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On a river nested deep in the mountains was a town surrounded by mines full of gold. The townspeople there thrived on the production of gold: they mined, smelted, and purified it and made it into bars, jewelry, thread, coins, and other goods. Every first and third quarter moon, they would send a cart to the city at the foot of the mountain to trade for grains, fruits and vegetables, salt, wood, and other essentials not available in the mountains. They lived safe, comfortable lives in a beautiful place, but their luck would change when they had an unexpected visitor.
It came two days before the first quarter, emitting a fearsome growl and flying so high it seemed to touch the sun. People cried out in terror and sought shelter in their homes from this unknown thing, hoping that it would pass over them and go somewhere else. Much to their dismay, the creature landed on a cliff overlooking the town, finally giving the people left outside a chance to gaze upon the monster in front of them. A dragon the color of blood spread its wings to show off its immense size, threatening the people of the town.
"If you do not wish for your town to be burned down and your people killed, you will place all of the gold you can find in the center of town by sundown,” the mighty beast bellowed, “Any gold you make from now will also given to me in the same fashion.” It took a few short hours to create a sizeable pile of gold. He admired it briefly before taking most of it in his claws and taking respite in a cave above the town for the night.
Two nights later, when the first quarter was upon them, they sent a messenger on horseback with a few bars of gold to the castle to request aid. They worked solely by moonlight, thankful for the clear sky, and only spoke when necessary in low whispers. When the messenger was ready to go, he rode swiftly into the night, and their hearts rejoiced when they could no longer see him among the shadows..
But then they saw the moonlight flick out of existence for a single instant and heard the whisper of leather wings cutting through the air. The fearsome dragon could smell the gold from its cave and made sure it got no further. He took the horse back to his cave and spared the messenger, who now had a broken leg. Nobody was sure if this was a benevolent warning to the people or apathy, but none of them wanted to find out.
And so the people made gold, but began to go hungry because they were unable to trade. The town rationed its food supplies as much as possible, which frustrated them. There were no solutions in sight aside from accepting their fate and eventually dying of starvation while the dragon revelled in its ever-growing hoard of gold. The people grew thinner and wearier by the day.
One young man with blue hair managed to stay optimistic despite the circumstances. He would do chores at home or run errands around town for his doctor grandmother, singing pleasant songs the whole way. His tongue was sharp and his words honest, but he had a kind heart, warm eyes, and a smile that could have replaced the crescent moon in the night sky.
The dragon heard the singing each day and began to grow interested in the town. He would sleep closer to the cave mouth each day to better hear, until he finally came to the edge and was able to survey the town. When he spotted the young singer, his eyes always seemed to follow the blue spot among the sea of people. Sometimes, he would get too far away or go inside buildings and the dragon could no longer hear his sweet voice. At first, he was curious, but he slowly grew accustomed to the singing and began to enjoy it.
But one day, the singing stopped.
“Where is the young man who sings? The one with hair the color of the sky?” the dragon roared from his cave. No one responded for several moments, too afraid to say anything. Finally, a middle-aged woman yelled up to him, telling the dragon he would be back after a day or two of rest. The dragon allowed this response and retreated to the back of his cave. Something stirred in his chest, but he ignored it and decided to rest instead.
At sunrise the next day, the dragon heard singing down in the town and felt happy, then confused. A dragon was supposed to care only for gold and nothing else, but he wanted something more. He went to the mouth of the cave again. “Bring the singing man to the edge of town,” he bellowed, “I shall be taking him with me for the day.” The dragon saw the man standing alone outside of the town and swooped down, gently grabbing him with his claws and flying back to the cave.
“Sing for me, human.” The dragon’s voice was deep, but surprisingly calm and quite warm.
The young man fidgeted, but sang an old song about knights fighting in battle. The dragon let his head rest on the ground and simply listened, enjoying the sound. The singing was shaky and quiet, but it filled the cave with a feeling reminiscent of being in a field of flowers. When he finished, he sat on the ground and had to catch his breath, taking in huge gulps of air like a fish out of water.
