A day and a half later, Lu Han is hard-pressed explaining to Baekhyun everything that happened.

“I’m telling you, Baekhyun, he’s a fully functional person with complete understanding of just about everything, and a full range of emotions. Everything!”

This statement—his tenth yet—is met once again by a staticky scoff.

“So, you observed him prepare a meal to make pasta? You had a conversation about Plato? You worked on calculus homework together? Discussed the birds and the bees?”

“Well…” Lu Han falters. “No, I mean…”

“Lu Han.” Baekhyun sounds tired, probably doesn’t mean to be condescending. “From what you told me, he came in for shelter, put on clothes, spoke a whopping ten one-syllable words, and was gone again come morning. Please explain to me how that proves Xiumin is a fully functioning adult male when everything we know about him says he has never been in the company of another human being, let alone a community big enough to teach him anything complex!?”

There’s an ache along his temple that tells Lu Han he’s got the beginnings of a headache coming along. “He... folded the clothes I lent him and left them on a chair.”

Both he and Baekhyun sigh across the phone line, before Lu Han barrages through. “Ten words though! Isn’t that a lot?”

“He probably learned them from you! ” Baekhyun cries.

And yes, Lu Han has considered that option. He has after all spent an inordinate amount of time in the wildcat’s company venting off on a million different tangents with all the eloquence of a Shakespeare monologue. Or rather, at least a dime novel. On the other hand, none of that satisfies Lu Han’s suspicions that Xiumin’s intelligence is a least something higher than what everyone, according to Baekhyun, suspects.

Since the following morning when Lu Han woke up alone, again, he’s been pouring over the records, the ‘everything we know about him’ to which Baekhyun referred. It’s borderline useless. Lu Han has already memorized everything before he came out here. Baekhyun’s memorized everything at least a dozen times over that.

“Got to be missing something…” he muses, frustrated beyond belief, not only because he can’t explain Xiumin’s actions, but also because the wildcat has been MIA since that night, which isn’t unusual for him, it’s just… Lu Han thought maybe they’d progressed beyond this. Sharing a night, even if all they did is sleep. Did that mean nothing? And Lu Han had so many questions too.

By the third night, Lu Han is restless. Dusk comes along, followed by a bright waxing moon. Lu Han packs his gear and heads off into the brush. He finds his normal perch above the ravine, settling in as usual, everything like usual. Well, not quite. He doesn’t bother bringing his camera. At this point he just wants a visual of the wildcat in whatever form he can take.

One hour later it happens. Xiumin appears on the far side of the ravine. Tiny rocks slide towards the water’s edge as he scampers down, and Lu Han sits up in wait. The wildcat takes only a quick drink from the ravine before hopping sprightly across it and up to Lu Han, like he knew he’d be there.

It’s not exactly what Lu Han expects to happen. Then again, everything that’s happened in the last few weeks is already beyond what anyone expected. Sighing, he exhales one long breath to steel himself for whatever the wildcat is gonna throw at him this time.

“Well, hi,” he says when Xiumin is but a couple meters away, slowing in his magnificent tread but not shying away. Lu Han sits up straight, knees digging into the earth, one hand on his notebook the other… well he offers it out for the wildcat to sniff. Xiumin walks straight into it and leans into the touch, whiskers tickling Lu Han’s open palm as the animal practically throws his weight against him.

Lu Han falls down to his , shocked but not injured. In fact he’s a little more upset that the wildcat seems to greet him him but then keeps on going. Right over to his food bag again too, the nerve of him.

“Xiumin?” he asks the cat.

Xiumin huffs once again at Lu Han’s meager portions. Then, unexpectedly, he turns, cocking his head.

“Woah, what!?” cries Lu Han, when the wildcat’s body begins to torque.

Xiumin hisses as if he’s in pain, arching his great back, paws digging into the ground. His head thrashes about, body wracked in shivers, and all of a sudden there are the sounds of bones creaking and joints popping. His fur recedes like in all of those werewolf movies Lu Han used to watch with Jongdae and laugh at. He can’t even describe the terror it instills in him, until… panting… the wildcat turns into a man.

