April 1982

Kim Taehyung sat in the car, looking out the passenger window at the front of the decrypt house. He was set to pick up his date in the next few minutes and had come early. It wasn't like he needed the date. He could have the pick of the litter if he was allowed to. He was going on this date tonight to prove a point. Yes, he could date every fashion model within a hundred mile radius, but he could also date any outcast as well. Losers were just dreaming to be on a date with him. This was also part of a dare and he never backed down from a good dare.

He was about to make this girl's night if she would hurry up and come outside.

He sighed as he leaned back in the seat, checking the Rolex watch he had on his wrist. This woman was taking her sweet old time. He moved to turn the interior car lights on after, checking his reflection in the mirror. He quickly used his fingers to tease at his blonde hair. He noticed the front door open out of the corner of his eye and immediately snapped up the mirror and turned off the lights. He turned his face to look at his date as she came out of the house.

His date - Min Chan-mi - came out onto the front steps dressed in a full length black dress; her frizzy brown hair like a bush about her head. Taehyung couldn't help but to smirk at her getup. Was she going on a date or to a funeral?

He watched as she took her laboriously slow time walking down the front walkway and to the passenger side of the car. Taehyung had enough time to re-buckle his belt and turn on the radio.

"Sorry if I kept you waiting," she said as she slipped into the seat, shutting the door behind her.

"You're fine," muttered Taehyung as he shifted the car into drive.

He didn't have to look over to see that the girl was blushing. All girls seemed to blush around him no matter what he said to them.

The date with Min Chan-mi proved to be one of the most disastrous ones that Taehyung had ever gone on. Since this date was all part of a dare, he hadn't expected it to go swimmingly, but he still hadn't expected it to be a complete bomb either. They had spent the evening at the movie theater in the dark. Taehyung couldn't remember the movie that they had gone to. All he remembered was that it was a long drawn out horror. It had surprised him that she wanted to go to a horror movie, but he wasn't going to complain. The movie hadn't scared him, but it had certainly scared his date. She had clung to his arm like a vice grip several times throughout it; curling her body closer to him. He thought for sure that he had lost all feeling in his arm at one point due to how hard she was gripping it.

'Smart girl,' thought Taehyung. 'She wants to handle the goods.'

The whole ride back to her house after, Min Chan-mi had decided that she was going to talk about all the horrific things that had happened to her during her lifetime. It started with the death of her grandparents in a house fire and it all culminated up to her older brother's death.

"Did you know my older brother was murdered?" she asked him.

Of course he did. It had been the talk of the entire school when Min Sung-Ho had been murdered. They had been in the same class. Taehyung could still recall the details of the whole thing. The way he had been found in the alley behind the supermarket with - what the corner's report had said - fifty stab wounds littering his body; his eyes ripped right out of their sockets. Min Sung-Ho would be twenty-five like Taehyung was now if he were still alive. He was sure that he wouldn't approve of Tae the playboy taking his younger sister out to fool around seeing as how Taehyung remembered how over protective the man used to be, but he wasn't here. Taehyung had free reign.

This world was his kingdom after all.

"I heard about your brother's death, and I'm sorry. I admired him as a classmate."

"He was a great older brother. Very protective. He'd do anything to protect me."

"I can only imagine."

Taehyung pulled back up in the same spot he'd been parked in before, ready to drop off his date. He heard the buckle, looking over at her as she shifted to grab the door handle.

"Thank you for the wonderful evening."

"Of course," said Taehyung with his winning smile.

'It won't count unless you kiss her,' rang the voice of his classmate. 'And it has to be a good one so that the inevitable heartbreak will be all the sweeter.'

Taehyung sighed a bit as he leaned over towards her. He extended an arm her way first, gently laying his hand on the back of her head. Her ratty brown hair felt exactly as he expected. It felt like a rodent's nest. He forced himself to comb his fingers through it anyway, tangling them there as he leaned over to kiss her lips as her eyes slid shut.

He forced himself to think of kissing one of his more attractive dates as he deepened the kiss. She hesitated to follow his lead but eventually did so. Taehyung moved to put his other hand on her knee when she stopped, pushing away from him and the kiss.

"A kiss is enough. I don't want to go further."

Taehyung drew both his hands back to his side, looking at her.

"I don't think we're compatible. Have a good night and a nice life."

"I'm...I'm sorry, what?"

"Min Chan-mi," said Taehyung, "I don't think we're compatible. So I won't be asking you on another date. This will be the last you'll see of me."

She looked like she was about to cry. They all always got like this. Min Chan-mi was nothing more than a name to him. A name for his list to be more specific. As he recalled the list back in his apartment, he realized that he was still solidly in the lead. The kissing bandit was still holding his title.

A few tears slipped down her face as she immediately moved to push out of the car.

