A few days later,

  the boy climbed the mountain again, as if he’d made up his mind.

  But Perkadia was nowhere to be seen.

  All that remained in that spot

  was a broken branch

  and the peel of an apple, half-bitten.

  In that moment, telepathy rang out.

  「I want to trust you.

  But I am a dragon,

  and you are human.」

  「This boundary is not something we can cross.」

  The boy lowered his eyes without a word.

  “···Then all the time we spent··· was it all a lie?”

  「···No. That was sincere.

  But sincerity alone can’t protect everything.」

  The boy took a step closer and said,

  “Per, live with us in my village.”

  “If I tell my father, we can persuade the villagers.”

  “If they learn what kind of being you are, they’ll accept you. I know they will.”

  Perkadia looked at him quietly.

  After a long silence,

  he slowly nodded.

  「If those words··· are truly sincere.」

  「Tomorrow, when the sun is setting. Meet me here again.

  I will wait one more day. Just one.」

  The boy’s eyes shone, and he smiled broadly.

  “Yeah! I’ll bring you good news—promise!”

  He ran down through the wind,

  as if the whole world were a bright blessing.

  But Perkadia already knew.

  The boy’s wish was an illusion that could never be reached.

  And that the time to leave this place was not far off.

  That night,

  the boy confessed everything to his father.

  His meeting with the dragon,

  the stories they’d shared,

  all the hours they’d spent.

  And even the earnest wish to invite him into the village.

  His father only listened in silence.

  The boy clenched both hands tight and waited, holding his breath.

  After a moment,

  his father spoke softly.

  “Of course. That’s what we should do.”

  He nodded, putting weight behind the end of his words.

  “Tomorrow morning, we’ll go to the village hall and talk.

  Everyone should welcome him. This is important.”

  On the surface, his voice sounded no different from usual.

  But the boy didn’t notice.

  How neatly controlled his smile was,

  how smoothly his words slid into place.

  Under the table, his father’s fingers trembled, uneasy.

  His eyes were on his son’s face,

  but his mind was already turned somewhere else.

  And the next morning.

  The village was buzzing with sudden excitement.

  “A dragon showed up?! Really?”

  “That kid said it! A red-scaled dragon lives in the mountains!”

  “Then··· if we can catch it···!”

  Whispers passed among the adults.

  “They say a ‘mana orb’ comes from a dragon’s heart.”

  “The scales are top-grade armor material,

  and the teeth can be set into holy blades.”

  “The whole village won’t go hungry for years.”

  “This is a chance.”

  “If the boy’s right, it’s still young—shouldn’t be hard.”

  “If we plan it well, we can catch it. No question.”

  The boy overheard those words in the village square,

  and his face went pale.

  ‘···No. That can’t be.’

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  But what he saw and heard

  kept grinding his belief down, little by little.

  He ran home.

  His breath stuck in his throat.

  When he threw the door open,

  his father was in the back yard, sorting things out.

  Rope, iron spikes, folded cloth.

  Leather straps damp with snow.

  The boy stopped short.

  “Father··· what is that?”

  His father answered with a calm face.

  “Something came up in the village.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.”

  The boy’s throat burned.

  “Father, don’t tell me···”

  Instead of answering,

  his father gave the boy’s shoulder a light pat.

  “You need to think of the village too.”

  “We have to survive the winter.”

  Those words

  felt like a blade.

  The boy clenched his fists.

  His nails dug into his palm.

  ‘···If it stays like this, by sunset today···’

  He bolted outside.

  Snow or mud didn’t matter.

  ‘I have to stop it.’

  ‘I have to··· stop them. For Per.’

  At sunset,

  the boy climbed the mountain with heavy steps.

  There were traps.

  There were magic circles.

  There were hunters.

  Weapons that caught the light,

  poison and arrowheads hidden in silence.

  The boy inhaled.

  Only then did he speak.

  “···What is this··· what is this?!”

  One hunter turned his head.

  “What’s wrong, Soleya.”

  Another adult said coldly,

  “Capturing the dragon is an opportunity for our village, Soleya.”

  “Yes. This isn’t some ordinary hunt.”

  “If we take a dragon, our village can prosper again.”

  The boy shouted,

  “That dragon is my friend!”

  “The dragon I told you about isn’t a thing to be sold!”

