Chapter Text
Jaeyun had always known something about him was wrong.
Wrong enough that dogs barked at him when he walked past them. Wrong enough that babies stared at him too long in grocery stores. Wrong enough that his older brother once looked him dead in the eye during an argument and snapped, “Why do you always act like you’re not even part of this family?”
The worst part was that Jaeyun hadn’t even known how to answer, because sometimes it felt true.
It wasn’t that his parents were cruel. They loved him, he knew they did. His mother still texted him reminders to eat lunch. His father still waited up when he came home late.
But every interaction felt slightly off, like they were actors who had memorized their roles but kept forgetting their lines, too stiff and too careful, like they loved him because they were supposed to.
His siblings didn’t bother pretending nearly as much.
“You’re seriously so weird,” his sister muttered one morning when Jaeyun froze in the kitchen doorway.
The family dog stood between them, hackles raised, growling again.
Jaeyun sighed tiredly. “I literally didn’t even do anything.”
“You’re bothering her.”
“I looked at her!”
“Exactly.”
The dog barked violently. His sister scooped the animal into her arms and narrowed her eyes at Jaeyun like he’d personally offended her. “You freak her out.”
“Everything freaks her out.”
“She doesn’t act like this with normal people.”
Jaeyun grabbed his bag from the counter harder than necessary. “Good thing I’m not trying to impress the dog, then.”
The kitchen lights flickered once, then all the power in the room cut out completely.
Silence dropped over the kitchen.
His sister stared. Jaeyun stared back.
“...Oops.”
“You HAVE to stop doing that!”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“You always say that right before something explodes!”
Jaeyun threw his hands up and left before the argument could get worse. Though, honestly, it already had. Again. As always.
By the time he got to work, he’d almost convinced himself he was normal. Almost.
Then his coworker handed him a coffee and smiled dreamily. “It’s on the house.”
Jaeyun blinked. “I didn’t order this.”
“I know.”
“...Then why are you giving it to me?”
His coworker just kept smiling.
Jaeyun slowly accepted the drink. “Thanks?”
Three seconds later, the girl beside the register frowned. “Wait. Why did you give him that for free?”
The coworker blinked rapidly, like waking up. “I--” His expression changed instantly to confusion. “...I don’t know.”
Jaeyun put the coffee down immediately.
Right. Normal people definitely didn’t hypnotize others into buying them things.
Cool. Great. Fantastic.
The dreams started getting worse after that. They weren’t nightmares, not exactly.
They were too beautiful to be nightmares.
Jaeyun dreamed of endless forests glowing silver beneath moons too large to belong to Earth. He dreamed of music drifting through dark trees. Of bonfires surrounded by figures with antlers and crowns of flowers and eyes that gleamed gold in the dark.
Sometimes someone called his name.
Not Jaeyun.
Something else. Something much older than he was.
Every time he woke up, his chest ached with homesickness for a place he’d never been.
It made him feel insane.
The breaking point came three nights later.
Dinner had already been tense before Jaeyun accidentally made it worse again. The lights flickered and then went out completely.
“You forgot to pay the electricity bill?” his father asked sharply.
“I thought Mom paid it.”
“I asked you to do it last week.”
“Well, sorry, I forgot!”
“You always forget!”
Jaeyun’s jaw tightened instantly.
His siblings exchanged looks from across the table.
There it was again. That look. Like they were all asking the same question, What is wrong with him?
“I said I was sorry.”
His father rubbed a hand over his face. “Jaeyun, we’re trying to help you become responsible, but every time we rely on you--”
“Every time you rely on me, what?” Jaeyun snapped.
The overhead light burst, shattering glass across the table.
Everyone jerked violently.
Then his mother whispered, horrified, “Jaeyun…”
Something inside him twisted. “I didn’t mean--”
His younger brother stood abruptly. “See?! This is what I’m talking about! Stuff like this always happens around him!”
“Sit down,” their father warned.
“No, because it’s true! He’s creepy!”
Jaeyun went cold.
Creepy.
The word lodged itself somewhere deep beneath his ribs.
“You think I don’t know that?” he said quietly.
Nobody answered, which was answer enough for him.
Jaeyun shoved back from the table so hard the chair nearly tipped over. “Forget it.”
“Jaeyun--”
But he was already gone.
He locked himself in the upstairs bathroom and gripped the sink hard enough for his knuckles to ache. His breathing came too fast, too sharp. His reflection looked wrong, paler than usual, eyes brighter somehow.
The bathroom light flickered overhead.
“Stop,” Jaeyun whispered to himself. “Stop doing that.”
Crack.
He froze.
A thin line had appeared across the skin of his wrist.
Jaeyun stared at it and another crack split across the back of his hand, like porcelain.
“What the hell--?”
The skin peeled. It wasn’t bleeding or tearing, but peeling. It curled back slowly, revealing something glowing beneath.
Gold.
No, not just gold.
Marks. Glowing patterns spread beneath his skin like curling vines of light.
