Haechan in Every NCT U Era
Countdown to Haechan's Birthday: D-3
SM Rookies ✦ NCT 2018 Empathy ✦ Coming Home ✦ NCT 2020 Resonance Pt. 1 ✦ From Home ✦ NCT 2020 Resonance Pt. 2 ✦ 90's Love ✦ NCT 2021 Universe ✦ Universe (Let's Play Ball) ✦ NCT 2023 Golden Age ✦ NYCT
There is a world that runs alongside ours. Lives as full, as vibrant, as depressing and chaotic. A world with its own set of rules and regulations, with its own needs and desires. It hums and buzzes, a hive swarming just under the surface of our own threatening to spill over into the daylight should the carefully constructed, thin barrier separating them show even the minutest of tears.
You walk through neighbourhoods and city streets, content in your understanding of reality and the world that surrounds you. Going to work, going home, going out. Weaving through life as a single thread in a much bigger tapestry; millions of other threads of people that weave around you and create your world, your city. A tapestry that could unravel, expand, rip apart at the seams if you deviate.
If, perhaps, you stumbled upon the wrong nightclub one day and found yourself amidst people that populate a different reality–strangers with glowing eyes and sharp teeth–that perception of your world would have to shift to accommodate them. Maybe you’ve already found yourself among them. Maybe they work with you, maybe they deliver your mail. Or maybe they just slip sight unseen through the cracks of your life. Either way, through some subconscious effort towards self-preservation, you’ve avoided the full realisation of who (and what) they were.
But what if that all changed? Would you embrace your new reality? Or would you cower in the face of the unknown.
Enter the Nightworld. Thirteen stories of the known and unknown, the mysterious and the apparent. Urban fantasy running the gambit of moods and genres. Choose one, or choose them all, but I hope you enjoy your journey either way.
☾ Shadowboxer ; Choi Seungcheol
urban fantasy au / boxer au / childhood friends to lovers
Once on his way to an illustrious boxing career before injury soured his life path, Seungcheol sacrifices his soul for a second chance at glory. But the Devil deals in shady business, and now he’s contracted to a life of underground boxing between the boundaries of reality and the shadow realm, trying to win his way back into his life.
You meet him one night when your friend brings you out to a match in the basement of a dingy bar at the edge of the city. Something about his technique and demeanour remind you of someone from your boxing club back home. Someone who you had always hoped to see make it big.
☾ The Devil and I ; Yoon Jeonghan
urban fantasy au / devil au / opposites attract
You've been working as the liason from the Dayworld to the Nightworld for going on 6 months now, mostly dealing with low level employees and the Devil’s stoic lawyer Wonwoo, but one major incident involving a breach in the barrier between the two worlds implores you to finally meet the Devil in the flesh.
Handsome and intelligent, but most of all sly, he is nothing like what you had been expecting. A test of wits presents itself to you upon entering his office and after bumbling your way through it unprepared, you have to try and put your simmering animosity towards the man to the side and find a way to work with the Prince of Darkness to fix this mess before two worlds collide into one and the balance of nature is undone.
☾ There Will Be Blood; Joshua Hong
urban fantasy au / vampire x vampire hunter au / enemies to lovers
Another night, another new target. The only difference being that tonight you’re having to deal with a new recruit. Which means questions. And mistakes. Mistakes that might get you killed; or worse, turned into the very creature you've spent your entire adult life hunting down.
When a mistake does happen, and you get severely injured during the hunt, you find yourself a ward of the vampire you had been targeting. Presumed dead by the rest of your group, you wait on tenterhooks for the inevitable end. Will this encounter reinforce the hatred you've built against vampires or force you to re-evaluate beliefs you've held close your whole life?
☾ Death and All Of His Friends; Wen Junhui
urban fantasy au/ grim reaper au / mystery
So you’ve died. So now what? Scenes of your life flashing before your eyes? A tunnel of with a white light at the end that you float idly towards, calm in the acceptance of the inevitable end? Maybe golden sparking pearly gates in a landscape of white cloud...
None of that, actually. Instead, you’re sitting in your caseworkers office, all too similar to a cubicle you worked in during life, and wait for your assigned death worker to help you come to terms with what happened and usher you out of limbo. The only problem is, neither of you can really figure out why you haven’t already been shuffled along to the next life yet and this process is going to take a lot longer than either of you ever bargained for.
☾ Creature Comfort; Kwon Soonyoung
urban fantasy au / witch au / friends to lovers
You're closing up shop for the night, setting aside your spells, potions, and tarot cards to head to bed when a small, oddly coloured hamster squeaks his way through the front door. You try to let him know you're closing but he seems intent on sticking around, almost like he has something to tell you. Still, you manage to shoo him out and close up only to wake up the next evening to news that a friend of yours, a rather chaotic witch named Soonyoung, has gone missing without a trace.
The news unsettles you and the night starts off slowly until a familiar squeaking interrupts your thinking and you look down to see the same hamster nudging the tip of your boot. This time you decide to take him a little more seriously and see what message he has to convey to you. Maybe it has something to do with Soonyoung’s disappearance.
☾ The Devil's Advocate; Jeon Wonwoo
urban fantasy au / lawyer au / strangers to lovers
You enter the office one day on a mission. Your parents had contracted your soul to the devil when you were an infant to help their struggling family survive and now that you’re a year away from the age outlined in the contract, you are doing everything in your power to avoid paying your parent’s dues and becoming an underling for the rest of your life.
