Taming The Villainesses

Chapter 436: The One Who Halts (11)

"Hey, you there. I don't know who you are, but if you’ve got no business with that door, why don't you move aside?"

A slender female voice. It was an unfamiliar tone. I had never heard this voice before, yet it felt as though memories I had long forgotten were rushing back into me all at once.

Whip.

I turned my head. And there, I saw a woman with long brown hair, frowning fiercely in our direction.

She wore worn-out leather clothing like a seasoned adventurer, but her limbs were slim and long, giving her a striking figure.

Her eyes were the clear blue of a bright sky.

Her face was fair and clean, though dust clung to it, and her furrowed expression gave her quite a fierce look. Even so, her beauty couldn't be hidden.

Simply put, her appearance was distinctive.

Her fair face carried a classic air like Queen Ayra, but the creased brow gave off a strict impression like Mirna.

The dust on her cheeks made her look rugged, like Elga, and the upward curve of one eyebrow gave her a mischievous air, reminiscent of Narmee.

Her ears were pointed, like Stella's.

But there was a difference: unlike Stella’s long, sharp fairy ears, hers were relatively short, resembling a nymph’s.

"What are you staring at like that? Never seen a nymph before?"

That's right.

She was a nymph.

But I had never heard of a nymph this tall and striking. She was even taller than me! I was genuinely surprised.

What on earth had she eaten to get that big? Some kind of giant-growing mushroom?

A real gigantamax nymph.

The nymphs I knew were mostly tiny, child-like creatures who whined and clung.

Myself included.

Well, anyway, none of that mattered now.

"You are..."

A bubbling mass of thoughts roiled inside my mind like boiling foam. It spilled over from my brain and filled my mouth, almost bursting forth.

Ugh.

But I pressed my lips tightly shut.

There were so many things I wanted to ask, so many things I wanted to say.

But some instinctive brake inside me warned that if I spoke now, too many things might spiral beyond repair.

Barely managing to hold myself back, my gaze slid from her fluttering brown hair downward to the child clinging to her slender leg.

A child.

Yes, he was a child. A boy with brown hair just like the woman’s. His height barely reached my thigh.

Five years old, maybe?

He looked like a boy just about to turn five. One look into those blue eyes and anyone could guess their relationship.

An older sister and younger brother with a large age gap?

No, that wasn’t it.

They weren't siblings.

"..."

Ssk, ssk.

The boy, perhaps scared or shy under our gazes, quickly hid behind the woman. She crossed her arms, frowning sharply as if to shield him.

"I don't know who you people are, but you'd better not pick a fight. I'm really not in a good mood right now!"

The adult nymph had quite a fiery personality. Aggressive and fierce. I had once watched battles among beasts for Ayra’s amusement in the Angmar royal palace.

This woman reminded me of the bristling porcupines I had seen back then. As if she would bite down hard if displeased.

She looked ready to lunge at us, even though we greatly outnumbered her, and that made me unconsciously take a step back.

"Well, um..."

Ssk.

At that moment, Elga whispered so softly only I could hear.

"This woman is strong. If we fought, a few of us would have to be prepared to get seriously hurt."

Not that anyone needed to say it. We could all tell. Judging your opponent and predicting the outcome was a basic skill for any fighter.

Conversely—

This large nymph must have assessed our strength too. She surely knew that if she fought us, she wouldn't come away unscathed either.

Even so, the fact that she still showed hostility must have been because of the child hiding behind her.

As I had felt during the wyvern incident — a mother protecting her child could become ferociously strong beyond belief.

Crackle, crackle.

The tension was rising, as if a fight might break out at any moment, but surprisingly, it was the nymph who first softened her hostility.

"Huh. Now that I look closer, you're /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ a half-fairy, aren't you? With that sly-looking face, it was hard to tell."

She lightly traced under her right eye with a finger.

I instinctively touched the scar that ran down my right eye.

It was true — a scar like that was unusual among fairy-folk.

Still, somehow, she had recognized me as one of her kind. And as was common among nymphs, once you realized you were kin, fighting usually stopped.

Ssk.

Then the tall nymph suddenly leaned in close to my face.

Startled, I let out a ridiculous shriek — "Uwah!" — and stumbled backward.

The large nymph frowned at me.

"What’s your problem? Don’t you know how nymphs greet each other?"

If it was the nymph greeting—

At that, Ayra chuckled softly.

"Ah, like what Biernoi from Monarch City did. You press your foreheads together, right? That’s how nymphs greet each other."

Just as Ayra said. Nymphs had a peculiar way of greeting by pressing foreheads together.

