Sometimes, the dreams come in seconds, a dash of scenes from random outskirts of Yeoksam-dong where he runs after a faceless man before the roads start to fray and the skies wither to flicks of dust. From a block down, he sees that familiar coffee place that serves the best cappuccino, elaborate foam designs searing mug lips and staining table napkins on the counter. Beside it is an abandoned building with exposed hollow blocks and broken glass windows. The running does not usually last very long for a person who’s awake, about fifteen to twenty seconds tops. But for someone who’s trapped inside the walls of the dream, the sprint takes almost half a day, kneecaps giving in from the assault and face crumpling in sticky sweat. The sun slithers back into the foams of the sea and lets the darkness take over. From here, everything falls back to phase one.

Phase one is finding your subject.

The thing about dream travelling is that you get lost in the expanse of time. Every night, an estimate 2.4 billion people dive into the realms of a dream, either by deep sleep or through unknown hallucination. The dreamscape is a huge world, a setting of all dreams designed in multiple layers of landmarks, buildings and streets all crafted from a person’s memory. Of course, these are not exact replicas. Oftentimes, the mind would conjure a different wallpaper pattern, a missing block or the wrong window shape all because memories are like that –– they are created to be imperfect. The human mind can only hold so much and not everything it holds can be used in a dream.

It took years for people to learn how to travel in dreams and how to control the human mind. Not everyone can do it, only one in every seven hundred and eighty-two people. And out of that number, only a few realize their potential. It takes a lot of willpower, body control and mental strength to be able to survive in dream dimensions while staying conscious. This is why people pay millions of dollars to hire dream chasers –– mind assassins as some would call them. These people enter the dreamscape in search for their client’s subject. Here, they murder them in the most unimaginable of ways enough to create the illusion of a nightmare and trap the person inside the dream. Above the dreamscape and in the real world, it may seem like the person died peacefully in his sleep –– no fingerprints, not even a carcass or evidence to show the reason why.

The method is so flawless that people who have realized their ability to dream travel have found means to build their own global black market. They go by small groups of men, working normal shifts in the morning and congressing for a kill once the sun surrenders to the break of dusk. The whole process is seamless and almost perfect, members binding themselves to their sacred union and earning more money than they can use. Once you pick out an assignment and enter the dreamscape, there is simply no going back. There are only eight dealers in the world –– two in the United States, one in Russia, in Japan, in China and in Ireland. The last two are in South Korea.

One of them is Dragonfly.

***

Luhan wakes up to the smell of starch and burnt bacon. His back is stuck to the rough mattress, sweat splayed out like peanut butter on his skin. Beads roll in twinkling masses from his forehead down to his sideburns as he wiggles his nose in the summer heat.

“Look, I ing told you I can’t make it tonight! You have to find someone else to fill in for the old man.”

Chanyeol’s voice is low and chirpy, an unusual mix Luhan has grown accustomed to for the last three years. Their apartment is near the city hall, about four stations from Chanyeol’s office and five blocks from the restaurant Luhan works for. The place only has one bedroom, but thanks to Luhan’s innovativeness and Chanyeol’s incessant requests for privacy, they eventually devised a way to split the room in half. Chanyeol gets the space near the door as he comes home really late at night, while Luhan gets the bed near the window as he always preferred.

Luhan rubs his eyes with the back of his hands as he scrambles out of bed with a scowl.

“I don’t care, okay. Tell him to take his money and shove it up his ! I am done with this job, do you hear me?? I quit.” The phone collides with the base of the kitchen sink as Chanyeol fists his hair with a grunt.

“Quit your job again, huh?” Luhan mumbles as he walks out of the bedroom door in his soccer shorts. He sweeps his way towards the fridge and wraps his fingers around a cart of milk resting on top of a pile of leftovers –– some probably spoiled or nearing expiry –– from the previous week.

Chanyeol palms his forehead with a sigh. “Well, I don’t need their money. Besides, my new boss is insane. He called me to his office the other day only to forbid me to bring a hotdog to my office table –– my office table. That guy is the ing Lucifer, I swear to––”

“You should quit swearing too, you know,” Luhan cuts his friend off as he the milk off his upper lip.

