Chapter 50

[50] Oppa, What Are We Supposed to Do Now...?

Around the time Gates began opening, monsters started pouring out, and Awakened began appearing to fight them, people wondered:

Monsters, artifacts, and magic—unreal things like those—had all turned out to be real. So why not dragons, creatures from fantasy?

Some people insisted that dragons had to exist somewhere. They just hadn’t been discovered yet.

And they were right.

Dragons really did exist, and without anyone knowing, they had quietly settled on Earth and made lives for themselves.

People had never learned of their existence because dragons concealed their identities perfectly and blended into human society.

Some dragons, like Sia, had come to Earth using interdimensional magic for a clear purpose. But they were few and far between.

Most had ended up here after being drawn through dimensional rifts, either willingly or against their will.

In any case, once they arrived on Earth, they did what dragons did best: they enjoyed themselves.

Students, ordinary office workers, politicians, famous celebrities, Hunters, and more.

They hid their identities across all kinds of fields and blended into human society, enjoying novel diversions that dragons in their home dimensions had never experienced.

Still, from time to time, even while enjoying themselves, they felt the urge to meet and spend time with other members of their kind who had settled here.

How could they not be glad to find their kin after landing in an unfamiliar dimension? Of course they would want to talk and share their experiences.

Besides, dragons could recognize one another, so it wasn’t difficult for them to connect.

The dragons who sensed one another gathered their kin, who had naturally blended into life on Earth, and held regular get-togethers to socialize.

Today’s gathering had been arranged to welcome Sia, who had recently arrived on Earth.

However...

It should have been a cheerful event, especially with a new arrival to welcome.

For some reason, though, the mood was a little different from usual.

“Thank you all for making time to come, even with your busy schedules.”

Rokan, the group’s chairman and the grandfather of today’s guest of honor, opened the gathering with his usual greeting.

“Think nothing of it. Of course we’d make time to meet like this.”

“And when we heard the new member we’d be welcoming was your granddaughter, we couldn’t resist coming to meet her.”

On the surface, no one brought up the “problem” directly.

Rokan greeted each guest who had come to his granddaughter’s lair, and Sia, the guest of honor, exchanged polite introductions with the dragons she was meeting for the first time.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet members of my kind in a dimension where I never expected to find any.”

“The feeling is mutual. What could be better than finding more of our kind to share things with in a lonely foreign land?”

“Welcome, Shasha. Let’s get together and talk like this from time to time.”

Everyone greeted her warmly as one of their own.

But both Rokan and Sia could sense the strange tension hanging over the gathering.

Then—

“How are you finding life here, Lady Shasha?”

Evan, a dragon who had been speaking with Rokan moments earlier, came over and asked Sia.

“I was a little worried at first, but with my grandfather here, I’ve settled in without any trouble.”

She gave a stiff reply, then subtly tried to excuse herself before the conversation could continue.

But Evan had no intention of letting her go so easily.

“Why leave out the part about your human boyfriend?”

The moment he mentioned Min-jun, the atmosphere in the lair turned cold.

More than half the dragons present already knew about him, but they’d avoided bringing it up because they didn’t want to ruin the welcoming party.

There had been an odd tension in the air, but until Evan mentioned Min-jun, the gathering had at least been following the usual formalities of a welcome party.

The moment he brought him up, though, the mood crossed a line it couldn’t come back from.

No one had wanted to be the first to raise the subject. But now that someone had, there was no stopping the questions from piling up.

“A human boyfriend?”

One of the few dragons who didn’t know about Min-jun asked in surprise.

Evan answered her question.

“Yes, she has one. There’s nothing wrong with dating a human while enjoying yourself. But that’s not the issue.”

The dragons who had been chatting away at the welcome party, unaware of the situation, fell silent and turned to look at Evan.

“You seem completely smitten with him. It almost looks like you intend to make an Eternal Pact with a human who isn’t even a dragon. I must be mistaken, Lady Shasha, right?”

An Eternal Pact.

In human terms, it was something like marriage.

But unlike human marriage, dragons who made this pact could never break it. They had to spend the rest of their lives with the partner they had sworn it with.

And there was one more important point: an Eternal Pact could only be made between dragons.

Without an Eternal Pact, even another dragon wouldn’t be recognized by their kind as a legitimate romantic partner.

In other words, Min-jun and Sia were in a situation where their relationship couldn’t be acknowledged as a proper romance.

Sia pressed her lips together, then spoke clearly.

