Nymph Oinoi #7
Everyone has heard a version of this speech at least once in their life.
Time never lies—.
You get back exactly what you put in—.
But in my opinion, all of that was a lie.
Effort lies too.
However hard a rabbit flapped its front legs, it was never going to soar like a crane. However long a water deer held its breath, it was never going to breathe underwater like a mackerel.
Some things simply could not be done, no matter how hard you tried.
That was the bitter truth I had spent the last ten years learning the hard way.
And yet the world kept lying to people anyway.
"Work hard enough and anything is possible," it said.
Because otherwise, all the water deer and rabbits out there wouldn't have the strength to drag themselves through another day.
Because otherwise, they'd never dare to think, maybe I could be the main character of my own story.
I'd been one of them.
Maybe I could climb past D-Rank—I trained until my bones ached, forced down every health food trend, hiked mountains rumored to be spiritually potent, prayed at temples and sat through church services alike, raising a general ruckus in my desperation.
Someone might say,
"Hey, even a D-Rank hunter isn't going to starve to death. Why not just be satisfied with that?" And believe me, I heard that one a lot.
But no.
This was the one thing I wanted to be good at. The one thing I wanted to be recognized for.
How sad is it, really, to have no talent for the thing you genuinely love? In that sense, the Seo Yerim I knew was a lot like me.
This was back when I had just made D-Rank and Seo Yerim was still F-Rank.
I'd been genuinely surprised to discover she was a hard worker, unlike what her image suggested. For the record, I held a prejudice about beautiful people back then—
The assumption that the pretty and the handsome never bothered with effort and simply coasted through life on their good looks.
But Seo Yerim never once complained, silently grinding through the butchering of repulsive 「Rock Crabs」 and 「Rot Snails」 one after another.
Even when the male F-Rank awakeners tried to curry favor—"Yerim, I'll take this one. Go rest over there."—she calmly turned every one of them down.
She had passion.
Which was, I suppose, how she climbed all the way to S-Rank. It sounds laughable coming from a bottom-tier D-Ranker like me, but S-Rank wasn't a height you reached on talent and luck alone.
Someone will say,
She made it to S-Rank, so what more could she possibly want?
But Seo Yerim was ranked 29th among S-Ranks.
The tip of the dragon's tail, so to speak.
And knowing her temperament from back in the day, there was no way in hell she could ever be satisfied with that.
She'd be anxious.
The more S-Rank awakeners appeared, the further down the rankings she slipped.
Nobody understood the feeling of being overtaken by latecomers better than I did.
So of course she'd take the bait.
"I know a way to raise your power."
Seo Yerim's expression changed in an instant.
But only for a moment.
"Is that so?"
It was a calm, level query, but there wasn't a shred of trust in it. Naturally. A bottom-tier D-Ranker claiming to know how to boost someone's power? Hilarious.
If a method like that actually existed, I'd have broken through to C-Rank ages ago.
Here came the crucial point.
"Seo Yerim, as you know, I've been stuck in D-Rank a long time. Maybe I'll be stuck there forever. But I hated it. I tried every single method out there—believe me."
"……"
Seo Yerim's face shifted into an expression that said, go on.
She hadn't thrown me out on the spot.
Just hearing me out already counted as more than fifty percent of the way there.
Cheering silently on the inside, I added a few more words.
"You know this already, right? The first C-Rank awakeners were born through elven training. The elves who drifted over back then taught humanity how to handle mana. It was knowledge from an entirely different world."
The criterion for reaching D-Rank had been simply sensing mana.
By sensing it, you could modestly reinforce your body.
But one day elves began drifting into our world, and as they wove themselves into society, the very concept of mana changed.
Mana wasn't something you simply let soak into your body—it was a tool to be wielded. And from that idea was born the next generation of awakeners, called 「Mana Users」.
Known today as C-Rank. And as far as I remembered, Seo Yerim had been among the names of that next generation.
Which meant she already understood exactly where I was going with this.
"And that nymph could be the one to lead me into a new realm?"
"Exactly. Right, Oinoi?"
"This Oinoi does not understand what is being discussed, but in any case, that is indeed so…! More importantly, this 'water purifier' is an exceedingly wondrous thing…! Clear ditch water comes gushing forth, gush-gush…!"
