Bojing

Bojing appears as completely human to those who are also human. But those who are particularly spiritually inclined, or other nonhumans blending into the human world, could notice the horns and tail that Bojing hides with spiritual magic. A winter snake that adorns itself with faux horns to pass as a dragon, yet its sleek snake tail gives itself away.

Slightly eccentric but mostly appearing as a calm and collected young man, Bojing works at a floral themed bar in the outskirts of Beihai. People often comment on his rather decorative and eye-catching appearance, but he claims that he simply likes jewelry and wishes to improve the image of the place he works at- Which he certainly does. He has handsome yet somewhat androgynous features, with dark gray hair and light blue dye on the underside. He typically only wears white, tan, light blue, and dark gray colors, paired with significant amounts of jewelry and white peony flower decor.

Despite his rather relaxed appearance and facial expression, when you look into his eyes you get the sense that he's seen much grief. Bojing rarely makes extreme expressions, usually masking his feelings with a slight smile or a slight frown. Yet when he returns to his small studio he currently calls home, sometimes he'll let his emotions come in crashing waves and live them out the best he can, just so that he'll have the energy to put on a facade the next evening.

While he's grown thicker skin to rude customers, generally he enjoys his job working as a late-night bartender. Living a mostly noctornal life, he tends to often wander onto the beaches during the late night and very early morning. Despite living in a somewhat busy city, he greatly values his alone time. Very rarely will you see him out in the bright, busy daylight hours, since he works the 6pm-2am shift and spends much time sleeping in the daytime.

Birth

A snake was born unto this earth on a cold winter morning, with parents that would spoil it, feed it, and love it, providing it and its siblings with warmth and care from the freezing air. But as it grew older and the winter nights grew longer, as it became less adorable and more demanding, it was simply left alone one day. It did not know what had happened, whether it had been abandoned purposefully or if something had happened to its parents. Yet wanting to survive, this snake wandered aimlessly into the wilderness with its many siblings.

At first there were seven of them in the nest, each somewhat lost in the world but grateful for each other, despite their frequent arguments. Then there were six, as one decided to wait in the nest for their parents despite the high likelihood of them not returning after a week of absence. Five survived the first week of winter, since one was smaller and frailer than the rest and could not withstand the cold weather. Four remained after a hawk swooped in from above and took the sibling at the very end of the group. And by the end of the winter, three siblings were left after one who wandered out to find food for the other siblings was burried by a sudden snowstorm.

Youth

The three of them left had gone through unimaginable pain after losing so many of their only family, yet together they continued to survive and eat enough to grow to be of considerable size by the summer. And when they happened upon a small human village, filled with people that looked similar yet slightly different from each other, the snake siblings once again were reminded of the loneliness they had felt and the family they had lost throughout the journey. Yet the humans often hunted creatures that did not look like them, and the snakes were wary of them. Hoping to assimilate into that community, they thought that in order to be accepted they should look like them. So together they attempted to morph into something similar to humans, shedding skin over and over again despite oftentimes painful failures.

One day, one of the siblings morphed into something that looked mostly human, yet was slightly off- Their tail still remained, and their face still had snake-like features. Yet humans came in variations, and the sibling was confident they could assimilate first, then slowly allow their siblings in as well.

Unfortunately, when they stepped foot into the village, they were woefully unprepared. Not only were they met with a language completely unfamiliar to them, the humans regarded it as a monster and brutally murdered it, even though it had so many similarities to the other humans.

The remaining two siblings were overcome with hate for this human species, and one cool fall evening they shed off their human forms in favor of their original, large serpent-like forms. Ravaging throughout the village and destroying everything they could, at the sight of two siblings huddled together in fear of the serpents, they took pity on the young humans and decided that although they could not undo deaths and bring back their parents, perhaps they could be a new family together, and the two serpents took on as human of a form as they could muster to accompany the two human children.

Yet despite their good intentions, hate burns into the heart too deeply. One night, the older child attempted to murder the two snakes in their sleep, and was partially successful in severely injuring the two. Seeing this, the older human child took its younger sibling away and ran far from the two snakes.

