The Red Dragon Princess Has Marked Me
Once the entrance examination was over, I was immediately placed under observation.
That might sound a little dramatic, but it was exactly what happened.
"Student Cheongha, for the time being you are to keep your Yeouiju—that is, the object in question—on your person at all times. Unauthorized use is prohibited."
"Yes."
"During class, do not take it out without your supervising professor's permission."
"Yes."
"And while sleeping?"
"I'm not allowed to sleep hugging it?"
"……We'll deliberate on that at a later meeting."
Why do you need a meeting for that.
What I sleep hugging is my business, isn't it.
Of course, from their point of view, I had just announced my intention to go to bed with my own heart parked next to my pillow—a statement that made me sound completely unhinged.
The examiner pressed a temporary permit into my hand.
Printed on it, alongside my name, was a very strange sentence.
PERMIT FOR POSSESSION OF A SPECIAL BIOLOGICAL MANA CORE
I stared at that phrasing for a long time.
Special biological mana core.
Just call it a Yeouiju.
Three syllables would have done it.
Watching them abandon a perfectly good three-syllable name and inflate it past ten characters, I could only conclude that the administrative future of this world was bleak.
If this had been a gallery, the title would already have been up.
Why do the people of this world insist on renaming other people's pearls however they please.
Of course they had no concept of a Yeouiju to begin with, so there was nothing to be done about it.
And that was the real problem.
I was an existence that did not appear in the original work.
Which meant this world's systems had no proper way to describe me.
In a game, I would have been a bug character.
In a novel, an external variable.
In a gallery?
A permanent-ban-worthy shitposter.
"Haa."
I sighed and headed for the entrance ceremony hall.
Drakenheim Academy.
It had looked lavish enough on the game screen, but in person it was on another level entirely.
Soaring ceilings.
Sunlight pouring through stained glass.
Portraits of successive dragon nobility lining the walls.
Family crests hung along both sides of the corridor.
Most of the students in uniform wore human forms.
But they weren't fully human.
Horns atop their heads.
Tails visible between the hems of their clothes.
Wings folded against their backs.
Skin patterns that shimmered like scales.
Polymorphed dragons.
Things that had looked like mere cute-girl accessories in the game felt strangely oppressive up close.
And even among them, I stuck out.
The other students had wings.
Large or small, folded or decorative—whatever the case.
If you were a dragon, you had them. That was the baseline.
My back was bare.
In their place, a long blue tail drifted lazily behind me.
The problem was that even the tail didn't match the thick, powerful tails of Western dragons.
It was slender and long.
The scales were smooth, and the tip curled like a wave.
In short—
I was in a completely different genre all by myself.
No. The standard itself was wrong.
They were dragons. I was a dragon of the Eastern kind—a yong.
Shoving an Azure Dragon onto a checklist designed for winged lizards was the only reason I looked defective.
Of course, if I said any of that out loud, I'd just get written off as another shitposter.
I was already the lunatic who walked around carrying her own heart. Adding "Eastern dragon" rhetoric on top of that would be beyond saving.
"Is that her?"
"The external heart."
"The one who carries her heart around?"
"I heard she's the wingless first-year."
"No breath organ either, apparently."
Rumors traveled fast.
I'd thought only the internet was like that, but a fantasy academy held its own.
I kept my head down and walked.
Don't make eye contact for no reason.
Thirty years as Kim Cheong-yong.
In that time, I had dodged countless fights.
Mostly in real life.
The internet was another story.
Real fights hurt.
In this world, they would hurt even more.
Because the other party could breathe fire.
Online, if you lost an argument, you blocked them and bailed.
Here, a single misstep and you'd be genuinely cremated.
I still had no intention of playing the Dragon Heart Romance OST as funeral BGM.
"You there."
Ah.
I'm screwed.
I pretended not to hear and quickened my pace.
"Cheongha."
She used my name.
Pretending not to hear was no longer an option.
I turned around slowly.
Just as expected.
Erika Rubellion.
The Red Dragon Princess stood with her arms crossed.
Around her, several students had naturally given her space.
The empty radius that forms around the powerful.
It was drawn with perfect clarity around Erika.
"Running away?"
"I'm worried I'll be late for the ceremony."
"There's still time."
"Then I was going to go sit early."
"I called you."
"And so I stopped, as you can see."
Erika narrowed her eyes.
Dangerous.
But my mouth would not stop.
This body looked small and cute; the human inside was still a gallery shitposter.
Karma.
This is my karma.
Body: Academy Azure Dragon first-year.
Soul: a thirty-year-old unemployed guy who used to dump oil on comment sections and run.
The combination was catastrophic.
"You. Are you actually fearless, or do you just not think?"
"If I have to pick one, I'm a bit more used to the latter."
The words left my mouth before I realized what I'd said.
Why did I answer that honestly.
My mouth is faster than I am.
Being able to shitpost without a keyboard—truly, humans are adaptable creatures.
Somewhere nearby, someone stifled a laugh.
Erika's eyebrow twitched.
