Chapter 59

[59] Because I Had to Tell You Someday, Oppa

A place boasting breathtaking scenery, reserved for just the two of us.

The view was beautiful beyond words, and a gentle breeze—blowing from who knew where—made the atmosphere even more romantic.

Sharing the food we’d each brought with the person we loved and talking together in such a cozy setting filled me with the kind of romantic feelings you’d expect to see in a TV drama.

“Oppa, say ah.”

“Ah.”

Sia fed me a piece of the kimbap she’d made, and I returned the favor by feeding her some of the tteokbokki I’d cooked.

Watching each other enjoy the food we’d brought, we naturally found ourselves smiling.

“I really like it here. Maybe we should come here for dates from time to time.”

“Right? There’s no one else here. I think that makes it even more romantic. It feels as if we’re the only two people left in this vast world.”

Sia confessed that she’d always wanted to go on a date in this kind of setting at least once.

“Maybe someday we could buy an uninhabited island and go on dates there. We could buy an island, build our own vacation home, and stay there together. What do you think, Oppa? Sounds nice, right?”

“Just imagining it sounds wonderful.”

“We could fish, catch crabs and clams, and make seafood stew. At night, we could look at the stars together from the roof…”

It was the sort of dream that would normally remain a fantasy, but Sia might actually be able to make it come true.

As my imagination ran wild, I thought of something I wanted to ask.

“Sia, does this place have seasons, too?”

“Why?”

“It’s autumn in Korea right now. I was wondering what it would be like to see the mountainsides covered in brightly colored leaves.”

The scenery was already beautiful, but since it was autumn, I couldn’t help thinking about the red fall leaves.

I was about to ask if we could go leaf-peeping somewhere soon instead. There was no reason to think they’d gone to the trouble of recreating all four seasons in a training ground.

“Wait a moment, Oppa.”

Sia rummaged around in her subspace and took out a crystal orb.

It looked exactly like the one Rokan had taken out here before.

When Sia poured mana into the orb, the lush green leaves turned red, changing into fall foliage in an instant.

The trees around us changed first, then all the trees covering the cliff below.

“What do you think? Do you like it?”

“It’s so beautiful…”

It had been beautiful even before the leaves changed, but the fall colors made it twice as lovely.

Faced with a sight I’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, I pulled out my phone and took pictures as if entranced.

Sia gestured toward the air. A maple leaf fluttered down from a nearby tree and landed gently in her hand.

She held it lightly and studied it for a moment, then handed it to me.

“Here, a present. Have it laminated and use it as a bookmark.”

“Thanks.”

I found Sia’s thoughtfulness, even in something so small, unbearably cute.

I carefully took the leaf from her and put it in my subspace.

Then, to show my appreciation, I fed her another bite of tteokbokki.

Sia closed her eyes happily and savored the taste.

“But now that I think about it, it’s kind of amazing.”

“What is?”

Sia asked as she wiped the tteokbokki sauce from around her mouth.

“The place where you lived is in another dimension, different from Earth. But the fall leaves here look so much like the ones there.”

It suddenly made me curious.

What did the autumn leaves look like in the place where Sia had lived?

My question might have seemed a little out of the blue, but Sia smiled as she answered.

“The leaves there look surprisingly similar to the ones here. They aren’t exactly the same, but whenever they change color, I remember going leaf-peeping with you before.”

Since the conversation had turned in that direction, I decided to ask Sia—rather suddenly—what her life as a dragon had been like.

It was something I’d wanted to ask her someday.

“Sia, could you tell me more about it? About your hometown and the life you lived there.”

“…Hmm.”

Normally, Sia would have been excited to tell me about it. But from her reaction, she didn’t seem too keen on talking.

Why?

She’d lived for more than two thousand five hundred years—an impossibly long time for a human. Surely she had plenty of interesting stories and things she wanted to share.

But when I thought about it, Sia had hardly ever talked about that world or her life there. She’d barely mentioned it at all after the first day we reunited.

Judging by her reaction, I probably needed to wait until she was ready to bring it up herself.

“You don’t have to force yourself to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

I didn’t know if I’d accidentally touched a sore spot, but Sia’s reaction made me think we should change the subject.

But she shook her head, then let out a deep sigh as if she’d made up her mind.

“No. These are things I had to tell you someday anyway. And it’s not right for people in love to have so many secrets.”

Since we were already talking about it, Sia decided to tell me the things she hadn’t been able to share until now.

“I didn’t tell you because…well, they weren’t exactly happy stories.”

In a calm voice, Sia began telling me in detail about the life she’d kept to herself—the life she’d lived as a dragon.

When she first realized she’d been reincarnated as a dragon, the first feeling she’d experienced was confusion.

For someone who’d spent their time letting their imagination run wild while reading fantasy novels, being reincarnated as a dragon—the most powerful creature in the world—might have been a dream come true. But she hadn’t been entirely happy about it.

Part of it was that Minjun was no longer by her side, but there was another reason, too.

It was the way dragons viewed humans.

After reaching adulthood, many dragons spent most of their time in human form. Yet, paradoxically, most of them considered humans an inferior species, beneath their notice.

The way humans might look at baby monkeys.

And as she lived among dragon society, Sia came to understand how they felt about romance with humans.

Among dragons, the prevailing view was that falling in love with a human and wanting to start a family with one was improper. Humans were seen as nothing more than playthings.

Those values left her confused about her own identity.

You know how people born into multicultural families can struggle with questions about their identity as children?

For Sia, it was far worse than that.

Because I Had to Tell Oppa Someday

She’d had to struggle with her identity between two species, not two countries.

Because of that, she said, she hadn’t even been able to confide in the other dragons. She’d had no choice but to suffer in silence.

