America VS The Strongest Clan's Youngest Daughter (2)
America VS The Strongest Clan's Youngest Daughter (2)
After Aika, S-rank No. 1, appeared...
Sia had been growing increasingly impatient.
She feared that Japan—or rather, Aika—might steal Yujin away at this rate.
—"You're going to live with Yujin!? That is absurd."
—"In Japan, it is called an uchi-deshi arrangement. It is quite common."
—"Japan has a custom like that...? Wait, I looked it up! It means the disciple lives at the master's house! That is the exact opposite!!"
—"Then should I take my disciple back to Japan?"
—Th-That's a little....
Aika's mere presence in Korea had already been a major crisis.
Worse, she had announced that she'd live with Yujin in his dormitory.
A grown man and woman alone beneath the same roof.
Aika becoming Yujin's master was one thing, but this was a different story.
What if Aika used her beauty to seduce Yujin?
Even if she had no such intention...
What if Yujin became captivated by those pointlessly enormous lumps of fat and followed her to Japan?
The mere thought made Sia's chest feel tight.
As a clan executive—and as a Korean.
She could not tolerate Yujin, a priceless talent, being lost to Japan.
—"To begin with, a mere friend of my disciple has no right to object to her master's decision."
'You dirty, big-boobed flat-earther...!!!'
A personal inferiority complex seemed to be mixed into her outrage, but never mind that.
So Sia could only stamp her feet in frustrated urgency.
As much as she hated it, S-rank No. 1 had latched onto Yujin and refused to let go.
'What could I possibly do against that?'
Paradoxically, the answer struck her like lightning only after the worst-case scenario occurred.
[U.S. President Mentions Awakener Seo Yujin... Controversy over 'Diplomatic Pressure']
'...Now the fire was at my feet.'
Aika had already been headache enough, and now even the U.S. president had set her sights on Yujin.
That crisis gave Sia the courage she needed.
To bring a talent like Yujin into Cheonhwa amid this emergency...
———She was prepared to do anything.
'I-I had no choice. Not with things like this. Right.'
It was a choice she never would have made under ordinary circumstances.
But...
She had already been impatient, and the international situation had become alarming.
Most importantly, deep down, she felt that it would be all right if the man was Yujin.
'Th-This was how to do it, right? Models in magazines posed like this all the time...'
"If you join our clan... you can hypnotize me."
Despite her revealing clothes, Sia was modest at heart; this was her all-out seduction attack.
She was certain that an innocent young man like Yujin couldn't resist.
The effect was tremendous.
"———Huh?"
"......!!!!?"
'Y-Yujin... Why are you making such a frightening face...?'
Only in the worst possible way.
* * *
'You may hypnotize me.'
Sia's sudden proposal left me speechless for a moment.
'What had gotten into her all of a sudden...?'
Had I done something to provoke this?
I'd eaten the breakfast Master prepared until I was full, then given her a massage in return.
I'd trained alone in the conditioning room, then forced down Alice's fish and chips under hypnosis when she offered to cook for me.
Then I had posted a photo on Outstar of the Sol's Eye I drank as a palate cleanser. That was all.
—"That vixen... Hah. Yujin, come with me. I have something to tell you."
—Huh? Sia, what's going on?
—Don't argue, just hurry.
'She had suddenly dragged me into her dorm room, and now she was saying what?'
She'd dragged me here claiming she needed to talk, only to say this?
That if I joined her clan, I could hypnotize her?
The moment I grasped the implication, my heart went cold.
"Huh?"
'Sia, did that mean what I thought it meant?'
She was trying to look sexy, but the pose only made her seem cute.
And this was Sia's private dorm room.
Given the location and circumstances, it could only look like seduction.
The problem was,
'It sounded as though she was offering to let me do sexual things to her if I joined the clan.'
But the seduction wasn't directed at me as a person.
Sia was not seducing me. She was seducing a prospective S-rank recruit.
I ground my teeth at this side of my wife I had never known.
'Did that mean she would have done this even if I had been some other man...?'
—Grit.
"Eeek?!"
In the First Round, I'd hypnotized her to fall in love with me before anything else, so I'd never seen this side of her.
Sia, had you really been the kind of girl who would go this far?
For the sake of talent, had you even been willing to use your body...?
"Yujin...? Did that... upset you?"
"......."
'No. Sia would never do something like that.'
The suspicion and disappointment vanished almost immediately.
The Sia I'd known for fifteen years was not that kind of woman.
Her clothes gave the wrong impression, but she was pure and kind at heart.
She was embarrassed by those clothes and wore them only to display the clan's wealth.
More importantly, Sia was a second-generation chaebol heiress who received hundreds of millions of won in allowance each month.
There was no way a sheltered heiress from such a family would offer her body merely to recruit an S-rank.
'Unless she secretly liked me, of course.'
It would make sense if she'd already fallen for me, but even she could not have fallen in love within a single week, so I ruled that out.
There were other contradictions too.
If recruiting an S-rank had been her goal, she should have tried this at the very beginning, before I knew anything.
Why was she going out of her way to do this now?
