019 – Old Rookie Ha Ildo and the Strange Animals # 1
“I've fixed the plumbing and the heating. I also got the internet installed, and there's waterproof paint on the roof and—”
Seo Yerim went through the whole list while standing in the wide yard. Mostly, it boiled down to the fact that the Well House had been repaired and renovated from top to bottom.
With Telos corporate money poured into it, the building that had once been branded a haunted house was now a far sight easier on the eyes. The fence and the exterior walls had gotten a fresh coat of paint, and it looked so much like a brand-new home that it was honestly impressive.
“This Oinoi has never seen such a pretty house before…! It truly sparkles like a tiny castle…! Surely no nymph in all the world has ever lived in a house this beautiful…!”
Oinoi scampered right up to the rooftop and shouted down at the yard from above. Apparently, moving from her cramped studio apartment into a real new home had put her in extremely high spirits.
Come to think of it, I used to feel exactly the same way whenever we moved into a new place as a kid. I'd check which room was mine, scout out the nearest convenience store and PC bang, and figure out whether any kids my age lived in the neighboring houses.
I was lost in those memories when Seo Yerim peered down into the well and added, “Also, the field agents will stop by now and then to take water samples from the well. Cooperate with them whenever you reasonably can. And if anything else comes to mind, I'll contact you as I think of it, so reply right away. Got it?”
Maybe it came with being the landlady, but the nitpicks just kept coming.
So this is the hardship of renting, huh?
“The compensation for closing the anomaly rift inside the well will be deposited into your account soon. Consider that settled.”
“Sounds good to me.”
A fresh surge of motivation to go out and earn some serious money welled up inside me.
One day I'd make enough to buy a place of my own. That was a promise to myself.
“So then, who's this gentleman over here?” Seo Yerim asked.
The old man who'd been circling around us for the past few minutes had apparently gotten on her nerves.
“He's the village chief around here.”
“How do you do. My name is Park Isu—I used to work as a professor at University A. I retired some time ago, but everyone around here just calls me Professor Park.”
The village chief was a curious man who loved sticking his nose into things, and honestly, who could blame him? A major corporation had bought up the local haunted house and was running all kinds of construction on it. He'd grilled me out of nowhere when we first met, and true to form, he was now showing the same curiosity toward Seo Yerim.
“Miss, you're a celebrity, aren't you? I'm pretty sure I've seen you all over the TV. Weren't you in that water purifier commercial?”
Unlike with me—whom he'd spoken down to on first meeting—he used polite speech with Seo Yerim. Perhaps the aura of someone who modeled and starred on screen made it hard to treat her casually.
Before long, Seo Yerim said, “Ha Ildo, I'll give you the money, so buy some rice cakes and hand them out to the neighbors. And don't forget that while you're staying here, you're the face of Telos.”
Then she pulled out her wallet and drew two one-million-won checks with a flick of the wrist—chunk, chunk—and the sheer swagger of it was something to behold.
With that kind of money, I could buy the rice cakes and still have plenty left over to make a little on the side, couldn't I?
As I was thinking that, she added, “Use the rest to buy Oinoi some clothes. Every time I look at her, she's wearing those filthy rags of a tracksuit. You do know that taking custody of a drifter means you're responsible for food, clothing, and shelter, right?”
Nag, nag, nag. That's all she did.
The F-rank awakener who'd once learned everything from me had now fully transformed into my boss. Life really is impossible to predict.
Driiing—.
Just then, a phone rang.
It wasn't mine.
Seo Yerim said, “One moment,” answered the call, and immediately her face crumpled. “A T-rank rift? No, the T-rank rift over in Gyeonggi Province was supposed to be handled by Lee Jeonghun. I told you in advance that today was my day off. Ah. Ahh, yes. Understood.”
From the look of it, someone had flaked on their schedule, and now she was stuck working on her day off.
Seo Yerim cursed under her breath in pure frustration. “Ugh, damn it.”
Perhaps because of her anger, the light dusting of snow that had drifted down over the yard the night before melted away in an instant. Before long, Ahn Yeongeun—Seo Yerim's secretary-cum-manager—came sprinting over in her black business suit, all in a fluster.
“Yerim! The supervisor just called! There's a rift in Yongin—”
“I know. Let's go.”
“Right, I'll drive!”
And with that, Seo Yerim was whisked away in the car driven by her secretary and manager, gone in a blink.
I hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but hearing S-rank awakener Lee Jeonghun's name come up in that phone call gnawed at me more than a little.
So Lee Jeonghun was the one who'd botched his schedule, was he?
Could it be connected to whatever happened when he met with Yu Ari?
I picked up my phone. Checking my thread with Yu Ari, there had been no reply since the message I'd sent: “Made it home safe. Don't know what that was all about, but I hope it worked out.”
“The 1 next to my message is gone, so she must have read it at least.”
So I'd just been left on read?
And here everyone always said women spent all day glued to their phones. It reminded me of that D-rank woman back in the rift who hadn't let go of her phone even while getting injured. For a message from me to go unanswered by someone like that…
Just as I was spiraling into that thought, a new message flew in.
“……!”
I flinched.
Naturally—I'd never imagined that the person herself would send a new message while I was literally staring at our chat window.
That's right. The messaging app Telos had made, TelTalk, kept a little number “1” next to your message until the other person read it—and since it had vanished the very moment a new message arrived, I somehow felt a bit embarrassed.
A housewarming party, huh.
I'd never thrown one in my life, so the word felt strangely foreign to me. I heard the popular social butterflies do that sort of thing—move in, invite all their friends over, throw a housewarming, the works.