That was especially true before she told her family there that she was reincarnated.

She had a human soul, belonging to an inferior species, yet the other dragons had loved her as one of their own.

As time passed, a quiet sense of guilt began to take root in her heart.

And there was more.

That wasn’t the only thing that had tormented her.

In that world, Sia was the pride of the Red Dragon clan.

As Rokan had told me before, she’d been born with a special energy that no other dragon possessed.

Her power was overwhelmingly greater than that of dragons around her age.

That made the other dragons cherish her all the more.

Paradoxically, it also made her feel an even greater burden in her life there.

She thought she was receiving far more love than she deserved.

The dragons’ casual disdain for humans, contrasted with the excessive attention and affection she received despite having once been human herself—

It was only natural that she’d become emotionally troubled.

And what tormented her wasn’t just the burden on her heart.

Around the time she turned one hundred—which was still very young, only about four in human years—the power dormant within her suddenly began to run wild.

As I said earlier, she’d been born with an extraordinarily rare power, one of the rarest in dragon history. No one knew what effect it would have on her in the future.

The other dragons had simply assumed that she’d grow stronger than them and eventually become a Dragon Lord who would lead the clan, like her grandfather.

But perhaps the power had been too much for her to contain, with her human soul.

One day, it swallowed her whole.

When it happened for the first time, Sia and her family were terrified.

Even they had never seen anything like it.

Healing magic, elixirs, even Dragon Speech—nothing could stop her power from running rampant.

The one saving grace was that no one was hurt during her outburst, and it subsided after a day.

It happened again after that, but fortunately, as time went on, the episodes gradually became less frequent.

“I rambled a bit, didn’t I? Anyway, that’s how things were. I had plenty of good, happy memories, too, but whenever I thought about that time, the bad ones came back as well. Eventually, I didn’t even want to remember it.”

“I see.”

“And, well…when I’m with you, I just want to be Jung Sia, a human, not Shasha the Red Dragon. That’s another reason I didn’t talk about it much. Still, it feels better now that I’ve finally told you everything.”

Sia looked into Minjun’s eyes with a faint smile.

For some reason, though, Minjun felt that the smile on her face was subtly different from the ones she usually gave him.

As it happened, Minjun’s intuition wasn’t entirely wrong.

Sia said she’d finally gotten everything off her chest, but there were still things she hadn’t told him.

For example, there were dragons in this world, too. When she met them, they’d reacted with the same disgust as the dragons in her old world at the idea of having genuine romantic feelings for a human.

No matter how much she wanted to tell him everything, Sia couldn’t bring herself to tell Minjun that.

Unaware that Minjun had sensed something was off, Sia lay down on his lap and asked him to let her use it as a pillow.

“Oppa, can I stay like this for a little while?”

“Sure.”

“It feels nice to rest my head on your lap again. I used to do this all the time.”

The conversation about her painful past had made the mood a little heavy, so Sia wanted to change the subject and bring back the sweet atmosphere they’d had before.

As she wondered how to steer the conversation elsewhere, she suddenly remembered what her grandfather had told her the day before.

He was planning to start a guild for Minjun soon.

Rokan had said he hadn’t told Minjun yet, so she should be the one to share the news. Sia had been waiting for the right moment to tell him.

Of course, she still had no idea that Minjun had already heard about it.

Eager to see his reaction, she brought it up as she lay on his lap.

“Oppa, want to hear some news that’ll really surprise you?”

“Surprise me?”

Minjun immediately realized what she was about to say.

But he pretended not to know and met Sia’s gaze with a curious look.

“Yeah. It’s news that’ll really, really surprise you. What do you think it is?”

“Hmm. What could it be…?”

Minjun took his time, pretending to think it over.

He wondered whether he should guess correctly, but decided not to this time.

“I can’t figure it out. What’s the answer?”

“My grandfather is going to start a guild himself, just for you!”

“Really?”

Minjun pretended it was the first time he’d heard the news. His acting must have been convincing, because Sia excitedly continued.

“He’d wanted to start a guild for a while, but you’re the reason he finally made up his mind. It’s awkward for you to join an ordinary guild, but it’s also awkward not to join one, so I guess he decided this was the perfect time.”

It was exactly what Rokan had told him, but Minjun put on an intrigued expression as though hearing it for the first time.

“Do you know you’re grinning from ear to ear right now?”

“Am I?”

“You must be so happy. If I’d known you’d react like this, I would’ve asked Grandpa to start a guild ages ago.”

Sia thought Minjun was smiling because of the news that the guild was going to be formed. But that wasn’t why he was smiling.

He couldn’t help smiling because she was so cute as she chattered excitedly, thrilled that her surprise had worked.

“Since we’re doing this, maybe I should join Grandpa’s guild, too. We probably won’t be able to work together, but still. Remember what we said before we graduated from the academy? We wanted to join the same guild.”

“I do. Back then, I was D-rank, so I thought we’d never make that dream come true. And now look at us.”

“Yeah! I should tell Grandpa. Someday, we can go on dates in gates together. We could fight side by side and relive some old memories.”

“That sounds easy enough.”

Ah, this was the life.

Sia sat up, perhaps worried that Minjun’s leg might go numb, then peeled a tangerine she’d brought for dessert and fed it to him.

The two of them enjoyed the breathtaking view and the cozy atmosphere.

They hoped they could spend the rest of their date this way—chatting softly and admiring the scenery in peace.

Even on their last date, a sudden gate break had interrupted them halfway through.

They hoped nothing like that would happen today, and that they could enjoy their time together in peace.

But a little while later, Sia realized that, unfortunately, this small wish wasn’t going to come true.

She could feel that the “outburst” of her power—the one she’d told Minjun about—was about to begin.