The Gold Dragon Saintess Worries About the Heart
The entrance ceremony ended more quietly than I had expected.
At least the building did not explode.
By my standards, that counted as an outstanding success.
I had woken up that morning as a female Azure Dragon, been treated like a lunatic carrying her heart around outside her body in the examination room, and snuffed out the Red Dragon duchess's flames in the hallway. If the ceiling of the entrance hall had simply managed not to collapse after all that, I was already sitting pretty in the top one percent of luck.
The headmaster delivered a long speech.
The pride of dragons. The responsibilities of bloodlines. The history of the academy. Harmony between the empire and the nobility. Roughly that sort of thing.
I barely heard any of it.
Because stares kept boring into me from both sides.
To my left, the Red Dragon duchess Erika was watching me. More precisely, she was watching me the way a predator eyes a meal it has just discovered.
Behind me to the right, a few faculty members whispered while looking my way. More precisely, they were looking at me with the same eyes they would use for both a hazardous object and a freshman at once.
And a little farther ahead in the front row, a blonde girl kept glancing back at me from time to time.
At first she simply caught my eye because she was pretty.
No—pretty did not begin to cover it.
Golden hair. Warm amber eyes. A sacred uniform mixed with white and gold. Small, elegant golden horns. A soft radiance that clung to her body.
The Gold Dragon Saintess.
Lydia Aurelia.
The healer-type main heroine of Dragon Heart Romance.
Even a casual player like me knew that much. Because one of the topics they always fought over in the gallery was this exact thing.
The gallery was diseased.
I was part of that disease. More precisely, I was on the pathogen side. The type that made immune-deficient newbies drop dead the moment they opened the comment section.
Anyway, Lydia was that kind of character.
Calm, broad-minded, kind to everyone—the Saintess. And among the heroines, the first one to notice the original protagonist's wounds.
And right now, that girl was looking at me.
Why?
Can she see my wounds? Or is she worried that my heart is outside my body?
The latter felt far more likely.
"With that, the freshman entrance ceremony is concluded."
The moment the headmaster finished speaking, the hall began to move. Students rose from their seats. I tried to blend into the crowd as naturally as possible.
My goal was simple.
Go to the dormitory. Lock the door. Sleep while hugging my Yeouiju. Pray that when I wake up tomorrow, everything will have been a dream.
It was a perfect plan.
"Excuse me, freshman?"
The plan died in three seconds.
Life always worked that way. Whenever I made a plan, the world slapped a "Didn't ask" comment under it.
The voice was soft. I slowly turned my head.
Lydia Aurelia stood there.
Up close she was even more unreal. It felt like light itself had taken human form and was standing in front of me. A Saintess in the literal sense.
She looked at me with worried eyes.
"Hello. I am Lydia Aurelia. Though I am hardly worthy of it, people call me the Saintess."
It was an extremely polite, textbook self-introduction.
"I'm Cheongha."
My own introduction, by contrast, scored a solid zero.
"If it wouldn't be too much trouble, might I have a moment?"
"What if I say it would be trouble?"
"Then I shall wait."
"…"
This was a foul.
The opponents I used to keyboard-war with in the gallery would answer whatever I said with insults. But when someone came at me this courteously, I became the garbage. Of course I was already garbage, but I did not particularly want the live certification on the spot.
If someone swore, I could swear back. If someone snarked, I could snark back. But if they acted kind? That was a foul. To a professional troll, a well-mannered person was a natural predator.
"Fine. It's okay."
Lydia smiled faintly.
"Thank you."
Please don't smile. You're blinding.
And I am currently in a girl's body. My mind is male, my body is female, and the person in front of me is a dating-sim heroine. There is no manual for how to process this situation.
Lydia carefully looked toward my chest—the place where I had tucked the Yeouiju.
"I heard what happened in the examination room."
"Already?"
"Rumors travel quickly inside the academy."
"Not the good kind of rumor, I take it."
Lydia did not answer. Silence was affirmation.
Ah. I'm already finished.
"An external Dragon Heart… isn't that terribly inconvenient?"
"It's not a heart, for the record."
The words came out almost automatically. How many times had I said that sentence in a single day?
Lydia did not look surprised. Instead she nodded with genuine seriousness.
"I see. So to you, it is not a heart."
It was the first time.
Someone had simply accepted my words as they were. The examiner had denied them, the professors had deliberated, the students had whispered. Erika had found it entertaining. But Lydia was different. She spoke as if she believed me—or at least as if she respected my own standard.
"Then what do you call that orb?"
"A Yeouiju."
"Yeouiju."
Lydia carefully repeated the unfamiliar word. A word that did not exist in this world. Yet when she said it, it somehow sounded gentle.
"What a beautiful name."
"Is it?"
"Yes. It suits you well."
Dangerous. The Gold Dragon Saintess is dangerous.
She did not stab people with insults; she disarmed them with compliments. Even a gallery veteran like me struggled to counter this. If she had thrown a personal attack I could at least report her. There was no reportable offense here. I could not exactly sue someone for the crime of kindness.
