I'll Bury My Bones Here
After the meal, Audria transformed into a dragon at once and made to leave.
"Where are you going?"
"I must return to my lair and rest, or I will not recover."
Rian stared at her, bewildered.
"Isn't this the lair?"
"The lair is in the north."
"Really?"
The thought of seeing a dragon's lair seized him all at once. He looked up at her with a show of reluctance to part.
"You're going alone? What about me? I want to go too. Please take me with you."
Her enormous jaws moved.
"You stay here and guard the fields."
"I want to serve you even at night. I'm your loyal servant, you know."
The words seemed to please her. Audria let out a snicker.
"It is a bitterly cold place. A human would freeze to death in under a minute."
Rian had no choice but to let the idea go. Freeze to death? Well. That settled that.
"Guard it well."
And with that, Audria beat her wings and soared away into the distance.
Left alone, Rian dragged a chair out into the yard and sat down.
"Damn. The view's incredible."
A sigh slipped out of him as he watched the sunset bleed across the sky.
"So I have to live here for the rest of my life, huh. Not that I've got anywhere else to go..."
He muttered to himself, staring off into nothing.
"Audria doesn't seem like that bad a dragon, either. Play to her mood and she treats me pretty well. The food's not my thing, I'll give her that — our tastes don't match at all."
He sat like that for a long while. Before he knew it the day had gone fully dark, and a cool night wind brushed his cheek. He was still lost in thought.
"...And she's a dragon. Just having a dragon for a master is an honor. Where else do you get luck like that? I mean, that's security."
At last, he reached a conclusion.
"Ah, whatever. I'll live. As long as I'm stuck here, I might as well bury my bones in this soil! Audria'll handle the funeral just fine — she'll outlive me anyway."
Kim Rian was an optimist through and through. Lamenting his lot, complaining about his life — gloomy thoughts of that sort never lasted more than half a day with him.
In a kind word: a positive guy.
In another: a simpleton.
And so, as of that day, Kim Rian the Earthling resolved to become Kim Rian, farmer of another world.
"Everyone else who comes to another world runs around waving a sword. Me? I'll run around waving farm tools! Just you wait. I'll become a specialist in agriculture!"
He threw together a rough dinner of foraged fruit and collapsed onto the bed. The moment he faced the ceiling, thoughts of his family rose up and his nose stung.
"Haa... I miss Mom and Dad so much I don't think I'll sleep a wink tonight. I wonder how they're doi—"
He was snoring before the sentence was done. He had passed out the instant he hit the mattress.
The next day, Rian rose early, fetched a broom from the shed, and swept the front yard with grim determination. Now that he had made up his mind to live here, he was ready to give his all to whatever the place demanded.
"Even if Audria has a change of heart and tries to throw me out, I'm not leaving. This is my home now. That huge stretch of fields is jointly owned by me and Audria — which means it's my land."
A look of deep satisfaction spread across his face, and he let out a loud, booming laugh.
"What is that unpleasant laughing sound?"
"Hup—!"
Audria's voice came from directly behind him. He spun around to find her watching him through narrowed eyes, a sack the size of a grain bag gripped in her right hand.
"Ah — when did you get here? You could've at least coughed."
He hurried over and took the sack from her. And then the thing —
"Wha—?!"
It was so heavy his back nearly folded in half. He couldn't lift it even with both hands. After a few seconds of straining and groaning, he gave up.
"What on earth is this heavy?"
"I brought it for you."
"Brought what?"
She answered as if it were nothing at all.
"Just treasure."
"Just... treasure?"
"My father used to say that humans are greedy creatures, fond of expensive goods. I am giving you this so you will not sneak away behind my back, or lie to me, or disappoint me. I will keep watching. If you do well, I shall bring more."
"Wow! Thank you! But what kind of treasure weighs this much?"
"I scooped it by hand from a mountain of treasure piled as high as a peak, and filled the sack. I do not know what is inside."
Scooped by a dragon's hand. That was no different from filling a bag with an excavator. Rian hurried to untie the sack and peer inside, and all manner of treasures glittered up at him — a tiara, a jewelry box, an ornate sword, a woman's dress, bracelets, and more. Gold and silver, wrought into treasures that lit his face with delight.
"With this much I could found a kingdom."
Or maybe not. Still — he could at least buy a fief with it. Either way, Rian was thrilled.
"I'll serve you and only you for the rest of my life, Audria! I mean it! For you, I'd even lick the soles of your feet!"
Audria burst out laughing.
"Licking the soles of my feet. What a funny way to put it."
After breakfast, Audria led Rian out to the fields.
"From today, you work hard. You are prepared, I trust?"
Rian beamed and answered with gusto.
"Of course! Please teach me!"
Ever since receiving the treasure, a smile had not left his face. Audria cautioned him to take the work seriously, then went on.
"First, I shall teach you a few things that are both the most basic and the most important."
She started him on digging drainage ditches along the borders of the fields. Rian, however, was hopeless with a shovel. Except for his time in the army, he had never touched one — and having served did not mean every man knew how to dig.
Audria watched him for a while, then stepped in, reluctantly, to help.
"Try it like this. Like so. Yes. That's it."
"Oh! That's working!"
He dug and repaired ditches every day, morning and afternoon without distinction, and with Audria watching closely at his side and teaching him, his shoveling became reasonably decent in just three days.
