“Come on. Just put it on credit for now, will you? I’ll bring money later.”
When the man standing in the middle acted threateningly, the merchant in front flinched.
One fact Naro realized while gaining a healthy body and living adapted to a new world was that trash existed everywhere.
For example, like those men right now—bastards who tried to extort goods by putting forward the fancy-sounding word “advance payment” even though they had no money.
“Haah.”
Naro sighed deeply. In this village, they were quite famous for being of poor quality. And Naro regretted it. Of all times, he’d visited the plaza when they appeared. He turned his steps toward a side path to avoid getting caught up in the commotion.
“Huh?! Naro!”
As expected. The man who discovered Naro—Anton, who stood in the middle among the three acting as the boss—approached with big strides.
“Hey, when you see this hyung, you should greet him, okay?”
“Ah, hello.”
Naro barely managed to hide his displeasure and bowed his head.
“What did you buy so much of this early in the morning?”
Anton slowly scanned Naro from top to bottom. Just as he was feeling displeased by the blatant gaze, Anton placed his hand on Naro’s shoulder with a thud.
“You look like you have a lot of luggage, want me to carry some?”
Goosebumps rose naturally at the hand kneading his shoulder.
“Since I’m going to your house anyway, can I have a cup of coffee before I go?”
As if Anton’s unpleasant breath closing the distance even more was touching his skin, Naro smacked away the hand on his shoulder and stepped back.
“I can go by myself. And please make sure to give Ron ahjussi his money. Then.”
Ron ahjussi was the owner of the shop that Anton’s gang had tried to get an advance from earlier. Naro roughly bowed in greeting and quickly ran into the side path. And without knowing that a sticky gaze was clinging to him, he panted and ran straight home.
He looked back wondering what if they followed, but fortunately, the concern didn’t happen. Naro sighed in relief, unlocked the door with his key, and went inside.
“Dragon, I’m back.”
Since he’d never thought he’d come to greet someone saying he was back when entering the house, his somewhat excited voice awkwardly cut through the air and echoed inside the house. But strangely, the dragon that should have been on the makeshift bed wasn’t visible.
“Not again?”
But the window was closed and there were no more signs of the door being damaged. Just as his spine was getting chills wondering where and how it had disappeared again, a rustling sound came from the food storage area.
Come to think of it, the storage door that he’d definitely closed when leaving was slightly open. When he opened the door wide, what greeted Naro was a thoroughly messy scene.
“Huh?”
The ingredients that had been neatly stacked were all fallen to the floor, and the baskets were completely overturned. And in the middle of it, the dragon wearing an upside-down straw basket was staring intently at Naro.
“You were here? I told you not to move around yet.”
Naro crouched down in front of the dragon. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to have escaped again. Then Naro’s eyes caught what the dragon was preciously holding in its arms.
“This is…”
It was none other than the corn that Garnet ahjussi had brought.
“Why this… Ah.”
Then a scene flashed through Naro’s mind.
‘When you wake up later and get healthy, I’ll make it for you too. So you have to get better quickly and wake up.’
“…Ah.”
Only then did the words he’d said to the dragon come to mind. He’d definitely said while eating corn soup that it was delicious, and that he’d make it for the dragon too when it got healthy. At that time, the dragon still hadn’t regained consciousness, but it seemed it had been unconsciously hearing his voice after all.
“You want to eat this?”
The dragon laboriously led its body to approach and placed the corn down with a thud at Naro’s feet. At that cute behavior, Naro’s lips naturally relaxed. Originally he’d planned to feed it meat to help it regain strength, but since the dragon had come forward directly saying it wanted to eat this, Naro couldn’t not grant it.
“Alright, then I’ll make it for you.”
Naro took the corn and came out. After placing it on the table, he held the dragon that was limping along behind him in his arms and put it on the bed.
Then after asking the dragon to stay still obediently, he hurriedly made the soup. Truly joyfully, the dragon licked the bowl clean. It was practically going to make a hole in the bowl. Watching that, the corners of Naro’s mouth drew a pleasant arc.
After finishing the soup, it also ate the meat Naro had prepared just in case, and seeing that, it seemed the dragon hadn’t touched meat all this time because it wanted to eat the soup.
