A Week In Korea (3)

“Dear, dear!”

“……”

“Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear!”

As I was lost in thought, Rurin called out to me endlessly. Thanks to that, I snapped out of it and looked at Rurin.

“Why, why?”

Before I knew it, Rurin had climbed onto my back and was frowning as she called me loudly in my ear.

“No, first get off my back.”

“Dear! This place is so strange. What is this world? Weird things are sparkling everywhere.”

“What, is our dragon scared? …Ouch! It hurts! Hey! Rurin!”

Rurin seemed to get upset at the word ‘scared’ and started pulling my hair.

She breathed heavily, clearly angry.

“This body would never be scared!”

“Alright, alright. Just get down!”

Finally, she got off my back and dusted her hands. It felt like my hair was ripped out in her grip.

Rurin brushed my precious hair off and continued to frown as she looked around.

“You seem calm. But this is the first time for this body! What kind of world is this?”

“No, I’m not calm. It’s been 15 years, so I’m stunned. Well, better than you, I guess.”

“After 15 years?”

“This is the world I originally lived in.”

“Huh?”

Rurin tilted her head. She pretended to think about something and then nodded after a while.

“Oh! Is this what you mentioned before? Then we’ve moved dimensions! Wow!”

Her eyes widened in surprise. She looked genuinely shocked.

Well, even a dragon would be surprised. I had asked her before if dimensional travel was one of the 10th-class mental spells that dragons could use, but she said it was impossible even for dragons.

Rurin also knew that I originally came from another dimension. Dragons know magic best, after all.

Of course, when I first confessed about my origin, her reaction was just “Oh”.

Now that I think about it, her reaction is very similar.

Of course, I never explained what my hometown was like. So she must be cautious.

“It’s a world where technology has advanced a bit. Buildings are taller, and those things moving on the roads are not monsters but advanced means of transportation.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re here.”

“That’s kind of you.”

That’s true for me too. Rurin and I looked at each other and nodded firmly. Then we held hands and started walking down the street again.

Actually, there’s only one thing I want to do now that I’m here. The reason I wanted to come back to Earth from the other world was solely because of my parents.

If it weren’t for the desire to see my estranged parents, I would have been content living there.

A black hole created by summoning magic brought back me here unintentionally.

So the first thing I need to do is find my parents. Then I’ll return. My life is already rooted over there.

To do that, I need money. This world, especially, is tough to live in without money. Well, that’s similar to Greek City too.

Of course, there is a simple way to get money.

I reached for the pure gold belt I had. I never thought it would be useful here. This gold belt is common in the lair. Of course, I could summon gold using magic, but for now, selling this belt would be better.

Using summoning magic was a bit tricky. At least until I found my parents, I didn’t want to use it again.

Since I’m here, I have to achieve my goal.

If the cause of coming here was indeed the summoning magic, then using it again should let me return to Greek City. Considering the theory of the black hole, it’s entirely possible.

Of course, I want to return to Greek City, but that should be after finishing my business here.

So I took out the belt. Pure gold is a universal currency in both places.

I went straight to a nearby pawnshop and exchanged the belt for money. Of course, when they asked for ID, I had the dragon use mental magic.

I’ve always told Rurin to never use it on humans, but in situations like this, there’s no choice.

Well, the world is like that.

Anyway, thanks to the collaboration of my pure gold belt and Rurin’s mental magic, we got a good price. So we had enough money for a while.

“Rurin, keep this amount. If we ever get separated, you can buy anything with it, so just eat if you need to. Got it?”

“Oh, is this the money here? It’s paper, not coins. The livestock on the ranch would like it.”

“They have coins here too, but paper holds more value in this world.”

“Really?”

Rurin held the bill with a puzzled look. She didn’t seem very interested, just stuffing it into her pocket.

Rurin knows the concept of money even in that world, but she never cared about it. She likes jewels, though.

But that’s not because of their value as currency or property, it’s just a dragon’s instinct to like shiny things.

Now that I had money, I needed to find my parents. The best way was to start by visiting the neighborhood where I used to live.

Looking around for a way to get there, I saw a subway station. As soon as I spotted it, I moved with Rurin. When we went down, I saw that the subway map had become much more complex than 15 years ago.

Well, they say even a river changes in ten years.

“This underground looks bigger than my lair underground. What is this! I don’t like it.”

She frowned and got upset over something strange, so I tugged her ear.

“This isn’t home, so don’t show weird competitiveness.”

“It hurts!”

Leaving Rurin rubbing her ear, I started looking for the restroom. I felt the urge to pee, maybe because of the tension from thinking about visiting my parents’ neighborhood.

