!”
Seo Gaeul’s temper flared instantly. Yu Yeoleum patted her shoulder.
“Don’t fall for such an obvious provocation. Calm your mind. Remember, tickling is nothing but electrical signals from the brain.”
She seemed to have high expectations for Seo Gaeul. It was like watching a gambler who had bet their entire fortune on a horse with a ridiculous name.
And so the weakness-overcoming training began.
“All right, Seo Gaeul. Lie down on the bed.”
“Don’t say it like some pervert.”
“Lie on the bed, please~”
“…God, I really hate you.”
Seo Gaeul lay perfectly straight on the bed that smelled of flowers. Her posture was so reverent, neat, and solemn she looked like a sacrificial offering being presented to the Aztec god of abundance, Tezcatlipoca.
Then I took one step toward her.
Her face suddenly scrunched up, and she exploded.
“Pffft—! Pffhahahat!”
I hadn’t even touched her yet and she was already laughing. Her face flushed bright red as she immediately got angry at me.
“Hey! That doesn’t count! You didn’t say start yet! And making that weird face is cheating, so stop it!”
“Fine, I’ll allow the invalidation. Though I wasn’t making any weird face.”
The match was reset.
This time, the moment I approached the solemnly lying Seo Gaeul—
“Pffft! Hey! Stop trying to make me laugh!”
“Why would I try to make you laugh? This is just my natural face.”
“It’s not the face, it’s….”
“I’m being completely serious.”
This suspension was precious time I had barely managed to secure for training. Why would I waste it on jokes?
“Pffhahahat! Pffhahaha!”
But once the dam broke, Seo Gaeul couldn’t stop laughing. Her face burned scarlet as she yelled at me again.
“Hey! Seriously! Stop making me laugh!”
“What did I even do?”
It got so bad that even Yu Yeoleum, who had been watching, scolded her sharply.
“Seo Gaeul. Get serious. And you, Ha Namjin, stop messing with her.”
But I really hadn’t done anything. I was the one being wronged here. What was I supposed to do if she laughed just from looking at my face?
Still, I could understand how she felt. A truly handsome man can make a woman smile with nothing but his face, after all. Such was the fate of Bread Pitt Ha Namjin.
# # #
Because Seo Gaeul would burst into giggles the moment she saw my face, I had no choice but to blindfold her with an eye mask. That was when the real problem started.
“Pffft, pffhahahahaha!”
Now she was laughing before I even got close. She pinched her own thighs and bit her lip hard. About five minutes passed.
“…….”
She had gone completely still, like a statue. She was ready.
I approached and poked her side with my finger.
“Namjin Poke.”
“…Mmph…!”
Seo Gaeul tensed every muscle in her body, desperately trying to hold back the laughter trying to burst through her lips. Veins stood out on her forehead. Not bad at all.
“Oh? So you can endure it?”
Instead of her side, I turned my attention to her legs. She was wearing white socks over black stockings. I slid the sock off, revealing the sole of her foot wrapped in thin black fabric.
“W-what are you doing, you pervert! Why are you taking off my sock?!”
“Are you scared?”
“…Fuck off!”
The feet are called the second heart for a reason; every nerve is concentrated there. For someone who wore stockings every day, her circulation must have been excellent—her foot was warm. Now, how would it feel?
“Tickle sensitivity times one hundred.”
I lightly ran my finger across her sole.
The result was spectacular. Seo Gaeul, who had been lying on the bed, shot up like a shrimp and immediately went into full convulsions.
“Pffhahahat! Aaaah! Aaaaaaaah!”
Laughing and getting angry at the same time—quite the talent. In the end, she couldn’t endure even five seconds, let alone fifteen minutes. It was only natural that Yu Yeoleum, who had been watching, covered her face with both hands.
Name:Yu Yeoleum
Possession:Expand to view details ☜
Status:《Despair》
The long-awaited opportunity has flown away, leaving only frustration. Her disappointment toward Seo Gaeul is immense.
“Seo Gaeul, you failed.”
“O-one more time! Again!”
“If you want another chance, try acting cute.”
At my words, Seo Gaeul’s face crumpled. But when Yu Yeoleum shouted, “Hey! Seo Gaeul! This is your chance!” she grit her teeth, twisted her body awkwardly, and forced out in a tiny voice,
“…U-ung… do it again-ing…”
“That was pretty weak.”
“You fucking son of a bitch!!!”
The problem was that no matter how many times they repeated it, the result was the same. The moment my finger came near her, Seo Gaeul would convulse with laughter.
“Seo Gaeul, you’re going to ruin everything because you can’t even handle a little tickling? I thought I’d already seen rock bottom with you, but I’m truly disappointed.”
