The Dragon and the Strange Woman
Schoolwork. Daily life. Magic practice with Ha-yan.
And one more piece of my perfectly ordinary routine.
Ssssk. Tak. Sssk. Tak.
"All of these documents are the company work that piled up while Master was snuggling and canoodling with Miss Ha-yan on Jeju Island."
"...Did you even do any work?"
"Are you being serious right now?"
"Come on, you know what I mean. Even if I was gone for a week, I handed you a ridiculous amount of authority before I left. And you're telling me this much work piled up in just seven days? That doesn't even make physical sense!"
"Physical or not, once you look through it you'll know perfectly well whether I was lying about working or not, won't you? Instead of saying things like that, how about you just get started."
"Tch... Haa..."
I stared at the mountains of paperwork stacked on either side of me, heaved a deep sigh, and got to work.
School was school, Ha-yan's magic was magic, and my company work was company work—all of it running in parallel.
The first two I could handle on my own terms, and a little magic was enough to solve most of them. The last one, though, was a different story. The number of situations where magic was even useful was far smaller than for the other two.
That was still true now.
Magic couldn't do everything. If it could, wizards wouldn't be researching spells in their own world while still using smartphones and running magic off computer systems. Magic had its massive advantages, and science had its own—each in its own domain.
"Then why am I stuck doing paperwork by hand? I've got a computer right next to me, and a brand-new tablet PC too."
"That's just how company work is. Even if everything can be stored as data, the government watching and breathing down our necks still wants it kept on paper. Ah—of course, if Master is willing to trail after the civil servants every time they come for an inspection and keep blinding them with illusion magic the entire time, you're more than welcome to do it that way. Though I can't guarantee their visits won't overlap with the hours you spend playing with Miss Ha-yan."
"Haa... Fine. I'll do it because it's dirty and petty and I hate it. I'll review and I'll sign!"
I already knew, deep down. I'd been running this company for nearly ten years—there was no way I wouldn't understand.
In this country called the Republic of Korea, civil servants were the most ironic existence of all: necessary, and yet you wished they would just disappear.
Grumbling the whole way, I worked through the documents one by one with Rhea's assistance—until a report on the incident we'd talked about earlier caught my eye.
"This one's been handled?"
"That's why I brought you the report. It wasn't that big a deal to begin with, anyway."
"He tried to pull that stunt with company money and you're calling it not a big deal?"
I'd put the man in an executive seat because he was supposed to be a seasoned veteran in this investment sector—and then he tried to stick his hands in the company accounts. Rhea had said she'd take care of it herself, so I'd left it alone.
Remembering that, I flipped through the report page by page, reading carefully.
And the conclusion was—
"It was all bait? Stuff you planted?"
"Heh. The idea that a man of that caliber could even approach our company's central account—which is under full magical protection—was absurd from the start, wasn't it?"
"Even so. Not just any account—the central account? I thought it was just some side account for dabbling in coins."
"Well, even the account you just mentioned moves hundreds of millions a day. But compared to the company's central account, that's a tiny sum."
I signed the papers and handed them back. Rhea gave me a brief rundown of everything that had happened.
"We cast the line. That man, who had zero loyalty to the company and cared only about building his own slush fund, swallowed the bait whole. Beyond that, there's nothing else you particularly need to know."
"And the result?"
"Prison, of course. We made sure he got a solid ten years or more."
"And you paid the legal team a generous bonus?"
"I spread enough around that they told me, 'You can work us like dogs if you want!' So don't worry."
Rhea might grumble at me constantly, but when it came to things like this, she was rock-solid.
With that settled, I kept grinding through the rest of the documents.
I'd come straight to the office after breakfast on Saturday morning, and by around lunchtime I'd managed to clear about half of the backlog.
Just before heading out for lunch, I picked up one more sheet with the lighthearted thought of wrapping up a single easy item—
and the moment I saw it, my mood went ice-cold.
My neck creaked like a rusty hinge as I turned toward Rhea, who still stood beside me with that cool expression of hers.
"And why is she here?"
"Why do you think? Look at the document and you'll understand. It says 'investment,' but you know better than anyone what that really means, Master."
"You're not serious."
"Of course not. Even without looking, it's obvious, isn't it? She's coming to bribe you into helping with her magic training."
"Haa... Can't they just leave me alone? I finally deal with the stiff-necked ones, and now this..."
I clutched my throbbing head and muttered at the title on the report in my hand.
If you'd heard the work Rhea and I had been handling and the conversations we traded, you would have figured it out already—
our company was essentially an investment firm built up from my own capital. A classic money-in, money-out operation.
We even had the word "Investment" right there in the company name.
