Dragon and Karma
Something. I had found something strange, but for the next two days there was no way I could dig into it further.
Ha-yan was already burying herself in exam prep; the last thing I wanted was to pile more stress on her. So I sat still, behaved myself, and took the tests like a model student.
Besides, this wasn’t even my job to begin with.
I had subordinates overflowing under me. Why would I handle it personally?
Time flowed on until the final day of exams.
“Exams are overrrr!!! Hey! Lee Ha-yan! Cha Siu!! Hurry up and let’s go restock our sugar at the tanghulu shop in front of school… Hey hey hey!! Where are you goingggg!!! You have to hang out with me!!!”
The moment the last test ended right before fourth-period lunch, I shook off Do Ji-yeon—who had come to kidnap us—at lightning speed, laced my fingers tightly with Ha-yan’s, and teleported us straight home.
And that brought us to now.
“What exactly is this? It feels unpleasant.”
“That energy. It’s coming from there. The mana detection last time was probably because of this too.”
“There were mana stones on Earth? I’ve seen plenty of the artificial ones Master created, but…”
“The ones currently keeping your body running are artificial mana stones, yeah.”
“Ugh. But the mana coming off this one… how do I put it? The feeling is a little…”
“Filthy, right? Yeah. I’m getting the same read.”
We had left a tiny mana stone the size of a thumbnail in the middle of the table. Ha-yan, Rhea, and I sat in a circle around the black stone, staring at it while tossing comments back and forth.
Ha-yan gave the stone a few light taps with her fingertip, then looked at me.
“What about Mom? Should we not tell her?”
“Your mother? I’m leaning toward ‘no need.’ We don’t have a single solid piece of information yet. No point making her worry for nothing.”
“True. If something weird had actually happened at school it might be different, but with Teacher Ho-jin around nothing went wrong.”
“Personally, I think it’s better to inform her now than hide it and get chewed out later, but…”
Rhea murmured her opinion from between us, yet neither of us had any intention of changing a decision already made.
And how long was I supposed to report every single detail to Mother and wait for her instructions, anyway?
Up until now I had discussed most things with her… but I was still a dragon in my own right, you know.
“In that case I’ll begin research immediately. First thing we need to determine is whether this is a natural mana stone or an artificial one.”
“Appreciate it. Give the research team solid support, and make sure nothing leaks.”
“That’s rather a lot of instructions, but I’ll handle it well.”
With that, Rhea vanished, black mana stone in hand.
For now, I would leave the matter entirely to her.
“Still, I can’t figure out why so many weird things have been happening lately.”
“Tch. Back in the day Siu caused trouble every single day and my mom suffered so much.”
“W-why is that story coming up now?”
I forced myself to hide the heat rising in my face as I asked.
Finding my flustered reaction amusing, Ha-yan flashed a bright smile, slipped right into my arms, and continued.
“Hehe. What’s the big deal? It’s all in the past. Thanks to Mom back then we can live ‘normally’ like this now, right? Without her, the place we live might still be nothing but empty wasteland, you know?”
“I-I get it. I get it, so please just stop bringing that up…”
I was practically begging her.
That particular incident was so mortifying I still wanted to cast memory-wipe magic on myself every time it resurfaced.
I hurriedly changed the subject.
“School midterms are over, but how’s prep for the magic exam going?”
“Ugh, ughhh. Even if you’re changing topics, why does it have to go there?”
“What do you mean ‘why’? Honestly, for us the magic exam matters way more than school midterms.”
“Tch. Then just let me use magic freely at school already…”
“Aren’t you free to use as much as you want right now?”
“Aigoo, seriously. If you couldn’t talk I wouldn’t even hate you~~!”
Unable to win the verbal spar, Ha-yan finally gave my cheek a light pinch and walked out of my room.
I rubbed the pinched spot and followed after her.
Naturally, our hands found each other again as we rode the elevator down to the basement of the building.
The moment we arrived, countless homunculi greeted us. Ha-yan answered every one of them with her usual kindness while we walked at a leisurely pace toward a certain destination.
We stopped in front of a door.
I let a trickle of my mana flow into it; the door shuddered faintly and slowly swung open.
And beyond it—
“Whew. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, it has. We couldn’t even practice magic while studying for midterms.”
“If we tried at home or nearby, Mom’s wrath would rain down on us.”
“We already have a track record, right? Last time we practiced fire magic in the space Mother made for us and nearly burned the entire neighborhood to the ground.”