Lydia carefully extended a hand.
"Would it be all right if I… examined it?"
I flinched back on pure reflex, the same way I had in the examination room that morning. But Lydia stopped her hand. She did not force her way closer.
"If you dislike it, I won't."
At those words I hesitated for a moment.
The instant Erika's flames had gone out. The wind that had risen when I gripped the Yeouiju. This orb was almost certainly connected to my power. Having someone else touch it felt instinctively wrong. But Lydia was a Saintess—healing and holy affinity. In the original she was the heroine who read magical states more delicately than anyone. She might actually be able to figure something out.
Of course, the human making this judgment was a guy who had only lightly touched the game and then quit. Reliability: about the same as a wiki comment section.
"Just a second."
I took out the Yeouiju. The blue orb glowed softly in my palm.
Lydia's eyes widened. Awe. And a trace of reverence.
"This is…"
"Looks like a Dragon Heart after all?"
"No."
I blinked.
"No?"
"It resembles one, but it is different."
Lydia spoke slowly.
"A Dragon Heart is a mana pathway. A core linked to blood, the heart, and life itself. But this…"
Her fingertips approached the Yeouiju. They did not touch. Just before contact, the blue light trembled faintly. Lydia drew in a sharp breath.
"It feels as though it is connected to the sky."
"The sky?"
"Yes. Rain, wind, clouds, water. It seems close to those things."
"Anything more?"
"I cannot tell."
Lydia shook her head honestly. I did not press further. She simply looked at my face.
"Miss Cheongha."
"Yes."
"You are not a defective species. You are not lacking. You are simply different."
It was the first time I had heard those words.
No one else had said anything of the sort. No breath organ. No wing organs. Internal Dragon Heart not detected. Suspected external heart. Risk grade pending. Amid all those judgments, this was the first time anyone had said: you are not defective.
My throat closed up strangely. The words sank deeper than I expected. Maybe that was what I had wanted to hear all along. By dragon standards I was defective. But I was not a dragon—I was a yong. If the measuring stick itself was wrong, then the defective verdict might be wrong too.
In the gallery I would have snarked immediately.
But for some reason my mouth would not open.
It was only the first day of possession. Only a few hours had passed. Apparently I had been more tense than I realized.
"Then what am I?"
Lydia hesitated a little. Then she spoke in a very low voice.
"I do not know."
"Ah."
"But it is something that cannot be measured by the academy's standards."
The words felt half like comfort and half like a larger anxiety. Cannot be measured by the standards. That could mean special. It could also mean dangerous. And, just a little, it felt satisfying.
See? Your dragon measuring stick that only cares about wings and breath can't even read me. Maybe I'm not broken—maybe their ruler is just too short.
"Which is why I have a request."
Lydia said.
"Might we meet often from now on?"
Hold on. Isn't this a route flag?
In a dating sim, when a main heroine says "Let's meet often from now on," it is not simple friendliness. Event triggered. Affection up. Individual route entry possibility increased. Roughly that kind of system message floated up in my head.
The problem was that the flag was supposed to plant itself on the original protagonist, Kyle. I was not a romance target, not the player—I was just some guy who had been pounding a keyboard in the gallery until this morning. So why was the healer-type main heroine tilting her head toward me?
Is this even okay?
On top of that I was currently in a girl's body. The other party was a Saintess, this was an academy, and the genre was Dragon Heart Romance. If I had been reading this as a reader I would already have left a comment.
But now that I was the one living it, I could not laugh. Not even a little.
"…Yes. All right."
Lydia smiled as if relieved.
"I'm glad."
Looking at that smile, I thought:
All you guys who used to fight that the Gold Dragon Saintess route was the true wife… you weren't wrong. No—calling her the true wife is still not enough. She is simply light. Light. Light. Light.
Of course, if I posted that in the gallery another war would break out.
That was when it happened.
The entrance side of the hall stirred. Students' gazes all swung toward one place. I turned my head without thinking. And I saw him.
A male student was walking into the hall.
Black hair. Ordinary build. Yet somehow a presence that stood out. Unlike the other dragon students, he showed almost no horns or tail. An appearance close to human. But a faint Dragon Heart reaction glowed from his chest.
The original protagonist.
Kyle Leonhart.
The mixed-blood with dragon heritage, the center of the game who opened the routes of four heroines. He had finally appeared.
I muttered inwardly.
He's here. The original protagonist. The main-ship pick has finally taken the stage.
If this had been the gallery, the comment section would have been split right now.
From here on, if things went according to the original, Erika was supposed to take an interest in that guy. Lydia was supposed to notice his wounds. The White Dragon student council president was supposed to test him. The Black Dragon was supposed to observe him in secret. That was the original story.
Except.
"Miss Cheongha?"
Lydia was still looking at me. Farther away, Erika was still looking at me as well. And the original protagonist Kyle—the moment he stepped into the hall, his eyes met mine.
His gaze went to the Yeouiju at my chest. Then it trembled slightly.
Why. Why are you the one looking surprised.
In that instant I understood.
The original story had started to go off the rails. From the very first day.