Oinoi had become thoroughly engrossed in dispensing water from the purifier. Seo Yerim watched her, still narrowing her brow in distrust.
I decided to play the ball before Oinoi could say anything else useless.
"Anyway. To break through into a new realm, you need to stimulate the Baekhoe acupoint. You know the one? It sits right at the crown of your head."
The Baekhoe point was a magical acupoint that supposedly resolved everything related to the head and mind—headaches, high blood pressure, dizziness, nervous exhaustion.
Among awakeners deep into traditional medicine, it was also known as the acupoint of the 「Mind's Eye」. Something about a hidden third eye buried in the crown of the head, allegedly.
Did it actually work?
No idea.
It certainly hadn't done anything for me.
But what mattered was that the Baekhoe point was located at the crown of the head.
"First, I'll apply pressure to it for you."
I stepped toward Seo Yerim where she sat on the sofa. I braced for a "Don't touch me!"—but mercifully, she sat still and quiet like an obedient patient.
More docile than expected.
Before she could change her mind, I hurried around behind the sofa and looked down at the crown of Seo Yerim's head, where jet-black, silky hair gathered in a clean, orderly whorl.
When I pressed it with my thumb, I couldn't help but startle.
The crown of her head was hot—far hotter than it had any right to be.
How did anyone have this much heat coming off their scalp?
Anyway.
I tested the waters, angling to pluck a single strand of hair.
And there, among all the black strands, I spotted one that glittered with a distinctly red sheen. It looked like the leader of the whole mane.
If one were to harvest a hair for use as a mystical magical ingredient, this one looked more than equal to the task.
Pop—.
"Ah."
"No, it's just—you had a white hair."
"……"
As Seo Yerim shot me a sideways glare, I swiftly tucked the strand into my pocket. Now all that remained was to spout some nonsense, make my excuses, and go home.
I decided to improvise.
"Seo Yerim, I've said this since your F-Rank days—you think too much, and it's what's holding you back. Too much thought is a curse that winds around a person and strangles them."
"……"
"Sometimes it's better to keep things simple. Try focusing on one single thing, as hard as you can. Like this acupoint at the very top of your head."
"This Oinoi likes this 'water purifier' far more than the crown of anyone's head…! This Oinoi wishes to save up money and purchase one of these water purifiers without fail…! They say the water comes out infinitely…!"
Swoosh swoosh—.
I gestured at Oinoi with my hand.
Time to go home.
I'd gotten the hair, so I needed to bolt before anything could be pinned on me!
What on earth was that? So what was the nymph training method, in the end?
Seo Yerim scowled as she surveyed the office, quiet again now that her bizarre visitor had slipped out the door. The guest had arrived without warning, and departed the same way.
"…A lifetime D-Ranker, lecturing me."
She replayed the memory of Ha Ildo presuming to give her advice. How many people in this world were even qualified to instruct an S-Rank like her?
However many there were, D-Rank hunter Ha Ildo was not one of them.
And yet, his story had sounded remarkably plausible.
Ha Ildo had been stuck in D-Rank for years upon years.
He would have felt the wall, and tried harder than anyone to climb over it.
"Hmph. Still pulling seniority on me, is he?"
Seo Yerim recalled the times Ha Ildo had instructed her in the past—how to fell magical beasts and process their byproducts, how to handle F-Rank monsters.
Looking back, his teaching had a surprisingly high hit rate and cut straight to the point. You could call his knack for it good.
Nothing to lose and everything to gain, anyway.
"Focus on one single thing, he says."
Seo Yerim's meditation was supposed to be a journey toward emptiness—a wiping away of all stray thought.
But it never went well; random, scattered thoughts sprang up without end. All that thinking truly did gnaw at her like a curse.
So this time, instead of trying to erase her thoughts, she tried concentrating on the crown of her head. By thinking of one thing alone, the branches would be pruned away on their own.
"The crown of my head…"
Focusing there was easy.
The strange warmth of Ha Ildo's hand still lingered on her scalp like a phantom touch.
Never expected him to fix my shoes, of all things.
The red heels had been the first luxury item Seo Yerim ever bought with her own money. A meaningful possession in more ways than one—a treasured thing—and it had made her furious when it got filthy.
Which was exactly why she'd preferred having the original cleaned and restored rather than simply buying a new pair.