Chanyeol laughs as he tugs on the silver tie around his neck. “Well I guess there’s no point in going to work today. I no longer have a job.”

“Great timing. I just ran across the landlady the other day and she said she’ll be here in an hour to collect the pay for our rent.”

Chanyeol rolls his eyes with a smirk. “There’s money inside my drawer. Get as much as you want.”

The springs beneath the foam spit out an awkward squeak as Luhan sinks his on the couch. He tips the base of the milk cart towards the ceiling and swallows every last drop of the liquid in his mouth, emptying the box in three gulps.

Chanyeol tilts his lips in utter disgust. “You look awful, have I told you that?”

“You tell me every day.” Luhan smiles, rosy cheeks swelling underneath the dark circles that have taken over his eyes.

Chanyeol folds his arms across his chest as he sits on the beanbag beside the couch. “Are you still dreaming about him?”

Luhan’s smile fades almost instantly, wrinkles disappearing from the sides of his eyes and cheeks hollowing and killing its earlier glow.

“It’s been four years, Luhan. Pull yourself together. You’re better than this.” Chanyeol bites his lips apprehensively. “I want my friend back.”

They have this talk every week. About nightmares, dreams of endless running that lead to nowhere and no one. It’s a sickening loop that plagues Luhan every night. He dozes off and finds himself on the same road and at the same time, feet breaking into a breathless run after an unknown man. He sees the back of his head, bright orange hair and pale white skin peeking from his nape, but the face is always blurred, always muddled in hazy shapes and dark colors. They fall into a never-ending chase with Luhan at the tail and failing to catch him every single time. He wakes up, sometimes shaking and feverish or covered in sickly sweat, heart erratically pulsing in his neck and ears.

“You should see a doctor. They can help you, you know.”

“I… I don’t need help, Chanyeol.  I just need more time to get over things, that’s all,” Luhan clears his throat and rests the side of his head on the armrest, eyes closing automatically as he relaxes to its comforting texture. He remembers every detail of his dream: the names of the road, the colors on the signage, the timing of the cars skidding through the opposite street and even the graffiti on the wall. Every tiny bit.

“Luhan, four years is a pretty long time. You can’t waste your life over something that’s never coming back.”

He’s right. Luhan knows this full well, but he still clings to every possibility that it’s not. Every day, he wakes up, takes a shower, goes to work, walks back home and does every little thing in his God-forsaken routine of a life with the same thought haunting him at the back of his mind.

“Minseok would have wanted you to be happy, too.”

The silence slices through the wind and plunges straight through his heart.  “Let’s not talk about––”

“He’s dead Luhan, and he’s not coming back.”

Luhan’s fingers curl into a fist as he pulls his head up, body still slouched restlessly on the couch.

“Look, I’m taking a nap. I’ll go out tonight and will be back really late. You don’t have to wait for me. Just,” Chanyeol pauses on his way to the bedroom, hand poised at the side of the door and head clocked back at Luhan’s frozen state, “take care of yourself and try not to skip dinner. If I didn’t know you, I would think you’re someone off the Walking Dead.” With a sigh, he closes the door behind him with a click.

It takes Luhan approximately two minutes to clear his head and walk into their small bathroom. Just like any ordinary day, he takes a shower, puts on a random shirt and a pair of jeans underneath his gray hoodie before combing his hair up with a few flicks of his hand. He locks the door behind him on the way out and travels to the restaurant by foot. At work, he drowns himself with all forms of distraction. He waits tables, helps out with the kitchen inventory and even volunteers for rare delivery requests –– anything to keep his mind off the person in his dream and oftentimes the person from his past.

“Are you sure you don’t need a hand? I can stay for a few more minutes and help you close.”

“We’re fine, Luhan,” Junmyeon waves his offer off with a warm smile as he directs one of Luhan’s co-workers to clean the last table. “Besides, you already rendered two extra hours for today. Go home and get a life.”

