Seduce the Anomaly
Lee Si-a clenched her fist and locked her eyes on Han Mir. He was, by any reasonable standard, not her type — and yet here she was, saddled with the thoroughly unwelcome job of seducing him. No honey trap in the world would land on that vacant, untroubled face of his. She was almost sure of it. But this time, she had Objects.
Objects. Relics charged with the same inexplicable power as Anomalies, forces science had no language for. Used the right way, they could take the world and fold it however you liked.
The ones Lee Si-a was cleared to use, though, were strictly the kind that would never put world peace at risk.
"Alright then — the seat next to Mir is empty. Why don't you go sit there?"
"Yes!"
Lee Si-a answered like sunlight. She strode toward Han Mir with every eye in the class on her, wearing the smile of a predator that had already picked its meal.
She sat down beside him, flashed a sweet little grin, and gave his shoulder a few light taps.
"Hey, Mir."
The classmates watching Lee Si-a greet Han Mir nearly fell out of their chairs. He was the class ghost — gloomy, quiet, the kind of loser who got picked on as a matter of course. Lee Si-a was the kind of girl who wouldn't have shared a lunch table with him if the building were on fire. And yet here she was, greeting him first. She even knew his name. The room could not believe it.
"What!? They know each other?"
"Oh my god. She's saying Han Mir's name like that? All soft?"
Lee Si-a put on a smile that could have belonged to a nine-tailed fox — the kind that slipped under the skin and stayed there.
"Oh, Mir and I were childhood friends. We grew up together. I moved away first, so we got separated, but running into him again like this… I'm just so happy."
"Holy shit. Han Mir's a legend. He had a childhood friend like that?"
"I want one too! I want a childhood friend!"
"But what's Han Mir doing? Si-a's right there and he's just sprawled out asleep?"
The back of the class erupted at Lee Si-a's bombshell. Han Mir, for his part, had already checked out — snoring, even, gone to whatever country sleep takes you to.
"Alright, alright, quiet! Class is about to start. Open your books and get ready!"
The teacher barked them into something like order. Even so, the students kept sneaking glances at Lee Si-a, each of them running a private commentary from their own particular angle.
When first period began, Han Mir rubbed his sleepy eyes and sat up.
He smacked his lips and stared blankly at the blackboard. Once upon a time he would have cracked a book and tried to study, if only because college had seemed like something you were supposed to do. But he had already decided to coast through the rest of his life on a hero's power, and the chalk marks on the board looked like nothing more than pale little worms wriggling across a dark field.
"Mir."
Lee Si-a whispered it. When he looked over, she smiled with her eyes, swept her hair back, and let the line of her neck show.
"This makes twice. Hehe. Nice to see you. You must've been really tired yesterday, huh?"
"……"
Han Mir stared at her without a word. When their eyes met and he still gave her nothing at all, a flicker of embarrassment crossed Lee Si-a's face. But she was a professional.
She let her hand settle lightly on his shoulder and leaned in close.
"Still not quite awake?"
She looked up at him with big, shining, baby-doll eyes. Han Mir's mouth moved. Widely.
"Haaaaah—"
He yawned right into her face, long and shameless, and Lee Si-a was treated to an uncomfortably detailed tour of his oral cavity.
She startled for half a second. On the outside, she kept smiling, and she waited.
Han Mir smacked his lips a few times. Then, at last, he spoke.
"Tch. What are you doing here?"
"What do you mean, why~ I came because I wanted to see you. Hehe."
"Yesterday you were all formal. Today you're talking casual. What's with the voice? You sound weird. Hit puberty or something?"
He looked genuinely creeped out.
"Kyaha! Puberty? You're so funny. I thought you were a comedian!"
She forced the laugh out and patted his shoulder. Han Mir's face turned worried.
"Yeah. The chicken I ate yesterday was definitely off."
She didn't answer. She just grinned and pulled something from inside her jacket, setting it on his desk.
Appears to be an ordinary piece of individually wrapped candy.
Anyone who consumes it is brainwashed for one full week.
Standard use: pacifying low-grade aggressive Anomalies — or, when necessary, humans.
"What's this, candy? Don't you people at the Bureau have actual work to do? Coming all the way to school… you must be bored out of your—"
The instant his mouth opened, Lee Si-a did not miss the gap. Her hands moved like lightning. The wrapper came off, and the candy went straight in.
Han Mir's pupils blew wide. He chewed, obedient as a child, and shut his mouth.
