The Red Dragon in the Room

Taming the Unseen Beast

For Mike, who gets it.

What do you do with a fish that refuses company, demands goldfish for dinner, and hits the glass when it’s displeased? If you’re my father, you call it a treasure. If you’re me, you start asking some fishier questions.

This is a story about beauty, loneliness, and silent legacies.

A Fish More Loved Than a Son

There’s a red and gold arowana swimming in a glass tank in my father’s house, and he treats it better than his own son.

No one says this out loud, of course. In our family, we don’t speak directly about such things. We just watch. And the fish gets watched the most. Every morning, my dad checks on it like a newborn. Every evening, he stares at it like a fortune teller reading omens in a gilded blur of scales and still water. That fish has a fan blowing on it when the weather gets warm. It gets upgraded tanks when it stops swimming—because God forbid the majestic creature feel cramped. It dines on hand-fed goldfish and organically raised worms that my father grows in secret, like some underground farm for royalty.

And I think: this is love? This is devotion?

Or is this just what happens when we’re raised to worship beauty, discipline, and silence?

Bad Fish: Salbahe

The fish is bad. Salbahe, my dad says in Tagalog. Mean. Anti-social. It hits the glass when it’s unhappy. It refuses food when it’s bored. It will kill anything placed in its tank, which is why it lives alone—like some moody prince with a bloody past in a dark castle. Beauty’s Beast.

And still, it is admired.

Because it’s not just any fish. It has streaks of red, which is rare and precious. Red means power. Red means luck. Red means, “Look how special we are.” And if there’s one thing our home believes in, it’s being special. Our curtains shimmer gold. The tiles do too. Even the furniture tries too hard. The whole place glows with quiet wealth, like it’s trying to convince God we’re doing fine.

Fish for Food?

Sometimes I stare at that fish and wonder if anyone ever eats arowana.

And if I did, would I gain its wisdom or just offend my ancestors?

But really—how can something have everything and still look so bored?

I don’t think it knows it’s caged. I think it believes this tank is the world. A palace, a stage, a high-security vault for a soul too delicate to mingle with others. My dad says it doesn’t want any company. It would murder a friend before sharing space. That’s just how it is.

And in this family, we let people be how they are—as long as they’re beautiful. As long as they shine. As long as they don’t make a mess on the floor. Or disturb the neighbors with some kind of infamous quirk.

The Red Dragon in the Room

That fish is not just a fish. It’s a metaphor no one wants to admit. It’s a legacy of high standards, of lonely power, of being pampered into madness. It’s what happens when you surround something in gold and forget to ask if it ever wanted to leave the water.

Me? I was born with fire in my mouth, not gills. I wasn’t built to glide in silence. And I’m not here to be gazed at like a symbol of someone else’s success.

Let the fish be a dragon. Let it live its strange, high-maintenance life alone. It might as well be the emperor’s personal fire-spitting, flying pet.

But I’ll be outside. Laughing in the dirt. Burning the old rules.

And writing stories that bite—just like the red arowana.

Next Time…

Maybe I’ll tell you about the gold Buddha my mom honors with homemade noodles, Sprite, premium bone collagen, and fresh bouquets.

Or the time we almost had a family feud over the broken handle of a window.

One dragon at a time.