Chapter 3 - Which One Is Prettier?

After that, we talked for as long as all the time we'd spent missing each other. But after a while...

“Hey, Sia. Shouldn't we move somewhere else soon?”

“Why? There's no one around.”

“That's not it. If we were anywhere else, maybe, but this is a cemetery. Staying here much longer feels a little...” And it wasn't just any cemetery. Sia's body from when she was human was buried here, which made it rather unsettling.

Sia nodded at that.

“Now that you mention it, my body's buried right next to us. Ugh.”

She grimaced, then grabbed my hand.

“Hold on tight.”

At her words, everything flared bright for an instant, as though a flashbang had gone off before my eyes.

[“Teleport.”]

A moment later...

“What do you think? Like it? It's much better than before, right?”

The scenery had changed in the blink of an eye. A moment ago, we'd been in a cemetery. Now I stood on a small beach with no sign of anyone nearby.

“Sia, did you just... use teleportation?”

“Yep! Remember how I said I dreamed of camping alone with you on a deserted island for a day? It suddenly came to mind.”

I did seem to remember her saying something like that once. But that wasn't why I was surprised.

'She can use teleportation... that easily?'

Teleportation was by no means a simple spell you could cast without calculating formulas or reciting a chant. Just how incredible was my Sia?

“Sia, could you teleport us to the other side of the Earth like that? Somewhere like Paraguay?”

“Of course! Why, do you want to go to Paraguay?”

She urged me to name a place, saying she could take me anywhere.

“No, I was just curious. But I'd be happy to go anywhere with you.”

“Hee-hee.”

After that embarrassingly sweet exchange, Sia started to say something to me, then lightly tapped her head as if she'd remembered something she'd forgotten.

“Oh, where's my head? Wait here a second.”

With that, she cast teleportation again in an instant. “Ta-da!” She reappeared only seconds later, holding the tteokbokki I'd brought in one hand.

“You brought this tteokbokki for me. I couldn't leave it behind.”

Perhaps it was the excitement of eating tteokbokki for the first time since her reincarnation, but Sia was grinning from ear to ear. From my perspective, though, I wasn't sure we should eat it. Of course, I'd bought it for her, so there was nothing wrong with her eating it... but it was, after all, a memorial offering. I couldn't stop her if she wanted it, but I'd rather buy fresh tteokbokki instead.

Just then, she asked, “What's wrong?”

I'd been staring at her without saying a word, and she seemed to sense something was wrong. Her voice trembled as she asked. In fact, her whole body was shaking, like a puppy standing before its owner after being caught misbehaving. If I didn't say something, she looked ready to cry. Flustered, I quickly waved my hands.

“Nothing. It's just... I brought that tteokbokki as a memorial offering, so it feels a little strange to eat it. I was wondering if we should buy some fresh instead.”

“Absolutely not!”

Sia breathed a sigh of relief at my answer, but shook her head firmly.

“You prepared this tteokbokki for me. It'd feel even stranger not to eat it! And the wine, too...”

The moment she mentioned the wine, we both realized we'd left the rice wine behind.

“... I forgot.”

“I thought dragons in fantasy novels were supposed to never forget anything. Are real dragons different?”

Half joking and half serious, I teased her affectionately, just like I used to. But her expression darkened sharply, as though she'd done something terribly wrong.

“Why did I... leave it behind?”

The old Sia would have taken a joke like that in stride and even fired one back at me. Instead, she grew anxious over a single bottle of wine. She told me to wait a moment and vanished again. Mere seconds later, she returned with the rice wine we'd left behind, her eyes unfocused as though her mind were elsewhere.

“The wine you brought for me... right... I shouldn't have left it behind...”

Something was wrong with her. Muttering quietly to herself, she stroked the bottle of rice wine with care.

“Sia?”

“I'm sorry. You prepared it for me, and I forgot... I'm sorry...”

She plainly wasn't herself. What was going on? Had spending two thousand years studying nothing but dimensional travel magic left her mind unstable? Or was this an aftereffect of using that magic? She looked terribly fragile. If she'd been like this ever since she came out of the gate, I might have understood, but she'd seemed fine until just now. I couldn't help feeling shaken.

I hugged her tightly to help her calm down.

“It's okay, Sia. Have I ever gotten angry over something like that? You're back. What does a bottle of wine matter?”

“...”

“I was teasing you, that's all. I was just so happy to see you again.”

