Our Oppa… What Do I Do?

He has talent. He’s a genius.

Rokan laid out his praise of me for Sia, heaping on even more of it than he had in front of me, until his mouth ran dry. The whole time she listened, the smile never once left Sia’s lips.

“Even so, I’d have the both of you keep firmly in mind that you mustn’t take this lightly. However much talent you have, Minjun, it’s plain enough that this will be anything but easy.”
“Of course. We will.”

It was far too early to be pleased with myself when I hadn’t even started. I had no intention of letting my guard down, either.

“Anyway, I’ll see to helping Minjun along, so you needn’t worry so much, Shasha.”
“Of course! I’m counting on you, Grandpa. Oh — Grandpa, that thing I left with you yesterday, you can pass it on to Oppa, can’t you?”
“I shall.”

Could it be a present? I kept it off my face, but inside, my curiosity was stirring.

“Then I’ll be in touch again before long.”
“Yes! Oppa, it isn’t long now until we get to meet again. See you then! Call me when you get home!”
“Mm. I’ll call.”

The moment the call ended, I asked straight out.

“Lord Rokan, what is it that Sia left with you?”
“I’ll give it to you now.”

Rokan pulled the thing Sia had left behind out of subspace. Of all things, it turned out to be a wearable camera.

“Wear it every time you go into a Gate. Shasha and I will watch the footage and analyze it. Which parts were good, and which parts need correcting.”

Footage from an ordinary camera would have put a ceiling on the feedback, he said, but Sia had modified this one so that, unlike a normal camera, it could capture even the finest flows of mana.

When on earth had she found the time to dream up something like this as well? She might be my own girlfriend, but our Sia really was a genius.

“Thank you for going to such trouble over me, in so many ways.”
“Enough of that. Just train properly.”
“I’ll live up to your expectations without fail, Lord Rokan.”

With everyone helping me this much, I had no choice but to throw myself into it.

Feeling that way, I spoke up.

“Lord Rokan. If it wouldn’t be rude of me… would it be all right if I trained here a little before I go?”

If I went straight home now, I’d have nothing to do, and there was no suitable place near me to train in anyway. On top of that, apart from Sia, Rokan was the only being who could advise me on the Dragon Word. If he would only allow it, I wanted to keep training here.

“Not just today — from now on, whenever you like.”

From the moment I had permission to use the lair until late that night, I spent the whole day there with my teeth gritted, throwing myself into training.

What did it mean to put your will into it, and what on earth was wielding the Dragon Word supposed to feel like? Every attempt felt like pulling an oar through empty air.

Predictably, training ended without my having wielded the Dragon Word even once. Well, I’d never imagined I could master it overnight in the first place. Still, someday I would wield it as freely as I liked.

Then came the next day.

After a quick breakfast I opened the Hunter job app and browsed for Gates worth clearing. Training was all well and good, but surely nothing beat the real thing. After hunting around for a suitable one, I settled on joining the clearing party for a D-Rank Gate about an hour away by public transport.

It feels empty.

Before that accident, I’d cleared nearly every Gate with Sia. Maybe that was why searching for a Gate alone, and signing up for a clear alone, felt so terribly strange.

The instant the party was assembled, I called Sia. A video call, of course. She picked up before the first ring had even finished.

“Morning.”
“Good morning, Oppa! You slept well, didn’t you?”

We opened with ordinary talk, trading news of the night before, and once we’d checked in on each other, we moved on to yesterday.

“Oppa. How was training yesterday? It was really hard, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t exactly easy… but it wasn’t so hard I thought I’d die either.”
“That’s something, at least. Did you get a feel for it at all?”
“No, not yet. I’ve got no idea what this dragon’s will thing even is. Your grandfather was right there helping me and I still couldn’t make head or tail of what he was saying.”

I poured out my complaints about yesterday’s training. When I’d asked him in concrete terms how one expresses will, Lord Rokan had explained a concept that was, by my standards, impenetrable, and then given me a demonstration. Naturally, I hadn’t stood a chance of understanding it.

“That’s normal at this stage. Which reminds me — next time I think I’ll watch you train, Oppa.”
“We only get to meet once a week. Even if you wanted to watch, you couldn’t, could you?”
“There’s video calls. I’ll watch through that. Oh — you know I bought a screen so I could do video calls with you?”

…A screen?
Like grandfather, like granddaughter.

Saying she’d show me the screen she’d bought, Sia switched the view. And there it was, set into one wall: an enormous screen fully twice the size of the one I’d seen yesterday in Rokan’s lair.

“I’m going to watch you training on this. We can’t meet, so at least I can see you this way.”
“Ah…”

If we could have met as often as an ordinary couple, Sia wouldn’t have gone this far. My chest ached for no good reason.

Anyway.

“You’ve already found a place?”

Sia’s old home was the place I lived in now, and since we couldn’t live together, it weighed on me. Staying long at her grandfather’s lair would be awkward for her too, so I’d been wondering what she would do. Hearing that she’d somehow found a place of her own came as a relief.

