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"There are no wolves in Seoul."
That's what Sohee's grandmother told him with the firm confidence of an old woman who'd seen it all. "Too many humans, too loud, and drawing territory lines using streets is awfully messy." She didn't look up from where she was butchering — in the literal sense, Sohee would have you know his grandmother knew her way around knives — the deer their pack had hunted the night prior.
Sohee, however, cubing radish to go into the dinner stew, paused and examined her expression until she noticed and motioned with her cleaver for him to carry on. The worn lines around her mouth were hard with grief, as if he'd be leaving his family home for good without as much as a passing glance back and not just moving to the capital to finish his studies with every intention to return over his semester break.
"Only Shapeshifters and their idolatry for the human way of life would last in a concrete wasteland like that," grandmother continued, slipping back into her old adage about how Werewolves were nothing like Shapeshifters, actually — the former being humans cursed into turning into wolves to the rhythm of the moon phases, the latter animals who had attained humanity and evolved from there, retaining their ability to shift back into their original bodies.
Sohee had heard it all before and the older he'd grown, the less it had made sense to him. Humans were a kind of animal too, for all biology classes had taught him.
He nodded, chopped on dutifully rather than pushing back. Some old dogs could be taught new tricks, but his grandmother wasn't one of them. You didn't become the matriarch of a clan the size of the Siheung Lee pack. If his family had settled here, in an urban area, then the idea of other wolves in Seoul wasn't really that all preposterous. And as much as he saw his grandmother's efforts to keep him safe and convince him to stay, he'd already confirmed his dorm choice and paid his semester fees.
He'd be leaving tomorrow. No scary tales of packless concrete deserts could keep him from the future awaiting him in Seoul.
"I'll be back for Chuseok, grandmother," he amended instead, moving his cube-adjacent radish pieces into a bowl so he could move on to chopping other vegetables, "You'll barely notice I was gone. You'll see."
Grandmother sighed and pushed the cleaver through a particularly stubborn section of cartilage. Sohee hoped he'd have this kind of strength at 79 as well. Methodically, she washed and dried her hands, then she motioned for him to come hug her. She'd grown small over the years (or maybe it was just Sohee growing up), easily fitting into his arms now, but the force with which she hugged him was undeniable. Sohee's shoulders sagged a little with relief.
When she'd fallen ill a little over two years ago he'd been worried he might not be able to hold her like this again. Leaving for his military service and relying on his parents' accounts of her health had been nerve-wracking in ways he hadn't even been aware of before.
But now, Grandmother hugged him with renewed vigor and every ounce of intent to keep him in his ancestral home for a little longer. Now, he hoped, things would be alright.
"You're a good boy, Lee Sohee," she told him and pulled back to pat his cheek. Her face remained unchanged and hard to read. "It'd be so much easier to ask you to stay if I didn't know you'll do well."
At the praise, Sohee smiled.
"I'll make you proud, grandmother. Just you wait."
Grandmother made a harrumphing sound and went back to the deer, shooing her grandson off to tend to the cabbage.
"Silly boy," she chided between the sounds of her cleaver hitting the cutting board.
"How could you not know you're already my pride and joy?"
Sohee wasn't a country kid. Siheung boasted a population of half a million inhabitants, skyscrapers, wide streets and droves of tourists during the summer; he was used to crowds and lively streets, he'd completed his military service, for crying out loud.
But somehow, nothing had prepared him for the stress of his first day on campus.
Wolves had a natural strong sense of direction but only so much of that mattered when Sohee's brain kicked into anxiety mode and made his palms sweaty, turned breathing into an ordeal and stopped filtering the sensory inputs of his environment properly. By the time he arrived on campus he felt winded, stressed and lonely.
All his life he'd been part of something larger that had already been set out for him — his family pack, the extended connections that came with it, even his military cohort. For the first time it was on him before anyone else to help him find a footing. The prospect was scary and felt a little overwhelming, especially considering that next to establishing some sort of stand-in pack Sohee also had to keep up with his studies.
Nervously, Sohee licked his lips and adjusted the straps of his backpack on his shoulders. He'd made it to the main building of his university, surely he could make it through the rest of the day as well.
