As he walked through the late-night market, Lay enjoyed being able to blend in with the busy rush of people. Here, surrounded by people who looked like him, who spoke the same language as him, he was not Lay of EXO but just Yixing. It was strangely freeing, being so totally unrecognized. He hadn’t been expecting this kind of freedom when they’d come to California; in the original plans, all of them had been scheduled down to the second. Reality had been a lot more pleasant, however, and outside of the crowded site that K-Con occupied, they had all found that it was surprisingly easy to just blend in with the rest of the crowd.

Thinking of this, he smiled, maybe a little too brightly, at the woman who was bundling up hot buns for him. He accepted the warm package with thanks, and then bought two more, to go. One, he handed to the manager--bodyguard he'd talked into coming down to Chinatown with him. The other, he kept for himself.

As they walked down the street, pressing back through the thick throng people, Yixing nibbled at his steambun. He was staying close to the edge, near the alleys, and that was how he saw the dog.

It was a sad sight, for sure. Even though the dog had a lot of fur, it was still obvious that it was much too skinny. Its tail looked ragged and tired, tucked against long, stick-thin legs. Big eyes were sunk deep in thick fur, and they followed Yixing (and his food) mournfully. It hesitated, lurking back in the shadows of the alley, but it was clear that the dog wanted what Yixing was holding.

Yixing paused, bringing the manager to stop, too. The poor dog looked so hungry… After a moment's hesitation, he tore off a bit of his steambun and set it on the ground.

The dog darted forward and gobbled it up. And then raised waiting eyes at Yixing.

Laughing, he tore off another piece and leant forward, ready to set the food down. But before he could, the dog jumped forward and snatched the food up. Its teeth also sank into the meat if Yixing's hand.

"Ouch!" he cried, stumbling back. He clutched his bitten hand at the wrist, just below where the punctures were starting to well up dark with blood.

The manager kicked at the dog, even as he gathered Yixing up. Somehow, despite barely being able to string together a Mandarin sentence, the Korean man managed to get several stall owners nearby to lend a hand. A motherly woman washed the wound and bound it up while someone who looked like his grandfather made him drink tea. They heaped care on him, and only released him when he had drunk enough tea to float.

Back at the hotel, an exhausted Yixing entrusted the package of baozi to the manager. The man could distribute the steambuns to the other members without Yixing’s help. As for himself, he showered and crawled into bed, injured hand tucked against his chest. He was asleep in seconds.

---

Suho called Kris in, because Suho had gone to thank Yixing for thinking of the whole group, and found him boiling with fever. His face, when he opened the door, was pale and drawn, nervous.

“He’s, uh, not really making sense,” Suho explained, closing the door quickly behind the other man. “Not in Korean, anyway.”

Kris nodded, understanding. They’d all gotten sick, either during training or after debut, and for those of them that didn’t speak Korean as a first language, communication could become a struggle. He was the worst; with English, Cantonese, Korean, and Mandarin to choose from, he could keep everyone on their toes when he was out of it. “Did you call the manager on duty?”

Suho nodded. “He’s on his way up; he has to get someone to stay down at the pool with Kyungsoo and Sehun, first.” Heaving a sigh, he sat down carefully on the edge of Yixing’s bed. “He said that one of the other hyungs said that Xing-ah got bit by a dog this evening.”

“A dog?” Kris asked, a sudden, sick feeling gathering in the pit of his belly. “He got bit by a dog? And that’s what’s making him sick?”

“I know, it seems crazy. Too soon, right? But that’s what hyung said.”

“Diu!” Kris swore, already digging in his pocket for his cellphone.

“I know it’s bad if you’re breaking into Cantonese,” Suho said. He smiled, but it was tight, fake, and didn’t reach his eyes. “What do you know that I don’t, Yifannie?”

Kris shook his head, cradling his cellphone to his ear. “Something I really, really hope isn’t—ah, Inda? Hi, it’s Yifan—Kevin. I really need to talk to—yeah. Okay. Thank you.” He’d started in Korean and ended in English, and when he next spoke, it was in Cantonese once more.

Clearly, Suho wasn’t going to get anything else out of Kris, not while he was in the middle of one of those rapid-fire conversations that only happened when you called home. Suho knew that particular look; he’d seen it frequently enough on the others, and in the mirror. Sighing to himself, he began to Yixing’s sweaty fringe away from his face.

