Nymphs and Greco-Roman Mythology # 1
"Ugh, damn it. My head feels like it's about to split open."
Waking up in the morning, Lee Jina scrunched up her face and spat out a curse. She was clearly suffering from a vicious hangover.
Whether it was her scrunched expression or her foul mouth, I couldn't say, but for some reason I felt like I ought to hand over every coin in my pocket to her, right then and there.
"…Wait, why am I naked? Hey, Ha Ildo. Did you strip me? You perverted bastard!"
Lee Jina growled at me as she took stock of herself, dressed in nothing but her underwear.
It was, of course, a misunderstanding.
"Are you serious? You were the one who stripped down all on your own because you were hot!"
Anger flared up in an instant and I snapped at her, loud enough that I immediately wondered if I'd shouted too hard and clamped my mouth shut.
But Lee Jina, acting as though such things were beneath her notice, simply touched her forehead.
"I stripped? Ah, damn. I don't remember a thing. That's a first for me. You kept feeding me drinks, didn't you? You bastard, getting me drunk and then what, exactly?"
"I told you to stop and you kept pounding them back anyway because it was fun. Lee Jina, you're never allowed more than one bottle of beer again. What kind of person gets sloppy drunk and passes out after two beers? Go wash up and eat."
After a shower, Lee Jina threw on a robe and sat herself down in front of a plate of bean-sprout ramyeon.
Bean-sprout ramyeon.
It looked like nothing special, and the truth was that it really was nothing special. Still, it would settle an empty stomach better than anything.
Anyway.
One thing I learned last night: a drunk Lee Jina was a far more violent, furiously boiling blast furnace of a human being than I'd given her credit for.
"No more drinking with you, ever."
The Arrow of Passion I'd experienced firsthand yesterday was especially potent. If a drunk Lee Jina had failed to rein in that ability while casually peeling off her clothes, what exactly would have happened?
The thought that I might have ended up guest-starring on the nine a.m. news I was watching right now — under a headline like "Awakener H. Accused of Molesting Drunk Woman L." — sent chills down my spine in every possible way.
Even in this day and age, a sex scandal was the kind of killer trap that could harpoon a man's whole life in one strike. Even once it came out that it was a misunderstanding or a false accusation, the trust and image of men who'd already plummeted into the pit never came back easily.
In that sense, it was a moment when Oinoi's words hit home with total clarity: "The true enemies of heroes are not the Hydra or the Nemean Lion, but beautiful women…!"
"Well great, who am I supposed to drink with now, then?"
Lee Jina emptied her ramyeon bowl and let out a long, deflated sigh. Suddenly I found myself imagining what would happen if she drank with anyone besides me and caused an accident — or provoked one.
Ninety percent likelihood, minimum. Probably more.
"Then just drink with me."
"Excuse me, you bastard. Are you giving me orders now? Well, well—"
Pok-.
Lee Jina popped back up out of her seat and locked me in a headlock. I tried to resist this time, but I was helplessly crushed by the technique. It was a remarkably powerful squeeze — and whatever large, magnificent thing was pressing against the back of my head was also remarkably powerful.
"Gwaaak!"
I'd noticed it yesterday too, but Lee Jina's raw strength was absurdly beyond what you'd expect, and since she was fundamentally used to violence and brawling, dealing with her was no easy feat.
No wonder gauntlets were her weapon of choice!
Swish-.
Having changed into freshly washed and dried clothes, Lee Jina now stood studying the calendar in my room. She took out a red pen and circled the Friday about two weeks away.
"Clear your schedule that day. It's the last time I'm helping out at the moving company. The day they haul my stuff out."
"You're moving out?"
"I'm moving out on my own from now on. If I stay home, Mom and Dad worry themselves sick about me doing hunter work and nag me to death. Plus, living independently has been my dream since forever."
Lee Jina, living on her own?
For some reason, it worried me. Call it this or that, but she was the same age as my little sister — maybe that was why it nagged at me.
"You bastard, you're having a dirty thought right now, aren't you? I know exactly what guys think about a girl living alone. But wake up from that dream. I'm moving in with Coris."
