Chapter Text
Minho was annoyed. Annoyed (and bored) because it was 6am and his music show recording had just been delayed for another two hours because of technical difficulties. And annoyed because his fans didn’t even seem to be interested in his upcoming performance at all.
He was currently scrolling through his comeback hashtag on Twitter to see what fans had to say about the situation, but all they talked about were something called “fanfics”. There were countless posts with links that led to those “fanfics”, with hundreds of comments below talking about how this “fic” had broken their heart or was so fluffy or angsty or whatever. He groaned.
“What the fuck are fanfics?” He looked over at Hyunjin, his backup dancer and best friend who was sitting on a chair next to him.
Hyunjin raised his eyebrows. “Fanfics? Why are you asking?”
“My fans keep talking about it.” He shoved his phone screen under Hyunjin’s eyes.
Hyunjin looked hesitant. “Ummm… It’s probably better if you don’t know.”
“Oh, c’mooonnnn…”
Minho was not a patient person. Neither was he quiet or felt like he needed to try to behave like an adult just because he was one. And so he started whining loudly and stamping his feet against the floor like a stubborn toddler, not minding all the staff inside the room.
Hyunjin rolled his eyes and sighed. “Okay. But you’re gonna regret it.”
Minho quirked his eyebrow. It couldn’t be that bad.
“A fanfic is a story people write with characters that already exist. They might be fictional, say Harry Potter or something, but they can also be real people. In this case, your fans are probably writing fanfiction about you.”
“So my fans are writing stories about me?”
Hyunjin nodded.
Minho shrugged. “What’s so bad about that?”
“Uhm…”
“I should check it out.” Minho lifted his phone again.
“I would rather not do that”, a voice sounded behind him. His manager Felix leaned against the table next to Minho’s chair.
“Why?”, Minho asked.
“Fanfiction is not some fun stories where you’re the main character and go on adventures like a fantasy novel or something. At least not in the most part. It’s love stories. Either it’s an Artist x Reader love story, or it’s a ship fic.”
“And what’s a ship fic? I make love with a ship?”
Hyunjin snorted.
“They imagine you being in a relationship with someone else”, Felix explained. “Normally someone you’re friends with. I know a lot of people write stories about you and Jeongin falling in love.”
Minho pulled a face. Not Jeongin.
“And many of them might be cute and harmless. But there’s a lot of fanfiction out there that’s overly sexual and extremely kinky to a point where it’s almost disturbing”, Hyunjin added.
“You guys seem to know a lot about this fanfiction thing.” Minho squinted his eyes.
Felix shrugged. “Fanfiction is fun as long as you don’t know the people in real life. I used to read a lot of Drarry fanfics as a teenager.”
Minho was gonna ask what the hell a Drarry was, but he decided not to. He was more interested in whether his friends had ever read fanfiction about him. So he asked.
Hyunjin looked embarrassed. “I did, once. I wanted to know what kind of stuff people write about you and Jeongin. I shouldn’t have.” He looked disgusted even just thinking of it.
“Believe me, for your fans this might be fun, but you do not want to read any fics about you.” Felix sternly looked into his eyes.
Minho just shrugged and returned to his Twitter feed.
However, curiosity can kill a cat. And Minho was pretty sure that his spirit animal was a cat. So he soon couldn’t control his fingers anymore and went back to scrolling through the tab he’d been on before. He also tried searching for Lee Know fanfic, which made even more links plop up.
“What’s the difference between Wattpad and AO3?”, he asked after he had figured out that those seemed to be the two major platforms his fans published their works on.
Felix groaned. “I told you not to look at it.” He buried his face in his hands.
“AO3 is better”, Hyunjin commented from the other side.
“It’s a website”, he added when Minho kept looking at him questioningly.
That was enough for Minho. He opened his browser, started searching for AO3 and clicked on the first link, ignoring the way his friends were watching him with horror in their eyes.
What he was faced with was a messy main page. He clicked on the search bar on the top right to type his name in.
A bunch of works plopped up. Or more like 25,000, according to the little note at the top of the page.
He scrolled down. Figuring out what all the words meant was a hustle. There were four square signs on the upper left of each rectangle that probably linked to one work. Those signs had letters inside, like M, T, gender indicating signs that were mixed up for some reason, exclamation and question marks, checks and crossed out circles. Next to that was a red text that he assumed were the titles of the works, and a date, maybe the time the work was published.
Below that he found a bunch of random words, from Lee Minho | Lee Know over Lee Minho | Lee Know/Reader to Fluff or Smut. What was smut even supposed to mean? Was the story set in a dirty basement or what?
He tried to click on the word and was taken to a page full of works that mainly didn’t contain his name at all. Instead, reading through the page, they all seemed to be extremely sexual. Was that a story of Hermione and Dumbledore having sex? He quickly went back to the page he had been on before.
