Oppa, Why Are You So Sexy?

Sia played the video again.

Everything was there, from me chatting away warmly with the Villains, with no idea they were about to show their true colors, to me making small talk with Junhwi during the breaks. To me none of it was remarkable, but Sia seemed to find every scene fascinating.

“It’s amazing, looking at the world through your eyes, Oppa.”
“Really?”

Come to think of it, if Sia filmed a video the same way and showed it to me, I’d probably be just as fascinated. Would it feel like sneaking a look at someone’s diary?

“Mm. And seeing what that trash who tried to kill you looked like while they were still alive…”
“Seeing it…?”

Had she changed her mind in the meantime and decided not to watch after all? Honestly, that would have been a relief, and I was just about to tell her she didn’t have to watch if it was too hard.

But.

“Now I’m certain. This world is far too dangerous for you, Oppa.”

Now what was this about?

“Look at that. That Seo Yuseon bitch over there keeps sneaking looks at you, trying to hit on you, Oppa.”
“That was just to make us drop our guard—”

To be honest, I’d never gotten the impression that Seo Yuseon was hitting on me. Sia, apparently, saw it differently.

“That’s a problem in its own way. Anyway, between that bitch back then and whatever other bitches might hit on you, there’s no telling what they’d do, Oppa. This won’t do.”

I’d sensed it now and then, but ever since our reunion, Sia’s worrying and jealousy seemed to have grown noticeably. Here she was, reading that much meaning into the behavior of a Villain who had tried to kill me. Then again, we’d found each other after a separation too vast to imagine, so I could understand it, more or less.

At this rate, the day might come when I’d have to explain away so much as brushing hands with a female part-timer at a shop, and it wouldn’t be a laughing matter. Anyway.

“So, Sia, didn’t I tell you? Watching the video wouldn’t be any fun.”
“No. I’ll keep watching. I have to see it anyway.”

Sia shook her head as if she had no idea what I was on about, and sank back into the video. Even while I was stifling yawns of boredom here and there, she never once took her eyes off the screen.

I couldn’t have said how long it went on like that before the video reached the point where the Villains, thrashing one last time before they died, spat out ‘those outrageous words’. I paused it for a moment to speak to her.

“Sia. Can’t we stop here? There’s nothing good to see past this point.”
“But I still wanna see it.”
“Even though it shows people dying?”
“I told you, they’re not human, they’re trash, so it’s fine.”
“…”

I tried one last time to talk her round, but she showed no sign of changing her mind.

“It’s fine. So I really do have to see it.”
“…All right.”

Trying to stop her any further would get me nowhere. In the end I gave up and started the video again.

On the screen, the ‘scenes’ I’d been dreading slowly unfolded: the insults against Sia and me, too foul to repeat, and then me running my sword through their hearts in a single stroke.

Here it comes — the thing that was bound to blow.

Sighing inwardly, I watched Sia closely for her reaction. When I’d first heard the Villains yapping like that, even my blood had boiled. How much worse would it be for her?

But Sia’s expression was nothing like the face of someone looking at something repulsive. If anything, her eyes were so alive with fluttering excitement that just looking at them flustered me.

…Why?

“Oppa.”

Oblivious to my confusion, Sia gazed at me with dreamy eyes brimming with excitement.

“Why are you so sexy?”
“…?”

What on earth is she calling sexy?

Even once the long video call with Minjun was over, after running on for hours, Sia stayed in front of the screen. If anything, she pulled herself in closer and replayed the video she had paused.

Was she running the combat footage back because her feedback had fallen short and she wanted to give Minjun more detailed notes? No. Nor had the idle chatter during the trek, the part Minjun had called boring, caught her interest and kept her from shutting it off.

The scene she wanted to see again was the one where Minjun drove his sword into the hearts of the foul-mouthed Villains without a moment’s hesitation.

“Hee. How can our Oppa be this sexy.”

Contrary to Minjun’s worries, she hadn’t taken the Villains’ insults to heart in the slightest. What interested her was how Minjun had dealt with them: the way he ran them through the chest without hesitation, as though nothing they said was worth hearing a moment longer, and the sword energy that flashed blood-red for a single instant, as if it carried his feeling.

“Oppa’s probably the only one who doesn’t know. Just how sexy Oppa is.”

When she had first called him sexy while they watched this video together, Minjun hadn’t understood what she could possibly find sexy in it and had shaken his head without thinking. As Sia saw it, though, he was simply embarrassed by the word ‘sexy’ itself. He showed off a sexy side that openly, then shuddered and shyly denied it the moment someone said the word. Sia found a nerdy charm in that.

Handsome, sexy, and on top of it all, the unexpected charm of a nerd.

A man out of a fantasy, as rare as a unicorn, was her boyfriend, and the thought sent a shiver through her.

“Still, this part’s a bit of a shame.”

