Chorong wakes up, swaying slightly in a seat in the subway. The car is packed and Naeun weighs down Chorong's shoulder, tucked into her embrace and breathing softly against her neck. Chorong can feel Naeun starting to stir and tightens her embrace. "What level of the dream are we on?" she asks into Naeun's hair once she knows the girl is fully awake.

          "The third level," Naeun replies, voice muffled by Chorong's skin. "Since the client's mind was already trained and militarized against extraction, we have even less time than on the other levels to complete the job before his projections start to attack us." She leans further into Chorong's embrace and stretches upward until the older girl can feel Naeun's lips brushing tenderly against her ear. "You're slipping, unni," she teases. Chorong snarls (pouts, really) and indignantly replies that she already knew all of that and that she was only testing her. Naeun giggles before moving downwards to place a firm kiss on Chorong's skin, pressing further into her cheek than necessary.

          Chorong smiles lovingly at Naeun and pulls the girl in for a long kiss. The projections look away. Chorong then pecks the tip of Naeun's nose before yanking the girl up as they arrive at their station. The older girl places a protective arm around Naeun's waist as they leave the subway car and a few menacing men follow them. The crowd stares after them and the two walk faster before breaking out into a sprint.

         They make a sharp left, Naeun leading the way as Chorong knocks over suitcase and stands to stall their pursuers. "There!" Naeun shouts, pointing at the door leading into the locker room. More projections have joined the pursuit and in desperation, Chorong pushes Naeun to run even faster before pulling out a grenade from her jacket pocket. The two rush into the locker room and Chorong throws the grenade before throwing her weight against the door to slam it shut. She groans as the power of the blast threw the door against her shoulder. That's going to bruise. But pain is all in the mind so she pulls out the gun tucked into the band of her jeans and shoots the two men attacking Naeun. 

         "Here, guard," Chorong directs, handing the gun to Naeun. She runs to the locker labelled A11 and before she can reach it, five men grab her. She manages to twist out of their grasp and grabs the first man she sees by the hair, slamming his head against a mirror hanging on the lockers with full force. She catches the second man in the side of the head with a whip kick before grabbing his head downwards and kneeing him three times in the face. The third man sends her flying to the floor with a punch to the cheek. Chorong grabs a shard of glass from the broken mirror and stabs the third man with it as he launches himself at her. She twists the shard in deeper before pushing his body off of her and standing up. She slits the fourth man's throat and impales the fifth man through the chin with the same shard of glass. She takes a few minutes to catch her breath, leaning against the wall, before heading to the locker.

          Chorong dials in the numbers 12, 19, 06, and 30, and yanks the locker door open. She pulls out the manila envelope resting inside and rips it open. Trembling eyes read the information on the papers found inside the envelope with breakneck speed. Afterwards, Chorong shoves the papers back inside the envelope and places it back into the locker. A thump is heard as a body hits the floor and Chorong pauses in closing the locker door. She looks up. Projections don't make any noise when they die, and if they don't make any noise then that means the body hitting the floor is- "Naeun!" Chorong shouts in horror as she sprints back to the front of the room.

          Chorong comes to a jolting halt at the sight in front of her. Lying on the floor is Naeun, a pool of red flowering on the front of her white dress shirt. A woman stands above her, Chorong's still-smoking gun in her hands. Chorong lets out a scream of anger as she surges forward and knees the woman forearm, effectively breaking the bone. She grabs the gun out of the woman's hands and shoots her point-blank in the face before dropping it and rushing over to Naeun's side.

         "Unni," Naeun breathes out heavily as Chorong takes off her jacket and presses the soft material against the wound. The older girl can hear the rattle in Naeun's lungs and prays that Bomi is fast enough to yank them out of this nightmare before Naeun dies. Before she becomes trapped in a place that Chorong isn't sure she can save her from. "Do you remember the first time you took me into a dream? Buildings kept on rising out of the ground and the sky and I said that I felt like Alice who had fallen down the rabbit hole." Naeun coughs up specks of blood and Chorong gently wipes the younger girl's lips. She can't say anything. It's like had been glued shut and her tongue had been nailed to the roof of . She wishes she can say something (but what good is 'you're going to be okay' when Chorong isn't sure it's true, when Chorong is almost sure that it isn't true?). "Unnie," Naeun starts again, chest heaving. The older girl can see the light fade from her eyes and tightens her grip on Naeun's bloody hand. "I think I'm falling down another rabbit hole. But this time," she pauses abruptly and harshly coughs. More blood surges up and Chorong's tears trickle down her face and onto Naeun's. "This time, you're not going to be there with me and I'm scared."

