"As you know, we dragons have been trying our hardest to find a way to close the rifts permanently since ancient times." Oathran said, recounting history rather than personal experience.

"And even though our number has been dwindling each century thanks to the holy war, nowadays, it is safer and easier for regular beast or human mages to enter and close a portal, thanks to the combined effort of the world. So I’m sure we will find more solutions soon."

That was too much information. Dragons... rifts... a holy war that had been culling their numbers for centuries... She wanted to ask a thousand questions. She wanted to stop him and demand explanations for every single sentence he had just uttered.

But she kept her mouth shut. If she interrupted, what if he stopped talking?

"I’m four hundred years old now." Oathran’s lips curved into a faint smile. "Just... a bit older than that."

Ah.

So his age in this world was the same as his age in the real world.

"I have been a "hunter" since before the modern Hunter Association even existed. In the past, they called themselves the Hunter’s Guild, or whatever—" He chuckled. "—and we did not need permits to fly or enter a rift to close it."

His gaze drifted toward the window, his grey eyes fixing on something distant. The glittering skyline, the grey winter sky, or perhaps a memory that was visible only to him. "But then I discovered cooking."

"After the last holy war, we lost so many people." Oathran said, his voice dropped, becoming quieter. "I fell into the worst depression I have ever had. And..." He sighed. "And I decided to take a cooking class." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

He turned back to her and smiled.

He told her everything. He had become a chef, an artist and a master of a craft. He had created a three-star dining experience, the kind of restaurant that had waiting lists months long, that critics wrote about in reverent tones, that people traveled across the world to experience. He had maintained it for ten years.

"I was happy." He nodded, as though he were agreeing with himself. "I think becoming a chef and taking the profession to its utmost limit, has been one of my greatest achievements so far."

Cooking. The act of creating something beautiful and fleeting, something that existed only to be enjoyed and then gone. That was what he considered his greatest achievement.

"But duty called," his voice softened slightly, the nostalgia fading into something more resigned. "The next cycle of the century’s rift outbreak arrived and the number of rifts increased exponentially."

"When I was still a chef, the rifts were in their downside cycle. I could go once a week and close them one by one within a night’s trip. It was quite manageable." He shrugged. "But now, the rifts are much harder to close. I can only do one every night."

"So I decided to resign from being a full-time chef. I treated the one-rift-a-night closing as a part-time job," his lips quirked, "and I took another part-time job as a burger-flipper."

Cecilia blinked. A three-star chef and a four-hundred-year-old dragon. A rift-closing hunter who fought holy wars, whatever it was—and he decided to flip burgers at McKing.

"You understand, right?" He leaned forward, his mist grey eyes meeting hers. "I am going to lose my mind if I don’t do anything else other than closing rifts. At least at McKing, I can do mindless work while standing in front of a grill, which I love doing. It’s therapeutic."

Cecilia’s eyes faltered.

Apparently in this world... Oathran was more...

Honest.

With himself, at the very least.

He was more open, more willing to admit that he was tired, that he had been broken and that he had found something that made him happy.

More importantly, he had refused to let it go even when duty demanded otherwise. He still carried an unbelievable burden, the rifts, the monsters, the slow, grinding war that had been going on since ancient times. He still had an ambition to save the world.

But he had also chosen himself.

He had taken a cooking class without anyone telling him to. He had taken it because he admitted that he was depressed and lost and needed something to hold onto, and cooking had been there.

He had achieved something other than saving the world.

And even when he needed to step back from that achievement, even when the rifts demanded more of his time and energy than he could spare, he had chosen to keep his place in the kitchen.

Any kitchen.

Even the kitchen of a fast food franchise, standing in front of a grill, flipping patties for minimum wage.

Cecilia loved it. She loved him. She loved this version of him, who had learned that survival was not the same as living, and that living meant making space for joy even when the world was ending—

But it meant that in this world... unlike the real world... Oathran never needed to sacrifice himself.

He had never needed to die.

