Reaching out, he lifted the blanket and went inside it. Aligning his body with hers, he brought his arm to the crown of Bom’s head and tapped it lightly with his wrist. Bom was engulfed in her tears and didn’t notice his approach so he went closer to her head and whispered into her ears.
“Come here.”
He gave her his arm to rest her head on, and wrapped his other arm around her small body.
What am I doing right now?
His muddied mind was still out of place and he couldn’t objectively look at his own actions. What he was doing right now was just due to a habit.
The child was crying in front of him, and thus he was giving her a hug.
He tapped Bom on the back until she stopped her tears. It was a method he learned from her; tapping as if caressing. Like how he sent Gyeoul off to sleep on a certain evening, he moved his hand at a rhythm.
Tap, tap, tap…
A dragon’s outburst of emotion tended to last long, and Bom’s was especially longer. It needed a long time for her to stop crying.
Meanwhile, Yu Jitae could not organise any of his thoughts.
The result was okay. Bom was not dead. The Third Night, and the plans of [Hostility] had all been neutralised.
However, everything except for the result was a mess.
Everything…
Soon,
Bom buried her head into his chest after collecting her tears. Touching him with her reddened cheeks, forehead and eyes wet with tears, she quietly rested in his hug as she regained her slow pace of breath.
“…”
Her gathered hands started twitching under his chest. After a while, Bom slowly raised her right hand and began nibbling on her fingernail. She continued chewing but what entered his eyes was the missing fang.
She was a dragon.
Even though the cracked tooth will grow back up, will that be the same with her cracked heart?
The scent of a bright day’s forest seeping into his nose was exotic, and continuing to smell it oddly settled his mood.
He pulled her head closer in.
Since Bom had wanted to become his accomplice even after knowing his most unsightly side, there was nothing he had to hide from her anymore.
“Anything you have to say?”
“…”
“You said you wanted to know about me.”
“…”
“Ask me anything. Anything is fine.”
Bom raised her head and looked up at his face, and silently continued gazing into his eyes.
*
Life was like a rainy season.
Ever since her birth, Bom had always been under a downpour.
The world had been raining ever since the start of her memories, and the young Bom took that in as something normal. Everyone was probably living the same way as her across all the distant places right?
Being imprisoned like her,
Getting hit everyday like her,
Learning some stupid magic and etiquette,
Going through some stupid surgeries and operations.
This must be how every dragon lives. That was what Bom thought.
She was wrong, and it took her a few years to find out the truth.
But regardless, Bom decided to look at it from a positive point of view. Wouldn’t the ground get harder when the rain stops? Since she learned how to endure through hardships, wouldn’t it be easier for her to deal with the upcoming difficulties? Besides, she had already acquired the perfect technique that could let her avoid the rain.
That perfect technique was closing her eyes and blocking her ears. And then thinking to herself that she was inside a field of reeds.
It was a technique she earned one day while being whipped by her mother. Even though the drops of rain might be hitting her body, Bom was now able to tell herself that those weren’t rain drops and that they were instead reeds touching her body.
It worked because she couldn’t see nor hear anything after closing both her eyes and ears.
All the green hatchlings of other iterations in Yu Jitae’s memories might have been relying on this ‘perfect technique’ to withstand his harsh experiments. ‘Boms’ of those timelines would have closed their eyes and blocked their ears as well, and through that, they should have been able to withstand his harassment.
Even now, it was the same.
The person she loved the most in this world was a devil incomparable to anyone out there. She was slapped by him and all the time she had spent with him was denied.
Her greatest trauma was used for a test; her fang was cracked just like how her mother looked when she died.
Even though it was still raining heavily–
Bom was fine.
She closed her eyes and blocked her ears.
Firstly, she emptied her brain and pushed aside all sources of distress. She then focused on the present.
Who am I and where is this place?
I am Yu Bom, and I am inside Yu Jitae’s arms.
Thinking that lightened up her mood a little, because there was no way something sad was happening in heaven.
The throbbing pain in her heart was because it was scraped by a reed, not because of the cold downpour. That was what she told herself.
Her heart was then put at ease.
After putting out the biggest flame, she could now spare the time to look around her surroundings, so Bom went back to all the words Yu Jitae had said to her.
His explanation of his life was dark. It was all because of dragons.
Although Bom had never been dissatisfied about her life as a dragon until now, she started hating the fact that she was born a dragon.
Dragons were the problems. Dragons were the ones that drove his life to this mess. Even though he was a devil, he had no sin. Even though he had no sin, he still had to crawl along the bottom of this cold and dark world.
All because of dragons.
In the process of looking back at his words, Bom suddenly remembered something.
– And yet later I started feeling guilty about my actions against you kids.
– I started regretting lying to you all.
– And like you said, you started looking pretty.
– Yu Bom. Do you think you were the only one that found it weird?
Bom widened her eyes.
His unconscious words were a strand of solace shining through the sky filled with murky clouds.
He was feeling guilty.
And he was finding her pretty.
This was something she could not spot anywhere among the memories she had received from Myu.
