Giggles filtered through her sleepy hearing and she felt herself be shaken awake. Seohyun resisted as much as she could – the dream she was being pulled from was too good to be interrupted. She groaned and slapped away the offending hand on her shoulder and tried to burrow back into her dreams. But the laughter around her only grew louder and she heard the teacher’s disapproving grunt.

Seohyun gave up on her vanishing dream and grudgingly opened her eyes. She was in her night study classes; her university admission exams were rapidly approaching and her parents had forced her into the extra tuition. However, the classes were both boring and draining. Seohyun only went for the socialising and coffee trips after the classes.

“So...” Yuri jabbed Seohyun’s ribs as they made their way down to the cafe after class, “What was it?” Seohyun played dumb and raised an eyebrow at her friend. Yuri rolled her eyes and begged her to tell her the dream. “C’mon! You have the gift of precog – your dreams come true! What did you see?”

Seohyun grinned wickedly and told her about a grassy field, about sliding across the frost as if she was ice-skating. “And just when I thought about ice-skating,” Seohyun whispered to Yuri as they left the cafe with their steaming coffee, “my hand was taken by another person and we danced like ice-skating partners. Oh my god! He was so handsome! Tall and slim body, long fingers, white skin ... and his eyes! They were dark and haunted – I swear, Yuri! You would’ve fallen for him in a heartbeat! He spoke to me, in his deep voice. He said...” and Seohyun stopped and leant forward, a fanatical look in her eyes as she mimicked his voice, “Baby, it is cold outside tonight.”

The two high school girls exploded with high-spirited giggles, causing other late-night city-goers to stare at them. Yuri pulled Seohyun back into their walk down the street and complained that her dream sounded like a fantasy rather than a precognition. Seohyun shrugged and said that she could never tell the difference but she hoped that this one was at least part true. “I mean, how romantic would it be?!” She squealed with the delighted hope of someone who had been out of a relationship for too long.

They parted ways at Yuri’s bus stop and Seohyun continued home on foot. She was passing by her high school when she realised that she had forgotten her textbook on her desk. She sighed and tripped the lock on the front gate. All the seniors knew how to trick open the gate; it was how some of the school cliques got inside for their underground gatherings. Seohyun trudged up the stairs and towards her classroom. She the light switch to reveal small individual desks with plastic yellow chairs that were facing the blackboard in haphazard lines; and her lonely textbook forgotten near the window.

She was reclaiming her textbook when movement in the corner of her eye grabbed her attention. From the window she could see down onto one of the sporting fields. A low-lying mist was gathering at the edges of the field, slightly obscuring the dancing shadow. Seohyun frowned and narrowed her eyes to better see the person and gasped out loud when she recognised his form. Her dream boy.

Seohyun hastily shut her bag and raced out of the classroom and down the hallway. She jumped the stairs and ran out towards the field. She didn’t want to be red in the face and panting for breath when she met him, but then she did not want to miss him at all. However, she did stop at the edge of the field when she got there and stared, wonderstruck, at the lithe dancer. He was as she had dreamed him to be.

Seohyun watched him dance a waltz by himself, humming the soft tune to match his movements. It was when he twirled about the spot that noticed his audience. He gave out a little chuckle and Seohyun’s heart both stopped and raced at his smile. The dancer held out a hand towards her and it was without hesitation that she stepped forward and accepted it. Together, they moved across the field like ice-skaters performing to the stars in the cloudless night sky. The dream boy continued his humming of the melody until at the end, when he leant down to whisper in her ear, “Baby, it is cold outside tonight.” Seohyun shyly nodded her agreement and led him towards the classrooms.

-- ????? --

‘It is 7 AM. Good morning and GET UP!’ The lump beneath the blankets groaned and stirred to life.

‘It is 7:05 AM. I say, GET UP!’ A head with frizzy auburn hair popped out of its blanket cacoon and blearily looked about the sunlit room. He found it to be too bright and proceeded to crawl back into the warmth of his bed.

‘It is 7:10 AM. GET UP YOU LAZY PIECE OF !’

A thin, white hand s its way from out beneath the blankets and snapped its fingers. The alarm on the other side of the room switched off. “For your information, it is one y and I don’t want to,” Taemin defended himself from his bed.