He psyched himself up for another minute, hovering by the entrance like a lost child before finally gathering enough courage to enter—
Or, that had been the plan. Instead, what he found himself walking into was the faintest trail of magic in the air; fresh and vibrant even when diluted.
Out of all the smells in the world, the essence magic left behind after it had been cast — after an Enchanter's spell, an arcane event, in the aftermath of a Werewolf or Shapeshifter's transformation just to name a few scenarios — was by far the most captivating, addictive one.
Sohee had been told that the actual sensation of arcane residue was different for every individual, registering in a variety of ways too (wolves just happened to have excellent noses) but he only really knew what its scent was like to him, burnt sugar laced with a strange, otherworldly kind of ozone.
He knew that whatever he'd caught was only a whiff at best, leftovers, not even fresh anymore, but the smell still hit him in the gut like a well-aimed punch. And more than anything, it filled Sohee with an ember of hope.
There were no wolves in Seoul, Grandmother had said.
But by her logic, there should be no wolves in Siheung, either. Grandmother was wise and experienced, but not all-knowing and most certainly not infallible.
Sure, the traces of magic in the air could be just about anything: maybe Enchanters frequented SM University. Natural events that brought surges of magic were far more common than regular humans realized. Grandmother had mentioned Shapeshifters communities existed in Seoul.
Part of Sohee just hoped that it could also mean he wasn't all by himself.
There were a million reasons why the smell of burnt sugar and ozone clung to Hong Seunghan like a spider silk veil.
That was all Sohee could do not to blow his cover. Humans didn't know anything but their kind existed in the world (with the small exception of enthusiasts of the occult, who were rarely really taken all that seriously on a larger scale).
Something something human superiority complex.
Either way, this human superiority complex was also the reason Sohee couldn't turn in front of Seunghan to test the waters, see how his new friend and roommate would react—
Perhaps Sohee should give a little more context, or he'd risk sounding like a clingy, delusional madman. So, context was as follows:
It was Seunghan who found him during their orientation day, asking Sohee if he could have the seat next to him in the auditorium.
"H-here?"
Sohee blinked, confused. The scent of magic had left him in a floaty, dazed state for a little and he was only starting to shake himself out of it now, only to have it hit him all over again.
The handsome man grinning at him had brought it along, leaving the sparking aftermath of magic hanging in the air around them like pins and needles, raising goosebumps down Sohee's shoulders and spine.
"Yes!"
The man nodded, the corners of his mouth remaining unchanged and far apart. His Cheshire Cat smile would be unnerving if it weren't for his idle bobbing in one spot, as if gravity alone wasn't quite enough to keep him in place.
Sohee looked around. The seats in their vicinity were largely still unoccupied, they were both fairly early. Returning his attention to the grinning stranger he had a hard time trying to convince him to move elsewhere, however.
Instead, Sohee nodded and gestured towards the chair next to his own with a helpless expression.
It took perhaps a whole of three seconds for the grinning man to flop down in the seat, sighing contently and melting into the chair for a moment in an impressive display of human-to-blob transformation — and then back, as he bounced into the impressive square back of impeccable posture.
"I'm Hong Seunghan," the grinning man introduced himself, digging through his backpack without taking his smile-curved eyes off of Sohee, "First year Liberal Arts student!"
The natural ease with which he fell into conversation was the nudge Sohee needed to ease up a little and break out of his surprise-induced frozen state.
"Lee Sohee," he replied with a hesitant smile he hoped wasn't too stiff or awkward. Seunghan didn't particularly seem to mind, eyebrows riding up and chin lifting a little as he pursed his lips in an expression Sohee somehow knew to read as him expecting a follow up—
Right, he'd introduced himself with his study year and subject!
"I'm, uh. In the Department of Vocal Music. First year, too."
Seemingly pleased with the reply Seunghan wiggled in the spot and, with a small, surprised noise of triumph as if he'd been doubting himself, produced a pencil case and what looked to be a new notebook from his bag. For a moment his attention on Sohee faltered and went towards arranging his supplies on the flimsy excuse for a desk attached to the chair in what looked to be a creative interpretation of Sohee's own (very organized, thank you very much) layout.
"Cool," Seunghan hummed once done with his handiwork, studying it for a moment before turning around to face Sohee and promptly almost undoing it again.