Was it because of the hypnosis-treatment highlight reel I'd created yesterday?
No. That could not be it. The ability would certainly be useful, but it wasn't something Cheonhwa would pursue at the organizational level.
'Then why...?'
I studied Sia again.
Her cheeks were flushed scarlet.
Her frightened eyes watched me for a reaction.
And lastly...
"Th-That... Um... No, actually..."
Finally embarrassed, she raised a hand to cover her chest.
She did not look remotely like a woman trying to seduce a man.
That erased my suspicions completely.
'Of course. My wife would never do that.'
"Sorry. I had never been in a girl's room before, so I got nervous and my face stiffened."
"......Huh?"
"Anyway, why are you suddenly talking about the clan?"
I casually changed the subject.
I silently apologized for suspecting her and acted as though nothing had happened.
Sia's expression gradually relaxed.
"Well, people are talking about you signing a contract with the hospital, so... I-I thought you might start needing a clan soon."
'Ah. So this was about taxes.'
My expression brightened as well.
Come to think of it, how much had I earned already?
The deposits hadn't arrived yet, but there was one billion won from the Chairwoman and 1.2 billion from the hospital job—a total of 2.2 billion won.
On top of that, I was scheduled to earn another three hundred million won every weekend.
From the perspective of a clan executive like Sia, that was bound to be worrying.
She was probably thinking that a clueless boy who simply accepted whatever he was paid would end up owing hundreds of millions in comprehensive income tax.
That had to be why she'd suddenly brought up joining a clan.
If I signed with a clan, it would handle all of those problems for me.
'And the hypnosis offer probably meant I didn't have to worry about them taking advantage of me.'
I belatedly understood why she had mentioned hypnosis.
She was offering herself as a kind of collateral.
She meant that I could hypnotize her, a Cheonhwa executive, and do whatever I wanted to her if the clan tampered with the contract.
That had to be what she meant. Warmth spread through my chest.
'Honestly, Sia. She did not need to go this far.'
"True. I had been thinking it was about time to look into clans anyway. Income reporting and all that is a pain."
"Y-Yeah! That's what I meant...."
"———Then, just as you offered, I will hypnotize you."
"......Huh?"
Casually steering the conversation back to hypnosis was a bonus.
My gaze reached Sia's eyes, then touched her soul.
Smoothly, without the slightest resistance.
—Ding!
[The target falls 'completely' under hypnosis.]
'Oh? It took perfectly. Had she deliberately lowered her guard to make it easier?'
Her brown eyes turned hazy, and her body went limp, incapable of resisting whatever might happen.
It was a perfect hypnotic success.
Sia's eyes settled on me.
"Yujin...? You did not really..."
—Slowly.
"......?!!!"
My hand slowly reached toward her as well.
I had sworn never to hypnotize my wives again, but...
She was the one who had asked me to do it.
She would have no grounds to complain, whatever I did.
—Glide.
"Hng?!"
I rested my hand lightly on her completely bare shoulder.
She reacted with the fresh nervousness of a maiden who seemed never to have been touched by an unrelated man.
She flinched in surprise and went rigid with tension.
But who was I?
The Second-Round Hypnosis Breeding Guy.
The number of times I'd been skin-to-skin with Sia was simply countless.
I continued without wavering.
"From now on, Yoo Sia..."
"I, I...."
"No matter what the clan needs, you won't pose seductively in front of men."
"......Huh?"
"From now on, do that only for a man you actually have feelings for. Otherwise, people will misunderstand."
The focus returned to her eyes almost immediately after I issued the command.
Sia stared at me in utter disbelief.
"What kind of bull—"
"When a woman brings a man into her room, strikes a pose like that, and says something like that, men are bound to misunderstand. Even I almost did."
"......Huh?"
"It feels awkward saying this myself, but all men are wolves. Be careful."
"You're the last person who should say that. No... Hah."
Perhaps because she had never intended the pose as seduction,
Sia was so dumbfounded that she couldn't finish a proper sentence.
But so what? She'd asked me to hypnotize her.
Unconscious seduction was forbidden from now on. Absolutely forbidden.
I'd get jealous if she did that to another man.
* * *
A moment later.
While I waited for Sia to recover fully...
"...Y-Yujin. Look at me for a second."
"Hm? Why?"
"O-Oh, n-nothing!"
Sia looked at me and attempted what she considered a sexy pose—and what I considered nothing more than adorable aegyo.
She was clearly testing whether the hypnosis worked and exactly where the boundary of seduction lay.
It was so cute that I laughed.
'That was a pose Sia considered barely short of seduction? Twenty-year-olds really were adorable.'
"Yeah, yeah."
I smiled fondly and waited a little longer for Sia to calm down.
I only stood up after Sia had settled down.
—Up.
"Well then, Sia, shall we go?"
"H-Huh? Where?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
After everything Sia had said, of course I had to go.
"To meet your father."
"Wha, Whaaaaaat!!!!?"
Father-in-law, your worthless son-in-law—who regressed after failing to protect your daughter—was coming to pay his respects.