The Halazia Chronicles

Spring had come quietly to the Han River.

Not the bright, loud kind. The kind that arrived in small changes Wooyoung only noticed because he spent so many evenings here.

The wind had softened. The night air didn’t bite as sharply. The buskers returned to the paths with their speakers and guitar cases, and little crowds gathered again like birds finding water.

Wooyoung came here almost every night now.

Sometimes he danced alone in the shadowed parts of the riverbank. Sometimes he just watched, letting the noise fold around him like a blanket. But lately…lately he hadn’t been alone.

He wasn’t performing, not really. He danced only at the edges, in the half-lit spaces where shadows pooled like ink.

He kicked a pebble lightly, listening to it click against the railing.

They’d met here a few weeks ago, him watching from the shadows, the three of them shining under bridge lights with a kind of ease he didn’t dare imagine for himself.

Hongjoong with blue hair like a bright challenge under the moon, Seonghwa moving with impossible precision, and Yunho grinning even when he wasn’t looking at anyone.

They weren’t trying to impress the crowd. They weren’t even trying to impress each other.

They were just…dancing.

Wooyoung had felt it the moment he saw them: They had something he didn’t. Not skill—he had skill. But expressiveness. Something bright and unbound that pulled people in.

He remembered standing there, terrified—wanting to run, wanting to stay, wanting something he didn’t have a name for.

And then Hongjoong had looked up and waved him over.

“Hey, you’re that kid from the viral video,” Hongjoong said, elbowing the two boys beside him. “The one dancing in the stairwell. Guys, look. It’s him. The TikTok kid we watched a few weeks ago.”

Wooyoung’s first instinct was to bolt. He actually leaned back, ready to sprint. But something inside him, a pull as tenuous as a thread but stubborn as gravity, dragged his feet toward the boys instead.

“Whoa,” Yunho breathed, eyes wide. “I can’t believe it’s actually you. We watched your video every day. You’re really good.”

Seonghwa nodded enthusiastically, smiling so warmly that Wooyoung felt his ears burn. “Over a hundred thousand views. That’s insane!”

“Th-thanks,” Wooyoung stammered. “It was…really unexpected.”

“Well,” Hongjoong said plainly, “you should expect it now. I bet a company will be knocking on your door soon.”

Wooyoung rubbed the back of his neck, hesitating before he admitted, “Actually…they’ve already called.”

All three boys jerked upright, staring at him.

“A lot of people, actually,” Wooyoung said, cheeks heating. “Some from big agencies. They asked me to audition.[1]”

He braced himself for looks of disbelief, jealousy, coldness.

But, instead—

“That. Is. AMAZING!” Yunho shouted, bouncing in place like an excited puppy.

“Which agencies? Can you say? What did they tell you? What did you say?” Hongjoong fired questions in rapid succession, barely pausing for breath.

“That’s incredible—seriously!” Seonghwa clapped, his smile lighting up the whole riverside. “You deserve it. You’re so good.”

Wooyoung blinked.

He’d expected to freeze the moment he stepped into their circle—expected his limbs to lock, his chest to tighten the way it always did when eyes turned toward him.

But something strange had happened instead. He found himself smiling. His shoulders loosened and dropped. The tension slid off him like water.

Without thinking, he leaned casually on the railing beside Hongjoong—close enough to feel the warmth of the group around him.

And that was how he started hanging out with them. Dancing with them.

When he danced beside them, the fear didn’t rise.

The chain that had always wrapped tight around his body—that first step he never dared to take—had loosened. Slipped. Fell away as if it had never been there.

He hadn’t told them that, of course. Not because he was afraid to speak. No, in fact, he couldn’t shut up around them. It was a nervous tic he’d had all his life—laughing and yapping loudly to cover the fear underneath.

He hadn’t told them because part of him was still unconvinced that the feeling was real. Surely, it was a fluke. A fleeting spell that would soon dissipate.

He just kept showing up at the river whenever he could, heart hammering, hoping the three of them would be there again.

And somehow…they always were.

He kept returning to them. Or maybe they kept returning to him.

Tonight, the river shimmered with the last hints of sunset, and Wooyoung stood with his hands in his pockets, pretending he wasn’t waiting.

But he was. He always was.

He exhaled softly, eyes on the path leading toward the water.

And then, far behind him, a voice carried down the river path—sharp, trying to sound annoyed but barely hiding his affection, absolutely Hongjoong. “Seonghwa, I swear, do we really need this much food?”

