Chapter Text
Jisung yawned, his tiny mouth stretching wide and showing off a set of perfectly white, needle-sized teeth. He hopped onto the window sill where he comfortably stretched his wings to their full span and then shook out his fluffy fur before taking off.
The night was cool and refreshing after the stuffiness of his room and Jisung indulged himself by flying a few loops around the tree tops. Sadly there was no forest close by, no area where he could really test his limits but the park was nice too.
He didn’t hunt anymore anyways after that first time, when his instincts had taken over and he had caught a fly. He could still remember the awkward taste and the way the chitinous exoskeleton had crunched between his teeth. Thinking about it made him nauseous every time, so he always made sure to eat dinner now before flying out, not too much to weigh him down but enough to feel sated so that his instinct wouldn’t take over again.
Jisung fluttered around a thick branch and then flew a sharp curve that had him chittering proudly through the air. Considering that he’d only been a bat for a little more than a year he was doing a very good job already. He still didn’t know what exactly he was (Werebat? Shapeshifter?) but he’d come a long way from being shocked and terrified to enjoying his monthly moonlit flights.
It had all happened so fast and he had never seen it coming. All it had taken was a bat, some alcohol and his clumsiness and the life as he had known before had been over in an instant.
~
Jisung had walked home from a club one night, all the way from the outskirts of town which was a very long time to walk, even when sober but he knew he couldn’t drive anymore and was too stubborn to take a taxi. So he had made his way through the night, passing an old building and in his drunk state he thought it might be a good idea to go up to the front door and peek inside.
When the door was actually open he took out his phone for some light and went inside, just to take a look. There was nothing exciting in there, just dirty wallpapers and a moldy couch but in the corner of the room he found a bat. It was sleeping upside down, his head tucked neatly under its wings and Jisung cooed under his breath.
„Aww, you’re so cute! Such a fluffy little thing!“
He tried to get closer to observe it a little better, maybe even take a picture if the light was bright enough. Because he knew that bats had very good hearing he tried to be extra quiet and sneaky but of course it had the opposite effect that night. He could be clumsy in his natural state but intoxicated he was practically a disaster on legs.
With his eyes fixed on the bat he missed the edge of a ripped old carpet below his feet and promptly stumbled over it. It sent him flying forward with a yelp and as his shoulder hit the wall of the house - right below where the bat had been sleeping - his phone cluttered loudly to the floor.
Jisung screamed when there were leathery wings beating against his skin as the bat flew up, tumbling through the room still half asleep and they both reacted in panic. Jisung flailed about, hitting the bat in midst air and the next thing he knew was the feeling of needle-like teeth sinking into his palm. He yelled out again as the bat flew out of the house, its balance still off and despite his fright Jisung’s heart sank.
„I’m sorry!“ he shouted after the little creature, even though he was probably just scaring it more with his raised voice. He really hadn’t meant to wake it.
With an uncomfortable feeling in his chest he looked after the bat, praying that he had neither hurt it nor gotten it in trouble with sending it flying out of the house like that. Only when the fluttering sound of wings had vanished and he was standing alone in the dark did he really notice the pain in his hand.
He fished for his phone on the floor, using the few rays of moonlight that fell through the shattered window as a guide to find it and then sighed when he saw that the screen was cracked. Again .
He should get a discount on phone screens at this point. His friends would totally make fun of him when they found out that he got scared by a bat, enough to even drop his phone. With his lightsource luckily still functioning he inspected the bitemark at his hand. It was tiny, barely even bleeding and so Jisung just wiped his palm on his pants and forgot about it.
He started feeling off the next day. It was a little like getting a cold; first a headache then a sore throat, then the overall feeling of exhaustion and sickness that he couldn’t quite shake. Jisung still pushed all of it aside, until he was sporting a fever and couldn’t ignore it any longer. He didn’t have trouble breathing or had a stuffy nose so he wasn’t too worried at first but he was sure that he was coming down with something and so he still decided to stay at home.
Later his friends told him that he had slept for days, barely conscious in between their visits, with his body sweaty and cold, looking more dead than alive. Jisung himself didn’t really remember that much except for a few bits and pieces, fuzzy and vague, like pictures in a dream. He remembered a cool cloth against his skin, Chan’s voice telling him to drink something and a dull pain, like an ache, that spread throughout his whole body and made his limbs feel as heavy as lead.
Still, none of them knew what he had actually caught - even the doctor they’d called had been clueless - and when Jisung finally fully recovered everyone was relieved.
Only after, when he was back on his feet did he consider the bat and its bite as the cause. He started searching for possible related illnesses online but stopped very quickly again when the results were way more gruesome than he could handle.
Besides, it couldn't have been rabies or something similarly anyways or else he wouldn’t have made it. So he convinced himself that it must have all been a coincidence; that he had just gotten a strange case of a cold or overworked himself or both and that with a little more care he’d just be fine.
Then came the next full moon and he realized that nothing was fine and that the bat bite had not been a coincidence after all…
~
It had been quite a journey since then, going from initial terror and desperation slowly to some form of reluctant acceptance. He’d only started to actually enjoy this monthly change for the last few nights that he’d been out, flying more and worrying less about getting caught or biting others.
Nonetheless he kept his new state of being – whatever it was – securely under wraps, not even telling his friends about it. He was scared that they would think that he was crazy or worse, that they'd believe him eventually but then would be too disgusted to stay friends with him or scared that he would turn them into were-bats too.
He had tried to find the bat that had bit him as soon as he had realized what had happened, walking back to the house in countless nights and even leaving messages behind but there was never an answer. He wondered if the bat had been like him, a former human that had been bitten by someone else before or if it had simply been some mutated bat, completely unaware of the consequences of its bite (the same way Spiderman had been bitten by a mutated spider and not another spiderman)
Whoever or whatever it was that had bitten him Jisung just hoped that they were okay. He didn’t hold a grudge against them. After all it had been him who had disturbed their sleep and if he hadn’t gone into the house while drunk then none of this would have happened.
Jisung stopped visiting the house after a while, stopped searching for messages or signs or articles online that could tell him who he was or who had bit him and just accepted his new life.
After some adjustment it didn’t differ that much from before and sometimes it even had its perks. Like finding nice spots from above during a nightly flight that he could show his friends the next time they went out for a field trip or learning all about bats and insects and other nightly creatures through experience instead of having to sit down and read about it. He also felt like his hearing had gotten better too, even as a human and that he healed a little faster than before. However, he couldn’t really test it out or compare the ‚befores‘ and ‚afters’ at the doctor’s office without raising questions that he wasn’t willing to answer.
Of course there were also a few downsides to turning into a bat each month: Not being able to go out or stay over at a friend's house during that night, being incredibly tired the next morning if he had been out flying for too long and – as mentioned before – remembering the taste of his nightly prey. Though all in all Jisung had to admit that it could have been worse.
He wasn‘t dangerous or too big to hide himself in his shapeshifted form and so he could continue his human life relatively undisturbed despite his nightly adventures. However it did get a little lonely sometimes to carry that secret with him but the fear and insecurity about not knowing what exactly he was and how his friends would react to it still kept him from opening up to them.
That’s why when one night he met another bat he totally freaked out.