Dragon and Company
Ordinary high school life.
It's good. Too good, really.
The days spent cuddling and flirting with Ha-yan make me endlessly happy, and horsing around with Choi Hoon whenever he barges into our space to pick a fight is pretty fun too. On top of that, thanks to a dragon's innate drive to seek out knowledge, the classes themselves are endlessly interesting.
In novels, almost every 'dragon' is painted as self-righteous, self-absorbed, and obsessed with money… that part always seems to show up.
Well. I won't deny that part completely.
I love money a ridiculous amount myself.
Just look at the short hallway from our house to the elevator, every inch of it decked out in jewels, and you'll have your answer.
And then there's this company I'm running right now.
This very building, rising all the way to the top floor in the most expensive patch of land in South Korea.
The building wasn't even company property.
It was, quite literally, my personal property.
Taxes?
Hmm. Well. No matter how deranged South Korea's top-tier tax system gets, I'm not sure taxes of that scale could put so much as a dent in my fortune.
Anyway.
The biggest part of my life is still the 'ordinary' high school days I spend with Ha-yan.
But I'm a dragon, and Ha-yan is a wizard.
On top of that, both of us have that 'looks' factor going for us.
I was pretty satisfied with that part myself, but after elementary school ended and middle school properly began, I learned something important.
Outstanding looks
inevitably
raise the odds of weirdos inserting themselves into your life.
That part? Couldn't I just handle it with magic?
I wanted to from the bottom of my heart, but after Ha-yan's mother went through a 'major incident,' she told me something.
Wizards are vanishingly rare. The total number of people who can use magic in South Korea is exactly four.
Me and Ha-yan. Ha-yan's mother and father.
In a situation where only those few exist, trying to solve everything with magic alone is bound to create side effects.
So what was I supposed to do?
If I couldn't use magic, I was just an eighteen-year-old with absurd strength—a dragon wearing a human shape.
Naturally, I had to solve problems the way the 'ordinary people' who make up most of this place do.
And the simplest, most perfect way to solve those problems was
money.
"The investment situation… Hmm. Aside from the solid haul we made off the Luna incident, everything else is practically converging on zero."
If I simply use pure Polymorph magic to shift from dragon to human, I end up looking like a teenage boy around Ha-yan's age.
No extra tweaks needed—just the dragon-to-human conversion.
My appearance stopped changing somewhere in my twenties, but right now I don't have much choice.
Still, walking into society looking like a teenager to make money?
Even if magic can handle identity and everything else, you can't ignore the outward impression.
So whenever I'm dealing with money or company business, I wind the clock forward a bit and Polymorph into a mid-twenties version of myself.
Complete with a sharp, high-end designer suit, of course.
At first I tried investing looking like a kid with no plan at all, and that caused a few problems.
Well. Whatever happened in the middle is in the past now. Let's just leave it on the other side of the river.
I picked up the tablet in front of me and started reading the report on everything that had happened at the company.
The last time I personally attended a meeting was about three months ago.
This was the first meeting since I handed every executive a set percentage of capital and declared I would personally check their investment performance afterward.
For an ordinary human, reading a report at this speed would have been impossible.
But I'm a dragon, so…
After skimming it once, I tossed the tablet onto the desk and said flat-out to the people in front of me,
"Do you all want to die?"
"Ugh…"
For the record, a little magical pressure works wonders in meetings like this.
Crushed under my presence, the executives broke into cold sweat and could only stare at the table.
"Honestly, I'm speechless. I'm that flabbergasted. Excluding the money I personally ran, we're sitting at plus-minus zero? I feel like I handed over every scrap of information there was… And is this really the level of competence our company employees have? I scouted quite a few people from MIT, top foreign universities, elite graduate schools. Or did I not? Are we short-handed? Then you should have said so earlier. I can hire as many as you need."
"…"
The executives still said nothing, only kept their heads bowed low.
I was throwing a fit right now, but I already knew everything.
I knew exactly what these insane executives had been doing with the competent staff in the meantime.
Yeah. At least they hadn't gone into the red.
If they'd embezzled or botched investments badly enough to post actual losses? Those people would already have been erased from existence.
So why keep these idiots around at all? Why not just do it myself?
Hmm… Let's just call this a personal dragon quirk, shall we? Besides, it wasn't completely useless.
"One month. It's only been about a month, so maybe that's understandable. But even looking at several months of results, only a handful of you have shown any meaningful gains… Don't you think that's a problem?"
"Ahem…"
For the record, those 'handful who showed gains' were the young executives I had personally brought in and planted in those seats.
The so-called 'old fossils' had just been collecting paychecks without contributing a single thing to the company.
Why was I still sitting still even in a situation this absurd?
Let's wrap the meeting first.
