Ayra had always been full of unpredictability. You could even say she was... peculiar.
Of course, it made sense—after all, in order to cloud Solomon’s clairvoyance of her future, Ayra had been forced to fill her life with improvisational and strange actions.
And yet... I’d recently begun to suspect that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t only because of the Demon King. Maybe this side of her was just part of Ayra’s natural temperament—her true self.
“Ayra-nim, what are you doing?”
I looked toward her. Ayra was simply sitting in a chair, staring at the toy hanging on the wall.
Yes—that was a toy.
“Ayra-nim?”
“......”
Even though I called out to her several times, she was so entranced that she couldn’t answer.
Reflected in Ayra’s pitch-black eyes was the image of a toy magic wand hanging on the wall.
There had to be a fancier way to describe it, but my limited vocabulary left me no option other than “toy magic wand.”
━Hioon...
Bael, you know what I’m talking about, right? That kind of thing little girls aged five or six play with.
I’d never held one myself, but the girls in the orphanage I used to live in would always growl and fight over them whenever toys arrived from donors.
━Hioooon!
Ah—right. Magic wand. I’d gotten so used to calling everything a “magic staff” that the word magic wand hadn’t popped into my head right away.
Anyway, Ayra was now staring deeply at a toy wand that looked like the kind you'd wave to transform into a princess and defeat evil.
“......”
What in the world was she thinking?
Shk.
At that moment, Leadernoi nudged me in the ribs.
“Let us continue our discussion about this business...! If Teonoi and I, the Great President Leadernoi, join forces, we could change the world...!”
So he claimed.
With no other choice, I entered the office of Fallen’s president. Once seated at the table provided, Leadernoi began.
“So, about that mysterious flying carpet...”
“Let’s make the trade. The information about the half-fairy—and if possible, could we also include a few of those toys over there?”
Leadernoi nodded vigorously.
“That much is easily doable...!”
A solid deal.
After shaking hands, I figured it was finally time to get to the conversation we’d postponed since yesterday. I asked Leadernoi,
“So, you really did see a half-fairy in this village long ago?”
“That is correct...! Half-fairies are a rare race. Once you’ve seen one, you never forget—it’s still clearly etched in my mind...!”
He wasn’t wrong. Half-fairies were indeed rare. Even now, despite my lofty status, I had never met another of my kind.
Sure, there were plenty of half-elves who shared elven blood. But as for half-nymphs like me? As far as I knew, there were none.
Which is why I couldn’t help but get my hopes up that the half-fairy Leadernoi claimed to have seen was actually me, Teo Gospel, back when I was a child.
Even if it wasn’t me—if there really was another half-nymph out there—I’d very much like to meet them. Half-nymphs are said to only be born male. If that's true, maybe he too had lived a strange, secluded life like I had.
“Hmm... So when was it that you saw this half-fairy?”
Leadernoi rubbed the space between his brows, as if drawing out an old memory.
“It was when the 8th president of this village was in office... That is to say, it was during the 8th term of this Leadernoi...!”
Leadernoi’s office was lined with framed portraits of every president from the 1st to the 13th.
All of them bore Leadernoi’s face.
...So this guy had been ruling as president for a long time.
Still, judging by how the villagers didn’t seem particularly dissatisfied, perhaps he was surprisingly competent.
I asked,
“How often do elections happen?”
“Every four years...!”
If we were now in the 13th term, then the 8th would have been... five terms ago.
Twelve, eleven, ten, nine... that would be about twenty years back.
Leadernoi said,
“Now that I think of it, that winter came early, just like this one... It was an unexpectedly harsh season...!”
“I see.”
“And back then, there were monsters all around the village as well, making things even harder...! Around the start of that difficult winter, a nymph came to us...!”
“A nymph?”
When I asked, Leadernoi’s reddish-orange eyes turned toward the window.
“That’s right... She was tall, as tall as any adult woman—and strikingly beautiful. But she was definitely a nymph...! And very strong...!”
A tall nymph, huh. Something clicked in my memory—like that imp Nar-Nar we met in the monastery recently. She had a model-like tall and lanky figure.
I didn’t know how she’d grown so much, but if even imps could grow like that, then it wasn’t impossible for pure nymphs to as well.
“Can you tell me more? Do you remember her name, or anything she said?”
“She said nymphs help each other. I clearly remember that...! That among nymphs, there is no ‘mine’ or ‘yours’...!”
Those were the exact same words Leadernoi had said to me last night. So he’d heard them from another nymph long ago.
As I found that rather intriguing, Leadernoi added a few more words.
“She was an incredible nymph...! But even more eye-catching than her was the small child in her arms...! It was unmistakably a half-fairy...!”
Leadernoi’s gaze began to glaze over, his eyes going dreamy.
“But he looked terribly sick...! He had clearly caught a severe case of anti-nymph flu, the dreaded Coronoi...!”
So the full-grown nymph had brought the sickly half-fairy to Fallen Village, nestled among the rocky mountains.
Perhaps she thought a village that survived off strange objects fallen from the sky might have the cure.
But Leadernoi shook his head.
