Chapter Text
The manager seated on Johnny’s left is younger than he is, his excitement written plainly on his face. His grin gets harder to see as the lights dim around them. Johnny’s glass is cold in his hand, his fingers curled tight around it. He takes another sip, then raises his eyebrows and flashes a smile when the manager nudges him. “This’ll be good,” the manager says under his breath, leaning forward in his seat. His knee is bouncing up and down. “I had to kiss Mr. Shin’s ass for months to get this invite, that’s how fucking good it’s supposed to be.”
“Yeah?” Johnny responds, but the manager isn’t listening to him anymore, with good reason.
The small room is now fully dark, save for the single spotlight that cuts a circle of low blue light on the back wall of the stage. The rest of the audience is silent, the low murmurs and clinking of glass fading away as the music starts to swell, slowly, quiet at first, then louder, with a bass line so deep it makes Johnny’s chest pound. He sets his drink down and grips his knee instead.
The hybrid on stage is turned away from the audience, his head tilted just enough towards his bare shoulder that the slope of his nose and curl of his lips are visible. His eyes are closed. The rest of the room seems to be holding its breath at the same time, waiting for him to move.
The hybrid’s eyes flutter open as he turns to look over his shoulder at the audience with wide, glitter-rimmed eyes.
Johnny already feels drunk just from the single glass of whiskey he’s been nursing since they got here. The room seems to spin at the same time the hybrid does, revealing a bare chest framed by the sheer robe he holds around himself.
The black-tipped fur of his bottlebrush tail ripples in the iridescent light. He smiles. And then the cat starts to dance.
Johnny watches the show in a daze, the strobe of lights on skin and fur and fabric leaving white-hot imprints behind his eyelids when he dares to blink. The cat’s movements are beautiful, fluid and feline. His face flashes between a smile – coy and sharp – and something more focused, serious.
Another hybrid joins the first, dancing with him as their tails entwine, bodies pressed close. Johnny aches deep inside, a phantom pain. The hybrids’ robes unknot, fluttering to the stage in a pool of dark, unneeded fabric.
The second hybrid leaves, and then it’s just the first, his spine and neck arching impossibly backwards as he strokes his own tail from base to tip. Someone behind Johnny whistles, and the cat is smiling upside down, his sharp canines and silver earrings flashing white in the starry spotlight. His chest rises and falls, glittery with sweat.
Their eyes meet – the cat’s, long-lashed and spangled, and Johnny’s, wide in the darkness – before the cat rests his palms on the floor, launches himself backwards into a graceful handstand, and wraps his ankles and tail around twin strips of silk hanging from the ceiling.
He dances in the air, winding himself into elaborate, suspended knots of silk before spinning out in controlled recklessness, toes arched and head thrown back as though he’s in the grip of pleasure.
Even seated, Johnny feels clumsy in comparison, his fingers rubber and his limbs leaden. The cat is alien in his grace, so far from anything Johnny knows about himself.
Before the hybrid can finish his performance, Johnny gets out of his chair and slips away, only half-aware of his surroundings as he skirts the tables. The hybrid leaning by the door raises an eyebrow, but lets him out of the room.
When Johnny casts his gaze back to the stage right before the door closes behind him, he sees the hybrid sinking into a suspended split, stretched taut between the ribbons as the audience erupts for him.
◈
In the bathroom, Johnny rests his hands on the sink to catch his breath. He mops the sweat on his nape with a damp towel, then dabs himself with more of the cologne he’d brought in his suit pocket. The scent of it clogs his nostrils, worsening his urge to vomit.
In the mirror, his reflection is pale. He reflexively combs his hair with his fingers, patting it down over where he wants it and wetting his fingers to lay it flat. The small baggie in his wallet seems to burn against his thigh. He hesitates a moment, then pulls it out and swallows one of the pills dry, even though he’s already had one this morning.