"I'm sure all of you know better than anyone what the contracts between you executives and me say. Right? So I'm in no particular hurry. And since you're all so much older than me, I'm sure you'll handle things yourselves. Meeting adjourned. See you when the next results come in."
If I looked at their faces any longer I wouldn't be able to hold back my mana, so I left the conference room at speed with Rhea.
The moment we were out, I returned to my usual young student form, and Rhea spoke.
"Is there a reason you insist on keeping humans of that caliber in executive seats? For the sake of the company's future, it would be better to clean them out."
"Well. Even insects and bugs we find disgusting sometimes end up bringing benefits, don't they?"
"…In what way are those people benefiting the company?"
Rhea asked back as if she genuinely could not understand, but I didn't bother answering.
I had struggled quite a bit to understand it myself at first.
More precisely, it wasn't me who struggled—it was Ha-yan's mother.
Why not just sweep everything away with magic and make gold to become rich?
It's all because of Ha-yan's mother.
"Ugh. Someone must be talking about me a whole lot. Why are my ears itching so much?"
Lee Ha-yan's mother scratched her ear as she walked down the street with her daughter.
"Hmm? Do you think Siu is talking about you, Mom?"
"Who knows? We've dropped by the company out of the blue more than once or twice, but for what reason this time? If it were about you, maybe."
"Ehehe. W-well, yeah?"
"…They say raising a daughter only benefits the son-in-law. I never expected that moment to arrive this fast for me."
Watching her daughter's expression melt instantly at the offhand remark, her mother heaved a deep sigh and continued into the massive building with Lee Ha-yan.
Ordinary people would never have known, but the moment the two women with mana passed through the revolving doors, the mana detector registered them and immediately sent a signal to Rhea on the top floor.
Receiving the signal, Rhea stepped into her own room and spoke to Cha Siu, who was mid-dive onto the bed.
"Miss Lee Ha-yan and her mother have just passed through the revolving doors of the company building. The signal just came—"
CRASH!!!
The instant he heard that, Cha Siu—who had been falling toward the bed at 9.80665 m/s²—used magic to keep that exact velocity and smashed straight through his own door, flying out into the hallway.
Thud-thud-thud-thud…
Clunk… Creeeak…
Rhea looked at the door that had fallen limp and the assorted debris scattered around it, then let out a long sigh and muttered to herself.
"Honestly. Looking that happy now… what does he plan to do later…"
She knew full well that an uncrossable wall was said to exist between dragon and human, and so she only murmured alone.
Having demolished an entire room, Cha Siu immediately boarded the elevator. Considering the image he projected to the other employees at his company, he appeared in the first-floor lobby in the same young adult form he had used during the meeting earlier.
Ordinarily Cha Siu almost never showed himself in front of regular company staff, but visits from Lee Ha-yan were the exception.
That was why among the ordinary employees she was known as 'the White Saint'—or 'the Chairman above the Chairman.'
The age gap?
Lee Ha-yan was still just a high schooler while Cha Siu's social face was mid-twenties—wouldn't that get him socially destroyed?
Well.
On that particular point, even Lee Ha-yan's mother didn't place much weight on Cha Siu using magic.
She understood both her daughter's position and Cha Siu's very well.
And thanks to this 'resolve' of Cha Siu's, her daughter was able to enjoy a peaceful school life.
Cha Siu greeted the two of them warmly, then naturally stroked Lee Ha-yan's hair as he asked her mother,
"What brings you here? I was about to head out soon anyway."
"Hehe. My husband's not home today. When else am I going to get a night in that lovely house of yours? And I don't have to do any housework either—perfect."
"If that's the case, you could have just done as I suggested before and—"
"Don't even start. Things like this are only fun when they're occasional events. And we're not so poor that we need your help. I'm not so out of my mind that I'd take that kind of thing from my future son-in-law."
Leaving those words with Cha Siu, Lee Ha-yan's mother boarded the elevator with Rhea in perfectly natural strides.
Rhea was equally used to the two of them and immediately began attending to her.
The moment her mother vanished from sight, Lee Ha-yan wrapped her arms around the slightly taller Cha Siu's waist and said,
"Ehehe. I love this."
"You like it that much?"
"Of course! When we're here I don't have to worry about other people's eyes and I can just be with you like this!"
"What about the skinship at school, then? It's not that different there either."
"Ugh… If I say it's different, then it's different! Guys and girls think differently, okay?!"
At Cha Siu's dry remark, Lee Ha-yan whined and rubbed her face all over his waist like a spoiled child.
Cha Siu, face lit with a bright smile, guided her into the elevator.
And countless female employees who caught sight of their chairman's smiling face felt their hearts skip a beat and sighed, or so the story goes.