A/N: Hi, guys! Here's the next chapter. It's a bit long-ish one.

Kyuhyun woke up groggily, his head pounding, his face stinging, and the rest of his body aching like hell.

What happened?

He blinked his eyes and looked around. He was in his living room, lying on his couch. It was dark, with the only source of light being a lamp on a table in the corner of the room.

He sat up. Immediately, his vision started spinning, his living room suddenly swirling and revolving. His stomach also felt like it was starting a revolution down there, making him feel quite nauseous. He put a hand against his head in an attempt to steady his vision, but it did little help.

“Try not to move so much,” a voice in the darkness suddenly said.

Contrary to the voice’s instruction, Kyuhyun started at the voice and quickly turned around, increasing his feeling of nausea. But he was distracted from his ty feeling when he finally noticed Yesung there, skulking in the darkness.

“What are you doing here? How’d you get in my apartment? What happened?” Kyuhyun’s questions shot out in rapid fire.

Yesung moved closer to the couch. “What do you remember?”

Kyuhyun frowned, straining his memory. He was going home from the university. And then—the thief! His backpack! The alley! Being beaten up in the alley! And Yesung suddenly showed up and—

Kyuhyun’s recollection paused as he got to the part about how Yesung took down the thief. The great strength. The claws. The fire.

Looking at Yesung now through the darkness, he seemed relatively normal, though. No shiny claws. No fire-breathing.

Maybe Kyuhyun was just hallucinating in the alley? That had to be it. He was beaten up pretty badly, after all.

“How are you feeling?” Yesung asked now.

“Like ,” Kyuhyun replied honestly. No point denying it, was there? He felt like . He probably looked like , too. “What time is it?”

“Just a bit after midnight.”

Past midnight already. That meant he must have been unconscious for a couple of hours. Kyuhyun tried to reposition himself into a more comfortable position on the couch, but the movement jostled his aching body and made him groan.

“Can I get you anything?” Yesung inquired. Being a powerful dragon, he was not used to worrying. But he had found his rider now, and he now worried for his rider’s safety. He wanted to help Kyuhyun with his injuries, but Yesung was not familiar with the treatments in this world. He did not have access to salves that healers in the dragon realm used on riders. Besides, with his rider being from this world instead, he was not sure if their normal treatments would work on him.

“Can you get me an ice pack?”

“Okay. Where?”

“In the kitchen. The pack’s in a box on top of the fridge. Ice is in the freezer.”

“Fridge? Freezer?”

Kyuhyun shot Yesung a weirded out look. Was Yesung an idiot?

Seeing the look, Yesung said, “I am not from this world. I am not quite familiar with your everyday things and technology.”

Despite the situation and all that he witnessed in the alley, Kyuhyun still rolled his eyes. Ugh. These claims about being a dragon again! But he didn’t have the strength to argue right now, so he just gave Yesung a detailed description of the fridge and the freezer.

Yesung then nodded, and he went off to the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later with the ice pack, filled with ice cubes from the freezer. He silently handed the pack to Kyuhyun, who pressed it on top of his head, this time groaning in mild relief.

“How did we get inside the apartment?” Kyuhyun asked as he settled more comfortably on the couch.

“I used the keys from your backpack,” Yesung answered. Then, it was his turn to ask, “Is that why you chased after the thief? Because the keys to your home were in the bag that he stole?”

Kyuhyun shook his head (slowly and carefully so as not to make his dizziness worse). “Nah. I wasn’t even thinking about my keys at that point. My PSP was in my backpack, so I had to get it back.”

“And what is a ‘PSP’?” Yesung was assuming that it must be something of great significance, for Kyuhyun to run after the thief and risk his own neck.

“It’s a… a kind of gaming device.” Seeing the bewildered look on Yesung’s face, Kyuhyun reached down for his backpack, which he had noticed Yesung had placed on the floor beside the couch, and pulled out his beloved PSP. 

The very reason why he risked his life in an attempt to get it pack.

He handed it to Yesung, who took it curiously. Yesung eyed the device, still trying to understand what made it so important to his rider.

“See, you turn it on here,” Kyuhyun said as he pressed the power button. He had just been beaten up, but he was a gamer, and he relished in every opportunity to talk about his beloved games. The screen came to life. “You play games on it. You press the buttons here to make your character move and launch special attacks. It’s great! You need to know strategy, and you beat all your opponents…”

Yesung’s expression of confusion turned into one of incredulity. “You risked your life for this?!”