The wearable cam had been thrown together in a hurry, and to her mind it still had plenty of shortcomings. The biggest was that its viewpoint was far too limited. Fixed to Minjun’s chest, the camera could only ever show things from the vantage of his chest.

If only she could have watched him from a third-person view.

I’d have been able to see even what sort of face Oppa was making right then.

The face Minjun must have worn as he snuffed out the lives of the three Villains. The other side of him he showed inside a Gate, the side she could never see. She had prepared the camera for exactly that, but now that she had actually tried it, the regrets just kept piling up.

Unless, maybe, she put a drone in the air and filmed with that.

Ah!
Why didn’t I think of that?

She had been so focused on other things that the idea had never come to her. A filming drone, then. If she improved on one, she could observe Minjun in far more detail and from far more angles. Had she built something like that from the start, she could have checked the face he wore back then, and beyond that, his expression and posture at every single moment.

But there was no use regretting it now. She would use a drone from the next Gate clear on; for now, she would have to make do with what she had.

Sia played that part again, slowly. The image wouldn’t be clear, but surely Minjun’s face was reflected somewhere, however blurrily.

Somewhere like…

Someone’s eyes, maybe.

Minjun’s image might have been mirrored in another person’s eyes. To find it, Sia magnified the screen and checked the Villains’ eyes one by one for his reflection. An eye was hardly the place to make out a detailed expression, but even that was better than nothing.

And then, at last.

“Found it…!”

Sia found Minjun’s reflection in the eyes of Seo Yuseon, the Villain who had been looking straight at him. She enlarged the image. It was a little blurry, but she could make out the figure of Minjun gripping his sword.

Can’t I make it any bigger?

She swallowed hard and blew the video up to maximum magnification. To her regret, though, only the blurred outline of Minjun’s face came through, and she couldn’t read his expression in any detail.

Should I just give up here?

The thought crossed her mind for a moment, but she soon shook her head hard. She had spent two thousand years studying one single magic, dimensional-travel magic, and nothing else. Wasn’t she the very icon of indomitability, a woman who knew nothing of giving up?

If she had hit the limits of science and technology, it was time to borrow the power of magic. She mobilized every scrap of knowledge she had built up over two thousand five hundred years to sharpen, by whatever means it took, the hazy image of Minjun in Seo Yuseon’s eyes.

Magic might look like it would make the job easy, but this video had been born of magic and modern technology mixed together, so the work was anything but. Then again, it was only hard by human standards. She was a dragon, and in a mere ten minutes she had the video enlarged and sharp.

Her heart trembling, Sia checked the expression on Minjun’s face in the reflection.

“Aah…”

Eyes flung wide, glaring at the Villains. Lips quivering with a fury he could not contain.

A rage too deep for words was unmistakably surging across Minjun’s reflected face, a violent rage at savage things not worth the air they breathed, who had dared to insult his woman.

Feeling every bit of that emotion, Sia clapped a hand over her mouth and, for a long while, could not tear her eyes from him. Her heart slipped out of her control and pounded harder and harder, and a flutter too huge to bear flushed her face redder than the sun.

If she had her way, she would run to Minjun that very instant and be held in his warm arms, to feel the heat of him and pour out to him everything she had felt. But she knew perfectly well that right now the situation didn’t allow it.

I wish I had something more.

Calls with Minjun, photos taken with Minjun, and now video of Minjun. At first she had thought this much alone would be enough to get her through a week, but she was slowly reaching her limit. Maybe it was how badly she missed him; strangely, her hands were shaking.

This can’t go on.

A video call wasn’t enough. She wanted to feel his warmth and his scent directly. She needed some kind of method, one that would let her feel him beside her even when Minjun wasn’t there.

Ever since ‘that business’, I had taken Rokan’s advice and stayed out of Gate clears. I asked him whether I couldn’t at least train, but he shook his head and said even the barest possibility had to be guarded against.

And so, forced into time off, I spent several hours a day on calls with Sia. We chatted the way we always did, but I also took the chance to ask her for all sorts of stories and knowledge about dragons, figuring that understanding dragons more deeply might be a great help in handling a dragon’s power.

Time passed like that until, at last, the day we’d agreed to meet arrived.

With all my preparations done, I looked at the clock and found about ten minutes left until the time we’d set. I used them for one last check that I hadn’t forgotten anything.

Today I was going over to Sia’s lair.

Since I was visiting a new home, I figured I ought to bring a housewarming gift, so yesterday I’d told Sia to name anything she wanted. Instead of an ordinary housewarming gift like rolls of toilet paper¹, though, she named some truly unexpected things.

We’d been together long enough that I thought I knew her fairly well, but lately I had no idea at all what went on in her head.

Why on earth is she asking for the old clothes I used to wear?

Not new clothes, either, or ones worn only a handful of times, but old clothes I’d worn for years, until they frayed.

…What on earth is she going to use them for?