Below all the random word links, he finally found a description of the first story.
Your father sold you to Lee Minho, a rich business man, as a sex slave. At first, you are scared of him, but after a while you have to admit that you quite like it…
Help?
He only realized he had said that out loud when he noticed his two friends had turned their heads towards him.
“Told you”, Hyunjin said without trying to find out what had made his friend say this.
“Do people really have such a wrong impression of me?”, Minho asked irritatedly. Did his fans really think he would do something like that?
“Don’t worry, most of those stories are not meant to represent you as a person. It’s more like people write what they would like to experience – or, I don’t know, at least things they imagine for whatever reason”, Hyunjin calmed him down. “And since you can publish anything anonymously, people get very creative with their ideas. It doesn’t mean that they really think you are like that.”
That comforted Minho a bit. He continued scrolling. There must be something more interesting in here.
Apparently not. He scrolled through about five pages, and all he found was the weirdest versions of written porn with him as the main character and a few more harmless stories that seemed like cheesy romance novels. He also saw a few of those ship fics, as Felix had called them, about him and Jeongin. He didn’t dare to even look at the descriptions of those.
When he scrolled down page 6, something caught his eye. Catboy Minho. Cats sounded good.
Minho read through the description.
Y/n lives in an abandoned castle, together with the other cats of their family. But y/n has a secret that they can’t tell anyone. Until they meet Minho, a silver-grey cat that seems to be same as them.
That actually sounded interesting. If everyone in that story was a cat, that would be fun. Finally a fan who knew what he liked. He immediately clicked the link to the work.
He had to scroll down quite a bit to get to the beginning of the story. The author had written a long note at the beginning of the chapter. From skimming through he got that they were apparently very insecure about the story and thought that they were horrible at writing. Why did they even publish it then? Whatever.
He finally reached the headline that said Chapter 1 and started reading.
Chapter 1
Y/n greeted their sister with a little meow when they saw her enter the room. They made space at the food bowl so she could eat some of the food their owners prepared for them. Their owners…
Actually, none of the cats really knew who their owners were. They never seemed to be home, but somehow the food bowls were filled up every day anew, without any of them ever seeing who did it. It was weird but, to be honest, they didn’t really pay attention to it. As long as they were fed, they really didn’t care who their owners were.
Y/n’s cat family was big. It consisted of their parents, many aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins, nieces and nephews. There must be a few dozens of them. All of them had grown up here, in this huge castle, filled with expensive artworks and decorations but, most importantly, enough comfortable sofas and armchairs to lie on and large pieces of furniture to climb on. All doors also had cat flaps so they could leave whenever they wanted to, if they didn’t just make their way down through one of the big trees in front of the windows.
Minho had to admit that the story was really good. It was similar to the kinds of novels he liked reading. He was already curious about the owners of these cats. But there was one thing that bugged him.
“What is y/n supposed to mean?”, he asked Hyunjin. Felix had left to get a phone call. “What kind of name is that?”
“It stands for ‘your name’. You have to insert your own name into it.”
Hyunjin still looked judgmental, but had clearly already given up on talking Minho out of reading this stuff.
“If I insert my name, will I meet myself in the story then?” Minho chuckled amusedly.
Hyunjin rolled his eyes.
Minho continued reading.
The only place the cats couldn’t go to was the west wing of the castle. It was separated from the east wing with a doorless wall on each one of the three floors. The western entrance door outside had no cat flap, making it inaccessible for any cat. The garden surrounding that part of the building was filled with stones, many of them sharp enough to cut into tiny cat paws, so they had long stopped going there. It seemed like a place they were not allowed to go to.
Y/n left the room, striding to the little dressing room next door. This room was barely used by the other cats because it had no furniture apart from a tall mirror and a closet that was so high it reached the ceiling, making it impossible to climb up there.
The door also had no cat flap and was always closed. Still, y/n checked one more time if they were really alone. Then, they turned towards the mirror. Slowly, their body grew upwards, their hind legs got longer, their front paws turned into hands as the fur disappeared from their body, revealing almost hairless skin and purple clothing. A human figure was staring back at them through the mirror. It had nothing cat-like on it anymore.
Y/n breathed out in relief. They loved being a cat, but some part of them always longed to be in their human form when they were not. As if they were meant to be human.
Actually, y/n didn’t remember what was there first: Their human or their cat form. They only knew they had always been like this. As a little kitten they had changed into the form of a human toddler whenever they were alone. In their twenty years of life, their human form had changed from an infant to a child, a teenager and finally an adult.
Y/n was the only one in their whole family that was like this. When they were younger, they didn’t understand why they couldn’t transform in the presence of the other cats, but it prevented them from ever telling anyone about their secret. They had always wondered what was wrong with them, but there didn’t seem to be an answer. They just were like that and the others weren’t. And apparently no one was allowed to find out.