“Human, why are you so tired after one song?” The dragon lifted his head off the ground a few feet to look at the young man.
Once he caught his breath, he replied, “I haven’t eaten in two days.”
The dragon was confused. “Why have you not eaten in two days?” When the young man failed to answer him, he growled and demanded an answer.
Suddenly, the young man’s brows furrowed and his face reddened. “I haven’t eaten in two days because we’re running out of food!”
Taken aback, the dragon said, “Your people were handing out rations. What happened to those?”
The young man stood up and began to yell, stomping up to the dragon’s face. “We can’t trade to get more food because you took all our gold!” He pointed at the dragon emphatically. “Your greed is making us starve to death! You even broke my friend’s leg!”
“When did I do that?” the dragon asked.
The young man sighed and sat down on the cave floor again. “It doesn’t matter. It would’ve been kinder to give him a quick death. He may die from infection or pain soon and we ran out of medicine ages ago.”
The dragon began to feel emotions other than greed and rage again. This time, it was something that made his chest hurt, and he felt a mysterious feeling warm his eyes
“What is your name?”
It was the young man’s turn to be confused. “A-Aoba,” he stuttered, “What’s yours?”
A new feeling began to form in the dragon’s heart, something that felt like a painful dream. “I do not remember. Perhaps if you sing one more song for me, I might remember.” The man sang one more song about a princess held captive in a castle, waiting for her prince, before the dragon took him back to the town. The squeezing feeling in his body did not fade.
Each day, the dragon would request Aoba’s presence, and each day he felt more of the strange stirrings rumble in his chest. They were inconvenient, and made him discover more of these sudden emotions. While he was unable to pinpoint most of them, he knew one thing for certain: listening to Aoba’s singing made him feel happy.
It was a dragon’s nature to steal gold and terrorize innocent people, but he began to feel the slightest tinge of guilt when he saw his hoard expand. He looked down on the town and saw children weep from hunger, and the production of gold slowed because people began to grow sick. Everyone looked like they were stepping closer to the embrace of death. The dragon saw it in Aoba and could hear his voice grow a little weaker each day.
“I know you said you’ve forgotten your name,” Aoba said as he caught his breath, “So would you mind if I gave you one? Even if you only keep it for now?”
The dragon’s heart pounded and he registered a new feeling in his chest that felt like a flower beginning to bloom. After a moment of thought he replied, “I suppose a great dragon should have a name.”
“I have the perfect name!” His smile filled his face so much he had to squint. “I’ll call you Beni, for the red of your scales.”
Beni. It was short and had a powerful ring to it. He could sense that this was not his real name, but it would do for now. Nobody had asked for his real name in a long time, and he felt like time had escaped him somehow. “Thank you, Aoba. I will treasure this gift you have given me.”
Aoba turned his gaze to a random spot on the floor to hide the blood rising to color his cheeks. He mumbled to himself, sang one more song, and was taken back home.
The dragon now named Beni soon found his thoughts were fixated on Aoba. He waited eagerly for the sun to rise so he could lay upon his pile of gold and listen to that pleasant singing voice. His desire for gold was strong, but he began to devote some of that to seeing Aoba’s smile again, maybe even wishing he could hear a laugh release itself from those lips.
These very un-dragonlike thoughts were only exacerbated by the growing relationship between man and dragon. Aoba would approach him, ask questions about him, and started to talk about his own life in the town. He had even hazarded to touch the deep red scales, which he said looked as if blood had hardened itself on his body, and stroke the soft, leathery wings that were warm to the touch. He even described his eyes as being like shining rubies.
“Aoba,” the dragon began as they stood on the outskirts of town, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?” Aoba responded, “You’ve done a lot of wrong, as is the way of the dragon, but you have a good heart somewhere deep inside of you. Anyone who enjoys music as much as you must.”
The dragon avoided looking at Aoba’s face. “Thank you for sharing your voice with me during this time. Sleep well.”
