To prepare himself for the fansign, Kibum had bought a college mathematics course online and downloaded it to his phone. This was a lot less conspicuous than lugging a 500-page maths textbook around, which would surely attract unwelcome questions. The course contained hundreds of mathematical concepts Kibum had never even heard of before, having never gotten further than high school calculus, but now he enjoyed an intuitive understanding of each idea, with the feeling of new worlds unfolding around him. Even in the brief moments of time he'd had to look at the course, it hd boosted his number web with a new level of complexity. Now his number web glowed strong and sturdy in his mind, the numbers and symbols ready to absorb the attention he would be given by the media and the fans.

When they walked into the small auditorium, the excited noise he’d heard through the door became screams of excitement. Even through the web it was like shards of glass being driven through his eardrums. Multiple camera flashes dazzled him, and he stood dazed and half-blinded while the others smiled and bowed. Noticing his trouble, Jonghyun put his arm around him and guided him towards the table set up on the stage. Unfortunately that gesture inspired an even greater level of excitement among the fans, and Kibum barely made it into his seat between even with Jonghyun’s help. He felt like he’d just been flattened by a steamroller, and the fanmeet hadn’t even started yet.

He took a deep breath and tried to find a smile. The MC was speaking now and the screams died down, making it easier to focus on his number web. Rather shaken, he wondered how he was ever going to handle a stadium concert if just a hundred fans did this to him.

The question and answer session went better than their entry. Handled expertly by the MC, the media representatives in the front few rows asked their questions in an orderly fashion and the fans sitting in the theatre behind them quietened down in order hear their responses. As the others answered questions, Kibum felt his composure come back, and some of his confidence with it. When it was his turn to talk, he found that if he focused intently on the person asking the question, he was able to filter out the most of the eager background attention of the fans until it was like white noise, still present but easier to ignore. The number web absorbed most of that white noise for him.

“What did it feel like being in a coma?” one of the media reps wanted to know.

Kibum shrugged. “It didn’t feel like anything really. I was asleep, and then I was awake. Only it was four weeks later than I expected it to be.” This prompted a murmur of sympathetic laughter from the audience.

“Did you dream?” the rep persisted.

Kibum hesitated. His recurrent dream flickered through his memory. Being a wolf felt so natural to him, and the ruined cityscape was so familiar. The question made him wonder. Had he perhaps dreamed of being a wolf before, while trapped in his coma?

Either way, it wasn’t an answer he could give the media. “I don’t remember any dreams,” he said.

The questions moved on, and finally it was time for the fans to come and meet them. It was a typical set-up. The group members sat behind a long table, and the fans lined up to come onto the stage a few at a time, carefully controlled by security guards. The fans had photographs, posters or albums they wanted signing, and many clutched gifts to give them. Kibum screened hard as the first couple of fans bounded towards them. He could sense the feverish excitement radiating off them. It was a surging kind of energy he hadn’t experienced with his extended senses before. It felt uncontrolled, almost feverish, and it made him nervous.

The girl in front of him handed him their latest album and he took it, careful not to let her fingers brush his. The other fan had given Taemin, who was sitting next to him, a headband with cat ears attached. Taemin obligingly put it on and smiled up at her, making the fans waiting in line give a groan of affection. Kibum felt the girl’s emotions lurch and crash around her like a tidal wave as she accepted her signed album with a shaking hand.

He was getting distracted. He glanced up at the fan whose album he had just taken and found that he recognized her. Like a computer program, as soon as he’d focused on her face, his mind had instantly searched through the many thousands of faces he’d seen of its own accord, placed hers, and attached it to a name he’d written on a poster last year.

“Lee Miyoung, right?” he asked, smiling up at her.

“Y-yes - h-h-how did you –“ she broke off, apparently stunned beyond the powers of coherent speech.

“You came to our fanmeet in Incheon last year,” he said, glancing down to scrawl her name and his signature across her album. “Thanks for supporting us.” When he looked up again, she had pressed both hands over and tears were pouring down her cheeks.

“Key!” Jonghyun pretended to scold him. “Stop making the ladies cry!”

