Without You (10)

“Time’s up! Please put down the fishing rod, Dragon. Hehe.”

I approached her and started counting the fish.

“Let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven! I’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Nine, ten! Hehe, I win!”

As I declared my victory, Rurin suddenly stood up, leaving the fishing rod on the ground.

Of course, she would throw a fit, right?

Feeling a bit guilty, I kept an eye on her. Would she deny it? Ask for a rematch? As I considered a few possibilities and prepared for them, she unexpectedly turned around with a blank expression and started walking toward the lair.

“I’m going back.”

And she said it so coolly.

Left behind were the caught fish and fishing rods.

She accepted defeat that easily?

All the scenarios and countermeasures I had thought of became useless. It felt kind of anticlimactic.

Well, this was better, of course.

Either way, I won, so there was no need to leave. I gathered the fish I had caught, planning to grill them all, and followed behind Rurin.

Even inside the lair, Rurin didn’t say much.

Since she didn’t tell me to leave, it was clear she had accepted her defeat, so I prepared dinner, and we had a fish party.

And so, night fell.

Nighttime meant it was time to sleep, and that meant it was time to enforce the conditions of my victory.

Rurin was still trying to curl up in her usual sleeping spot, far from me.

That won’t do.

Even if it’s petty, a victory is a victory. I had to get what I won.

“Rurin, you haven’t forgotten that you lost the bet, right?”

Even from afar, I could see her frowning, but it was no use.

A win is a win. Under the noble mission of reducing the distance between us, I shouted loudly.

“Are you coming here, or should I go over there?”

Of course, there was no answer.

I didn’t expect one. It would have been strange if she did answer. So, in the end, the latter it is.

There’s no way a dragon would deign to come over to a corner like this, so I would move.

I walked to the center of the lair, where Rurin usually slept, and began setting up my bedding about five meters away from her spot.

That was a lot closer than the original distance of 100 meters.

I could feel the dragon’s gaze quietly watching as I moved my things.

“Why? Is something wrong? I won, didn’t I?”

After confidently asserting my victory, she quickly turned her head and left one remark.

“You’re annoying.”

Then she curled up and closed her eyes.

At least she didn’t tell me to go back to the corner. In other words, she had accepted the outcome of the bet.

Her face, however, remained scrunched up, like a mask, without any intention of relaxing.

I opened my eyes.

I didn’t feel refreshed. Honestly, I wasn’t that used to sleeping in the lair yet.

Even though it had been quite a while since I started staying here.

Should I bring in a bed?

My body felt oddly stiff, especially around my stomach.

I hadn’t even done any intense ab workouts.

Was it just a feeling I had while half-asleep?

Rubbing my eyes, I turned my head, trying to figure out what was going on with my strange body.

There was nothing wrong with my body.

The cause of the stiffness was weight. I looked down at my stomach and was shocked at what I saw.

Even though five meters wasn’t that close, it wasn’t exactly sleeping together.

I had definitely slept at that distance. My backpack was right beside me, so I hadn’t moved.

That much was certain.

It was the dragon who moved.

The human-form dragon, the ‘short one’, had started sleeping five meters away, but at some point, she had used my stomach as a pillow and was now sleeping soundly.

Her long hair draped across my body, and she looked incredibly peaceful.

“Hey, Dragon?”

No answer.

It wasn’t surprising; she’s never one to rouse easily.

“Hey, Dragon!”

“Rurin!”

“RurinRurinRurin!”

“Kraaah! Shut up, you pillow!”

After calling her repeatedly, she yelled “Kraaah!” and squirmed, then just turned her face to the side and went back to sleep.

She didn’t even open her eyes.

This is too much!

I had no choice but to sit up. As I did, Rurin’s body slid down toward my legs.

“What the heck? Stay still! You’re so arrogant for a hard pillow!”

She calls me arrogant when I’m moving my own body?

Rurin brushed the dirt off her head, stood up, and walked back to her usual spot to lie down again.

It’s unlike her to use my stomach as a pillow.

Since when?

There was no sign of that before I fell asleep. Well, it’s a good sign, I guess. But calling me a hard pillow?

I touched my stomach.

Yeah, it is kind of hard.

If she means hard as in abs, well, that’s better than flabby belly fat, right?

“Okay, you wrap it like this, and then eat it like this.”

“Like this?”

“Yeah, like that.”

I was recreating lettuce wraps using some herbs we found nearby. Grilling on the stone plate was none other than the wild uba we caught by the lake.

“No, no, why are you putting so much meat in?”

“This is the best.”

Rurin piled the meat layer by layer onto the herbs.

One piece of meat, then two, then three.

She stacked more on top of that.

It was a meat tower.

Rurin’s gaze as she stacked the meat tower was so intense, like a commander about to face thousands of troops.

Or maybe not?

More like the focus you’d have when stacking matchsticks.

She carefully built the tower.

But then, with one wrong move, the tower collapsed.

“Graah!”

She screamed at me for no reason, then devoured the fallen tower and immediately started building it again.

