Nymphs and Hyper Evolution #1
Today was the once-a-month deep cleaning day.
Everyone swept away dust, wiped down surfaces, hauled off old junk, and rearranged the furniture—though honestly, it wasn't much of a chore, seeing as how the honey ant Angangi swept and scrubbed the house every single day anyway.
"Aah…! This Oinoi has once again fished these mysterious coins out from beneath the refrigerator…! This Oinoi has bestowed upon these mysterious coins the name 'Whispering Coins'…!"
Shwoop—.
Somehow or other, Oinoi kept scooping up fistfuls of coins from under the refrigerator, the bed, the sofa, and every time she did, she'd press one against her short, pointed ear.
Her short, pointed nymph ears, it seemed, could hear something mystical emanating from these Whispering Coins.
"Oinoi, you can actually hear something coming from the coins?"
I couldn't hear a thing myself, but Oinoi was absolutely delighted.
"It is the sound of voices cheering this Oinoi on…! Clearly, someone must have tucked their voices inside these mysterious coins and hidden them beneath drawers and wardrobes just for this Oinoi's sake…!"
And so, over the course of the big cleaning, Oinoi unearthed a whole mountain of mysterious coins.
As always, she dropped them neatly into her piggy bank, and by the time she was done there was a satisfyingly hefty pile left over—enough to play Mechanical Snail 3 several more times at the arcade machine out in the yard.
"It would be wonderful to show off this piggy bank on the MeTube…! It is certain that no other nymphs anywhere have gathered this many Whispering Coins…!"
Oinoi was a nymph who loved bragging and showing off.
Was that just how nymphs were, I wondered? Coris loved anything fun and entertaining, and Illinoi simply loved money. By that measure, Oinoi was the nymph most excited about appearing on MeTube.
"Nymphs who might be scattered all across the world could watch this MeTube that this Oinoi appears on and come flocking here…! This Oinoi is very much looking forward to it…!"
Scamper-scamper—!
Having declared that, Oinoi darted off to tidy and organize the house from corner to corner.
Right.
This deep cleaning had been prep work for the MeTube appearance. Of course things had to be neat and tidy before filming—common sense!
"The ten-million-subscriber MeTuber Kira is visiting our house!"
Tremble-tremble—.
My whole body shook uncontrollably.
God, I was nervous!
I wasn't the type to go around declaring myself a fan of other people, as a rule.
But Kira—I'd had my eye on her since her 100,000-subscriber days… which is to say, back when she was roughly the equivalent of a D-Rank awakener. During my rough patches, her videos dropping every Friday at 5 PM had been something to hold out for. A source of strength, even.
"This is nerve-wracking!"
Put simply, she was what a celebrity would be to me.
So the fact that I was about to actually meet her had me wound tighter than a drum, and a faint anxiety was creeping over me—shouldn't I be preparing something?
"Just relax. She said she wants to film your everyday life and do a simple interview. No need to go overboard. You've been on TV Animal Farm before, haven't you? It's exactly the same thing."
Lee Jina cut through all my fussing with a single remark.
From the way she was scowling hard at me, I gathered I must have looked pretty pathetic.
I turned to her.
"How exactly do you know MeTuber Kira?"
"Nothing all that pleasant, honestly. We're more like vendor and customer. She buys the candy I make—guess you could call her a regular."
Lee Jina was someone who could produce an item called Strange Candy. Her mana got baked into the sweets, and they drew out all kinds of emotional reactions from whoever ate them.
Boost your mood, calm your nerves, fire up your motivation—that sort of thing. I found it genuinely fascinating that MeTuber Kira had apparently been eating candy like that.
"Not to brag, but we've known each other a while now. Three years, give or take."
Three years—.
"That's when Kira hit A-Rank, cracked a million subscribers, and won the 'Diamond Button' on MeTube! No way, seriously? You two have been in touch since then?!"
A dizzying sensation washed over me from every direction.
The Diamond Button—the commemorative plaque MeTube awarded to channels that hit one million subscribers.
I remembered watching her unboxing video for it and leaving a comment like it was yesterday. And all that time, Lee Jina had already known Kira personally?!
