There Was So Much I Wanted To Do With You, Oppa.

…

…

Judging by the blank where my memory should have been, I’d most likely passed out.

Surely I’d just been making love with Sia, slow and unhurried, the way we always did.

…Granted, the mood had made things rougher than usual. But however rough it got, who blacks out in the middle of doing ‘that’ with his girlfriend?

What the hell happened?

A thick fog seemed to have settled over my head. Everywhere else, sensation had gone numb as if paralyzed, and I couldn’t feel a thing.

I couldn’t say how much time passed after that.

“…Oppa, Oppa!”

Sia’s voice reached me first, thick with worry, and one by one my other senses came back.

“Oppa, are you awake?”
“Ngh…”

I clutched my forehead with one hand and looked around. There was Sia, watching me anxiously, and…

…Rokan?

What was Rokan doing here? Come to think of it, this wasn’t Sia’s lair. It was his.

“So you’re awake. Is your body all right?”
“Yes. More to the point, what on earth…”

What had actually happened to me?

“As you can see, you were unconscious. Shasha brought you here the instant you lost consciousness.”

His answer raised an obvious question.

Was there any reason for me… to lose consciousness?

Sia and I were allowed three hours a week. But never mind three hours: from making tteokbokki together and eating it to the moment things caught fire, it couldn’t have been much more than an hour, at the very most.

Rokan, however, stroked his chin, let out a sigh, and spoke.

“Two energies of opposing affinity were forced to mingle, so a repulsion arose between them. That will be it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“It’s still only a hypothesis. But the two of you going beyond simply meeting and trying to entwine yourselves more deeply than that — that seems to be the cause.”

He’d put it as figuratively as he possibly could, but his meaning was perfectly clear.

— FWOOSH—.

Sia’s face and mine went red in the very same instant.

Between lovers there was nothing strange about it, granted. Having your girlfriend’s grandfather find out about it, though, was another story entirely.

…How am I supposed to keep this conversation going from here?

“Then, going by what you’re saying, Grandpa. If Minjun-oppa and I do, um, that…”
“It means that regardless of the time allowed you, what happened today will repeat itself.”
“…Understood.”
“It’s a hypothesis and nothing more, but what else could it possibly be?”

Maybe it was just my imagination, but Rokan seemed to be keeping his own expression in check out of consideration for us.

“This too — once I can handle a dragon’s power completely, it’ll be something I can solve, won’t it?”
“That much is certain. In the end, that is the root of the problem.”

Haa.

Holding down the sigh that was trying to burst out of me, I nodded.

“Oppa’s condition is back to normal now, so we’ll be heading back!”
“Do that. It’s precious time for you two; I shouldn’t be getting in the way.”

We traded brief goodbyes with Rokan and returned to Sia’s lair.

“Still… I’m so glad it wasn’t because you were sick, Oppa.”

The moment we got back, Sia made a show of patting her chest in relief, saying she’d really thought something terrible had happened this time.

“At this rate I’m starting to wonder if I’m not an ocean sunfish¹.”

The mood felt far too stiff, so I tossed out a joke to clear the air.

“Even when I smile, I’m not really smiling, Oppa.”

Even so, all Sia could manage was a bitter smile.

“Then, for a while—”
“—we can’t, huh.”

In front of Rokan we’d kept our feelings reined in as tightly as we could. Now, faced with the fact that we couldn’t be intimate for a while, neither of us bothered to hide how bitterly disappointed we were.

“I waited two thousand five hundred years and we finally, finally managed it once in Gangneung the other day—”

Sia’s eyes filled with deep regret.

“If we hadn’t done it then, I think I’d have regretted it for the rest of my life.”
“You’re right. Heaven really is heartless…”

Things had been heating up so beautifully, and now it would all just fizzle out.

“I’m only saying it now, but I really was looking forward to it. A lot.”

Right. From Sia’s side, it must have been so much worse.

“There was so much play I wanted to try with you too, Oppa.”
“…?”

That’s the first I’m hearing of any of that.

“I bought rope just in case, and handcuffs, and a whole assortment of costumes…”
“…Aah.”

At Sia’s belated confession, all I could do was swallow a groan.

Dear God.

Six days had already gone by since that housewarming date, unforgettable in more ways than one.

As the date was wrapping up, Sia had pressed a whole pile of gifts into my hands, calling them a return gift for mine. There were couple T-shirts she’d picked out herself, couple accessories and couple caps.

…And clothes Sia had worn.

Sia, what’s brought this on all of a sudden?
Well, because I thought Oppa would want to feel exactly the same way I do?

She meant she wanted me to feel that newlywed-home glow too, just the way she did. And that wasn’t all.

I’d rather other people didn’t think this was a place where a man lives on his own.

She’d said that as well.

…Honestly, I had no idea what she meant by that one. Was it the same idea as a woman living alone in a one-room who keeps a pair of men’s shoes in her shoe rack?

I stared blankly at Sia’s clothes hanging on the garment rack in the corner of the veranda, then turned my head away. That wasn’t what mattered right now.

It’s taking longer than I thought.

