The eyes behind Tazaki's glasses instantly went wide.
"Huh?"
"I... I didn't. Hypnosis or whatever, how could that be...", Tazaki instinctively tried to deny it.
But when he looked up and met Hikari's gaze, seeing those eyes that seemed to see through everything, his scalp went numb and cold sweat poured from his forehead.
'How does he know...'
'How could he know?'
Tazaki couldn't imagine how Hikari had figured all of this out the moment he arrived.
Normally, it should have been impossible. It was even more unbelievable than him actually succeeding with hypnosis.
But from Hikari's expression, Tazaki also understood that Hikari really did know.
'Hypnosis...'
'Right! Hypnosis. I'm someone who can use hypnosis now!'
Thinking of that, looking at Hikari, who was obviously taller and more strongly built than himself, Tazaki stopped feeling afraid.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and straightened his back again.
Confidence returned to the eyes behind his glasses as he said to Hikari, "I don't know how you found out about the hypnosis, but it doesn't matter if you know."
"You can't do anything anyway."
"Come, look at my hand."
Snap!
Tazaki suddenly raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
Then he ordered Hikari, "Hikari, you've already been hypnotized by me."
"I order you to forget everything you just saw, turn around, and leave this classroom."
After confidently casting his hypnosis, Tazaki immediately looked at Hikari with satisfaction.
But to his surprise, Hikari didn't react at all as instructed. He didn't say he had forgotten everything or turn around to leave.
Hikari's expression wasn't blank like Nogami Izumi's had been after being hypnotized. Instead, he was still smiling as he looked at him.
Cold sweat streamed down Tazaki's face. He quickly snapped his fingers again.
"Hikari! You've now been completely hypnotized by me!"
"I want you to acknowledge me as your boss, kneel down and kowtow to me, and obey everything I say!"
"Do you understand?"
Faced with Tazaki's words, Hikari smiled, "I don't really understand. Your hypnosis doesn't seem to work on me."
As he spoke, Hikari walked toward Tazaki.
Seeing him approach, the pressure in Tazaki's heart shot up.
He hurriedly tried every method described in the hypnosis instruction book, attempting to hypnotize Hikari.
"You've already been hypnotized by me. You're a dog!"
"You'll lose all self-awareness and only obey my commands!"
"I've hypnotized you. Stop walking. Don't come any closer!"
"Stop! Stop! I said stop! Do you hear me?"
Listening to Tazaki's nonstop attempts at hypnosis, Hikari only found it amusing.
"Are you done yet?"
Walking up beside Tazaki, Hikari reached directly for the hypnosis instruction book in his hand.
Seeing that Hikari wanted to take the hypnosis book away, Tazaki immediately flew into a rage.
After discovering that the hypnosis taught in the book was real, Tazaki had long since abandoned his original indifferent attitude and had come to regard this hypnosis book as the most important thing in his life.
Seeing Hikari trying to take it away, he naturally couldn't accept it.
"I'm going all out against you!"
With a roar, Tazaki leaped from where he stood and lunged fiercely at Hikari.
Then Hikari grabbed him by the neck and slammed him onto a nearby desk.
Holding Tazaki down like a chick, Hikari easily took the black-covered book with the words Hypnosis printed on it from his hands.
After casually flipping through it, Hikari quickly finished reading the hypnosis instruction book and immediately learned the so-called hypnosis.
Hikari released the hand gripping Tazaki's neck.
"Give me back the hypnosis book! Give it back!"
The moment Hikari let go, Tazaki bared his teeth and claws as he lunged at him, trying to take back the hypnosis instruction book that "belonged to him."
Facing Tazaki charging at him again, Hikari didn't make another move.
Instead, he snapped his fingers.
Snap!
The moment the snap rang out, Tazaki's charging body suddenly stopped, and he stood there blankly.
Looking at Tazaki standing motionless with vacant eyes, Hikari nodded.
"As expected, the effectiveness of this hypnosis is related to spiritual power."
After testing it, Hikari basically understood how this hypnosis worked.
As for the grudges between Tazaki and the three gyaru girls, Nogami Izumi and the others, Hikari now understood the situation in general.
But there was one thing he hadn't been clear about before.
Although Tazaki kept saying the hypnosis book was his and that Hikari had stolen it from him and should return it, that actually wasn't true.
Because the real owner of the book should have been Nogami Izumi.
She was the one who bought the book about hypnosis.
Tazaki had only borrowed it.
But as the purchaser of the book, Nogami Izumi had also tried learning hypnosis.
And Hikari knew that she had definitely made her close friends Hinata Sae and Sanada Minako learn it too.
But no matter how the three gyaru girls tried, they couldn't learn hypnosis.
