It takes Lu Han only a dozen paces running home before he realizes, he’s being chased. Yellowish eyes gleam at him through the night, the hybrid following on two feet, slowly. Like he knows Lu Han isn’t getting away. Something like adrenaline mixed with spite doubles down inside Lu Han’s gut, so he runs raster. Unfortunately, the terrain doesn’t make it easy. Like everywhere it’s covered in small brush and bushes, trees and hills, and with the darkness setting in it’s nearly impossible to see where he’s going. He trips once on a root stump, curses, and lays there for half a second before getting up, the wildcat still in slow pursuit.

“, no you don’t. You don’t get to do this to me,” he mutters, breath winded from the effort. In a straight shot Lu Han could run for miles. Here, moving fast is not an option.

“Why did I say that, why did I say that?” he grumbles more.

More than that, why is he being pursued?!

The second time he stumbles, Lu Han doesn’t even try to run anymore. He continues to stomp angrily though, and each time he looks back, the wildcat is closer.

“You don’t have to follow me!” he shouts.

There’s no answer, but then Lu Han hardly expected one.

It occurs to him that maybe he does want the wildcat to follow, to pursue. Isn’t that kind of always what Lu Han wanted? He wanted Junmyeon to do it, back when they fought. He thought he would, he assumed he would. Couples had squabbles and then they fought, but then they got back together if the circumstances weren’t dire enough. And Lu Han didn’t think they were that bad at the time. Maybe if they’d talked it out before Junmyeon left for Africa things could have been different. In the end they just fizzled out, and that was it for their so-called relationship.

And if Lu Han’s right, that’s potentially what’s about to happen again.

Can he really compare it though with Xiumin? Is this the same situation? Did Lu Han mess up in the same way? No, no, and a thoroughly no-ish no.

Then again, they kissed. And then they said some dumb , especially Lu Han. If he stops walking, will the wildcat catch up, come to him? Could it, would it be so easy to just, talk it out? If he were a little more brave, maybe he’d do just that. Stop his feet, and wait.

In the end, however, the motion’s already been set, and Lu Han doesn’t stop walking. He stomps back all the way to his cabin until, standing in the doorway, achy from his falls and sweaty from the exertion, he turns around and looks.

There’s no one there. Xiumin did not in the end, continue following.

For the next several days, Lu Han packs. And cleans. Unpacks, then packs again. Cleans some more. His small suitcase lays perpetually open, and the cabin in spotless. He’s just waiting for the all-clear. The final phone call from Baekhyun which will tell him to depart, nothing more for him to do now.

Their conversation the day after was brief, strained.

“I messed up.” Lu Han didn’t explain it all, just enough to reason that his presence here was compromised.

Baekhyun had sighed. He shockingly understood. “Is that so? Okay. I expect a report back from the person I sent to investigate. I’ll call you when that comes in and then you can probably come home.”

It’s been three days without a sighting of the wildcat. Lu Han has a hard time thinking of him in any other way. Who is Xiumin? Not somebody who matters. He’s just, the wildcat now. A half human, half feline creature with too much curiosity, and Lu Han fell for his games. He fell for it hard.

Three days later, that’s when the call finally comes in. Lu Han barely answers it in time. He’s still shamefully unused to a normal sleep pattern, more irregular now after the time spend with the wildcat, and the time waiting for him.

“Hello?”

“It’s Baekhyun, you sound chipper this morning.”

Lu Han rubs his eyes. The word ‘morning’ is hardly recognizable. He hasn’t been awake for a morning in what feels like ages.

“You don’t usually call at this hour.”

“I know. But I figured you were dying to get home. Listen up, the report is back.”

Lu Han sits up now, more awake by the second. “The one about Xiumin?”

Baekhyun scoffs. “Yeah, that one. Though is name isn’t Xiumin, obviously, since that’s the one we made up for him, in the absence of further information.”

“He seemed to like Xiumin though.” Lu Han has to smile. He’s remembering the wildcat’s brief, blushing confession. He liked the name because that’s what Lu Han called him. A burning, guilty fever burns low in Lu Han’s chest. ‘Xiumin’ probably hates him now.

“It’s Minseok.”

“What?” Lu Han doesn’t compute.

“Min-seok. No given last name—our contact either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell us — and that the school he attended didn’t bother keeping any decent records.”

“W-what? Lu Han’s still grasping here. “School? He went to a school?!”

