I Raised A Black Dragon

“……” How can I leave her when she’s like that? Staring at her, Kyle concluded that Noah was a languid cat. On a sunny day, the cat would lie on its belly by the window and doze off under the sun. She would only come when she felt like it or when she needed her owner, and when she finished, she returned to her place and dozed off again.

“Then do it quickly…” Kyle muttered, sighing.

Noah’s face lit up as soon as Kyle gave her a positive answer. Still, it was admirable to see her move the pen with fervor unlike before, and eventually Kyle took the seat across her.

Fortunately, he benefited from it. No matter how much of a workaholic he was since he was born, he needed a minimum time of rest.

“Miss Noah, what was your original hair color?” Kyle blurted out suddenly, as he watched Noah, who shook and massaged her wrist from time to time, as if her arm was hurting.

“Me?” Noah raised her head at the random question, and Kyle immediately realized he had asked a stupid question, shaking his head hurriedly. “No, it’s-”

“It was brown.” Noah answered casually, ignoring Kyle’s embarrassment with his own eccentricity. There was no emotion in her eyes other than the annoyance at her own situation where she was about to be buried in pages of reflection. 

…May I ask you some more, then? As soon as Kyle thought so, the next question slipped from his mouth. “What color were your eyes?”

“My eyes were similar to the color of my hair. Bright brown. I’ve heard a lot say that I don’t have very much pigmentation.” Noah answered Kyle again this time, her voice gentle. Somehow, she even looked very cheerful. “It was a bit of a hereditary thing. I looked like my mom.”

“…I see.”

“My face wasn’t as pretty as the face of Eleonora, but it was worth looking at. If I knew I was going to be in this world, I would have taken my body with me. Then, it wouldn’t have been necessary to come into this body and suffer like this.” Noah continued, sighing.

With her words, strange occurrences of her life sounded so insignificant. Noah muttered a few more words in a deep voice, moving the pen furiously, ready to smash her forehead to the piles of letters. It was one of the few sights of a motivated Noah Kyle had ever seen. 

Suddenly, a random thought crossed Kyle’s mind. The shell Noah was wearing, it really didn’t go with her. Noah was a very ordinary person, as she always insisted, though with a consistent expression of fullness. She was far from being involved with weapons, prisons, crimes and trials.

At first, Kyle assumed her appearance was similar to Eleonora, but today he believed Noah didn’t match her shell. Once he thought about it, the branches of his thoughts stretched out. Park Noah’s original body. Her original face.

Kyle was intrigued about such things. However, it was unlikely that he would reach the end of his curiosity.

Thud. Noah, who jotted the last word so hard that the tip of the pen broke, snapped Kyle out of his trance. “I’m done! Can I go up now?”

“…Yes, good work.” Kyle gave up on his thoughts and got up from his seat with Noah’s last letter of apology.

The trial was just tomorrow.

*

Penelope stayed in her office all afternoon. The large translucent screen that floated in front of her desk was playing a record from the tape that her boss handed over.

It was really unusual for Kyle to miss something as he was a person who calculated at least five or six numbers at once. Had it not been for his injury, he would not have handed over the chip containing this information to Penelope.

“Phew… what the hell is going on.”

The recording lasted about fifteen hours exactly two days ago, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. the next day. Everything that happened in the mana operating room was shocking in itself, but there was something else that surprised Penelope the most.

It was a record of around three o’clock in the morning.

“I was a little worried if I could come back up, but fortunately you came.”

The screen was dark, but judging from the rough silhouette, Penelope could tell what the situation was. 

“Good. It would have been pretty difficult if Miss Noah hadn’t come down.”

Almost at the same time as when Kyle spoke, the screen glowed a subtle orange. Penelope  could glimpse a hair with the color apricot. There was only one woman she knew with such unusual hair. Eleonora Asil.

“Have you had dinner?”

“…You’re asking me if I had dinner in this situation?”

“Are you hurt? I was worried!”

Penelope assumed the conversation wasn’t between Kyle and Eleonora. There was no way it could be, she thought. Eleonora Asil had fifteen previous convictions. After adding the latest case, she became a violent criminal with sixteen convictions. Furthermore, Kyle Leonard was her exclusive investigator.

I can’t believe they’re in a relationship like that…

However, it is difficult to quench her doubts. Why did Kyle have to be next to Eleonora when she wrote a letter of apology in the first place? For several days, it was only the two of them in a closed interrogation room.

When Penelope attempted to call him, his boss’s voice over the phone was as cold as usual, but…

Penelope frowned and fidgeted with the recorder. Unbeknownst to Kyle, she had put a small recorder under the desk in the interrogation room where Eleonora was being questioned. Of course, she would be dead lest she is caught, but there was something suspicious about their conversation that she had to take the risk.

“Miss Noah, what was your original hair color?”

“It was brown.”

Penelope’s face clouded with doubt, but even more so, with embarrassment. “Why would you talk like this?”