"What? No, I wasn't thinking anything."
"Don't lie."
"No, really."
"Bet everything on it? Bet all your points?"
"I don't do that stuff."
"See! Guilty!"
Lee Jina was riding high on her own triumph.
Vroooom-.
Just then, a red supercar slid into the village entrance and glided to a stop in the yard. The driver was, astonishingly, Illinoi!
"Behold! The Illinoi-car is truly something special, is it not…?! I have decided that from now on, I shall frequently go driving with my nymph sisters…! Feeling very, very good…!"
"Thank you for the ride, Illinoi…!"
"This Coris also had a wonderful time last night…! Next time, let us give that wicked psychokinetic Lee Jeonghun and the Muddy Water Nymph Moralis another good thrashing…!"
The nymphs, who had vanished last night under the pretense of watching the honey ants, had only returned once morning came.
Lee Jeonghun had contacted me, so I didn't think anything serious had happened — but watching Illinoi, who had forcibly hijacked his supercar, stolen it outright, and even renamed it the "Illinoi-car," I felt a great many things I wanted to say welling up.
"And why is the master of the house looking at this Illinoi with such eyes…? Does he not realize this violates the nymph anti-gaze discrimination law that this Illinoi negotiated with Lincoln of Springfield…?!"
Illinoi claimed to be well acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, the American president who had lived in the state of Illinois. Whether that was actually true, of course, there was no way to verify.
"See you next time…!"
Coris, riding in the back of Lee Jina's battered old moving truck, waved her hand in big, enthusiastic circles.
Vruuuuum-.
Belching a cloud of environmentally hazardous exhaust, Lee Jina's truck rumbled out of Taecho Village. Before long, the dog-squirrels were barking after it — Woof-woof! Woof-woof!
"She really does need to replace that thing."
That Lee Jina had an attachment to that rusted-out truck, I knew perfectly well. But lately I'd heard that, what with carbon emissions and all that, they were starting to slap much stricter regulations on car exhaust and greenhouse gases.
"Hot. So hot."
The world really was getting warmer. With September right around the corner, simply standing still was enough to send sweat trickling down your back.
Even with the Fifth Industry underway, the world was still working hard in all sorts of ways to tackle these record temperatures. The paper straws the nymphs so despised were, apparently, part of that effort too. Some were even predicting that the T-Rank rift known as the "Tempest of Time and Space" had opened because of the Pacific's abnormal weather patterns.
Turn on the TV, and you could hear experts holding forth about the freak climate from every channel.
So the elves' world had been destroyed by abnormal climate. Oinoi, who had been watching the TV, spoke up as well.
"Now that you mention it, the world we nymphs lived in also began to grow terribly cold, as though some dreadful winter had descended upon all things…! We thought Persephone had been abducted yet again…!"
The world Oinoi had come from. Apparently a strange abnormal climate had visited that place as well. The forests, the mountains, the fields had grown colder and colder, and plenty of nymphs had already sunk into hibernation, she said.
"This Oinoi is a nymph born of summer…! Fleeing the cold and making for warmer lands, I discovered a rift…!"
Solar activity. A warming Earth. It seemed the rifts were deeply intertwined with any number of complex factors. For someone who was neither a scientist nor a doctor like me, it was a difficult subject.
Whatever the case, all I could do was my best, from where I stood.
"So, Oinoi — last night you said you were going to watch the ants, so how did you end up at Lee Jeonghun's secret base? Did you take a taxi?"
"There are complicated circumstances that would take a great deal of explaining…! But to explain them, I must perform a flashback…! Nymph Secret Art: Chatter Like Crazy…!"
Chatter-chatter-jabber-jabber-.
Oinoi explained the situation at lightning speed.
"So last night, while you were watching the honey ants, you found a mysterious ant nest, chased after it, and somehow ended up all the way at Lee Jeonghun's secret base?"
"That is indeed what happened…!"
Wandering into the next town over while sightseeing an ant nest. For playful, flighty nymphs, it was an entirely plausible story.
"Come see it too, master of the house…! It is truly a mysterious ant nest…!"
