A Name Like a Girl's
Kwang (fuck).
"Why does your name sound like a girl's?"
"…My parents gave it to me. You seriously pulling a parent joke right now?"
"Huh?"
I'd been hearing it since I was little. All through school, and even into university — the same line, over and over.
Your name sounds like a girl's.
In-ah, what a pretty name. Wait — you're a boy…?
In-ah-chan~ so kawaii today too~
Why not change it to something manly, like Seo Injagang?
My name sounded like a girl's.
"…Maybe I should just change it."
My name was Seo In-ah.
An ordinary twenty-five-year-old man from South Korea.
It wasn't a particularly masculine name, but I never really resented it. I'd heard the "sounds like a girl" line so many times that it barely registered anymore — and it wasn't meant unkindly. It was simply a name that happened to be used more often for women.
How I ended up Seo In-ah went back twenty-five years, before I was even born.
At the time, my parents had been given a stern warning by my late grandfather: You must get the child's name from a shaman!
They didn't particularly believe in shamans, but they went along with Grandfather's wishes and paid one a visit. The moment the shaman laid eyes on them, she thrust two names forward.
"Your child will absolutely be a girl! Choose one of these two names, or misfortune will find you — take heed."
She wasn't a doctor, and my mother's belly hadn't even started to show, yet she was already prophesying the unborn child's sex. My parents wondered what she planned to do if it turned out to be a boy, but they nodded along and went home.
Grandfather insisted the shaman was gifted and that they were to use one of those two names without fail.
Waaah~ waaah~ waaah~
"Congratulations! A healthy little prince."
"…Excuse me?"
"A boy?"
And a boy was born.
These days you can find out the sex in advance, but back then no one told you — so until the moment of birth, you simply didn't know. Mother and Father held their newborn son and fretted. Both names the shaman had given them were girls' names. Even if they were supposed to avoid misfortune, wouldn't giving a boy a girl's name create an even bigger problem? And since they didn't believe in shamans to begin with, they worried the child might end up bullied.
Once Mother had recovered, they went back to the fortune-teller's shop — only to find a "Closed for Business" sign and no shaman in sight. She'd been gone a long time.
Left with no other choice, they went to Grandfather. He declared, more firmly than he ever had about anything:
"Absolutely not."
"But giving a boy a girl's name…"
"Silence! Do you want your child to meet with great misfortune?! You will use one of those two names, and that is final!"
In the end, my parents chose the less feminine of the two.
"…Isn't that just the saddest story you've ever heard? Hmm?"
"That's legendary… Wait, what was the other name?"
"Seo Hye-in."
"…For real?"
"Yeah."
A bar near campus. Over drinks with a friend I hadn't seen in a while, I recounted the origin of my name like some old folk tale. Nine out of ten people who heard it sympathized with the unfortunate reality of it.
Whenever someone needled me about sounding like a girl, I'd hit them with the "my parents gave it to me" defense — but the truth was, that had been a lie from the start. The name hadn't come from my parents at all. It had come from some unknown shaman. I was the joint product of a fortune-teller who couldn't even get the sex right and a grandfather who was one hundred percent stubborn.
The one silver lining was that I hadn't ended up Seo Hye-in. Seo In-ah was girlish enough, but Seo Hye-in was pure, uncut feminine.
"Maybe I should change it…"
"After all this time?"
"It's because it's been this long that I can. Honestly, I'm sick of people asking if I'm a girl every single time."
I'd laughed it off well enough, but being called a girl over and over never felt great. It was a good thing I'd taken up sports young — just as my parents had feared, there had been more than a few close calls with bullying. After I flattened the kid who used to sneer at me, I earned the title of hardest fist among the school's "middle-school girls." The bullying stopped. The laughing at my damn name did not.
The grandfather who'd forbidden any change had died ten years ago, and my parents had never believed in the vanished shaman to begin with. There was no one left to stop me.
There was only one thing that still gave me pause…
"What if the misfortune actually hits?"
"…It's gotta be bullshit."
The "misfortune" the shaman had warned about. Would something truly terrible befall me if I changed my name?
Doesn't seem like it, honestly…
Having the name Seo In-ah hadn't exactly filled my life with good fortune either. I'd injured myself playing sports, taken some nasty falls — accidents happened. I couldn't see how changing the name would make anything worse.
I drained my beer in long gulps.
Decision made.
"Screw it! I'm changing it."
"To what?"
"If I go too far it'll be weird… Seo In-jae? Seo In-ho?"
"Ooh… Or something even manlier? I've got one ready—"
"If you're about to say Seo Injagang, shut the hell up."
"Damn. Close one."
