Chapter 5
Chapter 5. Oppa, You’ve Really Been Through a Lot
I had certainly meant every word when promising Sia that I would treat her to as much tteokbokki as her heart desired.
Even so, ordering ten portions all at once felt utterly absurd.
‘Is it even humanly possible for her to finish all that?’
“Pardon me, miss… did you really say ten portions?”
“Yes, exactly that. I’ve jotted down the extra toppings on this piece of paper, so please prepare it like this.”
“Ah, understood! Right away!”
Much to my relief, the shop took the order without any complications. I had worried that preparing such an enormous batch might cause quite a delay, but the food was finished promptly.
“Order number ten is ready for pickup.”
The sheer volume of food was enough to make my stomach feel stuffed just by staring at it. Looking at the mountain of takeout boxes arranged across the counter, that identical thought from before crept right back into my head.
Where on earth was she going to pack away this mountain of food?
Once the payment cleared, we grabbed the heavy bags in both hands and made our way toward my studio apartment. We had barely walked a short distance, however, when Sia noticed that our path felt wrong.
“Oppa, didn’t you always take a left over there whenever you went back to your place?”
The direction we were heading had diverged from the route stored in her memory.
“Ah, I actually relocated several months back. Just wait until you see the new place—you’re going to be totally stunned.”
“Stunned, really?”
Sia tilted her head with mild skepticism, but I knew with absolute certainty that she would be deeply moved. And that prediction proved true the moment we arrived.
“Oppa… don’t tell me this is…”
“That’s right. It’s the old studio apartment where you used to stay.”
Following the tragedy of Sia’s passing, I had clung desperately to every single lingering trace she left behind in this world, and this particular room was one of them. It was the very studio flat where Sia had resided during her lifetime.
Nearly all of her wardrobe and personal effects had eventually been handed over to her surviving family, but the physical space itself had remained. The mere thought of some stranger moving in and painting over our shared history was unbearable, so I reached out to the building owner and took over the lease myself.
Of course, the atmosphere wasn’t identical to the days when Sia had lived here. Nearly all of her personal items were gone. Yet that hardly mattered. At the very least, it gave me a sanctuary where I could quietly hold on to fragments of our past.
Stepping across the threshold of her previous home after all this time, tears instantly welled in Sia’s eyes.
“Oppa…”
The surroundings were intensely familiar yet strange, a space that had once belonged entirely to her. Perhaps the realization that it was me, rather than an indifferent stranger, who inhabited the room in her absence caused quiet tears of relief to spill down her cheeks.
“H-Hic… Why… why can’t I stop crying today, oppa?”
“Don’t worry, Sia. You aren’t shedding tears out of sorrow right now. You’re crying because you’re happy.”
I softly rubbed Sia’s back as she sobbed without stopping, softly complaining about how her tears refused to dry up.
“H-Hic… I try so hard to hold it back, hic… but seeing that stuffed animal over there, hic… how could anyone hold back the tears, oppa?”
Before I even realized it, Sia had nestled herself deep into my chest. Her finger pointed toward a plush teddy bear resting quietly in the corner of the room.
It was the anniversary gift she had given me alongside a handwritten letter on our very first anniversary. Though countless years had slipped by since that day, I had taken extraordinary care of it so as never to let our shared memories fade, ensuring the fabric looked practically brand new, without a single smudge or stain.
Naturally, the accompanying letter had been preserved with the exact same devotion.
“Oppa, you fought so desperately just to remember me… hic.”
“How could I ever do anything else?”
Her tears of joy quickly melted into tears of comfort. Only after clinging tightly to my neck and thoroughly soaking my shirt did Sia finally let out a quiet sniffle and calm down.
“The tteokbokki is going to turn ice-cold. Let’s dig in before it does.”
“Mm… sniff.”
When our prolonged feast finally came to an end, we tossed the empty containers aside and stretched out side by side on the floor.
With a full belly, a warm sense of contentment, and Sia lying right next to me in our old room after so long, there was literally nothing else I could have wished for. It felt impossible to be any happier than I was at that moment.