◈
The private room they’re seated in after the show is small but richly furnished, with wide leather couches and gilded mirrors. Johnny doesn’t taste much of the food that’s brought out, nodding politely as a slender cat hybrid fills his empty glass with more wine.
The group talks business. Shin, their department head, tells them about the overseas client he’d brought here last month, who came skeptical and left with scratches all down his back.
This time, luckily, Shin doesn’t seem to have reserved more for them other than the private room. The slender hybrid working their room keeps her distance by the door, shimmering in a beaded dress, her ears perking up whenever one of the dozen or so managers raises a glass in her direction. Occasionally another hybrid will open the door and murmur something to her, letting in the sound of music from the hallway.
When she slinks over to clear an empty hors d'oeuvres tray, Johnny tries to keep his attention trained on Shin’s story. But he can’t help himself from glancing up as she leans over the low table. Her platinum blonde hair is done up in a set of pigtails that frame her white ears. From this close, Johnny can see that one of them is branded.
As she straightens up, her eyes lock on his. Her nose twitches.
Johnny looks away immediately. He sits back against the couch, spreading his legs and slinging his arm around the managing partner next to him. He squeezes the partner’s shoulder to pin himself to their conversation, but his pulse is racing so hard he’s sure the partner can feel it through his suit. His fingers twitch towards his pocket.
Johnny inhales through his teeth. He forces himself, vertebrae by vertebrae, to lean forward, deeper into the cloud of smoke. The beaded dress twinkles in his periphery. He reaches for the cigarette offered to him by one of the junior partners, murmuring a thanks that no one hears over the sudden sound of glass shattering. Johnny looks down to see a dark stain spreading through the carpet towards him.
The hybrid girl sinks to her knees, apologizing profusely as she scrambles to pick up the broken tumbler. Some of the partners laugh, a few lean down to help her, and Johnny sits frozen. The larger shard of the tumbler had fallen right next to his foot. The hybrid crawls towards him, reaching for the glass with her bare hand. Her face is barely an inch from his knee, and she glances up at him so quickly that if Johnny had blinked at the wrong moment he would have missed it. But he doesn’t, and he sees – once again, unmistakeably – her nostrils flaring.
Johnny is shaking. “Careful,” he says, with a voice that barely sounds like his own, and pulls a cocktail napkin from the table to grab the glass before she can cut herself. She takes it from him, setting the shard on her tray before dabbing the stained carpet and quickly standing up. She backs away from the table with a deep, apologetic bow. The conversation flares up again, and the hybrid disappears through the door without another look back.
◈
Another course of food is brought out for them, as is a special reserve bottle of twenty year old cognac. Johnny sips his as slowly as he possibly can, though the heat of it still sears his throat.
“I do not want to know where in the budget Shin got the money for all this,” mutters Jung Jaehyun, the junior partner who’d offered him a cigarette (still unlit between Johnny’s fingers). Jaehyun’s face is splotchy red, his tie loosened around the neck. “But please slap me if I start complaining.”
“Oh, I will,” Johnny says. “And I do know where the money’s from. You’re right, you really don’t want to know.”
“Fair enough,” Jaehyun says, a dimple appearing in his cheek. “This is your first time here too, right?”
“Yeah,” Johnny says.
“I’m surprised they never invited you before,” Jaehyun says, a frown warping his dimple. “Aren’t you tight with Shin’s circle?”
Johnny shrugs.
His boss has, in fact, invited him to Nightwalker. Johnny has always managed to snake his way out of it – usually, under cover of a date night with Irene (she’s an angel for letting him use her name). The managers believing that Johnny was wrapped tight around the finger of a girlfriend never stopped them from continuing to invite him to the hybrid club. It was the opposite, actually. But the pressure kept building, Shin’s smile got tighter, and the fragile bottom of Johnny’s life started to look unstable again, so he said yes.
Jaehyun leans closer to him. “That show earlier was nice, but I kinda wanted to see something weird. You know what I mean?”
“More feet?”