He’s crouched down on all fours, a posture derivative of his animal pose, but of course it looks strange now that he’s human. Xiumin gives one last shake of his head. Sandy colored hair reminiscent of his fur sticks out in all ends, wild and untamed. And then he stands. Joints still popping and fully , it’s almost intimidating how at peace he seems with his surroundings. Whereas Lu Han is wide-eyed and open-mouthed and he doesn’t know what to say or where to look.

Several nights ago, Lu Han hadn’t quite realized it. At full stature, Xiumin barely stands as tall as Lu Han’s chin. He’s slim and muscular, but he’s built like a human, only a small fraction of a size down.

Right, Lu Han has to remind himself. He’s a hybrid wildcat. Large for a cat, small for a man. At first glance and maybe with clothes on, he would fit right into society, no questions asked. On a second look, though…

There are goosebumps prickling along Xiumin’s arms, and he shivers.

Lu Han coughs. “Hang on,” he says, voice rough as he peels off his outer coat and hands it to the wildcat. Xiumin takes it gratefully, slips his arms through and zips it up with ease. Lu Han adds that to his mental catalogue of all the reasons he and Baekhyun and WHPC must be missing something about Xiumin’s physical upbringing.

He waits to speak though until Xiumin is pulling on the hood to cover his ears, wherein he squats down on the earth to tuck his legs. Lu Han sits down again too, a good several arms’ width apart. He can’t shake the piercing gaze of Xiumin’s cat-like eyes--about the only thing that didn’t change in the transformation--staring right at him, unmoving, and playfully curious.

“Hi,” says Lu Han, for lack of something better.

Xiumin smiles. He still hasn’t looked away.

Lu Han swallows heavily, stares at the ground, waits a moment, then looks back at the wildcat- no, at the man.

“I have so many questions.” It comes out as a whisper, a plea.

Xiumin nods, affording him the suggestion to go on.

“Right. Okay. First of all… wow, did that… hurt? Changing like that?” Not technically what he should be asking given the situation but he can’t easily forget the crackling and popping as Xiumin’s entire physiology literally changed before his very eyes.

“Yes. A little.” He shrugs.

Lu Han opens his mouth to comment, then shuts it again. Xiumin is finally looking at something else, although it seems his gaze is drawn more to his surroundings out of curiosity than because anything actually took his attention. Lu Han waits for him to look back.

“Uhm, Xiumin?”

Then the wildcat says it. “Not Xiumin.”

“What?”

“My name, is not Xiumin.”

Lu Han stares, chin falling open. “Oh,” is all he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know… what exactly is your name then?”

Why do you even have a name? Is what he really wants to know.

Again, ‘Xiumin’ just shrugs. “I like your name.”

“Which name? My name, or the name I call you?”

“Both.”

“Okay…” Lu Han smiles, nodding like this isn’t a somewhat frustrating conversation. “That’s fine. I’ll just call you that then for now since… How do you speak so well? Have you been around people before? And you know a lot of random customs.”

Baekhyun would be so proud, maybe.

Once again, however, the wildcat smiles that vague, mysterious smile, answering, “Yes,” without giving any further, juicier details. “Can I keep the jacket?”

Lu Han immediately nods. “Sure! Of course! Keep it!”

Another gummy, playful smile. “Thanks.”

It’s dusk when Lu Han gets back to his cabin, alone too, for Xiumin had not indicated any desire to come back with him tonight. Lu Han’s head is throbbing a little, and he’s beyond exhausted, but his brain is racing and he’s never been so hardwired to pull out and update every file he’s got. Xiumin is just so fascinating! He knew that already of course, but even an evening’s halting interview with the wildcat has revived every research-loving cell in his body.

He talks to himself as he types his notes.

“Right, let’s see how impressed Baekhyun is with me this time.” 