But she didn't get angry.
If anything, she seemed oddly entertained.
"After the entrance ceremony. Training Ground."
"I already said no earlier."
"It's not a duel."
"Then what?"
"Verification."
"Of what?"
Erika pointed at my chest.
More precisely, at the Yeouiju I had tucked inside my uniform.
"What you are."
"I'd like to know that myself."
I meant it.
I wanted to know what I was, too.
I understood that I was an Azure Dragon.
What that meant in this world, though—I had no idea.
How strong I was, what abilities I had, what the Yeouiju actually was, how it differed from a Dragon Heart.
I knew nothing.
This was exactly when original-game knowledge would have been useful, and I was a guy who had never finished the game.
I'd dipped a toe in and quit.
All I'd ever read were a few wiki lines and some gallery concept posts—just enough to shitpost with.
Ah.
I really want to kill my past self.
No—before that, I want to hit downvote first.
That was the notice my life desperately needed.
Has my past self already died, and is that how I became the current me?
My thoughts tangled.
"You."
Erika spoke.
"You've really got the face of someone who knows nothing."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Extremely."
"I'm screwed, then."
"You are. Weak dragons don't last long around here."
Those words weren't light.
Weak dragons.
The phrase snagged strangely in my ear.
I'm not a dragon—I'm a yong.
But if I said, "Excuse me, let's revisit the species classification first," that would be a direct ticket to the Training Ground.
For once, I shut my mouth.
A few students heading toward the ceremony hall heard her and averted their eyes.
Dragon Heart Romance.
An otome game.
But it wasn't a simple dating sim.
It was a game famous for its solid worldbuilding and flashy combat.
In other words, this place was not a flower field where noble dragons smiled and raised affection meters.
Bloodline.
Attribute.
Mana.
Combat power.
And family.
Rank was decided by all of those things.
I had almost nothing that would place me on that ranking chart.
No wings.
No Breath.
No internal Dragon Heart detected.
No family.
Attribute undetermined.
And I walked around carrying my heart on the outside.
You couldn't score lower if you tried.
"So."
I asked carefully.
"What happens if you're weak?"
Erika answered as if it were obvious.
"You get stepped on."
"That's terrifying."
"Admitting it right away is a talent too."
"Is that a compliment?"
"No."
"Figured as much."
The conversation synced strangely well.
Not in a good way.
We were kindling for each other.
One side a fire-breathing Red Dragon; the other a shitposter who started fires with her mouth.
By any measure, an accident waiting to happen.
Erika snorted a short laugh.
Then she took a step closer.
She was taller than me.
Her build was far more solid.
Her red tail looked strong and heavy, and even her folded wings radiated heat.
The air nearby seemed to warm slightly.
Red Dragon.
Nobility of fire.
She held out her hand toward me.
"Then I'll check for you."
"Check what?"
"Whether you're the kind that gets stepped on."
A tiny flame bloomed at her fingertips.
Right in the middle of the corridor outside the ceremony hall.
I instinctively stepped back.
"Here?"
"Scared?"
"Yes."
"Admitting it again."
"It's fire."
Erika laughed as if she couldn't believe me.
"Is being scared of fire strange? I'm not ready to be roasted yet."
"You and that mouth of yours."
"I have a strong will to live."
In that moment, the flame at her fingertips swelled a little larger.
A small bit of teasing.
For a Red Dragon, a threat that amounted to nothing.
But right in front of my eyes, it was more than scary enough.
I reflexively clenched the Yeouiju inside my uniform.
And then—
Wind stirred through the corridor.
"Huh?"
I couldn't tell who said it first.
It was a closed hallway.
The windows were far away.
Yet a cold wind coiled around me.
The flame at Erika's fingertips wavered.
Wavered—
and went out.
Puff.
Silence.
I looked down at the hand gripping the Yeouiju.
What was that just now?
Erika was looking down at her own fingertips as well.
Her red eyes slowly widened.
The proud Red Dragon Princess.
Her flame had been snuffed out by a wind I hadn't even meant to call.
The students around us stirred.
"Did you see that?"
"A Red Dragon's flame went out?"
"Who cast magic?"
"That defective species?"
Don't call me a defective species.
It hurts.
Just call me a guy who never finished the game.
That's true, so I can't even argue.
Erika slowly looked at me.
Her eyes were different from before.
Not irritation. Not mockery.
Pure interest.
And competitive fire.
I am truly, thoroughly screwed.
"Cheongha."
"Yes."
"After the entrance ceremony. Training Ground."
"I like that idea even less than I did earlier."
"Wow."
Erika smiled brightly.
"You really are fun."
That smile was beautiful.
And savage.
I understood then.
The Red Dragon Princess had marked me.
And in the worst possible way.
Whether it was affection, hostility, or a duel flag—I couldn't tell.
But one thing was certain.
In an otome game, a romance target had registered my existence.
Expressed gallery-style, it went like this:
The problem was that I was not the original protagonist.
And the original protagonist of this game—
had not even arrived at the entrance ceremony hall yet.