In contrast, there was Tazaki.
Originally the target of bullying, he had learned hypnosis instead.
Hikari hadn't been sure why before.
But after trying it just now, he understood.
Whether hypnosis succeeded was directly related to the caster's spiritual power.
People with strong souls and abundant spiritual power could use hypnosis more easily.
People whose souls weren't strong enough and whose spiritual power was weak would have great difficulty using it successfully.
Unlike Hikari, who had already come into contact with various supernatural powers, the vast majority of ordinary people knew nothing about souls or spiritual power.
And most people simply didn't possess the spiritual power needed to hypnotize others.
Nogami Izumi, Hinata Sae, and Sanada Minako, the three gyaru girls, were exactly like that.
Tazaki, on the other hand, had a relatively special soul and stronger spiritual power than ordinary people.
But compared with Hikari's spiritual power, the difference was enormous.
So even without the effect of complete immunity to negative 2D Underworld buffs such as the Pure Love Halo, it would have been impossible for Tazaki to hypnotize Hikari.
Having lived through two lives, Hikari's soul and spiritual power surpassed Tazaki's by who knew how many levels.
So although Tazaki couldn't hypnotize Hikari, Hikari only needed to snap his fingers to completely hypnotize Tazaki.
After clearing up the doubts in his mind, Hikari put down the hypnosis instruction book.
Looking at Tazaki, whose eyes were now vacant, he said, "Tell me everything about what happened recently between you and Nogami Izumi and the others, as well as everything about the hypnosis. Don't leave anything out."
"Okay."
Tazaki agreed expressionlessly and began speaking truthfully.
"A few days ago, Nogami Izumi and the others said they wanted to learn hypnosis. They wanted to use it to get revenge on you and make you lick their feet..."
"I originally dismissed so-called hypnosis as nonsense, and Nogami Izumi's failure proved that. But I never imagined that I, who was forced into trying it, would actually succeed."
"After successfully hypnotizing people, I wanted to get brutal revenge on Nogami Izumi and the other two..."
After listening to Tazaki's account, Hikari roughly understood the whole sequence of events. It was more or less what he had expected.
"After mastering hypnosis, what did you want to use it for?", Hikari suddenly asked.
"Of course to get revenge on Nogami Izumi, Hinata Sae, and Sanada Minako. Lately they've been using the fact that I stole girls' underwear from the changing room as leverage to threaten me, making me serve them like a slave and give them spending money. Now that I can hypnotize people, I have to get revenge on them!", Even while hypnotized, Tazaki still ground his teeth when talking about it.
"Besides that, did you want to use hypnosis on anyone else?"
"No. After mastering hypnosis, for now I only wanted to get revenge on those three," Tazaki said.
Hikari thought for a moment.
Tazaki, who had sneaked into the girls' changing room to steal underwear, wasn't exactly a good man.
But the three gyaru girls, Nogami Izumi and the others, who regularly bullied people, weren't good people either.
You could say it was dogs biting dogs.
Even though she had been hypnotized, it was hard to feel sympathy for someone like Nogami Izumi, a violent, overbearing gyaru who made a habit of bullying others, even as the victim.
Still, Tazaki wasn't a typical netorare type either.
Hikari had no interest in killing Tazaki for the sake of a bully like Nogami Izumi.
But letting Tazaki, who had already learned hypnosis, leave unchecked was also absolutely out of the question.
After all, in this 2D Underworld, it wasn't uncommon for someone to be an ordinary person one moment and turn into a netorare type or a Homelander-type the next.
Besides, Tazaki had just believed Hikari was trying to steal his hypnosis instruction book and had been so anxious that he attacked him. It wasn't impossible that he'd seek revenge afterward.
After thinking it over, Hikari immediately used his powerful spiritual power to cast hypnosis, erasing all memories of hypnosis from Tazaki's mind.
At the same time, he also erased Tazaki's memories of being bullied by Nogami Izumi and the others, and implanted the command for him to transfer schools..
As for the reason that would make the transfer seem natural, it was that the school had discovered him stealing girls' underwear from the changing room, after which he had been expelled.
From then on, Tazaki would completely lose all memories related to hypnosis and Nogami Izumi and the others, and start over as an ordinary male high school student at another school.
To be safe, Hikari also cut away part of Tazaki's spiritual power, reducing it to that of an ordinary person. It wouldn't affect his body or thinking, but even if he obtained another hypnosis instruction book in the future, he would never again be able to use effective hypnosis. He also attached a Pure Love Warning Paper Crane to him.
Picking up a lighter, he burned the book about hypnosis.
After the bewildered Tazaki left, Hikari turned his gaze toward the three gyaru girls, Nogami Izumi, Hinata Sae, and Sanada Minako.