“Mm! Grandpa and I went round looking together, and this one seemed the best.”
“If you went round looking with your grandfather, does that mean… you made a lair?”
“Mm. Built it myself.”

So this was how dragons got themselves onto the property ladder. Then again, with a lair, there’d be no need to go house-hunting at all.

“Come over to our lair sometime soon, Oppa!”
“Of course I will. Shall we make the next date at your lair, Sia?”

A housewarming and a stay-at-home date in one; surely I had to go at least once. Besides, I was curious how Sia had decorated the place.

“Ooh, yes, yes.”
“So where is the lair? If it’s not far I’ll come to you.”
“Um… it’s a bit far, so getting there would be a real pain. I’ll come and fetch you.”
“Where is it, then?”

Since I lived on my own in Seoul, I’d assumed she’d taken somewhere on the city’s outskirts. Apparently not. Her grandfather was in Gangwon Province, so had she built hers somewhere near him?

“Over by Mount Halla.”¹
“…Ah.”

Whatever else came of it, I’d be eating my fill of tangerines when I went.

We stayed on the line after that, trading small talk, until Sia said her battery was dying and she’d ring again soon. It felt as though we’d been talking for quite a while, so I checked the call time.

Call time: 03:53:12

Plenty of my calls with Sia had run over an hour before, but this was, I thought, the first time I’d ever been on the phone this long. Though from here on, it would probably be like this.

Right then, let’s see. The time was…

“…I’ve barely any time left.”

I’d agreed to meet the Gate clearing party at one in the afternoon, and it was already 11:50. The trip took about an hour by public transport, so even if I got dressed and set off right this second, the schedule was horribly tight.

“Uwaaaagh!”

How nice it would be if I could teleport as freely as Sia did.

Sia had spent some four hours on the phone with Minjun. It was about lunchtime, so Sia paid a visit to her grandfather’s lair, partly to eat with him.

“Grandpa!”
“Come in, our Shasha. Have you eaten?”

A visit from his granddaughter was always a pleasure, and Rokan welcomed her warmly.

“No. I was going to eat with you, Grandpa.”
“That’s good, then. I was just about to eat myself.”

Before long Rokan brought out a generous spread, and the two of them sat down to their meal in high spirits, chatting away happily.

“Grandpa, how was Oppa’s training yesterday?”

She’d already heard all about it from Minjun over nearly four hours on the phone, but she wanted her grandfather’s account as well. He was bound to see it from a different angle, after all.

“It’s only been a day, mind, but I could see plainly enough that he works in earnest.”

She’d heard much the same yesterday, but praise of Minjun never wore thin, no matter how many times she heard it.

“That boyfriend of yours is going to grow faster than you expected, I’m certain of it. He may even manage the Dragon Word before very long. But that is precisely why I have my worries, too.”
“Worries?”

For an instant, Sia’s pupils wavered.

“Because once he can wield the Dragon Word, the other clans will begin to feel Minjun’s energy as well, however faintly.”

The world at large hardly knew it, but Sia and Rokan were not the only dragons on Earth, and the dragons here were already aware of one another. Thanks to the energy peculiar to their kind, they could sense each other wherever in this world they happened to be.

Until now we’ve all lived with our identities hidden by unspoken agreement…

The problem was that from the moment Minjun could wield the Dragon Word, however imperfectly, the other dragons on Earth would be able to feel his energy too.

“So there’d — be that problem too.”

Judging it a smaller problem than she’d feared, Sia let out a breath of relief. Rokan, however, saw it differently.

“Shasha. This is a far more serious problem than you think.”

Rokan knew that not every dragon here would be well disposed toward Minjun. No dragon had ever seen a human wield the Dragon Word, so some might take an interest in him, though not necessarily a friendly one. But Rokan knew perfectly well that others would take offense at a mere human using the great power of dragons, the Dragon Word.

“I… suppose so.”

Accepting what Rokan said, Sia nodded weakly. She wanted to deny it, wanted not to hear it, but in the end she had to face facts, the same as he did.

“Is there… anything I could do for Oppa?”

Her voice came out drained, nothing like her usual self.

“Sadly, nothing just now. I say this out of an old man’s fretting, but keep it from Minjun for the time being. Nothing good comes of his knowing yet.”
“I will…”

But there was one thing Rokan could not bring himself to tell even Sia.

Some ancient dragons, Rokan among them, eventually open a third eye that reads the soul’s traces rather than the body’s. Once that eye opens, they can tell not only whether the soul before them is good or evil, but see through to its very nature.

There doesn’t seem to be a dragon here who’s opened it yet, though.

As far as he knew, hardly any of the dragons settled on Earth were ancient dragons as old as himself.

But if one of his own kind were to open that eye as he had, and could read the record heaped up in Minjun’s soul, that dragon would not stop at mere offense.