Archmage's Restaurant - Chapter 84: A Week in Korea (3)

“You! You!”

“……”

“You! You! You! You! You! You!”

Lost in thought, I was startled when Rurin kept calling for me without stopping. Her voice finally snapped me back to reality, and I looked at her.

“What? What?”

Somehow, she had climbed onto my back and was frowning, yelling right into my ear.

“First, get off my back.”

“This place is strange! What kind of world is this? Everything is glowing and moving around weirdly.”

“What’s this? Our great dragon is scared? …Ouch! Stop it! Rurin!”

Rurin, clearly offended by my teasing, began pulling at my hair. She was breathing heavily, clearly flustered.

“There’s no way someone like me would ever be scared!”

“Alright, alright. Just get down!”

She finally climbed off my back, brushing off her hands. It felt like she had yanked out a few strands of my hair.

Rurin then looked around, her frown deepening as she took in her surroundings.

“You seem so calm. But for me, this is the first time! What kind of world is this?”

“I’m not exactly calm. It’s been 15 years, and I’m still in shock. But I guess it’s easier for me than for you.”

“Fifteen years?”

“This is the world I used to live in.”

“Hmm?”

Rurin tilted her head, clearly confused. After thinking for a while, she nodded as if something finally clicked.

“Oh! That thing you mentioned before! So, we’ve traveled between dimensions! Wow!”

Her eyes grew wide with surprise, her expression genuinely shocked.

It made sense that even a dragon would be amazed. I had once asked Rurin if there was a spell among the 10th-class mental magic dragons could use to travel between dimensions, and she had said it was impossible, even for them.

Rurin also already knew that I had come from another dimension. Dragons, being so knowledgeable about magic, would understand such things easily.

When I first told her about my origin, her reaction had been similar—just a casual “Oh.”

Now that we were actually here, her reaction was more intense, but still, there was a sense of familiarity.

I had never really explained what my home was like, so it made sense she was being cautious now.

“This is just a more advanced world. The technology is more developed, the buildings are taller, and those things on the road aren’t monsters, they’re just transportation vehicles.”

“I don’t get it. But it doesn’t matter. As long as I have you.”

“Well, thanks for that.”

The truth was, I felt the same way. Rurin and I looked at each other and nodded firmly. Then, we held hands and started walking down the street again.

To be honest, there was only one thing I wanted to do now that I was back. The main reason I had wanted to return to Earth from the other world was because of my parents.

If not for the desire to see them again after we were separated, I would have been content to stay in the other world.

The black hole that had appeared because of the summoning spell had accidentally brought me back to this world.

So, the first thing I had to do was find my parents. Then, I would go back. My real life was on the other side now.

But to do that, I needed money. Especially in this world, where it’s hard to survive without money. Well, it was the same in Grayke.

Luckily, getting money wasn’t difficult.

I reached for the gold belt I wore. Who would have thought this would come in handy? This golden belt was something you could easily find in a dragon’s lair. Sure, I could always use summoning magic to summon more gold, but for now, selling this belt would be the quickest way to get by.

Using summoning magic again felt like a bad idea—at least until I found my parents. I didn’t want to risk it.

As long as I was here, I had a goal to accomplish.

If summoning magic had brought us here, it stood to reason that using it again would send us back to Grayke. Based on the theory of the black hole, it seemed entirely possible.

Of course, I did want to return to Grayke, but that would be after I finished what I needed to do here.

So, I took off the belt. Gold is a universal currency, accepted anywhere, in any world.

We went to the nearest gold shop and exchanged the belt for cash. Naturally, I had to resort to using dragon mental magic to get around the issue of needing identification.

I had always told Rurin not to use mental magic on humans, but in situations like this, there wasn’t much choice.

Well, the world is full of compromises.

Anyway, thanks to my gold belt and Rurin’s mental magic, we got a good deal, and now we had plenty of money for the time being.

“Rurin, hold onto this. If we get separated for any reason, use this to buy whatever you need. Got it?”

“Oh, this is the money of this place? It’s not coins, but paper? The livestock on the ranch would love this.”

“They have coins here too, but in this world, paper money is worth more.”

“Really?”

Rurin looked at the cash in her hands with a bewildered expression. She didn’t seem particularly interested and just shoved it into her pocket.

Even in the other world, Rurin understood the concept of money, but she had no real interest in it. Of course, she liked jewels.

But that was just a dragon’s instinct to love shiny things, not because she valued them as currency.

Now that we had money, it was time to start looking for my parents. The best place to start would be the neighborhood where I used to live.

Looking around for transportation, I spotted a subway station. As soon as I saw it, I took Rurin with me and headed underground. When we got down there, I noticed that the subway map was far more complicated than it had been 15 years ago.

Well, they say a lot can change in 10 years.

“You! This underground place is even bigger than my lair! What is this? I don’t like it.”

