Chapter Text
Wei Ying had always loved fantastical folk and fairy tales. Mythical beasts! Horrible monsters! Wicked witches! Clever cultivators! Noble princes and princesses!
It didn’t matter where the stories were from. He loved them all: Eastern, Western, ancient, or modern. He had always felt that there was something familiar about them, no matter how strange or wild. Maybe his parents had told him many of them before they...
The few memories he could recall of his parents were vague glimpses of their smiling faces, the sensation of being held safely in their arms, and being wrapped in the softest blankets he’s ever felt.
He had spent the years between the ages of six and ten sometimes in child welfare homes, sometimes out on the streets, sometimes in strange foster homes, and then right back into welfare homes, until he had been collected at age ten by a friend of his parents who claimed guardianship rights.
It was like the start of his own fairy tale. He had been swept away from the orphanage to an impressive lakeside manor in Yunmeng called Lotus Pier. His kind benefactor, an important businessman known as Jiang Fengmian, had taken him into his household and introduced him to his own children, with whom Wei Ying had become fast friends.
But no fairy tale was complete without a wicked stepmother, and Madame Yu seemed to fill this role with relish. No, she had never maimed him, had never locked him away in a tower, nor had she prevented him from going to the ball ( i.e., anything his siblings were allowed to attend, except for their seemingly extensive swimming lessons, which he gladly shirked for more freetime), but never had a day passed where her sharp words had not slashed and stabbed at him, reminding him he was not their son, not their sibling, and not their family. He had been at fault when anything went wrong; he was punished twice as much, yelled at three times as much, and put to do chores alone when the manor had had plenty of hands to cover them all.
She was largely the reason he was now in a cheap, cramped, storage unit of a studio apartment and not in the sprawling, grand manor house. His jiejie had gone off to university some years ago, and when it had finally been time for him and Jiang Cheng to consider their post-secondary schooling, Jiang Cheng had been set to attend the same prestigious university their jiejie did. But when the question arose of where Wei Ying would go, Madam Yu had thrown a fit.
"No! Absolutely not! He is not our child! We will not be backing him financially! He is going to be eighteen soon: an adult and no longer our responsibility!”
No matter how much Jiang Fengmian had argued, Jiang Cheng had insisted, and Jiang Yanli had pleaded, Madam Yu had obstinately held her ground. Tension had climbed higher and higher in the household until one day Wei Ying had not been able to stand the vicious arguing and had resolutely declared he would make it on his own.
Despite his excellent grades and test scores, and ignoring his less-than-stellar disciplinary record, it had been too late for Wei Ying to apply for scholarships, let alone financial aid that year. He had moved out after having found a customer service job in the city the same day Jiang Cheng had moved out for school. That had been a trying time, leaving the fairy-tale-esque grandeur of the manor and returning to the gray, dreary streets to the frenetic grind of modern life.
That had been almost three years ago. It was a good thing… he told himself. At that time, and even still now, he didn’t really know what he wanted to do. He loved fairy tales, myths, and legends, but he also loved tinkering around with things. Should he study literature? Science? Engineering? Taking a class a semester at a local community college, which was all he could afford, has given him time to get pre-requisite and general-education courses out of the way, so that by the time he can afford to go to a proper university, he can pour himself into his major (if he can choose!)
It was late, so so so so late, nearing three a.m. now that Wei Ying was finally getting to leave work. The last of his patrons at the bar had hung around until they had practically drunken themselves into a stupor. He had been so close to calling the police to escort them out so he could close up shop. And they had tipped poorly on top of that! Thank goodness tomorrow was his day off. He doubted he would be up before noon, not that he had ever been a particularly early riser to begin with.
The night air was cold despite it being early summer, and, Oh great, he thought as he felt a few cold drops of water fall on his head. It quickly picked up from there. His brisk walk turned into a run as he raced to the doors of his apartment. Luckily at this time of night, the streets were relatively empty, so he could just put his head down and sprint, but then he saw in his periphery something long and white drop to the ground. It dropped close enough to startle him, and he almost slipped on the puddle-ridden pavement. He stopped to scowl at whatever had caused him to stumble. His eyes grew wide, and his breath stilled.
Amidst the drenching downpour, on the dirty sidewalk, lay a twisted creature of immaculately white, slightly luminescent scales. Some kind of lizard...? No, it’s too thick. Slowly, quietly enough so that his steps were drowned out in the rain, he approached the creature with bated breath. No, it can't be, it's impossible. It can't be… But it was.
A little white dragon, poor thing, was so badly twisted it practically had itself tied in a knot! He crouched down beside it and gingerly extended a hand to touch it. His fingers, slightly trembling, paused just before he could brush its scales. It looked too real to be fake, but it shouldn’t exist!
With one more deep breath, he closed his eyes and ghosted his fingertips across the dripping scales. He flinched as his fingers made contact. Well, it certainly feels like a lizard. He could feel the gentle rise and fall of its breathing. It's alive! Wei Ying suddenly felt excitement akin to Victor Frankenstein bringing his monster to life! It's alive! It's alive! His mind screamed, and oh, so unconscious… Wait. His excitement halted. He withdrew his hand: a dark liquid streaked his fingers, intermixing with the rainwater. He crouched closer to the dragon, as close as he could without his shadow blocking the light from the sodium-orange street lamp. Thin gashes marred the dragon's upper back, disturbing the otherwise pristine scales. The dark liquid trickled out from them and was swept away by the rain.
Oh no! All sense of stillness and delicacy was thrown to the wind and the rain. Wei Ying scooped up the dragon as best he could, its long body threatening to spill out of his grasp. It was so heavy! What a dense creature! Wei Ying hurried to his apartment as quickly as he could, stumbling and under the dragon’s dead weight all the way there. It was twenty past three when he finally tumbled through the door of his apartment building.
"No, no! Dammit! No!" he cursed under his breath. The elevator, as of that past afternoon, was out of order. "It's fine, it's not as if I live on the thirty-third floor or anything!" he huffed to himself sarcastically, hauling the dragon to the stairs and starting to climb.