The Halazia Chronicles

Soon it was summer, and the warehouse was almost unbearably hot to hang out in. But they didn’t care. It had become the most wonderful, magical place for the boys. It was their Neverland, their Wonderland, their Chocolate Factory.

They were there every day, and there was always someone or a few people sleeping there every night. Every weekend, they all slept there.

The warehouse buzzed with a different kind of energy one afternoon.

Wooyoung, San, Seonghwa, and Yunho were running choreography beneath the big mirrors, while Yeosang filmed from the side. But the real star of the moment hovered above them.

Yeosang’s drone, newly repaired, painted a bright blue, and outfitted with a cheap camera held on by electrical tape, drifted overhead like a curious metal bird.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Yeosang called out, eyes darting between the drone’s monitor and the boys dancing in front of him.

Wooyoung dropped into a crouch mid-move. “Yeosang, I swear you're doing this to mess with us.”

“Nope,” Yeosang said flatly. Then, after a beat, “You’re off-sync on the third count.”

Wooyoung’s groan echoed through the rafters. “Of course I am.”

“Here,” Yeosang said, tapping a button. The drone replayed the last few seconds from above, the angle revealing exactly where Wooyoung’s foot lagged behind the others’. “You see? Your weight’s back when it should be forward.”

Wooyoung sighed dramatically, but corrected it on the next run.

Hongjoong, watching from a stack of crates, grinned. “I’m telling you, Yeosang joined us because he got tired of watching us screw stuff up.”

Jongho snorted. “And tired of hearing Wooyoung whine.”

“I don’t whine,” Wooyoung whined.

Yeosang tried to suppress a smile. He almost succeeded.

They continued for a while—drone footage, playback, corrections, laughter—until San suddenly piped up from beneath the mirror.

“Yeosangie,” he said, turning toward Yeosang, “how did you learn all this? Like…drones, machines, fixing everything we ruin? Do you study it in school?”

Yeosang blinked, caught off guard. “No,” he said quietly. “I just…learned on my own.”

Mingi scooted closer. “That’s vague. Be specific.”

Yeosang hesitated, then sighed, setting the drone controller down.

“Taking things apart helps my mind breathe,” he said. “When I dismantle something, all the pieces spread out…it makes sense. It feels like the only time I’m allowed to slow down.”

The boys fell quiet, listening.

“And putting things back together again,” he continued, “it gives me a kind of agency my parents don’t. There’s no right answer I’m being graded on. No expectation. Just…pieces. And me.”

Seonghwa nodded slowly, understanding in his eyes.

Yeosang’s voice dropped. “But dancing is the only thing I chose for myself.”

The sentence hung heavily in the air.

Then, naturally—stupidly, wonderfully—Wooyoung said exactly the wrong thing at the perfect time, “Oh! Is that why you don’t like your violin?”

Yeosang froze.

San elbowed Wooyoung. “Bro—”

“What? I’m just asking!”

Yeosang stared at the floor, jaw tight.

“…Yes,” he said, afraid to continue.

No one moved.

He swallowed once, then, “The violin feels like…handcuffs. My parents don’t hear music when I play. They hear achievement. Regulation. Proof I’m being shaped correctly.”

He took a deep breath. “I hate disappointing them. But I hate being controlled even more.”

“Play for us,” he said. “Just us. No pressure. No judging.”

Yeosang stared at the case like it might bite him. Then, with slow, careful movements, he opened it. He lifted the violin under his chin. His fingers trembled on the strings—not from fear of failure, but from the years of weight attached to this instrument. Expectations stitched into every note.

He inhaled deeply and began to play.

The first sound wavered—thin, uncertain. But then he thought of them, these boys sitting around him. Strangers he’d found, or maybe they’d found him. He had dreamt alone for so long, but now they were here, with him. His friends.

Yeosang’s bow faltered just a fraction, surprised—because, of course, that’s what they were. Friends.

And they didn’t want anything from him. They wanted things for him. Laughter. Comfort. But above all things, freedom.

His bow found its balance, the tone warming, widening, filling the cavernous warehouse like a pulse of breath.

The boys went utterly still. Time seemed to stop inside the warehouse.

He continued, the music swelling—gentler, then freer—the rigid structure he’d been forced into for years falling away.

When the last note faded, silence followed.

Not the awkward kind, the reverent kind.

And for the first time in his life, Yeosang realized he liked playing the violin when it was his choice, when the sound belonged to him, when the sound wasn’t a cage but an opening.

He lowered the bow, eyes bright with something he wasn’t used to feeling: relief.

He didn’t know who started clapping first because, all of a sudden, he was crying. He had never cried in front of anyone before. Then they were all around him, patting his back and hugging him. And Yeosang, blinking, let his lips curve upward.

