Chapter 1-

The air hung heavy with the dampness of a Kyoto night. Cicadas buzzed their relentless song, a melancholic soundtrack to his slow ascent. Sixteen years. Sixteen years he'd walked this earth, and now… this. Each step on the worn stone path felt heavier than the last, his limbs leaden with a fatigue that no amount of rest could alleviate.

Another sterile white room. Another shrug of a doctor's shoulders. "We can't find anything, son. You're… deteriorating, but we don't know why." The memory flashed behind his eyelids, sharp and unwelcome. A hollow laugh escaped his lips, swallowed by the night. Deteriorating. Such a clinical word for the creeping coldness that was stealing his breath, the persistent ache that had become his constant companion.

He reached into his pocket, the cool glass of the sake bottle a small comfort against his clammy skin. His mother's cheap stuff, but tonight, even that tasted like rebellion. A rebellion against the unfairness of it all, the stolen future stretching before him like an empty road. Her face… crumpled, tear-streaked. Each sob a fresh stab of guilt in his already aching chest. "My baby boy… not again…" The image seared itself onto his mind, a constant reminder of the pain he was inflicting simply by… fading.

The crest of the hill finally came into view, the full moon a stark, silver disc hanging in the inky sky. It cast long, distorted shadows, making the familiar landscape seem alien and foreboding. He took a long swig of the sake, the harsh liquid burning a temporary warmth down his throat. Twenty? He'd be lucky to see seventeen. So why bother with… anything?

He stumbled slightly, catching himself on a gnarled tree branch. And then he saw her.

Not human. Not even close.

Bathed in the ethereal moonlight, a colossal dragon lay upon the hilltop. Her scales shimmered like a thousand emeralds, catching the silver light. But it was the stillness that stole his breath, the unnatural droop of her massive head, the dark stain spreading across her flank. And then he saw it. Jutting from her back, wickedly sharp and radiating an almost palpable aura of power, was a sword. A sword that seemed to drink the very light around it.

A creature of myth, dying before his very eyes. His muddled mind struggled to comprehend the impossible reality. Yet, even through the haze of sickness and sake, a strange sense of kinship resonated within him. Another being facing its end under the cold, indifferent gaze of the moon.

He took another unsteady step into the clearing made by the massive dragon's body. Slowly, laboriously, the dragon's massive head lifted. Even in her weakened state, the sheer scale of her was breathtaking. Her eyes, like molten gold, flickered open, focusing on him. A low, guttural snarl rumbled in her chest, the sound more a tremor in the earth than a true threat. It was the instinct of a dying predator, a final, defiant warning to stay away. But there was a confusion in those golden depths. He wasn't recoiling. He wasn't fleeing. He was just… standing there, swaying slightly, a small, fragile silhouette against the backdrop of the full moon and her immense, injured form. The snarl died in her throat, replaced by a bewildered curiosity. This tiny mortal wasn't acting as prey should. There was no fear, only a strange, almost detached observation in his gaze. What was wrong with this human?

He only vocalized the immense emotions her large and majestic form evoked as "Woah!" in his drunken stupor. He then made direct eye contact without fear, asking the confused dragoness, "Hey… uh… you okay there? Want some help with your… boo-boo?" The large dragon froze, her mind trying to process her wounds as a "boo-boo."

Just as her mind was able to start turning again, this disrespectful human was climbing her back already! She began yelling at him to remove himself this instant, but he just ignored her, mumbling that even a dragon isn't scary to the dead.

Once successfully on her back and within reach of the massive sword, he gripped hard and began pulling. Tohru warned him that no human could remove the blade of the gods, but he started pulling anyway, the magic blade rejecting his efforts, burning his hands. But the desire in him, the desperate need to do something with his short time to be remembered, even if it was just by this one dragon, kept him struggling, his muscles swelling to the point of tearing.

Tohru sighed as she took in the struggling and pained face of a random human passerby who was currently trying to save her with no real reason besides drunken stupidity. Until she noticed something off about the human. Her senses told her that he was something more, much more than just human, but also with a foot in the grave already…

But then Tohru's eyes grew comically wide as, even though it was so imperceptibly small for the human to realize… the sword moved just a tiny bit. The white of her eyes massive in shock, but the boy didn't even notice as he continued his efforts.

And then, like the sound of a window being broken, something broke, and a torrent of pink magical energy erupted from the human. His hands were still on the blade, his eyes still closed as if he was ignorant of the cascading magic around him. Hrotti moved more and more.

And with a final scream of effort, the pink energy enveloped the blade as an obsidian black belt with a pink jewel manifested on his waist. The pink energy seemingly devoured the ancient rune blade. And as it disappeared, the effort the human was exerting had no purchase as his hands flew up over his head and he flipped off Tohru's back.

Tohru, the majestic dragon, felt the disappearance of any negative or poisonous magic in her body from Hrotti. Feeling none, she could now properly use her magic and turn into her human form (without any clothes).

Tohru, now in her human form, knelt beside the still unconscious young man. "Well," she murmured, "it seems I owe you a rather significant debt. A dragon of my standing cannot simply allow such a life-saving favor to go unreturned. Wake up now. Wake up and tell me your name."

His eyelids fluttered open. "Uh… Kobayashi… Takumi," he managed, still slightly dazed.

Tohru inclined her head. "Kobayashi Takumi. Tell me, Takumi. What is your desire? What do you wish in return for saving the life of Tohru, a dragon of chaos?"

Takumi just continued to stare silently, cheeks still red. Finally, the dark and dumb recesses of the human male adolescent mind drove him to one answer.

"Be my maid."

The words were barely a whisper, slurred with exhaustion and the lingering effects of the sake. And then, Kobayashi Takumi slumped forward, unconscious.

Tohru stared at his limp form, her golden eyes wide with utter disbelief. "...Huh?"