A familiar laugh—loud, bright, and unmistakably Yunho—followed.

Wooyoung straightened just as three figures rounded the bend in the path, backlit by the last streaks of the sunset like they were making a dramatic entrance on purpose.

“Wooooyoung-ah!” Yunho waved long arms over his head as if signaling a rescue helicopter.

Hongjoong led the pack, both hands full of drinks. Yunho bounced between Hongjoong and Seonghwa on long legs. Seonghwa came last, carrying three plastic bags of snacks.

“You said it would take TWO minutes!” Hongjoong flung this over his shoulder without turning.

“It did,” Seonghwa said calmly.

“It absolutely did not,” Hongjoong retorted. “It took twenty.”

“Quality food requires time.” Seonghwa lifted the bags primly. “Also, the selection was different today. I had to reevaluate.”

Yunho bounded ahead and plucked an iced Americano out of Hongjoong’s grip, handing it to Wooyoung. “We brought you a coffee,” he said. “Because someone—” he jerked his chin at Seonghwa “—said you looked tired last time.”

Wooyoung accepted the drink, trying very hard not to smile too much. Then he looked at Seonghwa.

“So…” Wooyoung drawled, “you dragged these guys across the river for some chips that took you twenty minutes to pick out?”

Seonghwa straightened in defensive dignity as he dropped the bags on a bench. “I did not drag anyone. I politely suggested we stop—”

“For the FIFTH time this week,” Hongjoong cut in.

“—for snacks,” Seonghwa finished.

Wooyoung’s grin sharpened. “Ohhh, snacks.”

Seonghwa glanced nervously between the boys. “Yes, snacks. What else would I be going for?”

Yunho suddenly became very busy rummaging through a plastic bag. Hongjoong began to gulp down a soda, looking vaguely out over the river.

Wooyoung leaned in, voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper of chaos, “Maybe…” his smile sparked, “…a girl?”

Seonghwa’s soul visibly vacated his body.

Hongjoong burst out laughing. Yunho dropped his drink and scrambled to pick it up.

Seonghwa sputtered like a kettle boiling over, “I—that—no—” he flailed, “—snacks.”

“Snacks,” Wooyoung echoed solemnly. “Of course. And if a girl who dances like a forest spirit just happens to be there—”

“It’s not like that,” Seonghwa said quietly, ears flaming red.

“You okay, hyung?” Yunho asked innocently.

“I’m leaving the group,” Seonghwa declared, though a slow smile was spreading on his face.

“No, you’re not,” Wooyoung said, draping an arm around him. “If you leave, who am I supposed to tease to stay emotionally stable?”

“Literally, anyone else,” Seonghwa replied, though he was grinning now.

Yunho lifted his remaining drink in a toast. “So are we gonna dance or what?”

Wooyoung felt something bright flicker inside him.

“Yeah, let me show you the beat I was working on last night,” Hongjoong said excitedly as he began to pull his laptop out of his bookbag.

As darkness fell and the lights along the Han River blinked awake one by one, the four boys dipped their heads close together. Music drifted from Hongjoong’s laptop into the cool spring air, carried gently by the river breeze.

The world around them dimmed, and their circle of light brightened.

-----

Lunch break had barely begun when Mingi felt someone approaching at terminal velocity. He didn’t have to look to know who it was. There was only one person in the world he knew who moved with that much chaotic purpose.

“MingIIIIII-ah!”

Wooyoung crashed into view, slid across the bench, and—without missing a beat—snatched the milk off of Mingi’s tray and began to drink it.

Mingi set his chopsticks down on the metal tray, opening his mouth to protest, but Wooyoung had already set the milk down and was picking up the discarded chopsticks.

“Wow,” Wooyoung said around a mouthful of Mingi’s bulgogi, “they made it really good today.”

Mingi blinked slowly. “You can get your own, you know.”

Wooyoung waved a free hand dismissively in the air. “Yeah, but you’re much closer. And what’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine. That’s friendship!”

“That’s theft,” Mingi replied.

Wooyoung beamed. “Ah, but you love me so you don’t mind, right?”

Mingi looked down, cheeks warm despite himself.

Wooyoung took a bite of kimchi, humming happily—and then froze.

His eyes sharpened.

“Hey,” he peered up into Mingi’s face, the playful grin fading. “What happened to your face?”

Mingi stiffened.

