WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ My Girlfriend Returned as a Dragon ◈
Chapter 3: Oppa, Which One’s Prettier?
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After that, we talked for a long time, as though making up for all the longing that had piled up between us.
But after a while...
“Sia, shouldn’t we move somewhere else soon?”
“Why, oppa? There’s nobody around.”
“It’s not that. This is a cemetery. Staying here any longer feels a little...”
And it was not just any cemetery. Sia’s corpse from when she had been human was buried here. It was a rather unsettling place.
Sia nodded after hearing that.
“When you put it that way, you’re right. My corpse is buried right next to us. Ugh.”
She frowned, then suddenly grabbed my hand.
“Hold on tight, oppa.”
At Sia’s words, my vision went white for an instant, as if a flashbang had gone off in front of me.
[Teleport.]
A moment later...
“How is it? Do you like it? It’s much better than before, right?”
The scenery had changed in the blink of an eye.
We had definitely been in a cemetery just moments ago, but now I was standing on a small, deserted beach.
“Sia, did you just... use Teleport?”
“Yep! Remember how I once said my dream was to go camping alone with you on an uninhabited island for a day? It suddenly reminded me of that.”
I vaguely remembered Sia saying something like that once.
But that was not what surprised me.
‘She can use Teleport... that easily?’
Teleport was not a simple spell that could be cast silently without formula calculations.
Just how amazing was our Sia?
“Sia, then can you teleport somewhere on the other side of the world, like Paraguay?”
“Of course! Why? Do you want to visit Paraguay, oppa?”
Sia urged me to name any place because she could take me anywhere.
“No, I was just wondering. Still, anywhere would be nice as long as we go together.”
“Hehe.”
After those embarrassingly sweet words passed between us, Sia was about to say something else when she seemed to remember something. She lightly smacked her own head in reproach.
“Wow, look at me. Oppa, wait here a second.”
With that, Sia cast Teleport again and vanished in an instant.
“Ta-da!”
She returned only a few seconds later.
With the tteokbokki I had brought in one hand.
“You brought this tteokbokki for me, oppa. I couldn’t leave it behind.”
Maybe because she was finally getting to eat tteokbokki for the first time since being reincarnated, Sia was beaming.
Still, I was not sure whether she should be eating that.
Of course, I had bought it for Sia, so there was no problem with her eating it... but it had originally been food for a memorial rite.
I could not stop her if Sia herself wanted to eat it, but I would have preferred to buy fresh tteokbokki instead.
Then...
“Oppa, what’s wrong?”
When I just stared at her without saying anything, Sia must have sensed something was off. She asked in a trembling voice.
Not just her voice, but her whole body was shaking.
Like a puppy standing before its owner after getting caught doing something wrong.
If I did not say something right away, Sia looked like she might burst into tears.
Flustered, I quickly waved my hands.
“No, it’s just... I brought that tteokbokki as an offering, so I was wondering if it might feel weird. I was thinking it might be better to buy new tteokbokki.”
“Absolutely not!”
Sia let out a sigh of relief, but firmly shook her head.
“You prepared that tteokbokki for me, oppa. Not eating it would feel worse! And the alcohol, too...”
The moment she said alcohol, Sia and I both realized it.
We had left the cheongju behind.
“...I forgot.”
“In fantasy novels, dragons are supposed to never forget anything. Are real dragons different?”
Half joking and half serious, I teased Sia affectionately, just as I always had.
But Sia’s expression darkened at once.
As if she had committed some terrible mistake.
“Why... did I leave it behind?”
The old Sia would have taken a joke like that lightly, and probably tried to strike back at me.
But she became distraught over one bottle of alcohol, told me to wait a moment, and disappeared again.
Only a few seconds later, Sia returned carrying the cheongju we had left behind.
Her eyes were unfocused, as if her mind had gone somewhere else.
“The alcohol oppa brought for me... right... I can’t leave it behind...”
Something about Sia seemed wrong.
As she muttered quietly to herself, Sia carefully stroked the bottle of cheongju.
“Sia?”
“Oppa, I’m sorry. You prepared it for me, but I forgot... I’m sorry...”
It was obvious that Sia was not herself.
How should I put it?
Maybe two thousand years of researching dimensional travel magic had made her mentally unstable. Or maybe this was a side effect of using that magic.
Sia looked terribly fragile.
I could have understood if she had been like this from the moment she came out of the Gate, but she had seemed perfectly fine until just now. I could not help feeling flustered.
I held Sia tightly so she could calm down.
“It’s okay, Sia. When have I ever gotten mad over something like that? You came back to me. What does a little alcohol matter?”
“...”
“I was joking. Just joking. I was so happy to see our Sia again that I teased you.”
As I soothed her with the gentlest words I could manage, Sia slowly began to settle down.
