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It was nearly the time for Christmas so the whole town was preparing for it. Setting up decorations, baking gingerbread cookies, doing last minute shopping... But in the east, outside of the town there was a small wooden house. The house was more into the woods than closer to town. In that small house Kim family lived. Mother Kim Eunji, father Kim Joongi, big brother Kim Junmyeon, big sister Kim Suhyun and the baby brother Kim Jongin.
Mother Kim put her kids on the sofa and sat in front of them.
"My babies, I don't want you to play in the woods anymore. I know you don't go out after the dawn but you both are going to be 15 this year and I didn't told you this before but there are wolves in this forest and these kinds are the types who will bring trouble with them. You shouldn't get to close to them. You can't get too far from the house. And if you ever hear something coming from the forest you don't go and look for it, are you listening to me? No matter what you can't go deep into the woods." Jun spoke in behalf of his sister "Okay mother, we won't go into the woods."
For siblings days went by doing daily chores, playing in the garden and studying, they never left thier house after dark. They were curious about whats out there that makes their mom scared like that but they never questioned it.
Almost 20 years passed and lots of things changed for the Kim family or what is left from it. When jongin was 12 his mother passed away, her last wish was "Never leave Jongin alone in here. Don't leave this house, and if you must bring Jongin with you, please."
When jongin was 16 his father passed away. His last wish was "Look after yourselves my children, don't end up in the poorhouse, look after each other and never leave each other alone."
Both of those wishes were so simple, very simple to follow. But like everything else in life this rule becomes a big burden to the big siblings. While jongin grows up to be a beautiful young man, their lives changed a lot. His big brother found a job in the town so he only came to home to sleep. After that his sister found someone and wanted to marry.
After she got married Jongin also started to see his brother less and less. His brother started to visit bi weekly only to check on him and give some pocket money.
Last time he visited was in the begining of spring. Forest was at its most beautiful stage, the snow was moslty melted and slowly flowers were staring to show themselves. The whole forest was white, pink and green. There was 15 days left before their mother's birthday. Jongin wished them to be together for her birthday, he wanted to pick pink flowers and have a dinner together. Talking to his brother he realized that his dream might never come true. His sister was pregnant and his brother was preparing for his wedding. Jongin hates being alone but his heart didn't allowed him to leave their home, he couldn't do this to his mother.
"I'm sorry Jong, but you should come live with me and Naeun, you know my home is yours too. I don't want to leave you alone in here, you know father would like us to live together." Jongin couldn't help but interrupt "Yeah, in here, in our house!"
"Jong... This home is nothing but an empty shell. Home is where your family, loved ones live."
"Well maybe I should go and live with squirrels and bunnies in the forest. They would love me more anyway."
First time in years Jongin saw anger and disappointment in his brothers eyes. His brother has always been someone who had a poker face. He rarely showed any negative emotion.
" Jongin, you don't understand how much we love you. Seeing you living alone like this pains me, a lot." his eyes slowly became glassy "I don't want to lose you Jongin, we don't want to lose you."
Jongin took a step back and took a deep breath, collected himself. "I'm good here big bro, I can live by myself, I'm a man now. I can look after my self." He took a step towards his brother. " You won't lose me I promise." Even though acting all tough and strong in front of your own big brother felt bad, Jongin had to do it.
They said their goodbyes in the evening. Hugged each other like they were hugging their deceased parents after all those years. In the inside Jongin knew that he was letting go of the last part of his family. But he didn't said anything.
A week passed before he realized. He only left the home to get some fruits and vegetables from their garden to snack on. He felt too tired to open the gas lamp at nights so he started sleeping at sunset. He didn't clean the house nor himself. He felt empty for some reason, he felt like his life had no purpose at all. He slept 15 hours a day because he didn't had anything to do.
One night he woke up to a very painful sounding crying noise. He tried to sleep again because there was no chance that this noise could come from an human. Its the forest and nobody comes here, at all. But after 10 minutes of ear torture Jongin got up and lit the gas light. He looked out of the window and saw something moving on the ground. It didn't looked like a wolf the silhouette looked mostly like a human, Jongin was scared, he wasn't expecting anything like this, also he didn't know what to do. He felt very helpless, if his brother or sister was here, they would know what to do. His mental torment took only two minutes before he decided to go out and help this person. He wore some clothes and his coat took his keys, the gaslight and the small axe to protect himself.
When he got outside and walked to the injured man(?) he was panicking. This dude looked like he broke his leg in a very ugly way. His bone was out of his flesh. Jongin slowly held this mans shoulder. "Don't panic, I'm here to help, I live here I can take you to my house."
The calmed down a little bit and Jongin saw this as a opportunity to pick him up. But he couldn't, this man must be close to 2 meters there was simply no way that jongin could just pick him up and carry him to home.
