WARNING: This chapter includes gore, not in a too graphic way (I think), but it's still gore. Please bear that in mind before you continue reading.

The world was dyed in a dim orange that reminded him of his childhood. His grandmother had owned a dusty old-fashioned lamp with an orange shade. Its light had been barely enough to illuminate her living room and whenever there was anything she wanted to read, she had always gone to the kitchen instead.

The scenery around him was just like his grandmother's living room. The only shape he could really make out at first was that of Chanyeol right next to him. He looked tense.

"This," Chanyeol muttered. "This is..."

Something dropped to the ground a few metres away from them.

"Jongin," Chanyeol said urgently and held onto the sleeve of his jacket. "Did you get permission to come here?"

Something else dropped to the ground, this time right next to them. It appeared to be a head severed from its body. Its eyes were wide open in silent shock.

Kai looked up. Over them was a floating island made of a thousand single pieces. Every once in a while one of them fell down and landed on the soft ground with a thud.
 
It was an island made of corpses.

"Jongin, please," Chanyeol said and pulled his sleeve. He tried to force him back into consciousness. He already had much better control than Kai himself. "Do you have any idea what you're doing here?"

A shadow appeared over them and they jumped out of the way of a torso splashing on the ground. They got covered in tiny drops of blood.

"," Chanyeol cursed under his breath. "This is bad. We shouldn't be here. We have to get out before he notices us."

There it was. The first mistake.

"Before who notices us?" Kai asked, still staring at the island above them. "Do you know whose dream this is?"

It probably sounded like a rhetorical question. Chanyeol frowned at him, obviously not sure how to react. But he had already said too much, accidentally fuelling Kai's doubts even more.

"You don't, do you?" Kai asked and forced himself to smile. "Because I have absolutely no idea. So you can't know either, can you?"

Chanyeol's eyes widened for split seconds. "I have no clue," he said and looked away. "But it looks dangerous."

He lied.

And Kai's mind stopped working, like a computer infested with a virus. He couldn't process any information, as if he was frozen. If not for Chanyeol, he would have been knocked down by the torso that had somehow grown limbs.

"Park Chanyeol, I told you, didn't I?" a voice roared. "Get the hell out of my head."

Even more body parts dropped from the floating island and formed an army of mismatching warriors.

And Kai laughed. This was the end.

---

"You know, my dear Kai," the impostor had begun thoughtfully while looking out of Kai's window. He had invited himself over for dinner, and Kai had found it hard to decline. Whatever the impostor had to say would probably either be a trap or sheer mockery, but something about his behaviour had put Kai off. "I took the liberty to look at some of the minds you left behind. Baekhyun's grandmother found you really impressive."

"So?" Kai had asked while trying to hide his uneasiness. He couldn't think of a reason for the impostor to be interested in his doings, not after making it clear that Kai had no way of hurting him in any way.

"So I also saw afterimages of that odd companion you always bring with you." He had turned around, giving Kai another of those unreadable mocking expressions. "At first I thought it was just part of your imagination. It smelled of you."

"So?" Kai had asked. That the impostor knew of the Chanyeol in his dreams hadn't been new to him.

The impostor laughed.

"Oh, my poor boy, just how many hints do you need until you understand my point?" he asked and shook his head. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed. The brighter your companion gets, the more you fade away. Don't you find that a little unusual for a dream image? If it really is a dream image that is."

Kai had looked the impostor in the eye for a few seconds, before he had turned away. He wasn't an idiot. He had of course noticed it.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he had said.

At first he had thought that it was the lack of proper sleep. His dreams were all over the place. He had trouble focussing and couldn't influence the things he saw and thought about.

After a while he had realized that he was getting weaker.

Chanyeol meanwhile just seemed to grow more and more sharp. He took the lead. He did things Kai slowly became unable to do.

It wasn't normal and Kai knew that. But he didn't want to jump to conclusions. The one thing that always hindered his suspicions from growing was the fact that Chanyeol never talked about anything Kai couldn't know. He always seemed to have those limits, proving that he was just part of his imagination.

"How about testing the image, just to make sure?" the impostor had grinned, apparently aware of Kai's trail of thoughts. "Let's show it a mind you know nothing about, a mind the real Park Chanyeol knew really well."

Kai hadn't wanted to agree to the plan.

"That's not a problem, is it? I'm sure we would both feel better after confirming the identity of your dream image."

In the end Kai had found himself in front of an unfamiliar house, accompanied by the impostor. The moon shone bright enough for Kai to clearly see the shape of the building.

"See that window over there?" the impostor asked and Kai eyes followed the direction his hand pointed at. "The one inside that room should answer all our questions."

It had obviously been another trap.

---

"Jongin, wake up," Chanyeol yelled and held onto his arm, but Kai couldn't stop laughing. Chanyeol already knew his new abilities. He knew that he could force Kai to do things, that he could create the world they were in, that he was the powerful one now. He had a consciousness of his own, so there was no doubt that he himself wasn't confused at all about his state.

It was laughable to think that Kai himself had realized it so late.

He pulled himself free, and took a few steps backwards, right into the open arms of one of the patched up creatures of the dream they were in. Its hand dug deep into his shoulder.

"Jongin," Chanyeol gasped, but Kai was still laughing, even when creature ripped off his arm. Chanyeol wanted to leap forward, when someone took his wrist and held him back.

"Get out," a short boy said with a sad expression. His voice sounded like distant thunder.