He went back to his cave and was overwhelmed with emotion that made him want to rip out some imaginary organ in his chest. He clawed at his chest, trying to see if he could alleviate the fullness within him, but only bled dark on the floor. In the darkest corner of his mind, he briefly recalled the feeling of letting warm tears fall from his eyes, but failed to remember how to do something like that. Guilt pooled in his gut and made him feel sick, and when he looked at his great pile of gold, he felt worse. That was when the wildest bits of himself left, the parts that were entirely dragon, instinct, and beastly, drove him mad trying to overpower this new development.
So he ate the gold. His stomach threatened to burst, but he was unable to stop and continued until he drowned the ever-persistent feelings that hid in his heart. While his body filled with gold, his mind was filled with Aoba and how thin he was and the hoarseness of his voice that day. The greed for gold that once consumed him now fell by the wayside and was replaced with a craving for Aoba’s voice singing him to sleep. Once the dragon ate all of the gold, he continued to imagine the crooning he loved so much. His eyes closed, and an image of blue spread across his eyes and made him feel at peace.
It took three full weeks for the townspeople to check on the dragon. They feared that the dragon may still be there, even if it had made no sound in all that time. When they found its body still and stinking, everyone knew it was dead, but they wondered where the gold had gone. After searching high and low for it, they came to a singular conclusion: they would need to cut it open. Even if the weak point of its body was its belly, they still needed sharp and sturdy weapons to slice it. It took two days of cutting by many people to get to the inside, where they could see its bulging stomach, clearly full of gold. So they took a few even slashes and the gold began to pour out along with something unexpected.
A man slid out with the gold, with a scar-covered body and beautiful flowers along his back. The people were confused, but took him back with the gold. Within moments, they rejoiced and had messengers with loads of gold sent out to gather whatever supplies they could. The young man was brought to the doctor’s house to be examined by the elderly doctor with pink hair. Her azure-haired grandson assisted, moving quickly to get him cleaned up and clothed after his body was checked over. The mystery man slept deeply, even when the town celebrated the gathering of supplies and started planning a feast. His body never moved except for light breathing.
The grandson put the laundry out to dry and hummed a light tune that could be heard inside. The man in the bed’s eyelids flicked open, and he sat up silently. He managed to follow the voice outside to where the musical grandson was. When he finally saw the sky blue he wished for, the feelings he held before renewed within him.
“Aoba,” he whispered, “It’s you.”
The grandson turned and his eyes widened in shock. “You’re awake! I need to tell granny!” He hurried to the man and grasped his arm to guide him back inside.
“I missed your voice.” The man took a lock of blue hair between his fingers as he spoke. “The last thing I remember is blue.”
Aoba grappled for words that might help this man make sense. “Who should we tell that you’re alive? You were inside a dragon!”
“I was cursed, and your voice made me feel something again. You broke my curse after being trapped in within scales for ten long years.”
The man continued his story as he was dragged along. Aoba tried to press him for details, but found himself getting nowhere. He learned of the man’s past: he was a soldier who rose quickly through the ranks and became a high-ranking general. With a taste of power, he wanted it more, so he became greedy and merciless. He made the mistake of trying to take from the wrong people, and was cursed into a dragon until he could learn to love something other than power and money.
When they were back at the bed and the man was sitting down, Aoba tried again to make sense of him. He noticed some blood on the top of the man’s foot and tending to it while thinking of where he could get a pair of shoes.. “Could you at least tell me your name?”
“You once called me Beni.”
Aoba looked up from the foot he was cleaning and into the man’s eyes. They were a shining red, like rubies laying in the sun. He could see the eyes of the dragon that loved music. “Can I ask for your real name?”
“My real name is Koujaku,” he said, “Would you mind singing to me for a little bit?”
“I’ll sing for you anytime, Koujaku.”
From that point on, Koujaku stayed in the mountain town, and repaid his misdeeds by giving his wealth to the town. He lived a comfortable life with Aoba by his side, the man he learned to love more than a dragon loves gold, and listened to him sing with a smile on his face.