“Rurin, don’t move from here. I’ll be back from the restroom. You don’t need to go, do you?”

“No. This body can control it. Unlike you. Hehe.”

“That’s really something.”

Yes, honestly, that’s an impressive ability. Being able to control urination.

It’s kind of enviable.

Rurin carefully examined the restroom El had entered. A blue sign. Then she looked ahead again.

She has a keen sense of smell and dislikes the scent of restrooms. Of course, the cleanliness of the Greek City restroom and the subway station restroom is different, but there’s no way Rurin would know that.

Rurin quietly watched the passing humans. People in strange clothes. It was so strange and so many that it was tiring to even think about how strange it was.

“El’s hometown has a lot of strange people.”

Then Rurin focused on one place. Where people passed through, making beeping sounds.

Of course, it was the subway turnstile. But for Rurin, it was something incomprehensible.

Rurin’s curiosity was piqued by the fascinating sight. It was unacceptable for such a great being not to know something.

So she moved just like everyone else.

As people passed through the turnstile, she touched the spot where they placed their hands.

Beep-!

Then, with a strange sound, the bar that was still blocked Rurin’s way.

“Oh?”

Rurin found even that fascinating.

“What is this? It’s funny. Should I break it?”

Just as she decided something that would have brought a storm of nagging from El, a little kid behind her poked her back and spoke. Thanks to that, the turnstile’s life was extended.

“Sis, you need to tap the card!”

The girl showed her card to Rurin, swinging it back and forth, unaware that her action had saved the subway station.

“Card?”

Of course, Rurin didn’t understand and tilted her head.

“This! Transportation card.”

The girl approached the turnstile, tapped her card in the center, and passed through with a beep sound.

“Sis, you don’t even know this as an adult?”

Then the girl tucked her transportation card into a cardholder on a lanyard, dropping a bombshell statement. Normally, Rurin wouldn’t have tolerated such behavior, but because she didn’t understand what a transportation card was, the girl was safe.

You could say curiosity suppressed her anger.

“I don’t know.”

“They sell it over there. My mom bought it there.”

“Over there?”

What the girl pointed to was not the single-use transportation card machine but a convenience store. Rurin looked at the store, still filled with curiosity.

It’s a trivial matter. Normally, Rurin would just break anything blocking her way, but for some reason, she wanted to make that beeping sound. If she wanted to try something, she had to do it. That’s Rurin.

There was no grand belief or reason for it.

“Heeyeon! What are you doing!”

“Mom!”

The mom of the girl who had gone through the turnstile first called out loudly. Thanks to that, the girl ran towards her mom.

Rurin had already lost interest in the girl. Her focus shifted to the convenience store the girl pointed to. Rurin walked confidently towards the convenience store in the subway station.

There were many strange things. The basic structure was similar to the general stores in Greek City. So Rurin spoke to a man who looked like a clerk. Rather, she commanded him.

“Give me a transportation card.”

“A transportation card?”

The convenience store clerk, bewildered by Rurin’s commanding tone, handed her a transportation card. Regardless of the command, he was charmed by her face.

“Here it is. How much would you like to charge on it?”

“What’s that?”

Rurin glared at the clerk for saying something strange. Even though she, as a dragon, lacked common knowledge about human society, she had become familiar with the practice of buying and selling things from following El around for so long.

Most importantly, selling food at the restaurant was her main job, so it was natural.

But even though she was a dragon, she had no knowledge about charging a transportation card. She was clueless.

She could interpret any language of any race, but she couldn’t understand a concept that didn’t exist in her original world. Rurin furrowed her brows and frowned. It meant she was starting to get annoyed.

“You need to charge it to use it.”

But the clerk kept repeating the word ‘charge’.

Rurin, on the verge of exploding, glared at the clerk. This was his last chance.

“So what is this charge, exactly!”

“You need to put money on the transportation card to use it, and that money…”

The clerk’s words trailed off. Rurin spoke Korean so naturally that he momentarily forgot, but she still looked like a foreigner.

Her facial features and eye color. Considering the communication gap, he thought about explaining the charge in English, but when Rurin heard the word ‘money’, she finally understood and happily searched her pocket.

“Oh, money? You should have said that earlier. I have that! Will this do!”

Her pocket was full of the bills El had just given her. Rurin pulled out the entire bundle of 50,000 won bills and handed them to the clerk.

“This should do, right? You’re slow. If you act this slow as a clerk, El will scold you. Tsk tsk.”

Rurin spoke based on her own experience.

“What, what?”

But the clerk continued to panic.

He felt like crying.