He had never been forced to choose between his life and the world’s survival. The Key did not exist here.

That was why this version of him existed at all.

This Oathran who still carried the weight of the world on his shoulders but had learned to set it down occasionally, to rest, to live.

"Oathran." Cecilia called his name, soft, hesitant. "After a month and a half ago... actually, I’m p—"

"Madam."

Cecilia’s mouth closed and Oathran’s posture shifted beside her. She turned toward the voice and saw Gregor and Thalia standing at the edge of their table, flanked by two tiger bodyguards in black suits and black sunglasses.

The four of them were massive. Mountains of muscle and fur barely contained by their tailoring.

In the real world, of course Cecilia knew them. Gregor and Thalia were Anton Vasiliev’s closest people, the beating heart of the Vasiliev household’s loyalty. She even recognized one of the bodyguards. Piotr, the messenger.

But this was not the real world, and in this world, she didn’t yet know what these people were to her.

Oathran stood unhurriedly, his gait suggesting that he was placing himself between a potential threat and the woman beside him. Cecilia followed immediately, her hand finding his and squeezing gently.

Thalia took a breath. She seemed to have been worried for days and was only now allowing herself to feel the first edges of relief when he saw Cecilia. "You kept ignoring our messages and calls, Madam. We regret disturbing your personal time like this, but..."

Ah. So they were still the same like the real world.

They were on her side.

The problem was, people were starting to look.

From the surface, the steakhouse had seemingly become a stage for an impromptu drama. Diners at nearby tables paused mid-bite, their eyes flicking toward the cluster of imposing figures in suits and the mist white-haired man standing beside the woman in the center of it all.

Cecilia noticed the crease between Oathran’s eyebrows. The tigers might not have noticed, but they were in far more danger than anyone could imagine right now.

"I understand." She said calmly. "Forgive me. I was only clearing my mind. We can talk."

She turned to Oathran. His eyes met hers, and she saw the discomfort. He had just shared everything with her. His age, his depression, his cooking, his life...

And now, before she could respond, before she could offer him anything in return, her life had barged in uninvited.

No. Of course he wanted to know everything about her. That was not the problem. The problem was that this felt... crass. Forced. The intimacy of moments ago, shattered by the intrusion of suits and bodyguards and the cold, formal address of Madam.

"Do you want to stay here?" Cecilia asked gently, her hand still holding his.

Oathran’s eyes widened. He had not expected the question.

"Madam, that is—"

Cecilia raised her free hand, and Gregor’s protest stopped.

"Can I really stay?" Oathran asked quietly, almost disbelieving, "And listen to... whatever you are going to talk about with them?"

"I didn’t want to do it like this, I’m sorry," Cecilia said apologetically, her eyes holding his, meaning every word. "But actually, this is good timing. You have the right to know."

The right to know?

He thought, for Cecilia, they were just a casual encounter. A moment of weakness, where she had chosen them but might just as easily un-choose them when her real life came calling.

Did he have the right to know because he was one of the men who had slept with her a month and a half ago? Because he and his two best friends stopped her tears and exchanged it with pleasure?

Whatever the reason, he didn’t want to back down.

Retreating to the safe, polite distance of a stranger was no longer an option now. It honestly was never an option ever since—

No. She had asked him to stay. She had told him he had the right to know, and that should be enough reason.

He would be damned if he let her face whatever was coming alone.

"Please take a seat." Cecilia gestured to the empty chairs across the table. Then she turned to the bodyguards, her voice firm but not unkind. "And you two, please wait outside."

"Madam..." Thalia said reluctantly.

Cecilia shook her head, final. "We are safe here. I promise you, there is no place safer than this place."

Her hand tightened around Oathran’s, and he felt it. His eyes trembled.

She trusted him.

Thalia and Gregor exchanged a glance and then, reluctantly, they sat. Cecilia and Oathran sat back down as well, their chairs pulled close and their hands still intertwined beneath the table.

"So." Cecilia began. "Has Arzhen processed the papers?"