If Oinoi was calling it marvelous, just how marvelous could an ant nest be?
As I prepared to leave for Greece, I stepped outside for a bit of fresh air, and there in the rice paddies approaching harvest season I saw ants swarming in droves.
They were honey ant workers.
━Jiji…!
━Gyuji…!
In Taecho Village, honey ants that helped the elderly with their farm work in exchange for wages paid in sugar were an easy find. Rice and fruit grown without pesticides, through entirely eco-friendly farming courtesy of the honey ants, had a decent market — so even before the harvest, reservations were reportedly fully booked.
"So what's so marvelous about it?"
Everything looked the same as always. But Oinoi led me to a particular paddy, and there I found some truly remarkable ants.
The ants had arranged tiny stones into a mosaic spelling out my name — "Ha Ildo."
"Huh. The ants wrote out my name."
Had the name of living legend Ha Ildo spread even to the world of honey ants?
Oinoi spoke up.
"These are Wandering Ants, a kind of honey ant…! They live apart from the colony, which makes them quite rare to encounter…! Even this Oinoi saw them for the first time only yesterday…! They are also said to be called Merchant Ants…!"
Wandering Ants. Ants that drifted from place to place, handing people things they'd picked up along the way and receiving various goods in return.
There was an emperor, knights, laborers, and now merchants. The world of honey ants really was no different from humanity's, huh?
One of the peculiar ants spoke to me.
━Joji…!
No idea what that meant. But ants who had spelled out my name in a rice paddy clearly wanted to tell me something, and I found myself wanting to understand.
"I wish I could talk to animals. Well, it's probably just them asking for sugar."
Just as I often gifted Ang-ang-i cube sugar, I fished a square lump out of my pocket and offered it to the ants. The merchant ants, looking thoroughly satisfied, each clutched their sugar cube and slithered-dispersed.
Yep. They wanted sugar after all.
Ssss-.
About a minute later, the Wandering Ants that had scattered to who-knows-where reappeared, carrying something back to me.
It was a resplendent amber jewel.
━Joji…!
About the size of my thumbnail. Inside, a single ant was fossilized in place, frozen like an inclusion in stone — pretty fascinating, honestly.
At the sight of it, Oinoi gasped in deep admiration.
"That is the Ant Amber…! Legend says that if it is specially crafted into a ring, one gains the ability to understand the language of insects…! Even this Oinoi has never seen one before…!"
"Oh, seriously? Did they actually understand me when I said I wanted to talk to animals?"
━Joji…!
I accepted the jewel from the wandering merchant ants, and they promptly ssss-vanished once more.
"Something tells me I'll be running into these guys again."
On an ordinary weekday afternoon, on the eve of my departure for Greece — what a wonderfully strange thing to happen.
Chios Island, Greece.
When the warm sunlight beat down, the beach glittered like pure gold. But with word that a typhoon might be coming, the shoreline was utterly deserted now.
Whooooooooo-.
KRAKOOM-!
━……!
Startled awake by the thunder somewhere along that shore, a creature crawled up onto land and made landfall on the quiet beach.
SPLOOSH-!
━zzzzz….
It bore a horrifying set of chitinous armor across its body; its carapace was black, and it had six legs. Yet like a human, it stood upright and walked on two of them — and the fisherman who spotted it first, a man named Pelasgos, was thrown into wild panic.
"What? What is that? What is it…!?"
That creature was the Chimera Ant, sealed long, long ago in the deep sea off Chios Island, back when the rebellion of the monster Typhon was quelled by the gods and heroes.
A minion of the terrifying demon god Typhon, and rumored to be the "Ultimate Perfect Life-form," capable of surviving in any environment whatsoever.
Of course, an ordinary fisherman like Pelasgos had no way of knowing any of that.
"Wh-what in the world is that thing?! Some man-sized bug just crawled out of the sea! Hiiii!"
Pelasgos grabbed the bug spray he always carried on him because of the sea mosquitoes and doused the enormous insect with it. The can read "Made in China."
Sssss-.
The upright-walking insect let out a pained ━zzzzz… — then turned back toward the sea.
SPLOOSH-!
It was summer.