Dragon and Meat
When you really thought about it, tonight was our first proper meal on Jeju Island.
Breakfast had been at Ha-yan's house, and lunch had been a solid hotel buffet, so this evening was the first time we were actually eating Jeju food.
And the menu we settled on for our very first dinner of the trip was, of course—
"Jeju black pork!! Whoa! Expensive! Insane! Sixty thousand won for six hundred grams… so that's like twenty thousand per person?"
"Guess the name really carries weight—even eating it on Jeju itself doesn't make it cheap. The per-person price is crazy."
"We came all the way out here. Don't we have to eat at least this much? Choi Hoon. You love meat too, right?"
"Obviously. I'm obsessed. I can't even get enough of it. And this isn't just any meat! This is Jeju black pork—black pork!!"
I'd heard that when high school students came to Jeju on a school trip, there was a usual stop they all made. I'd had Rhea look into it once, and it turned out to be some place that couldn't decide if it was a restaurant or a cafeteria, serving meat you couldn't even tell was real black pork, regular Korean pork, or imported foreign pork, all of it stir-fried into jeyuk bokkeum.
I had zero interest in eating that, and even less interest in feeding mystery meat to Ha-yan and the rest of my friends.
Which was why, for the first meal of our Jeju school trip, I'd insisted—hard—on booking a place that was genuinely famous even on the island itself, priced high, and rated so well the stars practically punched through the ceiling.
I hadn't expected an uninvited guest to tag along, but I'd already reserved a seat for a driver anyway, so it wasn't a big problem.
The place was enormous—at least thirty tables, easy—and at every single one, a staff member personally grilled the meat for you.
We sat at our reserved table, waited a bit, and before long it was our turn. Thick cuts of meat, gleaming with a gorgeous sheen, arrived right in front of us.
The staff member who brought it over took one look at us and, with a distinctly flustered expression, asked the first question that came to mind.
"Um, excuse me—are you sure you didn't order by mistake? You're going to eat all of this? With five people?"
Even faced with that stunned look, I answered with perfect calm.
"Is there a problem?"
My composure only made the employee more flustered as they glanced down at the mountain of meat piled on the tray they were holding.
"N-no, not a problem, exactly—but the manager told me I had to ask. We've had people from TV stations come in before, four of them eating twenty or even thirty portions… but five people… sixty portions feels like a bit much."
That was right.
When I'd made the reservation, I'd already locked in the entire menu and placed the order.
Who had? Me. Alone.
"S-sixty portions?"
Do Ji-yeon was the first to freak out.
She'd figured I'd handle the ordering myself, but she clearly hadn't imagined that much food. Her eyes went huge as she stared at me.
"Hey. Is your stomach made of steel or what? Have you ever actually eaten this much… before?"
Choi Hoon was looking at me like I'd completely lost my mind.
And Ha-yan—
"Here we go again… it's happening again…"
—just let out a long, weary sigh and shook her head, as if this was simply the appointed hour.
Leaving the bowed-head Ha-yan for later, I turned to Do Ji-yeon and Choi Hoon, both of them still staring at me with wide eyes.
"People can eat a little more sometimes. We came all the way here—why are you looking at me like that? Don't you want any?"
"No, it's not that. It's just… even when school served the absolute best cafeteria food, you never ate this much."
"Right? I mean, you already eat a lot for a guy, but this much? Were you just pretending at school? You used to eat about the same as Choi Hoon."
"Now you get it? Don't worry, staff. I ordered knowing exactly how much I can handle—just make sure the meat never runs out."
"Well… alright, then. We've already taken the money, so."
The part-timer had looked flustered at first, but once the customer who'd placed the order said it was fine, they didn't seem to care much anymore.
And so, for starters, ten portions of black pork belly arrived.
The moment the meat hit the table, Choi Hoon and Do Ji-yeon—who'd been so worried about me a second ago—dropped every scrap of interest in my existence and locked their eyes on the pork.
"Whoa. Holy crap. Look at that thickness and color. Last time we ate frozen pork belly near school, remember? Comparing that to this would be an insult, wouldn't it?"
"Plus that frozen stuff was imported. Though knowing your taste buds, Ji-yeon, meat is meat and you wouldn't care either way."
"You little— Are you seriously gonna keep saying stuff that makes sense when there's food right in front of us?"
Just as the two of them looked ready to start bickering—
Sssssssssssssssssssssss~~!!!
"…Whoa."
"…Gulp."
Click-click-click-click.
"Ohh. Now that's something."
Whatever fight they'd been about to have vanished. Meat, smoke, and popping oil seized every last bit of attention at the table—and our dinner began.
I did eat a bit more than most people on a normal day.
Let me say it one more time: I was not human. Strictly speaking, my true body was a dragon large enough to fill most of the vast underground space beneath the company.
Right now I was transformed into a human, so the physical laws of this form had scaled my appetite down accordingly—but every so often, the urge for a real binge still hit hard.
Ha-yan already knew that, which was why she'd never said a word about how much I ate.
There'd been a time before… when was it? Around the period when my mana capacity had suddenly surged, if I remembered right.
