WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ My Girlfriend Returned as a Dragon ◈

Chapter 81: Oppa, I Was So Worried….

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“Looking at the time now... it’s been a little under an hour since you entered the Gate, Hunter.”

“An hour?”

“Yes. To be exact, about fifty-five minutes.”

Several days had passed in there, but only an hour had passed on Earth?

I breathed a sigh of relief.

If a month or more had passed, as I’d feared, there was a high chance my family, Sia, and even Rokan, who was watching over Sia, would have been complete wrecks.

At least it was a small blessing amid the misfortune.

“Mr. Minjun. Did time inside the Gate... pass very differently from time on Earth?”

Perhaps because she was with the Hunter Association, the woman seemed to have grasped my question’s intent to some extent.

“Yes. It would be difficult to explain in detail here, but...”

I turned and looked over the people watching me.

Drinking a mouthful of water had helped me regain some strength, but answering all those questions here would not only be impractical, it would be a real hassle.

I might owe an explanation to the Hunter Association, but there was no reason to answer everyone else.

‘What excuse can I use to get out of here?’

Just as I was about to think it over.

[Minjun, are you all right?]

A telepathic message suddenly rang in my head.

It was Rokan.

I could hear his message, but I had no idea how to reply, so I looked around for him.

Then another telepathic message came from Rokan.

[I have concealed myself, so you likely will not be able to find me. If you can hear me but do not know how to answer, blink twice.]

I blinked twice as Rokan instructed.

[Understood. Make an excuse and go somewhere without people, then wait. I will come to you.]

I’d been thinking along the same lines, so I decided to get out of there with a suitable excuse.

“I’m sorry, but I need to leave urgently due to personal circumstances. I’ll give my contact information to someone from the Hunter Association, so we can speak later.”

I tried to leave after giving that vague explanation, but several people still wouldn’t give up and kept firing questions at me.

“Hunter! Please tell us just one thing!”

“What on earth was inside?”

I’d said I would tell them everything later, so I didn’t need to answer. Still, leaving without saying anything didn’t seem right.

“Then I’ll tell you just this. It was probably beyond anything you can imagine.”

I still couldn’t tell what I could and couldn’t talk about.

So I gave them a vague answer that would let them speculate among themselves.

Even after that, people were still raising their hands with questions, but I kept repeating that I would answer later and left Yongduam.

Right after escaping the crowd, I looked around for somewhere empty where I could meet Rokan.

But perhaps because of the Yongduam Gate, the area was packed with people.

Just as I thought I might need to go much farther to find somewhere deserted, I remembered the Stealth skill I had unlocked right before returning to Earth.

Maybe that skill would make it easier to reach somewhere secluded.

Wanting to test my new skill as well, I immediately used Stealth.

At first, I didn’t feel any different, but when I looked at my hand, it had turned transparent.

Wondering whether only my body had become invisible, I took a few steps. Even my footsteps couldn’t be heard.

The Stealth skill had worked perfectly.

When I looked around after using it, a man and woman across from me were looking around in shock.

I had suddenly vanished without warning, so they must have been quite startled.

Anyway, I used Stealth to enter a secluded alley with no one around, then released it.

Less than a few seconds later, Rokan appeared.

“Rokan!”

From my perspective, it had been several days since I’d seen him, and my voice rose without me realizing it.

“We have much to discuss, but let us go first.”

Before we could even exchange proper greetings, Rokan Teleported me to his lair.

I pulled over a chair and sat down.

The instant I sat, Rokan asked me bluntly, without giving me a moment to settle in.

“How did you do it?”

“Pardon?”

I didn’t know what he meant, but Rokan looked extremely serious.

“How did you hide your presence so perfectly?”

I had expected him to ask what had happened in the meantime.

Instead, Rokan asked something I had never expected.

I had used Stealth, but I thought Rokan, being a dragon, would still be able to track me.

Apparently, I had been wrong.

“I was following your presence, then suddenly, it disappeared completely.”

“You... couldn’t find me?”

“That is right. Realistically, it is impossible for you as you are now to hide from or flee from me like this. Yet how...?”

Mid-sentence, Rokan fell silent, as if he had realized something.

Then he looked directly into my eyes and asked.

“What exactly happened in there?”

“It may be a long story, and difficult to believe. But first, Rokan.”

Everything had been happening so fast that I had overlooked something important.

“Could we call Sia and tell her too?”

“Yes. I was about to contact Shasha anyway.”

Rokan immediately called Sia.

The moment he did, Sia appeared, looking like she was about to burst into tears.

[Oppaaaa!]

Looking closely, I could clearly see tear stains on Sia’s face.

She must have sobbed the moment she heard I had been sucked into a Gate.