Maybe he opened his heart to us, including me, even though he still hates dragons?
Bom expanded on that hypothesis.
Someone might hate tigers after losing a lot of loved ones to a tiger. But if that person happened to come across baby tigers and spent enjoyable times with them, wouldn’t it be possible for that person to become fond of those baby tigers?
It was definitely possible.
He opened his heart to us.
This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because ‘we’ were the only ones that he was fond of, despite him hating other dragons.
If we were the ones that tormented him to the brink of death, then shouldn’t we also be the ones making him happy? If there was salvation for him, then maybe we were the only ones that could do it?
When her thoughts reached this point, Bom started even considering this her mission.
It had to be this iteration.
In this iteration,
We had to save Yu Jitae…
“…”
Bom closed her eyes and ‘mentally prepared’ herself.
A virtual session of question and answer continued inside her mind. Within those suppositions, she would ask him a question and he would reply by saying something.
After coming up with 3,400 scenarios, Bom finally opened her eyes. Her head ached so much it felt as if it would explode but she had managed to find the one and only way to save him.
That was when he said to her, ‘Ask me anything. Anything is fine.’
Licking her lips, Bom opened her mouth.
“You will tell me everything honestly right…”
“Yes. Whatever it is.”
“I thought you were just a devil, and that all the sweet and good things you did for us were all fake…”
“…”
“But, not all of them were fake right.”
“…”
“Because you were feeling guilty. And you found me pretty. At least in some places, you were doing things sincerely for our sake… Am I correct…?”
Bom was nervous.
The single strand of solace was very weak. It was only after having a positive mindset to all her upcoming questions that she could finally gain the one way out.
Everything would become meaningless if any of the answers to her following questions were to stray away from her predictions.
“Yes. You are correct.”
Fortunately, Bom’s first question was met with an expected answer.
“My original plan was just to send you back to Askalifa. There was no reason for me to worry about what would happen after you went back but… I wonder when it began. By the time I realised it, I was excessively thinking of how I could give you better things.”
His intervention and manipulation of the apocalypse of another world for the sake of Kaeul’s new life, and all the education he had given to Yeorum, wishing for her safety after going back were all such examples.
“Why did you do that? Is it because you started to like us…?”
It was her second question. Bom asked for the reason behind his kindness.
“I won’t deny that. From some point in time, listening to your laughter became enjoyable, and I started wishing for the best of you guys even after my disappearance. Quite laughable indeed. It was an act with a mask but the stage had become my life when I came to myself…
“So you are correct.”
Ah…!
Yu Jitae’s reply was once again within the scope of Bom’s positive assumptions.
His kindness was not fake, and the reason behind his kindness was indeed because of their bond.
“…”
Bom saw hope.
The ground was the one that was slightly shifted out of place, and the foundational pillar of connection they had built with difficulty was still firmly standing there…!
Throughout the following conversations, Bom assigned his answers into the ‘hypothesis’ she had come up with and imagined how the future might look. Mysteriously enough, she could envision Yu Jitae demonstrating his connections with the baby dragons, just as she had anticipated!
It was just like the usual Yu Jitae…
“…”
However, as they continued unravelling what they had in mind, Bom started to feel mysteriously strange as she listened to his words. For some reason, she could sense relaxation from his voice.
It was difficult to express in words, but was similar to how one would explain the plot of an old movie…
The discomfort inside her grew bigger.
And thus, before throwing her ‘final question’ which she had prepared beforehand, Bom could not help but ask Yu Jitae one more thing.
It would be a very sudden question. It was a very sudden yet burdensome question, which she had been avoiding till now.
How was she supposed to ask this…?
She decided that the best would be a roundabout question with a smile.
After finishing her thoughts, Bom smiled as if there was a screw loose in her mind.
“It feels strange.”
“What is.”
“It’s as if, we will, part ways soon…”
The question was bulging out from the previous questions and was different in nature. Yu Jitae turned silent for a bit and in Bom’s eyes, he appeared to be in doubt.
Ah, was that question too abrupt?
But, it just suddenly felt strange…
It was when Bom was thinking along those lines, that he replied as if it was nothing important.
“Of course we need to part ways.”
In that instant,
The reeds crumbled down.
“……Sorry?”
Her head turned blank. Words fell to pieces and her heart shattered. She needed time to comprehend his words but drops of ink began to leave his mouth without waiting for her.
“That’s quite unexpected. I thought you would ask what I was doing in the underground isolation room first.”
“Uhh… that’s…”
“There, I was experimenting with the mutant black dragon’s heart. I analysed the Origin Fragment, and confirmed the dimensional coordinates of Askalifa and the required engines. It’s something I couldn’t find from you guys because of the Will of the Ancient One…”
“…”
“Now there are about 2-3 weeks until the last analysis of the coordinates is done. After this is over, I will be sending you guys straight back to Askalifa.”
The ink started writing down a word.
“There is something I need to ask you regarding that.”
And it soon finished its last stroke.
“What should we do in the remaining time?”
Farewell.