Personally, I wasn't too fond of it. Among imps like Marmar, they preferred wrapping their tails together, so I had almost forgotten.

"You're a weird one. You seem fierce and sneaky. Even if you're a half-fairy, you're nothing like my boy here, not at all. Right?"

Ssk, ssk, ssk.

The large nymph roughly ruffled the boy’s brown hair with her big palm. Watching this, Elga asked,

"Is your son a half-fairy too?"

"Yup. Cute, right?"

It's said that otters have a habit of proudly showing off their pups to everyone. Maybe nymphs were the same. The large nymph gently pushed the shy half-fairy boy forward toward the noble ladies.

Naturally, the little boy blushed bright red and fidgeted awkwardly. Watching him, Elga lifted her hand and poked the boy's cheek with a finger.

"He's really different from the half-fairies I know."

"Miss Lioness, could you step aside? I want to touch him too."

"..."

The boy pursed his lips tightly, trembling all over, then quickly hid behind the tall nymph again. Mirna awkwardly stared at her own outstretched palm, and the nymph said,

"Must be nervous with all the pretty ladies around. He gets shy easily."

...Yeah, he definitely looked shy.

***

We sat down in the flower field near the ruins of the temple to have a brief conversation.

Since the weather was eternally warm here and a pleasant floral fragrance drifted by, there couldn’t have been a better setting to talk.

"So anyway, after you guys took down that wyvern and wandered through the flower field for a while, you ran into me. It’s only natural I'd find you suspicious, right? Honestly, I still think you’re a little shady."

The nymph said her name was Trishy.

I had thought all nymphs followed the naming tradition of ending with “-noi,” but apparently that wasn’t the case.

Come to think of it, wasn’t it said that their names could vary depending on the season they were born?

But that wasn’t the important thing right now.

"So you all came through that weird sky-tear too, right? Defeated a wyvern, got led here by spooky ghosts and all? Same here, you know."

Nymph Trishy chattered away without being asked.

Even though she was tall and sleek—a gigantamax nymph, really—she was still just as talkative and excitable as the other nymphs I knew.

Thanks to her bright, spring-like personality, my wives quickly warmed up to her.

Of course, it wasn’t just her personality that helped.

"So, wait, you're telling me all these women are your wives? Seriously? That’s actually a thing? Man, you're even weirder than I thought."

Every time their conversation shifted toward me, I felt like a cat caught red-pawed raiding the food bin.

I flinched awkwardly, not knowing what kind of face to make, or what kind of words to say.

Just then, as if trying to steer the conversation elsewhere, Mirna—who had been brewing tea with freshly boiled water—offered Trishy a cup and said,

"Trishy, right? Why exactly did you come to this place? Especially bringing such a small child with you. Honestly, this isn’t exactly a place you should bring a child."

At Mirna’s pointed words, everyone turned their eyes toward Trishy.

The nymph simply ran her hand gently over the forehead of the half-fairy boy who was now dozing on her lap.

"Look at this kid. His face is as red as a tomato. Almost every night he burns up with fever like this. No matter what medicine I use, it doesn’t help."

Ayra, who had been silent for a while, finally spoke up.

"It’s an illness. His physical body can’t keep up with the rapid expansion of his magical power. I could tell just by looking at him—he’s got remarkable talent in magic."

"Yeah, that’s what I was told too. So when I heard about a place where time supposedly doesn’t move, I thought maybe I could bring him here. If everything stopped, maybe his magic would stop growing too."

Trishy's voice was laced with a small, heavy sigh.

At that, Ayra’s face clouded over.

"But it’ll only pause things for a while. If you stay here too long, he might end up suffering forever."

"I know. He's my child. Of course I know better than anyone. But... there’s nothing in this world that can cure him. So I..."

She trailed off, her mouth clamping shut before she could finish.

"I don’t even know why I'm spilling all this personal stuff to a bunch of strangers... I need some air."

With that, Trishy hugged the feverish half-fairy close and stood up, walking away to find some space to breathe.

Once a bit of silence settled over us, Narmee spoke up.

"She’s so beautiful."

Mirna nodded slowly.

"I think so too. But... that’s not what’s important here. Sir Teo, I believe that nymph and that little half-fairy boy are..."

Mirna trailed off awkwardly, but we all understood what she meant.

At least—I did.

Then Stella muttered,

"Is something like this even possible...? I mean, even if the timeline here is twisted... wouldn't a meeting like this... change history or something?"

At that, Elga asked me directly.

"What about you? Have you ever met any of us when you were little?"

At her question, I quietly fell into thought.

My childhood...

"Childhood, huh..."