WE CAUGHT THE SWAMP CRYSTAL
“I wonder what slimes taste like~” Halkara mused during dinner.
“Hold on, Halkara, just sit still for a second.” I placed my hand on her forehead.
“…Um, Madam Teacher? What are you doing?”
“Nope, no fever. But that still doesn’t make me feel better. You sure you didn’t eat any poison mushrooms? The kind that make you all hazy and say weird things?”
Or was her work at the factory surprisingly intense lately? No, she hadn’t seemed any more stressed than usual. And the managers of the company doesn’t get as much stress. The employees die from overwork because they’re forced to do too much.
“You’re terrible, Madam Teacher! I haven’t had any mushrooms today or yesterday!”
“So you asked about how slimes taste in a perfectly sound state of mind…” In a way, that was a bigger problem.
“I just suddenly wondered. It’s just a nice, random topic for a peaceful family get-together~”
“I don’t think it’s a nice topic, no. You know there are slime spirits in our family, right?”
Although if someone asked me if Falfa and Shalsha were cute enough to eat, I would say yes.
“Oh, that’s not what I intended! I would never try to take a nibble of Falfa or Shalsha!” Halkara immediately explained. She was awful at lying (see also: that thing not long ago with the mask), so I believed her.
Falfa and Shalsha didn’t seem particularly shocked about this, either; they just ate their burgers. They quickly dispatched any evil slimes when they found them, so they probably didn’t really consider themselves slimes.
“Big Sis Halkara, why do you want to eat a slime~?” Falfa asked the obvious question. There was a bit of sauce on her cheek.
“See, slimes are so bouncy, I sometimes think they look like a yummy snack. That is why I suddenly wondered if they’d taste like one, too.”
That description sounded like gummies.
“Madam Teacher came up with the edible slimes snack, too, so I wondered if real slimes are sweet~”
“I just added faces to them to give them a bit more visual impact, though…” The name manju would be a harder sell than slimes here.
“What a fascinating conversation. However, eating slimes is difficult.”
Shalsha had some sauce on her cheek, too. She was very calm as she ate, but it wasn’t going all that well for her.
“Because slimes are monsters. And once monsters die, they become magic stones. One cannot eat stones. And since slimes are weak, they will die the moment you bite into them.”
I patted Halkara on the shoulder.
“I just imagined you biting into a wild slime, then it turning into a stone, and you chipping a tooth. That’s not safe, so don’t do it, okay?”
“I am an adult, Madam Teacher. I do those things only a few times a year.”
“So you do do them.”
That was still a lot.
“Either way, it still sounds bad if it got into your stomach, then turned into a magic stone… You really shouldn’t try that.”
That would mean surgery at least, or in the worst-case scenario, a life-threatening situation.
“Okaaay. I did want to know what they taste like, though. Or at least what sort of texture they have. I have a feeling they might lead to the development of a new product.”
Now that she mentioned it, I didn’t ever recall seeing any gelatinous food in this world. A snack like that would be revolutionary.
“I feel your enthusiasm; just don’t get too excited about actually eating slimes. Maybe don’t think about it.”
“Yeah, Big Sis Halkara, you shouldn’t try anything you don’t have to. You can’t eat monsters.”
“There is an old idiom that goes: like eating slimes. It means something futile.”
Both the twins and I talked Halkara out of eating slimes. All bets were off for other inedible things, though…
After dinner, when I was taking a bath, there was a knock on the bathroom door.
“Madam Teacher, there’s someone I want you to introduce me to!”
“Why are you asking me this now?!”
“Well, I took off all my clothes as I was getting ready to go in the bath, then once I was naked, I realized, oh, someone’s in there already.”
That was a trope straight out of an old romantic comedy… I had absolutely no idea people actually did that stuff… It was pretty obvious someone was in here, because the lights were on.
“When I looked down at my chest, I recalled the slimes.”
