Summary- Onew dropped his fork and stared disgusted at his plate; Jonghyun only smirked. "It's true hyung, so many die every day that they don't even know the exact number."
Then Onew knew he had to stop the madness.
He died a little inside when he heard the news. Countless killed, mercilessly. The thought made Onew shudder, almost releasing dinner. That Diva must have put something in it, or he would never be this sick. 'No, it wasn't Key's fault; it was Jonghyun revealing the truth.
He took action immediately, first thing he did was call up a farm where refugees were hiding. Onew knew what he had to do. Double checking the numbers on his credit card, he adopted a whole family. Sure, Taemin would protest against the extra roommates, but that was his problem. The maknae would get over himself when he saw what a good cause this was. His fans might call him crazy for awhile, maybe shun him for it, but all that mattered was that they were saved.
They arrived three days later in a box with air holes, marked THIS WAY UP and FRAGILE- HANDLE WITH CARE… Of course it was upside down and had dents from being handled roughly. Such cruelty made Onew's blood boil. The madness had to stop. The manner of their arrival at the SHINee dorm itself let Onew know that this was for the best. He only hoped that they were okay, not hurt too badly.
Minhoused a razor to slice the box open. Onew was already apprehensive. The family hadn't made a single peep; Onew worried for the worst. Finally Minho was able to pull apart the box flaps and reveal what Onew hoped wouldn’t be a dead family.
Even Taemin cried a little. Only one survived. A child, with fluffy yellow hair, hypnotizing black orbs, skinny little chicken legs, and an innocent face. Onew instantly fell in love. She was his new resolve, the one he promised to protect.
Key promised to take care of the bodies properly. That night a fresh smell of sizzling bird filled the dorm, but Onew refused to eat in honor of Hamtaro’s family.
Hamtaro was a cute name, and she seemed to like it. The language barrier between them was unbearable, but Onew was slowly teaching her different things through symbols and arms movements. On Onew’s bed, she rolled around and played with his soft sheets. The poor dear, she was used to sleeping under her mother’s protection in a hay bed on the farm. On the pride of SM Entertainment, Onew promised she would live a better life.
That night, both slept with hungry stomachs, but together they were warm and content. She slept under Onew’s arm, crooning her pointy beak into his arm. Onew loved the tickle.
She always woke before him, like she ran on another clock. The dear hopped around on his bed until Onew woke, just like she, before the sun was completely up. Just the image of her brought a smile to his lips, and he put them to good use by kissing her on the top of her head. The kiss surprised her and she let out a small chirp before innocently jumping onto his lap. He put a finger to her chin to keep her in place and let her rest on her perch.
Breakfast was torture. Key made chicken again. Of course he did, there was a surplus of it in the house, and Onew wasn’t in any mood to finish it off. The rest of the members ate quickly, getting ready for the days schedule. That worried Onew greatly. He hadn’t actually planned ahead, how was he going to leave Hamtaro alone for a whole day?
An easy solution was thought up by Minho. All planned out and ready to go, Onew put Hamtaro in the bathtub, telling her to be a good girl and that she had food and trays of water in her reach. The young girl simply blinked in wonder, not understanding anything he said.
The schedule drained all five of them, especially Onew. Every moment he was given the chance to think for himself he thought of Hamtaro. The fact that he cared so much for her after only a day didn’t scare him, and her being so young did not matter at all. He was after all known as Kinki Jinki.
He gave in at lunch and ate some fried chicken fans ordered for them. Onew couldn’t disappoint the girls’ hearts; he had a reputation to live up to!
Tragedy struck again. Onew sobbed into the tile floor of the bathroom as Key fished out Hamtaro’s dead body from the toilet. He should never have left her alone. She probably took her life from depression, she had been trapped under her family’s bodies for who knows how long and she probably didn’t like corn. Onew promised her a better life and all he was able to provide for her was suffering. It was probably the smell of chicken always in the air. Reminding her of the farm and what she left behind. Where did her mother go? Her father? Brothers and sisters? All dead.
In panicked sadness, Onew grabbed his wallet and ran out of the house. The KFC was only three blocks over. He ordered five buckets of just-broke-up-make-me-feel-better crunchy greasy chicken. A bucket was already gone by the time he reached the park, the other four soon followed. Completely hopeless, a failure, the slob rested until dawn on a park bench, his bulging stomach too full to allow him to move anyway.
Funny that he was called Dubu- tofu, he didn’t even like tofu. Clearly he had a thing going for meat. What was a meat substitute doing as his nickname? Shawols were idiots.
He didn’t ask what they did with Hamtaro’s body, but he completely lost it during lunch when Key pulled out a packed lunch, filled with small chicken wings and crunchy legs. Tears filling and blinding his eyes, Onew ate and prayed for Hamtaro’s spirit to be well.
By the end of the week all the chicken in the house disappeared courtesy of Onew and a bottomless depressed stomach.
That weekend Onew died from clogged arteries and a heart attack. Too much greasy fried chicken. Key begged that they cut off the fat that Onew had built up during his binge, and the coroner complied. SHINee had to keep up their image.
Jonghyun felt that the whole mess was somewhat his fault. If he had never told Onew in the first place none of it would have happened. But he couldn’t play the what-ifs game, because then Minho would find some way to blame it on himself, and Key knew he was partly responsible. He had a special request at Onew’s funeral, to speak first before Lee Sooman.
In front of thousands of Shawols, Onew’s parents, the sobbing SHINee team, now leaderless, and other SM artists and trainees, Jonghyun spoke words Onew would have loved to hear. “He was strongly against the Genocide of Chicken.”