That said, we weren't listed on the stock exchange, we didn't take outside investment, and we didn't manage other people's money at all. We'd run the company entirely on my capital from the beginning, and we still did. The only real exception was that I—more precisely, our company—also managed the assets of Ha-yan's parents' household.
On top of that, since we weren't publicly listed and no one besides me and Ha-yan's family held any of our unlisted shares, there was no need for me to go around disclosing company information to anyone.
But living in South Korea and completely hiding a company's true nature was close to impossible. Word traveled fast, and anyone with even a mild interest in investment already knew the scale of our firm.
An unlisted company that still ranked among the top ten in the country by size—if you understood that South Korea inevitably ran on school ties, regional connections, and blood relations, you'd have a pretty good idea why I bothered seating incompetent people in executive chairs.
And the sheer size of our capital and our profitability were more than enough to draw hungry eyes from other countries as well.
Back when the company was still relatively small, one of the giant financial houses on Wall Street had even inquired about buying us out.
Naturally, those rumors had filtered into the wizards' world too. Which meant that in that world, they already knew the owner of this company was me—the one who sat at the very highest seat among them.
And the first country to react had been the one geographically closest: Japan.
"This way, please."
"It's been a while, Rhea."
"Yes. It has. It's been a while."
"And... our Cha Siu? I suppose that's what I should call you here."
"Call me whatever you want. You'll do as you please no matter what I say. Oh—and if it's just the two of us, Ha-yan is going to be a hundred percent pissed off. I already sent her a mana voice message, so consider yourself warned."
"Heh. Of course."
Unlike South Korea, where the only wizards were Ha-yan and her mother, Japan's wizard society was large enough to have its own government ministry for mages.
One look at the structure and you immediately thought of a certain kind of department from a certain kind of novel.
Even I'd wondered, the first time I saw it, Did that author maybe...?
Once Japan learned that the owner of this rapidly growing investment firm was me, contact started pouring in almost immediately.
On the surface, it was about requesting investment of company capital. But I could tell.
That girl—with her soft light-brown hair and, sorry Ha-yan, a figure far more voluptuous than Ha-yan's—
I could feel the mana rolling off her body.
"Still, every time I come here I can't help feeling envious. Our family's company may be large by 'ordinary' standards, but we don't own a building this massive right in the middle of Tokyo. As expected, Siu-nim seems extraordinarily capable in areas that have nothing to do with magic as well."
"Yeah. Capable. Sure. If I didn't have to use that kind of capability, I really wish you wouldn't have come looking for me at all."
"Ohohoho. How cold of you to say such a thing."
Bright brown hair—the complete opposite of Ha-yan's—swaying as she laughed her "ohoho" at my words.
Only one year older than Ha-yan; in Korean age, a high-school senior.
Daughter of a high-ranking official family that held a seat in Japan's vast magical society, and also the daughter of a fairly large Japanese hotel franchise.
Her name was... uh... what was it again?
"As I told you last time, my name is Takanashi Misa."
"Right. Takanashi."
"Heh. Siu-nim is more than welcome to call me Misa, you know?"
"Ah, yeah. It's not like I'm completely ignorant of Japanese culture."
In Japan, you used family names unless you were close. That was the idea, right?
I sat in the office sipping coffee, deliberately avoiding Takanashi's gaze—when a massive, far more violent surge of mana than usual flared from the direction of my room.
It had only been about ten minutes since I sent the message. Her mother must have gotten word too. There was no way she could have washed up that fast, so she must have taken a magical shortcut.
And then—
Thudthudthudthudthudthud. BOOM!!
The sound of someone sprinting full tilt, and—
"Hwaek!!... Haek!... S-Siu!!! Y-you're okay, right? Nothing happened?"
"You're here. That was fast."
"Hweeeh... I-I'm dying..."
Ha-yan burst through the office door in an elegant black dress that matched her dark hair perfectly—like a piece of the night sky—staggered over on unsteady legs, latched onto my arm, and collapsed onto the sofa beside me.
Then, wearing the blank, flat expression she almost never showed me—the one reserved for strangers and people she disliked—she fixed her eyes on Takanashi.
"Why did you barge in all of a sudden?! Making people run themselves ragged! Can't you see Siu is busy with work right now?"
"Ohohoho. I believe I'm a year older than you, Miss Ha-yan. Whatever happened to your honorifics?"
"You're a foreigner anyway—what honorifics? Be grateful I'm not throwing you out. This building is under my name, you know?"
"Ufufufu. Understood. I'll be careful... 'for now.'"
"Haa... This is exactly why..."
This was exactly why I couldn't stand Takanashi Misa.
Not only was the way she looked at me anything but innocent—every time this woman set foot in Korea, Ha-yan's mood took a serious nosedive.
And now I had to figure out how to cheer her up again.