Blurring at the sides.

His vision, that is. Face staring at you, familiar. Sad. It shouldn't have been sad.

He coughed—thought he coughed. It didn't even hurt anymore. Wait, what? Hurt? What hurt?

His mouth is moving, saying something. He can't quite make it out, he's not sure. He's oddly coherent, he thinks, as he brings a hand up, but not far enough, fingers barely brushing against solidity before falling through the air.

They don't quite—



-


He sit's up gasping, fingers splayed cautiously against his chest. The skin was strangely intact. He presses down; a stab of pain elicits another badly smothered gasp.

He wasn't dead—! No, but—

"Where?"

Jinki stands, glancing slowly around the small room. White walls. A small window set high in one corner. No door. A bed, a small screen. Speakers. He moves towards them, the same moment the screen flickers to life. He stops.

"Where am I?" His voice is surprisingly steady. It's steady, and this is surprising to him.

A young man stares back at him, leaning towards the camera. Jinki takes in the softness of his cheeks, his youth. This isn't a dream. That much Jinki knows. He presses his lips together, moistening them with his tongue as silence crackles loudly around them. When he gets no answer, Jinki takes another step forward. "Who are you?" and then "Where are they?"

The other man frowns. "You know who I am," he says flatly. Tiredly.

"That wasn't a dream," Jinki says.

"No, it wasn't," the other agrees. "Did you find him?"

It's Jinki's turn to frown. He walks the remaining distance to the screen, glancing around the room for a camera to direct his attention towards. He finds none. "Find who?" he asks, even as a memory slips into his consciousness. Darkness, night, the sound of rushing water.

Jinki stares. The other man stares back, unperturbed. A thought flits across his mind. "I know him," he says suddenly, urgently. "The other guy! The blond one. He's..."

"Find him," the other man says. No, boy, Jinki revises. He's more of a boy than anything, the sudden desperation hinged with panic unmasking his age.

Who? Jinki begins to ask. He doesn't get to finish.


-

June 13, 20xx, 14:07

"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."

Jinki blinked. "I can't?"

Minho sat across from him, a cup of coffee in front of them both. Find him, echoed in his thoughts, as Jinki shook away the dÈj‡ vu. He picked up the cup and brought it contemplatively to his lips, brushing the bitter taste against his tongue before replacing it on the table, the same moment Minho leaned back, exasperated. "Hyung."

So this wasn't a dream. But then, Jinki had no idea what it was. "I'm supposed to find someone," he said. Minho stared at him.

"Are you—" he began to say, when his phone rang. He frowned, giving Jinki a look. A 'we're not done talking about this' sort of look. Jinki shrugged.

There would be a man in a green shirt. Jinki watched Minho talk on the phone, the way his brows drew together as the conversation drew on. Maybe. There had been last time. It was hard to say.

"Find him," Jinki mouthed quietly to himself.

Minho stood, hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "It's—I'm sorry, hyung, I have to go. It's work," he said apologetically.

"Oh, okay." Jinki stood awkwardly, unsure of whether to follow him or not this time. Find him, echoed in his mind, even if he had no idea who he was supposed to be finding. "Yeah, um. Be careful!" he said, when he realised Minho was still looking at him.

"Thanks hyung. I'll call you when I'm free
," Minho said before dashing off, leaving Jinki with two half-full cups of coffee on the patio of a cafe. He stared at the cups for a brief moment, before leaving the cafe as well hoping that it would be okay if he left them there. He frowned, pacing the length of the sidewalk in the other direction Minho had gone.

The thing was, none of this made sense. The last thing he remembered—it was night. And then there'd been Minho. And then there'd been a man in a green shirt, and a blond man who Jinki was sure he knew, and a gun. Jinki frowned again, jamming his hands into his pockets. And then the other boy. And the room. The room was important—was it?

With a sense of disquiet, Jinki realised that he'd begun to retrace his steps. Another frown. Maybe he should've followed Minho after all; it didn't feel right. A sharp crack rang through the air.

Jinki swore, breaking into a sprint. He could hear yelling as he approached 3rd. A lot of yelling. The screech of tires as a car barrelled around the corner. Jinki backpedalled hastily, away from the edge of the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding being clipped by the sideview mirror. He stumbled and fell, palms scraping painfully against the ground, landing with a quiet 'oomf'. From the corner of his eye, he saw Minho stop breathlessly a few meters away, talking urgently into his phone. 

"Are you hurt?" Minho asked, flipping his phone shut as he jogged the distance to Jinki's side.

Jinki shook his head. "The car—"

"They're dispatching officers to stop it." Minho frowned. "I don't like it."

"You don't like what?" Jinki asked.

"The situation," Minho said shortly. "You should probably go home."

Minho began to walk off with determined steps; Jinki had to run to catch up to him. "You're going to do something dangerous, aren't you?" he asked, grabbing at Minho's wrist.

Minho turned, startled. "No," he said.

"Take me with you," Jinki demanded.

"No."

"I'm coming with you."

Minho shook off Jinki's grip. "No," he said again, walking away.

Jinki followed doggedly, even when Minho lengthened his stride. It felt right. He should've followed Minho in the first place. Minho was important, probably. "A man in a green shirt, right?" he asked.

Minho gave him a scrutinizing look, but didn't stop walking, grunting what Jinki took as an assent. He didn't elaborate further. They turned down a side street, and then again, a narrow alley between storefronts. Jinki glanced behind him nervously, Minho pushing open a door Jinki hadn't noticed, plastered behind old posters and grafiti as it was. 

"It's not locked," Minho murmured, stopping so suddenly that Jinki suddenly found himself pressed against the other man's back.

