Chapter Text
The first time Chan sees him, he’s alone at a corner table in a half-dead diner near Gangseo. The kind of place where the fluorescent lights never stop flickering, where the glass is scratched by years of bored keys and lost names. A neon sign outside sputters blue across the kid’s face, making his skin look like paper under a flame.
Chan stops walking. Just outside the glass, rain prickling his jacket, shoes soaked from a puddle he didn’t see. The street is dead except for the sound of someone dragging a trash bin three buildings down.
It’s 2:17 a.m., and Chan was supposed to be heading home.
He doesn’t move.
The boy sits hunched over a chipped table, his hand idly drawing lines in a pool of spilled Coke. Headphones in, head tilted like he's somewhere else. He’s wearing a pale hoodie, hood up, and underneath it—dyed blonde hair. Not salon-perfect blonde either. The cheap box kind, too yellow at the ends, roots already grown in, dark like wet ash bleeding from the scalp.
Chan stares at it. At the sharp shadow it casts across the boy’s cheekbone.
And the boy—he’s thin, built like something breakable. Narrow shoulders, wrists so slim the cuffs of his sleeves swallow them whole. There’s a rawness to him. Not bruised, exactly. Just… unfinished.
He doesn’t notice Chan outside the window. That’s the thing that does it. That’s the thing that sinks deep.
Because everyone sees Chan. They glance at him and look away—too quick, too polite. Like they smell the rot under his skin. But not this boy. This boy, who couldn’t be older than twenty-five, who hasn’t even noticed the way Chan has gone still on the sidewalk like a forgotten piece of street trash.
Chan exhales, fogging the glass. It’s cold, and yet heat crawls up his spine.
He’s seen strays before. He works with them. Abandoned dogs, burned-out eyes. Cats that chew their own fur to calm the itch of hunger. Both with gazes marred by the bone-deep understanding that no one’s coming back for them.
But this is different. This is a human stray. Untouched, unwanted, left behind.
A waitress in pink polyester walks past the boy and doesn’t even glance at him. No coffee refill. No eye contact.
Invisible. No one sees him.
Except Chan.
Chan watches the boy for twenty-three minutes.
Then he turns and walks into the night, rain soaking through the cuffs of his sleeves.
—
The shelter is full again.
It reeks of numerous cleaning solutions and fear. They just took in seven dogs from an underground fight ring out in Incheon. Three will have to be put down. Two already have.
Chan held the last one as its eyes dimmed. Just a pup. Too much damage to the jaw, bone cracked and rotting, brain swelling beneath the surface. Someone’s bootprint bruised deep into its side. Chan held the dog and whispered to it while the vet injected the cocktail. Told it sorry. The dog licked his hand once before going limp. Chan didn’t cry.
He never does.
Sundays mean bleach. The back kennels stink of ammonia and blood. The humidity causes everything to stick to him. His hair, his clothes. The smell. He scrubs while Jisung plays music off his phone and cleans out the blood-stained kennels. Chan prefers it quiet. The hum of the lights, the soft metal scrape of a paw against steel. Breathing. Silence is real. Silence tells the truth.
Today’s playlist is called “Vibezzz 2 Die 2 ☠️” — all capital letters and manic transitions between hyperpop and OST ballads. It makes the tinny speakers rattle. It makes Chan’s jaw ache.
Jisung jokes about it like always. Dances while he mops up blood and bile. He doesn’t notice Chan staring too long. He never does.
That’s the trick—pretending to like him. Pretending to be normal.
“Hey, hyung,” Jisung says, slapping a roll of trash bags into Chan’s hands. “Wanna get a drink later?”
Chan smiles, slow. Practiced. “Rain check?”
“Dude, it’s literally raining.” Jisung laughs at his own joke and walks off.
Chan watches the back of his neck until he disappears.
Two years into being co-workers and Chan never takes Jisung up on offers. Never lets him get too close. He likes him well enough. Enough to imagine how easy it would be to cage him if he ever needed to.
But he won’t. Jisung belongs to the world.
The boy in the diner does not.
—
He goes back two nights later.
Not for the dogs. Not for Jisung. Not even for the quiet.
He doesn’t tell anyone about the boy with the Coke and the sketchy elbows. He doesn’t know his name.
He needs to see him again. And he does.
He walks the route again, this time earlier — just after closing, 11:38 p.m.
Different booth. Same posture. New drink—black coffee, untouched. His hands twitch as he sketches in a battered notebook. Fingers delicate. A silver ring on his thumb glints under the stuttering diner light.
Chan walks past the glass once, twice, then goes inside.
The waitress barely looks up. “Booth or counter?”
“Counter,” Chan murmurs, but doesn’t sit. Just orders a coffee. Black. Watches the boy’s reflection in the mirror above the service bar.
The boy sips from a chipped mug. His fingers are thin, delicate, twitchy.
His profile is angelic in a way that’s all bones and hollow cheeks. Blonde, pale, sharp. There’s no softness in his expression. He looks like a statue someone left out in the rain.
Chan stares for too long.
The boy looks up, catches him in the mirror.
Their eyes meet. A flicker. Chan feels it like a burn.
It lasts four seconds.
Then the boy smiles.
It’s not friendly. Not the kind that reaches the eyes. Not even fake. Not even the kind people use to be polite.
It’s knowing. Like he’s dared people to watch him before and knows how the game goes.
Chan leaves without touching his drink.
He doesn’t sleep that night. The reflection plays on a loop behind his eyes. That smile. That arrogance. That fragility wrapped around something dangerous.
It turns in him like hunger.
—
He follows h im.