“Village high school. Exactly the place we thought he might have appeared. Closest to the park.”

“Xiumin attended high school?!”

“For six months, give or take a month. He disappeared again after that. Nothing about him before, or after.”

Lu Han rubs his head, has to lay back in his back. The wildcat went to school. Suddenly it all makes sense, his language speaking skills, his attunement to human customs. All the mysteries Lu Han’s had about him are suddenly fitting into place.

“So you found the woman who made the report about him?”

Baekhyun clears his throat in the negative. “Nope. We found something better.”

“What?”

“Her son.”

Lu Han listens to the monologue, interjecting only to grunt, utter some hmms and ahhs , or other appropriate sound effects. Mrs. Zhang, as Baekhyun’s man discovered, is in hospice care, not far from where Lu Han actually lives in the big city. Her only son Zhang Yixing retains medical authority over her wellbeing and had intercepted the messenger.

“And boy, you won’t believe how surprised he was to hear from us!” Lu Han lets go of the word ‘boy’ in favor of hearing the rest of the story. “Get this, that report from entirely true! He was Xiu- I mean Minseok’s best friend. Met him in class during a group assignment, took him home, was pretty damned close, from the way he tells it. I have the recording of this interview, and  me if he didn’t sound a tiny little enamored. Or maybe it’s just nostalgia.”

But oh no… if it’s anything like Lu Han’s experience, this Zhang Yixing is probably not just experiencing nostalgia.

“His mother found them one morning sleeping together.”

Lu Han’s eyebrow shoots up, even though Baekhyun can’t see it.

“I mean, not sleeping sleeping together, just sleeping, you know.”

Yes, Lu Han knows.

“As Mr. Zhang tells it, his mother screamed, and some animal shot up out of his bed. Nearly side-swiped her, and she fainted, and by the time he got through taking care of her, the animal was gone.”

“Was that the last he heard of him? From Minseok?” Lu Han asks.

“No.”

And now Lu Han is honestly surprised.

“I guess they met up once more, and while Mr. Zhang didn’t know any of the exact details, and Minseok was not forthcoming about himself, it was obvious they both knew the other knew.”

“So this Zhang guy can confirm it was definitely a wildcat?” Lu Han has to know. “Not a werewolf?” He adds with a chuckle to belie his regret. He can practically dictate how this final encounter went, if it’s anything based on his own experiences.

“Definitely not a wolf. He said he remembers, in the final seconds before the door opened, something purring .”

Lu Han clenches his eyes. They’re stinging, and a golf ball size wad of despair wells up in the back of his throat. He lets Baekhyun finish the tale in peace, lets the anger and the regret wash over him, lets that burgeoning heartbreak make its cruel, little appearance, before he squashes it back down.

“Seems he’s always wondered what happened to him after that. They parted ways, and Minseok disappeared. Never returned to school or the village. Mr. Zhang graduated and moved his mother away, and somehow always wanted to believe he’d just dreamed it. He wants to see him again, you know.” Oh, Lu Han knows . “But, well, given the circumstances I explained that wouldn’t be likely. Wildcats, you know. Elusive sons of es.”

But not too elusive. Before this assignment Lu Han would have agreed with Baekhyun. Now, however, he knows. Xiumin, or Minseok, is just as social as any other creature. A little more of a loner, but social nevertheless. It’s the humans who keep screwing things up for him. First the people who captured his parent cat, then Yixing, and his mother. Next up: Lu Han.

Lu Han can only hope that there won’t be more people like him to continue ruining things for one of the last wildcats on earth.

Before hanging up Baekhyun tells Lu Han to make his way back to town soon as he wants, pick up a bus ticket, and come on home. “Company will reimburse you for the ticket. Take as long as you need, okay, Lu Han?”

He hangs up, morose and bitter at the way Baekhyun seems to apologize to him for his failure. It’s not Baekhyun’s fault Lu Han screwed up, but maybe that’s part of his charm. Despite his robust personality, Baekhyun takes his employee’s experiences personally and after all, he’s the one who sent Lu Han there in the first place.

There isn’t much more to do in the cabin. Lu Han gives it one final quick clean and makes a final inventory check. It’s owned by the WHPC and will no doubt be visited again in the future. Lu Han wants to leave it in spotless condition. He tears the sheets from the bed, pointedly not thinking about all those nights the wildcat shared it with him, washes them in a large basin outside. As they hang dry, Lu Han stares down the sun sinking low into the sky, his eyes glossy, but his ears wide open, listening, yearning.

