Once upon a time, there was a beautiful Nanai girl named Aioga. Everyone in her village admired her beauty, and many said no one could match her looks. Aioga was very proud and spent hours admiring herself, sometimes in a polished copper basin and sometimes in the clear river water, feeling more pleased each time she saw her reflection. She was extremely lazy and obsessed with her own appearance, refusing to help with chores. One day, her mother asked her to fetch water. Aioga immediately made excuses, fearing she might fall in, scratch her hands, or tear her gloves. Despite her parents offering solutions, from sewing the gloves to wearing leather mitts, Aioga stubbornly refused, choosing instead to continue admiring herself.
At that moment, a kind neighbor girl offered to fetch the water. She went and returned, helping Aioga’s mother prepare dough and bake bread. Aioga, seeing the fresh, warm bread, demanded one for herself. Her mother reminded her that it was too hot and could burn her hands. Aioga insisted she could wear gloves and argued about drying and softening them. Her mother finally decided it was better to give the bread to the neighbor girl who had worked hard, rather than waste Aioga’s time and risk her beauty. Aioga became furious.
Angry and frustrated, Aioga ran to the river and gazed at her reflection. Watching the neighbor girl eat the bread only made her anger grow stronger, stretching her neck and making her whole body pale with rage. Her arms began to transform, and her fingers spread out into wings. “I don’t need anything… a…a…!” she cried, unable to stand on the shore. She fell into the river and transformed into a swan.
The swan swam gracefully, calling out proudly, “Oh, how beautiful I am! The most beautiful of all!” She kept swimming, lost in her own beauty, until she forgot how to speak Nanai. Only her name remained in her memory. Whenever she met anyone, she would cry out, letting people know she had once been a beautiful girl: “Ai…o…ga… Ai…o…ga…!”
This story reminds us that vanity and laziness can lead to unexpected consequences, and that true beauty is not just in appearance but also in one’s actions.