“No, man. I mean yeah, the cats are sexy as hell, but I’ve heard about some other … things.” He drops his voice so only Johnny can hear it. “If you pay the club enough – I’m talking billionaire money, VIPs only – they’ll bring out, like, amphibians. Birds. The rare shit.”
Johnny raises his eyebrows. “They’ve got Frankenstein in the basement too?”
“I know what I heard. They’re not just good for dancing, either.”
“Yeah, that’s what they say about the cats. Kind of an open secret.”
Jaehyun shakes his head, his eyes glazed and intense. Not for the first time that night, Johnny wishes he were anywhere else. “More than that.”
He can tell Jaehyun wants him to keep asking. But then Jaehyun’s eyes slide past Johnny’s face to a spot behind him, a look of awe spreading across his face. Johnny turns around to follow his gaze.
Through the doorway walks the hybrid from the stage. He stops for a moment to nuzzle the pigtailed girl with his cheek, then turns his spotlight smile on the room.
His robe has been replaced by a gauzy black top, fastened around the neck with a bow. His heeled boots ring sharp as he walks over. The sound softens as he steps onto the carpet to perch himself on the armrest of the far end of the couch, directly next to Shin.
He greets Shin with a kiss on the cheek, tail flicking as he leans in close for Shin to whisper in his ear. They’re acquainted, clearly. The department head must be more of a regular than Johnny had thought.
Shin’s eyes are fixed on the cat’s face, a grin dangling from his face like an old shirt on a hanger. “This beauty,” he says, raising his glass loosely in the hybrid’s direction, “is Ten.”
A smile twitches on Ten’s lips. “What a warm welcome.” He reaches down to take the glass from Shin (it was clearly not being offered to him, but Shin looks nothing short of delighted) and takes a sip. A pink tongue darts out from between his lips. “I hope you’ve all been just as friendly to Winter. She’s still new.”
The white-furred hybrid by the door — Winter — stares at the group. Johnny quickly avoids her eyes.
After placing the glass back in the hand of his thrall, Ten slides onto the couch snugly between Shin and the junior department head, making himself comfortable as they wrap him up in a conversation that Johnny can’t hear over the music.
“Are you smoking that or not?”
“Huh?” Johnny blinks, then looks blankly at Jaehyun.
Jaehyun nods at the unlit cigarette in Johnny’s hand.
“Oh. No. Take it.”
Jaehyun starts talking to the intern next to them, and Johnny forces himself to nod along and act interested. He’s long since mastered the art of resetting the emotions on his face so that he doesn’t need a mirror to know how he looks — genial, yet above-it-all in a way that makes those around him smile for his approval, part of the group but not reliant on them.
Still, with Ten so close, and Winter’s stare burning a hole in his cheek, Johnny’s heart beats so hard he can feel it in his fingertips. His undershirt is damp with sweat.
Ten soon stands up and heads to the other set of couches, making his rounds of the men. He leans down to wrap his arm around a meaty shoulder, then flits over to another, directing the flashlight beam of his attention on an expectant, languidly smiling face.
Soon, Jaehyun starts to rope Johnny into another hush-hush conversation, this time about mistake hybrids with butterfly wings sprouting from their cheeks. Jaehyun seems more than delighted to share this rumor with the horrified intern beside them. Johnny nods along, but his eyes follow the trail of Ten’s curved spine. His glossy tail curls up behind him, stirring the fabric of his shirt.
Finally, Ten sets his sights on their corner of the room. By that point, Johnny has let enough whiskey be tipped down his throat, almost beyond his threshold for self-control. His memory of Ten approaching his couch is hazy, almost like he was over there one moment and then here – right in front of him – the next.
Ten leans down towards the table closest to Johnny, plucking a flower-shaped slice of cucumber from the platter of fruits and vegetables on the low table. He moves like liquid. The cucumber splits between his teeth.
Ten looks directly at Johnny. Watching him, curiously, like he’s a feather at the end of a string.