Five minutes later and his mobile phone alarm went off. It had been left on top of the kitchen table the night before but it was still loud enough to annoy Taemin from his nap. He clapped his hands towards the kitchen and the phone lifted off from the table and buried itself into the sofa cushions.

Ten minutes after that, his TV powered on and the news broadcast filled the apartment. Taemin groaned into his pillow and finally rolled out of bed. He shuffled into his bathroom, yawning as he listened to the major events that had occurred the previous day: politicians, natural disasters, deaths, and the release of a captive tiger back into the wild. He picked up the newspaper from his front door and browsed the major headlines, his mind alert for anything interesting. By 8 AM, Taemin was kicking his feet into his boots, his phone snug in his back pocket, and joined the city’s morning bustle.

Taemin stepped into one of the local cafes on his way to The Firm, where he now worked. He stood at the end of the line and ignored the looks he was receiving from the female patrons. A news bulletin was being announced on the radio – the body of a high school student was just found with suspicions of foul play. Taemin hummed under his breath as he thought about whom would be given that particular case; he had just wrapped up the murder of the socialite and was now bored out of his mind. But Taeyeon had not called him about it, so it must have been assigned to Yoochun’s team.

With his daily coffee and the barista’s phone number scrawled across the cup (every day they lived with the hope that he would call one of them), Taemin ran up the steps of The Firm and waved his morning greetings to the guard and receptionist. He felt the faint mental protrusion knocking on the edge of his mind and he dropped his mental shield to allow the telepath to speak to him.

“Good morning Taemin,” the receptionist’s voice echoed in his mind. Taemin gave her another wave as he stepped inside the elevator. He pressed the button for his level and waited for it to move. “The Director would like to see you, something about having a new project for you,” she informed him and Taemin thanked her for the message. The elevator stopped and opened out onto his level but Taemin ignored it and pressed for the top-most level that would take him to see the company’s Director.

The elevator doors opened to a spacious room with a few chairs and tables scattered about the floor. Taemin could see the city sprawl out into the horizon from the roof-to-floor windows. To the left of the elevator was a hallway that led to the offices of the various directors that ran the operations of The Firm. The Firm was a private consulting agency and consisted only of those with super-human powers: precognition, empathy, and telepathy. There were other talents but they had less usefulness within The Firm, as The Firm was a detective agency. They were given the hardest criminal cases and sometimes did work for the city’s justice system to keep the court trials honest (a trained empath or telepath would be able to detect lies of everyone present, including the judges).

“Taemin,” a commanding voice addressed him from the hallway. Taemin turned to face the svelte brunette and gave her his best smile with his bow of greeting. Taeyeon’s eyes glittered with amusement and beckoned him to follow her.

She led him to a conference room that was occupied by two other people. Taemin bowed a greeting to Tiffany, one of the associate directors. Sitting next to her was a young girl with a mane of blonde hair. There was a flash of intelligence and curiosity beneath her stunning gold eyes that unsettled Taemin. He felt the curious mental pokes on his brain and he marked her as a telepath – a rude one at that. Taeyeon introduced her as Bekka and she was now one of The Firm’s new interns; and now Taemin’s new apprentice.

Taemin turned to the Director with round eyes of protest; he worked best on his own. But Taeyeon shook her head and told him that as compensation, he was assigned the high school death case. That way, he could show Bekka how things were done at The Firm. Taeyeon’s face showed that he was not going to be able to get out of this one and Taemin only sighed and stood up to leave with his new charge. The crime had only just happened and so they would need to reach the crime scene as soon as possible. He waved Bekka to follow him and they left.

Tiffany pouted and rapped her fingernails along the table’s surface. “He took that well enough,” she said to Taeyeon, who had leant back into her seat with a sigh of relief. Both of them had expected a little more fight from their lone coyote. Taemin was one of their best operators but he often caused friction with the other agency members.

“Well, we can only hope that he continues to play nice to the end of this case,” Taeyeon replied. She blew out air from her cheeks and stared up at the ceiling, praying that she had made the right decision. According to her precognitions, the consequences would be far too great if she was wrong.