He hoped Yixing wasn’t too sick; they had a flight back to Korea the next morning. The long flight over to the United States had been bad enough, back when they were all well. He couldn’t imagine doing it while ill. Too, the show didn’t stop because someone was sick, and they all needed to be on top of their game for their schedules. And if whatever Yixing had wasn’t from the dog bite, then that meant he’d had it before, which meant that, chances were, someone else in the group had it. Or several someone elses.

He looked up as the door opened, admitting a manager, and then down again as Yixing’s teeth closed around his finger. “Ow! Jenjang, Xing-ah, that hurt!” Scowling at the other young man—who didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong, a distant look in his mostly-closed eyes—Suho his injured finger in his mouth. Seriously. Ow.

“What’s going on?” the manager asked.

Kris, seemingly done with his phone conversation, broke in before Suho could get his finger out of his mouth to speak. “XingXing was bit by a dog, now he’s running a fever. I think it’s something I’ve seen before. I called someone who might know; she’s sending a—” he paused, thinking. “A specialist,” he said finally.

The manager’s eyes narrowed. He looked to Suho.

Suho shrugged. “He seemed to know what I was talking about when I said Xing-ah had been bit,” he said. “Besides, it’s Yifannie. He knows .”

The manager snorted. The statement was fairly accurate, for all that it didn’t really seem to fit into this context as well as he would have liked. “Do I need to call a doctor?”

“No!” Kris said, his eyes widening. “That is, um. No. But if the staff medic is floating around…”

“Let me guess. She could set up an IV, and that would be swell?” the manager asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow.

Kris smiled at him. “Or just give him something for the fever?”

“Aish, trouble, the lot of you,” the man groaned, but he pulled out his cellphone and started texting rapidly. “And this specialist—is he going to be a problem?”

“Hmm? No, no.” Kris shook his head. “He knows about keeping a secret. Trust me.”

The manager’s eyes narrowed again, but he said nothing.

---

By the time Kris’s phone rang again, he and Suho were sitting by Yixing’s feet, waiting impatiently for the IV to do its work. Yixing had fussed slightly when the nurse employed by SM to keep them all healthy and sane (for a given level of both) had put the needle in, but he’d settled back soon enough. She’d set him up with saline and something for the fever, and was now seated in one of the room’s overstuffed chairs, watching the three young men. The manager was pacing in the other corner, muttering under his breath.

Kris’s ringtone shattered the silence. Startled, he slipped off the edge of the mattress as he pulled the phone from his pocket. “Hello?”

The person on the other end said something, and Kris just listened, absentmindedly patting Yixing’s feet to settle him.

“Okay. I’ll have someone walk you up, yeah.” He hung up, then turned to the manager. “Hyung, that’s our specialist. He says he’s wearing a red shirt? He’s down in the lobby. Could you…”

The manager sighed, but nodded. “You sure you trust him?” he asked.

Kris nodded. “With my life.”

With another sigh, the manager left.

Only then did Suho speak up. “This specialist…in what?”

Kris cringed. “It…it might be better for him to say, actually,” he temporized, shooting a nervous look at the medic. “It might sound…crazy.”

Suho treated him to a flat stare. “Are you risking Yixing’s life?”

Kris shook his head. “No,” he said, swearing strongly. “That much, I promise you. These people know how to keep a secret.”

Behind him, the medic raised an eyebrow, but she said nothing.

They waited, in an awkward quiet, until the door opened once more. The young man trailing behind the manager was nothing like Kris had expected; for one, he was a young man, not a grown adult. He looked to be around Kris’s age, not much older, perhaps even younger. His bright red shirt advertised for “FULL MOON ENERGY PILLS – THEY’LL MAKE YOU HOWL!” and had a cartoonishly drawn werewolf on it. He was clutching a briefcase, and his eyes darted rapidly around the room.

“Hi,” Kris said, greeting him in English. “Stiles?”

The boy nodded. “Hi, yeah. Stiles. You must be Yifan.” He out a hand. As they shook, he spoke up again, this time in Mandarin. “And, uh. If this is easier. I speak Mandarin.”

Kris blinked at him. “Yeah, actually, a little. You speak Mandarin?”