Once. Then again. Then every night he can. Three weeks in and he knows the routine.
The boy comes Tuesdays and Thursdays. Same diner. Always alone. Sometimes reads, sometimes draws. Always drinks coffee but never eats. The waitress stops offering menus after week two.
The boy walks everywhere. Bus stops. Late-night convenience stores. A run-down goshiwon in Gwanak-gu, six floors up with a busted intercom and cracked windows.
He smokes menthols but only after midnight.
He doesn’t eat. Chan watches him throw away three full kimbap rolls in one week.
He sketches constantly—on napkins, receipts, corners of his sleeve.
He’s beautiful.
Not in the safe, movie-star way. Beautiful like a knife someone forgot to clean.
Chan learns the boy’s name from the sketchbook left unattended when he goes to the bathroom.
“Property of Lee Felix”
Felix, then. It suits him. Not because he looks like a Felix. But because Felix means lucky.
And Chan has never felt more lucky than when he watches him sit perfectly still, spine curled like a question mark, eyes dark with absence.
He looks like a secret.
—
Chan keeps notes. Records routes. Smiles at Jisung at work. Feeds the dogs.
The obsession doesn’t feel like obsession at first. It feels like a calling.
Chan tells himself he’s helping. That’s how it starts.
No one else sees him—Felix is a ghost in skin. Fragile, drifting through the world like it barely holds his shape.
He starts following. Two steps behind, silent as a shadow. Felix never notices.
He lives in a sublet—rundown, walk-up, cracked windows. He works somewhere (probably), but Chan hasn’t figured out where yet. He smokes menthols and throws the butts in the gutter. He walks with his hoodie up even when it’s warm.
He’s perfect.
So Chan starts building.
—
The cage is beneath the shelter, past the boiler room where no one goes except him. He tells Jisung and the others that the door sticks. They believe him.
The floor is already grated for draining. He welds steel, tightens bolts, installs a new lock.
He cleans it obsessively. Bleaches it until the smell bites the back of his throat.
There’s a mattress on the floor. Clean sheets. A soft blanket. Chains.
This will be a home.
Chan doesn’t want to hurt him. He wants to keep him.
He tells himself: this is love.
Not the weak, wet thing that people pass off as affection. Not the lie of “freedom” that’s let someone like Felix wander through life with no tether, no anchor.
This is real. He will give Felix something honest. Devotion. Safety.
Love isn’t freedom. That’s what everyone else thinks, but they’re wrong.
Love is knowing someone so deeply that you save them from themselves.
Love is ownership.
—
The moment comes a week later.
Felix walks back from the convenience store, through the rain, past the closed liquor store with the rusted gate. Headphones in. Hoodie up. A ramen cup poking out of his bag, untouched.
Chan waits by the alley mouth. Needle ready.
He practiced this once—on a stray cat that tore up his forearms before collapsing.
Felix doesn’t see the needle. Doesn’t even flinch. The drug hits fast.
The moment he stumbles, Chan is there — cradling him like something precious.
He’s lighter than expected.
Felix’s mouth parts like he wants to speak, but only a soft, fractured breath escapes. His head lolls. The needle drops.
Chan cradles him close. Smiles.
“I’ve got you now,” he murmurs.
There’s a pulse in his chest. Strong, erratic. Beautiful.
No one watches. Chan carries him down the alley, past a blinking streetlamp, into the dark. The city hums, indifferent.
He carries him home.
—
The first night, Felix is unconscious.
Chan strips him carefully, removes the ring, folds his hoodie.
He notices it again—the dark roots spilling into gold, like shadows swallowing light. The shape of his collarbones. His ribs. How his hands twitch in sleep, fingers curled like he’s reaching for something that never comes.
He watches him for an hour before chaining him to the wall.
—
Felix wakes screaming.
It’s not a startled scream. It’s the kind that tastes like blood in your throat. Felix screams so loud Chan can feel it in his teeth.
Chan waits it out.
He watches from the stool outside the cage, chin on his palm.
Felix lunges forward. The chain snaps taut and yanks him back. He falls.
Chan leaves him chained but gives him water. Gives him back his hoodie.
Felix spits at him. “You fucking psycho.”
Chan stays still. Sits on the stool outside the cage like it’s a confessional booth.
“I know you’re scared,” he says softly. “But it’s okay now. You don’t have to be scared anymore.”
Felix’s eyes are wild. No longer glassy. Alert and burning. He snarls like a dog. “You psycho freak. Let me out. Let me out! ”
He hurls the water bowl at the bars. It crashes, shatters.
Chan doesn’t blink.
“You’re safe,” he whispers. “Finally.”
Felix’s laugh is sharp and bitter. “You think this is safety?”
“No,” Chan says. “I know it is.”
Felix.
Lucky.
He gets up and walks out. Chan leaves him to scream.
The door locks behind him.
—
He dreams in static.
That night, Chan’s memories slip through the cracks.
He’s nine years old, watching his mother drown in the bathtub. Not with water. With pills.
She told him once, “The world doesn’t want broken people, Chan. We have to hide.”
He was eleven when he tried to glue a dead kitten back together. Thought if he held the pieces long enough, it would breathe again.
He was thirteen when his father said, “You feel too much. That’s your problem.”
No.
His problem is no one else feels enough.
—
He returns to the cage at sunrise.
Felix is quiet, curled against the mattress with his back to the bars.
He hasn’t touched the food.
The untouched ramen cup sits beside him, the steam long gone.
Chan kneels beside the cage.
“I can take care of you,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to worry anymore.”
Felix says nothing.
But he’s listening.
Chan smiles.