Listen to this while reading if you want. Highly recommended!

Kai and Chen are running side by side, shouting for people on the sidewalk to move aside, breathing heavily. The random pedestrians jump away from them, some dog tries to bite Kai’s leg off, Chen accidentally knocks over some kid’s bike, and screams his apologies.

They were out to get food. They did not expect to meet two witches gone wrong. There shouldn’t be any evil witches in town, really, and if there were, you should’ve known about that. And yet, Kai and Chen were being chased by two.

And one of them is slightly mental, it looks like.

Kai looks over his shoulder, seeing the witch running after them with a wide grin on his face. The guy has black eyeshadow all over his eyes, black lipstick, and is wearing leather. His whole body is covered in black leather. And he has long hair. He looks like a heavy metal band guitarist, not a witch, especially with all the jewelry he’s wearing. The second witch – a guy that’s running two steps behind the first witch – looks similar; they have the same frame, slightly similar faces, so they could be brothers. But he has a buzz cut and a dragon tattoo running down his neck, and while his metal brother’s arms are covered with leather, his muscled arms are revealed, as he’s wearing a leather vest.

“Kai, watch it!” Chen hisses, grabbing him by the collar. Kai feels his feet lift off the ground as Chen practically swings him away from the harm’s way; Kai barely avoids hitting a street lamp. They turn a sharp right, into an alley, gasping heavily, and they hear the first witch laughing like it’s the most joyful day of the guy’s life. He literally sounds like all the villains in every possible movie.

(Spoiler alert: evil maniac laugh is not actually that big of a thing, even in the supernatural world. But this guy sure seems to like it a lot.)

They head to the gym, because it’s protected from demons, witches, ghouls, wendigos, ghosts and other magical things that can be of threat. Just like Kai’s old loft in the forest, Heejin’s café (which she obviously doesn’t know about), Siwon’s place, and the hospital.

The boys turn left, jump out onto the sidewalk, scaring a five-year old and making him scream in terror. They knock over a few dumpsters, the trash spilling everywhere. Kai stumbles upon a few stray water bottles, and almost dies when he slips on a banana peel and he can’t believe that he almost became a cartoon character.

“Watch it!” a man shouts as they run past him. Everyone looks slightly outraged by their behavior, but how can they blame them?

They’re running faster than a regular human should, but not faster than an athlete, but they still manage to completely overlook Taemin walking on the sidewalk, probably coming back from work.

They run past him. Taemin looks up at them, confused, a question forming on his lips. He has his duffel bag slung over his shoulders and he turns a little to watch as Kai and Chen head to the gym, pulling an earphone out of right ear.

Then Kai’s brain catches up and he stops short. Chen stops as well, almost crashing into Kai’s back. Kai turns towards his brother.

“Tae!” he shouts. Taemin is frowning at him, dumbfounded. Kai’s eyes snap up when he sees movement behind Taemin, and that’s when the first witch jumps out from behind the corner, still grinning, running like crazy, in perfect form.

Obviously, a human shouldn’t be able to catch up to them that fast. And a witch theoretically shouldn’t either.

The witch is so focused on Kai and Chen that he doesn’t see Taemin take his duffel bag off his shoulders. He’s right in front of Taemin when the boy takes a huge swing and punches the guy with his bag.

The witch bends in half, sputters, and lands on the ground, his head lolling back. The force of the blow was strong enough to make his head bounce back and he hits the pavement with the back of his skull, losing consciousness.

Taemin swings the duffel bag again, throwing it over his right shoulder. Then he takes out his right earphone and looks back at Chen and Kai.

“What’s the rush?” he asks, surprised.

That’s when the guy’s brother jumps out from behind the corner. Kai and Chen see the moment he notices his crazy brother knocked out on the pavement, and the fury in his eyes. Taemin looks up at him and the witch uses some kind of power resembling telekinesis to throw the boy onto the nearest building.

“Taemin!” Kai shouts. Taemin slides down the wall, giving them his thumbs up, and Chen grabs Kai’s arm, yanking him to a run again.

Kai tries to focus on Taemin. He hears him breathing shallowly, but his heart is beating normally. He’s saying a handful of colorful words, someone on the street asks him if he’s okay and what happened, and Kai hears a few people talking about what just happened, saying to call the police.

Kai can only hope that Taemin will be able to handle this.

“Bus!” Chen says. Kai looks to where his beta is pointing his fingers. He sees a bus on the left side of the road, ready to depart, some people jumping on into it. “See you later?”