Seunghan's squawk was undignified and didn't quite fit the handsome, sharp features of his face but as he and Sohee both scrambled to pick up his belongings as they tumbled off the desk. The peal of laughter that burst out of Sohee's mouth was unavoidable, sharp and bright as the tang of magic in the air.
"I'm sorry," Sohee pressed out between giggles, his fingers picking up as many of Seunghan's colorful highlighter pens (he sure had brought a lot of them for an orientation event) as he could.
"This isn't funny, I know, just–"
When he looked up he only found Seunghan smiling, however, just as widely when he'd first approached him. His face looked relaxed, satisfied, not in the least bothered by Sohee's inappropriate laughing outburst.
"It actually kind of is," Seunghan replied and accepted the highlighters, pastel green, blue and pink, with a graceful nod.
And just like that, Sohee had made his first friend at university.
Then, it had turned out that Seunghan lived in the dorm room across from the one Sohee shared with soft-spoken and chipper Kim Seonwoo from the Department of Education.
Seunghan had this easy way of integrating himself into almost any kind of social setting, Sohee soon learned, almost like cats had a talent for shaping their body into the most cramped cardboard boxes. He and his roommate Chanyoung, who was a year younger because he was from abroad and didn't have to complete military service, quickly became common guests in Sohee and Seonwoo's room — and with that also filled it with the pervasive spark of magic that somehow seemed to stick to Seunghan (and Chanyoung, though Sohee was unsure whether that was just by proxy).
All that context, however, did little to explain why exactly Hong Seunghan lived in the constant remnants of magic and with their first semester quickly picking up speed the question became a constant fixture on Sohee's To-Do List of Small Everyday Things: just like doing the laundry it was something that bounced around the back of his head with high frequency but ultimately was left to the last possible moment.
The last possible moment turned out to be when Seunghan forgot his wallet in Sohee's room.
It was a solid, beautiful piece of leather work that Seunghan had mentioned had been a gift from his parents and Sohee, despite the promise of a full moon itching at his haunches and the increasingly hairy back of his neck, did not want to put returning it off unnecessarily.
He was lucky, he supposed, that the first supermoon of the semester fell onto a long weekend. While normal full moons were preferably but not necessarily spent in wolf form for most werewolves he knew, supermoons forced a transformation and often brought on a slew of symptoms before and after. Seonwoo frequently returned home over the weekends to see his family so Sohee hadn't bothered covering up his sharper nails or fangs when alone in his dorm room, and Seunghan and Chanyoung had been suspiciously absent themselves.
From what Sohee had caught onto they both were due for mid-semester assessments, however, so he hadn't really thought much more into it—
Or, he hadn't thought much more into it than one would when your friends were constantly blanketed in a haze of faded magic, which meant that Sohee had, in fact, found the way they'd made themselves sparse suspicious and wondered yet again if Grandmother had just been wrong about the wolves in Seoul.
He hadn't found it in himself to ask, though, not even when Seunghan had stopped by for an impromptu late night bibimmyeon dinner that he had, allegedly, very proudly, prepared all by himself. Having food made for him, unsolicited at that, had been so disarmingly heartwarming to Sohee, he'd only been able to send the rabbit god of the moon a fleeting plea and hope that Seunghan wouldn't pay too much attention to his hands or teeth or how the back of his neck had sprouted extra hair over the last two days.
But Seunghan, attentive and sharp Seunghan, had seemed distracted too.
"I just wanted to see you," he'd explained between comically large bites of noodles, as if that was a normal explanation for showing up with two massive bowls of (not all that) spicy noodles in front of Sohee's dorm door. He'd then proceeded to first almost and then, not much after, most certainly, had spilled part of his dinner on his white, worn-out shirt.
The wallet must've slipped out of Seunghan's back pocket between then and when he'd left to get changed and then just never returned.
Sohee had felt put out, but maybe Seunghan was just sensitive to the moon. Some humans were. And the moon most certainly charged the air around all of them with threads of lightning and caramel and fire, dragging at the wolf underneath Sohee's skin, beckoning him to come out and play.
