Chapter 19: There are two paths ahead, but which one will you take?

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Translator: Soafp

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“Hey, food's here.”

“…Just leave it there, damn it.”

It was somewhere inside a prison.

In a solitary cell occupied by only one man, a meal had been quietly placed down. The man looked at it with a sulky expression. Still, since he was in prison, perhaps a bad attitude like that was nothing unusual; the guard simply turned around and walked away.

“…Why… why is this happening to me…!?”

The man muttered as he bit into a plain piece of bread.

“Wasn't the hypnosis… wasn't that app supposed to be perfect!?”

The words “hypnosis” and “app” coming out of his mouth were extremely relevant.

The reason he was in prison was simple: he had been arrested for sexually assaulting multiple women.

He believed that he would never be caught. No matter how horrible the things he did were, he thought nobody would ever find out.

But now, the result of that betrayal was his arrest.

“It was going well at first… So why did they get their memories back!?”

The hypnosis app had somehow appeared on the man's phone. Using its power, he ran wild according to his desires.

When he spoke to women normally, they gave him unpleasant looks. But once he put them under hypnosis, they became obedient and he believed he could do anything he wanted to them.

He had continued doing that again and again.

“That one, that one… Even she was supposed to be hypnotized!”

The women should have become dolls who only obeyed his commands. But in the end, the hypnosis stopped working completely, and the women regained their freedom.

They reported him.

When police arrested him, every gaze directed at him was filled with such terrifying hatred and disgust that even he felt afraid of them.

“Damn it… Damn it…!”

He had not told the police about the hypnosis app.

That was because nothing remained on his phone that could serve as proof of the app. Instead, there were photographs of women in compromising situations—the evidence that sealed his fate.

And when multiple women reported him at once, police naturally took action. He was arrested immediately.

“Hehe… hehehe…”

Even so, he could remember the bodies of every woman he had targeted.

They were adults around his age. Some had boyfriends, some had husbands; they all had different circumstances. Yet he had simply violated them however he wanted.

Remembering it made him smile in a sickening way. Once again, he ended his day lost in fantasy.

Thinking about how he could have done it better, how he could have avoided being caught, he laughed in a twisted way while imagining days that could never return.

---

“Hey, Sis. I'm taking out the trash. Is there any more?”

“Ah, wait a second.”

In the morning, I called out in front of my sister's room. I heard rustling inside.

It sounded like she was desperately stuffing something into a bag. I gave a wry smile, and after a while the door opened. My sister appeared carrying a large garbage bag.

“I'll come too, okay?”

“It's fine. This is the kind of thing you should leave to a man.”

“Really? Well then, I'll leave it to you.”

“Sure.”

I took the trash bag from my sister, gathered as many other bags as I could from the kitchen and elsewhere, and went outside.

Our house did not have a designated person responsible for garbage. But whenever I noticed it, I generally took the initiative to do these kinds of chores.

“Oh, good morning.”

“Good morning.”

At the garbage collection point, I ran into a woman from the neighborhood.

She had long black hair in a side ponytail, with red highlights falling along her left eye—a rather rock-inspired look.

Because it was hot, she wore a thin shirt and hot pants, making for a rather provocative outfit. She was Nayu Konoe, a woman who lived nearby.

“…This is bad.”

Seeing an attractive older woman at such close range in the morning was enough to wake up certain parts of me.

I did not meet her especially often. We only spoke when we happened to run into each other like this.

“That's a lot to carry. Isn't it hard? Does no one help you?”

“It's no problem at all. I take the initiative with this stuff, so it doesn't feel difficult.”

“Is that so? You're a good boy.”

She reached out and gently patted my head.

I recalled that she was twenty-three—far more of an adult than I was. That was probably why she only saw me as a child.

Having an attractive, beautiful older woman do this was very nice, but did that mean I was allowed to use the hypnosis app on her?

“I don't think you should keep sneaking looks at my br**sts, though.”

“Ah… Sorry.”

“Haha♪ You don't need to apologize. If I wear a shirt that shows off this much cleavage, I can't really complain if someone looks.”

With that, Konoe waved casually and turned her back to me.

I was captivated by the sensual way she walked, her hips swaying as she left. Attractive older women really were wonderful.

“My sister doesn't have even a trace of sex appeal, after all…”

Oops. My sister had annoyingly sharp instincts. Thinking things like that might make her sense something.

“…Konoe-san.”