Back then, as the mana grew, the hunger had multiplied right along with it, and I'd spent nearly an entire day doing nothing but eating. Once I'd filled the hunger and finished digesting, my mana had increased by exactly that much.
But this wasn't that kind of period.
So why was I like this all of a sudden?
Honestly, I didn't know either. When we'd first arrived on Jeju, I hadn't felt anything special—but the longer we stayed, the more power seemed to keep welling up inside me.
Was it because of that mana stone Rhea had brought along separately? I wondered, but I'd been away from the stone for far too long for that to make sense. And if that had been the cause, I would have felt something different back when I'd been researching near it and working in the company building.
It felt exactly like those old days when my mana was growing—and the hunger had come with it.
Maybe there was some other direction of dragon evolution I didn't know about yet.
Anyway.
Starting with those first ten portions of pork belly, it went: ten of neck, ten of the specialty cut assortment, ten of jowl, ten of five-layer belly. And finally, another ten of pork belly, plus cold noodles and soybean paste stew sets for everyone.
Barely a word spoken—just nonstop inhaling of everything the staff grilled for us.
Choi Hoon, Do Ji-yeon, and Ha-yan had already tapped out around the time we started on the neck meat. They only picked up their spoons again once the cold noodles and stew arrived.
After neatly arranging the last of the grilled five-layer belly in front of us, the staff member peeled off their gloves, wiped the sweat streaming down their forehead, and spoke.
"Whew! You people are incredible. You actually finished all of it. And one person ate almost the entire thing."
The staff member wasn't exactly in normal condition either.
After grilling nearly sixty portions of meat without a single break, their gloves had gone pitch black, and their face was flushed red from the heat of the grill.
Then, from behind them, a solidly built man appeared and walked over to me—just as I was popping the last bite of meat and the final chopsticks of cold noodles into my mouth.
One look and you knew: this was the owner of the place.
The owner left us with a warm, good-natured smile.
"Heh heh. In all the years since I opened this restaurant, I've never met anyone like you."
"Mmph-mmph. First time? What about the YouTubers?"
"We've had them, sure—but those were people we asked to come promote us. This is the first time an ordinary customer has walked in and eaten this much. If it's not too much trouble, would you mind taking a commemorative photo with us after your meal?"
"No reason not to. What about the rest of you?"
"A photo? Yeah, that's fine."
"Damn it. I left my sunglasses behind. And my hair's a mess from all the grease."
"Ji-yeon! Here's a hat! Let's both wear hats and take it together!"
"Ooooh. That's our Ha-yan. Always prepared!"
Do Ji-yeon snatched the hat Ha-yan held out, jammed it on, and squeezed in between us.
I invited the staff member who'd spent nearly an hour diligently grilling our meat to join the photo too, and they accepted gladly.
We handed a DSLR to another employee, struck our poses, and shouted together—
"Kimchi~~!!"
And just like that, the first full, thoroughly stuffed day of our Jeju trip came to a close.
"Uuuuggghhh… man. I'm stuffed."
"After eating that much, if you weren't full, that would be its own kind of problem, wouldn't it?"
"It's all magic anyway, so what's the big deal? Physically speaking, it was completely impossible. If that much food had actually gone into this body, my stomach might've exploded."
"Well, that's true enough."
Having closed out our first day on Jeju with a lavish dinner, we rode back to the hotel quickly in Rhea's car.
Even with free time, there was still a curfew we had to make—and a headcount check for every room.
But none of that meant a thing to me.
I left the clone that would pass the attendance check in the room and followed Rhea up to the hotel rooftop.
A bit of a chill was still in the wind, so I wrapped a light layer of magic around myself.
Then I turned to Rhea, who stood demurely beside me in full secretary mode, and asked,
"Find anything useful at the oreum? And thanks for hauling that mana stone all the way here without telling me. Must've been a pain."
"So you knew after all, Master?"
I shrugged at her words.
"I didn't notice when we first met. But no matter how tightly you wrapped it up in that bag, there's no way I wouldn't feel it. It wasn't my mana, it wasn't Ha-yan's, and it wasn't Ha-yan's mother's either."
"I overlooked that point. With no point of comparison, I keep forgetting that Master is a dragon."
Rhea smiled brightly and handed me the tablet I was so used to seeing at the company.
"As before, I referenced novels related to dragons that exist on Earth. Once again, I found myself strongly feeling that these novels may not be mere fiction."
"That significant? You got this much of a mana reaction just from getting close to the magma?"
"Yes. Which only deepens my suspicion. I can't help but wonder where on Earth one could even obtain a mana stone like this."
"Seriously. I ran mana detectors for over ten years and got nothing. Now that something finally shows up, it refuses to give us any more answers."
I sighed and handed the tablet back to Rhea, then gave her the next order.
"Put it on hold for now. If we keep obsessing over this, the school trip's going to turn into a mess."
"Understood. A school trip with Miss Ha-yan is far more important than a mana stone of this level. I'll take my leave first. Please rest."
With that, Rhea vanished from my side.
After she was gone, I let out a long breath, looked up at the sky, and muttered to myself.
"Fiction… or faction…"