“Sorry, Miyoung-ssi,” Kibum apologized, rather unnerved that simply remembering her name had caused such a reaction. He held the album out to her, and she snatched it back and darted away, sobbing hysterically. Even through his number web he could tell her emotion scents were exploding around her like fireworks, and he realised she simply couldn’t process the strength of her feelings. Ruefully he decided that it was better to pretend he didn’t remember the fans he had seen before, if recognizing them caused this kind of reaction. At least hysterical fans were hardly unusual at a fansign, even if he’d never actually made one cry himself before.

The next few fans passed by without any unexpected drama. On his left, Taemin was accumulating a sizeable pile of cute animal hats, headbands and garlands. He kindly wore each accessory for a few minutes, until another fan gave him a new one to replace it. Kibum received several gifts too. They were mostly stuffed toys and similar small gifts, but some gave him expensive herbal medicines and health supplements. He was touched, and made sure to thank them all individually. He knew most of the fans were high school or university students and probably wouldn’t have much money, yet they cared enough about his health to save up and buy him the things they hoped would help him recover.

After about half an hour, he was approached by a girl who seemed different from the other fans. Her energy was pushing at him in a weird, aggressive way. She didn’t smile or say anything to him, just stared at him with oddly flat eyes, her hair hanging in limp strands around a thin, sallow face. He couldn’t smell her essence, because he was using the thickest part of his number web to prevent the incessant fan attention from grinding him into a pulp.

A yell from the security guards made Kibum glance up. The next moment, a pair of hands had seized his shoulder and neck, and a wild, staring face pushed too close to his. The girl dragged him towards her with savage strength. His hips crashed painfully into the table between them, knocking piles of gifts and albums flying. Shock at the sudden attack broke Kibum's number web apart. He heard the startled cries of the others only distantly as her hot, dry palm burned against the skin of his neck.

A mess of tangled images flooded into his brain, haphazard, confused and terrifying. A limp arm mottled with round, bruise-like marks - a booted foot coming down to crush a plastic toy train - a shaking hand placing a syringe to a vein - a skeletal woman convulsing on a grimy floor – leering, bloodshot eyes - gardening shears with blood on their blades - a poster of SHINee torn off the subway wall; she thought Kibum was so beautiful he must be an angel...the visions tore dizzyingly on, and then, worst of all, a nauseating rotting smell rolled heavily over him. The smell of sickness, of decay, of death. Panic overwhelmed him, and his extended senses flared up and roared outward in a rush of burning flame.

There was an ear-splitting scream and her hands were torn from his neck. He reeled back with a gasp. The security guards were still lunging towards them. The visions had lasted barely a second. They tackled the girl to the ground, but she had already let go of her own accord.

“Burned me, he burned me,” she wailed. “My hands, my hands…”

Kibum staggered backwards. She was right. He had felt the heat go out of him. Somehow, he had burned her.

“Oh my God! Kibum, are you okay?”

The others had all leapt to their feet. Jonghyun and Taemin were closest, having been sitting on either side of him. They were reaching out to him, shocked, concerned.

“Don’t touch me!” Kibum cried. He backed away further, towards the back of the stage. He couldn’t handle any more input right now, he would explode. And what if he burned them too? Kibum had never hurt anyone before. Her screams made him want to be sick. He turned and bolted from the stage, ran backstage and up into the main building, panic flooding him. He had no idea what his abilities were turning him into. He’d hurt someone and he didn’t even know how. What was next? What if he accidentally killed someone?

Far behind him, someone was shouting his name, but he paid no heed. He banged through the heavy door into the emergency stairwell and flew up the cold concrete steps, his breath sounding ragged in his ears. He could only think of getting away. He needed to be somewhere calm, somewhere quiet, somewhere nobody could push all these thoughts and feelings and noise and smells and LOUDNESS all over him, somewhere he could stop panicking and think -

He burst out onto the rooftop. It was bitterly cold, and the icy wind cut straight through his thin knit sweater and jeans. He reached the wall and put his hands on it. The chill of the concrete stung his palms. The city spread out below him, pale in the wintry haze, fading into the distant mountains. The world seemed to wheel and spin around him. The wind whipped at his hair, blowing it into his eyes and face.

Kibum breathed the freezing wind in, let it sting tears from his eyes. This high up, fresh from the snow-clad m