Seunghan could've fallen asleep in the process. He did that sometimes, flopping over onto the floor when he ran out of energy and waiting until he recharged enough to carry on with whatever he'd been doing.
Bringing the wallet was no skin off of Sohee's back.
The door to Seunghan and Chanyoung's room was on latch when Sohee crossed the hallway. Through the gap left open he could feel the evening breeze sneaking past, holding the last feeble dregs of winter cold as May loomed on the calendar.
"Weird," Sohee mumbled and knocked against the door anyway. He wasn't a heathen, thank you very much, and he had been raised by wolves — very polite ones at that — who'd instilled the importance of privacy and consent in him growing up.
The rapping of knuckles against the door caused shuffling on the other side, then something plastic clattered to the ground. Probably the container of cat treats that Seunghan kept balanced on a stack of textbooks on his desk because he liked to feed the stray cats around campus (one more (one of Sohee's few and rather weak arguments towards the Hong Seunghan is an Enchanter theory that he'd entertained for a few hours and then shelved because he felt silly for grasping at straws.
"Seunghan?" Sohee asked, fighting his curiosity tooth and nail not to just open the door. "Seunghan, you dropped your wallet! I just wanted to—"
Something on the other side of the door growled.
Sohee's eyes widened immediately, the coarse wolf fur at the back of his neck bristling and his own growl, a natural, automatic response, fighting its way up his throat unbidden.
He'd thought the university dorms safe mostly because beasts of yore were rare these days (humans took care of most atrocities without needing supernatural powers) and college students dying over exams and working ungrateful jobs made for pretty bad food.
Sure, Seunghan was tall and Chanyoung was even taller, and happened to have adorable, fluffy cheeks that still held onto a little bit of his baby fat but Sohee had seen an imugi skeleton and a bulgae's skull, both artifacts the Siheung Lee Pack kept in their basement as hunting trophies, and even Seunghan and Chanyoung combined would not make for much more than the equivalent of a box of Pepero — nice to the taste, maybe, but not really a meal.
"Seunghan, I'm coming in!" Sohee announced, sending his friends a quiet apology before pushing the door open with his shoulder and barreling into the room, Seunghan's wallet clutched to his chest.
The room was a mess, windows thrown open, packets of Churu spilled at the foot of Seunghan's desk and the vast of the floor space was taken up by a beautiful, very large, very imposing tiger.
Around Sohee, the air burnt with traces of magic, brighter and more acidic than what the moon alone could've done and discarded on the ground under one of the tiger's paws he caught a glimpse of the soiled shirt Seunghan had been wearing. Whether it was intact or not was a different question, but as far as Sohee could see the only stains on it were the reddish orange hue gochujang left behind. He'd watched Grandmother butcher enough animals to know what blood looked like.
Which left only one real conclusion—
"… Seunghan?"
The tiger physically recoiled and, rather than growling again, let out a sound that coming from a wolf would've sounded wounded. Sohee wasn't sure, okay he didn't speak cat—
And, well, there wasn't really much time to change that. Before he could say anything else the tiger turned around, jumped, crashed its hind legs against Chanyoung's desk that was situated right below the window and sending a barrage of textbooks to the floor (Sohee, despite the situation, winced at how narrowly one of its hind legs missed the expensive laptop) and disappeared into the night as if the evening had swallowed it.
Sohee's favorite part of the transformation had always been the in-between; the moment where it felt like he was morphing into something larger than himself only for the shifting of his atoms to click and the knowledge to settle that this had always been who he was.
As the moon guided his bones out of shape, stretched out his skin, caressed his fur where Sohee transformed in a narrow back alley behind the dorm where they kept the building's dumpsters he could almost fool himself into believing that transforming was a relief.
It wasn't, not really. He'd left Seunghan's wallet behind in his room after hastily trying to clean up a little. If it were him he'd hate to come back to a trashed room after a super moon night, though there were only so many things a (mostly) normal man in his early twenties could do to patch up the gouges the tiger's — Seunghan, Sohee had to keep reminding himself, the reaction to his name had all but confirmed his suspicions — claws had left behind on the desk surface.
Then he'd closed the window, locked up their door as good as he could without a key as well as his and had taken off after the pungent burn of magic in the air.
