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Water falls in an ocean from the sky, day after day in a city more accustomed to the earth cracking open than the heavens splitting. Makoto hurries to work with an umbrella in hand and returns home with it over his head. A single shake sends droplets pattering onto the floorboards of the hallway and the slippers in the genkan. Fafnir’s (unused) pair sits next to his own.
“Towel’s on the couch.”
That this has become routine is something Fafnir tries in vain to forget. At the sudden flurry of sneezes, he passes a box of tissues over without taking his eyes off the screen.
“What level are you at?” Makoto enquires.
Fafnir grunts. “Almost finished.”
“Wouldn’t have expected anything less from Faf-kun.”
Water flicked off Makoto’s still-damp hair catches on the controller, and Fafnir bites back a complaint. The last golem’s life bar flashes red and detonates. Enemies vanquished for the moment, he glances up at his roommate, who has slung the towel around his neck.
“You’re cooking.”
“Tonkatsu ramen tonight,” Makoto grins. Cooking under their roof usually doesn’t extend past throwing frozen meals in the microwave or boiling enough water for two cups of instant noodles. “Some rain we’re having, huh? I can’t remember the last time we had this much of a downpour. Looks like it won’t let up till next Thursday.”
Makoto passes the pile of neatly folded clothes on his way to the bathroom. “I’ll make dinner as soon as I’m out of the shower.”
The game spits Fafnir out onto the next level. His hands move on autopilot. Whether Makoto comes home soaked or dry is none of his concern. He gives the human towels and tissues because it would be inconvenient to have him bedridden. Someone has to make an income to buy their curry and video games.
Why can’t that someone be him? He could be doing more to support Makoto –
Startled, Fafnir’s hands slip. Game over. Clicking his tongue in annoyance, Fafnir logs off. Dragons are not housekeepers, no matter what Tohru thinks.
The rain intensifies in a sudden rush, drowning out the sound of the shower. The echoing roar reminds Fafnir of the weather gods and serpents he used to clash with when his cavern was still home, and the gold his only company. Tohru has mentioned on occasion exploiting her powers for some sun, but Fafnir has none of her frivolity and lack of good sense.
The next morning, wispy curls of white drift across an expanse of eggshell blue. Not a grey cloud is in sight. The forecasters on the morning news exchange breathy speculation on what could have caused the low-pressure system to simply move out to sea overnight.
Humans and their science, Fafnir snorts. Why overcomplicate magic?
“It’s a miracle!” Makoto exclaims on poking his head outside. In a daze, he places the umbrella in its stand beside the door and slips on his shoes. “Guess I’ll be heading out then. You get some sleep, Faf-kun!”
“You know I do not sleep.”
But he is already gone, daylight engulfing his figure.
Some days, Fafnir forgets what the shape of a dragon is: towering, tall; an immortal amongst men; flames hot enough to melt steel and a hide impervious to human instruments unless blessed by gods; merciless but generous in the quick death he bestows on trespassers; a living nightmare rightly feared by all who cross him. Nobody – and no dragon, except maybe Tohru – had told him it took only one who did not fear him to undo the illusion of power.
Fafnir is a dragon who could hold the world in his maw, but. He’s grown soft. Lazy. Idling away in this world with a human who values his company more than his gold. Where does Fafnir the dragon end and Faf-kun start? Where does Makoto’s influence wane? One day, Fafnir will have no choice but to return to life as a dragon, and he fears the form he’ll take. Will it be as fierce and fire-eyed as before?
Somewhere along the road to routinely laying out towels for Makoto on rainy days, he stopped caring so deeply about the after-Makoto. The thought of making peace with his enemies holds a strong attraction. He wouldn’t even mind retiring to a smaller cave, cosier and more reminiscent of their combined living room and bedroom, the futons squeezed between their computer tables. As for the gold? In the deepest serpent-coiled corners of his mind, he thinks he could do without it.
The fridge rattles like a skull. Fafnir scowls – it’s as empty as the commoners who once stormed his cavern blindly. No fresh fruit or vegetables, down to two packets of curry they’ll eat for dinner. Or one that Fafnir will eat. Makoto has been staying back at work late, something about helping Kobayashi rack up enough leave hours, and has foregone his usual shopping rounds.
How typical of his roommate to be so… helpful. The word drips toxins in his mind. But Makoto is only human and vulnerable to human foibles, self-sacrifice among them. Not every lifeform can be as perfectly selfish as a dragon.
His stomach growls.
