Nymphs and Clichés #1
Chirp-chirp!
Chitter-chitter!
Lee Jina's new house sat close to the mountain, and the birdsong outside was absolutely deafening. At this point, it wasn't so much birds singing as birds outright barking their heads off.
A crisp autumn morning. And Oinoi was hollering.
"The master of the house must come out at once, as is the truth of things…! Master of the house, show yourself this instant, as is the truth of things…! This Oinoi has discovered something, and you must behold it at once, as is the truth of things…!"
I was the kind of person who liked to sleep deeply and soundly once I was down—no interruptions, no waking up halfway. Every time I got jolted awake and drifted back off, I'd wake up in the morning with this strange, crushing heaviness in my limbs. Which probably explained why my body felt unusually leaden when I dragged myself out of bed this morning.
"Oinoi, what on earth is going on?"
Oinoi was a nymph who loved making a spectacle of everything. Nymphs in general possessed empathy and sensitivity more than twice that of ordinary humans, so it was hardly unusual for them to raise a ruckus whenever they spotted something out of the ordinary.
So what had she dug up this time? A rainbow in a cloudless sky, like the other day? Or had Kwang-kwangi's stocks shot up overnight again?
Shhff—
Dragging my exhausted body out to the living room with that suspicion in mind, I found Oinoi latching onto my arm and tugging me along without pause.
"We must hurry, as is the truth of things…! Even this Oinoi was greatly astonished, as is the truth of things…!"
"Seriously, what happened?"
Where Oinoi led me was the kitchen of Lee Jina's new house. Heading in, I found the floor littered with ramen wrappers and fruit peels, and right in the middle of the mess sat Ha Irae, lazily munching on a raw carrot.
"What is all this? Ha Irae, did you raid Jina's entire fridge?"
From the looks of it, sometime in the small hours of the morning she'd flung the fridge open and demolished every scrap of food and groceries inside. Lee Jina, staring at the empty soda bottles and the vanished fruit, rubbed her sleepy eyes and let her mouth fall open in mild shock.
"What even happened here? How starving could you possibly have been? Wasn't the jajangmyeon and sweet and sour pork from last night enough?"
"Dunno! I was just, like, super hungry!"
Even as she said it, Ha Irae didn't stop crunching on her carrot. How empty must the fridge have been for her to gnaw on an uncooked carrot like that?
She was my little sister, but that girl did strange things from time to time. Actually, come to think of it, maybe "from time to time" was generous. It was more like constantly.
"Hieeek…!"
Brrrrr—
Just then, Barbaru gave a full-body shudder. What on earth was wrong with her?
"Barbaru, what's the matter?"
"This feeling bodes ill, that is what it is…! Something ominous is crawling up my spine, I can sense it…! And that ominous presence has eight legs, that is what it is…!"
━Hio-ong…!
I peeled Kwang-kwangi off of Barbaru's back. The little ghost spider did have eight legs, but it preferred riding around on people's backs to actually walking anywhere. I suppose it was like how people would rather drive a car than hoof it on foot.
Anyway.
According to Ha Irae, she'd been so hungry in the dead of night that, as if possessed by something, she'd opened the fridge and eaten whatever she laid her hands on. I felt a flicker of guilt and embarrassment that my little sister had turned someone else's refrigerator into a war zone.
"Jina, I'll compensate you for everything Irae ate."
"Eh, whatever. If you're hungry, you're hungry. More importantly… was that always there?"
Shhff—
Jina's eyes turned toward the kitchen's threshold and ceiling. I hadn't noticed it yesterday, but now that I looked, there was a faint trace on the kitchen ceiling where something square had once been stuck. It looked like soot, and it was exactly the size of my palm.
"Looks like the mark of a talisman that was stuck up there."
Jina was right. Now that I was paying attention, I could see similar traces above the front doorstep and at the second-floor landing where the stairs began. On some of them, yellow-papered talismans scrawled with red lettering had clearly been torn away by someone's hand.