Is there really any point in building a tower?

It seems like just eating it would be better. But if she insists on piling it into a wrap, there’s nothing I can say.

Besides, can she even fit that in one bite?

The tower she rebuilt was a ten-layer meat monstrosity. Out of curiosity, I asked her.

“Can you eat that?”

“It’s no big deal.”

Rurin puffed out her chest and nodded confidently.

Of course, it was no longer a proper wrap. It was just a meat tower on a herb leaf.

These herbs didn’t have much bitterness and had a texture similar to lettuce. But with those proportions, who cares about texture?

Rurin shoved the entire meat tower into her mouth in one bite.

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

She chewed it. It was amazing that all of that fit into her small mouth, but it was as if she had a high-speed mincer in her throat, and her mouth emptied in no time.

“It’s delicious.”

Rurin had learned to use the word “delicious” appropriately by now.

“Well, if you can digest it, I won’t complain about how you eat. But you should try a proper wrap. Here, try this. This is how it’s supposed to be done.”

I handed her a regular wrap before she could start stacking another meat tower.

Rurin shook her head vigorously.

“It’s too weak.”

“Try it before you judge.”

Rurin stared at the wrap I made for a moment, then finally extended her hand, took it, and gulped it down.

Nom, nom.

She chewed it a few times and swallowed.

“Graaahh!”

And then, she exploded.

Of course, I pretended to be oblivious. Hehe.

I casually started grilling more meat.

“You brat! What did you put in there?! It’s spicy! Spicy!”

No comment. No comment at all.

“That can’t be. I’m fine.”

“Die. Just die!”

“If I die, who will cook this meat for you? Here, eat.”

“Huh?”

She got angry, but then ate the freshly grilled meat. Since I was grilling different parts of the uba, there was no time to rest. She was practically addicted to meat at this point.

“Ah, this isn’t right. How dare you feed me something like that!”

“Here, this…this is the tasty part.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s chewy.”

Rurin began devouring the meat again. After finishing, she seemed to remember something and started complaining again.

“Right. You! That spicy thing from earlier!”

“Come on, there’s plenty of meat.”

“Is that so? Nom nom! It’s delicious.”

In the end, my spicy wrap attack was gradually forgotten from Rurin’s mind.

After eating the meat, I lay down in the lair, gazing up at the ceiling.

Before I knew it, a month had passed since I started living in the lair.

Not much had changed in our relationship. The one thing I hadn’t mentioned to Rurin was that the bet’s time limit was clearly one month, yet she hadn’t returned to her dragon form.

And as for the sleeping distance, and our daily interactions, we hadn’t gone back to the 100-meter separation.

Even though the one-month period set by the bet had passed, the distance between us was still five meters.

And when we slept, that distance became zero.

Since that day, she had continued using my stomach as a pillow.

“Why do you keep using my stomach as a pillow?”

“Because it’s softer than the ground. Sleeping in human form is surprisingly uncomfortable. In my original form, I wouldn’t have this problem. It’s all your fault, so you’re the pillow!”

That was always her answer when I asked.

And so, my life as her pillow had become permanent.

“Ahh, I’m full.”

I didn’t eat as much as she did with her meat towers, but I still ate too much.

Rurin’s human form was so small compared to her dragon form, yet it was amazing how much she could eat.

Is her stomach still that of a dragon?

Drip.

“Huh?”

As I was lying around, a drop of water fell from the ceiling. It was muddy water, full of dirt.

Drip, drip.

At first, it was just a single drop, but then more started to fall.

It hit my cheek, my hand, and then the top of my head.

Rurin, who had been lying down with a satisfied expression, must have gotten hit by the water too because she suddenly sat up and stared at the ceiling.

Drip!

A perfect drop of muddy water hit Rurin square on the forehead.

“Huyaa! That’s cold.”

She wiped her forehead in surprise and looked back up at the ceiling. Water was dripping from it, which could only mean one thing.

“This…water’s leaking?”

Water was continuously dripping from a specific part of the ceiling onto the floor.

Rurin glanced back and forth between me and the ceiling with a puzzled expression.

The fact that water was leaking meant there was a problem with the lair’s ceiling.

Above the lair was the mountain peak. The lair had been carved out beneath it.

This meant we’d have to go up and check it out. I turned to Rurin and said:

“Let’s go up and check it out.”

“If we go up, will we find out what’s causing this?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

Rurin nodded, and when we stepped outside the lair, heavy rain was pouring down.

Swoooosh!

The fact that there was a leak meant it was raining, so it wasn’t surprising.

If it weren’t for the rain, no matter how damaged the ceiling was, there wouldn’t be any water coming through.

The rain was coming down hard. Rurin, who followed me out, stepped into it with a worried look on her face.

The rain soaked Rurin’s hair first, and I followed her.

The cold rain quickly drenched our clothes. It felt like taking a shower as we climbed to the mountain peak.

Rurin stood there, getting soaked by the rain, looking lost. Her usual composed demeanor was nowhere to be seen.