Black Badger

Jaeyeon toppled backward.

Because I had put real emotion into it, the punch was astonishingly effective. Breathing hard, I glared down at Jaeyeon’s limp body, now sprawled out unconscious.

Then I assessed the situation at once.

If I went back to sleep, would it continue?

I hurriedly lay down on the bed.

I had to go back to sleep.

I had to fall asleep again, fast.

With my eyes shut, I curled up like a grub.

And I tried to drift off again.

It hadn’t been that long, so maybe it would be fine.

If it was now... .

....

“Hey.”

I kicked off the blanket and sat up, then crawled over to Jaeyeon, who was unconscious beside the bed.

With my left hand, I lifted Jaeyeon’s head, then smacked his cheek a few times with my right.

“Jaeyeon. Wake up.”

“Ugh...?”

Jaeyeon frowned, then cracked his eyes open.

His eyelids trembled as he looked up at me with difficulty.

“What...?”

“Hit me.”

I hauled Jaeyeon upright by the shoulders, forcing him awake out of unconsciousness.

Then I sat him on my bed and sat down beside him.

“You know where to hit, right? Hit this part here, the jaw where it connects to the ear.”

“Ah, shit.”

Now that he finally seemed to understand the situation, Jaeyeon frowned.

He looked at me like he was staring at a lunatic.

“What the hell?!”

Then he realized he had gotten punched and knocked out, and got angry.

“Why the fuck are you making a scene when I even waited for you?!”

He exploded.

“I waited a full two and a half hours out ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) of the goodness of my heart while you slept your ass off!”

“Sorry, sorry. This is all my fault.”

I grabbed Jaeyeon’s arm as he tried to stand and forced him back down.

Before he could snap anything else at me, I leaned my face slightly closer.

“So hit me.”

“What?”

“Punch me in the face.”

“This bastard’s finally lost it....”

Though he shot me a look of contempt, he shrank back like he was frightened.

“What the hell is wrong with you all of a sudden?”

“Stop yapping and hit me!”

Why was it that usually he beat people for no reason, but now he was hesitating?

Frowning, I yanked on Jaeyeon’s arm.

“Hit me!”

“Fuck off! You sick little masochist!”

“Please knock me out!”

I shouted as I clung with all my strength to Jaeyeon, who was trying to flee.

“Hit me! Mongmong!”

Jaeyeon did not hit me.

He was someone who knew far too well how to screw people over. This was my mistake in handling him. I should’ve just woken him up and immediately started provoking him.

Now that I had honestly told him what I wanted, there was no way he’d grant it... .

In the end, I failed gloriously at falling asleep again.

Even if I did manage to fall asleep now, it didn’t feel like I’d see Kyle again.

My mood plummeting, I flopped back onto the bed.

“Ha....”

I dragged both hands over my face several times.

This fucking sucked.

I had opened my mouth with such resolve.

“So.”

There would be another chance, but still.

Without removing the hands covering my face, I threw a question at Jaeyeon.

“What did you come for?”

“No, why the hell did you hit me?”

Jaeyeon was still nearby.

He hadn’t knocked me out, but he hadn’t run away either.

From close at hand came Jaeyeon’s shrill voice. He currently looked like an ordinary, neat-faced man, but that sharp edge unique to him still clung to his voice.

“Was waking up someone who sleeps until eleven-thirty really that huge a crime?”

To be fair, Jaeyeon hadn’t really done anything that wrong. The timing had just been absolute garbage.

But I already disliked him.

There was such a thing in this world as the karma one piled up oneself. Honestly, if it had been Yun, or Yehyeon, or Kairos who had woken me, I never would have gotten this angry.

I would’ve been sad, sure, but I wouldn’t have thrown a punch.

But if Jaeyeon had woken me at three in the afternoon instead of noon, I still would have punched him.

“Ha....”

I let out what must have been my fifth sigh.

Then I dropped both hands and stared at the ceiling.

“I said, tell me what you came for.”

“Hey! What did I even do wrong?!”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I just hate you.”

When I answered so readily, Jaeyeon stared at me in blank disbelief.

Ignoring the handsome face in the corner of my vision, I muttered,

“I was having a dream I didn’t want to wake up from, and then you woke me.”

“This guy’s fucking insane.”

“Before I take my irritation out on you for no reason, just tell me why you’re here.”

I answered with complete sincerity.

Honestly, my anger still hadn’t fully gone down.

“If you say you don’t want to tell me, I’ll just knock you out again and dump you outside the cabin.”

Jaeyeon looked at me with an expression of utter disgust.

But in the end, I won. Probably because he knew I was physically stronger.

Though he did mumble to himself that after sleeping and waking up alone, I’d apparently gone even crazier than before. He grumbled that I’d sent all our kin off and even changed the rankings of the Elders, and now the bastard had become even more arrogant. Even so, he sat down on the bed.

Then for a while he simply sat there with his legs crossed like someone who was sulking.

Only after I abruptly pushed myself upright did he flinch and open his mouth.

“A dragon.”

Instead of answering, I raised one eyebrow.

“A dragon came.”

“The Ice Dragon?”

I had been listlessly brushing back my hair, but now I widened my eyes and turned to Jaeyeon.

“The Ice Dragon came?”

“How the hell would I know, psycho? He says he’s the Ice Dragon, but it’s not like I’ve got any way to check if that’s true.”

“Why not.”

Watching Jaeyeon’s grumbling profile, I smiled faintly.

“You could’ve polymorphed into the Emperor and checked with your sixth sense.”

Jaeyeon turned to look at me.

And for a while, he just glared at me in silence. I watched the being looking at me as though he might break into a hollow laugh at any second, his eyes slightly wide and slanted, and my smile deepened.

