Oppa, You've Been Through So Much All This Time.

When I told Sia I’d buy her tteokbokki until she got sick of it, I’d meant every word, of course.

But ten servings of tteokbokki? Seriously?

Can she really eat all of this?

“Sorry, ma’am, but ten servings… is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right. I’ll note the extra noodles separately on the order pad, so please prepare it that way.”
“Ah, yes, yes!”

Thankfully, the order went through without a hitch. I’d worried it might run a little late, but the tteokbokki came out right on time.

“Here’s the tteokbokki you ordered.”

There was enough of it to fill you up just by looking. The sight of the containers piled high on the table impressed me all over again. I’d wondered the same thing back at the counter: how on earth was she going to eat all that?

With the payment done, we headed for my one-room, tteokbokki filling both our hands.

But right then.

“Oppa. Don’t we usually turn the other way here to get to your one-room?”

I’d taken a different road from the one she knew, and Sia asked about it as though something felt off.

“Ah, I moved a few months back. When you find out where, I bet even you’ll be shocked, Sia.”
“Shocked?”

She looked half skeptical, but privately I was certain she would be. And that certainty soon came true.

“Oppa, is this place, by any chance…”
“That’s right. It’s the one-room you used to live in.”

Ever since the day Sia died, I had fought desperately to hold on to every trace she’d left behind in the world. One of those traces was this place, the very one-room she had lived in while she was alive.

Most of the clothes and other belongings had gone to Sia’s relatives, but the room itself hadn’t disappeared. I couldn’t bear the thought of some stranger moving into a room that held my memories of her, so I got in touch with the building’s owner and, in the end, moved in here myself.

It goes without saying that the room felt completely different from the days when she’d lived in it, since almost all of her things were gone. Even so, it was all right. It was still a space where I could turn over my memories of Sia, if only a little.

Back in her old home after so long, Sia’s eyes welled with tears.

“Oppa…”

Before her lay the one-room she had once lived in, familiar and yet not quite. Maybe it was because I was the one living there now, not some nameless stranger, but Sia’s relieved tears began to fall in big drops.

“Hhk, hic. Why, why am I crying so much today, hic, Oppa?”
“Sia, it’s all right. These aren’t sad tears, they’re happy ones.”

Sia said her tears just wouldn’t dry up, and she went on crying and crying while I patted her lightly.

“Hhk, even when I try not to cry, hic, when I look at that doll, hhk, I can’t help it, Oppa.”

Somewhere along the way she had ended up curled in my arms, and from there she pointed at the teddy bear sitting in one corner of the room.

Sia had given me that bear, along with a letter, on our first anniversary. Years had passed, but I’d kept it so carefully, so I would never forget our memories together, that it didn’t have a single stain and looked exactly as it had the day I got it. The letter I’d kept just as carefully as the bear.

“Oppa, you worked hard not to forget me too, hic, didn’t you.”
“Of course. Of course.”

Her tears of joy soon turned into tears of relief, and only after she’d hugged me tight and soaked my shoulder did Sia finally stop crying.

“The tteokbokki’s getting cold. Hurry up and eat.”
“Mm-hm… sniff.”

After the long meal we cleared away the empty containers and sprawled out right there on the floor. My stomach was full, a heavy contentment was settling over me, and for the first time in so long it was just the two of us, lying snug in the one-room. There was nothing more I could have asked for. How could I possibly get any happier than this?

“Oppa, your belly’s totally bloated.”
“Sia, you ate that much. How come your belly isn’t poking out at all?”

She had put away a full ten servings of tteokbokki almost entirely by herself, yet her stomach looked perfectly fine, as though nothing had gone into it.

“Mm, secret!”

We poked at each other’s belly fat and let the time drift by at our leisure. We’d been lazing like that for a while, kneading each other’s bellies as much as there was to knead, when Sia called to me.

“Oppa.”
“Now that I think about it, ever since we met again I haven’t even heard your side of things. It’s been nothing but my stories the whole time. How have you been all this while, Oppa?”

Come to think of it, I’d been so glad to see her that I hadn’t told her a thing about myself. Realizing that anew, I slowly began to lay out the story of my life in the time without her.

“Well, it’d be a lie to say I’ve been doing fine.”

A year in which the trauma from Sia’s death left him short of breath every time he entered a Gate, useless as a Hunter. A year spent wrapped in anguish and self-reproach, when he couldn’t even manage to live like a proper person.

Once she had heard the story of Minjun’s bleak year, Sia sank quietly into thought.

In the year after I died, how hard must Minjun-oppa have had it?
At least I had a sliver of hope, researching dimensional-travel magic so I could meet Oppa again. But Minjun-oppa didn’t even have that sliver of hope.
In a situation like that, I hate to think it, but surely he must have thought of ending it at least once.

Even so, Minjun had strained every nerve to protect his memories of her. In all that time he had never seen anyone else, and he had never once let her death anniversary slip by. That was the kind of man he was, this Minjun she had loved.

How agonizing it must have been for a whole year.