[What happened? You said you were just going out for some air! Why did you suddenly end up in a Gate...?]

Seeing tears well up in Sia’s eyes again before the old tear stains had even dried, my own eyes grew hot.

“Sorry. You were really worried, right? As for how that happened...”

After clearing my throat with a small cough, I carefully explained everything to them, from how I was sucked into the Gate to what I experienced inside it, in Elysium.

When my long story was over.

Sia finally let out the emotions she had been holding back and burst into tears again.

[Still... I’m glad, Oppa. You came back alive. That’s enough. When Grandfather told me it seemed like you had suddenly disappeared, I was so scared....]

Rokan, on the other hand, remained silent with his eyes tightly shut, deeply lost in thought.

[By the way, it’s amazing that the place Oppa went was Pangaea.]

“Right? You have no idea how surprised I was when I first heard that the place I landed was Pangaea. What a coincidence.”

After shedding tears for a while, Sia gradually returned to her usual energy as we talked.

Yet Rokan was still silent, wearing a serious expression as he thought.

[Grandfather, is there... some kind of problem?]

Sia must have sensed that something was wrong as well, because she cautiously asked Rokan.

But Rokan waved his hand.

“It is nothing. There is merely something I need to think about.”

Yet his serious expression did not change.

Perhaps his claim that it was nothing was not true, because Rokan remained silent afterward.

While he was lost in thought alone, Sia and I exchanged silent looks.

Neither of us spoke, but Sia seemed to be thinking the same thing as me.

He said it was nothing, but his continued silence only made us more anxious.

Finally.

Breaking the long silence, Rokan spoke with a more solemn expression than ever.

“Minjun. You said you met a man you believe was Bellium, and afterward, an EX-rank skill was unlocked.”

“Yes.”

It was obvious that Rokan knew something about Bellium.

“Do you remember what year it was there? Did they mention the year according to the Imperial Calendar or the Continental Calendar?”

“I don’t know.”

Looking back, I should have asked that too for later reference, but I had been too focused on returning to Earth to think that far.

I should have made plans for what to do after I returned as well.

“All I heard was that it seemed several tens of thousands of years had passed since Bellium died.”

Unfortunately, that was all I knew.

“I see.”

Rokan looked as though he had much on his mind.

I had seen him ponder deeply from time to time, but I had never seen him agonize as intensely as he did today.

Could there be another secret hidden among the things I experienced in Elysium, one I did not know about?

It felt risky to ask now, but it had to be better than letting this tense atmosphere continue.

“Rokan, do you happen to know what kind of person Bellium was?”

I asked Rokan cautiously.

“What you heard there is everything I know. He gathered those exiled from their respective homelands and built a city. He did not get along with the other dragons. That is all I know.”

Rokan firmly shook his head.

“Still, even something minor, any small clue about Bellium...”

“There is none.”

Rokan cut me off before I could finish.

“We do not know everything that happens in this world, nor do we record everything.”

Rokan firmly drew the line, saying he had nothing more to say about Bellium. Still, I couldn’t take his words at face value.

Even if that was true, what explained his grave reaction and long silence?

“Rokan, then do you know anything at all about Bellium’s child?”

He might not know more about Bellium, but perhaps he knew something about Bellium’s child, who was not recorded in Elysium’s history.

According to Adil, no one in Elysium knew anything about Bellium’s child, but Rokan was a fellow dragon. Perhaps it would be different for him.

But the answer was the same.

“I do not. If Bellium had been a great figure who left his mark on history, detailed records of him and his child would remain. But he was not such a figure. In fact, I heard that he had a poor reputation among his kin.”

He said that while the citizens of Elysium might have had reason to preserve information about Bellium, dragons had no reason to leave such information for future generations.

“Your humans are the same, are you not? Unless they are traitors who committed grave crimes, you do not go out of your way to record every mediocre neighborhood thug. Think of it as something similar.”

I had thought dragons might be different from humans in that regard, since they lived far longer lives, but apparently not.

Rokan’s words were convincing, but I still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.

“Perhaps there were books I did not read that mentioned them. Shasha, have you ever heard anything about Bellium or his child?”

Rokan passed the question to Sia, but she too shook her head with a regretful expression.

[No. Honestly... I only knew there was a city called Elysium and that someone named Bellium built it. I’ve never heard anything else either. Sorry, Oppa.]

Rokan nodded as though he had expected that.

“I would like to satisfy your curiosity as well, but I do not think I can. I will step out for a moment, so you two talk in the meantime.”

With a troubled expression, Rokan left.

* * *

The moment he entered his study.

Rokan sat in a rocking chair, frowned, and leaned his head back.

After suddenly letting out a deep sigh, Rokan muttered quietly.

“Bellium. Why do you keep causing trouble for your kin even after death?”

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