Did it work?
Lee Si-a swallowed hard and put her lips to his ear.
"The truth is, you're a slave who only listens to me. If you understand, nod."
"Mmph. Mmph. So that's your thing, huh. Candy's good, but I'd rather not pay for it by hearing about that particular taste of yours."
He said it while conspicuously crunching the candy to pieces, as if to make a point.
It hadn't touched him for so much as a minute. Lee Si-a was rattled down to the bone — and she never let the smile slip.
I expected this much, didn't I? He isn't an ordinary human. He's an Anomaly. She moved to the next operation.
"Oh? Mir, you've got something on your hand. Let me wipe it off."
"Something on my hand?"
The moment he lifted it to look, Lee Si-a flicked a wet wipe from her pocket and cleaned his hand with her own covering it. When the white sheet came away, a red thread was tied around his ring finger. It was not only tied to him. It was tied to her as well.
Bind the red thread around the target's ring finger and your own.
The subject falls instantly, violently, and inescapably in love.
Once tied, the thread cannot be cut by any known means.
According to the actual experiment reports, when a caster told the subject to prove how much they loved them, the test subject willingly split their own chest open while still alive and pulled out their heart, saying that this — this wet, beating thing — was their love.
No human had ever resisted O-172. Even Code C humanoid Anomalies could not claw their way out from under it.
Lee Si-a smiled inwardly, sly as a knife, and watched for his reaction.
"Huh?"
Lee Si-a stared, blank as a dropped doll, at the cut ends of O-172. Once the thread was bound around both ring fingers, it was not supposed to break. Not by force, not by fire, not by any trick anyone had ever tried. And yet a single flick of Han Mir's fingers had snapped it like cheap string.
She covered her gaping mouth with a pale hand.
She had roughly allowed for the possibility that O-172 might not take. She had never once imagined it would simply… break. The thought of having to report to her superiors that an issued Object had been destroyed made her head go light.
Han Mir looked at her the way you look at something faintly embarrassing.
"What the hell have you been trying to pull this whole time?"
She could not quit. Not now. Once she had started, she was going to see it through — and the advances kept coming, one after another, with no end in sight.
"Ta-da! Don't you want to smell this flower?"
Anyone who breathes in its scent loses all hostility.
They grow warmly disposed — and will grant any request asked of them.
"Ugh. That reeks."
Han Mir pinched his nose shut and turned his head away.
"H-hey, aren't you thirsty? This is a new drink that just came out. Try it!"
Whoever drinks it falls into eternal love with the first person they see afterward.
Han Mir happened to be thirsty. He tipped the bottle back and drank it down in long, greedy swallows. Lee Si-a immediately put on her most adorable face and shoved it toward him—
"Mmph!"
He mashed her cheek in one hand and pushed her away.
And that was not the end of it.
She used nearly every Object she had been issued. Not one of them so much as scratched him.
If anything, the longer it went on, the more he flinched from every little motion of her hands. Whatever goodwill he had started with was only draining away.
"This is impossible…"
Lee Si-a had walked into first period determined to seduce Han Mir and close the mission before the bell. By the time the break arrived and nothing — not one single method — had worked, she clutched her head in both hands and sank into something very much like despair.
"Quit the pointless crap and go back to that fancy Bureau of yours."
Han Mir said it like she was a fly he was tired of hearing, and folded himself back over the desk.
Then his head was yanked straight up. Kim Gwang-cheol had a fistful of his hair.
"Whoa, buddy. You planning to sleep all day next to a babe like this?"
"Hold it! What do you think you're doing?"
Lee Si-a shot to her feet and glared at Kim Gwang-cheol. He shrugged, easy as anything.
"Huh? What am I doing? Just messing around with a friend. Right?"
He looked at Lee Chi-myeol and Shin Ji-yoon as he said it. They nodded, wearing greasy little smiles.
"Yeah, yeah. Mir and us are best friends, so we pull this kind of mean prank all the time."
"Oh, totally~ Mir loves us so much he kisses our feet every single day. I've got video. Wanna watch?"
Lee Chi-myeol's nostrils flared as he pulled out his phone.
"Ah. Right."
Han Mir opened his mouth. Then the boy came up off the seat in one clean motion.
"I owe you guys a friendship fee."
He rose the rest of the way, slow and unhurried.
"Yeah, yeah, you said you'd pay the friendship fee. So? Where you wanna pay it?"
Han Mir grinned.