079 – Ha Ildo, Tracking the Witch # 1
Crash—!
A woman disguised with Seo Yerim's exact face and identical voice smashed through the window and fled.
I shouted as I watched her go.
"Keong-keong! Kwang-kwang! Chase her!"
Zip—!
At my command, Keong-keongi bolted outside like an arrow loosed from a bow. But out there in the darkness, he and Kwang-kwangi seemed to lose the trail entirely.
━Grrrr…!
Keong-keongi puffed up his fur and glared in every direction. The woman who had been in our house mere moments ago had vanished as though evaporated into these dark rice paddies.
I steadied my pounding heart and knocked on the nymphs' door. Knock knock—. A rustling came from within, followed by the creak of hinges, and Oinoi appeared, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"The master of the house…! This Oinoi wonders what business brings you…!"
"Why hast thou woken the Illinoi…?"
Oinoi and Illinoi looked perfectly fine. I told them what had happened.
"The Seo Yerim who was just here was a fake! Her face and voice were completely identical! But she was fake! I don't know what's going on! How is that even possible? What the hell is she?"
Perhaps because my explanation was so woefully thin, Illinoi and Oinoi didn't seem to grasp the situation. After I rattled on for another five minutes or so, Oinoi finally reacted with a huge start.
"This Oinoi knew nothing of this…!"
"Even the Illinoi was briefly deceived…! A fake…! A Fake Kore…! What a wickedly nymph-phobic act of deception…! I am suing…! Someone call the lawyer right now…!"
It had been a disguise convincing enough to fool even Illinoi, who had been in the same room.
No, wait—.
Could you even call that a disguise? It had been the woman herself, plain and simple!
"Then where's the real Seo Yerim?"
I assumed the real one had to be somewhere. So now that the nymphs were confirmed safe, I headed straight back outside.
Clunk-clunk—.
A noise reached my ears. I popped open the trunk of the electric car—and there was Seo Yerim, bound and stuffed inside.
"A Fake Kore has appeared…! The act of deceiving the Illinoi…! That is absolutely impossible to forgive…! Bloody retribution…! Shall be delivered…! Let's do it…!"
Nymph Secret Technique: Random Beating—.
Illinoi's fists rained down on the bound Seo Yerim.
“This is the revenge of a nymph who has always received an allowance that was far too small…! And this is the share of the Illinoi whose ice cream was stolen after she had saved it to eat all by herself…!”
Doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo—.
After taking a thorough beating, Seo Yerim spat out the gag in her mouth and yelled.
"Hey! What is this?! Why are you hitting me?!"
"Ahh—! That voice is unmistakably the True Kore…! In truth, the Illinoi knew all along…! I believed…!"
It had been chaotic in every possible way, but it seemed certain now that the Seo Yerim from the car trunk was the real one.
What on earth was going on?
For the time being, I untied her restraints. The rope, surprisingly, was just an ordinary rope.
"I can't believe you got tied up with something this plain."
"That's what I want to say! More importantly, where did that woman go? The one who cut my hair and tied me up like this! If I catch her, I swear I'll burn her alive!"
Seo Yerim was fuming, unable to contain herself. The strange thing was that even with her this furious, the surrounding air wasn't growing any hotter.
That was when I truly felt how serious the situation was.
"Keong-keong. Go fetch Ari for me."
Ari was renting a room nearby, enjoying a little vacation. I felt a bit guilty about dragging my vacationing junior out at this late hour.
Maybe five minutes passed?
Ari appeared before me in a light tracksuit.
"Senior. Calling me out at this hour—what's going on?"
"It's urgent."
"Urgent?"
"Look at her."
Swish—.
I showed Yu Ari Seo Yerim with her cropped hair. Yu Ari opened her narrow eyes with a "What on earth—," then quickly seemed to grasp the situation. I explained everything that had just happened.
"You were attacked? By a fake?"
Swish—.
I showed her the CCTV footage as well. The footage clearly captured Seo Yerim's likeness, and even Yu Ari's face stiffened with tension as she watched, visibly startled.
"Even to me, the disguise is seamless—she looks like the same person. Honestly, it doesn't even feel like a disguise. It feels like some kind of magic. How did you figure out she was fake?"
Ari had good instincts. Even to her eyes, this bizarre woman appeared to be Seo Yerim herself.
Then Illinoi suddenly shouted as if she'd realized something.
"Kore Yerim must have had a twin sister…! Otherwise, this situation would be flatly impossible…!"
"……."
"'Twas a joke…!"
Right, sure.
The problem was that Illinoi's words didn't quite sound like a joke.
Yu Ari, still scrubbing back and forth through the CCTV footage, asked me,
"By the way, Senior. How exactly did you spot such a flawless fake?"
"How did I spot it?"
I hadn't known at first, either. But the longer we talked, the more she said things the real Seo Yerim would never say to me. So something like a gut feeling went off.
I decided to be honest.
"She suddenly confessed that she liked me. Think about it. Does it make any sense for Seo Yerim to tell me she likes me? I figured she was either definitely fake or being controlled—one of the two."