“You walked out of my show,” Ten says. Musing, thinking. He speaks softly, but still loud enough for Johnny and those nearby to catch his words through the raucous conversation of the room.
Johnny opens his mouth, though the silence is filled with laughter from the managers. His tongue is dry, rough in his mouth.
“I did,” Johnny returns, seeing no way to argue.
“Maybe you don’t like cats,” Ten says, and now Johnny gets the sense that he’s being teased, though the hint of curiosity hums just beneath the surface of his voice. “Maybe you prefer dogs. Or kittens. We have other types, you know.”
While most of the group are busy with their own conversations, Johnny is hyper-aware of the few around him, watching them. He thinks of what Shin would say in his place.
“Compared to you?” Johnny says, forcing his words out slow and lazy, an easy drawl. “I’d be disappointed with anyone else.”
Ten raises an eyebrow, though he looks satisfied with Johnny’s answer. His eyes rake over Johnny’s face.
“You should come back soon, handsome,” he says sweetly. “Make it up to me for missing the end of my performance.” Johnny doesn’t respond this time, instead using everything in his power to keep the same pleasant expression frozen on his face.
As Ten starts to stand up, his torso already angled towards his next target, he frowns. His gaze slides back to Johnny, his frown deepening, eyes searching, and he parts his lips like he’s about to say more. But before he can, his ears prick up as a throaty laugh catches his attention: a rowdy manager on a nearby couch is trying to convince Winter to take a seat on his generous lap. Ten smiles at Johnny – his frown is gone, Johnny almost convinces himself it was never there – before materializing next to the offender and very diplomatically extricating Winter’s wrist from his hand, sending her out of the room for more drinks.
Johnny is still counting his heartbeats in his mouth when Ten says his final goodbyes to the room. Ten stops by Shin for another peck on the shadowed cheek, and then he is gone without another look at Johnny.
The night is even hazier after that. Johnny remembers taking off his jacket, his skin burning with heat. He remembers twin hybrid boys carrying sparkling trays of champagne into the room. They performed some kind of trick together, something with their tongues, but the details are blurry. He doesn’t remember leaving the club or getting back home, but he remembers the feeling of his body hitting the mattress before blissful sleep pulls him under.
◈
Johnny wakes up groggy, as always. He shuts off his alarm and sits up with effort, fatigue clinging heavy to his muscles. It’s difficult every morning, and though he’s gotten used to the feeling of seeing daylight when he opens his eyes, a hangover makes it about ten times worse. He takes a gulp of water from the glass beside his bed, then downs two of his pills – one to dull his senses, and one to keep him awake – before sliding out of bed and waiting for the drugs to battle it out with his nervous system.
He starts to feel better once he’s on the train, packed body-to-body with the other commuters. He watches the station signs flash past the window, nearly missing his stop after being lulled into a stupor by the rocking of the train.
And then there’s the press of bodies in the elevator, then the sunlight streaming in through the large windows in the office. The warmth feels nice. At this desk, he rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes, making spots of color swell behind his eyelids.
Last night feels like a dream; the more he thinks about it, the more it slips away from him. Ten is the hardest to see, the flash of a silver fish scale in a dark pond. If Johnny reaches into the water, the ripples from his hand will scatter the image across the surface.
Everyone else in the office seems fine: small bottles of hangover-relief drink are the norm here, stashed in desk drawers and secretaries’ pockets for the mornings after long nights with clients. Johnny sees a few loose ties and dark circles, but nothing they all haven’t dealt with before.
Shin calls him into his top-floor office after lunch. Jaehyun is already there, sitting on one of the sofas with a folder balanced on his crossed knee and a chewed-up pen dangling from his lips. A few other partners from last night are lounging around as well, and look up when Johnny walks in.
Shin smiles familiarly at him. Johnny wishes he wouldn’t. Shin has said more than once that Johnny is like a son to him, though he says the same about some of the other junior men in the office, and the words are often lubricated by a fair amount of alcohol. It makes Johnny’s skin crawl just the same. He’s probably supposed to feel grateful for it. But it doesn’t feel warm and familial, like he guesses Shin intends it to. It feels like ownership, or like debt.