An older woman… Definitely an option!

I wore such a wicked grin that anyone who saw it would probably be disgusted, fixing the image of her retreating figure firmly in my mind before returning home.

“Hey, I had a weird feeling. Were you talking about me?”

“What are you talking about?”

My sister was terrifying. This was not a joke.

Even at breakfast, I felt an inexplicable fear under my sister's fixed gaze. I quickly finished eating and left the house.

While walking to school alone, I thought back on yesterday.

“It was a shame about Sasaki and Someya, but Agatsuma was cute afterward. I never expected her to say it was a promise. Still, none of it remains in her memory, so there isn't even a hint of romance to it.”

I decided to forget about the two beautiful girls from the prestigious school for the time being. The only thing in my mind was wanting lunchtime to come quickly so I could spend time with Agatsuma.

I was becoming addicted to the girls' bodies under hypnosis—or rather, I was a little scared that being away from those sensations for too long might give me withdrawal symptoms.

“Well, that's a joke.”

I gave a wry laugh. If that were true, how bad would that be?

As I walked along while fantasizing about Agatsuma, I spotted a familiar face at a convenience store along the school route.

“Oh.”

“Huh?”

Mari was coming out of the store.

For an instant, her mouth hung open in surprise. Then she smiled and hurried over.

The moment I saw her large chest bouncing as she approached, I remembered what Konoe had said and quickly looked away.

“Good morning, Kai-kun.”

“Morning, Mari.”

Come to think of it, this was the first time we had met on the way to school in the morning.

Um… was I supposed to go on ahead now?

We had already exchanged greetings, so I began walking. Without saying anything, Mari fell into step beside me.

“Oh, we're walking together?”

“Of course. That's okay, right?”

“Sure.”

There was no reason to refuse. Walking to school with a beautiful girl was more than I could ask for.

She chatted rapidly in the way outgoing people did—about the TV show she watched yesterday, what she did with her friends, and so on. I mostly just listened.

Still, having her provide the topics helped. It kept me from becoming too self-conscious.

“And then, at that time—”

As I responded to what she was saying, I happened to look at Mari's arm.

The scars that had been there not long ago had faded properly. It was proof that she had not been hurting herself since then.

The anxiety weighing on Mari's heart had apparently been caused by problems with her ex-boyfriend and conflicts with her family. Now that those had been resolved, it seemed like I truly no longer needed to worry about her.

“Kai-kun?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry.”

I had apparently stared too long.

Mari noticed that I had been looking at her arm. With a wry smile, she stroked her own arm and continued.

“I'm okay now. Every day is really fulfilling, and I've found a new emotional anchor, so I'll be fine.”

“I see. Then I'm glad.”

“…Though if that anchor were to disappear, I think I'd want to die.”

“Don't say such dangerous things.”

I retorted that saying she wanted to die meant she had somehow gotten worse.

Mari laughed and agreed that I was right. Looking at her, I wondered whether she truly was okay.

Yet even while I felt that worry, the bad devil inside me whispered:

“Let's do both of them together today.”

I nodded at the devil's question.

I immediately opened the hypnosis app, hypnotized Aisaka as she walked beside me, and gave her an order.

Apparently, while I could not hypnotize two people at precisely the same time, I could do it with a time delay. So I could apply it in ways like this.

“Aisaka, come to the unused classroom at lunch today. Together with Agatsuma, satisfy me.”

“Okay, I understand. I'll definitely come. It's a promise, okay?”

“Y-Yeah… What, do you want it that badly?”

Right now, I was surely wearing an extremely wicked expression.

Smirking at a girl who could never defy me, I successfully set up the hypnosis to take effect later.

If this were not early in the morning, I would have enjoyed her chest right there. But the surrounding eyes were too much of a nuisance.

“Oh, and one more thing.”

“What is it?”

I had to say this.

“Don't joke about wanting to die, okay? Engrave it in your heart. You're one of the girls who makes me happy now. I won't allow you to disappear on your own.”

“…O-Okay.”

“You'll keep serving me from now on. Understood?”

After saying that, I closed the hypnosis app.

Mari, restored to normal, looked blank for a while. Then she quickly recovered and began humming happily.

Later, because I had arrived at school together with Mari, those guys finally made their move during break.

“Hey, come with us for a minute.”

“No. Go home.”

They grabbed their bags and went home.

The hypnosis app really was the strongest.