As a wolf, following the trail was a lot easier. He didn't exactly see smells the way humans would expect it but the scents of his environment still left behind noticeable trails. The air felt different, whether it was a change of temperature, a faint glow, light catching in spots where it shouldn't, things like that.
Magic did most of these things at once, making it easier than most tracks to pick up.
Seunghan's trail was joined by a fainter one leaving the same dorm that Sohee suspected must be Chanyoung and didn't lead particularly far; to the back of the campus sports facility, actually, where above an awfully convenient stack of plastic crates balanced on two dumpsters a window was left open — well, open for a cat, perhaps, even if a very, very large one.
Sohee realized belatedly, after he'd almost gotten himself stuck in the window, that there was nothing on the other end that would help him down from his uncomfortable vantage point of what must be the men's locker room.
But it was either staying here with his ass out the window, going back and stewing in his worry for Seunghan and his worry for what all of this meant for himself and his friendships and the burning curiosity to learn whether he'd actually, finally felt people like himself in Seoul, or taking the plunge. His aching joints surely would forgive him in time, right?
Sohee's wolf body was larger, heavier, stronger than his human one. This also meant that when he crashed into the tiled floor of the changing room whatever else was here must've heard him too. His own ears picked up on a handful of heartbeats by now, and the gentle lapping of water against ceramic — there had to be a door to the pool open somewhere.
He'd been here before, with Seunghan and Chanyoung, too. They'd decided to check out their campus facilities and it'd turned out that Chanyoung had been a competitive swimmer for most of his life so they'd set an afternoon during one of their first two months aside to spend here, splashing around and doing very serious swimming.
It'd been a good afternoon. Sohee didn't like that this memory was starting to get tangled up in his complicated, anxious feelings about tigers and Hong Seunghan and the scent of magic.
"Did you lock up behind you?" he heard someone ask. In human form it wouldn't have been much more than a rumbling growl to him, not that he would've been able to hear it from here to begin with, but many Werewolves and Shapeshifters retained habits like speaking verbally on top of their animal communication even when transformed.
The voice was familiar, though he couldn't place why right away. Instead, he remained very still on the spot, ankles aching after his most gracious landing.
"I– I don't know," admitted someone else. Below the purr of the tiger body Sohee could hear Seunghan.
"Hong Seunghan–"
"Wonbin-ah," a third voice chided, this one completely unknown to him.
Wonbin. Like Park Wonbin, Sohee's memory informed him, providing him with the image of a slender, handsome upperclassman he knew Seunghan and Chanyoung were close with. Sohee himself had only really met him once in passing, too intimidated to do much more than exchange pleasantries. Wonbin hadn't seemed particularly interested in taking the first step either, though according to Seunghan that was because he was shy too.
"I'm sorry, okay?" Seunghan's disembodied voice whined, "I was in a hurry!"
"Because your crush saw you after you shifted?" Yet another voice; a little deadpan and not familiar to Sohee either, though it sounded closer to what he was used to from his pack. Canine.
There was distant splashing, followed by an indignant yowl.
"It's the truth, though, isn't it?" That's Chanyoung, distant and faint even considering his naturally soft voice, "I haven't heard you physically shut up about Lee Sohee–"
"Our Seunghanie has a crush!" Someone else, someone new cooed.
More splashing ensued.
Sohee felt horrible eavesdropping. If he were in human form his ears would be heating up too, the flush covering him from his cheeks to collarbones. He pointedly forced himself to ignore the comment about Seunghan crushing on him. Allegedly crushing on him.
It wasn't like he hadn't wondered before. Seunghan was clingy and had an easy way with physical affection and Sohee wasn't used to this sort of treatment from people outside of his family's pack. But entertaining the thought had made him worry that he was being a little too full of himself. Seunghan was physical with Chanyoung too, and from what little Sohee had seen he hadn't been shy to quite literally throw himself at Wonbin, either.
He didn't know if he returned Seunghan's feelings. They'd been attached at the hip since the school year had started, but between adjusting to a new place and fighting to keep up with university assignments he hadn't really had the time to examine whether he'd been so eager to stick with Seunghan because he felt a deeper sort of kinship with him and Chanyoung or whether he was just afraid of being by himself.
