Chapter 2

Oppa, Let’s Never Part Again

✦ ✦ ✦

The girlfriend I loved, Si-ah, died one year ago.

Yet suddenly, a suspicious woman appeared from a Gate. Despite clearly not being a monster, she claimed to be my dead girlfriend.

In a situation like this, how many people in the world could believe her words at face value? At least for me, that was absolutely impossible.

Instead, the thought that someone was mocking me on the anniversary of Si-ah’s death made me furious to the tip of my head. It was an insult to the deceased Si-ah, as well as an insult to me.

I took a step back from the woman who claimed to be Si-ah and opened her arms to hug me.

Part of me wanted to hurl curses at this woman impersonating my dead girlfriend and scream at her to get out of my sight right this instant. However, since she was an entity that came out of a Gate, I judged that blindly provoking her wouldn’t be good.

For now, attempting a calm conversation was the top priority.

“Who on earth are you? How do you know my name, and how do you know the woman I love?”

I asked in a dry voice, suppressing my personal emotions as much as possible.

However, upon hearing my question, the woman suddenly began to snip and sob.

‘……Is she crying?’

It was a completely unexpected reaction.

While it was a relief that she wasn’t showing a hostile attitude toward me yet, the situation was flowing in an increasingly strange direction.

A mysterious entity appeared from the Gate, and around here, there was no one equipped with combat capabilities except for me.

‘Let’s be calm. I need to stay calm for now.’

First, I had to figure out how this woman knew my name and Si-ah’s name, and why she was impersonating the dead Si-ah.

Just as I was calmly arranging in my head what to say next, the woman began to mutter to herself.

“I’ve changed so much, so it makes sense that oppa would think that way. I was worried oppa might have forgotten me, but I’m so glad. I’m sorry. Doubting oppa… I was such a fool. You even brought Tteokbokki and Gimbap while thinking of me. That’s right, there’s no way oppa would forget me. There’s no way you’d date another woman while I was gone either. Yeah, I was wrong. Doubting someone like oppa, I’m really a fool.”

After rambling to herself for a long while, the woman caught her breath for a moment and looked around.

Then, raising one hand high toward the sky, she began to murmur something in an unfamiliar language.

[ Silence. ]

The moment her murmurings ended, a tremendous amount of mana spread out and completely covered the entire surrounding area.

“There’s no one around, but just in case.”

‘Magic?’

She cast magic just by chanting a spell? Without even a process of calculating magic formulas?

At that moment, I realized instinctively.

No matter how desperately I attacked, this woman had the ability to subdue me without even lifting a finger.

She was truly a monster that transcended common sense in every aspect.

My legs trembled so violently as if I were about to collapse right away, and my heart beat so wildly that it felt like it would pierce through my chest and burst out at any second.

“Oppa, why are you suddenly like this? Are you sick somewhere? You’re not sick, right? Right? Oppa, pull yourself together!”

“Wh-who on earth are you……?”

Because of the overwhelming difference in power, my breathing grew short.

Even so, far from taking advantage of the situation, the woman showed a very flustered expression upon seeing me unable to even breathe properly.

“Where does it hurt, oppa? Or…… are you scared of me? Oppa, calm down. Take a deep breath in and slowly exhale. I’m your girlfriend. Why would I harm you? Calm down. Ah, wait a second. I’ll make you feel more comfortable.”

She murmured something again and cast magic on me.

I couldn’t understand what exact words she said, but this time as well, she completed the magic with just a single chant without any process of calculating magic formulas.

“How is it? Do you feel a bit better now?”

“……Yeah.”

“Phew. What a relief.”

Just a few seconds ago, my heart was pounding as if it were going to explode, but my pulse returned to normal as though nothing had happened.

Strangely, that fact made me even more terrified.

Magic that stabilizes a person’s mind. I had never even heard of such magic before.

“Alright. I understand that oppa can’t believe I’m Si-ah. In this current situation, it’s something that can’t be helped. So…… I just have to prove the fact that I’m your girlfriend, right?”

