Dragon and Wrath
When it came to food, Do Ji-yeon was right—there was plenty of it on the mainland, too.
Jeju Island chocolate, meat noodle soup, seafood hot pots… heck, even the breakfast at the five-star hotel we were staying at could be found a hundred percent of the time if we just dug around near our homes.
But the natural scenery of Jeju that we had been racing around to see as hard as we could?
Well, for me and Ha-yan it would have been enough to just teleport around on the weekends while dodging other people’s eyes. Do Ji-yeon and Choi Hoon, though, didn’t have that luxury.
So while the other groups were out filming food tours and café crawls with the corporate card, we had decided to hit as many of Jeju’s classic tourist spots as we could.
Not that we skipped the food segments entirely, or refused to swipe the card in between. No real problem there.
I had already checked that Choi Hoon and Do Ji-yeon didn’t mind that part, either. Choi Hoon had never been the sightseeing type to begin with, and Do Ji-yeon was happy as long as something sweet was involved.
If they ever did start looking dissatisfied, I could just buy them a mountain of delicious food later. I had kept the fact that I was loaded hidden until now, but I had no intention of hiding it forever. Taking them to a Shilla Hotel buffet sometime wouldn’t be out of the question, right?
Anyway, that was why the biggest item on our last day of the school trip was set as cave exploration.
The two caves we planned to visit today were both located inside a fairly large park.
After getting out of the car at the park lot, we each stretched the stiffness out of our bodies for a moment, then gathered in one spot.
As the group leader, I naturally spoke first.
“Alright. It’s called a cave, but you know there’s nothing that special, right? Let’s just take a look around. Morning we’ll hit the caves and wander the park a bit, and in the afternoon… well, I deliberately left the afternoon schedule a little open, so think about it.”
“I heard there’s more to see in this park than just the caves! Let’s check the caves real quick and then roam the park too!”
“J-Ji-yeon! Wait up! Don’t go charging off alone again!”
“…Can’t I just stay in the car?”
“If you’re thinking of hanging out alone with the driver, dream on, buddy. If you don’t want Do Ji-yeon to murder you, start moving those feet.”
“Tch.”
The moment we climbed out of the car, Rhea pulled out the ultra-premium tablet she had been carrying, mounted it on the hood with perfect natural ease, and settled into the ideal resting posture.
Choi Hoon tried to pull some nonsense while gauging my reaction, but there was no way I was letting that slide.
Ha-yan hurried to catch Do Ji-yeon, who was already forging ahead again, while I grabbed the back of Choi Hoon’s collar—the one still angling for shenanigans—and started walking along the path marked “To the Caves.”
After a short walk we could see that other park visitors were heading the same direction.
Chatting among ourselves, we walked for a few more minutes until we finally reached the cave entrance.
It wasn’t an especially hot day, but the bright sun still made the perceived temperature pretty high. The closer we got to the cave, though, the more an incredibly cool breeze began to wash over us.
Knowing this would happen, I rummaged through the bag I had packed separately and started pulling things out.
“Ugh, it’s chillier than I expected. Siu, what’d you bring all that for?”
Ha-yan rubbed her slightly goosebumped arms and stepped closer to ask.
I casually took out a thin fleece and told her,
“Turn around.”
“Huh?”
“Just turn around already.”
“U-uh?”
Following my words, Ha-yan turned her back. I took her arms and slipped the black fleece onto her.
She had still been wearing a question mark when she turned, but the soft feel of the fleece against her arms made her smile as she said,
“When did you even get these ready? You brought ones for the others too.”
“Figured this would happen. And when I looked it up, a surprising number of people catch colds the day after going into caves.”
“Hehe. Best boyfriend ever!”
“Heh. Hey! Do Ji-yeon! Choi Hoon! Come grab yours too. Don’t catch a cold and spend tomorrow all sniffly.”
I called out loudly to Do Ji-yeon and Choi Hoon, who had already started bickering again at the cave mouth.
The two of them came over, each taking a fleece, then looked at me with deadpan faces.
“You totally just prepped one for your girlfriend and then grabbed extras so we wouldn’t give you the stink eye, right?”
“Still, what can we even say? We should just be grateful Lee Ha-yan is stuck to this guy’s side.”
“Hey, hey. Give ’em back. You little bastards. If you’re gonna talk like that, just hand them over.”
“Whoa whoa whoa!! Don’t you know giving something and then taking it back is the greediest move of all?! Ha-yan! Tell him I’m right!”
“You cheapskate! Now I’m wearing this out of pure spite!”
The second I made a move to snatch the clothes back, the two of them fell into perfect sync as if they had never been fighting and bolted straight into the cave.
Ha-yan watched them go, let out a soft snort of laughter, then linked her arm through mine and said,
“Don’t take it too hard. They’re good friends, aren’t they?”
“Good. Yeah. Real good friend ‘bastards.’”
I slung the now-empty bag over my shoulder, tightly took Ha-yan’s hand, and stepped into the cave.