Growing up with such a large, well-established pack Sohee had never been forced to examine any of these things before.
The time for that wasn't now, either. His presence was, at least to an extent, already known which meant that he either would have to show himself or wait for Seunghan, Chanyoung, Wonbin and whoever else was with them to come find him. He might as well rip off the band-aid.
The hallways of the sports center were only dimly lit by emergency lighting and the light of the moon filtering in through the windows, giving them the atmosphere of a haunted house. Perhaps this was an appropriate moment to mention that Sohee did not, in fact, enjoy haunted houses very much.
Just like he'd presumed before, the large metal double doors to the pool were wide open, letting the sound of the water escape into the corridor.
The voices had gone quiet after Sohee had opened the doors to the locker room and had remained that way, with only faint, hard-to-discern whispers making it to his sensitive ears.
He spent more time obscured by one of the doors waiting and listening, the sound of his own heartbeat deafening — and audible to everyone else, no doubt, animal hearing was no joke when it came to these things.
When Sohee finally found the courage to round the corner into the pool he did not find what he expected. To be quite fair, he hadn't been sure what he'd expected at all, but it wasn't the largest water deer Sohee had ever seen standing in the pool shallows with a crocodile— alligator?
he wasn't majoring in zoology for a reason, alright? — half-draped over its back.
The deer, impressively tusked and giving him a wide-eyed look of surprise, looked more upset with Sohee's appearance than the massive reptile in its immediate vicinity, which Sohee found a little insulting.
Before he could even consider shifting his attention to anything else in the room he'd been already pounced.
"How did you—"
The hard, muscular body that had tackled Sohee to the ground paused for long enough for Sohee to twist around and recognize the tiger from the dorm.
In the tiger's eyes, recognition dawned.
"Sohee?"
Then he was pounced again, this time with more enthusiasm and less killing intent.
"The man of the hour, I take it?" the canine voice from before mused from somewhere past Seunghan's body. The tiger blocked out most of Sohee's view as he was flat on his back and fighting his instinct to snap at his friend (and it was his friend, Sohee had no doubt; his presence was the same even when his shape wasn't) to let him back up. He didn't like showing his belly when he was anxious.
"Hani, you're making him anxious," the deer mused, still uncannily unbothered by the crocodile swimming slow circles around it. From somewhere in the room Sohee could hear Chanyoung giggling.
"Oh!"
The weight of the tiger's body pulled back and for a moment Sohee found himself confused by how he found himself a little disappointed. He'd have to think about that later — or not.
In the air of the pool hall the scent of magic mixed with the chlorine vapor in the weirdest, most intoxicating way. No one had turned on the overhead lights, probably because no one was supposed to be in here at this hour, but just like in the hallway the emergency generator seemed to be on and provided them with enough light for anyone born without night vision to get around clearly.
By the pool's edge sat three figures huddled into a lump of fur and limbs and unnerving eyes. Park Wonbin was easy to make out knowing what to look for, the black panther stared back at him with a suspicious glint in his eyes. Bracketing him were a wild dog — the canine voice Sohee must've heard before — and a squat creature that looked a little like a bear and a badger had an intimidating love child. He had no clue what kind of animal he was looking at but he was sure he didn't want to get into a spat with it.
"Sohee, hi!"
Now that they were sitting face to face (sort of) it was easier to take in all of the parts of the tiger that were so obviously Seunghan: the tail that refused to remain still, idly swinging from side to side, the way his eyes closed when he was satisfied, the way the magic — now fully in display — curled around his body protectively, like a safety blanket.
"Hi," Sohee managed, wincing at how winded his greeting bark sounded. His heartbeat was still going at a hundred miles a second.
"You forgot your wallet."
"My wallet? You brought it here– like this?"
The question helped to shake Sohee a little from his anxious stupor and he scoffed and pushed at Seunghan with his paw. The tiger, much larger and heavier than Sohee, their size difference more pronounced than in human form, did not budge.
"No, genius, I left it in your room!"
The reminder of what exactly had happened in Seunghan's dorm room made the tiger shrink into himself, his ears and tail drooping.