The boy smirked. “Strange, right? But this is California, man. Mandarin’s taught in schools. It was my foreign language in high school. And in college. Probably why Meiyee called me instead of someone who lives around here all the time.” Again, he looked around the room. “So. Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“Let me introduce you around, first,” Kris said, noting the look on Suho and the manager’s faces. He switched to Korean, realizing that this was already shaping up to be one hell of a long night. “Hyungs, this is Stiles. He’s American, and what’s happened to Yixing—what I think has happened to Yixing—is his specialty.”

Stiles waved awkwardly. “Hi,” he offered.

Suho looked at him for a long moment, and then looked to Kris. “You?” he told the other man, “you are going to owe me. I’m going to get hyung out of here before he cries. You better let me in on the secret.” That said, he grabbed the manager and cajoled him out of the room.

Stiles, watching them go, winced. “I’m really not that frightening,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes darted to the medic.

She waved at him. “Park Yunmi,” she said. “You’re here because he’s been wolf-bit.”

Stiles and Kris both stared at her. For all that her Mandarin had been shaky and awkward, the meaning behind her words was clear.

“You didn’t tell me someone here already knew!” Stiles enthused, setting his briefcase down on the room’s table. “Wow, you don’t really need me, then.”

“I didn’t know,” Kris said.

Yunmi shook her head. “I don’t know much,” she said. “I know it exists. But that’s it. I work with somethi—someone else.”

Kris folded that mystery away for later contemplation, even as he watched Stiles wave away her explanation.

“That’s okay, that’s okay. It means you’ll learn faster,” the young man said. As he spoke, he was pulling a large binder out of his briefcase, as well as a small organza bag. “Saves me having to figure out who can help them when these guys get home, anyway.” He turned to look at Kris. “So. Your friend—he speaks Mandarin?”

“I do,” Yixing grumbled, his eyes cracking open. He didn’t move from the strange half-curl he had fallen asleep in. “Who are you?”

“Hi, I’m Stiles, I’m here to check you out—wait, no, wow, that sounded wrong. Not check you out like check you out, more like check you out like look you over? See what’s wrong with you. If there’s something wrong with you. But you’re sick so I think there’s something wrong with you.”

Yixing blinked slowly. “Are you always like this?”

“Normally? I’m worse,” Stiles told him. “Now, Yifan said you got bit by an animal?”

“A dog,” Yixing confirmed. He held out his injured hand.

“Were you sick before?” Stiles asked, his eyes on where he was unwrapping the bandages.

“No, I felt fine.”

Stiles was careful not to touch the bite, swollen and red as it was. He felt around the edges of the wound, looking over the rest of Yixing’s hand, comparing it to the unbitten hand. “Anyone around you sick?”

“We’ve all been healthy,” Kris said. He was standing at the foot of the bed, watching Stiles interact with . “Not even a cough.”

Stiles nodded, absentminded. “Okay, two things, then I can confirm that Yixing is suspecting the right things. One, start flipping through this notebook. Do you read English—no? Good. Just look at the pictures. Stop when you get to one that looks like what bit you. I’ll be right back with the rest.”

He stood up from the bed, leaving Kris to get Yixing sitting upright and looking through the binder.  Opening the organza bag, he waved Yunmi over. He explained something to her, quiet, gesturing with one of the small jars. She asked him a question, equally quiet, and he replied. Kris gave up on trying to listen in to what they were saying; even as the conversation drew on and the gestures grew sharper and more emphatic, their voices stayed low and quiet.

“I think I found it,” Yixing said suddenly, stopping on a picture near the back of the binder.

Kris looked at the photo the other man had selected, curious. It had thick fur, at least on its body. Its legs were a bit more streamlined, for all that they were short. It was a dusty red-brown colour, with bits of paler cream and darker shades of brown in places. It looked like a dog, in some ways, but the bright eyes, the triangular ears, and the shape of its head belied the truth. It was a wolf.

A Tibetan Wolf, at that, Kris saw, taking advantage of the English title on the page. He started to read the rest of the paragraph beneath the photo, but Stiles was already taking the binder out of his hands.

“Ooh, a Tibetan Wolf. Nice, classy. At least it’s native to your area, I guess. That’s a good thing. More suited for the climate and the culture, you know? And hey, if you have to be lang ren, at least you can be a local one. Blends in way better.”

