Minjae stared at the email notification on his monitor for a long, silent moment.
It was formal, brief, and devoid of ceremony—just a subject line and two short lines of text.
Subject: Promotion Confirmation
You are hereby appointed as Senior Analyst, effective immediately.
There were no grand gestures. No speech. No smiling manager stopping by his desk with a handshake. Just an administrative decision, issued without fanfare, and yet it landed with weight.
He leaned back in his chair, the glow of the screen washing over his face. The offer had been made before—months ago, quietly extended by upper management. Performance metrics, peer feedback, a whispered consensus that Yoo Minjae was long overdue. He'd declined it then, citing timing. Declined again after that, without giving much of a reason.
But this time, there had been no choice. Someone had made it for him.
Behind the decision, he recognized subtle pressure. Not Renner—he was gone, withdrawn without explanation, the quiet shadow he cast now erased from daily rumor. This came from the quieter corners of the company—the ones that noticed what others missed. The ones who saw that the humble business analyst had long outgrown his title.
It wasn't recognition he craved. Not really. Yet, as his eyes lingered on the words, he knew he wouldn't fight it anymore.
He closed the email and returned to work, as if nothing had shifted. But he felt the difference—slight, invisible, pressing against the edges of his silence.
"Wait, you didn't even tell us?"
Seori's voice shot up an octave as she stared at him across the lunch table, chopsticks frozen midair.
"You got promoted and said nothing?"
Minjae paused, midway through picking up a piece of grilled pork belly. The three women watched him expectantly. He lowered his chopsticks and cleared his throat.
"…It was finalized this morning."
Yura leaned back with a sly grin, tilting her head like she couldn't decide whether to scold or tease. "You're impossible. Most people would be throwing a party or—at least—posting something cryptic on the company board."
"I didn't think it mattered that much," Minjae said quietly.
Yuri stirred her cold noodles, her expression calm but her eyes on him. "It matters to us."
The way she said it wasn't accusatory. It was simple, soft—like someone laying a truth on the table and leaving it there.
Seori puffed her cheeks and looked away, clearly frustrated but unwilling to argue. Yura, on the other hand, clicked her tongue, dramatically waving for another side dish like she was punishing him by overordering.
"Well," Yura declared, voice filled with mock offense, "if you won't celebrate, then we'll do it for you. Right, girls?"
"Obviously," Seori said, quick to agree, though her lips pressed into a pout.
Yuri gave a small smile, finally lifting her eyes to meet his. "Let us treat you. This weekend. You don't get to disappear again."
Minjae blinked. "That's not—"
"You don't get to say no," Yura cut in before he could finish.
The words left no room for escape. Minjae looked at them one by one—the three women who, without his permission, had carved space around him. In quiet gestures, teasing smiles, and warm silences, they had pulled him into their orbit.
"…Fine," he said at last, resigned.
But somewhere in his chest, something stirred. Not entirely unpleasant. Unfamiliar, but undeniably real.
Later that night. Minjae was there by himself in his private lab. The office floors up above had all gone dark a while back. But down here, this faint blue light from the monitors kept things going. And there was this low pulsing glow coming off the rune-etched slab right on the table. It cast these sharp lines all across the room, kind of slicing through the shadows.
His fingers brushed over the carvings. Those intricate symbols glowed faintly, like they were alive or something. They curled across the stone in this weird, twisting way. Basically, they were replicas. Painstaking reconstructions of stuff he'd known from another world. I mean, fragments of a language older than any memory. Etched right into his hands back when he still had that dragon's form.
The glow shimmered under his touch. A reminder. A warning.
This was why he kept secrets. Why he wore plain ties and unremarkable suits. Why he lived as a faceless analyst in a company too large to notice the truth.
A dragon's knowledge locked inside a human's body. That was the truth he couldn't share.
He stared down at the rune, his reflection faintly mirrored in its light. His lips pressed together.
"…Recognition means nothing if I forget who I am," he muttered.
The words hung in the air, absorbed by humming servers and the faint crackle of magic caged in modern glass and steel. He wanted to believe them—wanted to remind himself that titles and promotions meant little. That they were human inventions, shallow compared to what he once was.
And yet—
He didn't want it to happen. But his mind just wandered off anyway. Three faces popped up there without him asking. Seori's eyes, the sharp ones that would soften up a bit when she figured he wasn't paying attention. Then Yura's grin, all fearless like that, never backing down. And Yuri's quiet way of being steady, always hanging back till the end but not pushing for anyone to notice her or anything.
He inhaled slowly, then let the air out.
Perhaps he was already forgetting. Just a little.
Not his past. Not what he was.
But what it meant to be entirely alone.