I soothed her as gently as I could, and little by little she began to settle down.

“... Sorry. I scared you, didn't I?”

“No, it's okay. As long as you're all right.”

I stroked her back gently again. Her expression softened as she calmed down, and soon she gave me a shy smile.

“Then let's eat the tteokbokki together!”

Sia used magic to make a small table and chairs, then set the tteokbokki and wine on the table. She finished opening the half-torn packaging, unwrapped the two sets of wooden chopsticks that came in the bag, and handed me one.

“Let's eat!”

With that cheerful announcement, she dug into the tteokbokki.

“Wow, how long has it been since I had tteokbokki?”

From the first bite, she made a fuss as if she were eating the finest delicacy in the world, then began devouring the tteokbokki at a remarkable pace. Of course, she didn't forget to drink the rice wine between bites.

Tteokbokki and wine—and rice wine meant for a memorial offering, at that. I couldn't imagine how the odd combination would taste, but Sia happily enjoyed them together.

“You know, when I was a hatchling, I wanted tteokbokki so badly that I found the ingredients and tried making it myself once. But it didn't taste the same. I couldn't tell if I was a bad cook or if the ingredients were different from the ones on Earth.”

Having polished off a third of the tteokbokki on her own in no time, she gulped down the remaining rice wine like water.

“But thinking back, it wasn't either of those things. The real reason was something else.”

“What was it, then?”

“I think it was because I wasn't eating it with you.”

She met my eyes lovingly and took a dainty bite of fish cake.

“The tteokbokki was delicious, but I loved the time we spent eating it together. I think that's why I liked it so much.”

Her words hit me hard. She'd loved eating tteokbokki with me, so why had I always complained that it was all we ever ate? Regret washed over me again, along with guilt toward her.

“I'll buy you so much tteokbokki you'll get sick of it.”

So what if we ate it until we couldn't stand another bite? I'd get to see Sia happy.

I'd said it because I felt guilty, but Sia seemed deeply touched. She twisted bashfully from head to toe.

We ate and talked about this and that in the cozy atmosphere, and before we knew it, the takeout container was empty.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yep! But I'm still hungry.”

Still hungry? I stared at the container, scraped clean without a scrap of food left.

'This much used to leave a little over after we both ate.'

And she was still hungry?

“You're... hungry?”

“Yep. Since I'm a dragon, I eat a little more than I used to.”

That did make sense. I didn't know what real dragons were like, but the dragons in fantasy novels generally had true forms incomparably larger than humans. Maybe it was only natural that this much food hadn't filled her up.

“Then shall we go buy more tteokbokki?”

“Let's! We can get it in our neighborhood, right?”

“Yeah.”

We cleaned up the trash before teleporting. While we were at it, my gaze fell on Sia's clothes. If she went out dressed like that, people were bound to stare. What she was wearing wasn't anything a modern person would wear. If I had to describe it, it looked like an intricately made cosplay outfit.

“Sia, are you going out to buy tteokbokki dressed like that?”

“I was about to change. What should I wear? I'll wear whatever you pick.”

Good question. There wasn't anything in particular I wanted her to wear. Whether she wore an elegant dress, a fresh-looking tennis skirt with a pastel top, or baggy sweats, I'd like it all. But saying anything was fine might make it seem like I didn't care, so I suggested the first outfit that came to mind.

“A white T-shirt and jeans?”

“Okay!”

With a single gesture, Sia changed her clothes. The outfit she'd been wearing, which looked like something from medieval Europe, became a clean white T-shirt and jeans.

“Does it look good on me?”

“Yeah. You're really beautiful, Sia.”

I wasn't just saying that. Sia had been quite pretty before her reincarnation, but now she was beautiful enough to inspire awe. It wasn't just because she was my girlfriend. Objectively, she looked less like a person than a living work of art. The kind of expensive work of art someone like me shouldn't dare touch. Though she wasn't actually human or a work of art—she was a dragon. Anyway.

With a figure that perfect, she'd look beautiful in anything, but this outfit was especially good on her. It had that effortlessly stylish look that would make every man passing by glance her way at least once.

We'd cleaned up after eating, and she'd changed into clothes that suited the modern world. All that was left was to teleport.

But instead of casting the spell, Sia suddenly stopped me. “Wait a second.”

“Do you like the face I have now, or was my original face before I was reincarnated prettier?”

“... Huh?”

Her question left me speechless. ... How was I supposed to answer that?

'I'm fucked.'