“L-lang ren?” Yixing stammered.

“Yeah, about that…take a sniff.” Stiles held out a jar.

Obedient, Yixing sniffed—and then sneezed violently, before curling back into a tight little ball and whining low in his throat. He struggled slightly as Yunmi reached for his wrist, but eventually he let her take his pulse.

Stiles, putting away the jar, looked at her. When she nodded, he nodded back, and then came back to where Yixing was hiding and Kris looked ready to commit homicide. “Sorry about that,” he said, voice quiet and calmer than it had been all night. “That one’s, like, the last straw of proof. I needed it before I could really explain this to you. I know it stings—well, okay, I don’t know know, like, I’ve never sniffed it and gotten the hell of a headache you’re probably rocking right now, but I’ve seen enough people do it—and I’ve made enough of them do it, too, to be honest—that I have  a good idea. And yeah, it , but I had to do it, because otherwise, there would still be a little bit of doubt, a little bit of maybe maybe not, and you can’t have that right now.”

Carefully, he drew the blanket away from Yixing’s face. “So, let’s do this the right way, hmm? Hi, I’m Stiles. I’m the Emissary for the Hale Pack of Beacon Hills, California. I am human. Sort of.”

Yixing only blinked at him.

Kris smiled slightly, glad to see that the other had settled. Sitting down at the foot of the bed, near enough Stiles to stop him if he did anything, protecting Yixing’s curled form, he took a deep breath. “And I’m Wu Yifan, human member of the Harris-Beeker Pack of Vancouver, British Columbia.” Seeing the way Yixing turned that rabbit-eyed stare on him, he reached forward and a sweaty strand of hair out of that familiar face. “That’s how I knew to call Stiles.”

“High fever and delusions shortly after being bit by a dog-like creature is usually my thing,” Stiles said, nodding. “Because when we—when Yifan and I—say pack, what we’re talking about is werewolves. Lang ren. Wolfpeople. Shapeshifters.”

“Not real,” Yixing gritted out.

“Yes real,” Stiles replied. “Very real. My best friend was bitten our freshman year of high school. This has been my life for eight years. Eight long years. I’ve learned to recognize wolves, among other supernatural beings, work with them, and help new wolves get where they need to be. Like his aunt.” He gestured to Kris. “She does my job for a different pack, a different part of the world.”

Kris nodded. “Like Stiles said. She’s human. Sort of.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Stiles laughed. “No one ever does,” he said, pulling out a tablet. He tapped rapidly on the screen. “Here. You might not understand what he’s saying, but this is Derek. Derek’s my. He’s…well, technically he’s my Alpha. One of my Alphas? My boss. My friend. Okay, the pack situation where I’m from is weird, not a model to be followed, et cetera et cetera. He’s also a born wolf.”

Yixing’s eyes were glued to the little screen. “No way that’s…”

“Real? It’s real. What, you think I’d go to that much trouble CGI-ing something filmed in that low quality for a joke? As if. Even I don’t have that kind of attention-span, drugs or no. Now, normally I show this video as a hey, surprise, here’s what you can do! But you’re a different species—breed? Different kind of wolf from Derek and Scott—he’s the stupid looking one.”

Kris looked at Stiles. “How different?”

Stiles made a face. “Hard to say? I’m more familiar with Eurasian Grey weres, to be honest, because that’s what ninety percent of the people I run with are. I mean, the basics are still the same—wolf-human shape-shifting, the moon has influence, the wolf looks to an Alpha, infectious bite, et cetera.”

“But?” Yixing asked, his voice a harsh croak. He coughed, clearing his throat. “Something’s different.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, nodding. “The bite’s more infectious—anyone can change someone, not just an alpha. Pack structure is less rigid. It was the Asian weres that really started bringing humans in on a higher level in their packs, and that’s why. Look, this is going to be a mess to explain. When do you guys leave?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Kris said. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair. “At least, we’re supposed to. Will it be safe?”

Stiles bit his lip, obviously considering. “Likely. If he’s around someone who he looks up to, someone he respects.”

“Duizhang,” Yixing said, snickering. He weakly toed Kris’s thigh.

Kris laughed, too. “I can control him,” he said to Stiles, placing a hand on the lump of Yixing’s blanket covered foot.