014 – The Nymph Oinoi # 14
"You had a meal with Yu Ari? Why? What did you two talk about?"
Seo Yerim's brow furrowed all at once as she fired off a barrage of questions at me.
It was common enough for the officer on duty to grill whoever had handled an anomaly rift about this and that, but the questions felt a little too personal, I thought.
"Does any of that have to do with closing the rift? You're a busy woman. Wouldn't it be better to cut to the chase and wrap this up quickly?"
"I'm not busy at all, actually. We can talk for over two hours."
As Seo Yerim raised one eyebrow, I shook my head.
"No, I'm the busy one. I have to clean my place."
Scrrunch—
Seo Yerim's brow creased all over again.
Just then, Oinoi spoke up.
"Aaah…! The temperature of this room has suddenly begun to warm in a nymph-friendly fashion…! That boiler thing or whatever it was must surely have been fixed…!"
Delighted by the room's warming air, Oinoi threw both hands wide open. Keongkeongi the dog-squirrel, who loved warmth and hibernated through the winter, hopped back and forth happily as well.
━Keong-keong…!
So had the boiler actually come back on, warming the room like Oinoi said?
No way.
It was human kindling Seo Yerim who had raised the room's temperature. Push her mood any further south and this room wouldn't just be warm—it'd be scorching, and we'd all be roasted alive!
Deliberately souring the mood of a fire-wielding witch was about as smart as fist-punching a hornet's nest with your bare hand.
I rushed to lower the temperature of the room with words.
"I got promoted, actually—if you go purely by internal mana capacity, I'm C-rank now. So I went in for the exam, and it turned out Yu Ari was working as the on-duty physician. Did you know that?"
"Physician? Huh. So she was. The way I heard it…"
Seo Yerim's raised eyebrow slid smoothly back down.
Seo Yerim was a cantankerous woman, but if there was one thing that made her easier to deal with, it was that her emotions played across her face exactly as she felt them. Most fire-wielders were like that, weren't they?
Before rifts opened, there had been a craze for something called MBTI—a personality test. It was still popular now, but among awakeners its appeal seemed to have died off entirely at once.
And why wouldn't it? The 'Awakener Aptitude Test' was simply more accurate.
Got a pyrokinesis aptitude? Extroverted, hot-blooded, direct. Move things with psychokinesis instead? Delicate, reserved, quiet—that sort of thing.
Of course, I had no idea whether any of it was true. There were people who'd tested as pyrokinetic and climbed all the way to B-rank as plain enhancement-types, after all.
Anyway.
Sssss—
The room's temperature returned to normal.
Oinoi lamented, "The boiler has broken again…!", but it was a relief to me.
"Anyway, we just hadn't seen each other in a while, so we got some meat. And since I'd just made C-rank, I figured I could maybe pick up some tips on skill development."
I rattled off the whole story, start to finish. Seo Yerim looked mildly surprised at my brief explanation.
"You made C-rank? Oooh. Impressive. Anyway, well—sure. That about adds up. You were out eating, a rift popped open, you came home and closed it, and you brought back this what-is-it ant."
━Zzuz-.
The golden, glittering Emperor Ant bobbed its head left and right as though keeping a rhythm. It seemed to be trying to express something, but as ever, deciphering what was beyond me.
Seo Yerim's interrogation ended there.
I'd half expected her to haul the Emperor Ant off for examination, but she didn't.
"You do live remarkably well for a place where even the boiler doesn't work. You do know that if your living environment is deemed unstable, you're disqualified from your fosterer obligations for drifters, right?"
At Seo Yerim's words, I dug through my memory.
Way back, some kind-hearted elf woman had been living happily with her ward in a rooftop room in the slums, until people around her protested—'You're making an elf live in a rooftop room?! Shouldn't the requirements for fosterers be tightened?'—and the relevant laws, or whatever they were, got strengthened.
"Oinoi, wouldn't you rather live somewhere better than this, with a kinder person? How about my place?"
Seo Yerim asked. Oinoi shook her head.
"This Oinoi is quite content…! For the master of this house is exceedingly nymph-friendly…! Why, he allows this Oinoi to bathe in cold water even in the depths of winter…!"
"What? You make her bathe in cold water in this freezing winter?"
Seo Yerim's jaw dropped in genuine, thunderstruck shock. Then she glared at me.
"Why on earth would you make her bathe in cold water in winter! Is it because the boiler's broken? If word of this gets out, you will genuinely have your fosterer qualification revoked…!?"
"No, no—we don't use the boiler for hot water, we have a water heater! And I've shown her how to use it a dozen times, but Oinoi says she prefers cold baths! Hey, Oinoi, explain yourself!"