She was grateful that Minjun had somehow held his ground through such hard circumstances, and guilty that she hadn’t been able to come to him sooner. Sia quietly mulled over those two feelings on her own.

And then something surged up inside her.

Why — why on earth did I make a fatal mistake at the very end?
If only I hadn’t made that one mistake in the formula before I cast the dimensional-travel magic, Oppa would never have had to suffer like this.
Because of me, a precious year of Oppa’s just went up in smoke for nothing.
Idiot. Jeong Sia, you idiot.
However excited I was about going to meet Oppa — to make a mistake at a place that important?
Jeong Sia, you stupid bitch.
Still, it’s fine now.
Because from now on I’m the one who’ll make Oppa walk nothing but a flower path.¹
No — I have to make it so, without fail.

“Oppa, you’ve been through so much this past year.”

Sia poured everything into those words: her self-reproach, her guilt over the mistake, and her wish that, now that they had found each other again, the two of them would live happily from here on.

“The one who’s been through a lot isn’t me, it’s you, Sia. You said you spent two thousand years researching nothing but dimensional-travel magic just to meet me.”
“For a chance to meet you, Oppa, that much is doable. If you’d been in my place, you’d have made exactly the same choice. I believe that, Oppa.”
“‘That much,’ she says. I only had it hard for one year, while you…”

Unable to finish, his eyes brimming with tears, Minjun pulled Sia into a tight embrace then and there.

In all that long time, how hard and how painful must it have been for our Sia?

Patting Minjun, who had burst into tears in his turn, Sia thought to herself that coming back to meet her boyfriend really had been the right thing to do. Minjun-oppa had held out through a year-long tunnel, and she was grateful to him for it. Now she would make him truly happy.

By any means necessary, whatever it took.

And so, after a night of cuddly sweetness, dawn broke on my second day with Sia since our reunion.

Something soft touched my cheek, and I heard a small smooch.

“Oppa, are you going to sleep more?”

I woke to a sweet morning kiss from Sia.

“Sia, Oppa’s going to sleep five more minutes and then get up.”
“It’s twelve o’clock, Oppa. Don’t you think it’s about time you got up?”
“Five minutes. Sia, just five minutes.”

When I whined in a voice thick with sleep, she planted a kiss on my lips this time.

“Then I’m just going to keep pecking Oppa until he gets up.”
“In that case I’d better sleep five hours more, not five minutes.”

She seemed to think this would nag me out of bed, but honestly, that suited me fine. Sia’s sweet kisses were always welcome, and even if she kept at it, she’d have to get tired eventually, wouldn’t she?

And that’s the thing — I’m curious what Sia’s reaction would be then.

I had no idea when she’d tire, but surely in about twenty minutes she’d give up and wake me in a coaxing, wheedling voice: Oppa, I lose, so get up already. Just imagining it made me smile.

But then.

“If anything, all the better.”

Instead of giving up as I’d expected, Sia kissed my cheek once more, harder this time, and then pressed those cherry lips of hers to mine.

What the — don’t tell me she means to spend five hours doing nothing but kissing?

Then it hit me: for a dragon like Sia, five hours was nothing, a blink. Which meant there was nothing stopping her… was there?

Huh?
Huh, huh, huhhh?

Next, Sia kissed the nape of my neck hard and began working her way gradually lower. Her pale hand tugged at the hem of my shirt.

Any further than this is dangerous!

How should I put it? Everything else aside, this was a problem in genre terms.

With goosebumps standing up all over my body, I sat bolt upright on the spot.

“Oh, you’re up, Oppa?”

At the sight of me shooting upright, Sia pushed her lips out in a pout, as though something hadn’t gone according to plan.

“You can sleep more if you’re tired.”
“No, I’m really fine! I’m not the least bit sleepy now.”

I’d been a little hazy to start with, but her peck offensive had woken me up completely. She evidently couldn’t let go of whatever she’d had planned, though, because she tried to force me back down.

“Then shall I put you to sleep myself?”
“No, I’ve come to my senses now. Really.”
“No, if you’re tired, lie down just a little longer, Oppa.”

Normally I’d have held her off somehow with my advantage in strength, but Sia was a dragon now, and that was no longer an option.

Overpowered by her terrifying strength, I was pushed right back down and had to endure five minutes of Sia’s intense, one-sided physical affection. When she finally let go, I could barely, barely drag myself upright.

I’d only been kissed for five minutes, and my head was already spinning. The kisses had definitely been sweet. They’d been sweet, and yet…

Strangely, something about it was frightening.

If what I’d said had really come true and I’d been kissed for five hours, I’d probably have passed out somewhere in the middle.

Once I’d more or less pulled myself together, I asked Sia, who was gently stroking my body, flushed from her own touching.

“…Sia, was what we did yesterday not enough for you?”
“Yep!”

We’d shown each other a degree of affection yesterday that I’d have called excessive, but Sia answered with a bright smile, as though she genuinely felt it hadn’t been enough. Well, from where she stood, maybe that was how it was. She hadn’t been able to share any tenderness with her lover for two thousand years, after all.

I held Sia gently.