Na Jaemin: Occhiolism, Prologue
-; ༊*·˚
Na Jaemin was having a tranquil day.
He, Donghyuck, and Chenle, woke up at nine, grabbed breakfast, coffee, and hopped into Johnny’s black Acura for Elysium campus. Once there, Jaemin separated from the group to buy his second cup of coffee, then headed to maths.
Throughout the day, his professors had marginally interesting lectures. Some classes were only lecture-based, others more hands-on. But the sun was bright, the temperature a perfect degree, and he even spent some refreshing time alone eating lunch.
By the afternoon, Donghyuck shot him and Chenle a message, saying the pups were on cooking duty. Immediately he texted Jeno with mirth.
Jaemin: So. You guys are cooking tonight! Make us bulgogi (*^‿^*)
Jeno: We’ll try. No promises
Wishing his twin, Renjun, Jisung, and Aeja a good rest of the day, he cleaned up and headed towards forensics.
Enthusiastically he greeted his tablemates Sunwoo and Eric, then quickly caught up with them about their previous assignment.
“Did you finish the grid searching assignment?" Jaemin asked, settling beside Eric, who pointed towards their seatmate who rolled his eyes.
"This idiot forgot about it until I reminded him minutes ago," he sniggered.
"Shut up I was busy!" Sunwoo slapped the other's offending hand down.
Jaemin grinned and leaned towards him, arms crossed on the table. "Aren't you usually staying up all night playing PUBG? How's that being busy?"
Sunwoo huffed, indignant. "Excuse me. No. Not this time. My parents went out so I was stuck babysitting."
Eric laughed again, but Jaemin nodded, understanding where his classmate was coming from. "That would do it. When I was younger, my older brothers had to watch over me and the others when the adults were out."
"Thank you!" Sunwoo exclaimed, and focused on the teacher, who had begun setting up her papers and warming up the projector overhead.
"Brothers? Others?" Eric faced him. "Jaemin, how many siblings do you have?"
The pup backpedaled. "I uh, have a large family." Saved it.
A few minutes before class began, you walked in and greeted the professor with a polite bow, explaining you were a student from the waiting list. She instructed you see her after class and gestured to a table near the middle of the room. You followed her hand, only to falter when you neared the table.
Jaemin caught a whiff of chemicals and tensed. With caution, he turned around as you neared his table, and suppressed the desire to recoil as you sat across from him, completely unaware.
Well, that’s what everyone saw.
But to him, the smell of wolfsbane and silver belied your clueless demeanor.
Class began.
Thankfully, there was no lab that day. No need for interaction.
But Jaemin found it impossible to focus.
His eyes followed your every move: from the way you sat straight to the absentminded, yet expert twirling of your pen between your forefinger and thumb. Every little twitch kicked his fight or flight instincts in motion. To everyone else in the room, you weren’t a threat. Yet to him, it was the strange, grassy, citrus scent, mixed with the Mediterranean Sea, that confirmed your identity.
Jaemin knew that smell very well. He and Jeno memorized it, tucked it away in the deepest parts of their minds to the bottom of their hearts. Only a slayer’s blood smelled like that.
But there was something else.
Wafting out from below the sugary oxide silver, bitter wolfsbane, and the sea, was the faintest smell of sharp, fresh ozone. It looped around his senses and locked in his head; dread pooled in his gut.
Something flew towards you. Instinctively, your hand shot up and caught the thin object millimeters away from your temple.
It was a pen.
“Whoops! My hands are sweating, sorry.” The boy in front of you didn’t look apologetic at all.
And your blood had been simmering ever since you sat down. Sure this town was filled with supernatural creatures galore, but the content rolling off your classmate in waves kept you alert.
When class ended, Jaemin couldn’t move any faster and hurried out the door.
Routinely, he would wait for Donghyuck at the entrance doors of the Galaxias building, but now he rushed towards the parking lot, simultaneously limiting himself to a speedy walk, not wanting to appear rash. He hopped into the car and slammed the door shut so hard it rattled. His phone vibrated several times.
Donghyuck: Where are you~
Holy Goddess was that you?!
I know what the car door sounds like ~ Johnny will kill you if you ruin his baby :’(
Screw you ~ I’m coming your way ~ Running ~~~
Jaemin threw his phone down onto the passenger’s seat and set his forehead against the wheel. Out of everyone, Leto could have chosen . . . What did I do to deserve this?
He began to laugh. It sounded bitter.
A light knock against the window raised his head and he faced a worried-looking Chenle. Immediately his scowl softened and he unlocked the doors. “Sorry, Lele.”
The younger slid into the seat behind him and shut the door, much gentler this time. “Are you okay?” Chenle asked after a few moments of surveying the older. “Why do you smell like chemicals?” His nose wrinkled. “Something sweet too.”
Jaemin stared through the windshield, hands on the wheel, jaw clenched.
The passenger door next to him opened. Donghyuck sat down and faced his brother with a determined stare. He paused, sniffing the air. “Not to alert anyone but Nana smells like wolfsbane and silver.”
No response.
Chenle leaned against the back of Jaemin’s seat, chin resting on the leather shoulder. “Did you have a run-in with a hunter?” he asked hesitant-like.
Jaemin swallowed.
The car had never been more silent.
The vehicle was usually filled with laughter, mixed with sassy remarks and inside jokes about anything, or in today's case: could the other pups cook dinner, and if the house would be standing by the time they returned home.
Donghyuck, recognizing the seriousness of the situation bit the end of his silver tongue, and encouraged in a gentle tone, “What happened in Forensics?”
Jaemin sighed and reclined his forehead against the wheel again. “A slayer.”
“Was in class with you?” Chenle finished. “Why?”
“How would he know?” Donghyuck bantered.
“Maybe they’re the good kind?”