  One of the hunters shoved him roughly.

  The boy fell onto the snow.

  “Soleya, this is for the village.”

  “We have to protect our village.”

  On his knees,

  biting his lip, the boy said,

  “···We··· we really could’ve lived together···”

  “We could’ve been family···”

  At that moment,

  a red silhouette drifted down from the sky.

  Perkadia.

  The boy sprang up and rushed forward, yelling,

  “Per! Don’t come! They’re going to kill you!”

  But in that instant,

  someone clamped a hand over the boy’s mouth.

  His voice broke into muffled noise,

  his eyes widened.

  Perkadia stopped mid-descent.

  His eyes met the boy’s.

  A warning he couldn’t speak.

  A scream that felt like it would tear his lungs.

  Eyes that refused to give up until the end.

  Perkadia read something in that look.

  And then,

  a cold voice rang through his mind.

  「···So it is betrayal.」

  KWA—AAANG!!

  A roar.

  The mountain shook.

  Flame-like mana burst outward,

  and the traps and magic circles detonated at once.

  “Don’t move! Maintain the barrier!”

  The hunters shouted,

  but their attacks didn’t reach him.

  Perkadia only spread his wings once.

  With that single motion,

  every device suspended in the air shattered into fragments.

  The buried magic circles

  ripped apart like paper before the dragon’s mana.

  “No way···!”

  The hunters lost their footing, screaming,

  and one by one,

  they were swept by wind and heat and fell unconscious.

  But even then,

  not a single shard

  touched the boy.

  In that gap, the boy was freed.

  The dragon shot up into the sky,

  skimming past his vision.

  The boy opened his mouth,

  but no sound came out.

  Perkadia said nothing more.

  He only looked back once,

  at the boy.

  And then he disappeared—

  beyond the mountain ridge,

  beyond a sky the boy could never reach again.

  The boy sat there for a long time.

  His breath fell onto the snow

  and spread white.

  His fingertips trembled.

  And only much later,

  a sound slipped out between his lips.

  “···I’m sorry.”

  ◇

  Years passed.

  The boy grew into a man,

  and time gave him a home,

  and a quiet daily life.

  One snowy day,

  a small child came and sat beside him.

  “Grandpa, have you seen this picture?”

  “A merchant who passed through the village gave it to me. He said it’s a red dragon!”

  The old man—once a boy—

  quietly took the picture the child held out.

  In the drawing,

  a red dragon with enormous wings

  was flying through the sky.

  In that instant,

  the old man’s hand trembled.

  His lips went dry,

  and it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

  “Do you think this dragon really existed?”

  the child asked with pure eyes.

  But the old man

  couldn’t say a word.

  He only stared at the picture for a long time.

  After that day,

  his daily life began to change, little by little.

  In one corner of the yard,

  a quiet spot where sunlight lingered briefly,

  he built a small workbench.

  There, he took out

  an old carving knife.

  Over a hard piece of stone,

  he drew the blade slowly, carefully.

  It wasn’t just work.

  Each moment, he was reopening memory.

  He was rubbing clean the words

  he’d never managed to speak.

  The flute he carved by following those memories

  was always rough, awkward.

  Piiik.

  Pii···

  No proper sound came out.

  Even so, he didn’t stop.

  Sometimes he sat in front of a mural in silence,

  finishing it little by little.

  In the painting,

  a boy was reaching out.

  Toward a red dragon flying in the sky.

  The old man murmured, as if speaking to himself.

  “This··· is my last greeting to you.”

  At first, his family didn’t ask why.

  But as time went on,

  his children, and then his grandchildren too,

  began to pour their own affection into those carvings and murals.

  “What’s this dragon’s name?”

  The old man smiled gently.

  “Perkadia.”

  Then he added in a low voice,

  “A very long time ago··· he was a friend I treasured.”

  One night,

  the old man took out a single sheet of old paper.

  After a long hesitation,

  he lifted his brush and left his final words.

  《To Perkadia》

  Even now, sometimes I see you in my dreams.

  I go back to those days,

  the two of us talking on the snow, exactly as we were.

  Back then I didn’t know anything,

  but I loved every moment I was by your side.

  I shouldn’t have told the villagers.

  If I hadn’t···

  maybe we could’ve spent longer, so much longer together.

  I still remember that day.

