Chapter 3
3
[3] Babe, Which One Is Prettier?
Even after that, we kept talking, our conversation stretching on as long as the longing we had carried for each other.
But after quite some time…
“Sia, shouldn’t we think about going somewhere else?”
“Why, babe? There’s no one around.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Anywhere else would be fine, but this is a cemetery. Staying here feels a little…”
And it wasn’t just any cemetery. Sia’s human body was buried here, which made the place rather unsettling.
Hearing that, Sia nodded.
“Now that you mention it, you’re right. My own corpse is buried right next to us. Ugh.”
She grimaced, then grabbed my hand.
“Hold on tight, babe.”
The moment she spoke, a bright light flooded my vision, as though a flashbang had gone off right in front of me.
[Teleport.]
And a moment later—
“What do you think? Do you like it? Much better than before, right?”
The scenery had changed in the blink of an eye.
We had been standing in a cemetery just moments ago, but now we were on a small beach without another soul in sight.
“Sia, did you just… use Teleport?”
“Yep! Remember how I once said my dream was to spend a day camping alone with you on a deserted island? That suddenly came to mind.”
I did vaguely remember her saying something like that.
But that wasn’t what had surprised me.
‘She can use Teleport… that easily?’
Teleport was by no means a simple spell you could cast without calculating formulas or chanting an incantation.
Just how incredible had my Sia become?
“Sia, does that mean you can teleport to the other side of the world just like that? Somewhere like Paraguay, for example?”
“Of course! Why? Do you want to visit Paraguay?”
Sia urged me to name a place, saying she could take me anywhere.
“No, I was just curious. But I’d be happy to go anywhere with you.”
“Hehe.”
After that embarrassingly sweet exchange, Sia opened her mouth to say something, only to lightly smack her head as though she had forgotten something.
“Oh, where’s my head? Wait here a second, babe.”
With that, she instantly cast Teleport again.
“Ta-da!”
She reappeared just seconds later.
In one hand, she held the takeout tteokbokki I had brought.
“You got this tteokbokki for me. I couldn’t just leave it behind.”
Sia was all smiles, perhaps excited to eat tteokbokki for the first time since her reincarnation.
But I wasn’t entirely sure eating it was a good idea.
Of course, I had bought it for her, so there was nothing wrong with her eating it… but it was technically a memorial offering.
If Sia herself wanted it, I couldn’t stop her. Still, I would have preferred buying a fresh serving.
Just then—
“Babe, what’s wrong?”
Noticing that I was silently staring at her, Sia asked in a trembling voice.
And it wasn’t just her voice. Her whole body was shaking.
Like a puppy standing before its owner after being caught doing something wrong.
If I didn’t say something, she looked ready to burst into tears.
Flustered, I quickly waved my hands.
“No, it’s just… I brought that tteokbokki as an offering for your memorial, so eating it feels a little strange. I was wondering whether we should buy some fresh tteokbokki instead.”
“Absolutely not!”
Despite letting out a relieved sigh, Sia firmly shook her head.
“You prepared this tteokbokki for me. I’d feel worse if I didn’t eat it! And the alcohol, too…”
The moment she mentioned the alcohol, we both realized something.
We had left the rice wine behind.
“…I forgot.”
“I seem to remember fantasy novels saying dragons never forget anything. Are real dragons different?”
Half joking and half genuinely curious, I teased her affectionately, just as I used to.
But her expression immediately darkened.
As though she had done something terribly wrong.
“Why… did I leave it behind?”
The old Sia would have taken a joke like that in stride and probably teased me right back.
Instead, she grew restless over a single bottle of alcohol, asked me to wait, and vanished again.
A few seconds later, she reappeared with the rice wine we had left behind.
Her eyes were unfocused, as though her mind were somewhere else.
“The wine you brought for me… Right… I shouldn’t have left it…”
Something about her seemed off.
Muttering quietly to herself, she gently stroked the bottle.
“Sia?”
“I’m sorry, babe. You prepared this for me, and I forgot about it… I’m sorry…”
It was obvious she wasn’t all right.
How could I put it?
Perhaps spending two thousand years researching nothing but interdimensional travel magic had left her mentally unstable. Or perhaps this was a side effect of using the spell.
Whatever the cause, she seemed terribly fragile.
If she had been like this from the moment she emerged from the gate, I might have understood. But she had seemed perfectly fine just moments ago, leaving me at a loss.
I held her tightly to help her calm down.
“It’s okay, Sia. Have I ever gotten angry over something like that? You’re back. Why would a bottle of wine matter?”
“…”
“I was teasing you. Just teasing. I was so happy to have you back that I made a little joke.”
