008 – The Nymph Oinoi #8
━Arf! Arf!
It was my first time seeing a squirrel bark like a dog. It was tiny—small enough to fit in Oinoi's palm—but with its fluffy, tousled fur, it was unbearably cute.
Oinoi, holding the dog-squirrel in her hands, declared,
"In days of old, a dog-squirrel doth hibernate…! But this one, like this Oinoi, hath failed to fall into her winter slumber—of this, it is most certain…!"
Schwoooop—.
The squirrel scrambled back and forth across Oinoi's arm and shoulders, brimming with curiosity and energy.
"That's amazing. You sing, and a squirrel just shows up?"
Over the past few days, I'd done a lot of searching on fairies. Most of what turned up was about elves, and elves, it seemed, were beings deeply attuned to nature.
No wonder environmental groups had grown so powerful ever since the elves drifted into this world. It was famous news, after all, how a certain Brazilian CEO—once hell-bent on developing the Amazon and clear-cutting its forests—had married an elf woman and transformed overnight into a radical conservationist.
Anyway.
Nymphs, being fairies of the same kin, apparently shared that closeness with nature. Close enough that animals came running when you sang for them?
━Arf! Arf!
"What a marvelously healthy dog-squirrel this is…! This Oinoi hath never seen so robust and lively a dog-squirrel…! Surely it must be the foremost dog-squirrel among all dog-squirrels…!"
The foremost dog-squirrel, huh. I wanted to pet it too. Not that I ever bragged about it, but I was fond of animals myself.
"Dog-squirrel, I require some tail fur, if thou wouldst…!"
Shwick—.
Oinoi grasped the fur of its tail in one hand and, with the scissors she'd prepared in advance, snip-snapped away at it.
Once its fur was trimmed, the dog-squirrel let out a low growl—━Grrrr…!—then leapt down from Oinoi's palm and bolted back into the underbrush.
So in the end, I never got to pet the dog-squirrel. What a crushing disappointment.
Even so, obtaining fur from a dog-squirrel was a tremendous coup in every respect. Beasts and plants from the other world typically dwelt inside rifts, which meant you'd normally have to venture into one to get any of this stuff.
"The cat eyebrows were already secured by this Oinoi, as it were…! Which means all the ingredients to unravel the curse tormenting the master of this house are now gathered…! Let us return home forthwith…!"
And so, with that, we headed back home.
Oinoi piled the ingredients into a pot and turned on the gas range.
Click-click-click-click—. Whoosh—.
The moment the old gas range caught fire, Oinoi cried out.
"To conjure flame with such ease…! Surely this object hath received the blessing of the Goddess of the Hearth…! It is a most 'nymph-friendly' object…!"
What on earth was 'nymph-friendly' supposed to mean?
Back when we'd been watching YouTube videos about that Brazilian CEO who married an elf, he'd said something at one point like, "Toward a more nature-friendly direction…"
Oinoi had overheard it and apparently decided it was a tremendously amusing and excellent word.
"Don't mess with the gas burner."
I gave her a stern warning. She was free to fiddle with the sink or the bathroom faucet all she liked, but fire was dangerous in all sorts of ways.
Oinoi seemed to have grasped the gist of what I meant, more or less.
Anyway, I gathered the ingredients in the pot and brought it to a rolling boil. According to Oinoi, it needed to boil for at least an hour.
After an hour of waiting, the contents of the pot bubbled away until they began to thicken into something viscous. What ingredient on earth was making it go all gloopy like that?
Just as I was marinating in all manner of curiosity, Oinoi spoke up.
"Now, once it hath cooled to a suitable warmth, thou shalt drink it…!"
"……"
Drink this living-slime-looking thing? That was horrifying as hell.
But in my desperate bid to break through the D-rank wall, I'd eaten and drunk some truly ungodly things over the years. Compared to those, a bit of viscous liquid didn't even rank as weird.
So I waited about thirty minutes for the hot brew to cool, then drank down the entire pot of strange liquid in one go.
Gulp, glug—.
The sensation of it sliding down my throat was profoundly strange, and the taste was even worse. I was gritting my teeth against the urge to vomit when I finally drained the last of it.
At that moment, Oinoi announced,
"Now the curse is lifted…!"
"Really?"
I looked down at my body. Apart from a queasy stomach and the constant threat of throwing up, nothing seemed to have changed. But Oinoi was utterly convinced the curse had been broken.
At that, anxiety crept over me from every direction. The nagging thought: what if I just got played by this bizarre nymph, wasted all this for nothing?
That same half-doubting feeling I'd had back when I'd gone begging to every fortuneteller and shaman in the city, burning talismans and gulping down their brews. That sour aftertaste of thinking, "So this one was fake too." It came creeping up through me all over again.
