WOLF BLOOD: Wooyoung's Story

CHAPTER 1

"Come here, Wooyoung."

"I'm coming.."

Wooyoung boredly opened his door and made his way down the stairs and into the lounge where his father was sitting.

"Yes?"

"Could you please make a salad for tonight's dinner?"

"Yeah, sure."

He went to the fridge to grab the things he needed. Olives, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and apples. He went to the kitchen, set everything down on the counter ready to wash it all off and grabbed the sugar, salt and vinegar from the cupboard along with some pepper. He washed off the ingredients and grabbed a knife and cutting board. Around five to ten minutes later, he was done.

"I'm done."

"Thanks. I'll go prepare the rest of the food in a few minutes."

Wooyoung went off to his room to continue with whatever he was doing. He closed and locked his door again and sat down at his desk. While getting his laptop out, he saw a picture of him, his mom and his dad together. He remembered how happy they were, but this picture brought back a horrible memory too. The suicide of his mother.

[10 years ago]

"I found her."

"Take us there." The father demanded.

They walked through branches and ducked and climbed over some too before they got to her. With every step, the father had a worse feeling than the one before. He knew he was going to find her dead. Somehow he knew. Maybe it was because of her previous suicide attempts. It's not only that though. She seemed on edge for the last few days and whenever someone would try to help her, she'd deny the fact that something very serious was going on. It wasn't just her mental health issues or childhood abuse that made her this way. It was something much worse. Yet no-one knew. She was too scared to tell anyone. The only person (other than Wooyoung's mother) who knew about what she was hiding from everyone, was her enemy.

Finally, they arrived at the site. She was there. Pale, emotionless. Dead and hanging. Wooyoung came out from behind his father and looked at his mother. Her face was full of tears. Now dry tears, but still, tears none-the-less. The young boy, only 6 at the time, didn't understand what was happening.

"Mommy? What's wrong?"

Silence.

"How are you doing that? I wanna fly too!"

His father sighed as he tried as hard as he could to hold his tears back. His efforts were of no use. Tears fell uncontrollably. Wooyoung couldn't understand why his mother wasn't responding and as a result grew frustrated.

"Mommy? Why aren't you saying anything?"

"Son.. She's gone. She's not going to speak. She can't speak"

"What do you mean? She's not gone, she's right here! And why can't she speak?"

"She's dead, Woo..."

He walked up to his hanging mother, tears slowly and uncontrollably rolling down his face, one after the other.

"Why?.. How?"

He tugged on her gown but there was no reaction. Now he knew for sure. She wouldn't say anything any time soon.

[present]

Wooyoung sighed and put his laptop on his desk to start with his English assignment. He had to write an essay about his most traumatic experience. It was due in two weeks, but he decided to start now and get it over and done with so that he wouldn't have to think about it until he had to read it to the teacher for assessing. It took him about 2 hours before he finished it. Well, about 2 and a half hours since he had to eat as well. Once he finished, he went onto the chat room he made with his friends to check if anyone was awake. To his disappointment,, none of them were, so he decided to get ready for bed. He went to the bathroom to shower and brush his teeth. Then he got into his pajamas, jumped into bed and drifted off to sleep.

Every night, he had these weird dreams. Dreams of wolves. Of the moon. The forest, too. He often revisits the same dream. He'd rarely have a nightmare about his mother's suicide. He still didn't understand why she did what she did. What he does know, is that she was hiding something big, and that she always looked troubled. She was always scared. Very jumpy. Whenever they went out in public, she always looked around. It was like she knew something was gonna happen, or like she thought someone was going to grab her. She was always highly paranoid. Making sure to lock every door, gate, window and even the cellar door. Always making sure the blinds and curtains were closed. She even locked her own bedroom door and made Wooyoung lock his when everyone went to bed. At one point, she even had cameras, security lights, alarms, multiple panic buttons, a safe room and police watching at night.

Wooyoung knows his father knew at least some of what was happening, and he's asked about it before, but all his father responded with was, "I'll tell you when you're ready." but when is ready for him? When will Wooyoung be ready to know the truth? Will his father actually tell him? Is his father actually the man he thinks he is? Or is it just a mask? He's been asking himself these same exact questions for years. He never understood why his father couldn't just tell him what the f**k was going on. He knew his father kept many things away from him, but at the same time, he knew it was small, unimportant things. He pushed those to the side, he'd learn about all that later. What he was really curious about, was the big lies and the secrets his father hides.