“...Sorry, oppa. I scared you, didn’t I?”
“No, it’s okay. As long as you’re okay, Sia.”
When I gently stroked her back again, Sia seemed to calm down. Her expression softened, and soon she gave a small smile.
“Then, oppa, let’s eat tteokbokki together now!”
Using magic, Sia made a small table and chairs, then put the tteokbokki and alcohol on the table.
She finished opening the half-torn tteokbokki package, opened the two sets of wooden chopsticks inside, and handed one to me.
“Thanks for the food!”
With that cheerful greeting, Sia began eating in earnest.
“Wow, it’s been so long since I last had tteokbokki!”
From her first bite, she acted as if she were eating a grand feast and started devouring the tteokbokki at an impressive speed.
Of course, she did not forget to drink the cheongju between bites.
Tteokbokki and alcohol, especially cheongju meant for a memorial rite.
It was a strange combination I could not even imagine, but Sia did not care at all. She enjoyed the cheongju and tteokbokki together.
“You know, oppa, when I was a hatchling, I wanted tteokbokki so badly that I found the ingredients and tried making it myself. But maybe I was not a good enough cook, or maybe the ingredients were different from Earth’s, because it did not taste the same.”
After finishing a third of the tteokbokki by herself in no time, Sia gulped down the rest of the cheongju like water.
“But thinking about it, it was neither of those things. There was another reason.”
“Then what was the real reason?”
“I guess it was because I wasn’t eating it with you, oppa.”
Sia met my eyes lovingly and took a cute bite of fish cake.
“The tteokbokki was good, but I liked the time we spent eating it together. I think that’s why I liked tteokbokki even more.”
At that moment, it felt as though something struck me hard in the head.
Sia had loved eating tteokbokki with me, so why had I always complained about eating nothing but tteokbokki?
Regret washed over me, and I felt sorry for Sia.
“From now on, I’ll buy you so much tteokbokki that you’ll get sick of it.”
So what if she grew tired of it? I would get to see our Sia happy.
I had said it because I felt sorry, but my words seemed to touch Sia deeply. She squirmed shyly.
As we ate tteokbokki and talked about this and that in that intimate atmosphere...
Before we knew it, the container was completely empty.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yep! But oppa, I’m still hungry.”
She was hungry?
I stared blankly at the empty container, without even a scrap left inside.
‘Usually, this much would leave some leftovers even after Sia and I ate together.’
But she was still hungry?
“You’re... hungry?”
“Yep. Since I’m a dragon, I eat a little more than I used to.”
Well, I supposed that made sense.
I did not know what real dragons were like, but in fantasy novels, dragons were generally described as having true forms far larger than humans.
So perhaps it was only natural that Sia would not feel full after eating this much.
“Then shall we go buy more tteokbokki?”
“Let’s do that! We can buy it in our neighborhood, right?”
“Yeah.”
Before teleporting, we cleaned up the trash.
While doing so, my eyes fell on Sia’s clothes.
If she went out dressed like that, people would definitely stare.
After all, what Sia was wearing did not look like anything a modern person would wear.
If I had to describe it, it looked like an intricately made cosplay outfit.
“Sia, are you going out to buy tteokbokki dressed like that?”
“I was about to change. Oppa, what should I wear? I’ll wear whatever you choose.”
Well.
There was no particular outfit I wanted Sia to wear more than another.
Whether she wore an elegant dress, a fresh tennis skirt with a pastel top, or loose training clothes, I liked them all.
But if I said anything was fine, it might seem like I did not care. So I immediately suggested an outfit that came to mind.
“A white T-shirt and jeans?”
“Great!”
With a single gesture, Sia instantly changed her clothes.
The outfit that looked like something a medieval European would wear turned into a neat white T-shirt and jeans with one wave of Sia’s hand.
“Does it suit me?”
“Yeah. Our Sia is really pretty.”
I was not just saying that.
The original Sia before her reincarnation had been quite pretty, but the current Sia was beautiful enough to inspire awe.
I was not saying it just because she was my girlfriend. Objectively speaking, Sia now looked less like a human and more like a living work of art.
Like some priceless masterpiece that someone like me should not casually touch.
Though she was not human or artwork. She was a dragon. Still.
She had such a perfect bearing that anything would have looked good on her, but this outfit was especially impossible not to love.
It gave her an effortlessly put-together look that would make every passing man glance at her at least once.
We had cleaned up the tteokbokki, and Sia had changed into clothes fit for a modern person.
All that remained was to teleport.
But then...
“Oppa, wait.”
Instead of casting Teleport, Sia suddenly stopped me.
“Do I look better with this face, or with the face I had before I reincarnated?”
“...What?”
At Sia’s question, I froze speechless.
...How was I supposed to answer that?
‘I’m screwed.’
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