“Something feels off.”
“Hm? What kind of feeling? You’re not just cold, are you?”
“If this level of cold made a dragon feel cold, I might as well hang up the scales. It’s not that—it’s something else.”
A strange sensation had started to build.
Up until we entered the cave mouth, I hadn’t been thinking anything different from the others.
The cool wind blowing out from deeper inside had simply felt pleasant, that was all.
But the farther in we went…
the higher the ratio of cave air became compared to the outside air…
“My mana… is increasing?”
“Huh? All of a sudden?”
Do Ji-yeon and Choi Hoon were already way ahead of us, and there weren’t many people around, so I quietly told Ha-yan what I was feeling.
Her eyes went wide. She pressed her palm flat against my chest and began to sense my mana.
For reference, if you ever try this pose on a mage who doesn’t know you that well, you’ll get slapped on the spot. Think of it as more intimate skinship than a kiss.
But between the two of us, what did that matter?
I simply felt the warm mana flowing from Ha-yan into my body and asked,
“Well? It definitely went up, right?”
“Y-yeah? Your mana reserves are so huge that you usually don’t even notice unless the increase is massive…”
“Which makes this even weirder.”
“You’re not feeling weird anywhere else, right? No horns or tail or wings suddenly popping out?”
Looking worried, Ha-yan checked every corner of my body as she spoke.
I hadn’t felt a thing, but watching her fuss like that, a slightly wicked prank idea popped into my head.
“Uuuuugh… hang on. Is there somewhere I can sit?”
I furrowed my brows as naturally as I could and started looking for a resting spot. The unexpected change in my expression sent Ha-yan into a full-blown panic.
“A place to sit? Does something hurt? Is that it? A resting spot? Aaaaah… th-there! Just a little farther that way—there’s a bench, a bench!”
Exactly as expected.
Uh. Wait a second, though.
“Are you okay? Does it hurt? Is your mana running wild and making your body ache? M-maybe because most of this cave is solidified lava? What kind of relationship do lava and mana even have? Does it hurt? Shouldn’t we get out of here right now?”
“Uh… H-Ha-yan? Hold on…”
Her reaction was far more intense than I had bargained for.
She forcibly grabbed my wrist, dragged me at high speed to the bench, sat me down, and started pouring completely ineffective healing magic into me nonstop.
“Uuugh… d-does it hurt? Are you okay? Now? You were clutching your chest—don’t tell me something’s wrong with your dragon heart? Right? And…”
“Hey hey hey hey. Hang on. Ha-yan? Let’s both calm down for a second.”
“H-how am I supposed to calm down?! Y-you said you’re in pain! This has happened before! Last time you started talking about mana and then just collapsed!”
“Ah…”
Damn it. I remembered that crystal clear.
The memory was still vivid for me. I had simply assumed that almost none of it remained for Ha-yan.
It had been before we even started elementary school, after all.
I hurriedly took her wrists and said firmly,
“Ha-yan! Calm down!!”
“U-uuuh???”
It had been a while since I raised my voice at her; the cave’s acoustics made the sound boom and echo hard.
Do Ji-yeon and Choi Hoon, already deep inside, probably hadn’t heard, but I could feel Rhea turning back toward us after catching the noise.
I let out a long sigh at Ha-yan, who was staring at me with wide, startled eyes, and confessed everything.
“I’m fine. I was just messing with you, so please calm down.”
“…”
“Nothing hurts. My mana just went up and I was feeling good, so I pulled a little prank. Please just calm—”
“A prank? Aha. So it was a prank. Ehehe. That was a prank, was it, my Siu?”
“…Huh?”
In that instant a chill raced down the back of my neck.
My instincts were screaming at me.
Ha-yan was currently extremely pissed off.
I started inching backward, looking for an escape angle, but Ha-yan—who had already figured everything out and was now filled with pure rage—gave me zero opening.
She slowly reached toward me, one hand locking around my wrist while the other boldly slipped under my shirt and pressed against my chest, then poured a considerable amount of her own mana straight into my body.
For the record: when two people’s mana coexist inside one body and the receiving side forcibly rejects it, both sides end up in a pretty serious situation called mana rampage.
Forcibly knocking her hand away would produce the same result. In other words, Ha-yan had just put a self-destruct device on me.
As a dragon I would be fine, but Ha-yan would take a heavy hit. That was exactly why people who weren’t extremely close never shared mana like this.
And yet right now Ha-yan was deliberately shoving her mana into me like this?
It was a threat that wasn’t quite a threat: if I ran away—physically or magically—she would take the full backlash herself.
Looking up at me with glacial eyes, she delivered a single line.
“Our Siu needs to be punished, doesn’t he?”
All I could manage in reply was:
“Yes, ma’am… I will listen with the utmost care…”
And in the middle of that, Rhea arrived nearby, instantly sized up the entire situation, and said,
“Oh dear… our foolish Master…”
She insulted me right to my face, or so the report goes.