I’m alone at a dark and barren place. I look around, but I see no one in sight. I can feel my heart pumping loud against my chest, screaming.

            Then, somewhere in the distance, I see someone.

            I see him.

            “Kai!” I shout. Tears begin to fall down my cheeks. “Kai! I’m over here!”

            But he wasn’t coming. I started to run, but no matter how hard I ran I couldn’t get to him. He stays fixed at one spot, frozen.

            “Jongin!” I switch to his real name, as if saying so would prompt him to come to me. “KIM JONGIN!”

            Something suddenly appeared next to him. It was a gun.

            And it was pointing straight at him.

            “No…” My legs moved as fast as they could to catch up to him. I don’t think I’ve ever ran so hard in my entire life. “No, NO!”

            I could see Kai’s face, looking straight at me. A single tear fell down his cheek.

            BOOM!

            I immediately wake up. I was sweating, my mind was frazzled.

            But I was alert.

            I dashed over to my closet and changed quickly into a sweater and decent pants. I slid on my tennis shoes because I knew that I was going to need something comfortable.

            My mind was racing as I drove. Hands tightly gripped to the steering wheel, all I could think about was that I needed to see him. I needed to see him now. I needed to know if he was okay.

            It was midnight, hardly anybody was out. As I drove around downtown I realized that I didn’t even know where I was going. I didn’t know where Kai lived. He wouldn’t be out on the streets at this hour anyways, but I needed to try.

            I just needed to know.

            I took a turn to the mental hospital. The front light was on, a receptionist on her night shift. I barged in.

            “Excuse me,” I demanded. “But may I please know where that Kim Jongin boy lives?”

            “Kim Jongin?” the nurse asks. From the way her eyes lit up, she probably had the hots for him also. “The dark one with the beanies, right?”

            “Yes,” I said.

            “I’m sorry. But I cannot give out personal information.”

            “Please,” I pressed. “I think he’s in danger. He may be in trouble. I need to see him.”

            “Well,” the receptionist said, “are you related to him in any way?”

            “Um…” Time is ticking. Think! “Yes,” I blurted out, “yes I am. I’m his girlfriend.”

            “Oh. You were with him here the other day, right?”

            “Yes.”

            The receptionist looked around, as if to make sure she wasn’t going to get caught, before going through the files. I even helped her and tried blocking the desk as much as possible. She got up and went to the back room.

            It was then that I spotted a suspicious figure in the distance.

            The mustache. It was the same doctor that Jackson and I had run into on the day after Taemin had sent me the codes.

            I followed him down the hall. He turned a corner and I could hear him talking to someone. I leaned against the wall, out of sight.

            “Where should I take this?”

            “Take it to boss,” another voice replied. “We’ve relocated to the Northeast building. We’re probably going to stay there for a while too, since it’s a pretty good place. There was too much of a rat problem at the other area.”

            Northeast building?

            “Hmm. You shouldn’t be here.”

            I whirl around to find a frighteningly tall guy staring down right at me. His arms were crossed, his eyes evil.

            I then noticed that he looked oddly familiar. My eyes widened.

            The burning building.

            I made a move to run but he grabbed my arm in an instant and threw me against the wall. My skull felt like it was being broken into pieces as I struggled to escape, but to no avail. My eyes grew heavy, head throbbing, and I was out.

            “How much did she hear from you?”

            “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

            “Because if she heard you give away our location, we have no choice but to kill her. We can’t switch locations again. There’s nowhere else to go that’s also near town except for this place.”

            “No. You can’t kill her.”

            “Ah. Jongin, you’re here.”

            “Don’t kill her. Please don’t kill her. I’ll convince her it was a dream. She won’t take anything seriously, she won’t remember anything. She’ll listen to me.”

             “That might not be enough.”

            “Where is she? Let me see her.”

            “No.” 

            “LET ME SEE HER.”

            “You could give it up now. End the suffering, and kill her for me.”

            “No.”

 “So you would go this far, to get beat up to death, to practically sacrifice your life, to spare hers?”

            “I would do anything.”

            I was at a hospital. Kai was sitting next to me, holding my hand.

            “Hyemi,” he said.

            “Kai…” Seeing his face, my mind suddenly raced back to the dream I had of him getting shot, going out to look for him downtown, getting attacked at the mental hospital. “Did you save me?”

            “Of course I did, you idiot. You were lucky that I was watching my mom for the night and heard you.” He bit his lip. “What the hell were you thinking? What were you even doing out in the middle of the night by yourself? Dangerous people are everywhere, you know. Even at hospitals.”

            I remembered the guy’s face, then realized that this had been his second time attacking me: the burning building, now the mental hospital. Could this be a pattern? And the strange doctor too…

            “…I mean I knew you were stupid but not that stupid,” Kai went on.

            “I-I had a dream,” I said, and even thinking back to it sent shivers down my spine. “I had a dream that you got shot. And there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t get to you.”

            Kai pulled down the sleeves of his sweater. “What was I doing in that dream?” he asked calmly.

            “You were just standing there,” I said. “You weren’t moving.”

            “That sounds like a really stupid dream.”

            “Really?”

            “Yes. You’re being ridiculous,” Kai said. “Because realistically…I wouldn’t be just standing there. I would be running to you.”

Kai’s grip on my hand tightened, and it was only then that I realized I’d been holding onto his hand, too.

Seeing him sitting there in his sweater, with his chocolate brown eyes full of sincerity, I felt myself lean into him almost magnetically. I wrapped my arms around him tight, and I didn’t care if he wouldn’t hug me back. It felt so good to hug him, to breathe in the scent that was Kim Jongin. “Please don’t leave me,” I whispered to him. “Don’t ever leave me.”

He hugged me back just as tightly. “I would never leave you,” he said. “Never.”