Annoyed by something trivial, Rurin furrowed her brows in frustration, so I tugged on her ear.

“This isn’t your home, so stop acting like it’s some kind of competition.”

“Ow!”

Rurin rubbed her ear, looking wounded, while I looked for the bathroom. The thought of heading back to my parents’ neighborhood must have made me nervous, because I suddenly needed to pee.

“Rurin, stay right here. I’m going to the bathroom. You don’t need to go, right?”

“No. I can control it. Unlike you. Hehe.”

“Well, aren’t you amazing.”

Honestly, it was a pretty impressive ability. Being able to control when you need to use the bathroom? I was a little envious.

***

Rurin watched El disappear into the bathroom, then took a closer look at the blue sign. After a moment, she glanced back toward the crowd of people.

Rurin, with her heightened sense of smell, hated the scent of bathrooms. Even though the subway bathroom was cleaner than those in Grayke, there was no way Rurin could know that.

She stood there, observing the humans passing by. The strange clothes they wore. Everything about them was so bizarre, so strange that it wasn’t even worth calling strange anymore.

“El’s hometown is full of weirdos.”

Then, something else caught her attention. She focused on the place where people were holding up something and passing through a gate.

Of course, it was the subway turnstile. But to Rurin, it was an incomprehensible contraption.

Curiosity swelled inside her. She couldn’t accept that there was something she, a great being, didn’t understand.

So, she mimicked the humans.

She placed her hand where they had touched the gate.

Beep!

Suddenly, a barrier lowered, blocking her way.

“Oh?”

Even that seemed interesting to her.

“What is this? Funny. Should I break it?”

Just as Rurin was about to make a decision that would have earned her a long lecture from El, a small child behind her tapped her back, speaking up. The subway gate had just been spared.

“Big sis, you need to tap your card!”

The little girl waved a card in front of Rurin.

“A card?”

Rurin tilted her head in confusion.

“This! A transit card.”

The little girl walked up to the turnstile, tapped her card, and passed through with a beep.

“Big sis, how do you not know this? You’re an adult.”

After tucking her card back into a necklace pouch, the girl delivered that bombshell. Normally, such words wouldn’t have been tolerated by Rurin, but since she had no clue what a transit card was, the girl was safe.

Curiosity had overridden any potential anger.

“I don’t know.”

“You can buy it over there. My mom bought it for me.”

“Over there?”

The girl pointed, not to the machine that sold single-use tickets, but to the convenience store. Rurin’s gaze followed her finger, still filled with curiosity.

It was nothing special. Normally, Rurin would have smashed through anything blocking her way, but for some reason, she wanted to try using the beep sound that everyone else had. When Rurin wanted to try something, she had to do it. That was just how she was.

There was no deeper meaning behind it.

“Hyeon-ah! What are you doing?”

“Mom!”

The girl’s mother, who had already gone through the turnstile, called out loudly. The little girl ran to her mother.

Rurin had already lost interest in the girl. Her focus had shifted to the convenience store the girl had pointed out. Rurin confidently walked toward it.

Inside were all sorts of strange items. The basic structure of the store was similar to a general store in Grayke, so Rurin made her way to the counter and spoke to the man working there. No, she commanded him.

“Give me a transit card.”

“A transit card?”

The convenience store clerk was caught off guard by Rurin’s commanding tone, but he handed her the card, entranced by her beauty.

“Here it is. How much would you like to load onto it?”

“What is that?”

Rurin frowned, glaring at the clerk. Despite being a dragon, she had become familiar with human practices from spending so much time with El. After all, running a restaurant was her main job, so she understood the concept of buying and selling things.

However, the idea of loading money onto a transit card was completely foreign to her. She had no idea what it meant.

As someone who could understand and translate any language, Rurin couldn’t comprehend concepts that didn’t exist in her world. Her frown deepened, a sign she was getting irritated.

“You have to load money onto the card to use it.”

But the clerk kept repeating the same phrase about loading money.

Rurin, on the verge of exploding, glared at the clerk. This was his final warning.

“So what is this ‘loading’? Explain it!”

“Well, you need to put money onto the card to use it, and the money…”

As he spoke, the clerk trailed off, suddenly realizing how foreign Rurin looked. Her perfect features and the color of her eyes stood out, even though she had been speaking fluent Korean. He was about to explain in English, but when he mentioned money, Rurin finally understood and happily dug into her pocket.

“Oh, money? Why didn’t you say so earlier? I have that! Will this work?”

Her pocket was stuffed with cash that El had given her. Rurin pulled out a wad of 50,000 won bills and held them out to the clerk.

“This should do, right? You’re slow for a clerk. El wouldn’t be happy with how sluggish you are. Tsk tsk.”

Rurin scolded the clerk based on her experience working at El’s restaurant.

“What? Uh…”

But the clerk was still in shock, barely able to respond.

He looked like he might cry.