Hm. What would damage his pride more: stooping so low as to do the grocery shopping, or letting Makoto see a half-starved dragon? No, there’s a third option. He could simply buy food for himself and leave Makoto to his own devices; see how he likes being ignored!
His stomach, if possible, growls angrily.
“What’s this?” Makoto holds up one of the dozen plastic bags scattered on the sofas and chairs and TV cabinet. “Was there a tsunami warning I didn’t hear about? Are we stocking up for an emergency?”
Fafnir emerges from the bags on the sofa with a dead-eyed glare. There is no non-humiliating way to explain he overestimated the amount of food a dragon can buy. Human supermarkets are a labyrinth of free samples and discounts, and the petty cash Makoto left had gone a surprisingly long way.
“I thought we needed more supplies.”
He tries, ineffectively, to sound as though he intended to buy this much. Makoto takes out a packet of potato chips (one of five), foil crinkling against the hum of a lifestyle program playing on the TV. He inspects the labelling and breaks into a smile. “Barbeque is my favourite.”
A tension in Fafnir’s chest he hadn’t been aware of promptly uncoils.
“S-so what?”
“Thanks for doing the shopping, Faf-kun.”
As they sit amidst the bags they haven’t managed to cram into cupboards and the fridge, it occurs to Fafnir he’s losing his edge. That dragonish bloodlust that dominates in video games never quite seems to make it back to reality, to Makoto. Dragons are violent creatures, as they should be. Fafnir is violence; terror and night incarnate.
“You will not defeat me,” he growls at the screen. Makoto’s character somersaults away from a heated swipe. “I have seen the pits of hell; I am more terrible than you can imagine.”
He laughs. “I know, I’ve seen you.”
Is it possible, then, that not all dragons are the embodiment of terror? Nonsense. Terror is their heritage. Tohru holds the power to destroy worlds and universes if she so desired; Lucoa is a former goddess to whom humans once paid blood sacrifices, who can only ever make blood run. Even Kanna will one day rain lightning on her enemies as if they were no more than dandelions in a field.
And he, Fafnir, makes the surest of human heroes tremble.
“Take that,” he mutters furiously. The screen lights up with his combo attack, then whites out. When images return, Makoto’s character lies defeated on the ground.
YOU WIN flashes up.
“Ah, good one.” Makoto grins ruefully and drops the controller at his feet. “I’ll get us some more snacks. Where did we put the chips?”
YOU WIN. PLAY AGAIN?
The sole figure on the screen raises his weapon in a victory pose. Despite the night being early, Fafnir doesn’t have the appetite to continue.
The people he passes in the streets annoy him less, their inane chatter now just sound, like the ocean’s waves on the edges of his old territory.
He doesn’t understand himself these days, and it frightens the irrevocably dragonish part of him that once held full sway of his heart. Dragons do not share their hordes. Dragons do not share. But the human-loving, human portion will not be quiet, nor will it be cowed by the dragon. Its voice is reedy, thin and weak. It does not echo or boom as a dragon’s roar does, but it is louder somehow. It sounds like Makoto, like his laughter.
“I can’t believe you fell for that mimic again!”
“Shut up,” Fafnir glowers. “You were distracting me.”
Makoto’s glasses catch the light. “What was I doing?”
Existing, mostly. Fafnir growls, shakes his head, and picks the controller up.
Books puzzles Fafnir, the library even more so.
A hoard owned by no dragon but by what Makoto calls a “community”. Not gold or jewels or even the foodstuffs that humans find appealing (which would at least make sense), but books: paper glued to a spine and nestled between two covers. A single snap of his jaws and he’d clear half the library out.
“This is highly illogical,” he observes as Makoto leafs through a book. Otaku that he is, video games aren’t his sole domain. Makoto has an apparently voracious interest in a series of light novels, the details of which escape Fafnir and his patience.
Because they barely have any room at home in between the video games and curry boxes, Makoto goes to the library to read. It does not make sense to Fafnir. Sharing items with complete strangers does not compute. Why doesn’t Makoto simply take the book for himself, make it his own as his competitors lose interest?
“Now that’s illogical,” Makoto says, and takes the book to the borrowing machine.
A cat is sunbathing on the thin strip of suburban lawn that counts as their front yard. Although it’s public space and doesn’t belong to anyone, Fafnir has come round to thinking of it as an extension of Makoto’s house and thus his territory. He doesn’t take kindly to trespassers, least of all domestic felines.
Fafnir looms over the cat. “Leave before I incinerate you.”