There are secrets in the forest, too. There are still so many things he doesn't know about it. It's sinister past. The reason people kept going missing, and, in most cases, killing themselves there. The reason people stopped going there, despite it's natural, alluring beauty. He always found himself being pulled - lured - towards the forest. He loved it in there. It felt safer than his home, even. He was able to be himself. He was able to freely express his feelings - his anger, sadness and frustration- without being judged. He could listen to music as loud as he wanted without being yelled at, he could do whatever he wanted. He went there mostly to get as much of his feelings out as possible, but it rarely works these days. He's become more numb to the things that are happening around him. All that gives him joy now is music and his friends. His father has noticed this, and it worries him. This is exactly what happened to his wife.

All she could feel was fear. She was completely absorbed by fear. She was terrified of being alone, being in highly packed places and even partially deserted places where there weren't many people. She was even scared in her own home. Wooyoung's father has asked her many times what was going on, but she had only given him half a story. In her words, she'd explained that there was something special in her family's genes, and that someone had been after her specifically for reasons she wouldn't say. She'd also mentioned the full moon and the forest, but he hadn't seemed to understand. Everything she'd said was a dead giveaway to him. Intentionally. But she was being cautious. She'd also said that the person chasing after and blackmailing her is dangerous and doesn't work alone. That he'd killed some of her family. Her fear had been reasonable.

He grew more worried each passing day, as his wife was becoming a completely different person who's world was now only fear. His son might not be becoming engulfed, or, for lack of better words (and for use of simpler words), swallowed by fear, though what he was being trapped by was far worse than fear. Numbness can be a dangerous thing, pain much more so, but the two combined? It sounds impossible, you know? To be numb but in pain. But it is very much possible. More possible than you think. To explain it better, it's basically not being able to express much emotion towards certain events, yet always being in pain. Not physically, but emotionally and mentally. It's like being in so much pain that you just can't feel it anymore. It torments you, an it eventually gets to a point where you start to engage in harmful activities to feel something, and to distract yourself from other things. Smoking, self harm, drinking, drugs... There are many ways to distract oneself. All harmful, but nobody thinks of that. All they think of is the fact that it distracts. Others find a permanent solution to temporary problems. Suicide. Drowning yourself, overdose, cutting yourself up, hanging yourself, jumping off a bridge or a tall building, stabbing yourself, jumping into a volcano (it's been done before), poisoning yourself, setting yourself on fire, driving your car into the ocean, intentionally crashing your car and so on. Suicide is quite common and can be achieved in many ways. Self electrocution? Maybe. Letting your own car drive over you? I'll stop there. I'm pretty sure you get the picture.

Wooyoung has thought of it himself. He thought, maybe he could get this all to just stop if he ended it himself. But he didn't want to leave his father and friends behind. So instead of that, he hurts himself so he can focus on physical pain instead of his self-destructive thoughts. Not even his father knows about it. All he says is, "I'm just cold" and that's apparently convincing enough for his father. As for his friends, not so much. They know something's going on, but they brush it off as a weird feeling because Wooyoung is always so playful and cheerful around them. It is close to winter anyways. But even then, San had a really odd feeling and he had a hard time shaking it off as "just me imagining things". He's only ever seen Wooyoung with short sleeves once since 6 years ago, and even then, he wouldn't let anyone see his arms. He kept rubbing them, crossing them, putting them to his side and even behind his back all day. San and Yeosang both struggled to brush it off. They actually spoke about it recently, and they want to talk to everyone else in their friend group before they do anything to make sure they're all on the same page. They were going to do so tomorrow after school. Of course, they would do it when Wooyoung wasn't there. They knew about a few things that went on in his life, which made them suspect more was going on behind the scenes than what they saw.

Wooyoung got bullied a lot in his early teens, and still gets bullied even now. He was nearly killed in a drive-by but his uncle protected him and got shot instead. His father started drinking more for a reason Wooyoung hasn't mentioned. Sometimes his dad would lash out and say hurtful things that, yes, maybe he didn't mean, but it still hurt Wooyoung because he feels like it's true. His father sometimes calls him a mistake, tells him he's nothing, calls him weak, pathetic and useless and even brings up his mother sometimes. Everyone in the friend group knows this, they just don't know what Wooyoung means by "bringing his mother up" but they suspect it must've been a divorce or something. When he was around 9, he watched his aunt die in a hospital bed after they pulled the plug. When he was 12, he went through physical and emotional bullying, and he still goes through it 4 years later. He had a step mother at some point who was put in jail for attempted murder, and another step mother who got into a car accident and passed away. The rest of Wooyoung's friends also had really rough pasts. Abuse, foster home to foster home, bullying and so on but we'll get into that later. Everyone has had something bad happen to them in the past, and if not, something will surely happen in the future. Be it a small accident or a near death situation. Maybe a loved one passing away or even something as small as a broken hand. Nobody can say they're really truly happy. Everyone is either a little sad, mildly sad or really really sad. Like close to depression sad.