Catching her breath, the woman continued to speak in a calm voice.

She began to talk starting from the day she and I first met.

Exactly what words Si-ah said when she confessed to me, the place where we shared our first kiss, what the very first birthday gift Si-ah gave me was, and even the songs I enjoyed singing whenever we went to a karaoke room together.

Those stories were, without exception, things that no one could possibly know unless she was Si-ah herself.

‘Then…… is it really Si-ah?’

It was a situation hard to believe, but relying on that tiny possibility, I asked one last question.

“Then what is my favorite drink?”

“It’s a bit strange to call it a drink, but oppa, you love coffee milk so much. That’s why I used to ask you every day if you were addicted to coffee milk.”

The moment I heard that answer, I was able to be certain.

Why she appeared from the Gate, why her appearance was completely different from the Si-ah I remembered—I didn’t know the reasons at all.

However, the fact that the woman standing in front of me was my beloved girlfriend, Jeong Si-ah, was beyond any doubt.

“And oppa said that while you were addicted to coffee milk, you were even more severely addicted to me. I told you not to say cringey stuff like that because it gives me goosebumps. When was that again? Since I was twenty-one back then……”

“Si-ah.”

Before Si-ah could finish her sentence, I embraced her with all my strength.

“Si-ah. Si-ah. Si-ah…….”

I wanted to tell her that this wasn’t a dream, that I missed her so much, and that I loved her.

However, I couldn’t bring out any other words at all.

I merely called out Si-ah’s name over and over again.

As if relieved only after hearing me call her name, Si-ah smiled brightly and called my name.

“Min-jun oppa.”

“Yeah, Si-ah.”

Instead of asking how we had been doing all this time, we silently embraced each other for a long while.

Her face, her voice, and her height had all changed, but the moment I held her in my arms, I could be certain.

This woman was definitely Si-ah.

Because the only person in the world who loved being held in my arms like this was Si-ah.

After holding each other for a long time, we were finally able to calm down a little.

Wiping away my tears, I asked Si-ah what I had been curious about all this time.

“Si-ah, what on earth happened?”

❦

Inside the Gate, her whole body was burning up.

Even in a situation where she was enveloped in flames so powerful that resisting itself was impossible, Jeong Si-ah did not give up on the hope of surviving.

‘I won’t die. I will never die. For myself, and for my beloved Min-jun oppa, I will survive no matter what.’

Unfortunately, her resolve was only half fulfilled.

She was indeed brought back to life.

However, it was merely that she was reincarnated in a dimension completely different from Earth, as a dragon—the creature called the strongest among the living beings existing on that world’s surface.

Right after reincarnating, Si-ah couldn’t believe what had happened to her.

However, as time passed, she gradually adapted to her life as a dragon and began to enjoy her new dragon life pleasantly.

Yet, that happiness did not last long.

‘I feel empty.’

Reincarnated as a dragon, she could have anything she wanted and could do anything she wished to do.

Her affectionate parents bestowed an overflowing amount of love upon her.

Even so, Si-ah could not be satisfied.

‘I can’t meet Min-jun oppa.’

She had everything.

Except for one thing: her beloved boyfriend.

Si-ah loved Min-jun so deeply that she considered him half of her soul. The fact that that half was not by her side tormented her to the point of heartache.

Suffering from emptiness for a long time due to her longing for Min-jun, Si-ah finally made up her mind one day.

She decided to go meet Min-jun herself.

There was only one way.

To develop a dimensional transfer magic formula capable of transcending both space and time, and then use it.

From that day on, Si-ah embarked on preparations to realize that plan.

Before becoming an adult dragon, she trained endlessly to obtain power far stronger than other young dragons of her age.

Whenever she had time, she brought magic books from her father’s study to read, steadily building up her knowledge regarding magic step by step.

And after becoming an adult dragon, she obsessively immersed herself in researching dimensional transfer magic.

