Chapter Text
What happened before Jongin
Chanyeol remembers his childhood as a series of events that made him and his father run away again and again. He never met his mother but learned that she was from korea and she was a short red wolf. So when his father asks him if he wants to go to Korea and live there he says yes. He never blends in with the human kids at the japanese school anyway.
Him and his tall and fairly scary looking gray Eurasian wolf father traveled to South korea and found a wolf village and lived there for a year before a tragic event happened.
Most of the families in the pack lost at least a member in their family in the forest fire that was started by humans who wanted to use the area to build a hotel. What they didn't know was there was a village inside the forest that counted as a protected property of the government. The property was given to villagers to live on and after the fire a giant lawsuit began. Existence of werewolves and their whereabouts were known to the government for generations but it was top secret, that still didn't stop humans from hunting the widespread mongolian wolves. The accommodaters of the burned area were werewolves. When this information got to the higher ups the pack leader was called from the blue house, with the help from Chanyeol's father the pack council came up with a plan.
They wanted to use the abandoned homes until their village is built back and since they are going to clean up the abandoned homes those homes can also be sold after the pack leaves. Werewolves are good at renovation and carpentry, they grow up to be jack of all trades, kinda like the amish. For two years this part of the wolf community lived in and cleaned up the abandoned homes of the regions that are just outside of the city centre of seoul. After two years they went back to their forest but now the homes were renewed and the trees were freshly growing up. Most shocking part of all of this to kid chanyeol was when the pack leader surprised Chan and his father with a home in the village. "You are now part of us, if you accept this home and live with us we'll be more than happy." For the first time in his life Chan felt like he belonged somewhere.
Living in that village for the rest of his childhood, Chan met and got close to a lot of wolves and other creatures. Their pack leader was a gentle and very observant man, he was the first one to realize Chanyeol's interest in other animals and helping them. He went and talked to his father about sending him to university. His father was against it at first as he grew up in the forest as a lone wolf and was always afraid of getting too close to humans and he thought he would lose his son to the human society but after a bit of convincing he agreed. After pack leader Kim announced that Chan was going to get higher education he also encouraged lots of the families to send their kids to get a university degree. He said he would help with the accommodations and the payment and his intentions behind this was clearly to give children of the pack a brighter future. "The world has surpassed us and now it's time for our people to catch up, we need our youth to be educated and forward thinking, we need them to be better than us, they are our future." Lots of people disagreed with him at first, they had their reasons. Getting a higher education wasn't something common in the pack, most of the people who went to university left the village and started a human life in the city. Money wasn't the reason why they left, it was mainly lifestyle. But after a while the majority came to the conclusion that it was best for the younger generations to get educated. No one forced their child to go, some never even asked their children about it. To go to the city you really had to want it.
The living there or the money spent in education wasn't really an issue. The village had enough money to live very comfortably and all of this money came from hard work that is done by everyone in the village. The pack owned multiple businesses, they had a carpentry shop, they repaired houses, they had a little grocery store right outside the village where the city began, they have a summer camp for kids and they host winter sports events at the mountain that they live. To the outsiders the pack seemed like a tight religious group that lived together like some sort of a cult mainly because they also host lots of witch groups and let them have ceremonies and use the forest for resources. The former pack leader made a deal with some long-established witch families and they have been allies ever since.
With the help of some witch families the pack leader's son Kim Minseok was the first one of his generation to go college since the majority of the witch folk lived in the city they helped with the living area and getting enrolled in the school. The pack leader bought a three story building that was empty and with the help of the pack it was turned into a dormitory for the kids of Witches and wolves. A year later a few more wolves came to the dorm and they accidentally signed in as a human and when they realized it was too late.
Kim Jongdae came to Seoul by himself to find a place to live, after being enrolled into his dream college he now had to live close to it. On his way out of the campus he heard two girls talking about this so-called "young wolf's den" and how they were lucky to live there and how their parents should thank Mr. Kim for letting them stay there. Hearing that Jongdae thought the place must be an elite dorm or something and he wanted to check out the place so he followed them and waited at the door for a while and rang the bell, a young looking boy opened the door.
"hi?"
"I'm here for a dorm room"
" Are you sure? This might not be the place you were looking for."
The inside looked like a well decorated entry of a home and not much like a dorm but Jongdae didn't back down, he thought that this place only accepted specific people he thought bluffing would help and it luckily did.
" Mr. Kim said that I can stay here as it is very close to my university, maybe I'm at the wrong place, ı should go call my mom so that he can talk to Mr. Kim."
"You were sent by Mr. Kim? Well you don't have to call your mom, come in I'll find you a room…"
The boy in front of him started talking about the details and rules of the dorm and finally introduced himself as Kim Minseok son of Mr. Kim the pack leader. Jongdae didn't understand lots of the stuff this Minseok dude was talking about, he thought he fell into a religious group and since he was a catholic from family he didn't mind it that much. He went along with it. The monthly payment was very cheap and he was stupid enough to not ask why.
"I know you expected it to be free but we have to pay the bills ourselves and buy food so we came up with a system to pay everything and if we have some extra money left ıt goes to buying stuff like Korean beef or take out. You can settle into the room, if you need any help you can find me downstairs ım going to go back watching my show. I already told you that every floor has 2 bathrooms and downstairs is for eating or hanging out we also have a multipurpose hall. You can use that room as a gym if you need to and we have a small shed and a garden in the back, sometimes we eat there. This is the list of rules about this place. The most important one is don't go up stairs. "
"Why?"