As I soothed her as gently as I could, she gradually began to settle down.
“…I’m sorry, babe. I scared you, didn’t I?”
“No, it’s okay. As long as you’re all right.”
I gently stroked her back again. Her expression softened as she calmed down, and soon she gave me a bashful smile.
“Then let’s eat our tteokbokki!”
Sia used magic to create a simple table and chairs, then placed the tteokbokki and wine on the table.
She finished opening the partly unwrapped container, took two pairs of wooden chopsticks out of the bag, and handed one to me.
“Thanks for the meal!”
With that cheerful declaration, she dug in.
“Wow, how long has it been since I last had tteokbokki?”
From the very first bite, she made a fuss as though she were eating the finest delicacy in the world, then began devouring it at an impressive pace.
Naturally, she didn’t forget to take sips of rice wine along the way.
Tteokbokki and alcohol—and rice wine meant for a memorial offering, at that.
It was a strange combination I would never have imagined, but Sia enjoyed them together without a care.
“You know, babe, when I was a hatchling, I wanted tteokbokki so badly that I gathered the ingredients and tried making it myself. But it didn’t taste right. I couldn’t tell whether my cooking wasn’t good enough or the ingredients were different from the ones on Earth.”
Having polished off a third of the entire serving by herself in no time, Sia gulped down the remaining rice wine like water.
“But when I thought about it, neither of those was the reason. It was something else.”
“Then what was the real reason?”
“I think it was because I wasn’t eating it with you.”
She gazed lovingly into my eyes and took a dainty bite of fish cake.
“The tteokbokki tasted good, but what I really loved was spending that time eating it with you. I think that’s why I loved it even more.”
At that moment, I felt as though something had struck me hard in the head.
She had loved eating tteokbokki with me that much. Why had I always grumbled about having it all the time?
Regret washed over me again, along with guilt.
“From now on, I’ll buy you so much tteokbokki you’ll get sick of it.”
What did it matter if I ate it until I couldn’t stand another bite? I would get to see her happy.
I had said it out of guilt, but Sia seemed deeply touched. She wriggled shyly in her seat.
And so we ate our tteokbokki, chatting about this and that in our own little world.
Before we knew it, the container was completely empty.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yep! But babe, I’m still hungry.”
Still hungry?
“Then should we go buy some more?”
“Let’s do that! We can get it in our neighborhood, right?”
“Hmm.”
I stared at the container, scraped clean of every last morsel.
‘This much used to be enough for both of us, with a little left over.’
And she was still hungry?
“You’re… hungry?”
“Yeah. I’m a dragon now, so I eat a little more than I used to.”
Well, that made sense.
I didn’t know what real dragons were like, but the ones in fantasy novels generally had true forms incomparably larger than humans.
Perhaps it was only natural that this much food hadn’t filled her up.
We cleaned up our trash before teleporting.
As we did, my gaze fell on Sia’s clothes.
If she went out dressed like that, people would definitely stare.
For one thing, she was clearly wearing something no ordinary modern person would wear.
If I had to describe it, it looked like an elaborately made cosplay outfit.
“Sia, are you going to buy tteokbokki dressed like that?”
“I was just about to change. What should I wear, babe? I’ll wear whatever you choose.”
Good question.
There wasn’t anything in particular I wanted her to wear.
An elegant dress, a cute tennis skirt with a pastel top, or even loose sweats—I liked them all on her.
But saying anything was fine might come across as thoughtless… so I named the first outfit that came to mind.
“A white T-shirt and jeans?”
“Okay!”
With a single gesture, Sia changed her clothes.
The outfit that looked straight out of medieval Europe transformed into a clean white T-shirt and jeans.
“Does it look good on me?”
“Yeah. You look beautiful, Sia.”
I wasn’t just saying that.
Even before her reincarnation, Sia had been quite pretty, but now her beauty was almost awe-inspiring.
And I wasn’t saying that just because she was my girlfriend. Objectively speaking, she looked less like a person and more like a living work of art.
An expensive work of art that someone like me shouldn’t dare touch.
Technically, she was neither a human nor a work of art, but a dragon. Anyway.
With her perfect figure, she would look beautiful in anything, but there was simply no way this outfit could look bad on her.
It had that effortlessly stylish look that would make every passing man turn his head at least once.
We had cleaned up after our meal, and she had changed into clothes suitable for the modern world.
All that remained was to teleport.
But then—
“Babe, wait.”
Instead of casting the spell, Sia suddenly stopped me.
“Do I look better with this face, or was my old face prettier? The one I had before I reincarnated?”
“…Huh?”
Her question left me utterly speechless.
How was I supposed to answer that?
‘I’m fucked.’