" Wait, wait don't move, okay? I'm going to get our wheelbarrow and carry you with it." Because Jongin didn't know how to calm him down he started petting this mans head. Surprisingly that made him calm down a bit.
"It's okay, I'll wait."
Jongin was surprised to hear him, his voice sounded so deep but at the same time so beautiful.
After the initial shock Jongin started running, in few minutes he was already back and hauling this man into the wheelbarrow. After making sure of his legs were not touching the ground Jongin started to push him to his home.
Jongin laid the man on the sofa and went to the bathroom to get some stuff to fix his leg.
He knew that he only had to put the bone back in its place as the bones fix themselves in time. He ran to the bathroom and grabbed some towels, warm water and bandages.
" Now, I have to put your bone in place, you have to stay as calm as possible."
" I can try."
This giant man was crying but also he looked the calmest he ever looked.
It took 2 seconds to fix the bone and 20 minutes for the man to stop crying. Seeing then man calmed down Jongin started to clean his wounds and bandage them. After cleaning up the wounds and the man's face Jongin realized one, the man was beautiful, he looked like the most monstrous and at the same time most beautiful living being,with long and fluffy curly hair, with big elfish looking ears and big almond shaped eyes that shine like stars. Two, this man's wounds were almost gone, most of them looked healed and the visible ones were healing very fast.
Shocked and confused Jongin looks at the man in the face. "What! How! This must be a dream. I must be dreaming." Jongin pinched himself and realized that this wasn't a dream, it was a weird reality.
The man was startled by Jongins loud voice so he tried to get up and get away from Jongin but he fell on the floor and yelped in pain. " Wait, I'm human, I swear I'm human. Don't be scared."
"I can't help that! Also how can you be a human, you must be some creature, no human can do that! Explain!"
" I'm sorry for scaring you. I'm chanyeol, I live in this forest with my pack."
Even though the strange man talked in a soothing way Jongin wasn't calming down.
" What do you mean pack? "
" I'll explain, I'll explain everything but please lets calm down a little bit and sit down. I don't think I want to hop around like this anymore."
At that moment Jongin realized that Chanyeol got up from the ground and he is behind the couch while slightly hopping everytime he wants to move. At that moment Jongin thought that if a fight had to occur between them Jongin would win not because he was more muscular or anything (he wasn't) he would win because this man can't even stand up straight without tilting a little. He was still the injured man that Jongin found in the forest.
" okay lets sit. And you will explain everything, no lies."
"I'll do that I promise but please don't freak out. Just know that whatever I'll say after this doesn't mean that I will hurt you. I mean no harm, you saved me for gods sake."
"talk then, I'll try not to react much."
They sat down and Jongin helped him put his broken leg higher.
"I'm a werewolf. And please listen to me first. I'm a werewolf that lives in this forest with my pack, my family. I fell from a hill while running around and didn't realized that I hurt myself, I think I broke my leg there but I didn't know. So I got up and tried to walk back as a human but I fell over a branch and my broken leg got so much worse. I tried to howl but I couldn't from the initial pain so I started screaming, hoping that someone from my family would hear me and come to me. "
Jongin with how sleepless and distracted by everything he is, he didn't questioned anything he just heard. Other than one thing.
" why were you running around my home in the middle of the night? "
" ıhdanigtmere"
"what?"
"I had a nightmare okay? I hated it and I didn't wanted to burden other people with it. I was just going to run around for an hour and go back home. And I wasn't intentionally around your house, we know that you live here but this is also our territory too. And packs are supposed to not leave their territory unless they absolutely need to. "
"What do you mean by territory?"
This conversation continued for hours and the more they talked more Jongin became interested in the life of packs, especially this one. It sounded like they were a very close family. He envied it, he envied having people he loves around, he envied having so big of a family that his home can feel crowded sometimes. He envied having someone to have meals with. He felt so so lonely and he fell a sleep dreaming about being in a wolf pack and living with people that loves him.
They woke up cuddled on the couch. Chanyeol got up with no issues. Took a few steps, he was healed completely. This made Jongin realize that it may be time to separate. But he wanted to delay that so he started making breakfast and started talking. He wasn't a morning person and usually he couldn't make his body work correctly after waking up.so his speech was a bit slurred and he couldn't really pay attention to Chanyeol's answers. But one thing striked him. Apparently they excepted people from outside and you don't have to be a wolf to live with them. You can be part of their life if you want to even by being their neighbor and living in community and he can be with a wolf too. Chanyeols eyes shone while talking about his family and how Jongin would fit them. For the whole breakfast Jongin tormented himself about trusting this man and leaving or staying his own house.
After the breakfast they both didn't wanted to say goodbye so they washed the dishes as slowly as possible. Jongin said goodbye with his heart breaking. Chanyeol took a few steps only to hear the words he wanted to hear from the beginning.
"Chanyeol, can you take me with you?"
The end