"Oh right," Seunghan replied dejectedly and turned to the water. The deer was somehow successfully wrestling the crocodile into submission right now. Sohee never thought he'd ever see anything like that. He'd seen plenty of this kind — water deer, fluffier and a little smaller than their antlered relatives but outfitted with tusks that made them look a little vampiric — during hunts with his family. Next time he'd probably think twice before chasing after one of them.
"Chanyoung, I think I broke your desk."
"You broke my– what?!"
The crocodile's tail hit the water surface with a loud splash as if to underline his disbelief and in this moment it occurred to Sohee that this was where Chanyoung's voice had been coming from. The crocodile.
"Sungchan, give him a break," the strange creature Sohee couldn't place, cut in with a good-natured laugh in his voice.
"I'm sorry, but what kind of animal are you?"
His words came out before he could really think much of them.
Wonbin, hissed and put himself a little between Sohee and the other guy, though said other guy didn't seem particularly impressed and just pushed his head past the panther's body.
He notably didn't make to move away at all, settling against the black fur instead as if to soothe him.
"Wonbin-ah."
"It's rude," Wonbin growled and Sohee felt himself bristle a little. He hadn't meant to be, okay?!
"I'm sor–"
"No need." The funky creature shook his head, no malice or scorn in his voice.
"You don't often see wolverines around these parts. I'm Osaki Shotaro, it's nice to meet you!"
At Shotaro's cheery introduction the others seemed to deign it safe to come closer as well, with the exception of Chanyoung, who only lifted himself enough out of the pool to see what was going on. Sohee was surprised at how such a ragtag group of animals could feel like a pack in their own right.
By the end of the night Sohee didn't know whether there were any other wolves left in Seoul, but he knew that Song Eunseok, as pretty as his golden Jindo coat when he changed back into his human form, was as close to one as he'd get that night.
He'd seen Eunseok around campus, thinking back now, he was one of Seunghan's TAs, and Sungchan he remembered as the captain of the swimming team Chanyoung had developed a thing he refused to properly name for.
Shotaro worked at the office for foreign students and had apparently gone to university with the older batch of them.
"I'd been fully prepared to continue living all by myself, as wolverines do," he recounted, walking Sohee, Seunghan and Chanyoung back to their dorm. Wonbin trailed after them like a sulky shadow, almost one with the night even now that the moon had let up and allowed him to change back into his startlingly beautiful human form.
"But then Sungchan and Eunseok found me somehow—"
"The magic," Sohee breathed, and Shotaro laughed, nodding.
"The magic. And then, the year after, Wonbin entered university."
"And Wonbin and I are from the same area," Seunghan continued proudly, "and he told me all about his pack that he'd found here and— well."
Wonbin didn't say very much as he caught up with them, only wrapped an arm around Shotaro's shoulder. Sohee made a mental note to ask Seunghan about that later, too — or not.
"And Chanyoung?"
"Sungchan. Seunghan. Both, a little, at different times. Sungchan is a lot less polite about chatting people up about how they're dragging around magic residue."
At that, Sohee winced.
"I kept waiting for you to bring it up!" Seunghan whined and draped himself over Sohee's back, his cheek squishing against the side of Sohee's head. After everything that had happened tonight the werewolf caught his heart rate picking up a little.
Not now, Sohee begged his heart quietly. Some things were better left to be examined in daylight.
"I didn't want to weird you out. What if I'd been wrong?"
Seunghan burst out into a full-bellied laugh that was a little too loud for two in the morning, and Sohee, Chanyoung and Wonbin shushed him.
"Silly Sohee," he hummed after complying, his expression a little bemused and impossibly fond, "I still would've wanted to be your friend."
So here was where Lee Sohee stood after his first year in Seoul:
There were no wolves in Seoul (unconfirmed).
There were Shapeshifters in Seoul (confirmed).
Sohee's pack was not very werewolf-like. It consisted of a smiling wolverine, a deer that could wrestle alligators, a Jindo with a talent for dad jokes, possibly the world's shyest panther, an alligator-not-a-crocodile who shared his snacks with him and a tiger who snuck into his bed on new moons because he didn't like how empty the sky felt on nights like these.
It wasn't very werewolf-like, but Grandmother had said it herself, he'd long made her proud already.
Maybe it was alright for him to go a little bit against werewolf protocol here, just this once.