Kai nods and takes off towards the bus on the right. Chen runs towards the subway entrance. He jumps over the stairs, landing down smoothly, and runs towards the closest departing train. He stumbles into it, barely making it in time before the door slides closed, and lands on the seats. The thud is loud enough to make everyone jump and look at him in surprise, and Chen is pretty sure the old lady in the back almost gets a heart attack.

He tries to ignore the nasty looks he gets and tilts his head back, breathing in shallow gasps, tired from all the running, and he pulls out his phone. He has a short text from Taemin saying that everything’s okay, and a text from Kai asking if Chen is alright. Chen writes back, saying that yes, he’s okay. Kai replies with a ‘me too’. Then Chen looks up at the people in the train.

“Uh,” he says, “where are we going?”

Silence fills the air. The few people in the train – three men a few years older than him, the old lady, a group of high schoolers, and a girl with bubblegum hair all stare at him.

“Seoul,” one of the men says. Chen raises his brows him.

“Oh, I see, thank you.”

ing hell.

He looks back down, his eyes stopping on the bubblegum hair girl sitting on the opposite side of the bus. She’s staring at him. First, Chen smells her perfumes; pretty delicate and very sweet. Then he picks up the lingering smell of printing ink that seems to be deep inside her skin.

The girl is staring. He stares right back, frowning at her. She seems openly curious.

Then Chen’s wolf jerks a little and he snaps his eyes up, as if expecting something to be lurking by the train’s ceiling. He glares at it just to be sure. He loses the signal in his phone.

He looks at the girl again. She’s not staring anymore, but when he looks at her, she glances at him from the corner of her eye, fingers twitching slightly. Definitely curious. Chen tries not to look suspicious.

It gets a bit lighter and he realizes that the train is slowing down. Oh, it’s coming to a stop, he thinks with relief. He stands up even before the train stops completely, heading for the exit. The girl looks up at him, surprised. He just got on, didn’t he?

Ah, well, they can all blame it on him being high, or something.

The doors to the train open, and when they do, Chen sees a similar, furious face, and is punched in the face.

He flies back, hits the side of the train, and everyone screams. They all curl up on their seats instinctively, trying to shield themselves with their arms. Chen stands up, beginning to feel angry, and he screams, going at the guy full-force. He grabs his shoulders and hits the bridge of his nose with his head, hoping that it’ll be enough to knock him out and throw him out of the train. But the door close at the same moment and the guy hits them with a thud, making the whole car shiver a little.

“Oh, hell,” Chen moans, throwing his arms up in the air, as if blaming God almighty. The guy takes a swing at him, trying to use that moment to hurt him, but Chen is quicker; he blocks it with his bent elbow, grabs the witch’s outstretched arm and twists until the guy is plastered to Chen’s front and yelping with pain. Chen grabs the guy head – he can’t grab him by his hair because of the buzz cut – and pushes him onto the closest metal pole.

Chen literally beats the heck out of him by hitting the guy’s head on the metal pole. The guy may be human, but he’s surely not a normal human; Chen doesn’t know what he did, but it seems to him like he’s pretty much resistant to normal punches, and has stamina always as good as a werewolf’s.

The people on the train are still squealing. Chen sees the bubblegum girl stand up from her seat to sit closer to the rest; they all seemed to huddle together. Chen is actually glad she moved, because now he has most of the train just for himself.

So when he’s done hitting the guy on the pole, he clenches his fingers around the arm he’s still twisting, and throws him over his shoulder.

The guy lands on the ground, blood dripping from his forehead. He’s shaking. He’s glaring at Chen, and Chen is wheezing.

Then the witch stands up. As if Chen didn’t just almost break his skull on a metal pole.

He punches Chen in the stomach. Chen bends away, air running away from his lungs. Another blow in his cheek makes his head jerk to the side, and then the guy punches him in the nose, making his whole torso arch back and blood spill from his nostrils.

“What the , man!” Chen asks, shocked, and uses the opportunity of leaning back to kick up. He throws his legs up, kicking the man in the stomach, and therefore ends up on the floor himself. He flips his legs up again, heaving his whole body up in a wave, and before the witch can stand up, he literally jumps at him, pinning him to the ground with his body weight.

The man snarls at him. Which, what?

Chen punches him. Hard enough to make the man dizzy for a moment. During that time, he takes out his phone out of his back pocket, and finds the screen crashed.

“Look at it!” Chen moans, showing the phone to the witch. The man’s eyes are all over the place and then he’s squinting. “Thanks a lot!”

The witch throws him off by ing his hips up. Chen lands on the floor again, hits his head on the metal pole, and grunts, the phone slipping out of his hand.

“I came for the mage,” the witch says, looming over him. “And you’re gonna show me where I can find her.”