“Johnny! Come in, sit down. Lee, get up, give him your seat.” Lee gives Johnny a dirty look before letting Johnny take his spot on the sofa and retreating to the far side of the room.
“You look like shit,” mutters Jaehyun when Johnny settles in next to him. “Long night?”
Johnny ignores him. “Afternoon, sir,” he says to Shin.
Shin takes a sip of his coffee. “So. You enjoyed yourself last night, I take it?”
“Yes, sir. That place is something else.”
“So it is,” Shin muses, leveling Johnny with an appraising look over the lip of his mug. “I hope you understand why I brought you there.”
He trains his gaze on the rest of the partners in turn. “All of you. It’s not just for the, ah, soft pleasures. We can ruin our livers and get our dicks wet anywhere in the city.” Johnny hears Lee suppress a laugh.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” Shin continues. “It’s about luxury. Hybrids are still a delicacy – barely legal, hard to find, fucking pricey – and something we can provide for our clients to help us stand out from the pack. That club’s management is notoriously slippery, and it’s important that you all maintain the professional relationship I’ve worked so hard to build with them. It’s about trust, right? When we go, we spend big and we follow their rules. When we leave, we keep our mouths shut, and everybody’s happy. Is that clear?”
Shin’s gaze sweeps over the room, to a muttered chorus of yes, sir’s. “Okay.” He waves dismissively. “Get back to work.”
Johnny starts to leave with the group, only to hear Shin call out, “No, not all of you — Johnny, Jung, Lee, come here.” Johnny exchanges glances with Jaehyun, dread pooling cold and heavy in his stomach. Once the door has clicked shut behind the last person, Shin’s face splits into a grin. “I think you’ll be pleased to hear I have some more extracurricular work for the three of you this weekend. You did so well with our Hong Kong investors last month, so I’m trusting you with Singapore. I would go with them myself, but it’s my daughter’s birthday on Saturday, and my wife and I are taking her to the aquarium.” He hands Jaehyun another folder. “It’s not golf again this time – you’re going back to Nightwalker.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jaehyun says immediately, tucking the dossiers under his arm and dipping his head. “And happy birthday to your daughter.” Lee nods quickly before thanking Shin.
Fuck. Johnny stands numb, his mind sluggishly sifting through his remaining excuses. It’s his and Irene’s anniversary this weekend. He’s getting surgery. Irene is getting surgery.
Jaehyun’s shoulder bumps into Johnny’s hard enough not to be an accident, jolting him back to the present. “Thank you,” Johnny parrots hastily, as his window of opportunity for getting out of it narrows to the width of a splinter. “I…”
Shin and Jaehyun are both looking at him. The sunlight angling in through the wall of windows feels like it’s burning the side of his face.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
◈
The fitness center in Johnny’s apartment building is lined with mirrors. His legs shake as he pushes himself out of a squat, the weight of the smith machine’s bar pressing into his shoulders. He exhales heavily and shifts his balance before letting gravity push him down again, breathing through the burn. In the reflection, he looks stable. His face is red but not sweaty, and the muscles in his thighs and forearms strain against his skin. His mind is cloudy with exhaustion, but his body buzzes from the endorphins.
Sometimes, when he works out, he imagines segments of his hard-earned musculature peeling off his body like overripe mango. Underneath is just pulp, with a hard, slippery pit in the middle.
He tortures himself for a minute in the squat as he regulates his breathing, then levers back up to a standing position.
The weight machine forces him into a perpetual hunch, head slightly bowed to accommodate the steel bar that rests on his nape. He stares down his reflection in the mirror, making sweat-blurred eye contact with the man staring back at him: Two strong arms, two long legs. Intact.
◈
They go to Nightwalker that weekend.