His hair mostly obscured the bruise blooming high on his forehead, but the split lip and the cut along his cheekbone were impossible to hide.

Wooyoung’s gaze dropped to the knuckles Mingi was unsuccessfully trying to hide under the table.

“Mingi,” Wooyoung said slowly, voice lowering, tight with worry, “another fight? Who was it?”

Mingi looked away. Kids shouted across the cafeteria. Basketballs thudded against pavement outside. Everything was so loud.

“It’s nothing,” he said, shrugging a shoulder. He wished his voice sounded stronger.

Wooyoung stared for a beat.

Then he leaned forward and nudged Mingi’s shoulder with his own. Not hard. Quietly, gently. Just to say: I see you.

“I’ll beat them up for you,” Wooyoung said.

Mingi snorted. “You can’t fight.”

“I don’t need to fight. I’ll talk them to death.”

Mingi laughed despite himself. Wooyoung lit up at the sound.

“Ah, there it is,” Wooyoung said softly.

Mingi’s ears turned red. “Shut up.”

“No chance,” Wooyoung grinned.

He lowered his voice, leaning closer.

“Hey, you know I’ve been inviting you a lot, right? To hang out? With the guys?”

Mingi’s chest tightened. Here we go again.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, turning back to his food.

“You always say no.”

Mingi’s fingers tightened on his chopsticks. He shoved rice and bulgogi into his mouth.

Wooyoung nudged him again, harder this time.

“They’re good people,” Wooyoung said. “Hongjoong-hyung is strict but cool. And Yunho-hyung, he’s basically a puppy, but really tall. And Seonghwa-hyung—he’s kind of a mother hen, but you can convince him to do pretty much anything. They won’t judge you.”

Mingi swallowed hard, finally looking over at Wooyoung, “That’s what people say before they judge you.”

Wooyoung’s expression softened immediately. “You don’t have to talk to them,” he capitulated. “You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to do anything.”

Mingi's eyes dropped to his lap.

“You just have to show up,” Wooyoung finished quietly.

A long silence settled between them—filled with shouts and laughter and the faraway hum of the intercom—but to Mingi, it felt like the world had narrowed to this moment.

To Wooyoung. His friend since elementary school. The only person who had never given up on him.

He didn’t lift his head. He just nodded once, almost imperceptibly.

Wooyoung’s smile was wide and bright, like the Han River on Midsummer’s day.

“Okay,” he said, bumping Mingi’s arm once more. “After school. I’ll take you.”

Mingi looked up just as Wooyoung picked up his chopsticks again. “Oh, and,” Wooyoung added, “can you see if they’ll give you extra soup tomorrow? I think tomorrow is seaweed soup.”

Mingi groaned. “Why are you like this?”

Wooyoung just laughed—loud, electric, distinctly his. Warm in the way Mingi had come to rely on, like oxygen.

-----

They would argue for years—passionately and endlessly—about who discovered the warehouse first.

The truth was simple: the warehouse found them.

Wooyoung swore he found it first on his way home from dance practice. He’d taken a wrong turn behind the convenience store and ended up in an abandoned industrial yard.

The warehouse rose out of the darkness with torn metal siding that hummed like a song. Not a loud one—more like a low, familiar vibration he felt along his skin, the kind that made his pulse skip.

He hadn’t gone in that night, but he’d stood there for a long time, listening to that strange hum, every hair on his arms lifting, as if something inside the warehouse were calling his name.

Hongjoong insisted he’d stumbled on it first. He’d been wandering again after midnight, headphones on, chasing a melody that wouldn’t settle. His feet carried him without thinking, following the rhythm more than the streets.

When he passed the warehouse, he felt it before he heard it—the faint echo inside the building matching the rhythm in his head exactly, as if someone was tapping along from the other side of the wall.

He didn’t go in. But he remembered it. He always remembered sound.

Seonghwa claimed he’d known about the warehouse before either of them. It was after a late shift at the convenience store. He sat slumped on the bus, forehead pressed to the window, when he saw the girl again, standing under the garish fluorescent lights of the parking lot.

Three days had passed since he’d last seen her, dancing with that quiet, self-contained smile, moving as if the world were something she could slip in and out of at will. He’d spent those days working up the courage to speak to her, only for her to vanish again.

Now the bus was rounding the corner, peeling him away from her. And in the second before she slipped out of view, she lifted her hand in a sweeping gesture of dance.

