The Halazia Chronicles - Chapter 6

Hongjoong: So, river session? Day after tomorrow? I got a new beat!

Yunho: Yessir!

Jongho: Yeah, I think I can move my PT appointment.

Seonghwa: It’s pencilled in!

Yeosang: I want to say I can sneak away, but my dad has my schedule pretty locked down with lessons and appointments.

Hongjoong: I’m sorry, Yeosangie :( I’m sure he’ll loosen up soon. You'll be able to come out again soon!

San: …

Hongjoong watched as the ellipsis appeared, disappeared, then reappeared before vanishing altogether.

Hongjoong: Mingi, how’s your grandma?

A long pause.

Mingi: Fine.

Another long pause.


Wooyoung: Fascinating story, Mingi! Don’t worry, everyone. I’ll make sure he’ll be there to continue bombarding us with so many words!

Yunho: Sannie, how's the new place? When can we come visit?

San: Place is great! I’ll talk to my parents about a visit. How many of you will come?

Seonghwa: We’ll figure out schedules after you talk to your parents.

San: Sounds good.

The screen went quiet. No one said goodbye.

Hongjoong tossed his phone onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

He sat quietly in the half-dark for several minutes. The last few weeks stretched behind him like a desert, every conversation stopping just short of something real. The warehouse. It felt so far away now. Like he had imagined it. Had he imagined it?

He shook the thought loose and reached for his phone again, fingers searching through the rumpled sheets.

Hongjoong: Hey, are we still meeting tomorrow at the café?

Seonghwa: Yeah! 2 pm!

Hongjoong: Ok, great. Just wanted to make sure of the time.

Seonghwa: Haha, yeah, you really should write things down.

That was a lie. Hongjoong knew exactly what time they were meeting. He just needed to feel the relief, the proof, that someone was going to show up.

The café was tucked along a quiet street in Yeonnam-dong. Hongjoong came here often. He liked being surrounded by artists going about their day—sketchbooks open, laptop keyboards clicking, inspired conversations.

He claimed a small table in a shadowed corner and let his eyes wander over the art lining the walls. He didn’t realize how tightly wound he was until Seonghwa walked through the door.

Then it hit him: not nerves at seeing his friend, but the delayed fear that Seonghwa might not have come at all.

“Hey!” Seonghwa said brightly, already stepping in for a hug. "It’s so good to see you!”

Hongjoong stiffered for a second—putting on a show of bashful reluctance—before returning it. He told himself he wasn’t relieved. He absolutely was.

“Yeah, yeah!” Hongjoong said, pulling back. “I waited so we could order together.”

They got iced Americanos and settled in. Hongjoong talked about the new songs he’d been working on—half-formed things that were refusing to be caught. Anytime the conversation drifted too close to the warehouse, Seonghwa gently redirected it toward schedules, appointments, TV dramas Hongjoong couldn’t afford to miss.

They talked until the ice melted in their cups.

“Have you seen her recently?” Hongjoong asked.

Seonghwa looked up, “Who?”

“The girl,” Hongjoong said. “The bracelet girl.”

“Oh,” Seonghwa smiled, quick and easy. “No, I haven’t. Not in a while, actually. Not since before the warehouse. I think she’s over it.” He laughed.

What he didn’t say—couldn’t say—was that he’d stopped looking. And that on nights when he passed the convenience store, he kept his eyes forward. Not because he thought she wouldn’t be there, but because he wasn’t sure he could bear it if she was.

Hongjoong swallowed, then took a breath.

“Hey,” he said quietly, “thanks for coming today. And for meeting up with me the other days too. It really…means a lot.” He hesitated. “It’s been hard. That we haven’t met up like we said we would. All together, I mean. I miss it.”

“Yeah,” Seonghwa said lightly. “Everyone’s busy.” He tilted his head. “But we see each other! Someone’s gotta make sure you’re eating. Bathing. Sleeping.”

Hongjoong snorted, “Hey—”

“And have you been staying up too late again?” Seonghwa added.

“No! Well—yes,” Hongjoong ran a hand through his hair. “Wait, are you saying I look like crap?”

Seonghwa raised his hands in mock surrender.

Hongjoong huffed, then sobered. “Actually…I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Recurring dreams. But it’s nothing. Tell me about everyone.”

They talk about the others—how everyone seemed to have slipped back into the lives they’d had before the warehouse. Of course, they talked to Seonghwa; they always did. He saw Yunho the most. Yunho was still bright, still kind, but the grief for his brother sat quietly beneath everything.

Hongjoong thought of the broken guitar. Of the conversation they’d had in the warehouse—of how Yunho had said he reminded him of his brother, not in face, but in the way he listened.