Chanyeol panicked. "I'm not here because I want to," he muttered, still staring at Kai who sat down on the soft ground and kicked his severed arm, endlessly glad that he was still in control enough to prevent himself from thinking of it as real.

The short boy scoffed. "Right," he said. "You're here by accident, aren't you? So you accidentally brought your friend." He looked at Kai in disgust. "Do you think this is a joke? Do you think I like to see these things in my sleep? I just want to lead a normal life."

"Look," Chanyeol said hastily. "I told you that-." He paused. "I mean, I know that-."

"What?" the boy asked.

Chanyeol avoided his gaze.

"What?" the boy asked again. This time the ground under them shook.

But Chanyeol still didn't say a word. He quietly pulled at Kai's mind, obviously still hoping to find an easy way out. If Kai woke up, he wouldn't have to give any explanations, or so he obviously thought.

"What?" the boy yelled and large parts of the island dropped to the ground. Kai laughed at the idea that he soon wouldn't be able to tell his own arm apart from the others, and Chanyeol shielded his head. The boy meanwhile furiously turned to Kai. "And what's so funny?"

Another warrior dragged Kai up. Chanyeol gave him a pleading glance, so he said, "Everything." The warrior held him high above his feet. "Everything about this is funny. This has to be the funniest dream I have ever seen."
The warrior teared off his other arm. Blood fell from the sky like rain.

It really was funny in a way.

He had known that the dream he was to enter wouldn't be pretty, or else the impostor wouldn't have chosen it. It would have to be something that could force Chanyeol into a corner, something that was overwhelming enough.
But he still hadn't expected something as simple and brutal.

Chanyeol tried to chase the warriors away but there were too many of them. They couldn't hurt him unless he allowed them to, so he stayed unscathed. That in response fuelled the boy's anger even more, because none of his attacks on Chanyeol were of any real use.

Kai meanwhile was ripped apart and Chanyeol didn't get close enough to help him.

It was funny, because the situation forced Chanyeol to wonder just what Kai's aim was.

Did he willingly get hurt? Was that why he wouldn't wake up?

Or was he so weak that he couldn't defend himself? Because Chanyeol had stolen all his energy?

It was when Kai's head fell off that Chanyeol snapped.
"Stop," he quietly said. Sparks formed around him. He gave in.
"Kim Jongdae, just stop it already," he exclaimed. "I thought you were scared that you could turn into your brother. I thought that's why you keep seeing this stuff."

The rain around them stopped.

"So why do you hurt people in your dream? Isn't that exactly what you're so scared of? Isn't that what your brother would do?"

Lightning blinded them. The world changed like a film that burnt away. White flames ate up the picture, leaving only brown spots.

The floating island disappeared, as did the corpses around them.

Kai was back to the way he was.

"I'm really sorry, okay?" Chanyeol continued. "I shouldn't have seen all this to begin with, but honestly? Do you think the images will disappear if you keep them hidden? Do you think your dreams will change if you act like there's nothing wrong?"

He avoided to look at Kai.

"You can't just avoid the truth."

The boy looked miserable, and Kai sighed.

"It's not Chanyeol's fault that we're here," he said. "I'm really sorry."

He didn't wait for any explanations or anymore awkward situations. It was wrong for him to have come, but he wasn't in the mood to care about any of the things he had seen. Dream were private, so by barging into a really sensitive one he had done something unforgivable. He didn't want that realization to sink in.

Outside the impostor grinned at him.

"I assume you found your answer?"

---

"Jongin," Chanyeol immediately said once Kai had fallen asleep. He looked as if he had waited for him.

They were in Kai's room. The walls broke in, followed by a mayhem of memories. One of them was the floating island.

"Look, that thing we saw," Chanyeol said and stared at the threatening monstrosity over them, as if he feared another shower of body parts. "The dream, it belongs to my friend. He's really not a bad guy. His brother had a problem, and he hurt some people. He's getting treatment now, but my friend, he-."

"That's none of my business," Kai said in a bored tone, and closed his eyes. Maybe he could fall asleep if he really wanted to. He had no reason to be awake any longer.

Chanyeol was quiet for a while, before he muttered, "You had no right to go there. I thought you respected other people's privacy. I thought you learned that after..." He trailed off, probably aware that he reached a dangerous topic.

"After what?" Kai asked, still unwilling to open his eyes. He didn't want to see the mess that was his weakened mind. "After that one time when you made me come with you? When you ran away and hid, because we encountered a parasite?"

Chanyeol didn't answer.

Kai sat up, just in time to watch his oldest sister who trashed her bike when she was hit by Kai's arm falling from the sky. It was ridiculous.

"Talking about parasites," he said and suppressed a humourless laugh. "How much time do I have left? Before my soul dies, I mean?"

Chanyeol avoided his glance.

"I mean, that's your current aim, isn't it? You need a body, so you take mine. Because you know my name. Because that's really a lot more comfortable than to take back yours. That other parasite is not as naive as I am, right? Lucky you."

He didn't know when he started raising his voice but his words echoed in his dream. All the images were swept away. Only Chanyeol remained.

"It must have been really funny to chase me around all those dreams. Did you enjoy it? To give me stupid hints? Although you knew that there was no point in looking for you? Because you were there all the time?"

Chanyeol winced. "That's not..." he began.

"That's not what? Not the truth?" Kai scoffed. "Then what? So you're not actually..."

He frowned.

"Not actually..."

The world became blank.

"A parasite," he quietly said.