One

Red Riding Hood

When Sungmin was young, he had formed a habit. Was it good or bad, he had no idea, but he loved to venture into the forest alone. The forest had been his escape; from his family, from the village, everything.

His father was rarely ever home and whenever he was, he will be simply too tired to entertain his young child. It had always been a pat on the head and then his father was off to bed, whatever achievement or discovery that Sungmin held in his tiny hands neglected and soon enough, forgotten. Eventually Sungmin learnt that his father was not going to be like the uncle next door, who played with his son and had dinner with his family. His father was a busy man. Sungmin had not priority over his work.

His mother was of a similar story. Like many other women in the village, his mother was tasked with the job of a farmer; helping out with the harvesting of crops and selling of goods in the market. She was out by first light every morning and rely hours after sunset.

Sungmin had been having meals by himself since he could remember. At first it had been pots of stew and porridge with notes to apologize for having to leave, but it soon turned to just money pressed down by a book on the dining table and the notes disappeared soon after.

It wasn’t as if he was hugely affected by the neglect his parents showed him. He had always loved to explore and have an adventure so he was rarely cooped up at home with nothing to do.

The first time he had entered the forest was because he had been chasing the chicken that had escaped from the farm and had followed the frightened animal into the forest unknowingly. When he had finally given up and had turned to return to his home for a rest, he had been stumped. For every way he turned and how high he looked, all he could see were towering trees and endless greenery.

That day, he had been trapped in the maze of the forest scared and tired. He had lain beneath a huge tree where he rested until the next morning, surrounded by daisies all around. To say that when his mother found out she was not very pleased.

So she had made him a cloak with a hood, dyed a bright red color for him to wear when he ventured out of the house. He was to wear it every single time in case he got himself lost again. The bright red against the dirt of the village and the greenery of the woods, it would be easy to spot him if so. He complied with his mother’s wishes and donned the hood every time he left the house and he became so prominent in the village that people started calling him the little red riding hood.

Over the years he would have grown up and would outgrow the name, or so he had thought then. By no chance would he have guessed that he would retain his child-like looks even as he grows and matures into a lad, leaving the villagers with the choice to keep calling him little red riding hood.

It had had been months since he had last seen his father before the door opened to reveal the elder male. Years of stress and work had taken its toll on his father and every time he saw the man, it seemed as if he had aged far more quickly yet again. Wrinkles always increased in numbers and the movements of his father had slowed considerably. Sungmin had wondered then how many more times will he be able to see his father before age steals him away.

But as he had been lost in his thoughts, his father had walked to stand just before him. Sungmin was just 10 but his father looked well into his early forties. When his father spoke it had been confusing because that was just how the household in that family worked. You do your own part and keep to yourself, only speaking when it is necessary.

So when his father had asked him if he wanted to visit his workplace the next day, he had dumbly nodded yes.

For the whole of that night Sungmin had had to fight grins of his face. It had taken years, but he was finally going to spend time with his father. The excitement and nervousness had stolen sleep from him that night.

In the next morning, although tired from lack of sleep and bouncing in his seat with nerves, he had kept silent. There had been a barrage of questions that lurked in his mind, just waiting to spill out. Where did his father work at? What kind of job does he do? Does he work with chemicals or technology? He had always known his father as a researcher, but it had been the first time for him to visit his father’s workplace.

But there had been silence between them, years of avoidance and one-word exchanges resulting in a quiet relationship between father and son. There had had been no reason to break that peace between them. So Sungmin had waited as his father drove him to the facility.

When they had reached, the first thing that Sungmin thought of was how run down the place looked. Dirt covered the walls and the paint was peeling off. Weeds and overgrown grass had buried the pathways to the entrance and there was no single person in sight. Sungmin had looked back the way they came from and had idly wondered why his father worked in the middle of nowhere.

But when they had entered the building however, his eyes could not have had gotten bigger. Technology, there had been so much technology. Living in a village, he had little to no experience with technology of the scale he had seen. Screens of letters spanning walls and walls, papers stacked everywhere and the rolling of chairs as people stood and sat to continue their work.

The floors were a pristine white and Sungmin had stared in awe at the identical clothing that all the people in the building wore. White coats and sterilized gloves coupled with face masks and clear goggles. It had felt like something out of a sci-fi movie, until he saw the guns.

Positioned at the entryway to a further section of the building had been soldiers; full-fledged, army bred soldiers. In their hands they had carried guns the size of Sungmin himself. Needless to say, it had resulted in confusion and fear in the young Sungmin.

He had been unable to pay attention as his father helped him put on a white coat and brought him past the guns, too absorbed in the fear of danger to actually do so.

It was when he had been led to a huge stadium that he had calmed down and was able to converse with lightly with his father. The place that he had been taken to then was called “The Dome”, as the researchers around him had mentioned. Sungmin had found out that the only reason that he had been able to visit his father’s workplace that day was because the research team had been about to reveal their findings for their study. It had been a day when special audiences were selected to view the result of a 10 year study.

But Sungmin had noticed something wrong with the stadium then. Other than the fact that it had looked more like a Coliseum than a stadium, with a concave circular arena, the floors were stained red in some parts and there were soldiers all around. There were a few stationed around the dome and there were a couple stationed at the gates at the side. There were even two standing beside the audiences. It had been frightening to imagine what could have possible need so much preparation and caution.

There had been a few minutes of waiting before an echo around the dome announced the beginnings of the show and a few more minutes of uncomfortable silence before the gates of the dome was pulled up.