"Sorry," Jinki said, taking a step back. "Is that... a bad thing?"

Minho shook his head, pushing the door open wider, stepping inside cautiously. "It's strange," he said quietly under his breath. "If I tell you to stay here, you'd still follow me, right?" He turned back to Jinki with a slightly amused expression.

"Pretty much," Jinki agreed, following Minho closely.

Their footsteps sounded loud, loud until there was a whimpered cry, and Jinki bit back a gasp at the sound. A light flickered on suddenly, and Jinki blinked to clear the spots away from his eyes. Minho moved in front of him quickly.

"You're cops." A woman was speaking.

"That doesn't matter," Minho said.

Jinki could hear his heart beating in his ears, pulsing at the back of his throat. He moved until Minho was no longer obstructing his vision—and gasped again. It was the blond man from before, Jinki was sure of it, only he was crumpled in a heap on the floor, his wrists and ankles bound by heavy duct tape. His eyes were drawn to the streak of red running across his face, and Jinki gulped.

"Minho," he said quietly, urgently.

"I know," Minho replied in the same tone. "You won't gain anything from this," he said, louder.

The woman chuckled. Jinki had to tear his eyes away from the other man to look at her. She didn't look very old, or very young. Glasses, Jinki noticed. Grey jacket, jeans. "On the contrary," she said, and pulled out a gun.

Jinki decided that he'd had enough of guns for a life time.

A gunshot cracked sharply, loud in Jinki's ears. When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with smoke. "Move," Minho was saying in his ear, a guiding hand on his back. Jinki coughed, stumbling along blindly.

"What about him?" he asked, stopping suddenly to twist to look behind him.

"They won't kill him," Minho said. He gave Jinki a little shove, and Jinki found himself in the street, Minho close behind. "Just go, hyung. Seriously."

Jinki stared at him, and then back at the smoke filled room they'd just come out of. "Where are you going?" he asked.

Minho stared back, and shook his head. "Just go, hyung. Please." There was a look in Minho's eyes that Jinki couldn't quite place—desperate, was the closest he could come up with. Worried, maybe.

"Alright," Jinki agreed. He waited for Minho to disappear down the alley before pulling his shirt collar up to cover his mouth and turning back towards the building. He hadn't managed to set foot inside before there was a loud explosion, and Jinki lost himself in the engulfing heat.


-

The heat was pleasant, the way it seemed to stream off his back—or maybe it was just because his back was the only part of him facing the sun, everything else tucked under the shade of a tree. He grinned, leaning back until the sunlight was pouring against his face, his weight resting on the heels of his palms. "This is nice," he murmured. "See, better than being a workaholic, right?"

"Look who's talking."

"Mm," he hummed. A hand briefly overlapped his, and he grinned at the touch. The world looked red like this, eyes closed and overlaid with a fine web of lace. "It can't be helped."

He gasped suddenly, the wind knocked out of him when his back met the albeit grassy but still hard ground. "Hey!" he yelped, to the sound of quickly smothered giggling. Nonetheless, he grabbed the hand when it was extended to him, disgruntled.

"Let's go—"

-

June 13, 20xx, 19:23

He frantically taps in a few more cues, worrying at his lower lip. Nothing changes, and he frowns. "Hyung," he calls over his shoulder.

"What?" It's snapped, frayed nerves clearly visible at more than just the edges.

"Just come." He massages his temples, sliding his chair to the side to vacate the keyboard. "Please?" he adds as an afterthought, too addled by the situation and the numbers streaming across the screen to fall back on carefully drilled manners.

He feels a little better when he hears quiet footsteps approaching, twisting his upper body to send the other a grateful smile. "Sorry, I know you're busy, but... I can't fix this." He sounds helpless, and he hates himself a little for it. Hates himself a lot. But there's more on the line than just him, and bashing away at a tiny locked box with a club isn't going to get him anywhere.

"Memory," is the simple answer, with one frown at the codes. "I told him this was going to be the problem."

"If there'd been time—"

"There was never time. There isn't time."

Silently, he agrees. He wishes he didn't have to.



-



—Darkness.

It was night.

He paced restlessly.

His phone vibrated in his hand. He frowned—the caller was a private number.

The sound of the river nearby—


-

June 13, 20xx, 19:27

He sits up gasping, eyes still open wide in shock.

"Did you find him?" is the first thing to greet him, before he's even managed to get his bearings.

"Find who?" he asks. He rubs a hand tiredly against his face, slumping back against the wall. In the back of his mind, he sees Minho's face faintly, a blur in the distance when he turned back. "That wasn't a dream."

"No, it's not, I thought we already established that." Jinki sits up again, staring at the screen across the room. It's someone different. He has an intense gaze, Jinki notices. A sharp gaze, and sharp cheekbones.

"Where's Taemin?" Jinki asks, at the same time his mind realises oh, his name is Taemin.

The boy slides back into view, a serious expression on his face. "I'm here. But hyung—did you find him?"

"No, yes—a street off 3rd." Jinki stops suddenly, shakes his head. Frowns. "An explosion. There was an explosion."

The other man makes a frustrated expression, disappearing from view. "We knew that," Jinki hears faintly.

"We're running out of time," Taemin says. "They took him somewhere after the explosion, we need to find him."

"I know," Jinki says. His voice is exasperated, worn thin. He squeezes his eyes shut, massages his temples. Dying hurts. Really hurts. "I can't remember," he says, looking up.

Taemin bites at his lower lip, shaking his head. "That's not important," he says quietly.

"It is to me," Jinki says. "If this isn't a dream, what is it?"

Taemin shrugs, fingers tapping out of view at keys. "You know that too," he says. "Source code, remember?"

No, Jinki is about to say, when it all distorts again.