It blinks at him. It doesn’t move. Impressive for such a puny creature.
“I said, leave.” He accompanies his words with red eyes and an unmistakably demonic purplish aura that sends nearby birds fleeing from the bushes.
The cat yawns. Its pink tongue stretches out from behind pointed teeth as if to mock him. It does not have the look of an intimidated animal about to run off with its tail between its legs. Didn’t Makoto tell him cats were intelligent? Creatures capable of recognising a superior predator when they see one? This ball of fur just lolls onto its back and ignores him.
Fafnir ponders possible avenues of action. He could make good on his threat and torch the cat. But Makoto would not approve. Fafnir has seen his roommate pet dogs in passing at the park (the small ones, granted). And the neighbours might notice a bonfire from their front windows. Inconvenient, to say the least. He could magic the creature away to another dimension (two streets over) and leave it at that.
The longer he stares at the cat (its eyes now closed and breathing slowed), the more right it looks sleeping on the lawn. The dragon snaps its jaws impatiently. Why is he dithering over what should be a simple choice?
Tamping down the unsettlingly human voice telling him to leave the cat alone, Fafnir stretches out a hand and summons his magic. The runes have barely swirled into existence when a door opens and closes, and a familiar voice drifts over his shoulder.
“Making friends with the neighbourhood cat, huh?” Makoto, dressed in a t-shirt, slippers and shorts, sidles up beside him. “There hasn’t been this much sun in days. No wonder it’s out having a sunbath.”
“Why can’t it sunbathe in its own territory?”
A shrug. “Cats think they own everything.”
Much to Fafnir’s alarm, Makoto leans over and makes a soft face at the cat. “Isn’t that right, you furball? Just sleeping wherever you like.”
“You know this cat,” the dragon says through gritted teeth.
“He’s been around for a while. Caught this guy napping on my porch when I moved in, but I’ve never been able to evict him from the front lawn. He comes and goes as he pleases.” The cat rumbles in its sleep as if in agreement.
Fafnir scowls. “You shouldn’t encourage it.”
“Hardly!” and Makoto’s laugh is loud and wrung with good humour. “He was the one who moved in and settled down without consulting me. If anything, this guy encourages himself.”
“What an unfathomable creature.” He would have long kicked any intruder off his territory.
“No more unfathomable than the rest of us.” Makoto heads back inside with a wave, “I’m going to get changed,” and Fafnir is left staring at the cat. The gold tag affixed to its black collar winks in the light like a sign in a language he doesn’t understand. There’s just enough meaning in it to make him decide he will not eat, incinerate or otherwise harm the cat.
Fafnir watches it instead, the rhythmic up and down of its body, its fur ruffled by a passing breeze. Us, Makoto had said. Did he mean humans, or himself and Fafnir? Maybe the human has forgotten too what terror a dragon brings. They’re too accustomed to this – whatever it is, the unnameable way he knows when Makoto leaves and comes home, the sound of the tap running and water filling the sink, soap suds coming up to his elbows; playing video games in the dead of night and muffling his curses to not wake Makoto.
None of this is what a dragon does, and his roommate doesn’t know better. If he ever met a dragon other than the ones he knows now, thinking he could befriend it, he would only be disappointed. Something alien twists Fafnir’s heart at the thought. After seeing a dragon’s true nature, would Makoto still want to keep him around?
By sunset the cat has vanished, and the shadows paint its impression on a slightly flattened patch of grass only his dragon eyes can discern.
The darkness of his cave was once illuminated by the refracted light of his stolen gold, a taint that snagged on shadows and twisted rock. Whatever sunlight he saw wriggled, worm-like, through the snarls and turns of his cavern until it reached his eyes. The house in his vision contains no gold. The kitchen lights glow softly through the falling dusk; dinner is cooking, turning on a microwave dish. Fafnir glances again at the place where the cat was earlier in the day.
“Faf-kun!” Makoto calls. An unmistakable ding signals exactly what Fafnir has come to expect in the last few months. “Dinner’s ready!”
He goes back in.
The day after, Fafnir returns Makoto’s library books and drops by the supermarket to buy some orange juice and potato chips. People brush past and chatter on their phones, fragments of conversation from lives he knows nothing about.
A woman in business attire makes a sharp turn into the aisle ahead, phone pressed to her ear. “I know. Yes, you don’t have to remind me. Yes, I’m getting it now, calm down!”