"What made you say we weren't compatible?" asked Min Chan-mi from outside the car, standing in the street. "Is it because I wouldn't let you go to second base?"

"No. We were never compatible," said Taehyung, deciding that now came the time for brutal honesty. "I just wanted to see how far I could go."

"Then why did you ask me out?"

"Because who else would?"

Her face turned pain stricken then as she looked at him, taking a few steps back until she was in the middle of the road.

"You miserable son of a - "

Her curse was cut off by a truck honking as it raced down the road. She turned her face to look at it, but it was too late. Taehyung watched in horror as the truck mowed her down; her body flying up into the air as if defying the laws of gravity before landing in a twist of limbs back on the street. Her glazed over eyes faced him in the car as a crimson pool of blood left her head.

Later that night - after the police interviews and after trying to be the consoling 'boyfriend' to her grieving parents- he arrived back at his apartment. That evening had not turned out the way he thought it would. As he trailed through the apartment exhausted, he noticed that his apartment mate wasn't back yet. He must have found somewhere to sleep over for the night. It didn't matter to Taehyung. All that really mattered to him right now was that he get some rest. Taehyung barely had enough time to strip out of his clothes and down into his boxers before he collapsed utterly exhausted face first on the bed. It didn't take him long to fall asleep.

When he woke later that night, he didn't know what exactly woke him. Turning his head towards his open bedroom window, he noticed that a gush of cold wind was slipping through the window and into the room. It was touching his toes and every other limb, numbing it completely. It was raining outside, and it sounded like the storm would only continue.

Letting out a soft moan, he rolled himself out of bed and padded across his gray carpet to grip the window in his hands. He was about to push it shut when he heard a voice behind him.

"You think it's funny to play games with people, don't you?"

Taehyung froze with his fingers on the window. He could feel some of the rain splash in over the windowsill and hit his legs as he turned his head slowly to face the source of the voice. Even turning to face the voice, he couldn't tell where they were. His room was entirely pitch black.

His mind immediately raced into panic mood. If this was some sort of burglar, he could tackle them. He knew he could. He worked out every day. He could tackle away whatever weapon they may be holding and make it out to the phone in the other room to call emergency services.

"Leave now or you'll regret it."

"If only you had said the same words to my sister," said the voice, "But you didn't, and now she is dead."

Taehyung felt his blood run cold. The voice...no wonder it had sounded familiar. It was Min Sung-ho. But no. That wasn't possible. The man had been dead for several years now. Taehyung figured that he was just having some sort of lucid dream at the moment that was a combination of the horror movie he had seen and the death of his date shortly after.

"Go away," said Taehyung. "Or I'll beat you up."

A laugh - cold and bone chilling - echoed out through his bedroom.

"I'd like to see you try. I've already been beaten. Stabbed to be specific. Had my eyes gouged out while I was still alive even. How do you think that felt?"

"How would I know? I had nothing to do with that."

"Never said you did," said Min Sung-ho.

It was then - as Taehyung's eyes swept the furthest corner of the room that he saw a semblance of some sort of figure standing there. They practically blended in with the shadows.

"You did have something to do with the death of my sister though," continued Min Sung-ho. "That is unforgivable."

"I didn't tell her to stand in the road."

"Stop trying to defend your actions," said Min Sung-ho. "It was your cruel actions and words that drove her to devastation and her ultimate death. You may not have been driving the truck, but you may as well have."

Taehyung was tired of this. If this was a dream - as soon as he approached the figure - they would disappear. He'd more than likely wake up clutching his pillow. If they were a burglar that was messing with him, then he would be able to knock some sense into them.

He moved towards the shadow in the corner, and was about to wrap his arms about them when the figure spoke again.

"Do you want to see what it felt like to be stabbed?"

A jarring pain raced through Taehyung just then. It caused him to lose his breath as he collapsed to his knees on the carpet a few feet short of grasping at the figure. He put his hand to his right shoulder where the pain was coming from, but there was no knife there. It was just the pain. It ripped through him like the lightning through the sky outside.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Taehyung asked as he fought against the pain to try to grasp at the shadowy figure's ankles. He thought his hands had made contact, but they just went right through him.

Right through him.

Taehyung gulped a bit in fear as another stab like pain hit him. This time in his abdomen. He hissed a bit, scooting himself backwards on the carpet towards his bed. He was trying to think of what to do. This wasn't a dream or he would have woken up, but it couldn't be real because that would mean the person was a ghost, and ghosts didn't exist.

"I never liked you, Kim Taehyung. Did you know that? I watched you make your rounds through the female population, including the people my sister hung out with. I knew it was only a matter of time until you made it to her as part of your games. I vowed to myself that I would protect her from you, but those idiot friends of yours got to me first."

