After that, we talked at length, as much as the longing that had piled up between us demanded.
But after quite a while of that.
"But Sia. Shouldn't we move somewhere else soon?"
"Why, oppa? There's nobody around."
"No, it's not that. Anywhere else would be fine, but this is a public cemetery. Staying here any longer is kind of......."
And not just any cemetery, either, but a rather creepy place where the body of the human Sia was buried.
At my words, Sia nodded.
"Now that you mention it, you're right. If you think about it, my own corpse is buried right next to us. Ugh."
Scrunching up her face, Sia grabbed my hand.
"Oppa, hold on tight."
With that one word from Sia, my vision went white for an instant, as if a flashbang had gone off in front of my eyes.
[Teleport.]
And a moment later.
"How's this, do you like it? Way better than before, right?"
The scenery had changed in the blink of an eye.
Just a moment ago I had definitely been in a public cemetery, but the place I was standing now was a small beach without a soul in sight.
"Sia, did you just...... use Teleport?"
"Yep! Remember how I once told you my dream was to go camping with you on a deserted island, just the two of us, for a whole day? It suddenly came back to me."
I did seem to remember Sia saying something like that once.
But that wasn't what had surprised me just now.
'She uses Teleport...... this easily?'
Teleport was by no means a simple spell that could be cast without any formula calculation or incantation.
Just how incredible my Sia is.
"Sia. So could you teleport like this even to the other side of the world, say, somewhere like Paraguay?"
"Of course! Why, do you want to go to Paraguay, oppa?"
Sia urged me to name any place at all, since she could take me anywhere.
"No, I was just wondering. But anywhere's good as long as we go together."
"Hehe."
After that sappy exchange between the two of us.
Sia had been about to say something to me when she seemed to remember something she'd forgotten, and she lightly smacked her own head, scolding herself.
"Ah, silly me. Oppa, wait here a sec."
-So she said, and in an instant Sia cast Teleport again.
"Ta-da!"
She reappeared in just a few seconds.
With the tteokbokki I had brought in one hand.
"You got this tteokbokki ready for me, oppa. I can't just leave it behind."
Perhaps thanks to the excitement of eating tteokbokki for the first time since her reincarnation, Sia was grinning from ear to ear.
But from where I stood, I wasn't sure she should be eating that.
Of course, I had bought that tteokbokki for Sia, so there was nothing wrong with Sia eating it...... but it was, essentially, a memorial offering.
If Sia herself wanted to eat it, I couldn't stop her, but from my point of view, I would rather have bought fresh tteokbokki.
But just then.
"Oppa, what's wrong?"
When I just stared at her without saying a word, Sia seemed to sense something off and asked in a trembling voice.
Not only her voice, but Sia's whole body was trembling.
Just like a puppy standing before its owner right after getting caught doing something wrong.
It looked like if I didn't say something right now, Sia would burst into tears on the spot.
Flustered, I quickly waved my hands.
"No, it's just...... I brought that tteokbokki as a memorial offering, so it feels a bit iffy. I was wondering if it'd be better to just buy new tteokbokki."
"No way!"
Even as she let out a sigh of relief at my answer, Sia firmly shook her head.
"You got that tteokbokki ready for me, oppa, so not eating it would be even iffier! And the drink too......."
The moment the word "drink" came up, Sia and I realized it at the same time.
That we had left only the rice wine behind back there.
"......I forgot."
"In the fantasy novels I used to read, I'm pretty sure the setting was that dragons never forget anything. Or maybe real dragons are different?"
Half joking and half serious, I teased Sia affectionately, just as I always used to.
But at my words, Sia's expression darkened abruptly.
Like someone who had committed a grave mistake.
"Why did I...... leave it behind?"
The old Sia would have easily laughed off a joke like this, and even tried to hit back at me.
But she grew restless over nothing more than a bottle of rice wine, and then, telling me to wait a moment, Sia vanished again.
And in just a few seconds, Sia reappeared holding the rice wine we had left behind.
With her eyes glazed, as if her mind had wandered off somewhere.
"The drink oppa brought for me...... right...... I can't leave it behind......."
Somehow, Sia didn't seem like herself.
Muttering quietly to herself, Sia was carefully stroking the bottle of rice wine.
"Sia?"
"I'm sorry, oppa. You got this ready for me, and I forgot about it...... I'm sorry......."
Anyone could see that Sia wasn't in a normal state.
How should I put it.
Maybe her mind had become unstable from spending 2 thousand years doing nothing but researching dimensional transfer magic, or maybe it was an aftereffect of using the dimensional transfer magic.
Sia looked terribly fragile.
If she had been like this ever since she came out of the Gate, I could have understood, but since Sia had seemed perfectly fine until just a moment ago, I couldn't help being flustered.
I hugged Sia tightly so she could calm down.
"It's okay, Sia. When has oppa ever gotten angry over something like that? You're back, Sia, so who cares about some drink."
"......."
"I was joking, joking. I was just so happy to have you back that I teased you a little, that's all."
When I soothed her with the gentlest words I could find, Sia gradually began to settle down.
"......Sorry, oppa. Did I scare you?"