“...That’s right. I’m going to make an Eternal Pact with him.”

“With him? Perhaps the concept of an ‘Eternal Pact’ in your home dimension differs from the custom in ours?”

He asked as if he truly didn’t understand, but everyone knew the answer.

No matter how different their dimensions were, dragons shared a few customs. The Eternal Pact was one of them.

“Evan, that’s enough. Given the occasion, let’s arrange another time to discuss this.”

Knowing how his granddaughter must be feeling, Rokan tried to bring the uncomfortable situation to an end.

But Evan paid him no mind and challenged her directly.

“Dragons can never love anyone outside their own kind. If you believe what you feel is love, you must be confusing it with pity or affection.”

“...Why are you doing this to me?”

It was only natural that dragons couldn’t understand her point of view, and just as natural that they wouldn’t accept it.

She had planned to tell them everything once Min-jun became a complete dragon.

But why was Evan prying into her private life like this?

And why bring it up in front of every dragon living on Earth?

Couldn’t they just pretend not to know and let it go?

She didn’t want her relationship with Min-jun discussed in front of the other dragons as if there were something indecent about it.

Sia’s eyes trembled.

What was she supposed to say in a moment like this?

“Compared to the length of our lives, your connection with him is surely just a fleeting encounter. And yet you’re thinking of making a pact of love with such an insignificant creature. Perhaps you should simply call it another part of your diversion.”

Evan kept pressing her, saying that a dragon marrying a human was no different from a human falling in love with and marrying a pet.

“A human can play a dog in a performance. But neither during the performance nor afterward would they truly fall in love with a dog.”

“Evan.”

“I’m sorry to raise this at such an important gathering, but we need to address problems that must be addressed.”

“Evaaaan!”

Rokan’s anger finally boiled over. A faint trace of dragon’s fear entered his growl, but Evan didn’t so much as flinch.

Instead, his voice grew even sharper as he went on, driving his words into Sia’s heart.

“Lady Shasha, may I ask why you’ve made this choice?”

His tone was polite, but his manner was anything but.

She stared at Evan in silence, her eyelids trembling.

He ignored her reaction and continued to needle her.

“You know that even if you start a family, you won’t be able to have children.”

Everyone present looked perfectly human, but that was only an imitation of human appearance.

Sia couldn’t carry a child with Min-jun, who belonged to a different species.

“I know our kind have an unspoken rule of avoiding interference in this world and in one another’s affairs whenever possible. But this goes beyond what we can simply overlook.”

Quite a few dragons nodded along with Evan’s words, looking at Sia with disapproval.

But not all of them looked down on her.

“Evan, even so, you’ve gone too far. I... can still understand Lady Shasha’s feelings. To begin with, a dragon and a human...”

“Comparing their love to the love between a human and a dog is going too far.”

“I agree. To be honest, I think we should do away with outdated customs like the Eternal Pact. Everyone treats it as sacred, but it’s really no different from a curse disguised as a pact—one that keeps you trapped in a relationship even after your feelings for each other have faded.”

A few dragons began taking Sia’s side, and Rokan also scolded Evan, telling him to stop.

The welcome party had become an uncomfortable gathering full of raised voices and shouting.

Sia’s eyes were red.

For her grandfather and the other dragons who were standing up for her.

And for Min-jun, who had been dragged into the other dragons’ gossip through no fault of his own, and for herself, who had chosen a forbidden love.

What was I supposed to do?

An idea came to her, but she was afraid it might only make things worse.

Still, she soon decided that doing something was better than doing nothing.

“Um...”

She struggled to speak.

“Oppa is even prepared to change his species for me.”

Sia made a bombshell confession, hoping to somehow change the chaotic atmosphere.

“Shasha, what did you just say?”

“A human is going to... change his species?”

Sia’s words left everyone in shock, and the dragons gathered there began murmuring among themselves.

Amid the confusion, Sia struggled to continue.

“Oppa knows. He knows I’m a dragon, and that he has to become one too if we’re ever going to be able to make a pact of love. So he’s putting everything he has into making our dream come true.”

In truth, Min-jun didn’t know about the Eternal Pact or the dragons’ acceptance. But he did know that he had to become a dragon to marry Sia, so what she’d said wasn’t entirely wrong.

“What are you talking about...?”

She wasn’t sure this was the right time to reveal it, but the truth would come out eventually.