As soon as they were allowed to strive around on their own, they started regularly visiting the next village, turning up at playgrounds in their human form. That was how they learned to speak the human language and the basics of the human world. They also strove around a lot in their cat form, watching humans to learn more about them. As they got older, they dared to try out more things and started getting more used to the human life. They interacted with other humans, but never dared to make any friends. At some point people would always start asking questions they couldn’t answer.
Still, even though y/n loved the human world, they never really considered living as a human. First of all, they had no money or an education to make a living, and secondly they would miss their cat family too much. It was enough to go to the village from time to time and act like they were part of the society there.
Y/n walked to the closet, taking out a soft blue pullover and jeans. They got changed and then turned back into their cat form. They had found some money on the streets yesterday, and so they were going to finally eat out at that fancy Italian restaurant they kept walking past, admiring all the dishes the guests were eating.
As if nothing happened, they walked out of the door again. “I’m gonna go visit the village”, they said to their cousin as they walked past.
Excitedly, they made their way down the spiral staircase and through the hall towards the main entrance. When they were outside, they breathed in the fresh air. It was a bit cold, but it should be fine with the pullover.
The castle was separated from the village by a forest. Y/n walked through it as a cat. That was much more fun as they could climb over the trees and jump from one branch to another.
Only when they had almost arrived, they came back to the ground and transformed. They ran their hands over their hair a few times, trying to make it look less messy.
They looked around, feeling contented seeing all the people walk around them, busy with their own schedules. The village was small, but it was always buzzing with people. Y/n loved it.
The restaurant was on the other side of the village, and so they continued walking. Y/n didn’t mind walking long distances, though. It was so much fun to make their way through the small alleys, reading the advertising posters and watching what was happening around them. Some alleys were also just empty, with no people around. Y/n had to say they probably liked those the most.
As they were walking through one of those alleys, they spotted a cat comfortably lying on the ground. It usually felt weird to act like humans normally did around cats, but this one just seemed so cute. It had a fluffy, silvery grey fur and light blue eyes, staring at y/n in an almost human way. It even seemed like it was smirking. Y/n immediately felt torn towards it.
They bent down and reached out their hand to pet the cat. But before they could do so, suddenly the cat’s figure started changing its form. Y/n watched in shock as the cute animal turned into a just as cute silver-haired young man in a worn-out black pullover and jeans.
Minho chuckled. In fact, he had actually worn an old black pullover and jeans when he came here.
The boy, however, seemed even more shocked. He looked around in panic.
Y/n quickly raised their hands, trying to explain to the boy that they were the same as him. But before they could open their mouth, they heard steps entering the alley. They almost jumped in fear, and immediately turned into their cat form, hissing at the stranger out of reflex.
The man retreated, confused by the sudden attack. Now that he was gone, y/n could have facepalmed had they not been in their cat form right now. There was no actual reason to be scared of a stranger entering the alley at that moment. From the outside they would have just looked like two normal humans.
At least now the boy had seen them turn into a cat. Now he knew that there was nothing to be afraid of. They turned around to face him, but the boy was not there anymore. He must have escaped when y/n had been distracted.
They huffed frustratedly. This might have been their only chance to ever talk to someone that was like them. Maybe he knew why they were like this. They needed to find him!
Y/n started running in the direction where the boy had disappeared. But there were way too many alleys, and no matter which one they entered, they couldn’t find a single trace of the boy. Following the scent didn’t work either as their sense of smell always took some time to develop from a human’s back into a cat’s one.
In the end, they had to give up. Instead, they returned home, already having forgotten about the Italian restaurant. They would come back another day and search for the boy.
The whole time on their way home, and even at night when they lay on their usual spot on the armchair in the living room to sleep, they couldn’t stop thinking about the boy. In their whole life, they had never met another cat that could turn into a human. Yet this boy even turned up in the same village as them. How had they not met him sooner? Was there some kind of connection between them?
The boy had also looked so beautiful, almost ethereal. They had found humans pretty before, but this one was just on another level. They couldn’t get him out of their head.
This story was so good! Minho barely even took note of the fact that the boy in it was supposed to be him. He was way too engaged in the plot.
Okay, that ending was a bit unnecessary. Why would the main character just randomly fall in love with someone they met for two minutes? It made no sense.
He needed to find out how it continued, though. He had to know why those two could turn into humans. Frantically, he started looking for the button to the next chapter within the bunch of grey buttons at the bottom of the page.
Why the fuck was there a button called Kudos? He decided to click on it. Nothing happened.
Finally, he saw the grey field that said Next chapter and tapped it.
“Minho, we’ll start the camera rehearsal in fifteen minutes. Please get your makeup touched up”, Felix interrupted him before he could even look at the next chapter.
Minho groaned. He would have to keep this for later.
He locked his phone and put it in his bag, getting up to follow Felix’ instructions.