Other dragons tried to tempt her as well.

‘Dimensional transfer magic cannot theoretically even exist in this world. So give up on something like that and let’s go play with us.’

However, Si-ah was not swayed by any temptation.

Her gaze remained solely on completing the new magic.

Creating a completely new magic with her own power in a situation where success could not even be guaranteed was by no means an easy task.

At first, she thought that as long as she could meet Min-jun again, it wouldn’t matter even if it took thousands of years.

However, as time gradually passed, Si-ah was seized by the feeling that she was slowly going crazy.

Thoughts of wanting to give up everything continuously hovered in her mind.

Whenever that happened, she carved Min-jun’s face into a stone and pulled herself together once more.

‘Get a grip, you fool. Are you going to give up here? Min-jun oppa is waiting. Don’t act so pathetically.’

‘I miss oppa this much, so oppa must definitely miss me just as much. Right now, oppa can’t do anything. So I must work hard enough to at least be able to go meet him myself.’

Min-jun oppa. Min-jun oppa. Min-jun oppa. Min-jun oppa.

‘Please wait for me. I will definitely come to meet you.’

100 years passed, and another 200 years passed.

1,000 years went by.

And around the time a little over 2,000 years had passed since she started her research, Si-ah’s efforts finally bore fruit.

Existing dimensional transfer magic could not set the target coordinates for the desired dimension or time, and it was dangerous to the point that the caster had to risk their life.

However, the magic newly developed by Si-ah was different.

It was a truly revolutionary magic that could accurately specify and move to the desired era of the desired dimension.

Of course, there remained a possibility that a slight error might occur during the process of setting the time coordinates.

Furthermore, because an immense amount of mana was consumed to cast the magic, there was no way of knowing what kind of side effects might occur when actually casting it.

Nevertheless, Si-ah had the confidence to bear all those risks.

If it was for the sake of going to meet Min-jun, taking that level of risk was well worth enduring as much as needed.

“Finally…… this day has come.”

After checking the magic formula one last time, Si-ah cast the dimensional transfer magic without the slightest hesitation.

“Please wait just a little longer, oppa.”

❦

“Originally, I tried to move to the day right after I died. But only after casting the magic did I remember that I made a small mistake in the final calculation.”

According to Si-ah’s confession, she realized only after casting the magic that she had set the time coordinates not to one day, but to one year.

“As soon as I realized the mistake, I tried to modify the magic formula, but because the magic had already been activated, there was nothing I could do. If only I hadn’t made that mistake, I could have met oppa a bit earlier.”

Thus, Si-ah’s long, long story came to an end.

Judging by the story alone, it was content so ridiculous that it was hard to believe.

For decades since Gates first appeared, all kinds of monsters had been discovered, but a dragon had never been observed even once.

Above all, I had always thought that reincarnation was a story that existed only in novels.

However, Si-ah came back alive like a miracle and stood before my eyes.

If so, what reason was there not to believe this story?

Whether she was a dragon or whatever else didn’t matter.

Only one thing was important to me:

The fact that Si-ah had returned to me.

“Our Si-ah…… how much hardship you must have suffered. Although the time of 2,000 years might sound easy in words, how on earth did you endure those long years……”

Before I could finish my sentence, Si-ah suddenly embraced me.

Just like I had embraced her a moment ago.

“Oppa.”

Then, without warning, she deeply overlapped her cherry-red lips onto mine.

“I’m really very late, right? I’m sorry. I wanted to return faster, but no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

“Si-ah……”

“Let’s never part again now. Never.”

Si-ah’s lips were sweet enough to send a shudder through my whole body.

Perhaps because she had missed me so deeply all this time, she was reluctant to detach her lips.

Only after I ran out of breath and began to cough did Si-ah finally let me go.

“A-Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah. I’m just a bit surprised.”

At that time, I did not know yet—

What kind of influence this reunion with Si-ah would bring upon me in the future.