  Your eyes,

  the awful sound of the flute I blew,

  and your quiet replies.

  I always imagined going on adventures with you.

  Traveling the world,

  flying through the sky with you···

  That dream is still alive inside me.

  To me, you weren’t just a dragon.

  You were my most precious ‘friend.’

  If we ever meet again,

  then this time,

  I’ll start with the stories I’ve been saving.

  Your friend, Soleya

  ◇

  One winter, on the night of the first snowfall.

  A lone traveler arrived

  in a small village at the foot of a snow-covered mountain.

  Red hair,

  clear eyes.

  He blended into the crowd,

  sat in the square without a word,

  and listened to the crude grass flutes the children were playing.

  “Piiik··· pii···”

  A terrible sound.

  Yet that sound

  quietly tapped on something, somewhere—

  an old memory.

  He closed his eyes.

  With his eyes shut, it rose up.

  A boy running through the wind.

  The ruined sound of a flute.

  And the last look, left behind without a word.

  “···Soleya.”

  When he opened his eyes,

  a child spoke to him.

  “Mister, are you good at the flute?”

  “···A little.”

  “Then play with us!”

  “They say this is what the boy who became friends with a dragon used to play!”

  He flinched at that.

  “A dragon?”

  “Yes! It’s our village legend!”

  “They say there was a boy who became friends with a dragon when he was little!”

  The child talked excitedly.

  “They say the dragon was really kind.”

  “But the villagers··· later···”

  Trailing off, the child pointed somewhere with a hand gesture.

  “If you go to that hill, there’s a statue, and a letter too!”

  “Wanna come with me?”

  He was silent for a moment,

  then nodded.

  A small hill behind the village.

  A dragon statue standing between the trees.

  And beside it, a single stone marker.

  Walking ahead, the child said,

  “This is it! The letter is carved here.”

  “They say it was left for the dragon a long, long time ago.”

  The traveler approached slowly

  and read the words carved into the stone.

  《To Perkadia》

  His eyes shook.

  His breathing grew long.

  Something surged up from deep inside his chest.

  And then,

  tears fell.

  One drop.

  Then another.

  Those tears hit the ground

  and hardened into clear, tiny red gems.

  In that moment,

  from somewhere in the sky,

  an echo that couldn’t be heard

  brushed past his heart.

  For a long time,

  he couldn’t lift his head.

  The child,

  and the adults beside them,

  didn’t know what to say.

  Only snowflakes settled softly.

  After that day,

  the red-haired traveler vanished from the village.

  No one in the village remembered him.

  Only one child, somehow,

  kept recalling the time spent with him

  like a dream.

  And every year, on the night of the first snowfall,

  one story was still told in the village square.

  The story of a boy and a dragon.

  A farewell where sincerity couldn’t reach.

  And a name that refused to be forgotten.

  “Then··· did the dragon really come back?”

  The children ask.

  The adults smile and say,

  “Yes.”

  “It was only for a moment, but he really did come back.”

  “And he left his heart behind.”

  “His tears are still here.”

  “That’s proof.”

  Even if sky and earth never truly met again,

  their hearts remembered each other for a very long time.

  Inside the village hall, in a glass display case,

  a small ornament made from gathered red gems

  rested in silence.

  It was called “Dragon’s Tears,”

  and was believed to be the only proof of the village’s legend.

  Beneath the ornament was a small placard.

  《So I won’t forget ··· Soleya》

  The children stared at the gems without speaking,

  then left the hall and headed to the square.

  And there,

  they began to play their flutes again.

  Piiik.

  Pii···

  That night,

  one small child

  stood in the center of the square with a flute

  carved by hand from a wooden stick.

  “I made this flute myself.”

  The child said with a shy smile.

  “If a real dragon comes,

  he’ll definitely hear this sound.”

  The clumsy notes

  spread out along the falling snow.

  And in that moment,

  someone passing through the square

  slowed to a stop.

  He watched for a while,

  then sat down beside the child without a word.

  “Yes.”

  “He’ll probably hear it.”

  On a night of the first snowfall,

  the story always begins again like that.

  Maybe,

  a friend with red scales

  might come down once more.

  And someday,

  if that red silhouette brushes down from the sky,

  someone will surely remember.

  His name,

  the look in his eyes,

  and the heart he tried to deliver in the end.