Ignat no hanayome

"If life is meaningless no matter where you are..." For Rita, a lonely boy who has never found a place for himself in his village, those words carry a bitter weight. When the village custom singles him out as the "Dragon's Bride"—an offering for the Snowy Mountain Dragon whose ancient legend has long since faded into mere folklore—Rita accepts his fate with quiet resignation. He understands the unspoken truth behind the tradition: the sacrifice is simply a means of reducing the number of mouths the village must feed. Yet with nothing binding him to his old life, he sets out toward the mountain as the appointed offering. Abandoned alone in a raging blizzard and left to freeze, Rita is rescued by an unexpected figure—Ignat, a breathtakingly beautiful dragon who walks in human form. For the first time, Rita's eyes light up with genuine wonder: the dragon of legend truly exists, and at last he can fulfill the role he was chosen to play as a bride. But Ignat coldly turns him away, declaring, "I don't need a bride." Unwilling to abandon the one purpose he has ever known, Rita refuses to give up—and in his persistence, he uncovers the secret of a ritual said to turn humans into dragons themselves.