“Oppa, your tummy is completely puffed out.”
“You practically ate the whole ten orders yourself, so how come your stomach is still completely flat?”
Despite having devoured nearly the entire mountain of tteokbokki on her own, Sia’s midsection showed no trace of a bulge, looking as sleek as if she had barely touched a bite.
“Ehehe. That’s a secret!”
We spent a lazy stretch of time lightly poking and teasing each other’s stomachs, thoroughly savoring the peaceful atmosphere. Once we grew tired of playing around, Sia quietly spoke up.
“Oppa.”
“Yeah?”
“Come to think of it, since the moment we met again, we’ve only talked about what happened to me. I haven’t heard a single thing about your side. How did you manage all this time, oppa?”
Hearing her question made me realize that, swept up in the pure bliss of her return, I hadn’t uttered a single detail about my own past. With a quiet breath, I began to unravel the tale of the life I had endured without her.
“Well… it would be a complete lie to say things were easy.”
During the first twelve months after Sia’s death, Minjun had been utterly ruined as an active hunter. The suffocating trauma left him gasping for air every time he tried to set foot inside a dungeon gate.
That entire year had been completely dominated by crippling sorrow and guilt, making it impossible for him to function as a normal human being.
Listening to the grim reality of Minjun’s lost year, Sia sank into a heavy silence.
Just how agonizing had life been for Minjun oppa during the twelve months after she vanished?
‘I at least had that sliver of hope that if I just kept studying Dimensional Travel Magic, I might eventually find my way back to him. But Minjun oppa didn’t even have that tiny thread of hope to cling to.’
In a despair so absolute, though she dreaded the thought, the urge to simply end his own suffering must have crossed his mind more than once.
Even so, Minjun had stubbornly fought to keep every memory of her intact. He never pursued another relationship. He never once let the date of her passing slip from his mind.
That was the steadfast man Minjun had always been, the one she loved with all her heart.
‘Just how much heartbreak did he have to endure all alone for an entire year?’
Inside Sia’s heart, two conflicting sensations clashed: an immense gratitude that Minjun had somehow survived such a living hell without falling apart, and a crushing sense of guilt for not finding a way back to him sooner.
As those emotions swirled inside her, a searing warmth tightened in her chest.
‘Why? Why did I have to botch that single calculation right at the very end?’
Had she not made that solitary blunder in the spell matrix before activating Dimensional Travel Magic, oppa would never have had to suffer through that extra stretch of torment.
It was entirely because of her mistake that a full year of his precious life had been swallowed by grief.
‘You idiot. Jung Sia, you absolute idiot.’
Regardless of how desperately she wanted to be in his arms again, how could she make such a critical mistake at the most decisive second?
‘Jung Sia, you pathetic fool.’
Still, that was all behind them now. From this day forward, she would personally guarantee that oppa would only walk along paths strewn with petals. No matter what, she would make that a reality.
“Oppa, you’ve really had to endure so much this past year.”
Sia spoke to Minjun, pouring every drop of her remorse, affection, and wholehearted devotion into those few words. They were finally together again, so moving forward, nothing but happiness awaited them.
“I wasn’t the one who had it the hardest, Sia. You were. You spent two millennia doing nothing but obsessively researching Dimensional Travel Magic just to come back to my side.”
“If it was for the sake of seeing you again, oppa, I would gladly do it all over. If our positions were reversed, you would have made that exact same choice. I know that for a fact, oppa.”
“That’s hardly the same thing. I was merely in pain for a single year, while you had to suffer through…”
His throat caught, unable to finish the thought. Tears surged into Minjun’s eyes as he pulled Sia tightly against his chest.
How terribly lonely and heartbreaking must those countless thousands of years have been for his precious Sia?
As she gently patted Minjun’s trembling back while his suppressed tears finally spilled over, Sia felt reaffirmed that coming back to her beloved had been the absolute best decision of her existence.
Minjun oppa had walked through an endless, pitch-black abyss for an entire year. Now, she would ensure he experienced true joy, regardless of what measures or powers she had to employ.