"Why do you know all this in such detail? I'm getting a little creeped out. What are you, some kind of MeTube otaku?"
Lee Jina wrinkled her nose.
Something about my encyclopedic knowledge of MeTuber Kira's career clearly bothered her.
But it was only natural.
Back when I was digging around in ditches as a D-rank-for-life loser, MeTuber Kira was what I'd discovered.
She'd been a D-Rank awakener back then too, just like me—and watching her grind through one hardship after another while still somehow striving for something higher, pushing herself harder, that had won me over.
She was polite and diligent, too. Easy on the eyes, in the best sense!
How long did we wait?
Far off in the distance, I spotted an ordinary-looking sedan gliding smoothly toward Primeval Village.
The car was a perfectly ordinary white sedan. The person stepping out of it, however, was anything but.
She had pulled a black hoodie down over her head, but hair nearly white—so pale it bordered on snow—spilled out luxuriously from underneath it.
Ordinary jeans, white sneakers on her feet.
Apparently the rural dirt fascinated her, because she kept rubbing her soles against the ground, back and forth. The gesture was almost surreally endearing!
"So this is Primeval Village—the land of the Dog-Squirrels, the Honey Ants, and the Tiger Owls?"
Her figure was fairly slender; at a glance she could pass for a teenager. But the real statement piece was the cat-ear-shaped headphones slung chunkily around her neck.
"Hello there! Kira Stone, at your service."
The ten-million-subscriber MeTuber Kira had arrived at the well house where I lived with the nymphs and all our animals!
I was so nervous I had no idea where to put my hands and feet, and Lee Jina smacked me on the back—pow!
"Hey. Snap out of it."
"Oh, right, of course. I'm Ha Ildo. People call me the Legendary Legend. It's an honor to meet you, Miss Kira. I've, uh, been watching your channel since you had 100,000 subscribers. I even donated…!"
"Oh—how wonderful of you. The honor is entirely mine. Ohohohoho—."
"Your Korean is remarkably good."
"Fluency in assorted languages is simply one of a noble lady's accomplishments."
The British MeTuber Kira always projected elegance and icy poise in her videos. And the Kira I met in person proved every bit as haughty and dignified as her on-screen persona.
Oinoi refused to be outdone and bellowed right back.
"This Oinoi is Oinoi…! Oinoi is a nymph of the ditch waters, known as 'The Coin Gatherer' and also 'The One Who Is Rival to the Stage 4 Boss of Mechanical Snail 3'…!"
Delighted to see Kira, Oinoi thrust her hand up in a great sweeping wave.
She reeled off one bizarre title after another—typical of a nymph who loved showing off anything and everything about herself.
"A pleasure to meet you…!"
Watching Oinoi's warm welcome, I could tell that Kira's kindness was exactly what it had seemed on broadcasts—the real thing.
Nymphs, like herbivores, had long been the persecuted party, so apparently they could instinctively tell apart the people who meant them harm from the genuinely good-hearted ones!
Swipe, swipe—.
That said, Oinoi soon started glancing around, acting like someone with something on her mind.
When I asked, "What's wrong?" she answered.
"When the Animal Farm people came to film last time, there were crowds and crowds of humans…! But today there is no one…!"
Ah, of course—.
She was puzzled that no broadcast crew had come along.
Being a nymph, Oinoi apparently still hadn't quite grasped the difference between public broadcast filming and MeTube filming.
"MeTube is personal broadcasting, so the filming's a lot more free-form."
And yet—.
Kira was a ten-million-subscriber MeTuber.
At that scale, didn't you travel with your own personal film crew, plus a whole army of staff and managers and whatnot?
It struck me as odd that Kira had come all alone, without any of those people.
She explained it herself.
"This video is going to be shot as a surprise party of sorts, so I deliberately kept it unannounced to the outside world. Haaah… that's all part of the content too, you see."
The lazy, languid way she stretched as she said the word content felt so thoroughly professional that my heart started racing all over again.
"Wonderful! Alright then—let's begin today's shoot! Mr. Ildo, just relax and act natural! I'll handle the direction myself! Now then—."