When he showed up with that little girl in tow, I couldn't imagine what he was playing at. A nymph, was it? A nonhuman? Living with him, apparently? Surely nothing would come of it…
Sssss—.
The mana flowing through her body began gathering toward a single point. She could feel her body temperature climbing in an instant. Startled by the heat condensing at such ferocious speed, Seo Yerim panicked—
And at the same time, she felt something, intuitively.
"If it's now…"
Seo Yerim extended her index finger toward the window.
Single-point concentration.
Not flames fanning out in every direction, but the distilled essence of fire, held at her fingertips.
And at last, together with her will, it discharged.
Fweeeooosh—!
The heat that had gathered within Seo Yerim tore through the air like a bullet and shattered the glass window.
Simultaneously, the fire-suppression system detected the extreme heat and kicked into gear, drenching the building's interior with a torrential downpour.
Shaaaaaa—.
Once again, Seo Yerim was left looking like a drowned rat.
Every garment she'd been wearing had burned away—even her inner suit had been reduced to ash from the waist up on one side.
Wasn't that suit specially engineered to withstand fifteen hundred degrees?
There was only one conclusion to draw.
"…The temperature went up! And this time it didn't even go berserk!"
The awakener social media scene had been abuzz since morning.
Mostly about Seo Yerim.
Reading that Seo Yerim had developed a new technique and cleared a massive rift, I furrowed my brow. An already overwhelming S-Rank hunter getting even stronger?
Seriously, what a profoundly unfair world. Just as the bottom had a deeper bottom beneath it, the top apparently had a higher top above it.
"No way…"
A part of me briefly wondered whether that sloppy 「Nymph Training Method」 I'd rattled off to her the other day had actually worked—but I dismissed the thought almost immediately.
Imagine a national team footballer improving because of advice from some peewee league coach. Ridiculous.
She must have had a finishing move in the planning stages all along. Signature techniques matter enormously to hunters, in all sorts of ways.
And at the S-Rank level, unveiling a new technique probably calls for all kinds of dramatic staging, too. She was practically a celebrity, after all.
"So, Oinoi. How's it looking? Think we can actually catch that, what was it, dog-squirrel?"
I was out on a walk with Oinoi in the park.
It was a park ringed by a small mountain, known as a spot where squirrels often made appearances.
Oinoi insisted we had to capture this 'dog-squirrel,' but I had absolutely no idea what a 'dog-squirrel' even was.
Come to think of it, was this curse of Seo Yerim's even real?
When I'd used the word 'curse' to her face, her expression hadn't changed one bit.
Oinoi, dressed in her red tracksuit, spoke up.
"A dog-squirrel is called a dog-squirrel because it barks bow-wow like a dog…! It is exceedingly small and adorable…! But it is fiercer and wilder than one would expect, and so it rarely shows itself to people…!"
"A squirrel that barks like a dog?"
The rifts that opened from time to time were home to every imaginable magical beast.
Some even boasted strange vegetation that could never be found on Earth.
By the look of it, this 'dog-squirrel' Oinoi spoke of was one of those Earth-defying special species.
For the record, animals that escaped out of rifts sometimes sold to hobbyists or at market for absolutely staggering prices.
It was famous lore that a 「White Three-Headed Snake」 found by some herb gatherer had gone for three hundred million won.
And so everyone and their grandmother combed mountains and fields with fire in their eyes, hunting for creatures like these.
Were two of us really going to stumble across a beast that rare?
"Will wandering around aimlessly like this actually find us anything?"
"Muhhehe. This Oinoi…! Is a nymph who knows how to repay her debts…! Do not worry yourself, house-master…! By my eye, this spot is just right…!"
What was just right, exactly?
Just as I was puzzling over it, Oinoi cleared her throat—ahem-ahem—and said:
"Ditch, ditch, ditch water~, little ditch water. Brook, brook, brook water~, clear brook water. Squir-rel, squir-rel, squirrel~, little squirrel~. Little animal friends~."
To be precise, she wasn't speaking. She was singing.
What on earth was this bizarre song?
Rustle—.
Just then, something emerged from between the bushes.
It was a squirrel, striking for its brown fur marked with black stripes.
"Wow, that is genuinely adorable."
━Bow-wow!