Having spent the remainder of the night clinging to one another, the morning of our second day together finally arrived.
A gentle warmth brushed across my cheek, followed by the soft sound of lips pressing against my skin.
Chu.
“Oppa, do you really want to stay asleep?”
I drifted back to consciousness under the shower of Sia’s sweet morning affection.
“Sia, just give oppa five more minutes and then I’ll get up.”
“It’s already the middle of the day, oppa. Don’t you think it’s about time to roll out of bed?”
“Five minutes… Sia, just five little minutes.”
As I mumbled a lazy plea with a voice still drowned in sleep, Sia planted another kiss, this time directly against my mouth.
“If you won’t get up, I’m just going to keep kissing oppa until you’re completely awake.”
“If that’s the penalty, I might as well sleep for five whole hours instead of five minutes.”
She was clearly trying to tease me out of bed, but as far as I was concerned, that was nothing short of a luxury. Having Sia shower me with kisses was something I would never turn down.
Besides, even if she insisted on kissing me non-stop, she was bound to run out of steam eventually, wasn’t she?
‘I really want to see how she pouts when she gets tired out.’
I had no idea how long her stamina would last, but after maybe twenty minutes, she would probably give up, sigh adorably, and say, ‘Oppa, I give up, so please wake up now.’
Just picturing that scene brought an involuntary grin to my face.
Contrary to my expectations, Sia pressed another lingering kiss to my cheek and beamed with absolute delight, as if the prospect thrilled her.
“Sounds even better to me.”
With that, her soft crimson lips locked onto mine once more.
‘Wait… is she actually planning to spend five solid hours just kissing me?’
When I paused to consider it, five hours was nothing more than the blink of an eye to a dragon that had lived across thousands of years.
She was genuinely capable of pulling it off.
‘Wait…’
‘H-Hold on a second?!’
Sia’s lips moved purposefully down to my throat, pressing firmly before trailing further down. Her pale fingers began tugging gently at the hem of my shirt.
‘Going any further than this is seriously dangerous territory!’
There were numerous reasons, but primarily, crossing that line would completely derail the tone of this whole situation.
A chill of alarm shot straight down my spine, snapping me instantly into a seated position.
“Oppa, are you awake now?”
Seeing me sit bolt upright, Sia pouted her lips with visible regret that her plan had been interrupted.
“If you’re still exhausted, you can keep resting.”
“No, I’m totally wide awake! Not a single ounce of sleep left in me.”
While I had been half-dazed just moments ago, Sia’s sudden ambush of affection had completely banished any lingering drowsiness.
Yet Sia seemed thoroughly reluctant to let her momentum die out, reaching out to pull me back down onto the mattress.
“Should I help lull you back to sleep then?”
“No need, my eyes are completely clear now. Truly.”
“Come on, if you’re feeling tired, just lie down a bit longer, oppa.”
In the past, I could have easily resisted her physically through sheer muscle. But now that Sia was a full-fledged dragon, that power dynamic was completely flipped.
Utterly helpless against her overwhelming brute strength, I was shoved flat onto my back once more, forced to endure five intense, relentless minutes of Sia’s overwhelming affection. Only when her grip finally relaxed was I able to scramble back into a sitting position.
Even though it had merely been a five-minute kiss, my head was spinning as if I had been spun in circles.
Her touches were undeniably sweet, yet there was something undeniably terrifying about the raw power behind them.
If that little joke of mine had actually played out and she had locked me down for five uninterrupted hours, my consciousness probably would have faded completely halfway through.
Gasping as I barely pieced my senses back together, I stared at Sia as her hand lightly smoothed over the faint red marks left on my skin.
“…Sia, didn’t we already do more than enough yesterday?”
“Not at all!”
To anyone else, the affection we shared yesterday would have seemed overwhelmingly excessive, yet Sia answered with a radiant grin, genuinely believing it hadn’t been nearly enough.
Viewing it through her perspective, however, it made complete sense. She had spent two thousand lonely years unable to share a single warm touch with the person she cherished most.
Gently, I wrapped my arms around Sia and held her close.
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