“How would he know that too?”
“I’m just trying to be optimistic, hyung.”
“Well we don’t know who they are —“
“She’s my . . . “ Jaemin’s throat tightened. “I . . .”
Donghyuck’s eyes bulged and Chenle let out a small gasp in shock. The two shared a concerned glance.
This was far from ideal.
Chenle inhaled slowly. “A-are we sure Leto didn’t make a mistake —“
“She never makes mistakes,” Jaemin interrupted, head still lowered, voice muffled.
Tentatively, Donghyuck raised the keys that had been thrown onto the dashboard and reached out to rub the sulking wer's nape. “Should I drive back home today?” Driving while emotional probably wasn’t the best idea.
With a defeated sigh, Jaemin nodded and began moving out of his seat. “Thank you.”
-; ༊*·˚
Jaemin didn’t say another word the entire drive home. He stared out the window but didn’t see anything. Chenle graciously offered up his lunch leftovers, but his voice went unheard.
Is this a sick joke?
Don’t you think it’s too cruel to decide my soulmate is the one, only one. Thing. In this entire universe, I hate the most?
I was open to anything, anything at all. Even a boy. You could have chosen anyone and it has to be someone I could potentially kill? Hate for the rest of my life? Did you not think this through? Did I offend you somehow?
When Donghyuck parked the car, Jaemin didn’t even realize they were home until his door opened. “Home’s still up and standing,” his packmate said, joking that the pup’s hadn’t burnt down the kitchen, but all he received was a half-hearted smile.
Jaemin entered the house, kicked his shoes off, and strode up the stairs, not caring whether the others could decipher his mood with their nose or their ears as he slammed his shared bedroom’s door shut.
Blindly throwing his bag across the room, he crashed onto his lower bunk with a growl.
A few minutes later, he heard a screech from downstairs, and telling by the weight of their footsteps, he braced himself.
“Jaemin-ah.” His twin’s voice was always so soothing. A form appeared next to him. This time when Jeno spoke, it came from beside his ear. “I understand.” He was leaning against the mattress, watching his brother anxiously.
And that was enough for now. Jeno would always understand him.
The upset wer rolled over and sat up, gripping the covers in fists, scrunching up the blankets, creating wrinkles in the fabric. He breathed in, and out, in and out, repeat. When he felt sane enough, he spoke.
“My life is a disaster . . . "
“Hm.”
“I mean what was she thinking?!” Jaemin exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “I can’t kill her, can’t fall in love with her, can’t go near her because with all that wolfsbane and silver, and she could slay me! Me, Jeno! I could die in my sleep!”
“Wouldn’t she feel any connection, like at all?”
“Why? She’s a slayer, she kills our kind.”
“But she’s half Athena.”
“So?”
“So,” Jeno pushed up from his elbows which he had originally been leaning on and sat on the mattress’ edge. “She’s half supernatural. She should feel something to keep from killing you.”
“But she’s a slayer,” Jaemin emphasized. “Connection or not, if she’s the bad kind, it doesn’t matter.”
Jeno went silent, only nodding in agreement. Then he stood up. “I’ll bring your dinner.”
Bless his soul.
Minutes later Jeno came back with a plate full of bulgogi, lettuce, tofu, and rice, and handed it over with chopsticks and a few napkins.
Jaemin hungrily wrapped the bulgogi in lettuce and eagerly filled his stomach. Jeno sat on the floor, back to the mattress. He was offered a few pieces of appreciated tofu.
Minutes passed in comfortable silence.
All they could hear was the rushing of the lake’s waterfall, night crickets, cicadas, hushed voices downstairs, and Jaemin’s chewing.
Suddenly, Jeno gasped and turned around, stopping his brother mid-chew. “Don’t you think it’s weird she’s here?”
Jaemin scoffed. “What do you mean?”
This time, Jeno climbed onto the bed and sat down side by side. “Nana, ever since our parents were killed, there haven’t been reports of slayers in two decades.”
“Go on.”
“Well, instead of a whole clan, why only one? Why is she alone? It’s suspicious, isn’t it?”
It was. Jaemin realized, very suspicious.
Slayers always traveled in numbers, as wolf packs did. They were never found alone.
“I say, with Hyung and Noona’s consent, you should investigate and report.” Jeno's gaze was stern.
Jaemin stared ahead. “I’ll contemplate it.” A smirk tugged at the edges of his mouth. “Good thinking there, Acorn.”
He received a mean kick to the shin.
-; ༊*·˚
Over the next two consecutive weeks, all the pups kept an eye out for the slayer.
Wherever they spotted you, they marked the date, time, and place in a shared document.
But Aeja went the extra mile.
She was their critical juncture.
On that next Friday, like before, Jaemin got up at nine, ate breakfast, and drove to campus.
He paid for another cup of coffee and went throughout his day focusing on his classes, and relaxed with a quiet lunch.
Time for forensics.
You stood before him, examining different blood splatters the class was handed for a lab. Today, the smell of wolfsbane and silver was faint.
Jaemin made sure to finish up his lab first and left early.
Bzz!
Jeno: Good luck tonight, Nana
Jaemin: Thank you (*≧ω≦*)
Instead of heading towards the parking lot, he boarded a public bus heading on a route towards the edges of Elysium.
He fidgeted the whole way there.
-; ༊*·˚
In a quiet neighborhood, there was a small flat.
Right next to it was a park.
Behind it was an unknown forest.
It was there, in the park, on an inconspicuous picnic table, Na Jaemin waited.
-; ༊*·˚
Apologies dear Stories, this chapter has been delayed for a week now because the ex I mentioned, yeah, it’s been 6 years and we’re back together. But he completely understands and supports my fanfics!
Anyway, here is the prologue to Occhiolism, enjoy 💗! – Rose