Lunar New Year came discreetly, but under the ancient ritual beat a constant drumbeat—a soft, insistent beat beneath the fireworks' occasional explosions and the sparkles of glittering lanterns. City streets were draped in red and gold, each corner bearing fluttering banners and lacy cut paper filigree. Families jammed into small, hot apartments and snug houses, filling the air with their laughter and the heavy aroma of stews heavy with meat and spice, and rice cakes heavy with the weight of centuries of heritage. The wind outside bit sharp, so cold the scarves tightened and cheeks flushed, but beneath the blast of winter, the soft warmth of reunion and ritual welled like quiet white fire.
Minjae walked on the shallow balcony of the small ocean pension they had rented, the cold wind pulling at the worn edges of his sweater. Below, the ocean lay wide and calm, a giant mirror to the gray above. Waves crept up onto the beach in slow, unhurried lines, firm and patient, as if they too were holding this moment still. But as the world slept in tranquility, a flow moved through the depth of Minjae's mind—silent, unquiet, troubled. Something within him was rewound, like a machine long in hibernation came rising up from the frozen sea.
Behind him, the open door gave a glimpse of his mother's voice, a soft but unmistakable warmth. "Minjae, eat. Your father's already selecting the choicest pieces." The soft cajoling was all homecare.
Minjae spun around to hear the boisterous laugh of his father mingling with clinking chopsticks and plates at the dinner table. "I heard that!" his father thundered, his voice deep and unshaken.
Minjae smiled faintly to himself and went in. The pension was tiny but with personality—a clutter of comfortable, well-used furnishings, the smell of soy sauce and garlic heavy in the air, and the distant hum of his parents' muted conversation. The plain, unvarnished joy of the moment enveloped him like a familiar cloak, memories that had no need of words settling into his heart.
As he sat, his mother set a steaming bowl before him with a careful hand. "Eat well. You've lost weight with all this studying," she said, her voice threaded with worry beneath the softness.
"I haven't," Minjae answered, though fatigue still pulled at the corners of his voice. He picked up his chopsticks and felt the heat of the food into his fingers and bones, a small solace against the cold.
His father toasted with his glass. "To a good year," he said.
Minjae mimicked the action, holding his own glass of water. "To peace," he said softly.
Their rims clinked gently, the sound a trifle heavier than sound—a delicate hope contained in plain wood and porcelain, a vow uttered in the silence between words.
A little while afterward that evening, after the house had grown quiet and his parents had gone to bed, Minjae stepped out again. The ocean air was cold now, its salt sting and bitter kiss of winter breath. He headed down to the beach, his feet bare as he sank into the frozen, sodden sand.
His eyes rested upon a kite of a child caught in the bony arms of a bare tree. The colored cloth of the kite writhed pitifully in the air, pinned down but not damaged—shaking with a soft resolve, caught but not flexed.
He stood under it for a long while, observing the quivering dance of the kite.
The silence of the sea was nearly a substance of its own—immense, limitless, heavy with information that it never divulged. It was as if it was full of stories more profound than the novels in his collection, secrets older than nights.
The kite was a metaphor. Caught between flying and being encased, like the thoughts that swirled nonstop in his head—longing to fly but weighted down by invisible shackles.
His phone sliced through abruptly in his side, the spell broken.
From Hana.
*Home safely. The sea suits you. Draw it for me one day?*
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, the burden of words resting on him as if he were to select with care.
Perhaps.
At home, Minjae surprised his parents again. The TV light crossed the small room. His father laughed at a taped variety show, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes folding behind thick-lensed glasses. His mother ironed calmly, each motion slow and deliberate, polished by years of thought and habit.
Minjae stood in the doorway, arms crossed, observing them.
The difference between existing and living hit him with force.
They were—whole, untroubled, complete. Unscarred by the wounds of a foreign world, unburdened by memories too big for them to bear.
No dragon had ever been so peaceful.
But Minjae was.
That night, in bed, the incessant pounding of waves against his window rocked him into a tenuous peace. He lay staring up at the ceiling, the gentle creaks and groans of the old pension merging with the distant screeching of seagulls.
He thought about the various incarnations of himself lying across time.
Valmyros—the final dragon of Elandryss, fire nymph and air child—was no more than a name he whispered to himself in solitude. No thrones, no dark enemies hidden in dark forests, no mighty manas to call upon, no divine spells to conjure.
Decisions.
Bland, brutal decisions.
And in some way, they burdened him more than the crash of a thousand wars.
He shut his eyes, smelling the rinsed-out scent of sea salt trapped in the creases of his sweater.
Home-blue skies blinded him, in a form not his own, Minjae told things unseen by other humans.
"I am not lost. Just. unshaped."
Beyond, the tide continued to infinity, curving and curving.