Silence settled again, but this time it was warm and alive, holding all eight of them inside it.

Yeosang wiped at his eyes with the heel of his palm, but he wasn’t ashamed. Not here. Not with them.

Hongjoong, who had been watching him with something soft and almost nostalgic in his expression, leaned back on his hands and looked around at all of them.

“You know,” he began slowly, “I used to walk around at night all the time. Every night, actually.”

They all turned toward him.

Hongjoong’s voice was quiet but sure. “It felt like, in the quiet, I could hear the music clearly. In my head. Whatever melody I was chasing.” He huffed a quiet laugh.

“Sometimes it felt like if I looked hard enough, I could see…something else. Another version of the world. One where the things I dreamed about were actually possible.”

Yeosang’s brows lifted slightly. San tilted his head. Seonghwa twisted the metal bracelet on his wrist. Wooyoung stopped fidgeting.

“But I was so sad,” Hongjoong continued. “So lonely. Lately, I don’t walk in the dark anymore. Not as much, anyway.”

He looked at them, each in turn, and his voice softened further.

“Now I walk in the daylight with you. And instead of imagining other worlds, sometimes I feel like I can see one forming right in front of me.”

No one moved.

Hongjoong rubbed his forehead shyly, obscuring the left side of his face for a moment as he looked down. Then he lifted his head and added, “You’re starting to feel like…family. The kind I didn’t know I was looking for.”

A shimmering hush fell over the group.

Then someone exhaled sharply.

Jongho.

He had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling the basketball under his palms. Now he set it on the ground in front of him and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“That’s weird,” he muttered.

“Are you calling my speech weird?” Hongjoong asked, half offended.

“No,” Jongho said. “I mean, it’s weird because I know exactly what you mean.”

An air of surprise and expectancy swept through the room. Jongho rarely volunteered emotional truths. When he did, everyone listened.

He drew in a steady breath.

“You all know I injured my knee playing basketball,” he said. “But I didn’t tell you everything.”

Wooyoung scooted closer to him, chin on his hands. Yunho mirrored him instantly. Mingi leaned back against Wooyoung.

Jongho stared at the basketball in front of him.

“My whole life,” he said, “I had one dream. And I don’t mean a casual dream. I mean the dream.”

He lifted a hand and ticked off his fingers. “Win Nationals. Player of the Year. Youngest national basketball player. There was no backup plan,” Jongho admitted. “No other world. No other version of me. Just…that guy. The one holding a trophy someday.”

His voice thinned.

“And then I blew out my knee. When the doctor told me I’d never play competitively again, it felt like the whole world faded out. Like someone shut a door on the only future I knew how to want.”

He rubbed at his knee unconsciously.

Jongho kept his eyes down.

In the first days after his injury, Jongho had learned that people didn’t like hearing this story of failed dreams. They looked anywhere but at him. They tossed meaningless platitudes into the air, empty encouragement meant less to comfort him than to reassure themselves.

He couldn’t look at the boys now, afraid of what he might see. Fearful that if they treated him the same way—careful, distant, already moving on—he wouldn’t be able to recover from it.

But when he finally looked up, he was surprised to find them all watching him—not with pity, but with admiration.

His eyes sharpened, shining with a mix of defiance and hope.

“But then I met you guys,” he said. “And suddenly, there was a second door. A second world. A second dream.”

More than a few of the boys suddenly had something in their eyes and were blinking rapidly. Hongjoong pretended to be very thirsty and hid behind a water bottle.

“You said you could see another world forming, hyung?” Jongho went on. “I think I can too. It’s not basketball. It’s not trophies. But it feels just as real. Feels like I get to be someone again, not just someone who used to be something.”

He looked around the circle.

“So yeah. I know what you mean. You’re starting to feel like family, too.”

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then Wooyoung lunged forward and smacked Jongho’s chest with both hands, sending him toppling backward.

“YA! I didn’t come here to cry!”

“I didn’t come here to listen to you cry!” Jongho shot back, scrambling upright with a grin already breaking through.

San wrapped Jongho in a hug from behind. Yunho and Wooyoung immediately piled on. Seonghwa followed, then glanced over at Hongjoong, who had settled onto the couch with a small, fond smile. Seonghwa grabbed his pant leg and tugged him into the pile. Hongjoong didn’t resist.

Yeosang turned to Mingi and gave him a look that said, If you can’t beat them, join them. A moment later, they were folded in too.

Later that evening, Hongjoong watched them in the soft warehouse light—the warm chaos of laughter, the lingering echo of Yeosang’s violin in the rafters—and he thought: family.

He smiled to himself, thinking of a world of dreams. One they could reach. It was a comforting thought.

Whatever the truth, he knew that he would do anything—in this world, any world, all the worlds—to keep them together.

-----

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.