“Well, yeah,” Kyuhyun shrugged as he took his precious PSP back from Yesung. He turned it off and hugged it tightly against his chest. “It’s the love of my life.”

Yesung was just plain outraged.

“Cho Kyuhyun, you idiot!” (Little did the both of them know that this was only the beginning of the numerous times that Yesung would call his rider as such throughout their time together.)

Kyuhyun scowled. “Yes, I resent that remark!” He was in no way an idiot! He was a genius! He had the academic background to prove it!

“You risked your life for a gaming device?!”

“It was worth the risk!”

“That PSP can surely be replaced! I am certain that shops in this world sell other gaming devices like that! It can be replaced! Your life cannot be replaced!”

“This also can’t be replaced!” Kyuhyun insisted, hugging the PSP even tighter. “You don’t know how much time and effort I placed in the games here!”

“I have seen reckless actions from riders over the centuries, but none was as reckless and pointless as what you had done earlier!” Yesung just continued to rant. How did his rider survive for so long with this kind of recklessness and idiocy?

“Okay, I’ll agree with you on ‘reckless’, but it wasn’t ‘pointless’!” Then, he paused, processing the rest of Yesung’s words. “…What do you mean ‘over the centuries’?”

 “I am a dragon. I have been alive for many centuries. As such, I have witnessed many things. However, I have never seen a dragon, a rider, or even just an ordinary human as stupid as you.”

Kyuhyun glared. “First, I’m not stupid. Second, you’re not a dragon.”

Yesung looked disbelievingly at him. “After what you have seen in the alley, you still to refuse to believe me?” His rider really was an idiot, then.

Kyuhyun pursed his lips. “The thief pounded my head onto the ground many times. I was obviously hallucinating.”

“You were not hallucinating. You have seen proof that I am telling the truth. I really am a dragon, and you are my dragon rider.”

“Yesung, I appreciate the help earlier, but I just got beaten up badly. I am not in the physical and mental state to deal with your insane claims right now,” Kyuhyun just huffed as he stood up.

Yesung was quite annoyed that Kyuhyun still would not believe him, but he still dutifully followed his rider as Kyuhyun walked out of the living room.

“You’re still stalking me until now?” Kyuhyun said when he noticed Yesung walking quietly behind him, like his shadow.

“You are unsteady. I must be ready to catch you if you fall.”

And true enough, Kyuhyun’s legs were shaky and wobbly as he walked toward his bathroom. Thankfully (for Kyuhyun’s pride), he reached the bathroom without falling and, more importantly, without needing further assistance from his weird stalker. Who also happened to be his savior. His weird stalker savior.

“God, I really do look like ,” Kyuhyun groaned as he looked at his reflection on the bathroom mirror. He opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed a tube of ointment, and started to gingerly dab the ointment on the wounds on his face. “Still… it’s not as bad as it could have been.”

“Your body has healed quite a lot in just the past couple of hours,” Yesung remarked.

His face, which had been quite swollen only two hours ago, only had a bit of swelling left. The cuts on his face were already half healed, and his nose was looking much better, given that it had been broken only hours ago. The bruises were light, and his black eye was starting to fade.

“I have fast metabolism,” Kyuhyun shrugged carelessly as he continued to apply the ointment.

“It is because you are a dragon rider.”

Kyuhyun glared at Yesung’s reflection on the mirror. Didn’t he just say a while ago that he was not in the mood for talks about dragons and dragon riders?

“It’s because I have fast metabolism!” he insisted. “My dad told me, and he would know! He’s a doctor!” Years ago, when Kyuhyun was a child, he had noticed that he healed faster than his peers. When he asked his father, he was told that it was because his body simply had faster metabolism than others.

“Your metabolism is fast because you are a dragon rider,” Yesung explained. “It is one of the skills and powers of riders.”

“How did you find me in the alley, anyway?” Kyuhyun asked instead. Mostly because he wanted to change the topic from Yesung’s insane claims, but also because he was kind of curious as to how Yesung suddenly came to be in the alley to save him.

“I was following you from a distance. I saw you get robbed and chase after the thief.”

“You were stalking me again today?!” Kyuhyun demanded as he started putting bandages and band-aids on the wounds on his arms.

“I have been following you all week. I never really left,” Yesung stated simply.

He said it such as matter-of-fact tone that it was as though there was nothing odd or creepy at all about stalking someone all week. And also willingly admitting to the stalking, at that.

“You didn’t leave when I told you to?! You’ve still been following me all week?!” Kyuhyun demanded, quite annoyed. Annoyed because he had thought that he was free from Yesung, only to find out that he had still been