We've Gained a New Family! #1
"I don't specialize in animals, so I can't say for sure… but they don't look like serious injuries. I've disinfected the wounds and stitched up the worst of them."
Wheew—.
Ari was breathing hard, as if the whole ordeal had taken a lot out of her.
Kalinoi, the enormous Tiger Owl, lay sprawled across Oinoi's bed, letting out steady hoots—hoo, hoo—as she drifted off to sleep. Until just moments ago she'd been thrashing about and flapping her wings in distress, but it seemed the anesthetic Ari had specially prepared was doing its job.
"There's a large wound on her left wing. It's hard to say for certain until more time passes, but she may not be able to fly for extended periods for a while."
According to Ari's diagnosis, Kalinoi had crashed and flown, crashed and flown again and again before finally making it to our house. With a deep gash in her wing and something apparently chasing her, the repeated cycle of falling and flying had left her body riddled with wounds.
"But how did her wing get hurt in the first place?"
She should have been with Cha Yura, after all.
Kalinoi couldn't speak—she could only hoot, hoo hoo—so I'd sent Cha Yura a message. When she replied, she'd presumably tell me what had happened.
"So that owl is a nymph like Oinoi? That's amazing."
Ari murmured in quiet awe as she looked at the owl sleeping under the covers.
Before long, Oinoi, Illinoi, and Coris crept up to the owl Kalinoi and began stroking her body with their little palms—swish, swish.
"Hurry and get well, that is what Oinoi says…!"
"This Illinoi is a Nymph of Medicine, you see…! Making a recovery potion is totally possible, that is a fact…! If there is a side effect, it would be that you feel very high, that is a fact…!"
"This Coris hopes Kalinoi gets healthy soon and carries Coris on her back so they can fly through the sky and touch the clouds, that is what this Coris says…!"
Swish, swish, swish—.
Had the nymphs' stroking actually worked?
Hnnh, hnnh—.
Kalinoi's breathing, which had been ragged and labored—hoo hoo, hoo hoo—began to steady, if only a little.
Click, click—.
Just then, I heard someone opening our front door.
The person punching in the code and letting herself in was Seo Yerim.
"You caught the culprit? Where are they! The nerve—cutting my hair, then having the audacity to pretend to be me and feed Ildo all that nonsense!"
Apparently, the moment she heard Kalinoi had been captured, Yerim had wrapped up whatever she was doing and come straight over.
She took one look at the enormous owl lying on the bed and shouted.
"So it was you! Caught red-handed, you wretch! How dare you lay a feather on my head—"
"Shh. She needs to rest right now."
Whoosh—.
Ari grabbed Yerim's arm and pulled her back. She didn't want the owl Kalinoi waking up. A very doctorly judgment, that.
Yak yak yak, yakety yak.
Chatter chatter, the whole story from beginning to end.
I walked Yerim through every last detail of what had happened. As she listened, she would now and then glance at the enormous owl sleeping in the bedroom and furrow her brow. Perhaps it struck her as strange that the creature who'd attacked her was now lying there looking like it had been attacked by someone else in turn.
"What the heck. I'm the victim here, but the second I press her about it, I feel like the perpetrator. Tch."
Yerim seemed to decide that, for now, she'd hold off on browbeating the injured, collapsed Kalinoi.
I held out to her the golden feather Kalinoi had given me—a token of reconciliation.
Here—.
"She said to give this to you."
"What's this? A golden feather?"
Swipe—.
Yerim took the feather in her hand. Even without any explanation from me, her expression turned serious in an instant.
"Whoa. This is actually…."
Every awakener's mana had its own distinct character. Each person had materials that suited their magic, foods that suited it, tools that suited it.
Yerim seemed to feel it in her very bones that the golden feather of a Tiger Owl was a tremendously fine material.
Shff—.
She slipped the feather carefully into a designer handbag whose price I couldn't even begin to guess.
Then Yerim spoke.
"Fine. If she reflected on what she did and even brought a peace offering, I suppose I can forgive her. Whether the justice system will forgive her is another question entirely."
"Is Kore Yerim planning to call lawyers to this place, that is what Illinoi asks…? As expected, the legal teams of the industry are strong, that is a fact…!"
Illinoi asked.
Yerim narrowed her eyes and shook her head.
"No. Putting an owl on trial would be ridiculous. You can't put an animal in a courtroom to begin with. This one really is a nymph, like Illinoi said, right?"
That's right.
Kalinoi was a nymph.
And a nymph so enormous that you could actually call her 'big sister'!
Everyone would be floored when they saw her, no doubt about it.
Time passed in that fashion, and it was around midnight when the sleeping Tiger Owl Kalinoi stirred and raised her body.
—Hoo hoo—.
Had Ari's skills as a doctor done the trick?
Had the potion Illinoi brewed helped?
Or had the nymphs' heartfelt petting been the effective thing?
Kalinoi quickly recovered her strength and spread her wings.
Whoosh—.
—Hoo hoo…!
Kalinoi hooted like an owl.
I said to her, "Are you awake?"
—Hoo, hoo…!
Hoo hoo, she said.
What did that mean?
I tilted my head at the incomprehensible cry. Then Illinoi, who'd been watching the whole exchange, nodded as if something had just clicked.
"So that is how it is, that is a fact…!"
"How what is? Illinoi, do you know what's going on?"
"This Illinoi does not know, that is a fact…! It is truly no-thing, that is a fact…!"
Right.
Even the nymphs couldn't understand the language of Kalinoi's hoo-hoo hooting.
Then Coris gave a shudder.