For a heartbeat, Seonghwa thought a spark flew from her fingertips.

He watched it arc across the parking lot, straight toward the derelict warehouse behind the store—a place he had passed a thousand times without ever truly seeing it. Yet something in his chest tugged sharply, as if the spark’s path had carved a line straight to him.

He knew then he’d go to the warehouse. To seek the spark from her hand that flew there like a bird.

San didn’t swear he found it first. He didn’t swear he found it all.

He’d gone out walking because his mother was packing for yet another move—cardboard boxes swallowing his room piece by piece, his life reduced to neat stacks and taped-down edges. He needed air—anywhere that wasn’t being neatly packed into a box or zipped up into luggage.

He wandered farther than he meant to, past the river, into a quiet industrial strip that smelled of rust, old motor oil, and rain. He noticed the warehouse because it looked like he felt: lonely, misplaced, and strangely hopeful. San stopped without realizing he had.

Something in the shape of the building, in the stillness around it, felt like a breath he’d been holding for years. He stood there for a long time without knowing why.

Jongho remembered limping home one evening, knee throbbing, pride bruised more than the ligament. He’d cut through the back streets to avoid being seen, ducking behind fences and power poles, letting the shadows swallow him where they could.

That was when he found the warehouse. Or—maybe “found” wasn’t the right word.

He just looked up and realized it was suddenly there, hulking and half-shadowed, as if it had been standing watch over him all along. For a moment, the ache in his knee eased. But more surprising was the tightness in his chest—the one that had been living there for weeks—loosening, just enough for one clean breath.

He stood there, breathing in the quiet. Then he went home and kept the moment to himself.

Yunho didn’t think he had found the warehouse either.

He’d been walking home from visiting his brother at the hospital, heart heavy. The weather that day had been clear and warm. Before the accident, they would have gone to the river together to watch a street performance. That was in the past, now.

As he passed the abandoned industrial lot, he heard something faint—almost like someone humming his brother’s harmony.

He followed the sound, each step tugging him deeper into the maze of empty buildings. It led him straight to the warehouse. But when he placed his hand on the metal door, the humming stopped.

The silence that followed was so absolute he could hear the blood slipping through his veins.

In the morning, the first thing he thought of was the warehouse, not his brother. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up and not thought of his brother first.

Mingi didn’t discover the warehouse. Wooyoung brought him. Dragged him, really.

He arrived with hesitation etched into every part of his face, shoulders weighed down, bruises blooming beneath his hoodie—bracing for judgment, bracing to be overlooked, bracing to be invisible all over again.

Instead, three strangers looked up and smiled at him. Smiled like they had been expecting him. Had always expected him.

The warehouse hadn’t called him. Wooyoung did. And for Mingi, that was enough.

Yeosang was the last. He wasn’t looking for the warehouse because he already knew it was there. His father owned several industrial properties and regularly sent Yeosang to check the locks. He expected emptiness. Dust. Silence.

Instead, he heard laughter echoing inside, saw light leaking under the door, and found seven boys arguing over a broken drone.

His dismay at the trespassing—his father’s inevitable, terrifying retribution—melted quickly into pure annoyance as he watched them fumble with the thing.

“That’s not where that piece goes,” Yeosang said flatly as Jongho tried to jam a rotor arm into the body at the wrong angle.

“I told you,” Wooyoung said, snatching it back. “It goes here.” And he immediately began shoving it onto another very wrong part.

Yeosang winced. “Okay—stop. Seriously, stop.” He strode toward them before he could talk himself out of it. “You’re going to strip the motor mount. Just—give it to me.” He held out his hand.

Hongjoong blinked, “You…know how to fix drones?”

Yeosang hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder. “I build them sometimes.”

That was all it took. The drone was in his hands, and moments later, the motors whined to life. The little machine lifted, steady and sure, the boys shouting and cheering as it hovered above their heads.

Yeosang found himself smiling before he realized it—then laughing as they immediately began arguing over who would fly it next.

Later, he would think about the irony often: that the trespassers he was supposed to chase away became the biggest secret he ever kept from his father.[2]

----

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.

[1] This story about the viral video and agencies reaching out comes from Zero: Fever Pt. 1 Diaries, Wooyoung

[2] Yeosang finding the warehouse last and fixing the drone comes from Zero: Fever Pt. 1 Diary Film and Zero: Fever Pt. 1 Diaries, Yeosang, respectively