The Dragon and the High School Girl
Magic is incredibly profound.
That might not be the kind of thing an eighteen-year-old has any business saying, but still—when it comes to magical ability alone, I am a dragon no one else on Earth can match.
From the very moment I first gained awareness, I simply knew. How to use magic. How to handle mana. What kinds of magic I could cast.
And yet even I had no real sense of just how far “mana” could go—what, exactly, it was possible to do with it.
Here, “magic” and “mana” are obviously different things. More precisely, you need mana before you can use magic at all. Knowing the method means nothing if you don’t have the mana. In other words, mana is the foundation of magic.
And the only mages who possess that mana—besides me—are Ha-yan’s family, here in all of South Korea. I once asked Ha-yan’s mother why, in a country this big, the only mages were her family. She said even they didn’t know. It had simply always been that way. She had been born into that household and had just lived with it. On top of that, for generations the family had only ever produced an only daughter or an only son, so the mage lineage had never had a chance to spread further.
Anyway. That wasn’t the important part right now.
“Uuunngh… midterms… I hate them…”
“Last time you said you hated P.E. No—actually, P.E. you were just born bad at, so we’ll let that slide. But Ha-yan, you’re good at studying, aren’t you?”
“Just because you’re good at studying doesn’t mean you like taking tests.”
Ha-yan was sprawled face-down across my desk, lips pushed out in a pout as she muttered. A girl student walked up beside her, reached out, grabbed both of Ha-yan’s cheeks, and started kneading them without mercy.
“Yahhh!! Ha-yan, you get good grades and you still say stuff like that?! What about people like me stuck in the bottom ranks?!”
“Mmbbphhh!!!”
Ha-yan was completely at the mercy of the girl’s ruthless cheek-squishing. Even while her hands worked Ha-yan’s face, the girl looked over at me and asked,
“So? Predictions for midterms this time?”
“Obviously first in the whole school. You have to ask?”
“Brutal. Absolutely brutal. Spoken like someone who’s never once dropped from first place since first grade of elementary school.”
“Mmmph! Mmbbph! St-stop—!”
Ha-yan thrashed, but the girl paid her no mind and kept kneading. If Choi Hoon had known us since middle school, this girl—Do Ji-yeon—was the only student at this high school who had known what we looked like back in elementary school. Truly the only one. The one and only. She knew things even Choi Hoon didn’t.
After a long while of rubbing Ha-yan’s cheeks, Do Ji-yeon finally seemed satisfied. She stopped, dragged a chair over, parked herself beside us, pulled Ha-yan into a tight hug, and heaved a deep sigh.
“Aigoo. You two have it so good. Your futures are already all set. That’s why gold-spoon kids never understand the hearts of plastic-spoon normals like me.”
“Who’s the gold spoon and who’s the plastic spoon here?”
“Who do you think? You two are the gold spoons. People like me are the plastic ones. You own a giant company and you’re good at school. And look at those faces on top of it. Ugh. Why does God pile all the good stuff only on people who already have everything?”
Do Ji-yeon spoke with genuine resentment. As the only student in the school who had known us since elementary days, she didn’t know our true natures—but she did know the identity of the company I ran and that I was disgustingly rich. As another girl, and the one closest to Ha-yan, there had been no way to hide it. She had been to both Ha-yan’s house and mine. The company? I’d just waved it off as “family business.” And that little white lie had grown until now it included the idea that Ha-yan and I already had jobs waiting for us there. Which was why she was saying all this now.
There was no real need to dig into other topics, so Ha-yan and I just traded glances and kept our mouths shut.
A moment later, Do Ji-yeon spoke again.
“Aigoo. Fine. No point airing my petty grievances in front of kids like you anyway. Changing the subject—did you hear? People online are saying something weird happened in the neighborhood next door.”
“What kind of weird?”
Ha-yan, who knew nothing, asked back. I, who knew exactly what she meant, stayed quiet.
“You know—the thing in that alley where those delinquents got stuck into the wall and the floor like some kind of magic—”
As the story of what I had done just a few days earlier started pouring out of Do Ji-yeon’s mouth, Ha-yan also began shooting me sideways looks and clamped her lips shut.
