The Fairy Meets the Hunter
The Fairy Meets the Hunter
Spirit Summoners have short lives.
As friends of spirits, they indulge the spirits' mischief, play with them, and genuinely enjoy themselves, so the spirits also enjoy it and lend them their power.
However, the existence of spirits is connected to nature, and excessive contact with nature destroys humans.
There was a Water Spirit and a girl.
When was it? To the girl sitting blankly in the muddy slush, the Water Spirit approached and made it rain.
It washed away the mud that dirtied the girl.
Since that day, the girl became friends with the Water Spirit, but she brought the rain with her.
Rain always accompanied the places the girl went.
The rain liked the girl.
When the girl got angry, thunder and lightning occurred, and rain poured down heavily; when the girl was sad, the rain also shed tears, causing floods.
In winter, it turned into snow, and it buried the girl, who rejoiced at the white snow, in snow.
The girl wasn't lonely because she could talk to the spirit.
Even though she became more distant from other people because of the spirit that was always by her side, it was always the spirit that soothed the girl's loneliness.
It rains.
Cold rain.
The girl was always soaking wet.
That was so painful.
But,
Still,
Being lonely hurt more.
If she was with the spirit, she wasn't lonely.
The rain stopped.
"...?"
An umbrella blocked the rain that had been soaking the girl as she walked the lonely forest paths.
That was all.
The girl accepted the umbrella handed to her by a man twice her size and avoided the rain. She could block the rain with such a simple tool, yet the girl hadn't even thought of this simple thing.
The rain was the physical manifestation of the spirit, and the idea of blocking the rain didn't exist. Above all, no one had ever told the girl that fact.
"Hey you. What are you doing giving her an umbrella?"
"It's pitiful to let the kid get rained on, isn't it?"
That was all. The man left for the village chief's house, following the village chief.
The man's warmth was on the umbrella. It warmed the girl's world, which had only ever been cold, just a little bit.
Thud.
I dropped a pig twice the size of a person onto the ground.
The village adults who saw the pig came over.
"Oh! You caught a big one!"
The village men rushed at the prey I had caught and hung the pig up.
They drained the blood and skinned it. They dried the skin in the sunlight. The skinned pig had its innards pulled out and was divided by parts.
"Eat this."
"Thanks."
Pig's blood.
You can only taste the prey's blood when slaughtering.
It's said to contain the beast's power, so drinking it makes one's vitality vigorous.
There's a superstition that it makes people stronger, but considering that people who are close to the prey's blood all have sturdy bodies and strength, it wasn't something to laugh at.
Small water droplets fell onto my skin where I had wiped off the pig's blood.
"Ah, looks like she's here again."
Hans, the youngest adult in the village who had handed me the pig's blood, glanced at a certain tree.
"What are you going to do?"
"What do you mean, what?"
"Because you ignored all our warnings and helped her last time, she's stuck to you like a ghost."
Behind the tree, a girl holding an umbrella on a clear day was peeking out and hiding her body.
"It's better not to associate with the fairy. Even if you hang out with non-humans, only humans get hurt. Aren't there no fairies in the city?"
"I've seen worse things. As for me, I don't know what the problem is."
If I kept staring, the girl would poke her head out and hide again, but the umbrella stuck out.
"It's just rain, that's all."
"It's a relief if it's just a drizzle. The fairy needs to be lonely. No one should talk to her. You shouldn't give her food either."
"Then what about food? She doesn't even have a house."
"There's the Altar."
There was an Altar in the village.
Food is placed there for offerings.
It provides a space where the fairy can sleep, avoiding the wind and rain. You could see it as the fairy's house, but it was just a narrow space where she could curl up. It was no different from a doghouse.
"Rural sentiment is so stifling."
"They say the fairy needs to be lonely. My grandfather told me. Once, someone made the fairy happy, and the rain poured down like a flood, washing away several villagers and ruining that year's farming."
The fairy was a being with that much power.
A human captured by the existence of a spirit.
A spirit shaman.
A spirit doll.
An incarnation of a spirit.
The spirit was a being that protected the village, but even just a slight wavering of the fairy's emotions caused severe damage to the village.
If the year's farming was ruined, hunting could cover it, but hunting required risking one's life, and it wasn't very efficient because it required the Lord's permission and separate taxes and fees.
The current Lord was a strict person. He wouldn't show leniency just because the farming was ruined.
Hans emphasized the management of the fairy.
"More troublesome than I heard."
"It's because she's specifically the Rain Fairy."
Rain was an element that directly affected daily life. Whether it rained or not affected the villagers' lifestyle patterns.