Out of a curiosity he won’t admit to, he trails the woman into the aisle. Along the left, bags of pet food line the wall, from ten kilogram bags for dogs and cats to smaller boxes of birdseed. Halfway down the aisle the woman drags one of the medium-sized bags of cat food from the shelf with the phone still glued to an ear, “I’ve got it now, yes, it’s the chicken one Suzu-chan likes.”
She ends the call with a mumbled curse at her paranoid son, tucks the phone into her bag, and hauls the cat food off, leaving Fafnir in an empty aisle surrounded by images of purring felines and tongue-lolling dogs happy with their owners’ choice of food.
He selects the cheapest bag of cat food he can find.
The cat doesn’t return the next day, or the one after that.
The weather pivots to a mini-summer of sun and blue skies. Fafnir takes to spending his afternoons at their usual playground. The games have become boring of late, the guys in the chatrooms repeating the same old jokes and stories.
Makoto spots Fafnir on the way home from one work one evening and thinks of approaching him, but the dragon seems preoccupied and he doesn’t want to intrude. It reminds Makoto that he knows precious little about dragons despite living with one. There are things Fafnir won’t talk about, and maybe shouldn’t. Whatever life he lived as a dragon sitting on his cursed treasure trove can’t bear any resemblance to the sleepy (or not sleeping) reality of Tokyo’s suburbs.
But the supposedly man-eating dragon he knows is remarkably human – gripes at being forced outside the house, plays computer games to the crack of dawn, grouchy when he’s hungry and even when he’s not; has secrets of his own that Makoto knows well enough not to pry at.
By the time he returns home, Fafnir is already immersed in a game, as though he’d been hunched in front of the computer all day. The sun-warmed fabric of his suit gives him away when Makoto taps him on the shoulder.
“Your turn to cook,” he says, gently.
“I know,” Fafnir replies, taking off his headphones. “I know.”
Fafnir pays little attention to the children, even the school students who pass by with their yellow caps and backpacks and sweets in hand; even Kanna and Saikawa give him a wide berth whenever they drop by (if only because Saikawa remembers in vivid, terrifying detail her last encounter with the cursed dragon). He sees past them in all directions and dimensions.
Everything he sees here will be gone one day, the pavements snaking weeds and bodies six feet under, the metal structures and shoe-scuffed courts swallowed by decay and ruin; a city absorbed back into the earth. The places where they beat the bullies and practised their Christmas play will grow distant and damp, oceans rising into the sky, crashing down like divine judgement.
Through it all, sunlight will fall on an empty patch of grass where Fafnir might wait for a familiar call.
Two weeks later and increasingly concerned for his roommate’s mental state, Makoto detours to the convenience store on the way home before heading to the park. Fafnir isn’t hard to spot: a black, foreboding figure on the edge of the playground, conspicuously alone. The children have enough sense to give him a wide berth. Makoto plops himself next to the dragon and waves a packet of chips under his nose.
“You okay?”
He gets a grunt for his troubles. “I do not require your assistance, if that is what you are asking.”
Despite Makoto’s earlier resolution to wrest any of Fafnir’s thoughts into the open, he can’t muster the will. He trusts that Fafnir will tell him in good time, in words or actions. Until then, he can wait.
“I’m not here to talk, honestly.” Makoto opens the packet of chips with a satisfying crinkle. “I’m just here.”
They sit there until the playground clears of people and the chips are gone, stationary shadows stretching from quietly bright street lights. Despite them not being the living shadows of the other world, Fafnir suspects there must be another kind of magic in the calm they bring to his old bones.
(Maybe it’s just Makoto.)
“Let’s go home,” his friend says.
Drizzle and grey skies plague Tokyo for two weeks straight. Makoto comes home from work exhausted and minorly wet (their laundry is always dry), collapsing on the sofa without removing his suit. Fafnir keeps a close eye on him while preparing dinner, and wonders if everything is fine at work.
“It’s nothing,” Makoto tells him, unprompted, as they dig into their curry. “Large project, tight deadlines. Happens every now and again. Kobayashi’s got it worse than me.”
Fafnir spears a curry-covered potato with more force than necessary. Makoto loses their first round of gaming by dint of practically falling asleep, nodding off into Fafnir’s shoulder. He puts him to bed as best he can and without magic, fingers brushing Makoto’s forehead – warm and clammy but not high enough for a fever. He can’t explain the untightening of his chest, or the jab of annoyance.
The human stirs ever so slightly at his touch.
“You idiot,” Fafnir informs him, and Makoto smiles.
“Love you too,” he mumbles.
