Nymphs Love a Tempest Across Time and Space! # 1
The filming had been temporarily suspended.
Apparently, the keyword "release into the wild" had somehow set the nymphs off, sparking an outbreak of violence.
Truthfully, I was a little scared.
It felt as though I, as their guardian, had failed to do my duty by them.
"I'm so sorry. Our nymphs are normally gentle, well-behaved friends. But once in a while something snaps in their heads, and there's no stopping them—they just start wailing on people."
I scolded the nymphs while offering apology after apology. Wanting to get on television in the first place had been nothing but my own greed!
At this rate, I was going to end up on the news with a headline like "Mr. H. Caught Up in Violent Incident."
Something I never intended could set the entire internet on fire!
But Director Bang Saenghyeon of the Wild Animal Research Institute turned out to be far bigger of a person than I'd expected.
"It's quite all right. It didn't hurt much at all. It felt like being struck with a padded stick."
Not a single cut, not a single bruise anywhere on the man.
Rolling his shoulders around in slow circles, the Director remarked,
"If anything, my stiff shoulders feel better. Heh, how remarkable. In any case, my head feels wonderfully clear. 'Release humans back into nature first, too'... now that is a thought-provoking idea."
The Director seemed to have taken Oinoi's furious outburst entirely to heart.
And honestly, what Oinoi said had a point.
Where, exactly, did humans get the right to release wild animals wherever they pleased?
Viewed a certain way, it was a remarkably human-centric way of thinking.
Whether he read that thought on my face or not, Saenghyeon suddenly cried out,
"Come to think of it, it's strange that humans must live in forests of buildings while animals absolutely must live in the wild. By that logic, we ought to be wandering the wilderness ourselves, picking fruit off the trees."
"Um, well..."
"I've made up my mind! From now on, I shall return to the wild and live there. By experiencing the lives of animals firsthand, I will strive to become a person who is friendlier to animals and more environmentally righteous!"
Fist clenched, Director Bang Saenghyeon declared his grand ambition.
The idea that he was actually going to go live in the wild made my head swim in any number of ways.
What on earth was he talking about?
Getting punched by Oinoi and Illinoi had clearly rattled something loose in the man!
"Farewell, everyone!"
"Uh, uh—wait a moment.... Uh... Director? Uh...?"
Whoosh, whoosh—.
Having placed his bag, his wallet, and his phone neatly on my desk, Saenghyeon at last set off walking toward the apple orchard visible in the far distance.
It was the stride of a true man of the world, one that radiated the ambition of a great soul returning to nature itself.
Oinoi called out after him.
"You must live boldly and thrive even after returning to the wild, that is the truth of it...!"
The weekend had come around again.
Episode 1004.
After the broadcast ended, I found myself tangled up in all sorts of complicated feelings.
"This is bad."
I was afraid to even open the internet. My hands trembled.
But covering your eyes doesn't bring the night down on the world.
With my heart pounding, I decided to start by checking the Awakener social media communities.
A broadcast unprecedented in all of history, in which the director of a wild animal research institute was himself released into nature.
The internet blazed white-hot at the impossible spectacle.
And so did Oinoi and Illinoi.
"Oinoi's piggy bank appeared on the television, that is the truth of it...! Surely no nymphs before us have ever put their piggy bank on television, that much is certain...!"
"Why then was Illinoi's appearance almost entirely edited out, it may be asked...? Did promoting the paintings Illinoi painted prove a failure, that is so...? Summon a lawyer here at once, that is so...!"
"Coris wished to appear on television too, that is the truth of it...! She is terribly, terribly disappointed, that is the truth of it.... Next time you come visiting, Coris wishes to show you her thread-spinning, that is what she wants...!"
Only Coris, the one nymph who hadn't made it onto the broadcast, seemed faintly wistful—.
Overall, though, the nymphs appeared well satisfied with their television debut.
The broadcast drew warm praise across the board.
A whole parade of adorable animals had marched onto the screen, so frankly it would have been strange for the reviews to be anything less—cute animals are practically a cheat code, after all.
Still, I couldn't help brooding over it all from every angle.
Watching Director Bang Saenghyeon, now settled into the village chief's apple orchard, I found myself wondering—was this really a good thing?
"The mountain is the mountain, and the water is the water—."
And yet the Director looked tremendously happy.
He sat cross-legged beneath an apple tree in meditation every single day, while the dog-squirrels, the honey ants, and the Tiger Owls perched on his shoulders or scampered freely all around him.
━Woof-woof...!
━Zziji...!
━Hoo, hoo...!
Aside from me, was he perhaps the first person I'd ever seen whom animals gravitated toward like this? Well, I suppose you'd need to be that kind of person to become the director of a wild animal research institute in the first place.
"What on earth is nature, anyway? Humans and animals..."
I'd been racking my brain for days, but I couldn't reach an answer with the head I had.