Six months later.
I finally succeeded in changing my name.
"Heh heh heh heh…"
The name printed on my resident registration card.
Seo In-ho.
There had been several candidates, but this one sat best with me. Anyone who saw it would think man.
My friends were disappointed I hadn't gone with Seo Injagang, but there was no need to listen to those lunatics.
"Ah. Green light."
Gazing fondly down at my new ID, I stepped into the crosswalk.
And then.
"Huh?"
BAAAAAAARP!!!
"Ah."
KWAANG!
A truck ran me over.
"Kwang (fuck)."
Isekai reincarnation.
I'd always thought of it as something that only happened in novels, comics, and anime. I never dreamed I'd actually live through it.
Two moons hung in the sky. The ground was crowded with plants and creatures I'd never seen before. A world full of fantasy races — goblins, orcs, elves, dwarves.
The situation was so bizarre it was almost absurd. I thrashed, trying to push myself up — then froze on the spot.
Flap.
"Kyang?"
Filling my entire field of vision: the massive hide and claws of a great red lizard. At a glance, this was no ordinary creature. The enormous lizard was stroking me with what could only be described as affection.
The moment I saw that, I stopped struggling and quietly accepted her touch. One wrong thrash, one accidental puncture, and I had a feeling I'd be reincarnating a second time.
That aside…
Apparently I'd been reborn as a lizard. I hadn't noticed at first, but looking closer, my own hands and feet had the same shape as the giant lizard in front of me.
"Kyang."
More precisely — not a lizard. A dragon.
"She's gone."
Five years of being raised by the mother dragon.
Then something urgent came up, and she vanished without a trace, leaving me alone in the nest. In that time she'd taught me all sorts of things, and a certain fondness had grown between us. Of course, I already had real parents, so I never thought of her as a parent exactly.
More like a master. A benefactor.
Five years was a short stretch, but it had been a genuinely useful one. Even if we'd met as person to person back on Earth, she would have been a pretty good person… well, dragon.
In particular, she'd loaded me up with the knowledge a dragon needed to know — and one piece of that knowledge was a magic called Polymorph.
A spell that let a dragon take human form. Humans held a fair amount of power in this world too, so it was probably meant for when you needed to go outside…
Flap.
"…A girl?"
A girl.
And not just any girl — a little one who looked like she'd just started elementary school.
The reflection in the still lake was genuinely strange. Crimson eyes that seemed to hold the sun itself flashed back at me. Long red hair spilled down to my waist. On either side of my head, red horns curved upward, sharp enough to look like they'd pierce something at any moment.
Flap.
Ah — and wings, for the record. Fairly impressive, fairly large. Looking at the span, I could probably fly even in this form.
"Ugh…"
I sighed at the beautiful girl in the lake. I'd known for a while that I'd been reborn female, but seeing it was another matter entirely. Honestly, in dragon form the difference between male and female hadn't been all that dramatic. Of course, I was only thinking this way because I still had my past life's memories.
Hmm.
Flap.
"It does look pretty cool, though."
Something about flapping wings in human form felt good. In past-life terms — it had style.
Confirming that the beautiful girl in the lake was grinning, I spun once in place and headed back to the nest.
Twenty years later.
Having absorbed every scrap of knowledge the mother dragon had left behind, I left the nest. If I was going to be reincarnated, I might as well see the world. And I was still curious about where the mother dragon who'd vanished so suddenly had gone.
So began a long journey. I wandered the continent from end to end, and the world began to call me the Fire Dragon's heir — the Little Fire Dragon.
Little Fire Dragon Lea.
A lofty dragon who carried the blood of the Fire Dragon.
For a time I made a name for myself and got into all sorts of fights, but time dulls people — or rather, dragons.
"I'm bored."
Three hundred years had passed, and I returned to the nest. A little bigger than before, but still in the form of a small girl at about elementary-school height.
Dragons lived far too long. Enough time had gone by for an ordinary human to rot away five times over, and for a dragon it was still only childhood. My past life's memories had grown hazy, and even the whereabouts of the mother dragon — who had once burned with such fierce purpose — no longer stirred much feeling.
Maybe the rumors were right, and she really was gone…
"Hwaaaaaawn~"
Sleep…
I used to wonder why the dragons in stories always just lay around in their nests, bored out of their minds. Now I understood.
There's nothing to do.
When you lived for thousands of years, what else was there besides sleep?
"I'll sleep for about five years… then head to the fairy kingdom for some strawberry cream bread…"
My eyes were just drifting shut when—
Players are connecting to the world.
"…?"
Text I hadn't seen in a very, very long time floated up into the empty air.