• Formal language acquired, some vernacular. Perhaps local?

• Confirmed knowledge of clothing, such as zippers, hoods. A little surprised by the pockets.

• Does not eat in the human form! Raw meat only, as a cat.

• Unnervingly direct gaze when conversing

• Lack of observance of personal boundaries? Somewhat unconfirmed.

• He HAS ANOTHER GIVEN NAME!? 

It’s possible Lu Han, and by extension Baekhyun and the WHPC, will never learn everything they’d like to about the wildcat who has a name but isn’t inclined to share it. Lu Han blushes a little, remembering Xiumin’s soft admission.

“I like your name.”

“Which name? My name, or the name I call you?”

“Both.”

Unbidden, Lu Han’s mind wanders to every awkward, embarrassing monologue he ever directed to the hybrid cat, a cat who isn’t a cat and who is in fact an adult male with a fairly encompassing grasp of language.

“ me,” he whispers to the silent room, mortified and growing moreso. He basically told Xiumin he was gay. Was that before or after the hybrid crawled into his bed? His mind frantically scrambles and unscrambles itself. “After, that was definitely after,” he reminds himself, relieved but still embarrassed as hell. “Wait, why am I even thinking about this?!”

Lu Han shoves his notepad away and stands up angrily. He paces the room from window to window. “It’s not like it even matters, Lu Han, what the .” He scratches behind his ear, pauses next to Sehun’s cage and on a whim, opens the cage and lets the little animal out. The rabbit’s leg is practically healed, though Lu Han is reluctant to let it loose outside until he’s certain Sehun won’t quickly become someone’s prey, again. Or maybe he’ll just adopt him and take him home when this entire venture is over.

Another thought comes to mind: Xiumin being introduced to Lu Han’s home city, his neighborhood, his apartment… his two cats.

“Woah. Stop.” Lu Han shakes his head. “I should probably sleep. Yeah, sleep it is.”

Baekhyun’s phone call can wait until he’s had a chance to rest his brain and sort out these new feelings.

Feelings like maybe he’s just a little too interested in a hybrid man whose name is and isn’t Xiumin.

Evening falls on the ravine. The shadows lengthen and grow. A night owl hoots its greeting as a small fox scurries out of its den, scampering towards the stream of water. Rocks slip down the steeper edge of a small cliff, a tree sways in the wind. Somewhere a baby bird chirps out its fright until silenced by its parent. A twig snaps. On and on, the sounds of the day die down and the night comes truly alive.

The wildcat stretches its paws, eyes shut tight and groans a silent greeting to the world at large. His tail twitches. Somewhere above, another bird screeches into the night. A pair of yellow eyes turn suddenly open, awake.

Ignoring the rumbles of his belly, the wildcat stretches and writhes on his tree limb. He jumps down, four paws landing gracefully on the dry dusty earth. Tiny animals flee before him, but the wildcat ignores them all. It’s thirst, not hunger, which drives him down to the ravine.

And curiosity drives him up the other side when he’s done.

It’s been so long since a human came to these parts. Five years at least since the rogue hiker. Six since the poachers who were quickly apprehended by rangers. Before that the wildcat cannot remember. It’s been even longer that he actually let himself interact. Someone from the preservation agency usually comes around every other year, a different person each time, stays for a week, gets one shot of the wildcat and then goes home. That’s been fine. That’s suited the wildcat just fine.

And then came Lu Han.

The wildcat doesn’t need to know why he’s here. He knows that already. He knows who he is, where he’s from, what kind of food he eats, what kind of pets he has at home, what he likes in a boyfriend, what he doesn’t like. He knows that Lu Han is probably bored out of his mind. Also that Lu Han is utterly fascinated by him.

The wildcat preens a bit as he approaches the little cabin. There’s a smell of cooked food issuing from the fireplace, also the scent of fresh rabbit, uncooked. Through his nostrils, the wildcat scoffs at the human’s base sentimentality. Why eat muck out of a can when the wildcat presented him an entire meal .