"Because it's the girls floor. Don't ever think about it or I'll personally take you out."
" It's okay, Thanks dude for explaining and stuff, I'll get to unpacking, you sound like a fun talkative guy I'll come down once I'm done here."
"No, I'm not. This was a necessity and a duty but you are allowed to come downstairs if you want."
The Minseok guy smiled and his gums showed up and his little chubby face scrunched up really cute. Jongdae realized how cute he was at that exact moment.
Two hours later Minseok got a call from his father asking about his day and reminding him about school. Minseok asked about Kim Jongdae and how he didn't look like a witch. His father's reaction was to ask who kim jongdae was and chaos ensued.
The pack council and witch elites were called over just because the pack leader’s son spilled their secrets to a total stranger.
Jongdae was scared shitless, lots of freaky looking old men and women were on the couch discussing something and he felt like he was the center of the topic, he tried to explain that he meant no harm but after a particularly scary looking old lady said that they should just kill him and end it there and if necessary they can kill his family too. Minseok got slowly close to his father and whispered behind his ear asking to have a talk without all these people. His father accepted it and made a huge growling noise to stop the argument. "Wolf council, witch alliance I know that you are panicked and you want to solve this so I'm taking the responsibility of my child's actions and asking you to go home. Im going to solve this."
"We trust you, so you better do" said someone in the alliance and they left while bickering.
"How can you explain yourself to Minseok? You did something that can cost our lives, you know that. How are you going to redeem yourself from this?"
"Father, maybe we should let him stay. He doesn't seem like the guy who has any motivation."
"You made this huge mistake and now you are coming up with this idea?? How do you want me to trust you? What do you know about him that you trust him?What did he tell you?"
His father was halfway yelling at this point and Min knew he had to intervene before his father got even more angry.
" Dad, I talked to him about it. "
" About what?! "
" About all of this. How did he find here and such. He said that he was looking for a dorm room and heard two girls talking and he heard them say your name so he told me your name to get in. Apparently he came from a small city and his parents were catholic farmers so he thought we were a religious group and he didn't question anything, he just wanted the room."
His father made some dad noises "Bring the boy, I'm going to talk to him."
Jongdae slowly walked to the couch from where he was hiding on the stairs.
"I don't have a day, come quicker."
This made Jongdae jump and made him want to run for his life. But he just walked faster to the couch.
"where are you coming from? Jongdae"
"Just outside of Daejoon, ı grew up on our family's farm, sir."
"Okay, how did you come here, start from the beginning."
…
Minseok didn't really thought that his father would let jongdae stay here so he was shocked as much as he was excited when his father called him to the living room said that now that cat's out of the bag there is no reason to act hostile and that this jongdae boy looked innocent. He was more shocked when his father told Minseok to strip.
"What?!"
"Strip, start taking your clothes off, it's a little chilly so this one time I'm letting you do this inside. Strip to your underwear and shift in front of him."
Minseok looked at Jongdae and he was as confused and scared as Minseok himself, he looked like he was begging Minseok to not get naked.
" Dad I think we should do this outside. It's okay If it's cold. Let's go to the backyard. "
Mr. Kim listened to his son and considered it, he knew that his son said this so that he could stand far away from them while getting mostly naked. Even when he was a baby, whenever minseok felt shy he played with his hands. Now seeing that made Mr. Kim smile as he remembered the times where Minseok was too shy to shift in front of people and hid behind his mother's legs. Minseok was still his baby even though he was now as tall as himself.
They went to the backyard and Minseok shifted with his underwear on, this made it rip and fall to the ground. This was nothing weird compared to the fact that minseok was now a wolf that looked like a fluffier mostly reddish-brown a bigger husky. Jongdae wanted to scream but he couldn't find his voice, this was a first time occasion.
The wolf - Minseok? - came and laid his head on the sitting Mr. Kim's knees with a soft huffing noise. And Mr. Kim started to pet his head.
"would you like to touch? You are lucky you get to do this with my boy min, if you met any other rascals in here they would chase you down. Mind here has a calm personality, he is my biggest child, jongdae, he is first to stay here and maybe after generations of hiding he is the first to show himself to a human. No matter what happens here, my boy, you can never talk about this. If your parents want to know where you live we'll show this place as a proper dorm. But you must take this secret to your grave, If not this secret will take you to your grave, do you know what I mean?"
After a nice speech that Mr. Kim ended it on a serious note Jongdae thought he could maybe try touching the wolf. He patted for a few minutes before the wolf got up.
" Do you wanna see something cool? "
Mr. Kim's eyes were shining, he looked very mischievous out of nowhere.
And the wolf started howling, back in the day jondae listened to lots of howling from stray dogs and maybe mountain wolfs, but this sounded a bit different, It sounded like Minseok was hurt and was calling someone to come here. In less than two minutes few wolves and few humans? came to the backyard. They all looked on the edge, like they were ready to fight, after Mr. Kim's laugh they calmed down.
"Kids, this young man is going to live here from now on, he is a human" A few gasps were heard. "and he knows who we are. After close to a 200 years of hiding, he is the first and hopefully the only one to know us. You will protect him like he is one of us, because from this point on he is a part of this pack."
This is how jongdae -a human boy- became a part of something that was much bigger than he imagined. Mr. Kim thought this would be the end of it. This secret would die with the fortunate Kim Jongdae. Oh, how wrong he was…