Was it truly right for friends like Keongkeongi, Kwang-kwangi, and Ang-angi to live alongside me?
"So is that why you called me here? Because you want to read the animals' hearts?"
Lee Jina asked, frowning, after watching episode 1004 together with me.
I decided to be honest with her.
"You can read animals' emotions too, right? Could you find out whether the friends living with me actually enjoy being with me?"
Lee Jina was a sensory-type Awakener who could read not just people, but the emotions of animals as well.
She promptly scooped Keongkeongi up in both hands.
"Fine, I'll take a look for you."
And then she rubbed Keongkeongi's body against her own face.
Snuggle, snuggle—.
Keongkeongi stayed remarkably docile.
━Woof-woof...!
I'd noticed it before—my animal friends had always been unusually fond of Lee Jina.
Only a few seconds had passed, maybe.
"Keongkeongi seems to be in a good mood. Though he has put on a bit of weight."
"Has he?"
"Ang-angi and Kwang-kwangi are healthy too."
"Oh, good."
"I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? Animal or human, could anyone stand to stay in the same place for so long with someone they don't even like? They're not fools or idiots."
Listening to Lee Jina, it really did seem that way.
If I was keeping the animals with me and doing right by them in every respect, then that was a good thing!
"More importantly, Ha Ildo. Look at this. Ta-da."
Swoosh—.
Lee Jina pulled something out of her pocket and held it out to me.
It looked like an Awakener-exclusive ID card, with the name "Lee Jina" printed on it—and next to it, a single letter: B.
There was only one thing that could mean.
Lee Jina's rank had risen to B.
"Whoa. Seriously?"
Truthfully, it didn't surprise me that she'd climbed a rank.
I'd heard that back when she trained alongside Cha Yura, her scores had actually topped those of the S-Rank Awakener herself.
And Lee Jina's specialty was "reading emotions and manipulating the emotions of others."
Abilities that touched directly on other people were extraordinarily rare irregulars—and devastatingly powerful ones.
"So did you get the channel-opening procedure done too?"
Didn't they say it cost 300 million won?
Lee Jina came from a middle-class family much like mine.
I could picture all too clearly how hard she must have worked to scrape together that kind of money.
"After I ate the Truth Flower you gave the elves, my mana capacity shot way up. So I hit B-Rank without the Rune Engraving at all. Pretty impressive, right? I saved myself 300 million won!"
300 million won was an absolutely colossal sum.
Having saved it, Lee Jina looked thrilled beyond words.
"From here on, I'm climbing straight up to A, and past it. If you hadn't helped me in so many ways, getting this far wouldn't have been easy either. So I wanted to repay you, but I couldn't figure out what you'd actually like—."
Swoosh—.
Lee Jina pulled something else from her pocket.
It was a square ticket.
I half expected it to be a department store gift certificate, but looking closer, I saw plain white paper on which someone with surprisingly cute handwriting had written: "Lee Jina 1-Day Usage Voucher (1 use)."
There were three of them.
"What is this?"
"Can't you tell by looking? It's a voucher letting you use yours truly, the great Lee Jina. Three tickets, valued at 100 million won each. At this price, I'm practically giving them away. Me? I'm about to blow past A-Rank and head straight for S."
It was unexpected that Lee Jina had her sights set on becoming an S-Ranker.
But what intrigued me far more was the voucher itself.
"Use you how, exactly? If I call you when I need you and hand this over, you're saying I get to do whatever I want with you for a whole day?"
"Well, yeah."
"Oh."
This was very, very good.
A voucher that let me command Lee Jina as I pleased!
My mind was already racing through all the ways I could use it.
"Heh heh heh."
Lee Jina looked like a terrifying delinquent on the outside, but she was closer to the animals than anyone but me—and the nymphs adored her too.
Which meant that with this voucher, I could leave the animals and the nymphs in her care and enjoy freedom that was entirely, gloriously mine alone!
Life with a wriggling menagerie of animal and nymph friends was always a joy—but even I needed time to myself sometimes!
And a man has plenty of things he just wants to do alone, you know.
Going to the PC bang, for one!
Honestly, it had been far, far too long since I'd set foot in a PC bang.
"Ha Ildo. I'm telling you this now—no transferring them to anyone else. You."
"Heh, why would I waste them like that?"
Carefully, carefully—.
I tucked the Lee Jina vouchers safely into my pocket.
An item of truly limitless potential.
Should I use one tomorrow, right away?
Or maybe even today wouldn't be bad—
KWAAANG—!
Thunder cracked out of a clear blue sky.
What on earth was going on?
I came to my senses and opened the window—and there, standing in the front yard, was someone.
A woman dressed in white. A complete stranger, and as I was puzzling over who on earth she could be, Lee Jina reacted first.
"Isn't that Han Juryeon?"
Han Juryeon.
A third-generation Awakener—the A-Rank top ranker, that Han Juryeon?
Why would a person like that suddenly come looking for me?