The club is located in a five-story building, squeezed between two warehouses in the harbor district. From what he’s heard, Johnny knows that their company owns at least one empty lot in the area as investment property, and the rest of the land is owned by a few other development firms and an international shipping company. A handful of newly built, half-empty highrises keep the lights on at night here, but the streets seem deserted as the company car drives them through.
There’s no bass-heavy music pounding from the building, no crowds lined up outside. Just a heavy metal door with the building number engraved on it, and a human bouncer with an earpiece blocking the way in.
Just like the last time, they follow a second bouncer down a long hallway to the elevator; unlike last time, they take the lift to the first floor instead of all the way up. Once the doors open, they’re greeted by the sight of the dining room, softly lit and decorated with the same black granite and mirrors as the stage and private rooms upstairs. Johnny and Jaehyun follow the host – a hybrid girl, this time a tabby – to their table, tucked away behind a low wall of plants.
Based on the lack of people outside, Johnny had started to suspect they’d be the only ones here. On the contrary, nearly every table is full, the murmur of conversation competing with the warblings of a hybrid singer on a small stage at the far end of the room.
“I told you we’d be early,” Jaehyun says, sliding into the booth next to Johnny.
“I didn’t disagree with you,” Johnny says as he takes the menu offered by the server who’d materialized in place of the host. “A coffee, please.”
“Of course, sir. And something for the other gentleman?”
Jaehyun scans the menu. “How about red wine? Whatever you recommend.”
“That’ll be the house vintage.”
“Perfect,” Jaehyun says. “You know what, bring three bottles for the table. We’re expecting company.”
Johnny had been keeping his eyes on the menu for the entire exchange, and glances up just long enough to see the server’s gaze flick over to him. He looks back at the menu again, scanning the offerings with intensity as he tries to get his skittering pulse under control.
The paranoia is no better the second time around. His skin crawls with the feeling of being watched, every brush of a tail from a passing server making his heart jump to his throat like it’s attempting a jailbreak. You should come back soon. Make it up to me for missing my show.
The drinks are brought out quickly. Despite the tiredness that’s been tugging at his muscles, Johnny immediately regrets the coffee when one sip makes the blood start to pound in his ears even faster.
“Look alive,” Jaehyun mutters. Johnny follows his gaze to see a group walking towards them, two men and two women in their forties, their faces familiar from the files Shin had given them. Lee is with them – as the junior (more junior than Jaehyun), he’d been tasked with meeting the investors at their hotel, then accompanying them in the chartered cars to make sure they got to the club and past security smoothly.
He and Jaehyun both stand up and greet the investors, then there’s handshakes all around. Jaehyun knows one of the women from a previous company event, and the two of them take charge of the table’s conversation. Johnny orders enough food for the seven of them, and dishes are brought out until the table is full and the wine is poured and replaced with three more bottles.
Johnny fills his pockets with stones and lets himself sink into the role: funny yet deferential, lively but professional, keeping plates spinning and glasses full. Shin gave them no specific goal with this dinner other than to “show the investors a good time,” which really means to keep the money flowing to show them the company has funds to spare, that they’re still a profitable pony to bet on. Because of the women on their team, Shin was cautious about bringing them to the upper floors, but an expensive dinner staffed by doe-eyed, soft-eared curiosities should be more than good enough to prove their point.
At some point throughout the evening, the singer onstage is replaced by a pair of dancers, a set of pretty, short-haired black cats. Johnny has drunk enough glasses of wine by this point – he couldn’t refuse the refills – to be less than cautious. The stage is visible through the gaps in the plants surrounding the booth, and the twin silhouettes flash white behind his eyelids when he blinks.
He should probably go to the bathroom to refresh his cologne again; he must have sweated it off by now. But the booth is so comfortable, and the press of Jaehyun’s flank against him tethers Johnny to the weight of his own body.
The cats spin past each other; one catches the other by the waist and brings them back mid-spin, close to their body. For a moment it looks like they’re both sprouting out from the same torso, four ears, two tails, nearly kissing, until the captured dancer bends free and twirls away.