Yu Yeoleum glared at her with eyes full of contempt. Seo Gaeul immediately flared up.
“Hey, you think this is easy?!”
“I don’t have a weakness to tickling. I’m used to enduring torture.”
Yu Yeoleum had been subjected to all kinds of experiments in an illegal, secret research facility since she was a child. She probably wouldn’t even scream at mere tickling or ordinary pain.
In that case, how about this?
Kyu-ing.
I pulled Ing-ing out of my bag and held it out to her. Yu Yeoleum recoiled in horror, stumbled backward, and fell flat on her butt.
“T-take it away!”
Yu Yeoleum was weak to monsters. She couldn’t even handle a harmless “emergency ration” like Ing-ing that only cared about eating. An Awakened being afraid of monsters was a serious issue. It was like a competitive swimmer being terrified of water.
“Yeoleum, everyone has weaknesses.”
The point was that overcoming them was worthy of applause. There was no reason to be mocked simply for having them. Having experienced the same logic applied to herself, Yu Yeoleum had nothing to say. She pressed her lips tightly together and glared at Ing-ing.
Ing-ing-ya-ing.
Yu Yeoleum’s monster phobia and Seo Gaeul’s tickle terror. Whether they could overcome them within these ten days remained to be seen.
My gaze shifted to the box that was Seo Gaeul’s Bogu.
◈ A box the Fairy King of the Great Labyrinth cherished above all else.
◈ Capable of storing every thing that exists in the world.
◈ Contained Concept:Hope Lv.3 — Holds hope on the level of a first-prize lottery ticket.
It looked exactly like the box that had turned Jin Eunbyeol into that monstrosity. It seemed unlikely there would be two of them.
“Seo Gaeul, when did you get that box?”
“First year of high school. I took it from the treasure hall.”
I see. So the one that had been with Jin Eunbyeol had traveled through several hands before reaching Seo Gaeul?
Suddenly curious, I asked, “What do you use it for?”
“It’s a box. I can put things in and take them out. In my case, I use it to separate and dispose of concepts I awakened unintentionally.”
Putting concepts in and taking them out—
If the Devil concept had been sealed inside and Jin Eunbyeol had absorbed it, that would explain how she became a Main. It made sense.
This recent business had made me very interested in Mains. They were human, yet could no longer be called human. They hid their true identities so thoroughly that even I had only learned of them after returning to the past.
If the sudden destruction of the world was connected to them…
Future Seo Gaeul had told me, “Whatever you do, don’t reveal that you came from the future. There was a traitor.” Perhaps she had been afraid of the Mains who lived disguised as humans.
The pieces were clicking together. There was still one crucial piece missing, though…
Suddenly I remembered something Seo Gaeul had said before.
“Seo Gaeul, you once told me Jin Eunbyeol had always felt off to you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you feel that same ‘off’ sensation from the guy behind that door?”
“I did. I can tell with one glance. It’s like the uncanny valley.”
That was it!
The final piece snapped into place. Could Seo Gaeul detect Mains? That would explain why the Mains of the future had stabbed her in a vital spot to kill her. Everything fit together perfectly!
“Seo Gaeul, if I asked you to find people among a crowd who give off that same ‘uncanny valley’ feeling as Jin Eunbyeol, could you do it?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to try it first. And honestly, you feel insanely weird to me too, Ha Namjin. You seem way crazier than Jin Eunbyeol. You insane perverted bastard! Give me back the sock you took off me earlier!”
While she snatched the sock from my pocket, I established a single proposition.
Major Premise
Seo Gaeul can detect Mains.
If this proposition was true, then future Seo Gaeul’s confident statement—“If my past self trains properly, she can stop everything”—made perfect sense. The reason she had needed to awaken the Emotion concept was to identify those unknown entities.
My own reasoning gave me chills!
Of course, it was still only a hypothesis. But it was definitely worth testing.
“Seo Gaeul, you’ll have to go out with me tonight.”
“Go out? Tonight? It’s not even a full moon.”
Her eyes gleamed strangely. I didn’t need the power of Emotion to read exactly what she was thinking.
“What if I run away while we’re out together?”
“You won’t be able to run. You have another weakness besides being ticklish. A weakness far more fatal than peanut allergy.”
“I have another weakness? And what the hell is ‘peanut allergy’? Sounds like Ing-ing chewing on fur.”
While Seo Gaeul looked at me like I was crazy, Yu Yeoleum—who had been nervously biting her thumbnail—asked me in a quiet voice.
“Only Seo Gaeul is going out? What about me?”
“You stay here, Yeoleum. Don’t worry. I’ll leave Ing-ing with you, so you won’t be bored.”
Alone with the adorable Ing-ing. Yu Yeoleum’s expression twisted strangely, as if her mood had improved.