There are different levels of sadness, and while the worst sadness may be hard to hide, its also hard to detect. People are strange like that. They seem to notice someone's slight pain or sadness rather than straight up depression or severe pain. When people try to open up about being really down or depressed, it's always brushed off as a "phase", especially in their teen years when they're going through many different personalities, style changes and tastes in music. Then in the event of suicide, people say things like "Oh, I wish we could've seen the signs and helped them" or "If only we'd known. If only we'd payed more attention and been there for them." but really, most of the time they're only saying it to make people believe that they didn't just push that person aside. It's really funny, too. Y'know, when someone who has been really damaged and has a thousand knives in their back and they go unnoticed, yet when someone has one or two in their back, they're easily and quickly noticed by everyone. Many people experience it in different ways.

One thing people need to remember about this world is, it's someone you know who is your biggest hater, and some stranger who is your biggest supporter. Well, that's the case most of the time. Wooyoung knew this. But he also knew he could trust his friends. His friends knew they could trust him. They trust each other and care for each other. They understand that everyone has different hardships and different sensitivity levels and reactions toward those hardships.

As a result to their care for eachother and their trust and love toward eachother, Wooyoung always told his friends about his odd dreams. He explained to his friends that he keeps having these weird dreams about wolves and the moon, and he's trying to figure out what it means, but he just can't. Now, as I'm explaining this, he's in the middle of a deep, deep sleep, and in the middle of one of those dreams, too. Let me explain what exactly goes on. Just a summary. You already know, there's wolves and the moon. It happens at night, obviously. And it's full moon. Lot's of howling and growling. Snarling, too. But it's weird because Wooyoung imagines, well, dreams of himself... transforming? Taking the form of a wolf. Not just any wolf, though. He's a massive one. I'm talking like two times the size of your average wolf. Maybe, just maybe, three or two and a half times that size. Not only that, though. He's huge, yes, but you do get huge wolves. His fur is pitch black. And on top of that, he has red eyes. Oh good, great! Absolutely f*****g marvelous. His teeth were like razor blades, too. That's not an exaggeration. I mean razor f*****g blades. Again, razor blades. One more time. Razor. Mother. f*****g. Blades. And you think it stops there? Ha, nope. His claws? His f*****g claws? Get caught by that and it's over, buddy. It doesn't stop there either. He has the strength of about 50 or even more full grown ass men. Again, that's not an exaggeration. He's scared of that version of him. I mean, his nightmare version. In this nightmare, he tears multiple people apart. And I mean he bloody shreds them. Then he wakes up and that's it. Weird, right? Well, what's even weirder is that his friends have started having almost the exact same dreams. Hongjoong, Yunho, Mingi, Jongho, San, Yeosang and Seonghwa. They all had the same appearance, as if they were their own pack of one type of wolf. It made literally no god damned sense. It was normal to have dreams or nightmares like that, but every f*****g night?? That's not normal. And it all surrounds that forest, too. Starts in that forest and ends in that forest.

They've all been weirdly drawn to that forest recently and it's starting to freak them out. They're trying to figure out if those dreams have any meaning and they've been researching it for a while, yet so far they've found close to nothing. All they've found so far was some articles on werewolves and mysterious maulings in the forest. One specialist said that, a regular wolf can't possibly do that to a person, despite what others think and how aggressive wolves are or can be. It wasn't normal. Especially the amount of new victims found every full moon. There is so far only one person known to survive an attack, but they couldn't describe what it looked like. Another article that they read on werewolves said that werewolves come in all different shapes and sizes. They can be really, really big or really really small. Their eye colours can range from gorgeous Hazel eyes, to beautiful red eyes. In a pack, there's a pretty simple ranking system. Alpha, Beta, Omega. Alphas are distinguished easily by their Red eyes. Betas and Omegas are recognised by their glowing Hazel eyes. Blue eyes indicate a werewolf that has murdered. Alphas can have blue eyes, too. Normally Alphas are stronger than their Betas or Omegas, but in some cases, Betas and Omegas can be stronger than their Alphas. Omegas are able to steal an Alpha's power, unless its a True Alpha. True Alphas are either born by the mating of 2 Alphas, or earn it.