Wonwoo has seen every possible petition that people have against his boss‒all except one. He thought the idea of parent's selling their first born to the Devil was the stuff of fairytales but here you sit in his office, outlining your side of the situation and he cant help but feel a little moved on your behalf. he’s not sure he can really do anything to help you, not since he is technically working for the man you owe your life to, but he’s willing to bet he can find a loophole somewhere.
☾ Ghost Notes; Lee Jihoon
urban fantasy au / phantom au
After decades of bad luck, businesses going bust, rumours of hauntings, and sitting empty for the past 18 months, the old opera house in the city's old quarter is set to be demolished. You hear about it through your grapevine network of urban explorer hobbyists and realise this is your last possible opportunity to revisit a relic of the old city.
At best you had expected old instruments, glassware, some interesting artefacts when entering. Something to post in your Discord chat for explorers across the globe. At worst, just some dust and cobwebs inside of an otherwise empty building. The last thing you had expected was a labyrinthine basement suite housing a fully functioning music studio, apartment, and the strangest man you’ve ever met. And yet here you were, face to face with a phantom of the past.
☾ Reality Bites; Lee Seokmin
urban fantasy au / vampire au
Okay, so you messed up? So you maybe felt sort of kind of bad for the poor schmuck who ended up on the other end of your fangs and didn't fully drain him of his blood. You felt an ounce of pity and now you’re left with a newborn vampire to take care of and introduce to the Nightworld.
But does he have to be so goddamn nice about the whole thing?
☾ The Wolfman; Kim Mingyu
urban fantasy au / werewolf au / exes to lovers
You live a pretty average life. Work from home, partly some freelance coding, partly chipping away at your pottery business. You have a dog, an emotionally dependant German Shepard named Garth, and you have your small home with an equally as small yard. Your own little slice of heaven that you scrimped and saved for for years.
At least it was average, until the man you dated for 3 years, who all but ghosted you at the end, shows up completely butt ass naked in your backyard one morning. His body is bruised and broken and now you have to re-evaluate your entire concept of reality with the information he is giving you as he begs for a place to lay low for a while.
☾ The Crow Prince; Xu Minghao
urban fantasy au / assassin au / shapeshifter au / childhood friends au
No one told you that when your estranged grandmother died, leaving you as her only surviving heir, you would be inheriting a lot more than just money. For one, a strange 3-story brownstone sandwiched between two massive skyscrapers, all of her worldly possessions (and there are a lot), and last but not least, a contract on her life. A debt now to be paid with your own.
The Crows are methodical in their work, they never leave a contract unfulfilled, and Minghao is very good at his job. Now that the contract has landed on his desk, you’re going to have a lot more to deal with than just a house full of dust and books. For one, there’s this huge crow that keeps staring in through the kitchen window while you cook…
☾ Siren Song; Boo Seungkwan
urban fantasy au / siren au / strangers to lovers
It’s Friday, the night is still young, and yet you are spending it waiting in line at the DMV (Department of Magical Vocations) to get your herbalist license renewed. Boring. Or at least it was until the clerk at the counter starting sassing a death worker for not having his identification in order and now all of a sudden you’re having to remember where you recognize him from.
An achingly familiar face. You turn him over and over in your mind—eye rolls and all—as you head home. You continue rotating him like a rotisserie chicken while you open and close shop. And fold and unfold him like a secret message as you wake up, change clothes, and head into the Dayworld to indulge in an exceptionally guilty pleasure—human musical theatre. Except you’re not alone this time, and you’ve finally solved the riddle occupying your mind. The opening song begins and a voice enchants the audience in a way that’s almost supernatural.
☾ The Midnight Corner Store; Vernon Choi
urban fantasy au / convenience store au / exes au
You know you shouldn’t be out this late, the city gets weird at night, but you had a hankering for Cool Ranch Doritos that just would not quit. So now you stand, face to face with the past you tried to forget, as he yawns behind the cash register sporting an electric green vest.
The reunion is as awkward as imagined when you finally approach the counter, and you cannot leave soon enough. The store itself, on the other hand, has different ideas. You step through the door only to find yourself immediately back inside the store. Vernon stares at you agape and you try and try again to no avail until you hear a strange rustling down the chip aisle and now have to confront more aspects of your past than you had bargained for.
☾ Ghost Encounters; Lee Chan
urban fantasy au / paranormal investigator au / demon au
In a bid to impress the sceptical head of the paranormal investigation team he has joined, Dino ventures out with a few supplies scavenged from the equipment room and a desire to find any proof he possibly can.
You've been more than content to just exist in the shadow region between the real and the corporeal. Moonlit walks through the woods or the nearby cemetery, spending time combing through the libraries of the undead housed in the mausoleum of a former oil baron, the occasional tea or coffee at the only demon-friendly cafe left on this end of the city. All in all, keeping to yourself.
But now that some young, stubborn human obsessed with the paranormal has unwittingly bonded his soul to your own, will you ever really get to enjoy any of that rest? Not until you can figure out how to sever the connection.
† all aus, genres, warnings, etc subject to change with each individual release. stories may contain suggestive material.