"No, it's fine. As long as you're okay, Sia, that's all that matters."
When I gently stroked her back again, Sia seemed to calm down little by little; her expression softened, and soon she broke into a shy smile.
"Then, oppa, let's eat tteokbokki together now!"
Sia used magic to create a simple table and chairs, then set the tteokbokki and the rice wine on the table.
Sia finished tearing open the half-opened tteokbokki package, then broke apart the two pairs of wooden chopsticks that had come in the bag and handed one to me.
"Well then, thanks for the food!"
With a cheerful greeting, Sia dug into the tteokbokki in earnest.
"Wow, how long has it been since I had tteokbokki?"
She started making a big fuss from the very first bite, as though she were eating a feast of rare delicacies, and then began wolfing down the tteokbokki at a considerable pace.
Of course, she didn't forget to drink the rice wine in between, either.
Tteokbokki and alcohol, and memorial rice wine at that.
It was a bizarre pairing no one could ever imagine, but Sia didn't care in the least and enjoyed the rice wine and tteokbokki together.
"Oppa, when I was a hatchling, I once wanted tteokbokki so badly that I gathered the ingredients and tried making it myself, you know? But it didn't taste right, whether because my cooking skills weren't good enough or because the ingredients were different from Earth's."
Having polished off 1/3 of all the tteokbokki by herself in no time, Sia gulped down the rest of the rice wine like water.
"But when I thought about it, it wasn't either of those. The real reason was something else."
"Then what was the real reason?"
"I guess it was because I wasn't eating it with you, oppa."
Gazing into my eyes lovingly, Sia took a dainty bite of fish cake.
"The tteokbokki was tasty, but I loved the time I spent eating tteokbokki with you, oppa. I think that's why I liked tteokbokki even more."
At that moment, I felt as if something had struck me hard over the head.
Sia had loved eating tteokbokki with me that much, so why had I always grumbled that all we ever ate was tteokbokki?
Regret washed over me once again, and I felt sorry toward Sia.
"From now on, I'll buy you so much tteokbokki you'll get sick of it."
So what if she ate it until she was sick of it. I would get to see my Sia happy.
I had only said it because I felt sorry, but Sia seemed deeply touched by my words, and she squirmed all over, bashful.
As we ate tteokbokki and chatted about this and that in that cozy atmosphere.
Before I knew it, the takeout container had been wiped clean.
"Did you enjoy it?"
"Yep! But oppa, I'm still hungry."
She's hungry?
I stared blankly at the takeout container, scraped clean without a single bite left.
'Normally, this much would be enough for both me and Sia with some left over.'
And she's still hungry?
"You're...... hungry?"
"Yeah. Since I'm a dragon, I eat a bit more than I used to."
Well, that made sense. At Sia's words, I thought it was possible.
I didn't really know what actual dragons were like, but the dragons depicted in fantasy novels all had true forms far too huge to compare with humans, didn't they.
So it might be only natural that Sia didn't feel full even after eating this much.
"Then should we go buy more tteokbokki?"
"Let's! We can buy some in our neighborhood, right?"
"Yeah."
We cleaned up the trash before teleporting.
While we were doing that, my gaze landed on Sia's clothes.
If she went out like that, it was obvious other people would stare.
For starters, the outfit Sia had on was clearly not something a modern person would wear.
If I had to describe it, I'd say it looked like an elaborately made cosplay costume.
"Sia. But are you going out to buy tteokbokki in those clothes?"
"I was going to change anyway. Oppa, what should I wear? I'll wear whatever you pick."
I wasn't so sure.
There wasn't any outfit in particular I wanted Sia to wear more than others.
Whether Sia wore an elegant dress, a pastel top with a fresh tennis skirt, or a baggy tracksuit, I liked it all.
But saying anything's fine could come off as careless...... so I immediately named an outfit that popped into my head.
"A white T-shirt and jeans?"
"Okay!"
With a single wave of her hand, Sia changed the clothes she was wearing on the spot.
Her outfit, which looked like something a medieval European might have worn, turned into a neat white T-shirt and jeans with one wave of Sia's hand.
"Does it suit me?"
"Yeah. My Sia is really pretty."
It wasn't lip service; I meant it.
The original Sia before her reincarnation had been quite pretty too, but the current Sia was so beautiful she inspired awe.
I wasn't just saying that because she was my girlfriend; objectively speaking, the current Sia looked less like a human than like a living work of art.
The kind of expensive work of art that someone like me shouldn't dare to touch carelessly.
Although, in truth, she was neither a human nor a work of art, but a dragon. Anyway.
With a frame that perfect, anything would look good on her, but this outfit in particular couldn't possibly look anything but pretty.
An effortlessly chic outfit that every man passing by would spare at least one glance.
So we had cleared away the tteokbokki we'd eaten, and she had changed into clothes that suited a modern person.
All that was left now was to teleport.
But then.
"Oppa, wait a sec."
Instead of casting Teleport, Sia suddenly stopped me.
"Is this face of mine better now, or was my original face before I reincarnated better?"
"......Huh?"
At the question Sia threw at me, I was struck dumb.
......How am I supposed to answer that?
'I'm fucked.'