Baekhyun feels like he is on the verge of losing himself. Just yesterday morning, he was still aghast at the thought that the person who can turn him into a beagle with just a teeney bit of physical contact is right there in the university and is even rooming across him. And then about an hour later, he heard his voice that seemed to have dug inside his head and it keeps on playing for him to hear mentally.

And then he will be lying if he tells that he didn’t notice a head with bog ears attached to it gaping at him in awe when he was on stage. He tried to convince himself that he just noticed that because Kyungsoo was right there beside the guy but in all honesty, he was performing to impress, not Kyungsoo, but the tall, twitchy face and big-eared dumbo sitting right next to his baby Soo.

He can’t even help himself but steal glances at him during the tour and feels his heart and stomach do flips inside him when he sees that the guy – Chanyeol – was also looking back at him, maybe with the same level of curiosity and interest that he has. It wasn’t even a day that has passed but he has turned a 180 on the matter of meeting his alleged true love.

As carefree as Baekhyun may seem, he’s not romantic. That notion has died on him the moment that he saw his parents interact with each other and understand. He never noticed odd things going on with his parents but it was there right in front of his eyes, waiting to be seen. His parents were together for a decade already when he was nine but for the first time in his nine years of existence that he noticed the look that his parents are giving each other. It wasn’t anything negative like anger or annoyance. Rather, their eyes show respect.

Baekhyun memorized this kind of look and he had misinterpreted that as love because almost all of the couple that he knows give that look to their husbands or wives. That was the norm and even at that age, Baekhyun knew that couples get together because of love. And that was changed the first time that his parents had brought him out to an amusement park and saw another family with a kid in tow.

The kid was going on about the rides that he wants to get on and the things that he wanted to win and much more things that Baekhyun couldn’t keep up with. And then his eyes went to the kid’s parents and he was taken aback. Those smiles weren’t different from the smiles that he sees from his parents but those smiles made him feel different. There was more to it than what he sees and it made him curious. The father hugged the mother as they watched their son babble loudly and the mother looked at her husband with sparkling eyes that were so heartwarming that Baekhyun had the urge to cry in happiness.

The husband saw this and he kissed his wife and looked at her with the same kind of heartwarming expression. Baekhyun’s heart clenched as he unconsciously compared the boy’s parents with his. The difference is quite significant and it made questions inside his head. He wanted answers and so he followed the other family around and when they decided to grab something to eat, Baekhyun took this opportunity to gets his questions asked.

The kid and the father went to get them food while the mother sat on a group of chairs, waiting for her boys. Baekhyun walked up to her and patted her arm lightly. She turned and smiled when she saw a kid, who looked like her son’s age, and bent lower.

“Do you need something, dear?”

“Uhm…” Baekhyun felt a little shy but his answers are pretty important. “I just want to ask you something, ma’am.”

“Oh, what a cutie!” she gushed. “What is it?”

“Why do you look at your husband with sparkly eyes? How do your eyes do that?”

“You are adorable, I wish Channie is as sweet and smart as you are,” she sighed. “This is really embarrassing that you have noticed and pointed that out but that’s because I love my husband, dear,” she paused and smiled brightly. “He makes me and Channie happy that’s why I look at him like that. He completes me and I could never ask for a more perfect husband and a father to my son.”

That night he asked his own mother about what the lady in the amusement park has told him and that is also when he learned more about the Curse.

“This has started a very long time ago, Baekhyunnie. Our ancestors lived in a village where… let’s just say that they took love for granted. The deity of the forest where their territory is have witnessed this and she was greatly disappointed and she decided to step in and put the villagers in line. She put the Curse to all of the villagers and their offsprings to remind them how they have mocked love. The Cursed are to turn into animals during new moon so that the reminder renews everytime the moon does. And when they find the person who could give them true and pure love, they will not have them.”

It was some years later that he found out that their ancestors have defined love as something that is purely physical and went at it like animals so the deity decided to mock them back by making them turn into animals at physical contact with their true love. And they ended up cooping themselves from the world because the effect of the Curse was devastating. People who discovered them turn them into research specimens and those who were able to find the person destined to them, they were shunned and rejected; leaving them broken beyond repair.

Baekhyun has then decided that he will not let himself meet ‘the one’. Nor did he believe in anything remotely romantic anymore. More so the cliché of falling in love at first sight.

But fate was making a joke on him, it seems, and Chanyeol was brought to him. All of his six-foot, dorky and handsome glory. He was everything Baekhyun could’ve dreamed of for ‘the one’ when he lets go of all of his inhibitions.

There Baekhyun was, lying on his bed, wide awake and not even a tad sleepy, thinking about everything that is Chanyeol and the war that has been raging inside him all day. The need