“You’re too cold.”

“I knew you were cold, but I thought you would at least warm up to me.”

“I thought I could bear it, but it’s too much.”

“You’re not a bad person. You’re just not the right person for me.”

TaekWoon heaved a sigh. It wouldn’t stop playing over and over in his head. Like an annoying song playing through the PA system in a store, and there’s no way to stop it.

“Tch.”

He soccer-kicked an empty can into the concrete wall of a nearby building. Drinking his sorrows away was not TaekWoon’s style, but he certainly felt like it. Suddenly being dumped after a solid year and two months of dating can change a man. Maybe he needs to change. But not today. It’s still a weekday.

Still sulking, TaekWoon swerved down an alleyway. It deviated from his usual route home, but there was no incentive for arriving home anytime soon. If he could just walk off the agitated cloud in his head…

He stopped short. A slight movement in his peripheral caught his attention. He stood in the center of a T where a space opened to another alley that ran perpendicular to the one he walked along. Down that alley, it was dark, moreso with the setting sun.

Down that alley, he saw a body.

The sight chilled TaekWoon to the bones; for a split second, he thought maybe it was a corpse. But as he edged slightly closer, he could tell the person was still moving, taking shallow breaths and trembling. He thought it was a kid, curled in on himself with arms that had no strength left to hold himself together. The sight of pointed ears pressing flat against the top of his skull proved otherwise.

A hybrid…!

It wasn’t completely rare to see one these days, but it wasn’t common, either. Dogboys, catgirls, any genre of a half-human, half-animal being who walked through civilization. At first, they were hardly regarded as anything more outstanding than any other human or pet, but as they started slowly dying out due to their reproduction rate falling more and more harshly, their existence became novel. They became trophies rather than companions, one never without someone nearby to claim it.

So what was this one doing here? Its appearance was definitely not of one that was properly owned and taken care of. Its clothes were old and filthy, and the hybrid itself would need a thorough washing, as well. TaekWoon continued to take carefully measured steps towards the creature. It obviously heard him, opening its eyes and warily locking onto his gaze, but it made no move in reaction. TaekWoon could see why it didn’t make a move to run or otherwise.

A deep gash in its left leg was festering, probably at the very least a day old. It was much too deep for it to heal on its own, and TaekWoon was almost positive the wound had become infected with no thanks to the dank alley where the hybrid lay.

All it took was one more step from TaekWoon before it suddenly tensed and snarled. TaekWoon froze in his tracks, quickly throwing up his hands. His reaction was pointless, though, as the low growl dwindled to a whine, the hybrid wincing from the ugly wound in its leg.

What am I doing, anyway? TaekWoon wondered this as he edged close enough to shrug off his coat and throw it over the hybrid before scooping it up into his arms. It squirmed about in surprise, growling again.

“Oh, shut up,” TaekWoon responded with a growl of his own.

Surprisingly, it stopped wriggling around, but it glared up into TaekWoon’s eyes in disdain. TaekWoon had managed to tightly bind his coat around the creature’s arms in case it tried to scratch him or something. It was only a guess that it probably wouldn’t try anything with its legs. TaekWoon hefted it up to hold it properly and set off.

Thankfully, he frequently passes a vet clinic on his way to and from work every day. He never thought much of it, but with a hybrid that grumbled every so often in his arms, it was the first place that came to his mind. TaekWoon hastened his steps, very conscious of the odd looks he was getting for walking around and carrying a hybrid bridal-style. He planned to leave it in the care of the clinic, but it didn’t occur to him that maybe they only dealt with actual pets and not hybrids…

Either way, he muscled his way through the door with no hands, narrowly avoiding second-hand kicking a kid in the face who was coddling his own puppy. The few people who were inside stared with wide eyes. The receptionist behind the counter was frozen, her eyebrows jumping up.

Now that his brain had finally caught up with his body, TaekWoon realized he didn’t even know what he was doing. He stared back at the receptionist. “This…”

A head poked out of a door off to the side, one which belonged to a somewhat middle-aged man who regarded the scene before him, staring longer at TaekWoon and the gangly hybrid in his arms. His own eyebrows lifted in interest, and he stepped out and ambled his way into the front room.

“I see, I see,” he muttered. The hybrid’s ears pressed flatter against its skull, and a low growl rose from its throat again. This, however, seemed to elate the man. “Nice! Very good. SoYeon-ah!”

A girl appeared through the door where the man had appeared, and she had zero hesitation at approaching the scene as well. “Yes, Mr. Lee?”

“Take this one to room four. We’ll need the supplies from there.”

“Yes, sir!”

Disregarding the fact that TaekWoon was much taller than she was – even the hybrid seemed like it would be taller than her – she easily pulled the creature from TaekWoon’s arms into her own and trotted back through the door she came from. The hybrid was just as confused, its bewildered eyes catching TaekWoon’s one last time before it disappeared behind the door frame.

TaekWoon sighed. “So you’ll take care of it, then? I’m done here?”

The man looked at him questioningly. “What do you mean?”

“I just found it on the street. It’s not mine.” TaekWoon scanned the man before him, spotting a shiny nameplate fixed to the front of his shirt. Min Woo Lee, it read. “I’m guessing you’re a vet?”

“I’m the vet, yes. This is my clinic. From the sound of it, you only cared enough to bring him in so he could be treated. That’s the extent of your compassion, probably.”

TaekWoon narrowed his eyes. “I believe it’s your job to take care of the animals that come in here, not judge the people who bring them in.”

Unaffected, MinWoo held his gaze, disregarding the fact that TaekWoon maybe stood another head taller than him. “True, but consider this. Who would take care of the cost it would take for cleaning up his injuries? The operations, supplies, and medications?”

“So you’re hounding me for money, now?”

“Not necessarily. While this clinic is a place of business, I’m also a human being who holds more empathy for animals and hybrids than other humans. If I had found him on the street in such a manner, I would have taken him in and treated him of my own volition, no charge to him at all. However, this is a clinic; not a shelter. He’s homeless as soon as he can walk out which means he’ll probably subject to whatever brought him here in the first place.”

Huffing, TaekWoon crossed his arms. “Natural selection.”

MinWoo whistled. “That’s rough. You want that sort of thing on your conscience, then?”

TaekWoon was a millisecond away from replying in his usual, apathetic style, but at that moment, the insufferable playlist ran through his head. It seemed as though the vet was satisfied with TaekWoon’s hesitation.

“I believe you’re not the kind of person you want to seem like,” he continued. “So how about this… It will still take a few days for that one to recover. In the meantime,” he tucked a business card into TaekWoon’s pocket, “you let your feelings ferment. If you’re the person I believe you are, you can call the office. There’ll always be someone there to pick up the phone.”

Dumbfounded, TaekWoon merely stared back at the vet. MinWoo just winked and swaggered off to the door where the hybrid had disappeared through. However, he stopped just short of shutting the door behind him.

“Sorry about your jacket, though,” MinWoo called back. “We’ll clean it for you, as a service. You also might want to wash your hands before you leave. The restroom is that way.”

It took no longer than two seconds of seeing the blood on his hands for TaekWoon to shut himself in the restroom to wash it off.

A/N: So it begins?? I wonder if this first chapter feels like a mess.