We teleported off.
"Wait, where are we?" I asked, startled. Why had Llewellyn got us to Central Baekhaven?
"Food," Llewellyn said, tossing an artifact to me. "We skipped breakfast, lunch, coffee, and everything in-between. I'm starving. What would you like?"
Oh. Now that he said it, I was starving too.
I activated the artifact.
"Anything is fine," I said, "but let's choose somewhere we can talk. Though—Um." I tugged the collar of my coat. "I should probably buy a scarf from the System shop first."
Llewellyn looked amused. "You're using concealment. Only I will see them."
I raised my eyebrows. "Why, you like looking at them?"
Llewellyn eyed me. "Obviously."
"…"
…Uh.
There was a tree right behind him. And we were using artifacts. Maybe I could crowd him against it and—
"Brunch fine?" Llewellyn said, heading off to Haneul Lane. His ears had gone slightly pink. "There are several places around here."
I shook myself.
What was I doing?! I needed to tell him about the percentage thing first.
…Ah, I really wanted to kiss him.
***
We sat down and ordered our food.
I braced myself to tell him, but what came out of my mouth was—
"We… um… still need to choose a name for the dragon."
Ah, damn it.
Well, that was true anyway.
Llewellyn hummed. "What were you thinking?"
I equipped an artifact for Penguin too and placed him on the table.
"None of the names I could think of suit him," I said. "But I was thinking that we could go full Innishae and put a blessing together for him, mixing word roots. That's what I would have done for Penguin anyway, if he didn't have other ideas."
Penguin chirped, completely unbothered by the idea that he'd passed on a blessing. He still liked his name, it seemed.
"It's not a bad idea," Llewellyn said.
Our coffees were brought to the table and Penguin jumped onto my lap to hide, just in case; then he looked up at the waiter with round eyes—though the waiter obviously couldn't see him.
When the waiter left, I took a sip, sinking into my chair, then watched Penguin climb up onto the table again.
"Where should we start?" Llewellyn said.
Ah, I really didn't know.
I was never really interested in etymology stuff in school, so I only remembered the basics, but still, it should be enough?
"Let's start with what we have," I said, like I knew what I was doing. "He's on Mount Dalrin now—that should be 'dal' (Korean for moon) and 'rinn' (Irish for point or peak), if I remember correctly. I suppose we can discard 'rinn', since it's not really suitable here. Can we go for a moon blessing? Which Irish suffixes did we historically use for Innishaean blessings? -mor? -wan? -wynn? -baine?"
I hope I wasn't mixing those up. That would be… Dalmor, or Dalwan, or Dalwynn, or Dalbaine?
…Okay, maybe not. I mean, they sounded Innishaean enough, but also like… yoghurts.
When I said that, Llewellyn snorted.
"I was initially thinking of a blessing of brightness or radiance," I pivoted after a moment, "but thinking about it, we have too much 'baek' around here already."
"That's relative," Llewellyn said. "It could work. We also don't have to use Baek-, we could go with Hwyeo-, or Hwan-, or Hwi-, or even Ryeo- or something similar. They sound more natural in names. Or we could find another angle. He was very friendly. Jeong? Gyeo-something?"
Mmh. That might suit him. I tried to picture it.
I mean, naming things wasn't exactly a skill on my resume, so I was going off vibes.
Still, I really liked the G sound for him. It seemed to suit him.
"We also excluded rinn, from Korean, because it means peak," Llewellyn said. "But -rin was used in older Innishean blessings as a term for affection or fondness. Probably because of the Irish diminutive -in."
I took out my phone and did a quick search. "Oh, you're right. This says -in and -án were both used as a diminutive in blessings."
We mulled this over for a bit, tossing names out, but couldn't come up with anything that sounded right.
"Among all the ones we came up with, Hyeonan is not a bad option," Llewellyn said. "It does what we want it to do."
"But it doesn't suit him." The lack of G sound was bothering me. "What if we keep the sentiment, but switch it around—Irish or English first, then Korean?"
"Irish for brightness you mean?" Llewellyn said. "Like Loinnir, Glé-, or Gile?"
Uh. Yes! Glé- seemed to match him great.
"I have an idea," I said. "Hold on a second."
***
Between the food, the coffee, and a dozen bad name attempts, we finally wrapped up the naming debate and headed out.
"I need to go now," I sighed.
We'd settled on a name we both liked, with a proper blessing to match that suited our dragon friend, but… well, it made more sense to go back the following day, so that we could see how he was doing after a night alone. Besides—
"I don't want to skip my Core Partition hour," I explained, "and I have to work tonight."
Llewellyn hummed, then looked at me.
What?
"It's none of my business," Llewellyn said, "but you should quit your job."
…Damn it. Couldn't people just let it go?
"What, are you going to get me fired if I don't?"
"Why would I—" Llewellyn sounded annoyed. "Obviously not. But think about it. The reason Emma hired your team to monitor my online presence is because, objectively, it's better if I don't read all that nonsense about myself and I'm only aware of the bare minimum. If your job is looking at content on me, that's one thing. But on yourself? Eight hours a day six days a week? That's not a good idea. In fact, you should probably quit as an employee and get the System to hire the agency to do the same for you, considering the latest threat to your Gran. Or we could just expand my project to include you as well, since it already does anyway. I doubt Emma would mind, especially if the System bumps her pay up."
I… didn't know what to say to that.
Nothing about what he said was wrong. But.
When I didn't reply, Llewellyn eyed me.
"You're upset."
I wasn't upset! I mean, I had no reason to. He was right.
Ah, I didn't want to explain it. It sounded pathetic.
"I will… drop more days," I said. "Keep only one or two if they let me. That should probably be fine."
Llewellyn sighed.
"Alright," he said. "I'll expect you to keep teleporting in unannounced, then."
Uh? Wait—
He was right! I hadn't apologized!
"You can't really think I want an apology," Llewellyn said, when I tried to. He sounded amused.
What?
His gaze landed on my throat. "Let's just say, next time you want to take my shirt off, you don't need to ask for permission," he said. And teleported off.
"..."
Well, damn.
I think my brain just exploded.