“Not gonna happen, dude,” Chen says, standing up and leaning on the metal pole. “You have to go through me first.

The man is furious at that. Chen sees his eyes flash blue, just like a werewolf’s; so a witch that’s also a werewolf? How is that possible?

The man lunges. Chen uses all the power he has in his arm muscles to lift his feet off the ground by grabbing the pole, and he swings his whole body in the air, legs straight. He make a full circle around the pole, disappearing from the man’s view, just barely avoiding his murderous punch. The man’s clenched fist is met with air instead of Chen’s face, and he stumbles forward with his own force and weight. Chen kicks his back as hard as he can, sending him flying onto the windows.

And that’s when the whole train jerks.

Chen yelps, clutching his fingers around the pole, so that he doesn’t tumble into the front; the people in the train scream as well, shocked and surprised, and Chen looks up to see that the bubblegum hair girl has turned the emergency handle, making the whole train stop.

Chen stares at her. Everyone is staring at him. There’s dried blood under his nose and on the collar of his shirt. There’s a guy he knocked out three feet away from him, and it’s not good.

He runs for the door. He has to open it on his own, but that’s not too hard. Then he goes to grab the witch slash werewolf guy.

He jumps out of the train and heads to the closest stop, praying for the witch not to wake up until he’s somewhere he can actually fight, or, preferably, somewhere where you can take care of him.

*

“I got rid of the footage,” Amber says.

“What about the witnesses?” Chen asks, biting his lip.

“I tricked them a little,” Amber replies triumphantly. “They are one hundred percent sure the guy fighting with the bald metal was European. Blonde, short, buff, and blue-eyed.”

“God,” Chen breathes. “You can do that?”

“Apparently,” Amber says, and he imagines her shrugging. “You owe me pizza.”

“I’ll buy you pizza for the rest of your life,” Chen gasps out. “My Goddess.”

“Aw, how cute,” you say, entering the room. Chen looks up at you with a grin. You grin right back.

Chen bids his goodbyes to Amber and looks at you.

“So?” he asks.

“He’s a werewolf,” you say. “But he’s also a witch. He can use basic spells, telekinesis if he waits long enough for the magic to cumulate after he tells a spell—it’s hard to talk to him. He seems furious, wild. Feral.”

“But he’s not an omega, he’s a beta,” Chen points out.

“And his brother is an Alpha,” you nod. "Jaejoong dropped by. Said he’s gonna take them both to Father."

“It’s not the first time Father takes someone we fought,” Chen says, his voice serious. “Do you know where he’s taking them all?”

You shake your head. “I don’t. But it’s either Father imprisoning them, or us killing them. I’ll always choose option A.”

“What if he’s not imprisoning them?” Chen asks. “What if he’s killing them?”

“Jaejoong trusts him,” you say. “Father is…yeah, he can be weird, and he’s very mysterious, but I can’t imagine him killing these people. Stripping them of their powers, maybe, but not killing them.”

Chen hums. “Oh, Kris is coming.”

Kris practically runs into the room, still in his police uniform. He stops to give Chen a once-over, and then lets out a relieved sigh. He takes a few big steps, practically heaves Chen up from where he's sitting on the couch, and pulls him into a fierce hug that makes Chen sputter. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, dad,” Chen says with a smirk, patting Kris on the back a few times. “Chill. It was just a fight.”

“Yeah, with a werewolf-witch chimera,” Kris says, pulling away. “What the hell is that about, anyways?”

You don’t get to reply because Kai bursts into the room, eyes restless. He looks at Chen, sighs with relief (almost mirroring Kris), and plops down onto the floor, visibly tired.

“Good to see you in one piece,” he says. “Sorry I left you.”

“It was my idea,” Chen replies, shaking his head. “Who knew he’d actually come for me instead of you.”

“I get the dumbness vibe from him, actually,” you interrupt. “It’s like he’s not exactly thinking about all this stuff. Like I said, he looked feral.”

“Am I the only one that thinks something bigger is going on here?” Kris asks, frowning. “I mean—it’s the third time this month when we don’t realize there’s a hostile magic creature in town. It’s like they all suddenly learned to avoid your wards and spells, Dal, and additionally learned how to hide their presence from us. Even from Siwon. That rarely happened before.”

“Yeah,"  you say, nodding. “And today Amber told me about the first time she fought off that hacker attack at the police station. She said that there was something weird in the code, the word ‘magic’ just there, out of place. She said that since then, they tried to hack their database three times, and she finds the same word in every single code. Mabeob. Magic.”

“Why are you telling us about this now?” Kris questions.

“Because I think these things might be related.”