“I, Leadernoi, have studied a bit of medicine myself...! And I concluded the small half-fairy’s illness was beyond what we could treat. So, the nymph and her child left...!”
“If they left, where did they go?”
“That, I do not know...”
That was as far as Leadernoi’s memory could take us. Though it wasn’t much of a conversation, it was still valuable.
One last thing—I had to ask.
Shk.
I opened the scroll at my waist, 《Squirrel Storage》, and took out a framed picture I had sealed away.
In it, a graceful woman with brown hair held a baby in her arms.
I asked,
“Is this the woman you saw back then? Does she look like the nymph you mentioned?”
“Hmm...”
Leadernoi jutted his chin forward like a giraffe and stared at the image. He furrowed his brow in concentration, and my heart began to race.
I hadn’t felt this kind of rush in a long time. My blood seemed to be coursing faster; my breath grew sharper, and the world around me clearer.
━ Hey, Narmee, hand me that massager. My shoulders are stiff.
━ Professor Stella, what’s this strange thing?
━ Ah, that’s called a camera...
As the girls chattered just outside the office, their voices rang more clearly than usual.
And finally, the nymph opened his mouth.
“I don’t think it was this ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ woman...!”
Then he shook his head side to side. The blood that had rushed to my head seemed to cool instantly.
Why did it feel like I'd been slapped with disappointment?
Just then, Leadernoi added,
“But she looked very similar...! If this nymph sister grew a little older and taller, she would look exactly the same...!”
Crack!
It was like lightning struck inside my brain.
Just as I was still reeling from the shock, Leadernoi opened a drawer and began rummaging through its contents. Finally, he pulled something out.
“Here—it’s a photo we took together on that day...! Because it was a group photo with the villagers, I’ve kept it safe all this time...!”
Shk.
Leadernoi handed me a rectangular photo.
***
When I think back to my childhood—
I feel like I was often sick. I remember times when my whole body burned like fire, and even breathing was difficult.
And whenever I fell asleep like that, without fail, I would have terrible nightmares.
Dreams full of ghosts or monsters grabbing at my legs. I’d always wake up in fright.
Eventually, I became afraid to fall asleep at all—afraid of what dreams might come.
But whenever that happened, someone would gently place a cool hand on my forehead or cheek. Then, I’d forget all about the nightmare and fall peacefully back to sleep.
That’s one of the few memories I have of my childhood. And for some reason, when I looked at the photo, that memory came back to me.
A woman, smiling among others like a class photo taken on a school trip. I gently traced her small face with my fingertip.
“......”
An ache tugged at my chest. I felt like I might grow a little melancholic, so I lifted my head.
Out in the snowfield, Narmee was making snowmen with the children.
━ Big sis, make my snowman move too!
━ Noona, mine too!
Even here in Fallen Village, there were children. I wondered—someday, when they looked back on their childhoods, would they feel a similar kind of bittersweet sadness?
Shk.
Just then, someone sat down beside me.
“Your face is all red. You look gloomy too. Do you have a fever or something? Caught the nymph flu, maybe?”
Her slender, cool fingers gently stroked my cheek and forehead.
Now that I think about it, Ayra always liked to stroke me like this.
Maybe I liked it too—because her touch reminded me of those childhood memories.
Their touch... really is similar.
Maybe what I’d longed for in Ayra was a kind of motherly affection I’d been missing all my life. Though, of course, it wasn’t just that which drew me to her.
With that sort of feeling, I held something out to Ayra.
“Here.”
“What’s this...?”
“A magic wand. I received it as a bonus for the magic carpet trade. Earlier, you were staring at it for quite a while, weren’t you?”
Shk.
Ayra accepted the toy wand from me.
It was the kind of thing toddlers played with—but strangely, it suited her perfectly. With her slender fingers, she spun the wand skillfully.
“When I was little, I used to play with things like this all the time. I imagined myself swinging a wand to defeat bad guys, helping people in trouble.”
“I never imagined you having a childhood like that.”
“Of course, now I’m probably closer to the evil witch I used to fight in those daydreams than the magical princess I imagined being. I wonder what the child version of me would think if she saw who I’ve become.” Searᴄh the Nôvel(F)ire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.
The child version of myself, huh?
That made me wonder too.
“So, Teo—did you get the answers you were looking for?”
Ayra shifted the conversation naturally, and I followed along just as smoothly.
“More or less. Our destination hasn’t changed. That shattered window-like place—we’ll go there, find the remaining clues, and... well, do what we must.”
“I see.”
Ayra nodded in quiet agreement. Just then, I saw Stella rushing toward us from afar, looking frantic.
“Everyone, we’re in trouble! We can’t be sitting around like this! Nearby—chasers sent by the Church are on our tail! How did they get here so fast—”
At that, Fallen Village’s president, Leadernoi, puffed up his chest with pride.
“This village is a natural stronghold! Hidden from sight...! No one can enter unless we invite them—!”
“President! There are strangers at the entrance—!”
“Aaaah! Outsiders are entering freely—! This is an invasion—! It must be a strike by the Communist Imp Party, trying to sabotage our Free Nymph System—!”