There had been a brief little commotion, but today Do Ji-yeon was walking home with us. Midterms were approaching and she seemed to have all sorts of worries, so she had suggested we hang out. We had nothing else scheduled, so we cheerfully accepted.
“So what are we doing?”
“What else?! Eating! Eating is the only thing that stays with you, you know?”
“Ugh… that pattern again…”
I just shook my head at Do Ji-yeon’s words. I was a human—and a dragon—who had spent roughly eighteen years in this country called South Korea, same as the two of them, but I still could not understand the foods that were trendy these days. And high-school girls our age who ate those things almost every single day were even more incomprehensible.
How could a person eat malatang and tanghulu day after day without getting sick of them?
Ha-yan usually walked to and from school with me, so her frequency was a little lower—but whenever we walked home with another girl friend, one of the two absolutely had to put something into her stomach before the commute was allowed to end. And this had been going on for over a year.
My face was rotting as I watched Ha-yan and Do Ji-yeon come out of the building in front of the school, each holding sweet tanghulu in both hands, looking utterly satisfied.
Fine. Malatang I could maybe accept. You could choose the milky broth, the spice level, the ingredients—so each bowl was a little different. If you counted the wide range of ingredients as making them separate dishes, then sure.
“But doesn’t it get boring? Doesn’t your stomach turn? You’re basically chewing pure sugar.”
“Siu, you only turn into some middle-aged uncle when tanghulu’s involved. Even my dad doesn’t talk to me like that.”
“I don’t think that’s the issue. Tanghulu is pretty much only eaten by girls. And you’re obsessed with it.”
“Guys eat it too if they like it.”
“The frequency is different. Frequency. Even Choi Hoon, who’s close with me, eats one maybe once a week at most. You eat tanghulu every single day of the week!”
“Why are you getting so worked up? Why? Because it’s delicious, that’s why!”
Do Ji-yeon declared this with complete confidence and popped a shine muscat tanghulu into her mouth. Ha-yan crunched away at an orange one and offered,
“Want one, Siu? This one’s not as sweet as you’d think!”
“…You’ve both completely lost your sense of taste…”
I let out a long sigh and just watched the two girls happily chewing on lumps of sugar.
After both of them polished off their tanghulu with gusto, they set off somewhere else. I checked the direction they were cheerfully heading and let out what felt like my hundredth sigh of the day before asking Ha-yan,
“Photos again?”
Malatang. Tanghulu. Four-cut photo booths.
I was seriously going to die of boredom. Ever since around last summer we had been running the exact same course for six months already, and I was ready to lose my mind. Ha-yan knew perfectly well how I felt about those three “date” activities, so on days when it was just the two of us they never appeared—but today was the exception. Because Do Ji-yeon, who was even more unhinged about those three things than Ha-yan, was with us.
Having demolished the malatang and tanghulu at light speed, Do Ji-yeon looked like the long-awaited sugar-and-mala refill had made her eyes spin. I briefly considered using a little magic to calm her down, but decided to leave her alone. Ha-yan seemed to be enjoying herself in her own way, after all.
I followed the two of them around, throwing in agreeing remarks and playing along so they could have a good time. There was a separate reason I wasn’t saying much, though.
While Do Ji-yeon stepped into the restroom for a moment, Ha-yan cast a spell and linked telepathy to me.
There’s something, isn’t there? Right?
Why are you so sharp about things like this?
Normally you’d already be yelling at Ji-yeon to hurry up and go home. But today you just stayed quiet. And the way your mana’s moving is weird.
…True, but you don’t need to worry about it. It’s not that big a problem.
Really?
Have you ever seen me lie to you?
We ended the short telepathic exchange just as Do Ji-yeon came out of the restroom, once again bursting with energy.
“Next is karaokeeeee~~!! Coin karaoke, go go go!!”
“Let’s just go. Trying to stop her is going to drain the life out of me.”
“Mm. Okay.”
First things first: calm Do Ji-yeon down, and then we could deal with the rest.