The thought drove a lancing pain through his chest. Losing the warehouse had cost them all something, but he suspected it had taken more from Yunho than any of them wanted to admit.

Jongho worried Seonghwa the most. He was sure Jongho was depressed. He just didn’t know how to help someone who refused to ask.

Wooyoung kept trying with Mingi—kept showing up, kept reaching. Mingi kept pulling away. Wooyoung had been angry at first. Now he was just hurt.

Yeosang barely had time to breathe under his father’s schedule. San was struggling too—lonely in a new place, afraid he was a burden to his family for feeling it.

“I keep thinking about how it all fell apart so fast,” Hongjoong said.

“It feels like it started with San moving,” Seonghwa said.

“I don’t think so,” Hongjoong replied. “I think it started earlier. Weeks before that. One of us would joke that it wasn’t working. Or that it never would. We all did it.”

Seonghwa nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

“It’s like our dream of being together…” Hongjoong searched for the words. “It turned into something heavy. Like shackles. All the problems piled up like laundry you keep meaning to fold.”

“Yeah,” Seonghwa said. “I know.”

Silence stretched between them.

Then Hongjoong said, lost in thought, “My dreams started around then, too. The recurring ones. There’s this man in black. He’s always there. Isn’t that weird?”

Seonghwa laughed softly. “Probably nothing. Coincidence. Or you’re remembering it wrong. You should—”

“Write things down,” Hongjoong finished for him. “Yes, yes.”

They both laughed.

“Yeah,” Hongjoong said. “You’re probably right.” He forced a smile. “I really should get more organized. Like you.” He hesitated. “I’m just…glad you get it. That we need to find our way back together. However it happens.”

“Of course,” Seonghwa said quickly. Then he glanced at his phone. “But hey, can we talk more later? I’ve got an appointment.”

“Oh,” Hongjoong said. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah!” Seonghwa said, standing. “I scheduled twenty minutes to organize my desk. If I don’t do it now, my whole day’s off.”

Hongjoong stared.

Seonghwa didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.

“Hey,” Hongjoong said as they gathered their things. “We’re meeting at the river tomorrow. You’ll come, right?”

Seonghwa hesitated.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not really good at dancing. Or singing. I don’t want to drag everyone down.”

The words fell out clumsily, like they surprised even him.

Hongjoong reassured him—too quickly, too eagerly. Seonghwa smiled, said he’d see, and left.

Hongjoong stayed behind, stacking empty cups, straightening napkins that didn’t need it.

When he finally sat back down, the café felt louder. Smaller.

He stared at the empty chair across from him, thinking how easily Seonghwa had slipped back into his lists and rigid schedules.

It felt like losing him all over again.

---

The next day at the river was bright, hot, and humid.

The air clung to Hongjoong’s skin as he paced along the railing, nerves buzzing with a fragile, unreasonable excitement. His face lit up when he spotted Wooyoung and Yunho approaching together, already laughing about something, shoulders bumping as they walked.

For a moment, it almost felt normal.

Wooyoung’s smile faltered first.

“I didn’t see Mingi at school today,” he said, trying to sound casual and failing.

No one responded. No one needed to. They all knew what that meant. Mingi hadn’t been absent. He’d been avoiding him.

Phones came out one by one.

Hongjoong texted Jongho. Yunho messaged Seonghwa. Wooyoung hesitated, then sent a message to Mingi anyway.

Replies trickled in slowly, unevenly. Appointments. Pain. Obligations. One message didn’t come at all.

Hongjoong watched the screen, hope thinning with each excuse, each delay, each carefully phrased apology.

“Okay,” he said finally, forcing brightness into his voice. “We’re here. Let’s dance anyway.”

Wooyoung queued a song. Yunho counted them in. They moved through the first few beats, clumsy and disconnected, bodies out of sync with each other and with the space. The river crowd felt louder today, closer. Wooyoung’s shoulders tightened. His steps grew smaller.

The old fear crept back in.

They stopped without saying it out loud.

“Let’s…do this another time,” Yunho said gently.

No one argued.

Hongjoong nodded, throat tight, and watched them drift off in opposite directions, their goodbyes too quick, too careful.

---

One afternoon, a few days later, he walked aimlessly down by the river.

The sun bore down without mercy, the heat thick and unmoving. On that long, breathless afternoon, as the humidity pressed in and the sky refused even the relief of rain, Hongjoong felt something inside him soften and then dissolve.

It felt like the last of their youthful certainty melting away.

The streets were eerily empty. No cars passed. No voices carried. It was as if the city itself had stepped back and left him alone with his thoughts.

He walked for what felt like hours.

When he finally stopped, he was standing in front of the warehouse.

He wasn’t surprised.

Maybe he had known all along where his feet were taking him. He needed to be inside. Needed to be close to the space, close to them.

