1.
“…Hoo.”
The man sighed as he smoked his pipe. Since coming here, that was all he ever did. One person doing something in a quiet place did not change much.
“Is that why you’re always smoking that thing, because you have nothing else to do? You really are a man with too much time on his hands.”
“What am I supposed to do here? I was abandoned by my country, and now I have nothing left, so this is how I must live. It’s not as if farming here would yield anything.”
There is little in my domain for humans to eat. I had no need to eat anything myself. Still, I was providing him with enough to keep him from dying.
“Is your time to die drawing near?”
“Probably. It seems the country is still searching for me, but I wonder if there is any meaning in that. No matter how hard they search, they will never see me in the end, and I will die here.”
“Who decided that?”
“Because the great dragon would never abandon a pitiful person like this.”
“No, I intend to abandon you.”
He was a man begging in another’s domain. A man who would do anything he could to survive. Well, since there was nothing he could do, perhaps this was his way of doing something. I did not much like seeing a human behave like this in my domain.
2.
“He was a man abandoned by his country. With nowhere to go, he fled and happened to enter this place by chance. He had nothing to his name… No, he did have exactly one thing. A pipe he often smoked.”
“It seems he wasn’t exiled.”
“He ran away before that. He had seen people dying before his eyes, so he knew he would surely end up the same.”
Because it was clear he would die, he ran quickly. Wise, if one wished to call it that, but at the very least he should have thought clearly about what he would do afterward. He did not. No, from the beginning, he had not been able to.
“How did you come to take him in?”
“I—no, we do not interact with humans. It is not as if it was established as some firm rule, but we decided to live that way. Even if we make such a decision, while living in this world, contact with humans happens in the end whether we want it or not. I had no particular intention of taking him in. It was just that if I ignored him here, my domain would end up full of human bones. Surely you are not telling me I should simply look at that and do nothing?”
It was a simple reason. I did not want to see my domain littered with human remains. We lived quietly in our domains, not paying much attention to the affairs of the world in the first place. If something unnecessary appeared in such a domain, it was only natural to clear it away.
“I could have simply ignored him and abandoned him, but instead of that, he began doing something strange. It seems this place looked good to him. He thought my domain was a place fit for people to live.”
“It doesn’t look that way.”
“Right. It isn’t a good place for people to live. I only live like this because I do not die. Those who are not like us cannot live properly here. He used that fact. A cunning fellow.”
3.
“The great dragon would not wish for his domain to be filled with human remains, would he?”
“Of course not. Would you like it if your home became that filthy?”
“Then please allow me to stay here.”
“Hah?”
There was a man who made such a demand boldly. And before me, no less. I did not kill him only because there was no need to. All he had to do was leave this place on his own, but this man did not do that.
“What an impressive attitude. Do you not understand that you are alive right now because I am allowing it?”
“How could that be? I am well aware of your generous consideration. However, as someone who has had everything taken from him, I need help. And you, surely, are capable of giving such help.”
“Why should I?”
“I need a place, and you need this situation in which you can remain quiet. They will not be able to come this far, and if I remain outside, things may become noisy all the way here. No one would leave a place where a dragon resides alone.”
“So you are saying I should let you inside in order to live quietly?”
“I would be grateful if you did.”
I wondered if I should breathe fire onto that smiling face, but I shook my head. If that thing died here, cleaning it up would be my responsibility. No matter how much time passed and his remains mixed with the soil, when I thought about having to look at them until then, I could only sigh.
“I do not like this.”
“Thank you.”
And this man was always smiling. Even now, he was looking at me and smiling.
4.
“He… had quite the personality, didn’t he?”
“In any case, that was how I lived with him. Until he died. Well, it was not bad. I was not bored. Unless I was meeting others like me, I usually lived alone.”
“By others like you, you mean?”
“Those who are exactly the same as I am. Dragons. Those who underwent a change from humans and became dragons. All those who walked a path from which there was no return, who had been human but were no longer human.”
“Were dragons originally human?”
“As far as I know. Every dragon I have met was originally human. They were human, but because they became something no longer human, they are persecuted and hunted. It is a truly strange world.”
Upon becoming a dragon, my body mutated. Some of us, myself included, even had our sex changed. The confusion I felt after undergoing that change is now all a thing of the past. After living this long, all of those things become nothing more than something encountered long ago.
“I live like this under the name Seo Eunha, not as the human Seo Eunha, but as the dragon Seo Eunha. Once your purpose here is finished and you leave, do not speak of me. You may not, but someone who hears your story and comes here may arrive with ulterior motives. We have seen many such cases.”
When we treated them kindly, the price was always dreadful. To them, we were nothing more than prey. Knowing that fact—
“We will not speak of you. Is there anything more you can tell us about the owner of this grave?”
“Hard to say. There is nothing special. His household collapsed and even his line died out, so finding anything more will be difficult. This is about all that can be salvaged.”
The pipe he had always carried and smoked. Other than this, there was nothing in particular. In any case, I had no hobby of smoking it, so I had merely kept it.
“Take it if you need it. To me, it is only an object I have been storing.”
“Is that truly all right?”
“I do not mind. He said it had become nothing more than trash that would simply be left behind anyway. If it can be put to good use, then it is better to give it there.”
“Seo Eunha, you are kind. I suppose not all dragons are kind, are they?”
“No. After all, many of us have suffered quite a lot. Unless all of that is resolved, they will not approach others kindly. Perhaps I am like this because I have not suffered that way very much.”
5.
“By the way, you said you became a dragon. When exactly did you become one?”
“When I became a dragon? It has been quite some time. Let me see… before I became a dragon, I was a priest.”
“A priest?”
“Yes. As a being seated in a high position, I always lived that way. The events of that time… are faint, but I remember them clearly. Though the memories of when I was human are not so important now.”
That appearance from back then—there were still parts I remembered. Of course, the parts that remained in my memory were, as always, the moments when the human me met her end.
“While living as a priest, my body happened to begin changing. Such a change in the priest came as a shock to everyone, and in their fear, they began to question me.”
“By questioning, you mean…”
“They spoke of whether it was truly all right to leave the priest as she was, and whether they needed to select the next priest somehow. In the end, there was no priest after me. Everything disappeared as it was.”
Many things changed when I became a dragon. The way they looked at me, the way I looked at them… and the way those around us looked at us as well.
“In a situation where no one could accept the sudden change, the village disappeared as it was. Everyone died. Except me.”
“That’s…”
“There is no need to take disappearance that way. Everything is bound to disappear in the end. To disappear and be born anew is the order of nature. And we look upon the world from outside that order.”
None of us are dissatisfied with our transformation or with our lives. All we have to do is live quietly outside. There is only friction with those who insist on dragging us inside.
“That friction was the problem. So do not think of creating friction with them. Even if you do not intend to create friction, curiosity toward them will create it in the end.”
“…Understood. We will keep today’s meeting buried deep within us.”
“It would be a tremendous hit if written as a thesis, but yes, that is how it must be, isn’t it?”
I did not know what the two of them were talking about, but it was likely nothing important. In the end, all that mattered was that they comply with my request. Once those two leave this place, I can sleep again. I do not know how deeply I will sleep, and I am somewhat worried that someone else may come here again, but there is no need to concern myself too much.