Your boobs made you think of slimes? “Well, you’ll just get sick waiting out there, so come on in.”
I couldn’t tell her to just wait outside. She was literally standing there; her body was ready. I couldn’t relax like this.
“All right, then. I’m coming in~”
Halkara splashed herself with some water, then entered the bath. It was big enough to fit multiple people, so she had no trouble squeezing in. The bath got bigger when Laika remodeled the house. Even though I had no idea I’d end up with such a big family at the time.
“So who is it you want me to introduce to you?”
I had a lot of contacts, in a sense. Not a whole ton, granted, but they were quite diverse—demons, spirits, poltergeists, gods. Regular humans were actually few and far between.
“First, let me explain my reasoning. Since I cannot eat slimes, I wondered if there were any non-monster creatures that are also similar to slimes that I could eat. To be honest, I am much more interested in the texture rather than the flavor.”
“What a strange thing to wonder about… I mean, that’s not really bad, but…,” I replied as I stared at Halkara’s chest. Her boobs were big, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call them slimes. Yeah, definitely not. They’d just get in the way if they were that big.
“I was thinking about any squishy creatures, and I came to one.”
I wonder what it was?
“That is…jellyfish!” Halkara exclaimed. “Please introduce me to Curalina, the jellyfish spirit!”
Jellyfish, eh?
I guess that made sense. They definitely had that round, squishy image to them, and some types were edible. Some Chinese appetizers had the crunchy kind in them.
But those crunchy kinds needed to be desiccated to get that texture… I had a feeling eating them with all the water still in them would be impossible.
“So even if you could eat jellyfish, I don’t think you could eat them while they’re still squishy…”
“I will cross that bridge when I come to it! There is significance in the attempt!”
Halkara’s passion won me over, and I decided to introduce her to Curalina.
A few days later, I took Halkara to Momma Yufufu’s house.
“—So, Momma Yufufu, could you introduce Curalina?”
I couldn’t exactly set up a direct meeting with the jellyfish spirit, so I asked Momma Yufufu to set us up. I had no idea where she’d be anyway…
Since she was the jellyfish spirit, I heard she rarely ever returned to her home island, either.
I also heard she’d lived for such a long time that I was just a blip on her timeline, so she probably got bored at home.
“I see. I don’t mind setting you up with her.” Surprisingly, Momma Yufufu didn’t seem all that interested. If anything, she seemed disconcerted.
“You want to eat jellyfish, right? I have a feeling she might not take this well.”
“You’re right… She might think we’re being rude.”
In the past, she’d moved the jellyfish out of the way when we went swimming at the beach, but she didn’t kill any of them.
“Well, I suppose it won’t hurt to ask. It’s so hard to tell what she’s thinking, after all.”
It sounded like Curalina was unique, even among the spirits…
“Thank you! Once I start thinking of something, I can’t stop until I try it!” Halkara bowed. I guess everyone in the family was a little reckless, so I wasn’t going to say anything more on the matter.
“Of course. Then I’ll go call her, okay? Hold on for a second,” Momma Yufufu said before leaving the house.
Thirty seconds later.
“We’re back~”
Momma Yufufu entered the house with Curalina right behind her. This had happened in the past, but it was still surprisingly quick…
“…It’s nice to see you. Are you hoping for a painting? Jellyfish-fish-fish.”
Oh, she thought we’d called her here as a painter.
“I just completed my quadriptych, Despair, and I’m about to start on my next one. I call it Boredom.”
She could place all the paintings she wanted in a museum, but I wasn’t so keen on putting art with those titles in my house…
I lightly pushed Halkara forward. It was her job to do the hard part.
“I am Halkara the elf. Today, I have a request for Curalina, the jellyfish spirit…”
Halkara couldn’t bring herself to suddenly start off with eating jellyfish, of course, so she started with her original issue of eating slimes.