Adulthood

That night, one of the snake siblings died, leaving the only remaining sibling in anguish. Loneliness overcame them and they did nothing but wake up, cry, and go to sleep, not eating or drinking and wishing that it too would die so that it could be reunited with its family, if an afterlife existed.

Instead, a dragon passing by saw the pitiful form of the part-human, part-snake, and saw the potential in it for being able to transform into a human rather quickly. Somewhat forcing the snake to join its clan and painfully adorning its head with a pair of dragon horns made from her own carved nails, the snake now was apart of the dragons and brought to live with them.

Going through intense education and training, the snake quickly learned thousands of years worth of knowledge accumulated by the long-living dragons, mostly under the wing of the dragon that had taken it in. Giving the snake a name, 波璟 (Bojing) it had yet to deserve the 龍/Long dragon surname. Yet for the next several centuries it would work tirelessly to receive admiration and praise from its elders, yet also earn the envy of other dragons who would ridicule it for being a snake.

It would often suffer, not knowing whether it deserved to live or not, or if one of its siblings could have been better suited in its current position. Yet still it trudged on, until it finally was time for it to die.

Death

Snakes, with a much shorter lifespan than dragons, meant that Bojing living centuries was already a very strange anomaly. The centuries had taken a toll on Bojing, and his old wrinkly skin and clouded eyes were in stark contrast to his youthful looking master. Though Bojing's master was particularly fond of Bojing- She was without children, or other talented apprentices, and after centuries upon centuries of life had worn herself down, she asked Bojing a simple question.

"Do you want to live forever?"

Bojing, afraid and on its deathbed, did not think twice to say, "Yes, I would have liked that."

With that, the dragon master pulled out a shining blue pearl from her throat and placed it in its palms with her slightly cold fingers.

"Please swallow this. As long as you have this in your chest, you will be an irrefutable descendant of the dragons, and be granted wisdom, spiritual energy, and immortality. So don't refer to yourself as 'it' anymore, it has always pained me." And in a rapid span of a few moments, the once youthful looking dragon master who had not changed in the centuries Bojing had known her, quickly aged to a middle aged woman, then an elderly woman, then to unrecognizable skin and bones, before collapsing into skeletal remains and finally dust- Leaving nothing but the silk hanfu that she was wearing. Yet Bojing could not forget the joyful smile on her face, as if a thousand year old weight had finally been lifted off her shoulders.

The snake did not know what to do. He was suddenly granted a surname, an identity, a family, at the cost of his master's life. He felt as if he had betrayed somebody he did not realize he also considered family until just now. The pearl he was holding seemed to rejuvenate him just by touching it, and his wrinkly old hands from centuries of wear suddenly became youthful looking.

To honor his master's last words, he swallowed the pearl and felt immense energy pouring into himself, yet could not help but to spit it out once again as if his body was rejecting the pearl. Realizing the horror that he could not fully accept his master's gift, he fearfully ran away and descended back into the human realm and realized that many, many things had changed in the centuries he had been gone.

Rebirth

After his prolonged training, he learned to be able to hide his horns and tail, both physically or using magic to trick the eyes of people around him. Keeping the pearl on his chest at all times, while he is unable to swallow it for prolonged periods of times without a gag reflex he keeps it as a 'jewelry' while having it also acting as his life source. During his studies with the dragon kind, he also learned many languages, including certain human languages as well. But still feeling somewhat estranged from the people around him, yet oddly wanting to know more about the human race which he had once hated with such a passion, he decided to take residence in a small studio in the outskirts of Beihai, which he paid for in full with some gold he had accumulated over the centuries. Working for the sake of conforming to society, he took upon a late night bartending job in a floral themed bar. He enjoys the company of most his coworkers and his female manager, who slightly reminds him of his old master. More than anything Bojing likes doing a good job. He feels as if it's the least he could do, considering so many people had died for him to be where he is right now.