[Un-betaed]

*****

Yunho stepped backwards in instant response as the strange-acted boy stepped closer to him, seemingly able to feel the danger within the other presence. Nervousness strike him as his back bumped on the solid wall behind him, making him trapped in the corner of room – no space for him to sneak out or runaway.

“You…are human right?” How he felt that was such a stupid question he ever asked to someone and what could be more embarrassing it was asked by someone in his age of 27.

What am I thinking? He looks perfectly like a human.

Jaejoong was still in his expressionless face, staring at the man who had a disquieting and anxious look.

Suddenly, the sound of Yunho’s stomach growling made the queer boy backed a step from him and looked at him with a blank stare.

“Oh…I haven’t eaten since this morning.” Yunho grinned nervously and wrapped his arms on his stomach, not very sure if the boy understands what he said, since all the boy did was just stared at him blankly.

Jaejoong blinked his eyes once before he retreated away and walked out from the house, leaving Yunho with a deep frown on his face, feeling curious.

“What a weird boy…really weird.” Yunho mumbled as he saw the boy dashed out from the house.

Yunho snapped out from his dazed after the boy disappeared; alert it was a great chance for him to get out of the scary house, which looked more like a haunted mansion to him. It was better for him to find the way out of that wood himself. But when he had just stepped his foot at the door, the sudden return of Jaejoong which stood still in front of him made him jumped back a little.

“Oh my, you scare me!” Yunho took a deep breath and huffed. What’s with this boy? He go and come back in such a lightning speed…

Yunho stared and observed every move the other would make next. Jaejoong suddenly extended out his hands which held two fresh fishes, he handed one to Yunho.

“You catch this for me?” Yunho asked with a doubtful look.

“…..…”

“Uhm, then… thank you.” Yunho uttered as the queer boy still didn’t give him a verbal response, only gave a scary stare.

Yunho just took his backpack to the ground, when he caught Jaejoong opened his mouth to eat the raw fish, “Oh, no!” His eyes widened in instant as he snatched the catch from Jaejoong.

The boy’s action stopped midway as he froze.

“You…you can’t eat it raw. I mean… eating cooked fish is safer than eating raw fish.” Yunho said in a tone of reprimand.

“Listen, even you’re not concern about health, well…I do. And I won’t consume something without caring about hygiene. So there’s no way I will let you do something like that in front of me. Let me cook this first. I assure it will taste better…” Yunho just kept babbling while started rummaging through his backpack.

Jaejoong remained freeze in his spot, watching the man’s every move; even he didn’t understand what the man talked about and did.

After made a stack of dry twigs and leaves, Yunho grabbed out a lighter and started set off the fire to grill the fishes. It was good he still got all of his travel things in his backpack when he fell from the high ground before.

Once the fire lit up, Jaejoong suddenly cringed and scooted away in a move that startling Yunho.

“What…hey, what’s wrong?” He tried to reach the boy, but the boy dashed inside the house which left Yunho stunned.

“Don’t tell me…he… No, he’s not. That mythical creature just in an absurd story I ever read.” Yunho mumbled to himself, as he sat there in a deep thinking face.

It had been told in the folklore which was kept passing on by the folks who lived in the village near an isolated mountain to their descendants. It told a story of a nobleman in the village, who was devastated by calamity when his only child was attacked by a strange illness. There was no physician who can cure him nor would the most expensive medicine in the world, to restore the boy to health back. Until one day, when a royal physician came and prescribed that the liver taken from a live fox would certainly cure the boy’s illness. And that was what the nobleman believed and had ordered all his servants to go out for fox-hunting, procure the fox's liver no matter what it would cost. What came afterwards was something nobody ever predicted, as the fox’s liver that had been procured not from a normal fox, but from the greatest old fox that had nine tails, the one of a kind that had live for thousands of years. The fox was in the middle of feeding its cub when it was killed and its liver was taken.

Soon, the boy’s health recovered sufficiently with a white fox liver’s spirit. Also, he was indescribably grown up into a pretty young boy and got a superior intelligence, which the noble man was always proud of. His son had always surpassing others, in term of beauty, intellect and ability.

But that glory life of him wasn’t last long when the boy turned eighteen, the fact of he was getting abnormally strong than a normal human and enchantingly beautiful put skepticism to villagers. The thing was no longer to be questionable amongst the villager when one night, a catastrophe that no one ever predicted and imagined came crushed over the noble man’s family. All people in his household died after been attacked by a leash of foxes. It was believed those foxes were the cubs of the greatest, legendary white fox that was killed a long ago. They came for a revenge on their mother’s death. In such chaos night, the villagers tried to help but were shocked to found all the foxes died outside the mansion after killed the noble man family. Seem their lives only last after they paid their revenge.  Strangely, the only survivor of the tragedy was the young boy. It seemed the foxes left the boy who had possesses their mother’s liver alive.

And in that night of full moon, the villagers were struck by another great shock as they witnessed the boy suddenly changed