"This Coris heard that Callisto, the nymph who lived in the Moon Forest, was struck by a terrifying curse and transformed into a bear, that is what she says…! It seems this situation is something like that, that is what Coris says…!"
According to Coris, Callisto had been an Animal Nymph capable of turning into a bear. A very special nymph, one who'd received courtship from many men.
For a moment it did strike me as odd that nymphs like Oinoi, Coris, and Illinoi would have had suitors—but then, picturing the enormous nymph Kalinoi, I figured her big sister Callisto must have been an equally enormous nymph, so no problems there, I supposed.
Coris shivered as she went on.
"But one day, Callisto turned into a bear and was never able to return to her nymph form again, that is what this Coris heard…! She truly became a ferocious bear, nothing more, that is what she says…!"
A nymph who could become a bear.
But she'd transformed into a real bear, turned ferocious, and after running rampant she was slain at the hands of heroes and became a constellation—that was Callisto's story.
Yerim rubbed her drowsy eyes and scowled.
"That's a bit different from the nymph Callisto stories on the internet. Well, I mean, I already accepted that this nymphs' world isn't quite the same as the one in the myths after watching Illinoi, but still."
True.
The nymphs' world resembled Greek mythology, but it wasn't an exact copy. There were little differences here and there.
Anyway.
The state of the nymph Callisto, who'd one day transformed into a genuinely ferocious bear, and the state of Kalinoi, who could now only hoot hoo like a genuine Tiger Owl.
The way I saw it, the two were connected.
"Could it be some kind of curse?"
I asked. Oinoi, who'd been listening intently all this while, nodded.
"This Oinoi also thinks it is some kind of curse, that is what she thinks…! But it is a curse so powerful that even this Oinoi has no way of undoing it, that is the case…!"
A curse even Oinoi couldn't lift.
Kalinoi was, in every sense, the key itself—someone who could get close to the being known as 'the Witch.' And she was someone who could testify about this and that, too.
And that someone had been cursed into becoming an owl, plain and simple?
Just then, Ari clapped her hands as if something had occurred to her.
"Could it be some kind of gag order? Secret organizations and groups usually have rules, you know. Like, if you leave, you get lynched—something along those lines. Maybe that's what happened to her?"
It was a reasonable theory.
Morning.
Perhaps her condition had improved considerably, because the owl Kalinoi spread her wings toward the sky and took off.
Flap-flap—.
Kalinoi soared upward. But less than ten seconds later, she dropped straight back down.
"Whoa—!"
If I hadn't caught her with my own body, the impact of hitting the floor would have seriously injured her.
—Hoo…!
Kalinoi slipped free of me with a whoosh. Then she repeated the cycle—launching into the sky, falling, launching, falling.
Because her wing was injured, she couldn't stay airborne for more than ten seconds—that was Ari's diagnosis.
Swish, swish—.
Oinoi stroked Kalinoi gently as she spoke.
"Tiger Owls are creatures that love flying through the sky more than anything…! That she can no longer fly is so terribly sad, Oinoi thinks…!"
"To abuse an animal like this…! And Kalinoi is one of our nymph sisters, that is a fact…! This Illinoi does not forgive such illegal movement, that is a fact…! This is a lawsuit, that is a fact…!"
"More than that, Kalinoi's condition is strange, that is what Coris says…! It seems like she doesn't recognize our nymph sisters anymore…!"
Kalinoi's condition truly had become that of an ordinary owl. Whether from the great shock, she now warily avoided humans and kept trying to fly off and escape.
Watching her, Yerim dragged a hand down her face.
"Taking her to court in this state would just be a comedy routine. Ildo, you get along well with animals, so you handle it."
Handle it how?
I didn't have the faintest idea what to do myself, you know.
Worst of all, now that she'd recovered her strength, the owl Kalinoi would go —hoo hoo…!— and bristle with wariness whenever I reached out my hand.
She was like a genuinely wild animal. The only ones she didn't seem wary of were the nymphs.
What should I do—I was turning it over in my mind when Oinoi let out a mhehehe chuckle.
"This Oinoi stayed up all last night and found out the way to break a curse on the thing called the internet, that is what she did…! The internet is truly amazing, Oinoi says…! Everything is on it, that is what she says…!"
She found a way to break a curse on the internet?
Could that actually be true?
Then Oinoi declared:
"On the internet there is a story of a bear that turned into a human, that is what Oinoi found…! If you feed it garlic and mugwort for one hundred days, the curse breaks, and Kalinoi will surely turn from an owl into a human, that is certain…!"
A story of a bear that became human by eating mugwort and garlic.
It was a story no Korean could fail to know.
"……."
Anyway!
I decided to take care of the owl Kalinoi for the time being.
"Kalinoi."
—Hoo, hoo…!
She understood when I called her name. She just wouldn't hold my gaze—she'd meet my eyes, then whip her head away. If I approached, she'd flap off to a distance, and only once I stopped looking at her would she trot-trot-trot back to her original spot. A wild owl through and through.
"Since we're going to be living together from now on, I'd love it if we could get close. Maybe I'll tame her with Lee Jina's candy, like when I tamed Kwang-kwangi?"
—Hio-ong…!
On my shoulder, Kwang-kwangi raised and lowered her legs from side to side, dancing. Very friendly, she was.
"It was quite an ordeal getting close to Kwang-kwangi too. Would've been worse without the candy."
Lee Jina's candy was so potent that it instantly maxed out the affection level of Kwang-kwangi, a Ghost Spider who was extremely wary of humans. Using that candy, I should be able to get close to Kalinoi too.
The problem was that I didn't have a single one of Lee Jina's Strange Candies on hand.
"Lee Jina did ask me to go to the Awakener Shop with her, come to think of it."