Sungmin could hear the clanking of metals echo against the bricks of the walls before he had seen the figures emerge from the gates. And Sungmin had never wanted to cry out more so than he had then. 

Wrapped in chains of metal, blindfolded with washcloths and held at gunpoint; the figures were children just like him. Boys and girls, they had been led forward by a chain around their necks towards the center of the concave platform.

Sungmin had felt his father stand just the slightest bit closer to him and he had felt the bubbling of rage in his chest at the action. How dare his father try and protect him when other children are subjected to those kinds of treatment.

Because those children were not human. Humans had hands and feet, not claws and paws. Humans had no tail. Those children were animals.

No, not fully animals. Just partially. There was still humanity inside them, but that had only been Sungmin’s hopes.

There had been a ding of a bell and suddenly the children were let loose, brought to different areas of the arena before their chains were released. Once the bounds were released, however, all hell had broken loose.

Sungmin could not think of a time when he had to witness so much bloodshed and deaths, hear so much screams and cries. Before he had noticed it, he was shivering; knees weak as his wide, frightened eyes scanned the massacre before him.

A show. That had merely been just a show.

And amongst all the deaths, all the fighting and clawing, all the tearing of skin and drawing of blood, his eyes flickered to a far corner of the arena. It had been odd then, to observe such stillness within an area of so much action.

But lain on his belly and watching the others had been one boy and Sungmin had immediately noticed something different about him. That boy had ears. Not like the ones he had that adorned the side of his face, the boy’s ears were like pyramids that stood on the helmet of his hair. Coupled with the way his tail had swished so slowly, it had triggered an image in Sungmin’s head and he suddenly had a name for those children. They were wolves.

Caught up in his revelation, he had been too slow to see as another boy lunged at the boy lying on the ground, but he had been able to catch the following scene.

Like a true blue provoked predator, the lying boy had growled. A human had growled. So deep and menacing it had silenced the dome and its occupants, and the boy that had been attacking froze like a deer caught in headlights. The attacking boy had shrunk in on himself, once erect tail drooped low and hung between his legs, giving up the fight. Sungmin could feel the fear that that one sound had instilled and on the spot he had claimed that wolf eared boy to be special.

And like a coiled snake, the wolf eared boy had lunged. Quick and precise, within a second his attacker laid on the floor, dead and unmoving.

Fear had gripped Sungmin’s heart, for death had always been a foreign concept to him before that day. And yet to witness such a detailed slaughter so suddenly, he had been more than a little shaken.

He had watched, attention captured by the wolf eared boy. He had watched as the boy moved over the dead body of his previous attacker and he had watched as the boy crouched over the body and snarled at the soldiers.

He had been so overwhelmed by all that he had seen that day that he could only watch, frozen like a statue and unable to even look away from the gore of the arena.

It was only when the wolf eared boy was screaming in pain that he had been able to react, like a spell broken. The chaotic thumping of his heart had suddenly turned deafening in his ears as he watched the wolf eared boy curl his body in pain. And that was the catalyst that sent had sent his fear overflowing and he had finally been able to tear from his throat a scream of horror.

He had felt his father’s arms around him in an instant and under normal circumstances he would have loved to stay in those arms forever. But that had not been a normal circumstance. He had just been exposed to some of the most inhumane acts and he had been unable to forgive his father just yet for being a part of it.

So he had struggled, and he had struggled hard. He demanded to see the wolf eared boy, to see for himself that the boy was fine and not dead. He had forced himself to ignore the rest of the dead bodies that littered the arena and focused on the wolf eared boy.

The wolf eared boy was special.

And he had screamed in his father’s face, had called him names he was petrified to even mention until his father had relented and allowed him permission to visit the wolf eared boy.

Shaken and distressed, Sungmin had been glad that when the doors to the wolf eared boy’s cell, not even a room, opened, the occupant was still resting. There had been a warning and a set of instructions that his father gave and he had nodded back like a robot without processing anything. His father had lost his faith.

“His name is Fenrir.” Was all he had taken into his head before he stepped into the cell.

He had scrunched up his face in disapproval, because Fenrir was such a bad choice of name. The wolf eared boy was special, and what better way to let him be special than to have a name. A sense of individual identity.

So when the wolf eared boy had stirred in his waking, Sungmin had forced himself to be calm and friendly to the boy, and had tasked himself with the mission of giving that boy a name.

And when those brown eyes rose to meet his own carbon black ones, it had officially been his very first meeting with Cho Kyuhyun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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So that was Sungmin's take on Fenrir. Yeah Kyuhyun's one is extended more in the future but I gave you Sungmin's past so it's an exchange~ This was very random but my term test ended just today so I am very happy and had just plopped my down before my laptop before this plot appeared in my head. So yeah, it's not really fine-tuned and stuff hahahaha pardon my laziness to do this well I just rushed it out. Thanks for reading this and I hope you enjoyed it ~ ^^

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Sujution
#1
Chapter 1: omg i like this <3
Ray4URay #2
Chapter 1: This story or au is just beautiful!! Could you please do a sequel or a chaptered story on what happened after Kyuhyun escaped and what happened to Sungmin??? Pls!!! :DD
Gyaaaa #3
Chapter 1: Aaaah, last year i was hoped that fenrir would be a chaptered fic.. I forgot about it already, but you give us this fic... Now i really really really want to see them meet again after 10 long years.. After kyu ran away from the facility.. ㅠ_ㅠ

Any possibility for the sequel? ^^

aaah, also thanks for writing... Love it... ^^
seongmin137
#4
Chapter 1: Oh i liked this one even it is very uhm bloody ahahaha thanks for this!