"Ooh, so this is the legendary K-Squirrel of Korea! The squirrel America envies, China admires, and Japan bows before in trembling reverence! Utterly adorable! Gorgeous!"
━Woof-woof…!
Kira fussed endlessly over Keongkeongi the Dog-Squirrel, camera in hand, cooing with delight.
She also devoured the Korean snack chips I offered her with tremendous relish.
"Korean snacks are packed with nitrogen—so fresh, so good! A flavor you simply cannot find in Britain! Truly the taste of a 5th Industry superpower! The taste of nitrogen! And the thoughtfulness of portioning them so small that nobody can finish the bag and has to leave some behind—simply exquisite! I can feel the dignity in this!"
Kira looked ordinary enough, but she was in fact a noble lady who lived in a castle estate, modeling for something like Britain's answer to Dizzinieland.
Naturally, she'd uploaded plenty of videos where she tried her hand at commoner life and reacted to everything.
"Please film this Oinoi's piggy bank too…! The nymphs of the world will surely wish to know how magnificent the coins crammed inside this piggy bank truly are…!"
"Good heavens, everyone! Are you all watching Oinoi right now? A nymph straight out of a fairy tale actually exists! The elves I came to film in Korea last time were fascinating, but nymphs are something else entirely!"
"Comparing long-eared elves to our short and splendid ears is a grave discourtesy…! We nymphs are the elder and nobler lineage of the fairy kind, it being so…! This is a historical fact recorded even in the Melon Annals…!"
"Great! Cut there!"
Ding-dong—.
Kira paused the filming.
Then she immediately sat down to review the footage.
"I wonder if it came out well! Well—since I, the lady of House Stone, directed it and starred in it myself, it can hardly be anything less than perfect. Ohohohohoho—."
How should I put this.
Her on-camera energy and her real-life energy were so perfectly identical that it was actually disorienting.
So a person really could have that much self-esteem, huh.
Was that what aristocracy meant in the twenty-first century?
Meanwhile, Oinoi, completely indifferent to all this, had fetched a clear glass jar.
"Behold this typhoon cloud…! Ever since it was fed the Typhoon Flower, it has been growing at a tremendous pace…! If you listen closely, you can even hear it crying 'ngiing-yaaing—'…!"
It seemed Oinoi had an endless stockpile of things she wanted to show off.
But Kira was anxiously nibbling at her thumbnail, scrutinizing the footage they'd just shot with ferocious concentration.
"As I feared, there isn't enough stimulation! If this keeps up, my subscriber count will start dropping! My awakener ranking has been stuck at 30th forever, and if my subscribers fall on top of that, I'll just be an ordinary noble lady!"
Tremble-tremble—.
Kira shuddered as if seized by a full-body spasm.
What on earth was an "ordinary" noble lady, anyway?
Being an aristocrat in the twenty-first century already seemed decidedly extraordinary to me.
Watching her, Lee Jina—who had until now simply observed our broadcast from the sidelines—let out a long sigh and murmured, low enough that only I could hear.
"Word is she's been psychologically unstable ever since she hit a million subs. She went hunting for all kinds of coping mechanisms, found my candy, and started dealing with the gangs. That's how the two of us met, actually."
I see.
The old saying came to mind: however graceful swans look gliding across a lake, beneath the surface their feet are paddling like mad.
Behind the glittering, carefree facade of celebrities, there were always struggles of their own.
"Mr. Ildo! My channel, 'Kira Land,' has a great many staff, and a great many people who depend on me! Not to mention my channel is officially sponsored by the Royal Family itself! Failure is simply not an option!"
I see, I see.
So her impatience wasn't just vanity or a hunger for view counts.
As someone aspiring to be a person who stands above the rest, this mindset of Kira's was something worth learning from.
"Miss Kira. I think it's remarkable that you juggle being an awakener and a MeTuber at the same time. Back then or now, the one constant is that you've never stopped working for it. Well done."
Clap, clap—.
I applauded.
At that, Keongkeongi the Dog-Squirrel came scrambling over to me at full sprint.
"Let's premiere it right here on the MeTube channel 'Kira Land'—the new power that the legendary Legend Ha Ildo acquired upon reaching A-Rank: Hyper Evolution…!"