"The place where this Oinoi once lived… when winter came, the ditch waters and brook waters… the flowing streams all froze solid…! Thus bathing in cold water was difficult…! But this thing called a showerhead gushes forth cold water in abundance, which is wonderful…!"
So that was it.
Oinoi simply liked cold water.
Seo Yerim wore an expression of utter incomprehension, but before long she let out a long sigh.
"Anyway, you should get your housing situation properly sorted. You, making C-rank all of a sudden—that's related to Oinoi, isn't it? If you don't nail this down, you'll end up separated from her."
She wasn't wrong.
I'd been able to reach C-rank thanks to Oinoi. And going forward, I figured we'd be helping each other out in all sorts of ways.
"Well, I'm off."
Swoosh—.
Seo Yerim turned her back. As she moved to put on her heels, she brushed the dust from them with her palm—tap tap—and somehow that glimpse of her from behind felt far more domestic than I'd expected.
Just then, a question occurred to me.
"Seo Yerim, you were pretty close with Yu Ari back then, right? The girls on your team all hung out together, didn't they? Shared meals, visited each other's places."
"Yu Ari? Well, everyone was close."
"Then what's her deal with S-rank Lee Jeonghun?"
I figured another S-rank like Seo Yerim might know. Seo Yerim put on her heels, looked my way, and simply shrugged.
"I don't really know either. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. I don't much care for gossiping about people behind their backs."
Seo Yerim, disliking gossip. Did that even compute?
Just as that thought crossed my mind, Seo Yerim opened the door and added one last thing.
"There were a lot of ugly rumors about Yu Ari. That's all I can say."
Creeeak—click.
With those final words, Seo Yerim shut the door and was gone.
Click, clack. Click, clack—.
The sound of her heels on the stairs faded away, and soon there was nothing left of it at all.
"Seo Yerim was truly a princess…! Good heavens—this Oinoi has never before laid eyes on so grand and magnificent a house…! There is even a pond in the garden brimming with water…!"
"That's probably not a pond, it's a swimming pool."
"There are carp in it…!"
"…Okay, it's a pond. Damn, a pond in a private garden?"
Oinoi stared at the monitor, marveling in every possible way. She seemed genuinely stunned by the mansion that came up when we searched Seo Yerim's home.
"This Oinoi had assumed the place by the sea was Kore Yerim's house…! But the true house was elsewhere…! This Oinoi wishes, even now, to live together with Kore Yerim…!"
Looking at Seo Yerim's estate, Oinoi seemed to be slipping into despair over living in this old, crumbling one-room apartment. I felt the same way.
The world really was unfair.
Still, I'd more or less gotten the room cleaned back to its original state.
━Jiz-.
"The Emperor Ant really is good at its job. Guess I should give it a name, too. Since it's an emperor ant, how about something impressive—Nero. The name of a mighty emperor."
No-no—.
The Emperor Ant shook its head left and right as if to say it didn't like the name. But it was an ant, and it was in no position to refuse a name I unilaterally bestowed.
What was it going to do, say it didn't like it? I doubted it could even understand me in the first place.
Still, just in case, I asked again.
"Then since you go 'zzuz,' how about Zzji?"
No-no-no—.
The Emperor Ant shook its head violently, apparently unwilling to be named Zzji either.
In the end, the name that stuck was Angangi—the one Oinoi had given it.
Why Angangi, I had no idea. Drifters from the otherworld simply had a sense for naming that diverged wildly from modern humans.
"Ants love to snatch things up with their pincers—ang-mu, ang-mu! Thus: Angangi…!"
And compared to the drifter elves, the drifter nymphs' sense was a little… stranger still.
And so it was that our household became me, Oinoi, Keongkeongi, and Angangi, living together under one roof.
Which was when it finally hit me: the place was smaller than I'd thought.
At this point, wouldn't it really be better to just move?
"I'd been saving up to get a weapon fitted after my promotion, but screw it—I'm changing houses."
Nothing for it but to break into my savings.
"This Oinoi wishes for a garden where flowers may be tended…! And a pond as clear as stream water…!"
━Keong-keong!
━Zzji.
Oinoi wanted a house with a pond. Keongkeongi and Angangi seemed to want trees and earth in the new place—though honestly, their tastes were just me guessing on their behalf.
Anyway.
"A house with a big yard, huh."
I wanted a spacious yard too. Now that I'd made C-rank, I wanted to practice combat techniques out in the open.
Combat skills—I'd always imagined them, but my internal mana capacity had never been enough, and they'd remained nothing but a dream. Just thinking about practicing them already had my body itching to move.
"Heh heh."
With that, I opened the app for my savings account.
My entire net worth: ten million won.
Could I really find a house with a yard in the city for ten million won…?