After watching Jaeyeon’s face for a moment, I lightly smacked his back.

“Did you get his contact info?”

Jaeyeon pushed back his hair with a motion that looked like he was only barely restraining his urge to explode.

“No.”

“Then what? Did Erhart send a car again? Or did he at least send you the place where the Ice Dragon is staying?”

“He says it’s a gift for you.”

Jaeyeon pulled something from his inner pocket and roughly held it out to me.

He wasn’t looking at me, as if one look at my face would make him explode.

“Fuck! What am I, some filthy little lapdog....”

“Crazy.”

Ignoring Jaeyeon’s grumbling, I lunged for his hand.

Resting in it was a radiant crystal orb.

I snatched up the transparent crystal orb at once, its surface tinged faintly with sky blue.

It was from the Empire.

“It’s the mages’ crystal orb?”

“He says since communication doesn’t work once you go outside the Core, you should use that.”

Jaeyeon explained flatly.

“And apparently today, if possible, he’ll come to the cabin himself?”

“I don’t mind whenever he comes.”

I leaped to my feet from the bed at once, ready to prepare for receiving the Ice Dragon.

Then I rushed downstairs and sprinted to the bathroom.

“Why did he go looking for Eric instead of me?”

“It wasn’t on purpose. That pervert cult leader got obsessed with something again and went to watch a magic show, and just happened to run into him.”

Jaeyeon grumbled.

“He said after the performance, the guy who’d been performing as the magician suddenly came up to him. Then all of a sudden he completely changed the way he talked, grabbed Eric, and went, now then, you...”

If a dragon wished, it could appear in front of our house in three seconds flat.

So without even thinking of touching the crystal orb I had placed neatly atop the pile of blankets, I moved busily.

I washed up in no time. As I changed clothes, I activated Tig. After clearing away the things scattered around me, I checked whether there was any tea or snacks fit to serve a guest.

“Jaeyeon!”

After throwing open every cupboard in the kitchen and giving up, I ran back upstairs.

“Help me out here!”

“More of your bullshit again?!”

Jaeyeon, who had been sullenly scrolling through his SNS feed, shuddered.

“What now, white-haired masochist?”

“I’ve got nothing to serve him.”

I half-lifted Jaeyeon and carried him downstairs.

Jaeyeon flailed his long limbs wildly, but I paid him no mind.

“What else do I need to prepare? You’re good at this kind of thing. Help me.”

Though Jaeyeon grumbled, he did help me.

Whether it was a whim, or because he’d buckled under my silent pressure, I couldn’t say. Either way, even while snapping irritably, he rummaged through my cupboards and somehow managed to find useful things.

He even picked out pretty tableware.

“You’ve got all the good stuff shoved in the back.”

He also insulted my poor innocent dishes as cheap junk.

While nagging me to throw out perfectly usable plates and bowls, he pulled out something that, to my eye, looked no different from the rest and stared at it in surprise.

“What the hell? You have this?”

After examining it closely, he glared at me.

“You didn’t buy this yourself, did you?”

“No idea.”

Since other people had managed the cabin while I’d slept for seven months... .

I knew some of the tableware and furniture had changed, but not who had changed what.

When I just stared at him blankly, Jaeyeon let out a grand sigh.

“You hopeless idiot....”

“That’s harsh.”

I answered absentmindedly as I checked the state of the cleaning.

“This should be enough, right?”

Jaeyeon raised his brows, then gave the cabin one final inspection.

He really was meticulous. Rather than checking the cleaning, all he did was lightly rearrange the items around the room, yet the whole atmosphere of the cabin changed. I stared, mouth open, at the space, which had lost about half its coziness but become twice as refined instead.

He hadn’t bought anything new, and he hadn’t really thrown much out either, so how had it changed this much?

At this rate, I could welcome the Ice Dragon with pride.

But the shapeshifter, versed in every kind of art, still didn’t stop grumbling.

“No prizes for guessing Yehyeon was the bastard in charge of maintaining the cabin. Not an ounce of taste to be found even if you scrubbed your eyes raw looking for it.”

“It looks refined enough now, doesn’t it?”

“Thank my former fiancé.”

Jaeyeon snorted.

“Looks like all the usable things here were left behind by the fiancé I once loved.”

“What?”

“Cutlery, teacups, tea!”

At my blank question, Jaeyeon snapped again.

“All the decent cutlery is obviously Choi’s taste! Though sure, Yehyeon that idiot probably can’t tell the difference between a ten-thousand-won teacup and a ten-million-won one.”

“I don’t need a ten-million-won teacup.”

At this point, Jaeyeon seemed to have given up on answering me any further.

After shooting me a look thick with contempt, he muttered that he needed to get out of this horrifyingly tacky space and headed for the door.

I didn’t bother seeing him out.

Instead, as I listened to the sound of the door opening behind me, I looked down at Tig returning to its place.

Cute little Tig.

Thanks to it, cleaning had been so easy... .

“Jesus, you scared me!”

At Jaeyeon’s scream, I spun around.

“If this was how it was going to be, there was no reason for me to come at all!”

“Thanks to your advance notice, I was able to come without breaking etiquette.”

A leisurely voice tinged with laughter rang out.

It was no longer as youthful as before, but.

The owner of the voice stood right at the cabin door, and I identified him instantly. Since I had been expecting an early visit, I even managed to keep my composure.

I straightened fully and went to greet him.

Because I had felt that heavy presence in an instant, there was no way I could fail to know.

Magician DK.

The Ice Dragon’s polymorphed form.

“It has been a long time.”

Looking at the Ice Dragon, who unlike before had taken the form of a much taller, neatly composed adult man, I spoke politely.

“I apologize for contacting you so late.”

The Ice Dragon smiled beautifully.