001 – Nymph Oinoi # 1
It was an unusually cold day.
When I heard that a D-rank rift had opened in the middle of downtown, I grabbed my gear and headed out—only to find myself shivering in weather far worse than I'd bargained for.
"Why is winter these days cold even when you layer up?"
The temperature had dropped past minus ten degrees Celsius. Of all the rotten days for an unplanned Anomaly Rift to tear open.
"If I ever win the lottery, I'm quitting this job."
It was a December day like any other, my muttered complaints vanishing into the pale fog of my breath where no one could hear them.
The rift had opened on a busy downtown street, right where crowds came and went.
"Look at that guy. He's carrying a case the size of a coffin."
"Must be an awakener. Bet there's a weapon in there."
Downtown in December was all flashing lights and noise. Since it was a Saturday evening, most of the people glancing my way were couples on dates.
Must be nice—.
I clicked my tongue at that thought, and before I knew it, I'd arrived at the scene.
Police and riot squad officers, weapons drawn, ringing a shimmering haze of distortion that hovered in midair—it was a sight I'd grown more than used to by now.
"D-rank awakener Ha Ildo. I received the dispatch notice."
I showed my ID and stepped inside the police perimeter. They gave it a cursory glance, then hesitated, lips fluttering like they wanted to say something.
"Ha Ildo, the D-rank awakener… weren't you that guy from back then—?"
…….
A cold sweat crawled down my back.
Because what if they actually recognized me?
Up until about six years ago, I'd been somebody. That fact cinched around my throat like a noose, and I had to fight the urge to squeeze my eyes shut.
But then a huge roar from the crowd swept my worries away.
"Th-that's S-rank Seo Yerim!"
"No way? Good thing we waited by the gate in this freezing weather!"
"This is my first time seeing a celebrity in person!"
Along with the crowd's cheers, someone pushed past the police line. A woman in a black coat, long legs wrapped in black stockings, hair as black as the night sky.
Her small, delicate face was as beautiful as any celebrity's. True beauty overwhelms everything around it—she turned the women walking down the street into so much background scenery.
Her name was Seo Yerim.
One of the rare S-rank awakeners found not only in Korea but anywhere in the world, and a celebrity on top of that.
And I could only gape.
An S-rank hunter dispatched to a measly D-rank Anomaly Rift? While I was busy cranking my head away, the police approached Seo Yerim with a question.
"Ms. Seo Yerim, the S-rank hunter? Your name wasn't on the dispatch roster we received. So, um, what exactly—"
"Hm? I was meeting an acquaintance nearby, and I stopped by since I saw the rift. Looks like an Anomaly Rift popped up out of nowhere. Mind if I join? I'll file the report myself later."
"You'd do that? Then by all means, please! A rift in a packed downtown area—even a D-rank one could put civilians at risk."
The officers' faces lit up in an instant.
Apparently none of them wanted to spend a Christmas weekend shivering in the cold over an unscheduled rift, either.
The crowd welcomed her too.
"With an S-rank hunter on it, the rift's as good as gone, right?"
"How much do you think those people make? A billion won a month is the baseline, surely?"
"Thank god, the road was blocked off and it was a pain!"
An ardent welcome. S-rank hunters were greeted with respect and admiration wherever they went. Turn on the TV or unlock your phone, and there was their face in every other ad.
"…Wait. No way. Ha Ildo?"
Then I heard someone call my name.
Shit—.
And here I'd been deliberately turning my head, pretending not to know anyone.
"Hey, Ha Ildo. It's been a while?"
Click, clack—.
I could feel the sound of high heels drawing closer to me. When I reluctantly turned, a pair of rather fierce eyes were staring straight at me.
"Still working in this business, huh? D-rank?"
"Well. Yeah."
I answered as flatly as I could, but inside I wanted a rat hole to crawl into. Seo Yerim had been the F-rank junior back when I had first made it to D-rank.
Senior and junior. That relationship had since been split apart into sky and dust, a star and a speck of dirt—so of course I was embarrassed. Just as I was mulling over what a nightmare the whole thing was, Seo Yerim looked away from me.
Had she finally lost interest in a dime-a-dozen D-rank nobody?
"Then from this point, I'll be commanding the 'N-52' site. All personnel, we'll enter with prepared participants first. Breach—"
Whoooom—.
S-rank hunter Seo Yerim hurled herself into the trembling rift. The crowd filtered in behind her one by one, and I threw myself in last of all.
"Good grief. S-rank or not, a D-rank rift cleared in under five minutes…?"
"Bashkir bees the size of oxen, and they turned to charcoal with one flick of her hand?"
"…I honestly don't know if we should take today's pay. We didn't do anything."
Anomaly Rift N-52 was cleared in less than five minutes. A D-rank squad alone would have needed two hours at minimum.