“And so, can you eat jellyfish?! Please tell me if you know any good ones… B-but if it’s not possible, then I’ll leave it at that…”
“…” Curalina was silent for a while.
Was she angry? She didn’t show any emotion, so it was hard to tell. I actually had no idea.
“So you called me here for jellyfish, not paintings.”
She was disappointed! But she was the jellyfish spirit, so shouldn’t she be okay with this?!
“I don’t care if you eat jellyfish or not. They don’t seem to have any nutritional value. I won’t stop you.”
It didn’t sound like she had any problem with it, but I wanted to confirm just in case. “So you’re all right with the act of eating jellyfish itself, right?”
“Jellyfish don’t think, so they’re the same to me as all the other creatures roaming around the wilderness. I’m not the queen of jellyfish or anything.”
There you have it: The jellyfish spirit has no interest in jellyfish.
“I can still communicate telepathically with them, though.”
“So you can communicate with them!”
“But they don’t think, so it isn’t much of a conversation. It’s been like that for seventy thousand years.”
I guess she gave up trying to act like a spirit a long time ago.
“I understand what you’re going through. If you want a stand-in for slimes, then I should show you some that live in ponds and swamps. I’ll tell you where they are; you’re free to boil them or fry them or however you like. And they’re rather difficult to capture, so I’ll help. Please bring your own net.”
She was going to help us. But there was still something I wasn’t satisfied with…
The opposite of love really is apathy…
We picked a day to go to a swamp with jellyfish types similar to slimes.
We got a net and went to the swamp.
Coming along with us were the very interested Falfa and Shalsha, and our transport, Laika.
“This is but a normal swamp, Lady Azusa…”
“Yeah. And I really wonder if jellyfish live in swamps. I guess I never thought about freshwater jellyfish before.”
Curalina was lying down at the swamp’s edge. She wasn’t collapsed or anything—that was just how she was waiting. It was hard to tell what was going through the jellyfish spirit’s brain. Or maybe it was just an artist thing.
“Um, Curalina? We’re here.”
“Oh, hello.”
She slowly sat up. There was nothing I could use to measure her blood pressure, but she definitely had hypotension.
“Did you bring a net?”
“Yes! We got one just for today!” Halkara proudly showed off the net.
Since she brought it up first, I’d let her go first. “Then throw it into the swamp and pull.”
“That’s rather simple…” It sounded like she thought the same. “But all right! I’ll do it! Hoi!” She threw the net into the swamp, and the weights pulled it right down into the mire.
We’d find all kinds of stuff once we pulled it up. I wasn’t really interested in catching swamp things, though… I could just imagine what kind of nasty junk was down there.
After a little while, Halkara pulled on the net.
“Here I go! Hrrrgh, hrrrgh…” She was pulling as hard as she could, but the net wouldn’t budge. “It’s so unbelievably heavy! It won’t move!”
Either it was simply caught on something, or she’d netted something massive.
Curalina simply sat staring at the swamp and didn’t really bother to explain anything.
“Fine, fine,” I said. “Laika, help me out here.”
Between the three of us, we should be able to get it out.
“Understood, Lady Azusa!”
Laika and I stood behind Halkara and pulled on the net. It had to move with me and Laika pulling, even if it broke. Fortunately, the net came up whole.
Now, what did we get?!
The twins peered at the haul with great interest.
Inside were some fish that lived in the swamp. No surprises there. A shoe. Yep, some trash, too…
Then we started spotting some weirder things in our catch—for one, a sort of clear jelly that briefly fooled me into thinking we’d pulled up some of the water itself!
“What is this?!”
It was just about as big as a seat on a carriage.
And there were several of them. It was hard to tell if they were alive or not.
“Wow~ So pretty~ They’re clear, even though they were in the muddy swamp~”
“One could liken them to a slime, but they are wholly different. They do not move on their own.”
Just as my scholarly girls analyzed, what we got was a large, clear object.
“Ooh! We did it! This certainly is very slime-like!”