"As I said, I had nothing to do with your death," said Taehyung as he managed to scoot back to his bed frame. Another stabbing pain shot through his left leg as he twisted his body sideways, trying to grip the bed frame some to rise to his feet. It was then that a pain stabbed his back, causing him to fall right back down to the ground and onto his side.

"It didn't matter. My death is inconsequential. Besides I dealt with it," said Min Sung-ho.

"Dealt with it?" asked Taehyung.

"Yes. I took away something they loved in return," said Min Sung-ho, "And let me just tell you it was something that makes them each quite pathetic now."

Taehyung tried to think about what Min Sung-ho meant. If his killers had been his close friends...Taehyung suddenly seemed able to remember how one of his best friends had lost his scholarship due to drug paraphernalia being found in his duffel bag. That friend had been forced to go back home to work on his parents' farm - a place they hated more than life itself - where they had eventually lost an eye in a farming accident. One of his other friends had lost the ability to speak in some medical procedure gone wrong while another had become paralyzed in a freak car accident.

"Are you planning to do something similar to me then?" asked Taehyung as he slipped an arm under his bed. He was hoping he had something hidden there. A baseball bat. A shoe. Anything he could use as a weapon. His searching fingers suddenly curled in pain as another stab of pain shot through his arm. This time the pain was paralyzing.

"I thought about it for a while, but no. I think I have something even worse in store for you."

Taehyung turned his head to face Min Sung-ho as their black cloaked figure stood just inches away from him now. He couldn't make out any sort of body. All he could make out was the face and the two black holes where his eyes should have been.

"I plan on showing you how beastly your actions really are," continued Min Sung-ho.

Taehyung was going to say something when he felt another stab of pain tear through him. This time it took over his entire body.

"I'll show you what it feels like to not belong," said Min Sung-ho. "I'll show you what it's like to be feared by everyone and treated like a monster. You'll lose everything. Your entire pathetic life you have set for yourself here."

"And all because I told your fugly sister we weren't compatible?" hissed out Taehyung in anger.

"No!" shouted Min Sung-ho as Taehyung was hit with another new round of pain. "It's because you deserve to be taught a lesson for your behavior."

He laid on his side on the carpet, curling in on himself as the pain seemed to eat away at his whole body. He couldn't help but to think that this must have been what it felt like to have been stabbed fifty times or hit by a truck.

But at least both of those deaths had been instant. His felt like a never-ending pain.

"If you're going to kill me, just kill me," said Taehyung. "No need to prolong it."

"I already told you what I'm going to do," said Min Sung-ho, "I'm going to show you what it feels like to be feared by the world."

Taehyung was crippled by pain now as he laid there on his bedroom floor. It felt like the breath was being taken out of his body. The storm outside continued to rage; lightening lighting up the room as Taehyung let out cries of pain. None of his neighbors would be able to hear him though over the storm. As another round of lightning lit up the gray bedroom wall, Taehyung was able to see that one of his arms was now covered in bright orange fur striped with black and white. He tried to move to scream, but a roar came out instead.

Min Sung-ho could only laugh.

"Have fun with your new life, Taehyung," he said.

Taehyung felt the pain lick and eat away at his body until the world around him passed out. When he woke later, he had no idea how long he had been out. All he knew was that he was lying on his bedroom floor as sunlight poured into the room. He could hear the front door of his apartment open. It must be his apartment mate coming home from wherever they had spent last night. He moved to get up, and felt as if the world had become slightly smaller. He blinked heavily as he looked down and saw that paws greeted him instead of his hands.

He tried to let out a scream, but a roar came out instead like last night. He immediately clamped his mouth shut as he made for the mirror by the closet in his room. His eyes widened in horror when he saw a full grown tiger staring back at him instead of the handsome man he once was. He turned his head to look towards his bedroom door when it opened slowly.

"Hey dude, I heard a noise and..."

His apartment mate paused when he saw the tiger staring back at him, immediately going white and racing from the room.

'No! No! Wait!' thought Taehyung as he moved to run after him. He saw that his friend had already picked up the phone and was calling emergency services.

"Yes, hi....I live at..."

Taehyung didn't wait to hear the rest of it. He couldn't talk so there would be no way to convince his friend. He instead looked about him and was grateful to see that his apartment mate still had the bad habit of leaving the front door open. Racing towards it, he barreled out the front door and down the hallway. He had to get out.

He had no idea where he would run to. All he knew was that he had to keep running. He kept to back alleys, listening to people screech 'tiger' or 'monster' every time they saw him. Hearing sirens in the distance only fueled him on. He kept running even when he felt like his limbs would give out. Eventually they did though. Taehyung felt like his lungs were going to burst as he collapsed outside some run down shop.

He had no idea that - as he passed out - that he had found the place he'd call home for the next several decades to come.