He forced the door and slipped inside.

The warehouse greeted him with silence.

The mirrors were still there. The makeshift studio. The scuffed floor where they’d danced until their lungs burned. Everything remained—except them.

The absence hurt worse than he expected.

His strength gave out all at once. He sank onto the old couch, the springs groaning under his weight, and stared at the ceiling where their laughter used to gather.

He didn’t notice when exhaustion pulled him under.

The warehouse returned to him in pieces.

The couch beneath his body. The familiar sag of the cushions. The faint smell of dust and old fabric. He was aware, distantly, that he was dreaming. But the space felt too intact, too precise, to dismiss.

Then, as if from a shaft of light coming from a window, someone stepped into view.

The man wore black from head to toe: a fedora pulled low, a mask covering half his face, a jacket, pants, shoes—all dark, all threaded with subtle metal embellishments that caught the quickly fading sunlight. He moved without sound, as if he existed in a vacuum, untouched by friction or weight.

Only his eyes were visible above the mask.

They were tired. And somehow familiar.

Not in the way of recognition, but in the way a place feels familiar when you return to it after a long time away. As if he had traveled far—through distance, through exhaustion—to find Hongjoong here.

The man stopped a few steps from the couch.

“You lost your dream not because of the tough reality, but because you guys decided to.”

The words settled heavily in the air.

Before Hongjoong could shape the questions pressing against his chest—Who are you? Where did you come from?—the man spoke again, calmly, as if he’d heard them anyway.

“Get rid of the idea that the world you see is everything. There are many dimensions and many realities in this world. The world I am in, the world you are in, are all real.”

The warehouse felt suddenly larger. Or thinner. As if something unseen had shifted.

Why have you been in my dreams?

“I want to tell you everything, but I don’t have much time right now.”

Only then did Hongjoong notice what the man was holding.

“What is this?”

The man glanced down at his hands. It was an hourglass—golden, luminous, pristine. White sand rested inside it, bright as bone or new snow.

“The Cromer. The key to connecting the world.”

He extended it. Hongjoong took it without thinking. The weight was real. Solid. Warm in his hands.

This hourglass was the key to connecting the world? What kind of riddle…

The thought barely had time to form before the man stepped back.

“Follow your heart, the map is there.”

When Hongjoong looked up again, the man was gone.

He woke slowly, the weight of loneliness settling over him before his thoughts fully caught up.

He blinked up at the ceiling, then pressed his palms into his eyes and held them there. That was the first time the man in black had ever spoken in his dreams. He thought about calling Seonghwa to tell him, then decided against it.

He sat up—and froze.

On the low table in front of the couch, something caught the light.

The Cromer.

For a moment, he simply stared at it, his mind scrambling to reconcile what he was seeing. Then he glanced around the warehouse, certain he was still dreaming.

He wasn’t.

Wasn’t it a dream?

He reached for it carefully, half-expecting it to vanish beneath his fingers.

It didn’t.

“Cromer,” he murmured, the word uncertain on his tongue, pulled from memory rather than understanding.

He stood up from the couch and absentmindedly walked towards the center of the room as he stared at the Cromer.

He turned the hourglass over and watched the white sand begin to fall, steady and unhurried. As it flowed, his thoughts drifted with it—to the boys, to laughter echoing off metal walls, to music stitched together from shared breath and bruised hope. He realized, with a dull ache, that somewhere along the way, they had stopped being part of his dream and become the dream itself.

That it hadn’t been the music he was chasing all along. It had been them.

He glanced back down.

The sand had already finished collecting at the bottom.

Hongjoong frowned. Impossible. Only seconds had passed. He was sure of it. He lifted the Cromer slightly, turning it in his hands as if the explanation might be etched into the glass.

But then the sand began to rise.

Grain by grain until it was a steady stream, it reversed itself, flowing upward against gravity, against sense, against everything he knew to be true.

Hongjoong looked around the empty warehouse, searching for an answer in the dust, the mirrors, the long-abandoned space that had once held all of them.

The Cromer began to glow—soft, faint, alive.

Hongjoong blinked.

In that second, he heard the large iron door slide open. Footsteps followed, approaching one by one.

When he opened his eyes, his friends—every single one of them—were gathered around him, the same puzzled look on their faces.

----

This is a fan-made, transformative work based on Ateez’s official storyline. Ateez, the Cromer, and all associated concepts belong to KQ Entertainment. I make no claim to the original IP, and this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by KQ.

Hongjoong breaking into the warehouse and his dream are told in the Zero: Fever Part 1 Diaries, Outro. It's also depicted in the Zero: Fever Part 1 Diary Film. We learn that everyone goes back to the lives they had before the warehouse from the Ateez Fever Road series.