We had reached a corner of the vast underground space beneath the building.
Once the door opened, the interior looked… well, something like a training center attached to a gym.
I wasn’t the only one leading a double life—ordinary student by day, CEO of a company only we knew about by night.
Ha-yan already knew I was a dragon, so she was hardly ordinary herself. On top of that, while she lived as a regular high-school student, she was also the only mage in South Korea capable of using magic besides her mother.
Dragon and mage.
In fantasy novels they usually slaughter each other, or one side unilaterally exploits and torments the other, or the dragon simply rules everything.
But… why bother? As long as I had money I could roll around all day with round, cute, pretty Ha-yan and live just fine.
And Ha-yan tormenting me?
Well… I couldn’t say it never happened, but the bond between us was anything but ordinary.
Ha-yan’s mother’s foresight really shone at times like these.
Without her guidance… I probably would have gone mad first and turned the whole world upside down.
Anyway.
I stepped inside, held out a short stick to Ha-yan, and said,
“I heard tools are allowed for this exam. Use this and you’ll breeze through with a perfect score.”
“What is it?”
“What else? A wand I made myself.”
“Whoa. Amazing. It makes mana control so easy.”
Ordinary human students had midterms. Young mages scattered across the world also had their own “exam”—once a year, a chance to show off the magic they had polished.
Oh, and for the record, I was already registered among them as a reclusive, mysterious mage who rarely used proper magic. Unless I deliberately dropped my polymorph, there was virtually no way for them to discover I was a dragon.
I had prepared various contingencies, and I had already appeared before them together with Ha-yan once, so it wasn’t a problem.
I had refined Ha-yan’s own mana into a mana stone and crafted a wand tailored perfectly to her, then handed it over.
She accepted it with eyes full of overwhelming gratitude, dashed over, and hugged me tightly.
“Thank you. Really, thank you. You made this from your scales too, didn’t you? It has that exact feel.”
“I changed the material a little, but yeah.”
“You always told Mom it hurt every time you pulled a scale.”
“That’s that, and this is this.”
A wave of embarrassment hit me; I turned my face away and mumbled.
I didn’t know how I looked in her eyes, but Ha-yan gently stroked my cheek and spoke once more.
“Always. Thank you. I love you.”
“…Enough of that. Let’s practice, practice!”
“Hehe. Look at you getting all shy!”
“Ahem!”
Whenever the atmosphere turned like this, I was always the first to pull away.
My hands and feet started tingling so badly I thought I’d go crazy. A corner of my heart was tingling too.
Fortunately(?), Ha-yan followed my lead and dove into serious magic practice.
For ordinary students, midterms came with endless workbooks and online lectures they could study alone. Magic exams were a completely different beast.
Reference books? There weren’t even textbooks.
Lectures? The only mages in Korea were Ha-yan and her mother.
Which meant…
I, who could cast magic with my eyes closed, was her one and only perfect top-tier instructor.
We each ducked into the changing rooms, switched into simple training gear, and came back out.
“What are you doing here? You took the mana stone. Don’t you have work?”
“Someone else is in charge of that. My rank isn’t so low that I need to handle every little thing myself, is it? Among the homunculi I sit at the very top. Of course, to Master we are all subordinates, but we have our own rules and hierarchy as well.”
“Is Rhea joining us too?”
I had no idea when she arrived, but Rhea was already waiting in the lounge, dressed in training clothes of the exact same design as ours.
She had answered me curtly, yet the moment Ha-yan asked, her voice turned polite and soft.
“Of course, Young Miss. I judged there might be points Master would find difficult alone, so I came down myself. I am rather proficient at magic as well. Fufu.”
Ugh. Look at that smug face. If she treated me like that even a little more often, how nice would that be?
“Please don’t say such absurd things. You work me to the bone every day and still think that? That’s pure greed.”
“…You can use telepathy too?”
“Master’s face simply leaks far too much information. Young Miss Ha-yan, shall we? Let’s slowly review what you learned last time together.”
I was genuinely speechless.
But Ha-yan seemed completely absorbed by the chance to practice with Rhea again after so long.
“Hehe. Great! Practicing while hanging out with Rhea after so long? That works for me!”
“Fufu. I’m grateful you feel that way. Then let us go.”
Without so much as a glance at my blank expression, the two of them slipped into the training hall together, leaving me alone in the lounge.
“…Is this karma?”
I couldn’t help but recall the past.