"What! What kind of reason is that?!"
At my words, the real Seo Yerim scowled hard. Then Yu Ari, who'd been listening nearby, clapped her hands with a crack and agreed with me.
"Exactly! Yerim told us once, just among us girls, that any man who dated her would have to be at least A-rank for them to even be on the same level! You're still B-rank, Senior, so you wouldn't even register on her radar. The fake must not have known that!"
"Hey, that was ages ago! Not that you're wrong—a man who dates me does have to hit at least A-rank—"
Typical Seo Yerim—even her standards for a partner were as towering as the rest of her.
Anyway.
I knew perfectly well that the magnificent Seo Yerim was not the type to build up a mood and confess her feelings to me—and sure enough, just as I'd predicted, the intruder's true identity was a fake.
That was when the real problem emerged.
"What was the goal? Why go to the trouble of approaching me disguised as Seo Yerim? What was she trying to do?"
If—.
If I hadn't seen through the fake's disguise, what would have happened? I was certain something so dreadful I couldn't even imagine it would have come to pass.
Chilling, honestly.
Night.
We agreed to take Seo Yerim into our protection. This house had Keong-keongi, Kwang-kwangi, and the Honey Ants, so it was reasonably secure.
It felt like déjà vu, honestly.
Pinch—.
Yu Ari gave Seo Yerim's flank a squeeze. Seo Yerim turned her narrow eyes on her and asked coldly,
"What are you doing right now?"
"Just checking whether you're the fake. Setting a second trap isn't exactly difficult. What if you're a fake too, huh?"
"Says the one doing the pinching?"
Yu Ari and Seo Yerim began bickering. Watching them, Oinoi, who had been deliberating for quite a while, finally spoke.
"It seems to this Oinoi that 「magic」 was used…!"
At Oinoi's words, my ears practically perked up.
"Magic? You mean actual magic—not psychic powers or awakener abilities, but the real thing? The kind where you fly around on a broomstick, or turn people into frogs."
The twenty-first century. The age of the 5th Industry. Even in a world where awakeners genuinely existed, "magic" remained essentially the stuff of absurd fantasy.
Because an awakener's powers operated within fairly fixed rules and limits—they couldn't stray beyond them.
Then Oinoi added,
"To deceive animals with keen senses, along with this Oinoi and Illinoi—this is surely the work of a very accomplished mage…! This Oinoi believes it is none other than a fearsome Witch…!"
The Witch—.
At those words, the world seemed to tilt before my eyes. Because the being who had once cursed me had drawn close to me once again.
"But having approached this closely, she can in fact be tracked…! This Oinoi can use the magic of tracking, so long as the materials are provided…!"
She could track the Witch?
Of all the misfortunes that had thrown my day into disarray, this was the one piece of good news.
Witch, you fiend.
The longer the tail, the easier the catch!
Soon Illinoi went muh-heh-heh— and rubbed her palms together.
"Ah, the tracking magic—the Illinoi has heard of it…! It is the magic once used by the Nymphs of the Net, former devotees of the Moon Goddess, when they tracked animals…!"
"Illinoi…! Let us bottle the moonlight in this glass jar…!"
"Verily, a very good thing…!"
Oinoi and Illinoi scurried up to the rooftop to prepare their "tracking magic." I had no idea what bottling moonlight in a glass jar was supposed to mean—.
Seo Yerim, watching the pair with obvious unease, turned to me.
"Hey. That fake didn't go spouting any nonsense, did she? Whatever she said, it was all lies! Don't go thinking any of it came from me!"
Seo Yerim was a celebrity. Someone impersonating her and spreading rumors was clearly making her anxious. I did my best to reassure her.
"It's fine. I didn't believe a word of it either. She probably had no idea what our relationship actually is. Which, honestly, worked in our favor."
"Excuse me? And what exactly is our relationship?"
Seo Yerim's narrow eyes narrowed further. Then Yu Ari, who was taking Seo Yerim's blood pressure with a cuff on her arm, cut in.
"You're nothing to each other. Senior is kind to everyone—my guess is the fake simply 'misunderstood.' You're hardly the only person he treats nicely. Right, Senior?"
Clinkle-clinkle—.
Yu Ari shook a glass jar filled with milk tea.
"For you to give me such a precious gift—anyone who saw it might reasonably wonder, 'Does he like me?' Not that I would ever make that mistake, of course. But Senior. When you show kindness to women, you must remember that misunderstandings may always follow."
I made a mental note to be more careful from now on.
Anyway.
According to Yu Ari, Seo Yerim's condition was not good.
"Her internal mana concentration has dropped to A-rank. We'll need more precise machines to know the details, but… for her internal mana to fall this suddenly—this is just like the time with Lee Jeonghun."
Seo Yerim had, it seemed, been cursed.
At a time when T-Rank Rifts were springing up like bamboo shoots after rain, a curse placed on Seo Yerim amounted to nothing less than a national crisis.
The fate of the nation now rested, quite literally, on the nymphs climbing up to that rooftop!