Nearly ten days had passed since I’d manifested that unidentifiable sword energy, and because the control device wasn’t finished, I still hadn’t been able to set foot in a Gate. With that aurora-light sword energy in me, I was in no state to go into one until Rokan had the device ready.

I’d figured a week at the outside, even if it dragged, and still there was no word.

“…Should I give him a call?”

Asking at all felt rude, but surely I could at least find out roughly when it would be ready.

Right at that moment, a call came in from Rokan.

“Hello?”
“Stop by the lair. The control device is finished.”

Whoa. Damn. Goosebumps. Speak of the devil and he appears, as they say.

“Yes, I’m on my way now!”

The moment I hung up, I got changed. I’d been bored out of my skull, loafing around doing nothing like some idler, and now at last I could go back into a Gate.

There was a time I’d drag my feet whenever a Gate came up, grumbling about what a hassle it was to go out and earn money, and for the year after ‘that accident’ the mere act of entering a Gate had frightened me. It struck me all over again how much my attitude had changed, and I owed every bit of it to Sia.

Once I was ready to head out, I used the artifact without delay and went straight to Rokan’s lair.

“Lord Rokan, I’m here!”
“…Welcome.”

I hadn’t been able to tell over the phone, but in person his fatigue was plain as day. His eyes were hollow, and the hair he always kept neatly in order had gone wild, enough to tell me how punishing the research had been. And then there were the dark circles, sagging halfway down his face.

You could skip rope with those.

Just how finicky was this control device, if even Rokan, an ancient dragon, had needed close to ten days to make it and still come out wrung this dry?

“Um, Lord Rokan. You are… all right, aren’t you?”
“I’m better than I expected to be. Than I expected.”

Whatever he said, his eyes were sunk terribly deep. Later I’d better bring him a box of red ginseng or something, just out of courtesy.

“Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it. If anything, there was a quiet thrill to the challenge of it. I rather enjoyed myself.”

He looks far too rough for that to be true, though.

“Follow me.”

I trailed after Rokan to wherever he was headed. Whatever it looked like from outside, the lair was so vast that there were any number of spaces I’d never set foot in.

Eventually we came to a room crowded with artifacts of every kind, the sort of tools you’d see in a smithy, a miniature furnace, and implements I’d never laid eyes on whose uses I couldn’t begin to guess. This was probably Rokan’s workshop.

Rokan swept his eyes over the room, then took something out of a drawer.

“The control device. Try putting it on.”
“Ah… this?”

Contrary to what I’d expected, the device looked utterly ordinary. Going by appearance alone, it could have been a plain silver bracelet from any accessory shop downtown.

“Wear this and you should be able to control that power. Apart from being unable to use that sword energy, everything will be as it always is.”
“But what if a situation comes up where I have no choice but to use it?”

That sword energy was dangerous enough to swallow me whole, yet it was also a formidable weapon, one that let me stand against beings far beyond my own level. Backed into a corner, I might have the bad luck of finding I had no choice but to use it.

Rokan answered my question.

“When it’s unavoidable, you use it. I’ll go into that in detail shortly, so for now put it on.”

When he held the device out, I fastened it around my wrist and moved my arm about lightly. I’d assumed my mana flow or my body would change the instant I put it on, but nothing of the sort happened.

“Now we’d best check that it works properly.”

Partly to test what the device could do, we moved elsewhere to train. As always, Sia said she’d be watching remotely.

“Oppa, good morning!”

Today was no exception. Sia appeared on the big screen and waved at me happily, looking just as she always did, except for one detail that caught my eye.

“Sia, those clothes.”
“They’re your clothes, Oppa! I was curious so I tried them on, and it turns out they’re great to sleep in. Completely comfy.”

She’d taken the old clothes I’d given her the other time and was wearing them as pajamas. They were among the better-kept ones I’d handed over, but they had pilled quite a bit and the sleeves kept sliding down, so by any measure they looked uncomfortable to sleep in.

“So, Oppa, if you’ve got more old clothes at home, could you give me those too?”
“I can give you some, but…”

Personally I’d rather she used them as rags or throwaway work clothes than as pajamas.

One way or another, it looked like I’d have to buy her proper pajamas.

“Really? Thank you!”

Before I’d even finished answering, Sia was grinning bashfully and thanking me. To think old clothes could make her that happy, when they weren’t even a present.

Then she pinched the fabric between her fingers, tugged it up, and started sniffing it.

They’re old clothes — do they smell of something?

“Do the clothes smell?”
“No. It’s nothing. Just, I thought I could smell you on them, Oppa.”

What’s that supposed to mean.

Before I knew it, this cute side of Sia had me gazing at her with my guard completely down and my face gone soft. For a moment I’d forgotten that Rokan was standing right beside us, watching.

“At this rate I’m going to turn into an invisible dragon.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.”

I felt sheepish, realizing I’d put on an over-the-top display of affection in front of Rokan for no good reason.

“It’s fine. It’s all natural enough between lovers, is it not?”

Still, not an invisible man but an invisible dragon. He really was a dragon rather than a human, so it wasn’t the wrong way to put it, but…

…for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on, I got the feeling one roar from him would defeat gods and demonkin alike².