First off, thank you so much for reading this story of mine! I really appreciate every view, every subscriber, every commenter, and every upvoter! It really puts a smile on my face knowing that people enjoy this short story. I love reading comments, so please don't hesitate to leave your thoughts down below. I'd love to know how you reacted and what you thought about the scenes depicted in the story. I reply to every single comment I get and I'd love to start a conversation with you! Subscriptions and upvotes are highly appreciated, since they let me know that I'm (hopefully) doing well!

As noted in the foreword, this was written specifically for ann5654 as a gift for an EXO-L Secret Santa event hosted by orengichinku. So special thanks to them for being the reasons this story came to be! It was my first time participating in a fic exchange and it was a lot of fun. It definitely challenged me as a writer to go more out of my comfort zone, especially when it came to writing fluff and action scenes. I generally prefer to write angst, since I sometimes find fluff to be extremely cheesy if overdone. But some fluff every so often is good to indulge in, haha. I'm also pretty weak at writing action scenes, both magical and fighting, since I have to choreograph the movements in my head and for magical scenes especially, they're a bit difficult to write without repeating the same thing over and over again. But I tried my best and if anything, this was good practice in two areas I feel that I need improvement in.

I was given a selection of supernatural creatures to choose from and the chimera immediately caught my eye. I'm not a huge fan of werewolf!AUs, because they're overdone to death in K-Pop and especially EXO fanfiction, or vampire!AUs, because they were overdone back in the day with shows like Vampire Knight, Twilight, Vampire Diaries, etc. I actually really like dragons, but chimeras just seemed more interesting to me since I don't think many (or any, actually, but do correct me if I'm wrong) people have humanized them before. It's already rare to read about them in fanfiction and when they are used, they're portrayed as dangerous monsters with no shred of humanity. So I wanted to create an emotional, compassionate chimera character that can also transform into a human in the form of Kai, since Ann mentioned that she liked the trope of one of the main characters hiding his supernatural side. Not to mention, I'm also a huge fan of Greek mythology. I grew up reading the stories of the Greek gods and goddesses, and I love some of the modern retellings that have been published. One of my favorite texts from classical Greek literature is the Odyssey written by Homer. If you haven't read it yet, I definitely recommend it although the archaic language and structure may be a little difficult to read, especially if you're not a native English speaker. But it's still worth a glance!

Fun fact: και means "and" in Ancient Greek. In this story, Kai didn't have a name until choosing one on the spot when Kyungsoo asked him. Since και is the sixth most used word in Greek, I thought it would be fitting for Kai to have heard the word iterated millions of times throughout his expansive lifetime, which is why he chose to use it as his name. Kai and Kyungsoo are also speaking in Greek to each other, since Kyungsoo is a polyglot (a person who can fluently speak multiple languages). I used Pegasus as the main antagonist, since I wanted to connect a well-known Greek myth to the story and the one containing the chimera is Bellerophon's myth. But since one of my restrictions was to not add, for lack of a better word, "cutesy" supernatural creatures, I twisted it so that Pegasus had gone mad and his outward appearance had drastically changed to reflect his now evil heart. And I sparingly added forest nymphs, specifically the Meliae who were nymphs of the ash tree, since I wanted the magic of the forest to be shown a bit more with its supernatural inhabitants. This entire story was also supposed to solely be in Kyungsoo's POV, but it ended up shifting between both Kyungsoo and Kai, haha. I think that has to do with Kyungsoo being my friend's ultimate bias, so I tend to look at him as "the person being admired" and not as the person whom the story is being told through. Just an interesting psychological by-product I thought I'd mention.

I usually like doing character analyses to supplement the minor characters who don't get spotlighted very much, but since there are only three characters in this story, I don't think I will for this one unless you guys really want me to, haha. Kai and Kyungsoo are pretty simple characters as this is a relatively simple story. This isn't my most fleshed-out piece, but I do like the pacing I ended up with. Kyungsoo and Kai's journey spanned several months, from the end of summer to the beginning of winter, which I think is an ample amount of time for them to fall in love with each other. I thought a lot about how I wanted to end this story and I hope the epilogue that took place in the beginning of spring is a satisfying end to this tale, especially since I know several people wanted a chapter with Kai as a human.

I hope this was interesting to read and I apologize if I seemed to be rambling. If you have any thoughts on the characters or the events of the story after reading this, please do leave a comment down below and I can either supplement their back-stories or clarify anything you may be confused about. If you'd like to check out my other works, you can find them linked in the foreword or you can follow my stories by clicking the button on my profile to be notified of any future stories that I post. I would be very grateful for your continued support! And if you'd like to monetarily support my work, please join my crowdfund! Every bit of support helps keep me fueled as a writer and you'll also get special perks!

Once again, thank you so much and have a wonderful day!

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If you'd like to read another Kaisoo story from me, then you might be interested in The Meaning of Perfection which is an ongoing story that is more Jongin-centric and has a much larger character cast, including the other EXO members. This will be a long story with a lot of depth to it that I'm very excited to be writing.

If you aren't an exclusive Kaisoo reader and you enjoy reading about the other EXO members, then you might be interested in One Plus One Equals Three: The BaekChenLay Chronicles which focuses on my EXO OT3. Some of the stories I've written in that collection are my favorites, so I'd be very thankful if you took a look.

If you aren't an exclusive EXO reader, then you might be interested in Two Halves of a Heart: A HyungKi Mini-Collection which focuses on my Monsta X OTP. Some of the stories I've written in that mini-collection are my favorites, so I'd be very thankful if you took a look.

If you aren't an exclusive  reader, then you might be interested in Thanks for Everything which is a completed OC x Jeongmin (from Boyfriend) story. It's a very personal story to me, since I consider it my "writing comeback" and I put a lot of myself in it.

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