Once it started eating heartily, after that the baby dragon rapidly regained its strength. Now it could move to some degree, and whether the changed medicinal herbs helped or not, the wounds that had been healing slowly also showed improvement.
“Naro, you seem to be in a good mood these days!”
Naro, who came out to the plaza, smiled and responded to the greetings from the village people.
It was just as they said. Naro was in a good mood these days. Not only was the dragon he’d brought to save escaping the crisis of almost dying and regaining its health, but even its sharp wariness had disappeared.
“I’m back.”
As soon as he bought what he needed at the plaza and entered the house, urgent footsteps could be heard, and the baby dragon jumped toward Naro.
“Ugh…”
Even though it was a young dragon, since it had basic weight, each time this happened Naro’s body would sway backward.
“I told you not to jump like that yet.”
When Naro nagged softly, the baby dragon licked Naro’s lips while wagging its tail energetically. At first, just letting down its guard and allowing him close was moving, but these days the dragon was, how should he put it… right, it acted like a puppy that followed its owner well.
Naro was delighted by the dragon’s behavior. A life with limited time was always lonely and solitary. There was no family by his side, of course, nor even a single friend to worry about him. After dying and dimensionally transferring to this world, he was very happy to settle in this village and meet village people who took care of him like relatives. Because of this feeling, he could newly realize that people live by forming relationships with others.
But that didn’t mean the essential nature of others as an existence changed. The village people who took care of him devotedly also each had their own families and their own most precious existences. Even though the world he lived in changed and he gained a healthy body, one fact that didn’t change was that he didn’t have such an existence.
That’s why these days, the existence of this dragon that welcomed him when he came home was becoming more and more precious.
As a result, changes naturally occurred in Naro’s daily life too. First, after opening his eyes on the bed, the first thing he did was,
“Did you sleep here again today?”
It was to check on the baby dragon that had snuggled into his arms by lifting the blanket. Naro raised his upper body awkwardly and turned his gaze toward the fireplace side. There was the dragon’s makeshift bed that he’d made himself.
The baby dragon had been living there continuously since it entered this house. But from the point when it regained some strength and was recovering, it naturally burrowed into Naro’s bed.
Naro gently stroked the body of the baby dragon still soundly asleep. The texture of its body covered in lustrous scales was soft.
Sensing Naro’s touch, the dragon drowsily opened its eyes. It quietly met his gaze, then jumped onto Naro’s stomach and familiarly licked his lips.
“Yeah. Good morning.”
When he smiled and greeted it good morning, the baby dragon excitedly kept licking his cheeks and lips. It had started licking his lips at some point, and the worst time was in the morning. At first he wondered why it was doing this, but after roughly guessing later, he thought it was probably giving morning greetings in its own way.
After Naro wiped his damp face with his sleeve, he first checked the baby dragon’s wounds.
“They’ve healed a lot.”
Now it didn’t even need to have bandages wrapped separately anymore. There were also wounds that had completely healed with traces almost fading. Seeing Naro’s delighted face, the dragon wagged its tail excitedly.
Naro, who had properly woken up, got down from the bed, gauged today’s weather through the window, and went into the bathroom to wash up. During washing, crashing sounds could be heard from the food storage area, but Naro, now accustomed to it, came out after washing and leisurely headed to the storage.
This was also one routine. Having grasped that Naro woke up in the morning, washed, then prepared and ate breakfast, the dragon would first go into the food storage as soon as it woke up and pick out ingredients itself.
Seeing that behavior, he could realize this creature had quite high intelligence. In the first place, it even understood his words.
“Did you decide what to eat today?”
When he asked casually while wiping his dripping face with a towel, the dragon came walking forward holding an armful of ingredients.
“Corn again?”
The dragon nodded its head. While it was fascinating and very cute that it picked ingredients itself, the problem was that even though quite a lot of time had passed since the baby dragon recovered, it always chose corn for breakfast.
“Then I should eat corn soup today too.”
The dragon nodded and placed the corn in the arms of Naro who was crouching in front.
Anyway, thanks to the baby dragon, Naro also came to eat corn soup every morning, but honestly, it didn’t really matter.
Naro, who came out of the storage with the dragon, immediately made soup. Since the baby dragon still needed to recover more, he didn’t forget to prepare meat separately either.
