The Tough Guy Hides the Villainess

072 – Peanut Allergies Are the Worst Weakness

072 – Peanut Allergies Are the Worst Weakness

Bangdaengi said that, up until middle school, Seo Ga-eul was such a good, innocent student that she never once uttered a curse word.

A model student, Seo Ga-eul.

It was hard to imagine such a thing, especially after seeing the person having daily fits. But if I thought of it as her always putting on a facade, it somewhat made sense.

What mattered, however, was that this façade of Seo Ga-eul’s was once thoroughly shattered.

It happened during their second year of middle school, on a school trip.

Seo Ga-eul and a group of friends, including Baek Yeoul, had turned off the lights in their dorm and started charging toward her.

It was just a common prank by friends, apparently.

But the moment they grabbed Seo Ga-eul and started tickling her side─

━aaah, shit!

A curse so filthy it was completely unexpected from the pure Seo Ga-eul exploded from her lips.

Afterward, the atmosphere instantly soured, and I could easily imagine it, as though I had been right there with them.

Seo Ga-eul was that sensitive to tickling.

“Everyone has weaknesses. But the important thing is how you endure and overcome them. This is part of that training.”

Being ticklish in a world like this was a deadly weakness.

It was on the same level as the world’s worst middle school graduate’s weakness, “peanut allergies.”

Therefore, during this 10-day suspension, I was fully intent on helping the girls overcome their weaknesses once and for all.

“Seo Ga-eul, are you ready?”

I asked, and Seo Ga-eul, who had been sitting cross-legged and taking deep breaths, opened her eyes and shot back at me.

“Don’t you dare back out, got it? If I endure 15 minutes of tickling without laughing, you better keep your promise to grant our wishes.”

“I, Han Namjin, will never break a promise or contract, and I am as faithful as my own purity. Even if you cry and beg, I won’t break it.”

“We’re not going to cry and beg, okay? And who cares about your purity anyway!”

Seo Ga-eul snapped.

Yoo Yeoreum patted Seo Ga-eul’s shoulder.

“Don’t fall for obvious provocations. You need to control your mind. Remember, ticklishness is just an electrical signal from the brain.”

It seemed like Yoo Yeoreum had high expectations for Seo Ga-eul.

Like a gambler who bet all his fortune on a horse with a peculiar name at the racetrack.

Thus began the weakness-overcoming training.

“Alright, Seo Ga-eul, lie down on the bed.”

“Don’t talk like a pervert.”

“Lie down on the bed.”

“…Oh, seriously.”

Seo Ga-eul lay straight on the bed that smelled of flowers.

It was a solemn and dignified posture, almost as if she were a sacrificial offering to Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec god of abundance.

Step-.

But as I took a step towards Seo Ga-eul, she suddenly frowned and then burst out laughing.

“Pff-! Pffhaha!”

She started laughing even before I began tickling her.

Soon, Seo Ga-eul, with her face flushed red, got angry instead.

“Hey! This doesn’t count! I didn’t say we started yet! And making weird faces is cheating, so don’t do it!”

“Alright. I acknowledge it doesn’t count. And I wasn’t making a weird face.”

The game resets.

When I approached the solemnly lying Seo Ga-eul again.

“Pff! Hey! Stop trying to make me laugh!”

“Why would I try to make you laugh? This is just my natural face.”

“No, it’s not about your face…”

“I’m serious.”

This is the suspension time I barely secured for training.

Why would I waste time playing around?

“Pffhaha! Pffhahaha!”

But Seo Ga-eul kept laughing, like a dam that had burst.

With a face flushed bright red, she even got angry at me.

“Hey! Stop! Stop joking around!”

“What did I do?”

Even Yoo Yeoreum, who was watching this scene, couldn’t help but scold Seo Gaeul.

“Hey, Seo Gaeul. Be serious. And Han Namjin, stop teasing her.”

No, seriously, what did I do?

I feel wronged.

What am I supposed to do when Seo Gaeul laughs just by looking at my face?

But it wasn’t that I didn’t understand Seo Gaeul’s feelings.

A handsome man can make a woman smile just with his face.

This must be the fate of “Brad Pitt” Han Namjin.

# # #

Seo Gaeul liked my face so much that she would burst into laughter, so I had no choice but to cover her eyes with a blindfold.

But then a problem arose.

“Pfft, pffthahahaha!”

When her eyes were covered, she started laughing even before I approached. Then she pinched her thigh and bit her lips.

About five minutes passed?

“……”

Seo Gaeul didn’t move at all now.

She looked like a statue.

She must be ready.

I approached Seo Gaeul and poked her side with my finger.

“Namjin’s finger.”

“…Ugh…!”

Seo Gaeul tensed her whole body as if trying to hold back the laughter that was about to burst out from between her lips. A vein stood out on her forehead.

Impressive.

“Oh, are you holding out?”

Instead of her side, I focused on Seo Gaeul’s leg, which was covered with white socks over her stockings. When I slipped off the white socks, her foot wrapped in black stockings was revealed.

“What, what are you trying to do! You pervert! Why are you taking off my socks!”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“…Fuck off!”

The feet were said to be the second heart, a place where all the nerves were concentrated.

For someone who wears stockings every day, I wonder if her blood circulation is good—it’s warm, at least.

Then, what about sensitivity?

“100 times more ticklish.”

Swish-.

I lightly rubbed the soles of Seo Ga-eul’s feet with my fingers, and something incredible happened. Seo Ga-eul, who had been lying on the bed, suddenly jumped up like a shrimp and then began convulsing.

“Pwahh! aaah! aaahhh!”

To get angry while laughing, now that’s a skill.

In the end, Seo Ga-eul couldn’t endure the ticklishness for even five seconds, let alone fifteen minutes.