Somehow, they’d already found out that she was dating Min-jun. It was only a matter of time before they learned he was practicing Dragon Speech to become a dragon.

The dragons’ murmuring grew louder.

With eyes glistening as if she were about to cry, Sia looked at Rokan.

It was as if she were silently asking him whether she’d done the right thing.

Instead of answering, Rokan gave her hand a gentle squeeze, his expression troubled.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go the way she’d hoped.

“Does that human really think he can do it? That’s absurd.”

“Absurd, yes, but I admire his courage. There was a human like that where I used to live. He failed in the end, though.”

“Admire him? He doesn’t know his place!”

“Exactly! That isn’t courage. It’s recklessness!”

The dragons split into two camps: those who thought positively of Min-jun’s resolve, and those who didn’t. The arguments started up again.

The latter group vastly outnumbered the former.

How dare a lowly human aspire to the status of a dragon, a species closest to the gods?

Many dragons took offense at the mere thought of it. Even if Min-jun succeeded, that wouldn’t erase their displeasure.

And there was another problem, too.

“There’s something we’re overlooking. That human knows we exist. And the reason he knows is clearly...”

The dragon who spoke turned to look at Sia.

“Because of you, Lady Shasha.”

Ever since settling on Earth, they had concealed their identities completely.

It would only cause trouble if people found out they existed, so none of the dragons wanted to reveal themselves.

And yet...

Because of a romance with some human, the existence of dragons in this world had come to light.

“Lady Shasha.”

Evan, who had brought the situation to this point, spoke in an even colder voice.

“Do you understand what you’ve done?”

She wanted to argue, but she couldn’t.

Feeling as though everyone present had become her enemy, she shrank back and forced herself to speak.

“...Still, Oppa doesn’t know there are other dragons besides me and Grandpa. I would never put the rest of you in danger—”

“You keep calling him ‘Oppa,’ but if I recall correctly, you’re about two thousand five hundred years old, Lady Shasha. Not twenty-five.”

Through various channels, Evan had learned that she was in love with a human man. He also knew that the man was trying to wield dragon power.

But even after uncovering all that, there was one thing he still hadn’t figured out:

Why did Sia call that human man “Oppa”?

“Who is that human, anyway? And, Shasha, why on earth have you chosen him as the one you want to make an Eternal Pact with?”

“Now that you mention it, that bothered me from the start, too.”

“Rokan, you know something, don’t you? As our leader, as our elder, as the wisest among us, you must know how abnormal this situation is. It’s your duty to explain what your young granddaughter is doing, or, even if it’s late, to guide her back onto the right path.”

Rokan was the only Ancient Dragon among them, and he had once been a Dragon Lord. Ever since the group had formed, the dragons had trusted and followed him as their new Dragon Lord.

But...

They believed Rokan was also responsible for what his granddaughter had done, since she was family. They wanted him, as their leader, to resolve the situation.

Sia squeezed her eyes shut. Rokan let out a low groan.

Even with thousands of years of wisdom behind him, he couldn’t tell what the right decision was in that moment.

After a long silence, Rokan met Sia’s eyes without saying a word.

The truth was bound to come out eventually.

Reading his intentions in his gaze, heavy with complicated emotions, Sia let out a deep sigh and finally gathered the courage to face the others again.

“...I was originally human in my previous life.”

No matter how I thought about it, something felt off.

That night, after his rank reassessment, Min-jun’s mind was in turmoil.

Normally, Sia would have contacted him by now.

But he still hadn’t heard from her, which meant something must have happened.

She was a dragon, so it wasn’t as though she was in any physical danger.

Then what had happened?

Sia’s voice, when she’d said she had something to do and ended the call first, still lingered in his mind.

He’d wanted to celebrate such a wonderful day with her, but now that things were going this way, he couldn’t settle down.

She still wasn’t answering his calls, so he decided to go to bed and call her again in the morning. With a heavy heart, Min-jun lay down.

Just then, his phone gave a short buzz.

Hoping it might be her, Min-jun checked his phone.

[Oppa.]

Just one short message.

The moment he saw it, Min-jun hurriedly started a video call to Sia.

For some reason, though, she declined the video call and called him back with a regular voice call instead.

“Sia? Sia, are you okay?”

[...Oppa.]

Her voice was hoarse.

It sounded as though she’d been crying for a long time and had only just managed to calm down.

“What happened? Come on, tell me slowly.”

Sia swallowed hard and spoke one word at a time.

[What... what are we... supposed to do now...?]