He Keeps Trying to Make Me into a Pill

I’ve lived in seclusion in the city for three hundred years, making a living by selling Chinese medicine.

> The programmer who moved in next door keeps coming to buy calming tea, saying he can’t sleep because his code won’t run.

> Then one day, he collapses outside my shop, covered in blood, scales sliding from his suit sleeve.

> The men in black pursuing him sneer, “The Dragon Prince thinks he can run away from his arranged marriage?”

> I quietly close the door.

> After all, the bride in that wedding agreement from three hundred years ago was supposed to be me.