Tene's Day
"....Hwaaaaaah—mmph…."
Tene's day began a little later than everyone else's in the mansion.
The servants rose before the sun, taking the crow of a rooster as their alarm, and those same servants in turn became the alarm that woke the Evergarden family. But Tene, who was essentially a guest and a freeloader, slept when she felt like sleeping and woke when she felt like waking.
"Mmyah…"
Bright sunlight pricked at her closed lids until her eyes opened on their own, and the morning chatter of birds tugged her consciousness back into place. Tene sat up lightly and blinked the haze from her vision.
"...Sleepy—"
And then she toppled straight back down and fell asleep again.
Tene averaged a solid twelve hours of sleep a day. For someone who, in the modern world, had been crushed under school and cram academy until five hours was the best she could manage, this moment felt almost blissfully happy.
Her original body, however—Tenebrix Nox—had only woken from a deep slumber in the latter half of the original story to go on a rampage, which meant the body was still chronically short on rest. Sleep kept pouring over her in waves as it tried to make up even a fraction of the deficit.
If Tene had truly set her mind to it, she could have hibernated for months on end like a dragon settling in for winter.
Grrrrooowl—
"I'm hungry!"
Waking early enough to feel the hollow in her stomach, her belly-clock performed its duty with perfect loyalty and successfully hauled her upright.
The first things she did upon waking were straighten her bedding and change clothes at once.
"So this is possible once you're a dragon, huh."
She slipped out of her airy indoor clothes, pulled a dress from the wardrobe, and put it on—without opening her eyes a single time through any of it. Even with her sight cut off, a dragon's senses processed every scrap of information about her surroundings and fired it straight into her mind.
One might reasonably ask why she didn't just open her eyes, but this was the meaningless stubbornness of a teenage boy who still hadn't adjusted to his own bare skin.
Unlike the Evergarden family, who received attendants for every little task, she was a guest and had to manage on her own. The clothes in her wardrobe were maid uniforms from the mansion staff, lightly redesigned and tailored for easy changing. Tene, who wasn't used to being waited on either, found it more comfortable this way.
"....Damn, I'm cute today too."
Dressed, she stood before the mirror and muttered at her own reflection.
"I used to imagine having a girlfriend like this every single day, and now I've become her. Still can't believe it."
When she first became female, Tene had suffered the parting of ways with a certain junior she'd spent her whole life with. But if she set her pride down even a little, this body was nothing short of a blessing.
Dragons stayed clean no matter how many days they went without washing. Her hair never got greasy; it always hung like silk. She always smelled faintly of cool, crisp mint.
And a dragon sat at the absolute peak of humanity—the top of the food chain. A light stomp could shake the ground. A single howl could make hundreds, even thousands of humans wet themselves and faint on the spot. She still couldn't use magic or breath attacks, but her physical ability alone was absurdly high.
And on top of all that—
"....Hehe."
—her face was a perfect beauty. Looking in the mirror every day was a genuine pleasure.
—Grrrrooowl.
"Guess I should go eat first?"
She had been striking pose after pose in front of the glass when another rumble from her stomach finally sent her out of the room.
"Oh, Tene? Just waking up?"
"Hello, Noona."
"It's unnie, not noona, you know."
"Hehe… I'm still not used to that."
Maids who spotted her wandering the corridor in search of food greeted her warmly. At first they had treated her with formal courtesy, assuming she was a guest brought in by important people—but Tene had made it clear she was just a guest and they could be casual with her. Freya had declared as much herself, deciding that treating a perfectly ordinary high-school boy like some noble would only make things awkward, and Tene preferred it that way too.
"Still a late sleeper, aren't you? Reminds me of my little sister."
"Tene! Where are you going?"
"To eat."
"Huhu, look at those cheeks. You're so adorable."
"Eugh… hehe…"
The servants, who had once been stiff with uncertainty about how to treat her, now simply handled Tene like the cute little girl living in the mansion. If they ever learned that this child they babied was actually the legendary Black Dragon of myth, they would have dropped dead on the spot—but to people who knew nothing of that, she was just a darling.
Surrounded by maids fawning over her, Tene was living through the first and greatest peak of popularity in her entire life, and a foolish grin kept slipping out.
"Bye~"
"See you later~"
She set off again under the maids' fond send-off, destination already decided. Down the corridor, down the stairs, to the first floor—she stepped into a room where steam rose in soft white curls.
"Mister! Hello!"
"Well now, if it isn't our little glutton."