Jaehyun reaches past Johnny for the nearest wine bottle, then uses his outstretched arm to cover his mouth as he leans towards him. “All good? You’ve barely said anything for the last hour.”
From this close, Jaehyun’s face is blurry. Johnny blinks back at him. No one else is paying attention to them right now, distracted by the server bringing out an overflowing platter of seafood and a tray of shots for the table. “Yeah,” Johnny mutters firmly. A familiar thread of panic laces through him, albeit dulled by the alcohol. “Just letting Lee practice his conversation skills. You know he needs it.”
Jaehyun snorts, but the expression on his face remains split between skepticism and something discomfitingly close to concern. “Right.”
“I’m gonna go take a piss,” Johnny says, prickling under the acupressure of Jaehyun’s gaze. Unable to argue with that, Jaehyun lets him out of the booth without any further comment, and Johnny slides out before anyone can hand him a shot.
The bathrooms are down a small set of steps in a warmly lit alcove. At the sink, Johnny wets his hands with cold water and pats his burning forehead and cheeks.
According to his watch, they’ve been here for two hours already, though it feels like much longer. The club has very few windows, and the rare view it does have is dark, the glittering city skyline obscured by the tall warehouses around the building. Time feels sluggish here, the hours soaked in honey.
After he finishes washing his hands, he makes his way out of the bathroom and to the stairs in a distracted daze, no better than when he left the table.
“So, you really did come back for me.”
Johnny fights the immediate urge to leap backwards. He grips the railing, his heart hammering against his ribcage.
Two black leather boots are perched on the step just below Johnny’s eye level.
When he looks up, he is met with the sight of Ten above him. The low light of the stairwell reflects in the silvery fabric of his shirt, which moves like seawater. His eyebrows are drawn together, his dark lips pulled into a pout. Ears alert. When he takes a step down, Johnny instinctively backs away from him, nearly losing his footing as he finds the step below.
“I recognized your company name in the guest book for tonight,” Ten says lightly, by way of explanation, the taut expression on his face finally loosening. “But I didn’t see your boss at the table. Master Shin couldn’t make it?”
Johnny’s mind feels like wet cement. “No. Not tonight.” Did Ten follow him to the bathroom?
“Hm. Too bad,” Ten muses, and Johnny truly can’t tell if he sounds sincere or not. “You know, Winter would not stop talking about you after you left. You made a real impression.”
Winter? He struggles through the cement for a moment until he remembers — the girl who’d broken the glass.
“Oh, yeah?” Johnny manages. Ten continues to stare him down.
“Not just her, either. Some of the other girls noticed it too.”
Fear ripples cold under the surface of Johnny’s skin. Only years of experience allow him to continue masking it.
When Johnny doesn’t respond – not quick enough for his liking, apparently – Ten grabs hold of the banister and leans down. Bending almost ninety degrees at the waist, he presses his nose against Johnny’s neck.
His lips brush against skin; his breath is warm. Johnny shivers, frozen in place, as Ten inhales, exhales slowly, then sniffs a few times in rapid succession. A shower of cold prickles, like sea spray, cascades down Johnny’s spine.
Before Johnny can catch himself, Ten is upright again. Something Johnny doesn’t know how to read swims in his dark eyes.
“So,” Ten offers. “What’s your deal?”
“I …”
“I can smell it on you. We all can. Cat.”
Johnny’s mind goes dark. Suddenly the floor tiles are falling out from under his feet, the walls collapsing around him.
“Do you have a hybrid chained up at home?”
Johnny stares blankly up at Ten.
“Do you?”
He shakes his head.
“Hybrid parent?”
No.
“Genetic mods? Don’t tell me – breeder?”
Blank stare.
Ten squints, leans down like he’s going to sniff Johnny again, then thinks better of it and pulls back. Arms crossed over his quicksilver chest, head cocked.