He sleeps in the sleeping bag overnight, but it’s a fitful rest after all these weeks of being nocturnal. In the morning he folds the sheets and crams the last bit of his belongings into his camping bag. Belatedly, he realizes he’s still missing a jacket, several pairs of pajama pants, a shirt, and his oldest set of shoes.

Maybe that was my tribute, he muses to himself, smiling wryly. Then he sets off.

The walk to the village takes a full day, and then some. Lu Han arrives well past midnight, his feet aching and he’s itching for a good night sleep. It’s the same town Minseok once dwelled in. And who knows, maybe his parents before him. Lu Han and the WHCP are still woefully missing all those milestones which have shaped and molded and nearly made extinct the entire hybrid Asiatic wildcat population.

For now at least, that’ll be someone else’s job. Lu Han will go home, and no doubt be reassigned. Maybe his next excursion won’t be so bad. Maybe Baekhyun will take his good intentions to heart and send him out on an adventure for something awesome: like the octohybrid. More likelier, he thinks, is that he’ll be put on the archaeological division digging up bones of fossilized fauns. At least there he won’t be allowed to hurt any more of these beautiful creatures’ feelings, thus jeopardizing the whole operation.

He finds a motel, mercifully open twenty-four hours a day, though the room rates are by the hour. Lu Han enters his little suite alone, drops his back by the door, and after that his shoes are the first thing to go. By the time he showers and snacks, it’s four in the morning, His cell phone is on its last 2% battery life. Lu Han lets it run to zero and plops on the bed. Despite the ache in his bones and his overall weariness, he can’t sleep.

Perhaps, that’s a good thing though.

Barely an hour later there’s a little knock on his door. Lu Han whines and sits up. It can’t be the motel staff this late, surely?!

In the pit of his stomach though, Lu Han knows who it is. He yearns for it, begs it to be true. Even still it’s with great trepidation that he pads softly towards the door, unbolting the lock. He opens it slowly, achingly prolonging every bit of hope Lu Han knows to muster.

He starts at the feet.

Hmm, familiar.

Then the pant legs. A little tatty. Like they’ve gone for a hike in knee high brush and gotten twisted all around.

That shirt, pretty ugly. One he never liked. Covered in a decent jacket.

The face though. Now that’s a face Lu Han likes.

The hybrid stands before him looking more anxious than Lu Han has ever seen him. Looking more human too. Maybe it’s the lights from the street, illuminating his skin in a way not even the moon can do. Maybe it’s the backdrop, the village architecture, old-fashioned, but decidedly human. A remnant of everything Xiumin usually is not.

Lu Han’s breath comes to a stop. The wildcat wrings his hands, biting his lower lip, and Lu Han finds himself saying, “Hello,” in a manner he hopes conveys more, so much more.

“Hi,” says the wildcat. Then, softly, “Can I come in?”

Lu Han nods, like he was always going to. He backs away from the door frame, leads the man into his darkened room, never turning away, ready for all the world like he’s afraid the wildcat is going to pounce on him. Because ohh , he hopes he will.

But it doesn’t happen like that.

“I didn’t really think you were going to leave.”

Lu Han doesn’t have an answer. He shakes his head sadly. It’s not a response, more an admission of his own guilt.

Xiumin, or Minseok, changes tactics. “Did you want to leave?”

This time Lu Han’s head shake is genuine. He smiles. Then the hybrid smiles. “Me neither. But since you’re here…”

The wildcat doesn’t pounce, not all the way. But he does step softly up into Lu Han’s space, and tentatively wrap his arms around Lu Han’s middle. Lu Han inhales, loving that earthy scent, loving the feeling of that smaller body looping around his, all warm, hard muscle, compact and magical.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” asks the hybrid, his head now firmly down in the space between Lu Han’s neck and collarbone.

And Lu Han can only respond, his voice a relieved whisper. “Please, yes.”

Wooo, an update!!! The first of a longtime, I'm so sorry. Writing has been elusive for me lately, as I'm tired all the time and also 2 AND A HALF MONTHS PREGNANT with my second child. Ugh.

Probably typos galore, it's 5am, I'm sorry. I'll stop saying sorry now.

Stay tuned for an EPILOGUE!