The kitchen that fed the entire Evergarden mansion. She strode in with a booming greeting, and a man who had been vigorously kneading bread dough looked up to welcome her.
"What are you doing?"
"Pre-kneading the dough for tomorrow morning's bread. You've got to make it ahead so it can rise overnight and bake up soft."
"Oh… that's cool."
"Hang on a bit. I'll finish this and get you some food."
"Can I watch from the side?"
"Heh. Getting interested in cooking, are you? Watch all you like."
"The most important thing is the chew. The more you work a flour dough, the better it rises and the softer the texture."
"Uh… ah! I know that! Gluten, right? I learned that flour has gluten in it, so that's why."
"Glu… what? No idea what that is, but I learned it from my master too. Watch carefully."
"Whoops. Ah—yes, sir."
While the man worked the dough with steady force, Tene quietly dragged a chair over and watched from beside him.
"Here. Eat up."
"Thank you for the meal!"
Once the dough was done, the man simply plated the leftovers from breakfast prep and handed them over.
"Mm! It's good! It's so good!"
"Heh. That so? Watching you eat like that does a man good."
Chef Gren smiled with genuine pleasure as Tene stuffed her mouth full and chewed with gusto.
Lately the Evergarden nobles had ordered fewer dishes and smaller portions at meals, and had even started leaving food behind—a blow to Gren's pride. The truth was that the family, forced to eat Western fare day after day without a scrap of kimchi, had simply grown tired of it and begun picking at their plates. They could hardly demand rice and kimchi from the head chef, so the meals had dwindled into half-hearted nibbling. Gren had no way of knowing any of that.
Then a girl who had arrived as a guest of the house started poking around the kitchen. He'd offered her a taste to check the seasoning, and that single connection had grown until he was now preparing her meals separately in the kitchen every day.
Since possessing this body, Tene had barely eaten properly and was starved for food; a dragon's palate meant she found everything delicious. Gren, for his part, simply found it heartwarming that someone cleaned every plate he set before her.
"I'm thinking of making cream stew for dinner. Coming back for it?"
"Yes!"
"Heh. You little."
Gren ruffled the hair of the strongest, most terrifying dragon in existence as she happily finished every bite, and grinned as if she were the most precious thing in the world.
"Hwah… that hit the spot."
Tene wandered the corridor, patting her full belly with a blissful smile. Her body, heavy and drowsy with food, was already clamoring for a sweet nap back in bed, and she was in complete agreement—heading straight for her room—when—
"Ah! There you are!"
"Urghk—N-Noona…?"
Far down the hall, a figure spotted her and came tearing toward her at a mad sprint. Dragon vision confirmed the identity instantly, and the happy smile Tene had been wearing vanished into a distinctly sour expression.
The figure was none other than the eldest son of House Evergarden—Felix Evergarden.
He was running so hard he almost seemed to fly—no, he actually was flying. Felix had lifted himself a fraction off the ground and was gliding toward her like a skater on air.
"Right! You're helping with today's experiment!"
"What?! We're doing that again?"
He landed in front of her and announced that she would be assisting, and Tene recoiled in horror.
Tene was, fundamentally, a dragon. She might be in human form now, but her strength and durability hadn't gone anywhere, so Felix had a habit of dragging her along as a target dummy for all sorts of magic.
"It's fine! It doesn't even hurt, right?"
"Last time Noona said she wanted to test fire magic, put me on the experiment table, and my clothes burned clean off! Do you have any idea how mortifying that was?!"
"That was, well… a slight error in control, let's say…?"
Tene found Felix thoroughly unpleasant—he came looking for her almost every day just to fling magic at her. At first, the mere mention of using magic had reeled her in completely; she'd trotted after him and declared herself his assistant. Then he had proceeded to pour every offensive spell he knew into her as a living bullseye, and the enthusiasm had long since died.
She had tried learning magic herself, but she couldn't even sense mana to begin with, and Felix's explanations were so dense and technical that without any foundation they were impossible to follow. She had given up on learning entirely.
And the memory of that last experiment—when he'd hurled a fireball at her, her body had been fine, but her clothes had turned to ash on the spot, forcing her to sprint naked back to her room—made her face go rigid at high speed.
"It's fine! This time it's not fire—ice! We're testing ice-attribute magic!"
"Still, though…"
"Hm? You're going to help, right?"
"....Fine."
In the end, the kindhearted high-schooler who could never refuse when Felix pushed all the way through became today's experimental subject once again.
…..And after taking an ice spell dead-on, she moved—and the frozen clothes shattered into powder, leaving Tene naked. Again.