Despite facing over a hundred giant honeybees single-handedly, S-rank hunter Seo Yerim wasn't even out of breath. She simply looked down at the Queen Bee, master of the rift, through narrowed eyes.
Then she spoke to me.
"Hey, Ha Ildo. Extract the core."
"…Why me? Harvesting is F-rank work—"
"Extract it."
The gap between S-rank and D-rank was roughly the distance between a legion commander and a freshly commissioned second lieutenant. So, just as she ordered, I picked through the charred corpse of the Queen Bee and pried out the round mana stone. There was no helping it.
My hands came away smeared with sticky ichor and ash, but how was I supposed to voice a complaint? Not that I wasn't pissed. Harvesting was supposed to be the job of the F-ranks who'd come along.
Strict, demanding woman. Why is she always so desperate to chew me up specifically? It had been like this before, too. Back in her F-rank days, she'd once gotten caught trash-talking me to the other women on the team.
Remembering it made me angrier still.
Crunch, crackle—.
I was hacking through the Queen Bee's scorched carapace with my harvesting knife when it happened.
Splaaash—.
I must have put too much force into it, because ichor burst out in a way I never saw coming—and splattered across the shoes of Seo Yerim, who was standing nearby. Those glossy red shoes, so luminous I half expected to see my own reflection in them, were filthy in an instant.
…I was so fucked.
"Hey."
Could a single word send a man's heart plummeting into his stomach?
It could.
"Do you have any idea how much these cost?"
"…How much?"
Sensing that I was about to be billed, the world tilted before my eyes. My rent was already overdue, and now I had to pay for property damage too?
Shoes worn by an S-rank hunter with money to burn—of course they'd be some astronomical luxury brand. And when Seo Yerim actually told me the price, I genuinely thought I was going to black out.
"And you still can't manage a single harvest properly. Idiot."
Swish, swish—.
Seo Yerim waved her hand casually through the air. When the black shoes emerged from her Void Pocket, she kicked off the red pair she'd been wearing and flung the soiled ones at my chest.
"Take those, buy an identical pair, and you pay me back. Got it? Give me your number. Try going radio silent or running away like last time, and see what happens."
Snatch—!
With strength no one would ever expect from a woman, Seo Yerim ripped the phone right out of my hand. She punched in her number, then shoved the phone back at me like she was discarding trash.
I nearly burst into tears.
That was the last conversation Seo Yerim and I ever had.
The standby police wrapped up the scene with practiced ease, and the crowd melted away into the happy shimmer of Christmas.
Me?
I clutched a pair of worn-out women's shoes and trudged down the freezing street.
"Goddammit!"
I was in a foul mood.
How could anyone have luck this rotten? Who walks around spending that much on shoes, of all things?
"…Dammit."
My steps home felt heavier than ever.
How was I supposed to repay shoes worth over ten million won? That was a lump sum only a lottery win could produce. Or maybe some stupendous stroke of fortune would find its way to me…
Just as I was heading toward my one-room apartment—
Rustle, rustle—.
I spotted something rummaging through the recycling bags near Daehangno. At first I took the small figure for a grandmother collecting scrap paper.
It wasn't.
Because scrap-collecting grandmothers actually dress warmly.
This thing was wearing nothing but a ragged, oversized T-shirt. Its arms and legs were bare, and its feet were completely uncovered—so blue with cold that frostbite couldn't be far off.
"Hachoo!"
It even sneezed.
I was so stunned by the bizarre scene that no words would come. Then the creature seemed to sense my presence and looked up at me.
A bob of hair down to the shoulders, a pale honey color. The eyes matched.
Twelve years old, maybe?
The strange thing was the triangular ears poking up through that hair, sharply pointed. This was, by any stretch, not the face of a twenty-first-century Korean.
Thankfully, I'm no idiot, and ten years as an awakener had left me with plenty of knowledge to draw on.
"You wouldn't happen to be a demi-human? An elf?"
Pointy-eared demi-humans were elves.
There were about a hundred living in Korea, so I knew them well. Every last elf was at least a C-rank awakener in ability, which earned them treatment as premium naturalized citizens. They were even contributing to Korea's fight against its collapsing birth rate, after all.
Was this a young elf, then?
I'd never seen a child elf before. Could she be some drifter who'd gotten caught up when the N-52 Anomaly Rift opened?
While I was turning all this over, the freezing, raggedly dressed little thing shook her head.
"…Mheheh. This Oinoi is not some long-eared fairy like an elf, but a nymph with a short and splendid triangular ear, that is what it is…! Far more distinguished, that is…! However, this Oinoi is terribly hungry and terribly cold, that is also what it is…."
"Triangular-eared… nymph?"
Even for me—a perpetual D-rank, but a ten-year veteran awakener nonetheless—the word was unfamiliar.
Another string of the unexpected washed my mind black, but I had a pretty good idea what I needed to do.
I held out the red shoes to the barefoot nymph Oi-whatsit and said,
"…Want to put these on for now?"