Halkara was thrilled by the results. Good thing, too, after all this.
Curalina, on the other hand, was as blah as ever. It was better than before, when she was lying down, though.
“That’s a jellyfish called the swamp crystal. It sinks to the bottom of the swamp, absorbs nutrients in the water, and stays put. Not sure what’s so fun about that. Kind of worthless, if you ask me.”
What a heartless thing to say of a fellow jellyfish… But some creatures really didn’t move at all.
Halkara went straight for the swamp crystals, brimming with curiosity. “Oh, it does smell a bit after all that time in the swamp, but it looks pretty. I wonder if it absorbs any mud. But…I hesitate to bite into something like this that’s been sitting at the bottom of a bog… I want to rinse it off with clean water first…”
That was just common sense.
“You’ll definitely get sick if you just bite into it. Let’s take it to a clean river or something. Can we even carry it, though…?”
I wondered if all its water would come rushing out if we tried to pick it up. It seemed so delicate.
“I wonder. Let me try picking up one. I think I can manage just one.” Halkara knelt, leaned forward, and placed both hands on one swamp crystal. I had a feeling it would be way too heavy for her to pick up…
But in the next moment, something strange happened.
Halkara’s hands slowly sank into the swamp crystal! “Ahhh! I’m stuck!” she exclaimed without much worry. “Oh, I suppose it was too soft~ If I can’t use my hands, then I guess I’ll pull it off and put it in a box or something.”
That’s definitely not the trouble I was imagining—I thought she’d hurt it, not the other way around.
She turned to me with a look of panic on her face. “I can’t…get my hands out! I think it’s pulling me in instead! It’s so strong…”
“What?! The swamp crystal is attacking you?!”
“I don’t know if it’s an attack, but it’s pulling me in!”
Slowly, the swamp crystal absorbed Halkara…until everything but her face was inside it.
She looked like a street performer who’d put herself inside a balloon for show, but this was probably more serious than that.
“Ahhhhhh! What is going on?! I think it’s trying to digest me…!”
“This is bad, Lady Azusa! We must save Miss Halkara!”
“You’re right, Laika! But I’m afraid of attacking it directly, so I wish I had a weapon…”
I had a feeling either Laika or I could take it down in one hit, but we couldn’t say with certainty that we wouldn’t get sucked in like her.
This was an unfamiliar creature, after all, so I had no idea what it would do.
“Understood! I will go fetch a stick!” Laika broke off a nearby tree branch.
In the meantime, I begged Curalina for an explanation of all this. “Uh, so, question: Is Halkara all right? I didn’t think this thing would be so violent…”
Curalina was still just standing there, but that wasn’t exactly reassuring. Even if the world was burning, she would just stand and stare. “She’s all right. Her life is not in danger. The swamp crystal cannot absorb all the nutrients a person contains.”
That was what I wanted to hear.
“Really? I trust you! Don’t come back to me later and say you were lying!”
“You might drown if you were caught by a swamp crystal while it’s in the swamp, but it’s fine when it’s on the ground. They say legends across the globe of the bottomless swamps are in part due to the swamp crystal. Jellyfish-fish-fish.”
I wished she’d told us that ahead of time.
“Madam Teacher, it doesn’t hurt all that much, and I don’t feel any weaker, either!” Halkara herself confirmed her safety.
“Good. Then we shouldn’t have a problem saving you.”
“Yes. I feel a bit itchy, but nothing to worry about. I can’t move very much, so I will wait for my rescue!”
We needed to get her free, but it wasn’t a huge deal if her life wasn’t in danger.
Then, just as Laika returned, wielding a big stick—
“Miss Halkara, I am here to save you! If we use this stick to impale the creature—”
Pop! The swamp crystal spit Halkara out. Well, maybe spit wasn’t the right phrasing for that, but she had been ejected from the swamp crystal’s body.
She shot straight up in the air like a pop-up pirate, then landed.