Jaeyun stumbled backward so fast he slammed into the bathtub. “No no no no--”
More cracks spread across his arms, his neck, his collarbone. The human skin split apart in delicate fragments, falling away like ash. Underneath was something inhumanly beautiful.
His ears sharpened slowly to elegant points and the glow beneath his skin pulsed faintly like moonlight beneath water.
And his eyes… His eyes were no longer human at all.
Jaeyun stared at himself in horror. Then downstairs, someone called his name.
Panic slammed into him instantly and he bolted out of the bathroom, down the hallway, past his family shouting after him, and into the night.
He ran blindly toward the woods beyond town, branches clawing at him as cold air burned his lungs.
He didn’t stop until the sounds of the neighborhood vanished completely. Only then did he collapse against the trunk of a massive tree, shaking violently.
“What the hell is happening to me?”
“Honestly? You’re taking it better than most changelings do.”
Jaeyun jerked upright.
Someone sat sprawled across a branch overhead.
A boy. Maybe around his age.
He was wearing dark clothes and his eyes glowed catlike in the darkness. A black tail flicked lazily behind him.
Jaeyun stared. The boy stared back, entirely unimpressed.
“...You have a tail,” Jaeyun said weakly.
“And you’ve got bark peeling off your face. We all have problems.”
“What are you?”
“I’m what you’d call a cat sith. We’re very rare.” The boy tilted his head. “You can call me Jungwon.”
Jaeyun’s pulse hammered painfully. “This isn’t real.”
The boy smiled wickedly. “Oh, it’s very real.”
Jaeyun shook his head. “No, I’m hallucinating.”
“If you were hallucinating, I’d probably be way nicer.”
Jaeyun pressed shaking hands against his face. His skin was still splitting apart beneath his fingers. “Oh my god.”
“He’s probably not involved, actually,” Jungwon murmured.
“Stop talking.”
“Can’t. You look like you’re about to pass out and I do not want to deal with that.”
Jaeyun stared at him helplessly. “What’s happening to me?”
For the first time, Jungwon’s expression softened slightly. “The glamour broke.”
“...The what?”
“The magic hiding what you are.”
Jaeyun laughed once, sharp, breathless, and horrified. “And what exactly am I?”
Jungwon hopped lightly down from the branch. Up close, he looked even stranger, too graceful, too sharp around the edges. His eyes reflected light like an animal’s. He would look human if it weren’t for the cat ears and tail.
“You’re a changeling,” he said simply. “Although under that it looks like you might be of the sun court. Probably the best court you could be from all things considered.”
Jaeyun blinked.
Jungwon sighed quietly. “A changeling is a faerie child left in place of a human one, glamoured to look identical to the human child.”
The world seemed to tilt sideways.
“No,” Jaeyun whispered immediately.
Jungwon only shrugged. “Yes.”
“No.”
“You really think humans accidentally explode lightbulbs when they get emotional?”
Jaeyun opened his mouth then closed it again immediately, because this explained a lot.
The dreams. The lights. Animals fearing him. People giving him things without understanding why. His reflection. His skin. His entire life.
“No,” he repeated weakly.
Jungwon watched him carefully. “Changeling glamour usually lasts longer,” he admitted. “Something must’ve weakened it.”
Jaeyun barely heard him.
A faerie child swapped. Replaced.
Something cold settled in his stomach. Slowly, he looked up. “If I was exchanged…”
Jungwon nodded once.
“Then where’s the real child?”
The silence that followed felt heavier than anything else that night.
Jungwon’s ears twitched slightly. “...That,” he said carefully, “is a complicated question.”
Jaeyun stepped forward immediately. “Where is he?”
Jungwon shrugged. “In the faerie realm, most likely.
Jaeyun thought of his mother downstairs. His father. The family photos lining the hallway. A child stolen from all of that. Because of him.
“I have to find him.”
Jungwon blinked slowly. “That’s your first reaction?”
“What else would it be?”
“Usually changelings panic about their identity crises first.”
Jaeyun laughed bitterly. “I can do that later.”
For a long moment, Jungwon simply stared at him. Then he sighed deeply, like the entire situation had become inconvenient.
“Absolutely terrible idea,” he muttered.
Jaeyun’s chest tightened. “But possible?”
Jungwon grimaced. “...Unfortunately.”
Hope flared painfully inside Jaeyun. “You know how to get there?”
“Yes.”
“Take me.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“You’ll die.”
“I don’t care.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
Jaeyun stepped closer desperately. “Please.”
Jungwon looked at him for several long seconds. Then, finally, he groaned.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But when this becomes a disaster, I need you to know I predicted it.”
Jaeyun exhaled shakily.
Jungwon flicked his tail once and glanced deeper into the woods.
“The veil’s thinner tonight,” he said. “If we leave now, we can cross before dawn.”
Jaeyun looked back once toward the distant glow of town lights, toward home.
Or something that had almost been home.
Then he turned away.
“Okay,” he whispered.
And he followed the faerie into the dark.