It was only natural for Yoo Yeoreum, who had been watching this scene, to cover her face in disbelief.

「Name: Yoo Yeoreum

Status: 《Despair》 – A rare opportunity has flown away, leaving her frustrated. Great disappointment toward Seo Ga-eul.”

“Seo Ga-eul, you failed.”

“Dd-do it again! Do it again!”

“If you want to try again, at least show some cuteness.”

At my words, Seo Ga-eul’s face scrunched up in distaste.

But then Yoo Yeoreum shouted, “Hey! Seo Ga-eul! You’ve got to grab the opportunity!” and Seo Ga-eul gritted her teeth, twisting her body.

“… U-uh, okay, again…”

“Not as good as I thought.”

“You b*stard!!!”

The problem was that no matter how many times we repeated it, it was the same result.

Whenever my finger touched her, Seo Ga-eul convulsed and burst out laughing.

“Seo Ga-eul, you couldn’t even withstand something as simple as tickling, and you ruined it? I thought I’d already seen your bottom, but I’m really disappointed.”

Yoo Yeoreum glared at Seo Ga-eul with a look of contempt.

Seo Ga-eul, in turn, bristled.

“Hey, do you think this is easy?”

“I don’t get tickled. “I’m used to enduring torture.”

Yoo Yeoreum’s body had been subjected to many experiments in illegal and secret research facilities since childhood.

Certainly, you wouldn’t even scream at a tickle or a mild pain.

Then how about this?

━Gyuiiing.

I took Yingying out of my bag.

And I handed it to Yoo Yeoreum, who freaked out and stumbled backward, falling on her butt.

“Get, get it away!”

Yoo Yeoreum was weak against monsters.

She couldn’t even handle ’emergency food’ like “Yingying,” which only liked to eat. It’s a big problem for an awakened one to struggle with monsters.

It’s like a swimmer being afraid of water.

“Yeoreum, everyone has weaknesses.”

Overcoming a weakness is something to be applauded for, not something to be mocked for succumbing to.

With this experience of empathy, Yoo Yeoreum had nothing to say and just glared at Yingying.

━Yingyingyaing.

Yoo Yeoreum’s monster phobia and Seo Gaeul’s tickle phobia.

Will they be able to overcome them within the next 10 days?

Now my eyes turned to Seo Gaeul’s “treasure” box.

「Name: Fairy King’s Repository

A box cherished by the Fairy King of the Great Labyrinth. It can store everything in the world.

Possession: 《Hope Lv.3》 – Contains hope equivalent to a first-prize lottery ticket.」

It looked exactly like the box that made Jin Eunbyeol strange.

I don’t think there would be two of such items.

“Seo Gaeul, since when did you have that box?”

“Since first year of high school. I got it from the treasure exhibition.”

I see.

Did it pass through various routes from Jin Eunbyeol to Seo Gaeul?

I suddenly became curious.

“What is it used for?”

“It’s a box. You can put things in or take them out. In my case, I can use it to separate the concepts I unintentionally awakened.”

Putting in and taking out concepts-.

If the concept of “demon” was embedded in it and Jin Eunbyeol acquired it?

And then, did I become a demon?

It makes sense.

This incident had piqued my interest in demons.

They are human, yet they can never be called human.

They hid their identities so thoroughly that I only realized who they were after returning to the past.

If they were connected to the sudden destruction of the world?

Future Seo Ga-eul told me, “Don’t reveal that you came back to the past. There was a traitor.” Was she afraid of the demons pretending to be human?

I felt like the puzzle pieces were falling into place.

An important piece.

A really important piece was missing, though…

Suddenly, I remembered what Seo Ga-eul had said.

“Seo Ga-eul, you said Jin Eun-byeol felt strange to you from the beginning, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you feel that same strange feeling from the guy behind this door?”

“Yeah. You can just tell at a glance. It’s like an uncanny valley.”

Is that so!

I felt like an important piece was fitting into place.

Could Seo Ga-eul possibly detect demons?

So the demons stabbed future Seo Ga-eul in a vital spot to kill her—thinking that way, everything seemed to fit perfectly!

“Seo Ga-eul, if I asked you to find people who give off that ‘uncanny valley’ feeling like Jin Eun-byeol, could you do it?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to try. And honestly, Han Nam-jin, you seem really weird too? Honestly, you seem crazier than Jin Eun-byeol. You crazy pervert! Give me back my sock that you took earlier!”

Whoosh-! While Seo Ga-eul took the sock out of my pocket, I formulated a proposition.

A major proposition.

【Seo Ga-eul can detect demons.】

If this proposition is true, it makes sense why future Seo Ga-eul confidently said, “If I train well in the past, I can stop everything.”

If future Seo Ga-eul needed to awaken the concept of “emotion” to recognize those unknown guys?

I’m getting chills from my own reasoning!

Of course, it’s just my hypothesis.

But it seems worth experimenting.

“Seo Ga-eul, you need to go out with me tonight.”

“Going out? Today? It’s not even a full moon.”

Seo Ga-eul’s eyes glimmered strangely.

There was no need to use the power of “emotion” to grasp his true intentions.

“What if I run away while we’re out?”

“No, you can’t run away. You have another weakness besides being ticklish. A weakness far more fatal than a ‘peanut allergy.'”

“I have a weakness? What nonsense is this about a ‘peanut allergy’?”

When Seo Ga-eul looked at me like I was a strange person, Yoo Yeoreum, who had been nervously biting her thumbnail, asked me in a subtle voice.

“Only Seo Ga-eul goes out? What about me?”

“Yeoreum, you stay here. Don’t worry. I’ll leave Yingying with you, so you won’t be bored.”

Alone with cute Yingying.

Yoo Yeoreum’s expression twisted strangely, as if she was pleased.