I think I'd seen it on some variety show where celebrities showed off their luxurious single lifestyles. I lived alone too, on my own rent money, but watching celebrities sip wine and gaze out at the Han River nightscape while I drank flat, room-temperature cola from a personal-training gym bottle just made the sense of deprivation sting too much, so I stopped watching those shows.
“But hey—now I can be one of those people too.”
“Mwahahaha, this Oinoi has planted the Marmelo seed safely in the garden…! Now all that remains is to water it, and a tree shall surely sprout and bear Marmelo fruit in due time…!”
Oinoi had planted the seed that Grebnoi had guarded for so long in the Well House's yard.
For a moment, thoughts of soil quality, environment, and climate suitable for growing the seed floated through my head, and I found myself wondering if it would really grow well—but Oinoi thrust her broad chest forward with total confidence.
“This Oinoi is a nymph, a being of nature itself…! When it comes to tending and nurturing trees, I know better than anyone…! This soil is without doubt well suited for a Marmelo…!”
Come to think of it, she had a point.
Nymphs were a fairy folk, cousins to the elves. If the elves who'd naturalized in Korea showed such brilliant talent for horticulture, then their fairy kin the nymphs were surely every bit as good at raising vegetables, flowers, and trees.
Worrying over it had been a waste of energy.
“The Marmelo is a plant shaped like an apple, gleaming with a golden light…! It even carries the grand nickname of the Golden Apple…! Its taste is… utterly terrible… but… in any case, it is very good for the body…!”
The Golden Apple.
At that name, even my ears perked up.
I hoped it would grow quickly.
Of course, the apple wasn't the only thing that needed to sprout right now.
My own abilities had to grow up strong and healthy too.
“Keongkeongi, come here for a sec.”
I called out to Keongkeongi, who was darting around the garden chasing bugs. He glared at me with a low growl—━krurung…!
Dog-squirrels were far more independent than you'd expect. By nature, they were supposedly creatures that could never be tamed at all.
Keongkeongi was no exception.
“I'll give you a peanut.”
Whoosh—.
I pulled an expensive macadamia nut from my pocket, and Keongkeongi immediately scampered up onto my palm and took the nut in both paws.
━Keongkeong…!
“There, there. Good boy.”
Whoosh whoosh—.
I stroked his fur gently with my palm, and for a moment, the little guy's brown coat gleamed even brighter under the mana flowing from my hand.
“Keongkeong, attack!”
━Keongkeong…!
The squirrel shot off my palm like a bullet, slammed into a small rock sitting in the yard, and smashed it clean to pieces—crack!
“Whoa, that's some serious firepower!”
At that level, I figured it was comparable to the Railgun that C-rank awakeners were known to use. I only knew this because I'd watched tons of MeTube videos of C-rank weapon performance tests—I'd always dreamed that someday, when I made C-rank myself, I'd buy gear like that.
“With firepower like that, we could probably take on C-rank rift commissions….”
How much was the bounty for clearing a C-rank rift again? If I remembered right, C-rank pay was where an extra zero got tacked on. I pulled out my phone and searched, and there were stories claiming a single rift subjugation paid one million won.
“Average time to clear a C-rank subjugation is three days. Work nonstop for a month and that's about ten jobs… so the monthly income would be roughly….”
Ten million a month.
That was a staggering sum.
That meant an annual salary north of a hundred million, didn't it?
My back was already starting to itch with ambition.
“Oinoi, want to head into town with me? I need to buy rice cakes to hand out to the neighbors, and I'm getting you some new clothes.”
“This Oinoi is in the midst of a prayer for the growth of the Marmelo seed…! And during a prayer, one must devote oneself to a single purpose, and nothing else…! Go into town alone, master of the house…!”
A prayer, of all things.
Looking closer, Oinoi was indeed circling round and round the spot in the yard where the seed was planted. It looked for all the world like she was dancing.
“Angangi, you stay with Oinoi.”
━Jijeu.
I'd take that as a yes.
I went into town, bought the rice cakes, and spent what was left on a new tracksuit for Oinoi—a yellow outfit modeled after Bruce Lee's, which I figured would suit her honey-colored hair nicely.
Shopping bags in both hands, I next headed for the public government office. I needed to submit the paperwork confirming my C-rank certification and pick up work commensurate with it. Honestly, this was the whole point of coming into town.
“Mr. Ha Ildo, correct?”
A woman in her early thirties, glasses on, looked at me with patent indifference. She glanced over the forms I'd filled out, then asked, “About the list of equipment you're declaring. You'll need to enter the exact product names. Every so often someone writes in nicknames like ‘Excalibur’ for their high-frequency blade.”
Ah, I'd seen that plenty of times myself. People who arbitrarily renamed their weapons on official documents.
“You can only be assigned commissions if the names are accurate.”
That was fair enough. Team leaders putting together rift-clearing squads needed a precise picture of everyone's capabilities, which meant equipment and skills had to be listed exactly. Fudge the paperwork or write something weird, and you were the one who lost out.
I had years of experience and plenty of time as a team leader under my belt, so of course I knew this—and I could say it with pride.
“I wrote everything down exactly as it is.”
“…You're telling me the name of your weapon equipment is genuinely ‘Dog-Squirrel’? Which manufacturer makes that? Is it a bladed weapon? A firearm?”
“Keongkeong, come out here for a moment.”
Whoosh—.
Keongkeongi, who'd been sitting quietly in my pocket, scrambled up and stood on the table.
━Keongkeong…!
“Wh-what is this?! You brought an animal inside a government office…?!”
The civil servant's already indifferent expression turned positively prickly. Was this what the drill instructors' faces looked like back when a recruit smuggled in the hamster he'd been raising at boot camp?
I declared, proud and confident:
“Well then—let me show you directly. The testing range in the back is available for use, right?”