June 13, 20xx, 14:07

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

Jinki blinked. "I can't?"

He was sitting across from a young man who looked like he'd just gotten out of college, all fresh face and wide eyed with an earnest expression marred by a touch of concern. A table was between them, two identical cups of coffee in front of them both. This baffled Jinki. He'd never liked coffee.

"Hyung." The young man sounded exasperated. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, picking up the cup and tipping it to his lips.

There was another problem that baffled Jinki. "Running away from what?"

The man rolled his eyes, replacing his coffee on the table. His mouth was already open to speak when a generic ring tone sounded loudly. He frowned, giving Jinki a look. A very clearly 'we're not done talking about this' sort of look. Jinki shrugged.

"Choi Minho speaking." That must have been his name. His tone was brisk, officious. A number he didn't know, Jinki surmised.

Jinki leaned back in his seat, tuning out the other's phone call to observe his surroundings. They were sitting on the patio of a small coffee shop. It was the middle of the day—no, wait, that couldn't be right. He distinctively remembered it being night. It had to have been night. He'd fallen asleep, then. This was a dream. He could live with that. So it was the middle of the day, and it was a nice day at that, just enough clouds so the sky didn't look plain but not so many as to be overcast. And he was having coffee with a man who he didn't know, who had just stood up with an extremely serious expression on his face and was walking away with brisk steps.

Jinki stood up and followed him. In terms of dream logic, it made perfect sense.

"No, it's—I'm sorry hyung, I have to go." The man paused just long enough to turn to Jinki with an apologetic expression, hand over the mouthpiece. "It's work."

"I'll come with you," Jinki said. He didn't know why, it just felt like the right thing to say.

The man frowned. "No, you can't. It's dangerous. You know that, hyung."

Jinki smiled, a light touch on his arm. "All the more reason to, right, Minho?" The name rolled off his tongue, and Jinki felt a little bad about the deception. Dream deception, but still. It was the thought that counted.

"Look hyung, you'd just get in the way. I'll call you when I'm free, okay?" Jinki was a little disappointed when the man turned his attention back to the other end of the line. He sighed, watching him disappear down the street. Well that was anti-climatic. So much for a dream. Jinki frowned, fairly sure that that was not how dreams worked. He shrugged, and chased after him.

"Hey, uh, wait! Minho?" He was rewarded when the man stopped and looked at him, giving Jinki enough time to catch up. "Let me come with you. I, uh, just have a feeling about this. And the feeling says that I should come with you."

"Sometimes, you're really weird hyung," Minho said, but didn't protest when Jinki followed with determined steps. "We have a possible situation on 3rd. They want an eye on it even if nothing happens. Standard procedure, nothing we haven't seen before."

Jinki nodded, as they rounded the corner of the street. He hadn't been here before; he didn't recognise any of the stores. Well, that was the power of a dream, right? To come up with things he'd never seen before. This seemed awfully realistic for a dream, though. "So, um, what's the possible situation?"

Minho shrugged. "Don't know yet. Green shirt, black jacket, jeans, baseball cap, around five seven."

"Green shirt," Jinki muttered to himself, scanning the crowd. A man leaning against a car caught his attention. "Black jacket, jeans, baseball cap?" he confirmed.

"Yeah, you found him?"

Jinki nodded, doing his best to point at the man as subtly as he could. "By the car. Oh, no wait, not anymore, he's walking towards a store, talking to someone? He's kind of short, blond hair—oh. Um, I think that's a gun?"

Jinki didn't think he'd ever seen anyone spin around as fast as Minho had at that moment, eyes hardening. "Stay here," he said to Jinki, pulling out his cell phone. Jinki nodded, frozen to the spot as Minho walked away slowly, so as to not draw attention.

This, Jinki decided, wasn't a particularly good dream.

He tried to make himself as inconspicuous as he could, and settled for taking a few steps to the side to stare at a window display. He looked casually to the side. Minho had disappeared out of his field of vision, but he had a perfect view of the man in the green shirt. The other man was frowning, his shoulders tense. The man in the green shirt said something that made the blond man frown even harder, shake his head and pull away. Jinki saw the man in the green shirt step forward, and the blond man recoil before nodding, taking a step towards the car reluctantly.

Jinki had given up all pretence of window shopping to stare. He saw Minho at maybe the same time he saw the gun, maybe a little after, because if he'd seen him before maybe he wouldn't have started running towards the two men. "Leave him alone!" he yelled.

The man in the green shirt stared at him. Pulled out the gun.

Dying, Jinki found, really hurt. Even in a dream.