          "Don't be scared," Chorong says, mouth finally unstuck. "Because I'll be right there, you hear me? Naeun, don't be scared because whatever rabbit hole you fall down, I will follow you," she whispers fervently. "I will always follow you. Because I love you and because I'm a selfish person. Did you know that, Naeun? That unni is a selfish person? I take what I want and I'll take you back." Chorong presses their forehead together and smooths Naeun's eyebrow with her thumb. The younger girl brings up a trembling hand to Chorong's cheek before kissing a soft 'i love you, too' against the tear-stained skin. Chorong feels Naeun still in her embrace and finally, she lets go. Sobs rack her body as she stands up and picks up the fallen gun. 

          Chorong presses the barrel against her temple and before she can pull the trigger, music echoes through the room. She looks up in alarm. "No, no! Goddammit, Bomi! No!" she screams out in frustration to the ceiling. Chorong feels a tug at her navel and the next thing she knows, she's in a suit on a hotel room floor. Then she's in a drenched double-ed coat in the back of a van. Then she's awake, back in her seat on the plane. 

          Bomi is kneeling on the floor in front of Naeun's seat, confused as to why she wouldn't wake up. She turns to Chorong, a panicked look on her face. "Unni, why isn't Naeun waking up?"

         Chorong's eyes start to tear up in despair. She opens , then closes it, then opens it again. She barely manages to croak out, "Because she's trapped in limbo."

A/N: This story is based on the world built in Inception. So if you guys haven't watched it (you should) and I'll be explaining possible confusing points in the author's note. Inception was about breaking into people's dreams.

-When Naeun says that they were in the third level of the dream, she means that they're in a dream (1st level) inside a dream (2nd level) inside a dream (3rd level). It's a bit confusing. Also, the deeper the levels go, the longer time stretches out. So in the first level, five minutes in the real world would be an hour there. In the second level, it'd be a couple of hours. In the third level, five minutes in the real world would be 10 years.  

- Projections are the people inside of your dream. They're people that your mind created or put there. Sometimes they're real people, but most of the time they're not. The reason why they're attacking Chorong and Naeun is because Chorong and Naeun are invading that person's dreams and the projections are there to kick them out.

- A militarized mind is a mind that has been trained to protect itself against dream invasion. In the world of Inception, dreams can be broken into and some people (important people) are trained so that their minds can protect itself from that. This manifests in the form of the projections becoming an army and attacking the invaders. The mind already does that on its own, but a militarized mind can do it faster and more effectively.

- The kick is the jolt you get when you wake up out of a dream; it's what wakes you up. Like when in a dream where you're falling and then suddenly you kind of just jolt awake. In the movie, there are multiple ways to do the kick. One way is actually tipping the person over. Another is dunking them into water. The one used just now was music, like when you set your alarm to play music to wake up. Bomi is the one who put the headphones onto Chorong so she can play the song.

- Limbo is dream purgatory. Usually, when you die in a dream, you wake up in real life. But in this situation, Chorong and Naeun were under a sedative that was too heavy for being killed to wake them up from. So since the sedative is preventing them from waking up, death sends them to limbo instead. In limbo, times stretches out the longest. So, like, how five minutes in the real world would be an hour in the first and 10 years in the third, five minutes would be 50+ years in limbo. So, in this story, time will be a huge factor that Chorong worries about a lot.

-Also, I'll be incorporating a lot of quotes from the movie because I think that the lines are amazing and that the script was beautiful. Everything about that movie was great.

If you have any further questions, just ask. And since the opening scene was kind of gory, I'm willing to rate it M if you guys are uncomfortable with it. Just tell me.