He ran, waiting for the rest of the pack to catch up to him. That was the last thing he wanted, but the inevitable was what it was. He had no hope. He’d watched them tear Dahee-nim to shreds. He’d heard her last cries. They were going to catch up to him, eventually, he knew it. But for now, he’d run as fast as his four legs could take him, hopping over benches and avoiding the humans by skulking around alleys and sleeping in abandoned warehouses.
It took Tae around 3 months to raise the money to fund his crazy idea. He knew the pack was coming after him. They had once before, now twice. Third time’s the charm, right? He didn’t want there to be a third time. So he had to leave. The only option he could come up with was fleeing the country. Claim refugee status, maybe. But Korea isn’t a war-torn state, so refugee status was unlikely. Tae would be lucky if he could get a work visa, but his initial reason was “visiting relatives.” He had no one.
The plane ride was terrible. He had to maintain form while anxious as shit, thousands of miles in the air when he was not built for that. Wolves are land dwellers, cave dwellers in most instances. Being in the air was wrong, in the same way it was wrong to say the sky wasn’t blue. But he held, doing his best to remain calm. The meditation exercises he’d learned from Dahee-nim escaped him.
The lay over in London was nice, Tae thought. He’d never been out of Seoul before, and even though London was a still a big city, it was a different city. He couldn’t read anything, or understand anyone, but everything looked magical. He picked up an English for Dummies book in some gift shop, flipping through it as if he could understand the western alphabet. He’d take lessons in New York, his official destination. Tae wasn’t sure what to do during his wait, but he fiddled with his phone and his drawing tablet, sketching the sky from the plane window. When a woman commented on it, he just blinked at her until she gave him a thumbs up. For the first time in a while, Tae felt warm.
The plane ride from London to New York wasn’t near as bad as the first. He had more leg room, being on the emergency exit aisle. He’d tried to tell the flight attendant, who was speaking in English, that he couldn’t help anyone because he couldn’t understand what she was telling him, but he figured there wouldn’t be the need anyway. He could always use the pictogram and what little common sense he has to help. He slept for a little bit, which was nice and much needed, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling of being followed. He’d resigned himself to not staying in New York long, based on whether or not the creeping feeling along his spine ever went away. He wasn’t sure it would.
New York was certainly a “concrete jungle.” That was one of the first phrases someone taught him once he landed, welcoming him to the city. Concrete jungle. Everything was concrete, and it was all confusing. He found what they called “K-Town,” having googled it before leaving Korea. An area with an abundance of Korean people was just what he needed; maybe he could find someone he could talk to. Find a language school that offered Korean to English services. It didn’t take him long.
His adventures in K-Town were varied and wonderful. His journey learning English was a hard one, but he had Mrs. Kim from the restaurant to help, and Mr. Park from the grocery store was practically a Korean to English dictionary. Tae had the forethought not to tell Mr. Park when he was wrong. He’d seen him go off on someone else for just that, and Tae didn’t want to make enemies.
Eventually, his English was proficient enough that he could hold conversations with strangers and customers alike. He could read the subway map with only difficulty keeping the lines right. He learned to avoid Times Square like the plague, and that cities are less overwhelming when you know what’s going on around you. Unfortunately, this also meant it was time for him to leave. He didn’t want to.
Saying goodbye to those who had supported him when he first showed up on their doorstep was hard. He was nothing but a skinny, half-starved werewolf kid who was scared of his own shadow. Barely even an adult, if he even was. He had no papers when he came into the country; all his documents were forged but passed TSA so he wasn’t going to own up to that. They took him in with no questions asked, offering their houses and their food to him, but he couldn’t take it. Not for long. If the pack came after him, and they found out he was close to another… he couldn’t have a repeat of what happened to Dahee-nim. It was best to cut ties when they were still relatively fresh.
He went next to Boston, which felt a lot like New York but entirely different at the same time. There were less opportunities for him there, so he didn’t stay for long. Seafood had never appealed to him, even in Korea. He missed kimchi, made the real way, with proper rice and other side dishes. Korean American food didn’t compare.
After Boston, Tae kept making his way down the coast, to every major city he could find on the map. He’d stay for a few weeks, sometimes months, especially in the winters. He held a lot of odd jobs, from restaurant work (what he knew he could always do; especially in a tourist town) to working with a tattoo artist, who taught him a few things. Art had always been a forbidden pleasure when Dahee-nim called the shots, saying it was a distraction. It had been long enough, and her influence shouldn’t continue to rule his life. He had to learn how to be his own person.
From the time he was in Orlando, he was tattooing on a regular basis. He’d managed to get a good rep from some of his teachers, and he started following other artists around the country. It was better than picking cities at random. He would connect with them somehow, usually by the cellphone Tae was reluctant to have, and they would plan something when Tae was in town. Sometimes he could get studio space for free, or he’d take some lessons from the greats. It was in the tattoo world that he rediscovered the supernatural world to which he really belongs. Apparently, the supernatural like tattoos even more than the humans do.
Traveling eventually took its toll on Tae, and he began to wilt. His art lacked color and passion, and his will to live slowly left him. The longer Dahee-nim had been dead, the harder it was for Tae to appreciate what was around him. He felt he was cheating her, and her rules. Surely, she would find him, somehow from the beyond, and would punish him for breaking every rule in the book. His anxiety started affecting his daily life, and he never felt safe. There was no safety.
This is when an intervention was staged. He was in Denver, settling in for a winter’s stay when one of the werewolves that he’d met at the studio pulled him aside. Tae thought he was in trouble, and braced for the worst. Not many of the wolves he had met were overly violent, but packless wolves were more so than those who belonged somewhere. Tae tried to be the exception, but instead had regularly taken his frustrations out on himself. No one needed to know that.
Luckily for Tae, he wasn’t in trouble. Instead, Malcom told him of a place, a pack. On a ranch, in the mountains. Somewhere that would offer him protection and would maybe give him peace of mind at the very least. Malcolm knew that Tae had never belonged to a pack, and told him it’d be good for him. Apparently, he knew the alpha of this pack well, and knew that she would be good to Tae.
So off he went, packing up his few belongings. His tattoo gun and some non-disposable supplies, his few changes of clothes, and his drawing tablet and his phone.
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