Luhan pulls his hoodie over his head with a huff. “Alright. Take care then, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It’s midnight, what else can he possibly do with his life in this ungodly hour? Luhan takes a long tardy breath before starting his way back home. The walk back to the apartment is always a little drearier than the one he takes on the way to work only because the streets are much busier in the morning and the noise from the cars and the pedestrians are far more effective in drowning his thoughts. As he rounds up the fifth block from the restaurant to their apartment, he comes face to face with blue and red lights from a blaring ambulance. More than half of the street is cordoned off with yellow tape and eight policemen and more than twenty random tenants from the apartment stand in various corners, making it impossible to reach his destination.

“Excuse me, sir but you’re not allowed to cross this line,” a tall man, probably in his mid-thirties, tells Luhan off as he nears the yellow line that’s taped to two opposite electrical posts at the end of the street.

“I’m sorry, but my apartment is at the end of this road. I don’t think I can go ho––” Luhan’s voice trails off as soon as he sees the body on the stretcher that is being hauled inside the ambulance. “Kyungsoo!”

The policeman glares at Luhan annoyingly as he runs past him toward the ambulance.

A man clad in a long white coat blocks Luhan off with a heavy arm before he could reach his friend. “I’m sorry sir, are you a relative?”

“No!” Luhan almost cries, his voice breaking due to his body’s weary state and the sight before him. “I’m his friend. What happened to him?”

“Sleep apnoea. His roommate found him dead in his sleep and reported it to the police. The investigation is still ongoing, sir, I’m sorry but you can’t––” the rest of the doctor’s words fly above Luhan’s head as soon as his eyes land on a familiar bob of bright orange hair in the crowd a few feet away. The hair belongs to a fleeting figure that’s now rushing to make a turn off the block right at the end of the street.

Without another word, Luhan finds himself taking the doctor’s information and penning it on his palm before running after the familiar head. As he rounds up the block, he sees the figure scuttling from two turns down the road.

“Hey!” Luhan calls out in the dark, but the man is too quick to catch his word. He rounds up on another block and in barely half a minute of chasing, Luhan loses track of the stranger completely. He tries to walk further down the road, but with every turn he takes, the more hopeless he gets. After two more blocks, Luhan finally gives up and takes the shortest route back to their apartment. By the time he gets back on their street, only two policemen are left and the yellow tape has been taken off.

At night, the summer heat is replaced with a chilly weather, cold enough to comfort Luhan in his sleep. But like any other night, what starts off as a peaceful rest in between his blanket and pillows turns into another trip down that familiar dream. Only this time, the streets are eerily familiar and in no time, Luhan becomes absolutely sure he is running down the same street leading to their apartment. He scurries down the path and skips two buildings before he finally sees it –– bright orange hair belonging to a man wrapped in a dark jacket and a small frame.

Luhan’s subconscious almost moves predictably in dreams, instantly carving his heels on imaginary gravel and taking him off to chase the familiar figure. Normally, Luhan doesn’t get near the figure at all, it becomes this endlessly floating spectacle that stands (or more like runs) a few feet away from him, making the chase perpetual. In this dream, however, things are a little different. Every step he takes, the figure grows closer and closer until it finally dawns on him –– the man is not moving at all.

Slowly, Luhan stretches his hand and feels the warm fabric scraping across his fingertips from the man’s shoulders. The texture is so precise it almost doesn’t seem like a dream. Luhan tries to open his mouth but no words come out, only a slow steady breath that flows through like a whimper as the stranger’s head begins to move. The scene plays out in the slowest of motions and before the man can fully turn around and reveal his face, he wakes up to the sound of a raging fist pounding madly on their front door.

----

A/N: okay idk what took this so long and why the length is nothing like a prologue but ;AAA; here it is omg

i should stop watching movies like inception srsly. lol but rly, i've been wanting to write this story for the longest time now, and if i didn't even get in this fandom i frankly wouldn't even get the chance to.. so yeah ;;

i know it may seem a little gruesome and thriller-like rn but it's not, ok? lol... well i hope it's not 

happy easter!