Once the ditches were done, they moved on to weeding. Weeds grew back as fast as you pulled them, so they had to be yanked up constantly, even in the middle of other work. The land was the size of eight soccer fields, the plots were many, and there were only two pairs of hands — this was not a job that would be finished in a day or two. Audria had been away from home for a long time, and in the meanwhile weeds had shoved their way up everywhere: between the paths, between the vegetables, here, there, and everywhere.
Rian stretched out his arms and pulled them up in great handfuls.
On the fourth day of weeding, the once-lush weeds had visibly thinned, and Audria was delighted. A weight seemed to lift from her shoulders as she looked at him with warm satisfaction.
"I'm glad I have you."
Rian seized the good mood and asked, carefully,
"Audria. There's something I've been curious about for a while. May I ask?"
"What is it?"
"How did you hurt your leg?"
The smile lingering at the corners of her mouth faded.
"You don't need to know."
"Why not? Can't you tell me?"
"It is a matter of the outside world. Hearing of it would only confuse you. You are to live here for the rest of your life."
"I have no intention of leaving. I was just wondering who did that to you — a wound that bad. Who knows? Maybe I'll avenge you someday."
Audria snorted, as if the idea were laughable.
"You couldn't lay a finger on him. Don't concern yourself."
Rian was deeply hurt.
"We're not one, we're two. When hardship comes, we should face it together. I'm here at your side now."
The words moved Audria in a way she had not expected. Having lost her parents and spent a hundred years alone, she had never heard anything that comforted her so deeply.
Once the weeding was finished, she set him to repairing the collapsed ridges. Audria demonstrated first, and when Rian marveled at her skill with a hoe, she cheered him on, telling him he could do it too. Perhaps because of the conversation earlier, her manner was much gentler that day.
"You won't be good at it right away, so take breaks as you go."
Three more days passed. When the ridge work was done, Audria led him to a field of stony, rough soil.
"Dig out the stones buried in the earth and throw them off the cliff."
This lesson was aimed at building his stamina. The cliff was a fair distance from the field, and the path was packed dirt that barely let a wheel turn, so loading the stones onto a cart and hauling them was no small labor. Honestly, Audria could have transformed into a dragon and hurled the cart, load and all, over the edge — but she deliberately did no such thing. She left him to grunt and strain and push the cart himself, so that his body would grow stronger.
It was exhausting, and it hurt, but Rian clenched his teeth and endured it, clinging to a single hope.
"If I keep this up, I'll turn into a muscleman, right? Right, Audria?"
Two months later, Rian's body was a different thing entirely.
"Whoa. This is me? I can't believe it!"
When he had first arrived in this world, his skin had been pale and his frame skinny. Now he had the copper tan of a man who lived in the sun, forearms where the tendons jumped the instant he gripped anything, and thighs that had shed their fat and grown sleek and solid. The moment he realized how much better his body had become, a confidence he had never known took root in him, and his drive shot through the roof. Farming, suddenly, was fun.
From then on, he didn't wait for Audria to assign him work. He threw himself at it of his own accord, hungry for more.
"Got anything else? I've still got energy to burn."
"That's enough. Let's rest. You'll hurt yourself if you overdo it."
She found his attitude thoroughly admirable, and a desire rose in her to share every scrap of wisdom she possessed. Now, she thought, was the time to begin his theoretical education.
"From tomorrow, you will learn from books. You can read, I assume?"
"Read? I can read Korean, at least."
Until now, Audria's speech had reached Rian's ears as Korean — made possible by a language only dragons could use. Draconic was a tongue in which even a single syllable spoken aloud carried mana, and so every living thing heard it in their own native language.
"I shall have to teach you the language as well. That way you can read even when I am not here."
Rian tilted his head.
"Which country's language?"
Audria, who had been mapping out a new schedule in her mind, lifted her gaze to meet his.
"The only language I know is Draconic."
"I'm going to learn Draconic?!"
Joy flooded his face.
"That's insane!"
And so, starting the next day, the study of Draconic ran alongside the crush of farm work. Mornings were for the language; afternoons, he went out to the fields to pick stones, pull weeds, dig furrows, and hunt pests.
The first week of learning Draconic was misery. Humans and dragons were built differently in almost every respect, and the gulf in the mana they possessed was vast — for an ordinary human like Rian, speaking a language that drew on magical power was, in every practical sense, impossible.
"Pronounce it as I do. Twayze isera."
"Tw- twee..."
He tried several times, then hung his head in defeat.
"When I try to say it, my voice just... won't come out. Why is that?"
"Perhaps you are being rejected because no dragon's blood runs in your veins."
She went on,
"Don't give up. Let us keep trying."
But a full week passed, and Rian still could not produce the sounds, nor write a single character. The moment he tried to form a letter, it slipped from his mind.
"I don't think I can learn it."
Audria comforted his downcast face.
"It is too soon to give up. I will find a way to teach you, no matter what it takes. Take heart."
A few days later, she kept her word. Rian became able, at last, to learn Draconic. She solved the problem by changing his very constitution — by tearing off her own skin and feeding it to him. Of course, she never told him a thing about it.
From Rian's point of view, he had studied himself half to death and finally broken through, and he was overjoyed. That Audria had fed him dragon blood and scales was something he never dreamed of, not even in his sleep.
If I tell him I tore off my own flesh and fed it to him, I'm afraid of how he might change. Father used to say that humans are so greedy they will stop at nothing to obtain something precious. He might even try to kill me for still greater power... I want to stay with Rian for a long, long time.
As it happened, she was still recovering from the wound in her leg. As it healed, the scabs and shed skin that had formed over the torn flesh were peeling away, and new skin was growing in underneath. Those blood-crusted scabs and sloughs were what she had fed him.