Thats just about all the information they could find on werewolves, as nobody knows much about them. What scares the boys the most, is that they become murderous beasts in their dreams. They have no control over anything they do. And what's even weirder is how real it all seems. They can smell and taste their victim's blood, feel what's going on around them, etc. And somehow, some of the people they see in their dreams end up on the news either in a hospital bed and severely injured, or dead with grieving families.

They've been trying for months to understand how these dreams connect them to eachother, and why it all seems so real. These boys would never hurt anyone unless absolutely necessary. So this version of them makes them feel scared. Not of what they are, but rather what they do. And what's even more confusing is how it all goes back to the forest. Not only in their dreams, but in the real world, they seem to be attracted to that forest specifically. There are many forests in the area, but somehow this one just feels different. And so, they've been trying to figure out what this all means. Why they have the same dream every night, why it's all 8 of them having the same dream, why the people in their dreams end up on the news and in newspapers, why they all look the same and why the hell they're so drawn to that forest.

The forest itself is gorgeous. Huge, green-leafed trees, Green grass, gorgeous flowers and wildlife, A beautiful river. Nobody has ever seen anything as beautiful as that. And not onlt that, but the calming sound of birds chirping.l, the wind blowing the tree branches, making them move elegantly and softly. Its almost impossible for the boys to stay away from there. As for other people in the town, not so much. Apparently it's not every day that a group of teenagers show up and are immediately attracted to the forest that everyone so fears.

Hongjoong, being the leader of the group, advised the boys to stay away from the forest. But even he, himself, cant seem to stay away from there. And the most puzzling part is that, these vicious attacks only started when the boys moved into town. But somehow, despite the amount of blood in their nightmares, and despite their torn clothing, when they wake up, there's not a drop of blood on them. And their clothes would still be perfectly fine. Yet, the people in their dreams are people in the news the next day.

Hongjoong, Seonghwa, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung and Jongho are all seemingly regular highschool students, other than their dreams. They go about their day-to-day life doing what most teenagers do. They wake up, go to school, do schoolwork, get home, do homework, and other things depending on the day. What isnt normal is that they feel the absolute need to go back the the forest every day.

Their parents are worried about this, but try to brush it off. None of the boys have told their parents about their dreams. But Wooyoung was thinking about telling his father about it eventually. Maybe within this week. He has discussed it with his friends, and they all came to the decision thay they should tell their parents. The chances of their parents being able to help them understand this were very very low, but the chances of them ubderstanding any of this at all would be even lower if they dont tell their parents. They've discussed how they'd tell them. How it'll start, how to get further into the conversation and how to end it. Hopefully their parents would be understanding, and not scold them telling them it's nonsense and that they should just brush it off. Of course, if their parents do this, it will bring them right back to square one. And that frustrated Ateez.

It was frustrating to them that they couldnt seem to understand anything that was going on. It was frustrating to them that they had these horrifying dreams every night, from the moment they fall asleep to the moment they wake up. It scared them that the faces they saw in those dreams would be the same faces in the news the next day. But of all that, what they really wanted to know is how theyre all connected to eachother. Even the moment they met, they all immediately got along. Instant friends. And since then, nothing could keep them apart, no matter what.

They promised to always be there for eachother, care for eachother, protect eachother, love eachother, comfort eachother, and to always make up for any wrongdoings to eachother. You'd think, huh, that's impossible. Teenagers couldnt possibly do that. Well, to ateez its very possible. They do almost everything together. As a Team. They help eachother with tasks, they helo eachother through tough times, they even study together.

People have tried to break them apart during these few years theyve been friends, but have been unsuccessful in doing so. Their bond is so strong, nothing could ever break them apart. Hongjoong is like the father of the group, while Seonghwa acts like a mother to them. Every member is gentle and kind in their own way. Every member has their own personalities. Despite Yunho and Mingi being giants, theyre kind-hearted, caring and gentle. Wooyoung is very hyper and loud, San is very expressive in his movements and pretty hyper too, Yeosang is more quiet but very very funny, Jongho is the youngest and most protected in the group, as well as very polite and kind. Hongjoong is soft, kind-hearted and his group loves teasing him. Seonghwa is the eldest, and cares for the group as a mother would, and he loves cleaning, too. The friend group teases him too. They all have a way of teasing eachother that shows how much they care for eachother, and that pulls them closer together. And when one is down, everyone helps raise him up again. That's what makes their friendship so beautiful.