Dragons do not love, not really. But Fafnir lets it go this once.
The cat makes a sudden reappearance in the wake of the showers, not in the least concerned with how the resident dragon might react. Completely uncaring that cats are not morning creatures, it squirms about on the freshly-warmed grass finding the best position to catch the sun. An uncomfortable relief itches at Fafnir’s mind, which he assuages by hauling out the cat food and filling a bowl.
He takes it out to the cat, and watches it raise its head and take a cautious sniff of the contents before settling in to eat the rest.
“What do you want for dinner tonight?” Makoto asks on the way past, umbrella tucked under an arm and hair damp from his morning shower. His blue tie is crumpled, and absently, Fafnir reaches out to straighten it.
“The usual,” he replies.
“You got it.”
Dragons destroy homes, they do not build them. They do not build lives in suburban Tokyo with nerd programmers. He cannot help but think there’s a reckoning coming his way, that the universe will catch up to him for taking what was not meant to be his. In his darkest dreams (the ones he sees even when awake), he sees falling fire and smoking ruins, of a house he cannot imagine destroying, and a human he cannot kill.
It feels more and more like a miracle when he awakes to the sight of a ceiling over his head and Makoto’s drowsy warmth beside his. Waving him off in the morning, Fafnir leaves the door open for as long as it takes Makoto to disappear into the grey-green distance. The sight of his back is never as warming as his face when he comes home, blue eyes brighter than the street lights.
Fafnir’s human form is a skin he wears, one that has grown comfortable with time. The dragon rumbles drowsily but refuses to sleep, and Fafnir knows it is out of fear. With a human imagination and conception of time, a dragon might even dream (of a life he has no right to.)
One evening, Makoto returns with a bag of something smelling savoury and sweet.
“Hey, Faf-kun. Bought you these today,” and Fafnir catches the bag with one hand. He pauses the game to investigate its contents. Two curry buns.
“Both are for you.”
“Thank you.” The words tumble off his tongue naturally. The dragon stirs only to remark he enjoys curry buns, and if he doesn’t hurry up and eat them he’ll have to share them with the human. Fafnir might take that as a final, sleepy capitulation.
Winter rolls around and snow falls on the labyrinth of the city, swallowing roads and alleys until their outlines melt into one another. A colder fire than his wraps the suburbs in its hold. Humans shrug on their furs, their jackets and scarves, soldiering on as they always have (in this world and the old one).
One morning, Fafnir finds himself toeing on the fluffy slippers by the genkan. It takes him an entire hour to realise how needless they are before he practically flings them off in disgust. But his feet feel bereft without them, the memory of toasty toes hard to dislodge, and within the hour they’re back on.
To err is to human, or so they say. Not all lifeforms are invulnerable to mistakes. Even dragons will stumble from time to time.
“I’m back!” Makoto calls.
“Welcome home,” Fafnir replies, and gestures to the two cups of instant ramen on the table. “Dinner’s ready.”
By day, Fafnir watches the pigeons fly towards the mountain he once called his temporary den, their peaks clothed in snow. Waters that rushed are now frozen, now hibernating, as he would be too if he were in his cavern. Instead, he’s wrapped in a duvet he has no real need for, squashed next to his roommate and working his controller furiously.
“Gotcha!” crows Makoto, triumphant. YOU WIN the screen says.
“So you do.” Fafnir gets up to do the washing. He can live with that.
Everything falls into place one evening, a quiet becoming that’s crept up on him. It’s the dead of night and Fafnir is making the most of a silence punctuated by the occasional spatter of rain to grind his way up a couple more ranks. The rustling of sheets snatches his attention from the screen.
“Faf-kun?” Makoto yawns. “Another all-nighter?”
Squinting against the brightness of Fafnir’s computer, he manages a sleepy smile. “Come to bed,” he says, raising the corner of his futon.
Fafnir doesn’t know what else to do with the invitation but accept it. Nothing else feels more right or natural to log off, ignoring the chatroom’s startled occupants, and to roll in beside Makoto, hearing his human heart and breathing, his acceptance of everything Fafnir is.
It makes sense that he’s already sharing Makoto’s life and Makoto his, living in the same house of video games and empty curry boxes; rain drumming on the roof that Fafnir will magic away for the so-called company picnic Makoto’s organised with him and Kobayashi and Tohru (and everyone else he knows) for the next day.
Fafnir has already given up this much for Makoto; it’s not unfathomable or selfish to carve out a human existence in this dragonish body, as long as it’s beside Makoto.