# # #
It was the second day since Lee Jina's move. We finished unpacking, fine-tuned the furniture arrangement down to the smallest details, and wrapped up the cleaning. It had been a busy day, but the process of filling an empty new house with life was more rewarding than I'd expected, and before I knew it, the clock had spun its way to lunchtime.
Lunch hour.
"Oppa, should I order delivery? Lasagna and pasta?"
Pasta? What pasta?
Hadn't Jina said this morning, "You all helped me move, so lunch is on me—I'll cook"?
When I pointed this out, my little sister Ha Irae frowned.
"What are you talking about? You told me earlier we were ordering delivery for lunch today, oppa."
"I said that?"
This was news to me. I'd spent the entire day up on the second floor sweeping and dusting with the likes of Keongkeongi, Ang-ang-i, and Kwang-kwangi.
"I never said anything like that."
"Yes you did! When I was cleaning the kitchen, you said it! Today's lunch is delivery! Oinoi, Coris, you guys heard him too, right?"
Coris and Oinoi shook their heads vigorously. Apparently not.
"Ha Irae, did you eat something weird or what?"
Had the new semester fried her brain? College students were always a little off during the first week of classes, after all.
But Ha Irae just kept protesting, "No! He said it! I distinctly heard oppa's voice!"
━Grrrrowl…!
Right at that moment, Keongkeongi—who'd been racing around the spacious first floor—let out a menacing warning growl. Keongkeongi usually made that sound out of sheer boredom, but what could possibly bore a dog-squirrel that had been playing all day long?
I went downstairs to check on him, arriving at the cluttered storage room where the unpacking wasn't finished.
"Keongkeongi, what's wrong? Bored already?"
━Grrrrowl…!
Scritch-scratch! Scritch-scratch!
In that half-unpacked room, Keongkeongi was clawing furiously at the floor like a puppy digging up a buried bone. In the process, he'd already torn up an old rug that had been laid down there before we even arrived.
"Are you kidding me? Keongkeongi! How bored could you possibly—wait, hold on—"
My puzzlement over his behavior lasted only a moment. I pulled the rug aside, and there on the floor was something that looked like a square wooden panel set flush into the boards.
"A door? A door leading to a basement? Hey! Jina! Come look at this!"
I called for Lee Jina. After all, nobody had mentioned anything about a basement when we were hauling boxes around yesterday.
"What is this? A basement? I don't think the realtor ever said anything about a basement? That's weird. Should we open it? I'm curious what's down there. A basement would make a great storage space, too!"
Jina seemed genuinely pleased about the surprise basement. But for reasons I couldn't fathom, the door appeared to be firmly locked from the other side. Of course, Jina was an awakener with strength that could startle even me, and she simply ripped the lock open with raw force.
CRACK—
The basement door, now thoroughly broken. When she heaved it open, a staircase emerged, blanketed in the kind of dust that spoke of years of abandonment.
"Ugh, what is that smell?"
Jina pinched her nose. Beside her, Oinoi thrust her hand up in the air with a flourish.
"Somehow my heart is pounding as though we've embarked upon a grand adventure, as is the truth of things…! This Oinoi wishes to hurry and discover what lies within the basement, as is the truth of things…!"
"This Coris would rather everyone hurry and eat lunch already, as is what this Coris thinks…! But if everyone is together, then even going hungry would be joyful, as is what this Coris thinks…!"
With lunchtime slipping into early afternoon, we all agreed to head down into the basement together. All except Ha Irae, who trembled and showed unusual resistance.
"I-I don't want to. I'm not going down."
What was that about? Could she be sensing some bad energy down there?
"There's probably tons of cockroaches!"
Well, fair point. Though with Keongkeongi, Kwang-kwangi, and Ang-ang-i around, any cockroaches down there would be evicted from the premises before they could so much as flex a leg.
And so we stepped into the creaking basement. It was roughly the same footprint as the first floor. Some boiler machinery hummed away in a dark corner, ancient cobwebs draped the rafters, and the occasional cockroach carcass glinted on the floor.