“Oh, I got out. Ah! Miss Laika, please don’t stab me!!”
Halkara’s head was real close to connecting directly with the stick, but Laika prevented it.
“I’m relieved to see you safe, Miss Halkara.”
“Thank you! I thought that liquid would melt off my clothes!”
What a strangely specific worry.
“I’m back, safe and sound! But I do very much appreciate your attempt to save me, Miss Laika!” Halkara hugged Laika. Yes, yes, all’s well that ends well.
“Of course! I would do anything to help my family. But…Miss Halkara…?” After a brief show of pride on her face, Laika’s expression changed, and she looked away. “You’re a bit slimy…”
“Is that so…? Is it because I was in the swamp crystal?”
Glad she didn’t come to hug me…
We took a few swamp crystals home as samples and saved them at the back of the house in boxes filled with water.
I would leave Halkara in charge of dealing with them.
But when it came around to dinnertime, another strange thing happened.
Halkara didn’t come to dinner.
That was weird. I thought I saw her go back to her room… Don’t tell me some latent poison kicked in and she’s unconscious…?
I hurriedly flung open the door to her room.
“Halkara, are you okay?!”
“Yes, I am all right.”
She didn’t seem to be in pain at all, so I didn’t think she was being affected by any jellyfish poison, but there was something else strange going on.
For some reason, she had her legs folded in the lotus position, like in zazen style, with her hands folded down by her stomach.
Her eyes were closed, too, so was she really doing Zen meditation…?
But I didn’t know of any religions in this world that needed you to sit like that and meditate… Well, people here could sit like that if they wanted to. If they had the arms and legs for it.
“Um, Halkara? Dinner’s ready. What are you doing anyway?”
“I am practicing asceticism to find enlightenment.”
Halkara spoke in a calm voice. Normally, I’d assume she was being silly.
“You’ve never done any asceticism before. What brought this on? Were you influenced by some business book that told you that managers should be more aware?”
It reminded me of people who were making a lot of money suddenly caring about the environment and stuff.
“No reason. In fact, no reason is necessary. Once one thinks of engaging in ascetic practices, that is when one should begin. Asceticism is not a practice to be approached after extensive preparations.”
Wow, that was some pretty deep awareness…
“Would you like to start, Madam Teacher?” Halkara opened her eyes.
They were sparkling!
What is going on?! She’s completely different!
“The world is full of unsightly things, yet letting this unsightliness control you will not bring a fruitful life. By calming the heart, one will start to see the truth of this world.”
What she was saying sounded pretty good, but it was extremely fishy coming from her.
“Halkara, are you sure you haven’t been secretly snacking on some crazy mushrooms? I have a feeling you’re under…some kind of influence, or in some kind of trouble.”
Always question the mushrooms first when it comes to Halkara.
“I haven’t eaten any such thing. I would fight the entire world to prove the truth of this. I do not tell lies.”
Please don’t fight the whole world over something like that.
“Okay, so it’s not a mushroom, so something must have sparked this, right? Tell me. I’m more scared of not knowing than I am of any mushroom…”
“A spark—you mean the chance presented to me to walk the path of enlightenment?”
Seriously, no need to reword everything I say. And that definitely is not what I’m talking about.
I could see the wheels in her head turning. Considering how terrible she was at acting, it was probably best to assume she was serious.
“Yes, perhaps it was when I had been sucked into the swamp crystal’s body. It felt as though all my worldly attachments had dissolved within the swamp crystal. When I emerged, I was reborn.”
“That’s it!”
It was almost 100 percent due to the swamp crystal. That was the only noteworthy event in this short amount of time. And since Halkara was the only one who’d gotten sucked in, it made sense that she was the only one affected.
Curalina had said that getting sucked in wouldn’t put her life in danger, nor would it take away any of her strength. That was the truth.
But maybe it’d taken away all the “sullied” parts of her heart?
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login