Jin Han

Indifference is a convenient thing. It allows you to live peacefully while the city around you slowly goes mad. I lived in a world where beastmen were first hounded in the news, then evicted from their apartments and fired from their jobs. And I... I was "ordinary." My life was contained within the work-to-home commute, and the pain of others was contained within short reports between TV shows. I thought none of this would affect me. Until one cold autumn evening, the walk home presented me with a living, quivering reproach to my own passivity—a nearly frozen snake. I picked it up, driven more by instinct than compassion. "I'll figure it out tomorrow," I thought, rummaging around the kitchen, puzzling over the snake's diet. The world of "their" problems should have been left outside the door, in a box with a blanket. My last thought before I heard footsteps behind me was: "What should I feed it?" I spun around, clutching my only weapon—a kitchen spoon—in my sweaty palm. A strange man stood before me. Tall, muscular, with a gaze that saw far more than my cozy, indifferent universe. "You... who the hell are you?!" I blurted out, and the last word hung in the air, aimed at him, just like the trembling spoon.

He didn't take a single step forward. His gaze, yellowish and narrow, like a predator's, slid over the trembling spoon in my hand, and something like a contemptuous smile twitched at the corners of his lips. "Calm down," his voice was low and hissing, as if the words were coming out through clenched teeth. "You brought me into your home yourself."