There were dead rats, too.
"Guess that's what being near a mountain gets you. Lots of rats. And is that a crow…?"
Rat and crow corpses lay scattered about. Maybe that was why the smell had been so foul when we opened the door. Sweeping my flashlight beam around as I pressed forward, I suddenly froze in shock.
"What is this?"
How to describe it—a shrine? A grotesque, bizarre-looking Buddha statue sat crowded together with a collection of small dolls on a table, alongside half-melted candles that had left smears of soot behind.
"Doesn't that look kind of like that shrine from the gang's military bunker back then?"
I remembered the shrine Illinoi had once demolished in a rampage, screaming, "There is no god more powerful than Zeus, that is how it is…!"
"You think so? It does look similar. But hey, don't all these things kind of look alike anyway?"
Jina scratched her head. Looking closer, I could see traces of incense that had been burned there too—though I never got the chance to examine it properly, because Ha Irae, who'd stayed behind upstairs alone, let out an enormous scream.
"KYAAAAAH!"
"Hey! What's wrong?!"
I sprinted toward her, and Ha Irae shouted:
"A cockroach came out!"
Siii—
Where Ha Irae was pointing, there it was: a jet-black, gleaming cockroach about the size of a thumb! Had it crawled out of the basement?
━Kwang-kwang…!
Just then, Kwang-kwangi stretched his forelegs toward the cockroach. A web-like filament sprayed from his feet and ensnared the insect in an instant. It was a remarkably clean takedown.
Anyway.
That was how our basement expedition ended.
"Hey, everyone—could you spit some water for me?"
I asked the nymphs whether they could use Nymph Secret Art: Ruthless Water Spouting to clean out the basement. The nymphs nodded at my request and opened their mouths.
FWOOOOOSH—!
Under that ferocious torrent, years of grime were stripped off the basement floor in seconds.
CRACK—
The trouble was, in the middle of all that cleaning, the Buddha statue, the dolls, the incense, and the candles got swept up in the water cannon and smashed to pieces!
"Are you serious? Are we about to get hit with some kind of curse here?"
A vague sense of dread crept up my spine. I was the kind of guy who put at least some stock in superstitions and folk remedies—back in my endless days struggling as a D-rank, I'd even drunk talisman-infused water for exactly that reason. So to my eyes, the crumbling shrine looked deeply ominous, kind of like having a honey ant latched onto your back.
━Zzji…!
The nymphs, however, seemed entirely unbothered.
"No god can ever surpass the power of Zeus, god of the nymphs, as is the truth of things…!"
"This Coris thinks the very same thing, as is what this Coris thinks…!"
Nymphs really do fear nothing, huh.
Soon even Barbaru, who'd been watching the scene unfold, wagged her tail left and right.
"This comrade Barbaru, Prime Imp, once served the Demon King himself, that is what it is…! The Demon King is the devil among devils…! No curse in existence can harm Barbaru, that is what it is…!"
Whoosh—
Then, as if drawing in a great breath, Barbaru bellowed:
"Imp Secret Art: Fire-Breathing Blaze of Five Cries…!"
FWOOOOSH—!
I flinched back at the flames erupting from Barbaru's mouth.
"Barbaru, you—! Are you trying to burn the whole house down!?"
It was like staring into an unbroken wall of fire. Such an intense blaze!
"Muh-heh-heh! You'd best not come any closer, that is what it is…! Unless you wish to become ash, that is what it is…! No one can stop Barbaru when she breathes fire, that is what it is…!"
Crackle, crackle—
The Buddha statue and the dolls burned away, leaving behind grotesque smears of soot, until at last they were nothing but black ash.
And that evening—
Everything went wrong.
"Ar-r-r, gar-r-r-r, ar-r-r…!"
"Hieeek…! Kore Jina is crawling around upside down on the ceiling, as is the truth of things…!"
"This Coris has no idea what is happening, as is what this Coris thinks…! And she is making some very strange beast noises, as is what this Coris thinks…!"