"Urp—."
Then it hit me—the vomit I'd been holding back surged up from the soles of my feet all the way to the crown of my head. I sprinted to the bathroom, gripped the toilet, and heaved up everything in my stomach.
"Bleeeuugh!"
So this is what it felt like to empty your body of everything inside it?
After purging my guts for five or ten minutes, I was on the verge of passing out. It was exactly like the morning after my first company dinner as a D-rank awakener, when the other guys had "made me drink up" by force and I'd ended up in this same wrecked state.
"Ugh… I'm dying."
I crawled into my blanket with the heating pad turned up warm. As I shivered through the chills, Oinoi spoke.
"Then the master of the house shall sleep deeply…! In the meantime, this Oinoi shall make friends with this thing called a computer…! The computer is most surely a nymph-friendly machine…."
Her voice trailed off, softer and softer. I closed my eyes and surrendered to the unstoppable drowsiness.
Morning.
I woke up feeling better than I had in years. Vitality seemed to hum through me from head to toe. Had my body ever felt this light?
"Did it actually work?"
I stretched, feeling wonderful. And that was when I spotted Oinoi sitting in front of the computer.
She was sitting perfectly still before the locked computer screen. Apparently she hadn't known how to unlock it. Had she really been sitting there doing nothing but staring at the screen since last night?
"This Oinoi wisheth to try the thing called a computer…! But… this Oinoi knoweth not how one doth operate it, and so hath simply remained seated…!"
"…I see."
"For the master of the house did declare that I must not touch the household's belongings without leave…! This Oinoi keepeth her promises well…!"
So that was it. She'd turned on the tower, then just sat there motionless all night.
"The computer, huh…"
I wondered if Oinoi—who had only just learned how to turn a gas range on and off—could even comprehend a computer if I taught her.
While I was mulling that over, Oinoi sprang up from her chair. Seven in the morning had arrived.
It had become her daily routine: at seven o'clock sharp every morning, she'd go into the bathroom and bathe in cold water.
Shaaaaaa—.
"Mmhehe, the water floweth like a mighty waterfall…! This frigid current is most nymph-friendly, like a cool mountain brook in midsummer…! Surely no nymph in all the world hath ever possessed a magic faucet that summoneth forth such bounty of water as this one…!"
So she claimed, anyway.
At any rate, my body felt fantastic. All five senses—hearing, sight, everything—had sharpened, and my nose, which was always half-clogged, had cleared completely, so breathing was effortless.
Good lord—who knew a nose was supposed to be this refreshingly clear?
"Excellent. Feeling great."
I felt good enough that a stray thought crossed my mind: maybe now—just maybe. So I dug out the stack of Mana Diagnostic Kits I'd hoarded at home.
The Mana Diagnostic Kit was a sheet of specially treated reagent paper: drop a single bead of blood on it, and it changed color according to the mana contained in your body.
Granted, just a few years ago you'd have needed to get strapped into a hulking MRI-style machine to measure your internal mana, but the world sure did improve fast.
"Ordinary people turn plain red. F-rank awakeners turn orange. D-rank turns yellow. C-rank is… green. It followed the rainbow, right?"
I tossed aside the yellowed paper from my last test, found a needle, and pricked my finger. Blood welled up with a sharp sting. The moment I pressed it to the index-finger-sized strip, the change was instantaneous. The paper turned a vivid, unmistakable green.
Green—the symbol of C-rank.
A rush of emotion hit me all at once, and my vision swam.
"It worked! It actually worked!"
Startled by my shouting, Oinoi—who was blow-drying her hair while wearing a fluffy Adidas tracksuit—jumped about a foot in the air. Like a cat startled mid-meal by the sudden appearance of its fish.
Oinoi said,
"This Oinoi knoweth not what hath occurred, but seeing the master of the house so joyful, it is a relief…! Now that the Curse of Weakening hath been dispelled, thy body's balance shall surely improve in a most nymph-friendly manner…!"
Curse of Weakening?
So it really had been a curse. That rotten witch Seo Yerim—how dare she lay a curse on me! I was going to sue!
Wait. Would suing even work? It wasn't the Middle Ages anymore—witch trials were long gone. Could you actually take someone to court over a "curse"? And even if I tried, she'd hire lawyers from some top-tier firm. What were my odds, really?
"Unbelievable!"
I'd been struck down by dirty tricks, and there was nothing I could do about it!
As I trembled with frustration, Oinoi spoke up.
"A dispelled curse returneth to its caster, bearing even greater power, as it were…. Verily, at this very moment, a mightier Curse of Weakening must surely have rebounded upon the witch Seo Yerim…!"