If it rains a lot, the river level will rise, and the fields will be submerged.
If the fields are submerged, farming is ruined.
If it doesn't rain enough, the ground dries up, and a drought comes.
Because she was a powerful guardian deity who controlled the weather, even in years when farming went normally, it was a bountiful harvest, but she required more careful attention and interest than the guardian deities of other villages.
It was truly contradictory that she needed to be ignored while also needing appropriate attention.
"So you must ignore her. You might be unfamiliar with the village rules, but if you've come to be our village hunter, I'd like you to follow the village rules."
It had only been a week since I came to this village. As Hans said, it wasn't a matter for an outsider to argue about.
Since I needed to have a good relationship with the village to make life even a little easier, it was a sensitive issue for me, having come as the village's hunter.
"More than that, Hyung, I heard you're Gold Rank, is that true?"
"Who said that?"
"The lady at the Hunter Guild. She said Gold Rank is a person of incredible skill even among hunters? She said other village hunters are Silver Rank. Is it true that if you're Gold Rank, you can even catch monsters alone?"
"Usually."
"As expected! Catching something that even all the village men fighting together might not be able to catch, all by yourself! Then, by any chance..."
"Hans!"
"...Yes!"
The village adult called out.
"What are you doing! Why aren't you coming to help with the dismantling! Do you have time for that?!"
"I-I'm going! I'll go help now."
Hans went back to the dismantling workshop, sent off by me.
Glance. Glance.
The fairy hiding behind the tree keeps peeking at this side.
The hunting ground was the Lord's property, and I was in the position of renting it.
The villagers, who are the Lord's subjects, take charge of slaughtering and processing the prey I've hunted.
"Here, take this. It's your share. If you need anything else, just say so."
Village Chief Hams packed the slaughtered pork and gave me my share.
It was an amount I could eat heartily before it went bad.
The innards that needed to be eaten immediately were thoroughly cooked by the village women who had lit a fire nearby. I, who was enjoying the chewy texture unique to the innards, received my share from Hams.
"We'll make the leftovers into preserved food and give it to you. What should we make with the skin? A hat? Clothes? A pouch? If you don't need anything, I'll give you a portion of the sales price, just like last time."
"Do that."
"Hehe. Good. Thanks to you catching it cleanly, it'll sell for a high price. I'll make sure you're well compensated, so look forward to it."
"...."
Even so, it's much cheaper compared to the market price, but that's how wholesale prices are.
It was more profitable to go catch the next prey than to manage the bones and skin myself to sell at the market.
Above all, a hunter is a job that catches monsters.
It also performs the role of controlling the monster population within the territory.
The Hunter Guild recognized this village as my hunting ground through negotiations with the Lord.
However, because it was a rental, the Lord had ownership of all prey caught in the hunting ground.
Only the prey after meeting the monthly quota is recognized as my property.
If I don't meet the quota, I'm stripped of the rights to the hunting ground.
Hams, not knowing that situation, was grateful to me for only taking the meat.
The byproducts from that pig are paid to the Lord as village taxes.
The Lord pays a portion of the profits obtained from the submitted byproducts to the Guild as an employment fee, and the Guild pays the compensation to me, the hunter.
Hunter -> Village -> Lord -> Guild -> Hunter.
This economic cycle goes round and round.
I hugged the meat and went to the outskirts of the village.
The hunter's house is close to the hunting ground.
The previous hunters. The hunters before that. The house where past hunters stayed is located on the boundary between the village and the forest.
It was because the hunter is an outsider.
They couldn't let an outsider they didn't know into the village, but since a house was needed, it ended up in this ambiguous location.
"...."
Light came through the window, illuminating the interior.
It was dark, but I started cooking right away.
I made soup using various ingredients and spices I got from the villagers. The soup could be eaten for a long time, and I cut all the meat I got this time into large chunks.
I opened the pot lid.
Bubble, bubble, bubble.
I dropped the meat, which I had simply grilled in a pan, into the soup that had started to boil.
A delicious smell brushes against the tip of my nose.
I transferred the soup into a bowl along with the bread that an auntie had slipped into my hands on the way home.
"...."
Rustle, rustle.
The sound of grass coming from the window.
An umbrella was peeking around.
"...."
I stopped eating; the spoon was about to head to my mouth but went back to the soup.
I opened the door.
The fairy ran away in a hurry.
The umbrella sticks out around the corner of the house.
'Will this work?'
I placed the soup in front of the door.
I closed the door, put my share back in the bowl, and sat at the table, just then.
"Ow...!"
A small scream from the fairy, as if she had burned her tongue, bursts out from outside the door.