“You don’t smell like a threat, though. That’s what Winter told me, and I think I agree. You smell bitter, though. Like fear.”
Someone pushes past them on their way to the restroom, casting a smirk in their direction. To an outside eye, Johnny must look like a very lucky customer.
Johnny stares at Ten’s boots again. Ten taps his foot; Johnny looks up. He feels naked, fifteen again. The customer service sparkle is long gone from Ten’s eyes, and he looks frustrated. Almost disappointed. Johnny so desperately wants to open his lips and tell Ten what he wants to hear, but something stops him. The cement, now fully dry, hardens the words on his palate.
“Listen,” Johnny makes himself say. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ten doesn’t say anything for a while. He searches Johnny’s face, eyes flicking to the top of his head.
“Fine.” He spins on his heel and starts walking up the steps, the tip of his tail almost batting Johnny on the nose. As Johnny stares despairingly after him, he turns around and puts a hand on his hip. “Come back when you're ready to tell the truth. Because I can smell it on you, and you're not fooling anyone here. Apart from your friends.”
With that, he is gone, leaving behind the warm, sweet scent of skin and perfume.
The evening ends two hours after midnight. Johnny, Jaehyun and Lee help the investors into the chauffeured cars that will take them back to their hotel. They’ll stop by the office Monday morning before their flight home, almost certainly with nothing but good things to say to Shin about their productive meeting at Nightwalker.
While they wait for their own cars to arrive, Lee slumps his lanky frame against Jaehyun, surprisingly bad at holding his liquor for someone less than a year out of business school.
“There, there,” Jaehyun coos, patting his upper back like he’s burping a baby. “Poor thing. Let’s get you back home to your girlfriend, yeah?”
Lee nods heavily in agreement.
Jaehyun tuts. “Shin really should not send him out more than once a week. I mean, look at this! Eugh —”
Jaehyun pulls Johnny backwards just as Lee doubles over a fire hydrant and retches out a pungent soup of wine and lobster onto the pavement. Jaehyun starts complaining about the red splatter on his shoes.
In truth, Johnny barely registers the scene in front of him. His mind is still in the stairwell, still ringing with the sound of boots tapping and silver fabric rustling and I can smell it on you.
He can’t come back. He’ll tell Shin that Irene is putting her foot down for good, that he’ll work late nights to make up for it, or he’ll suggest – casually, over lunch, almost like it was Shin’s idea in the first place – that Lee should be the one to take over these types of accounts, the investors love him, the hybrid girls love him, we can finally take his training wheels off and let the kid handle things on his own, right?
He won’t come back, and the heavy metal door of Nightwalker will keep everything sealed away inside of it. Butterflies inside of a bell jar.
When the black car arrives, Jaehyun enlists Johnny to help him puppeteer the wobbly junior into the backseat between them. They speed through the hedge maze of brick warehouses and dark highrises until they catch up with the lights of the skyline. Despite the pressing closeness of the body next to him, and the body next to that one, he feels distant, separated by oceans.
First, Lee is delivered safely into the arms of his livid, sweet-faced girlfriend. Next, Jaehyun ambles slowly to his apartment building, kissing a cigarette with his jacket slung over his arm like he’s the star of his own movie. Johnny is the last to leave the car, and he thanks the driver for putting up with them before making his way into his building, through the empty lobby, and into the elevator.
When the doors open, Johnny blinks, disoriented, until he realizes where he is. Instead of correcting his error, he steps out into the hall. Through the glass door at the end of it, he is met with the smell of chlorine bleach and lemon, with hints of vinyl and sweat. A cleaning bucket with a mop leans against the wall by the shower room. Even at three in the morning, despite the emptiness, all the lights in the gym are still on.
Johnny walks up to a familiar weight bench and sits down heavily. He stares at his hunched frame in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and counts.
Two arms, two legs. He brings his hands up to his gelled hair, parting it with his fingers to feel the two raised, neat ovals of scar tissue where, more than ten years ago, his ears used to be.
Cat.