He stops outside the door, wondering whether he should wait a bit and let the human come to him. Another option is to paw at the door and beg that way to come inside. A third option is to open it himself, like a man.

He’s not particularly keen to change. It hurts, and he doesn’t like his skin. It’s cold and useless, bare and superbly fragile. Physically, an inferior form, and when he does this Lu Han stares at him, and then suddenly refuses to look. There’s both an advantage to play there, and also a disadvantage. The wildcat isn’t entirely sure which one he wants to play tonight. One one hand, he likes listening to the human talk. It’s comforting, altogether soothing. He likes having his ears scratched, and Lu Han likes giving him attention. There’s an easy domesticity which suits the wildcat when he remains just like that, a wildcat. He can listen and not talk, not strain himself so much.

On the other hand, having a person to talk to is also a nice idea. The wildcat barely remembers how. No, it’s not the language which is hard. He’s grown up with that, lived with that, though of course not for so many years. He’ll never forget the language. Rather, remembering which muscles to use, how to quench his throat, move his lips. And once he gets past that there’s the option of dialogue . How much to say to sate the human’s curiosity but not too much that Lu Han will decide he’s gathered all there is to know and suddenly take off and leave.

The wildcat is curiously reluctant to let Lu Han leave.

No doubt it’ll happen one day. He’ll wake up and cross the ravine and pad his way to the empty cabin. Lu Han will have moved on just like all the other researchers. He must be special, this Lu Han, to stay for so much longer. It’s why the wildcat approached him in the first place.

Curiosity really is a thing.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, there’s a subconscious thought. An idiom. His parent wildcat, or was it someone else? What did he used to say? The wildcat struggles to remember. It was something about a curiosity. And a cat. He’s missing some words, he knows. No matter now.

He paws on the door, and utters that achingly embarrassing meow that so flusters Lu Han.

He hears the bunny screeching inside, and if he were in his other form right now, the wildcat would smile. Instead, he feigns a disinterested look when the cabin door is opened from the inside and Lu Han, flushed face and excited, cries, “Xiumin? I mean, oh. You’re here. Okay, okay this is cool. I can do this. Come inside. I mean, that’s what you want, right? To come inside?”

The wildcat brushes past him, knocking into his knees and almost pushing him over. He ignores the feeble bunny, sticks his nose into the pot of goop Lu Han’s cooking over the small electric burner. He scowls. Of course it’s something inedible, though it could be worse.

“Hey, Xiumin?”

The wildcat looks at him. Lu Han freezes, and then gulps. Continues with what he’s saying. “Are you… going to stay that way, for now?”

For answer the wildcat hops onto the bed and stretches out, careful not to rip the sheets with his claws. He thinks, no he remembers, that humans don’t like that.

“Alright,” quips Lu Han, as if steeling himself for a grand ordeal. “Cat it is then. Should I uhm, just talk for a bit? What would you like to hear tonight? Childhood story? School life? That time I got drunk and found myself outside in an alleyway, and oh yeah, okay maybe not that story. Oh! I know!” He claps his hands together, and the wildcat stares at him quite startled. “Have you ever met a wolf? I haven’t told you about Jongdae, yet, have I? He’s like you. Well, sort of. He’s human, and also a wolf. He shifts back and forth. He’s my best friend in the city. A great pal. Sage of wisdom. And everything in between.”

The wildcat’s ears perk up. A wolf who is also a man? He’s heard stories. Never met one in the flesh. But it sounds fascinating . Jongdae, huh? First a Junmyeon, now a Jongdae. Sometimes a Baekhyun. That’s so many humans now he’s got to compete with, and they’ve all got nice, fascinating names.

Should he tell Lu Han his name? Not that one he’s semi enjoyed being called. Not Xiumin. His other one.

If he does that though, will Lu Han ask him where he got it? Or, won’t he care at all?

The wildcat kind of hopes he will.