WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ My Girlfriend Returned as a Dragon ◈

Chapter 1: Oppa, You Haven’t Found Another Girl Already, Have You?

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[The Late Jeong Sia / 2000.08.25. to 2023.08.25.]

Exactly one year ago today, she suddenly passed away.

It happened only six months after she graduated from Hunter Academy and officially became a hunter.

She had already lost her family to a Gate Break incident in high school. I never imagined she would suffer an even greater tragedy.

Who could have guessed that she would meet such a senseless death on her birthday?

“It’s already been a year since our Sia left my side.”

Today was both the anniversary of Sia’s death and her birthday, so I visited her grave.

In one hand, I carried her favorite tteokbokki.

“I still can’t believe our pretty Sia left me.”

Jeong Sia.

She was my one and only beloved girlfriend.

That day, we had promised to celebrate her birthday with dinner at a nice restaurant after our field exercise.

Then a terrible accident occurred inside the Gate.

Gates were dangerous places where nobody knew what could happen inside, but who could have expected a dreadful inferno to be waiting in a D-rank Gate?

The accident left three people injured and one dead.

And the only person killed was our Sia.

‘What if I’d been stronger?’

That thought had never left my mind since Sia died.

If I had been just a little stronger, if I had moved just a little faster, could I have saved her?

‘If only that Trait had manifested...’

In every respect, I was nothing more than an ordinary D-rank hunter of the swordsman type.

Except for one thing.

[??? (EX)

Skill Description: ???]

The problem was that I did not know what this skill was, let alone how to use it.

I did not even know whether it was passive or active.

But if I had known what it was.

If I could have used even a little of it.

Would Sia have avoided such a pointless death?

‘What good is any of that now?’

A skill I had never used, a skill that failed to protect the person I loved.

It was better to live as though it did not exist.

Setting aside those meaningless what-ifs that kept holding me back, I took out my phone and slowly flipped through the photos I had taken with Sia.

Each photo brought back memories from that time as vividly as ever.

Sia, who confessed to me boldly without caring what anyone thought.

Our Sia, whose smile was more beautiful than anyone else’s in the world.

Our Sia, who said my arms were so warm whenever she nestled against me and never wanted to leave them, even for a moment.

My beloved Sia, the reason I lived.

As I began remembering our time together, I felt my eyes growing hot.

We had loved each other so deeply that we could not live without one another. Why did we have to part like this?

Holding back my tears, I poured the clear rice wine I had brought into a cup and placed it before Sia’s grave.

I set down the tteokbokki she liked beside it.

The spicy scent of tteokbokki brought back the day she left this world.

‘Sia, let’s eat something good for dinner tonight. What do you want?’

‘Um... Tteokbokki! Let’s add lots of extras!’

‘Tteokbokki? Come on, it’s your birthday. Let’s have something nicer. I told you I’m paying today.’

‘You don’t like tteokbokki, Oppa? I want tteokbokki.’

If I had known Sia would leave my side so soon,

I wouldn’t have complained about eating the same thing again. I should have eaten tteokbokki with her at least one more time.

The regret came rushing back.

I poured the rice wine from the cup over Sia’s grave, then poured another cup and drank it straight.

“Sia, it’s okay if I get a little drunk today, right?”

Then, as I emptied one cup and reached to refill it.

Rumble...

The ground suddenly began to shake, followed by a deafening roar that nearly tore my ears apart.

The air split open, and a small crack began to form.

‘A Gate Break!’

Anyone could tell these were the warning signs of a Gate Break.

As the crack steadily grew, my mind began racing.

Of all days, this had to happen on Sia’s anniversary, right where her grave was?

I knew about Gate Breaks, but this was the first time I had seen one in person.

Faced with something I had never experienced before, I froze in place.

‘I have to do something.’

I needed to report this to the Hunter Administration, then somehow buy time on my own so the damage would not spread.

The moment I picked up my phone to take action, the Gate writhed and something emerged from it.

Naturally, I assumed it was a monster and hurried to pull out my weapon from my subspace. But the instant I saw what it was, I could only stop.

A young woman with strikingly foreign features, about my age.

Unbelievably, the unidentified being that emerged from the Gate was a woman.

But she was far from ordinary.

Her red hair resembled holy flames, and her ruby-like eyes did not look human at all.

And that was not all.

Her skin was as white as jade, and her delicate features were so beautiful that calling her a goddess would not have been an exaggeration.

Her clothing did not appear to be from Earth either, making her seem all the more like a goddess.

‘No. I can’t let her appearance fool me.’

She might be an unknown monster that had taken the form of a human woman.

I could not let my guard down.

There was nobody around, but I still had to prepare for the worst.

Since I did not know what she was, I had to be careful.

First, I needed to determine whether she was friendly to humanity or hostile.

As I cautiously drew my weapon, the woman stared somewhere else as though my weapon did not matter at all.

At the tteokbokki and gimbap beside Sia’s grave, and at the birthday present I had never been able to give her, its wrapping untouched for a year.

After examining them, she turned her gaze toward me.

It was one thing for her to look at my face, but why was she so interested in the tteokbokki?

But there was something even stranger.

“Oppa?”

Despite looking so foreign that nobody would have thought she was Korean, she addressed me warmly as Oppa, with perfect pronunciation.

Oppa?

She called me Oppa?

Just as the question of what she was rose to the tip of my throat.

“Minjun-oppa, it’s me. Your girlfriend, Jeong Sia.”

...What?

“Oppa, I spent two thousand years shut in my lair, never going out to have fun even once, studying only dimensional travel magic so I could see you. I did good, right? Really good, right?”

Two thousand years? A lair? Dimensional travel magic?

The woman who introduced herself as the dead Sia rattled off a string of words I could not understand.

“Oppa, you haven’t found another girl already, have you?”

Footnotes:

“Oppa” is a Korean term a woman may use for an older male friend or romantic partner.

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