The Azure Dragon and the Eternal Debate
There was this friend of mine who loved arguments more than anything. He’d start fights about everything—from famous soccer players to tigers versus lions, summer against winter, Coca-Cola against Pepsi. You name it, he’d drag it into a debate and pick a fight with me. Then one day, he brought up an interesting topic.
He cleared his throat and spoke two words: dragon and wyrm.
That was how the Dragon versus Wyrm debate began. He took the side of the Eastern dragon and started tearing apart everything about Western dragons. He’d rant about how you should never associate with winged creatures, how they were pathetic idiots who burned their own lungs coughing up fire, how they got beaten up by humans all the time. Normally I would have just humored him and moved on, but he kept it up for a whole week straight.
Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I stayed up all night researching everything I could about Eastern dragons. The next day, when he came at me with his usual provocations, I muttered under my breath:
I pointed at the sky and looked at him. He stared back at me with a blank expression. Then, as if he finally understood what I was doing, he took several steps backward. I wiggled the finger I’d been pointing skyward in response to his reaction.
Then I let my hand go limp. The finger that had been rising toward the heavens dropped straight down. I even crouched on purpose as if to touch the ground and made a loud deflating balloon noise for good measure.
He trembled all over and pointed at me accusingly. He looked like the ultimate embodiment of over-immersion, asking how I could do something so cruel. I let out a small snort and was about to raise my finger to the sky again when he shouted at me.
As if. From that day on, our debates only grew more intense. Surprisingly, we started taking it seriously. After the initial barrage of colorful insults, we began digging up sources and building arguments based on actual facts.
The argument lasted more than a month. Thanks to it, we nearly flunked out and almost didn’t graduate. Maybe it was because of all that hardship, but we finally reached a conclusion.
By researching ways to crush each other and then sharing that information, we ended up learning far too much about one another’s positions. In the end, we reached a dramatic compromise and returned to our normal lives.
So why am I suddenly telling this old story? It’s because of the situation I’m in right now.
As I mentioned earlier, even though it was half-forced, I had ended up on the side of Western dragons. I was familiar with them from all the fantasy novels I’d enjoyed since childhood, and I thought their overall appearance was cool. On the other hand, my friend was a complete and utter supporter of Eastern dragons.
In other words, this current situation should have happened to him, not me.
A dragon with azure scales, guardian of the East among the Four Directions. The king of all aquatic creatures, and furthermore, a sacred being that presides over all of nature.
Yes. The Azure Dragon.