----then

They first met because of Chanyeol's bad habit of disregarding other people's privacy. One of his usual pretexts was that there surely must have been a good reason for his ability, that reason being that he was supposed to use it. Things he could do were things he was supposed to do, or so he had always liked to explain.
That people could lie and kill and steal, too, but weren't supposed to, had never seemed to occur to him.

The truth was that Chanyeol simply enjoyed entering dreams. He wanted to pry, so he constantly came up with flimsy justifications. In a way that had actually always been the worst of his habits.

Chanyeol liked to wander dreams. The less he knew the person, the better. He liked the thrill.
So when they met, they were strangers. The only thing that connected them was the fact that they happened to attend the same school.

It had been the summer of his first year in high school, when Kai had fallen asleep in his classroom after his last lesson. He had oddly always felt a lot more relaxed in school. At home everyone had always been much too noisy.
That spring his second oldest sister had developped a latent dreamwalking ability, so although she couldn't counsciously use it and although their grandfather didn't see the need to take her serious, had it been especially annoying for Kai who couldn't just see her constantly barging into his dreams the moment he fell asleep, as something that just belonged into his mind. Nothing could stop his sister, so the only place where he could sleep, was a place without her.

The last things he had seen before he had finally nodded off were the orange evening sky and the surface of his uneven desk someone had doodled a helmetted superhero on.
The first things he had seen of his dream world were the blank sky and the blank surface of his desk, dull versions of his actual surroundings. Clean, empty spaces without life, there was nothing else he wanted to see.

He had just closed his eyes once more, when someone had asked, "So, if you fall asleep in your dream, what kind of dream do you see?"

He had put his arms over his head to block out the noise, because he had frankly had it with people who interrupted his sleep.

"I mean, do you just see another classroom and another you? Does it go on forever? So does each you have to wake up before you're back in the real world?" that someone had continued.

He had sat up in annoyance.
"If I fall asleep in my dream, I just sleep. There are no dreams in my dream. That's the point."
He had given the intruder an irritated look, and it had only been then that he had noticed that something clearly was wrong. He was in full control over his dream world. There couldn't possibly be any voices, unless they absolutely didn't belong there.
And that boy giving him a curious glance most definitely hadn't been part of his imagination. His school uniform had been the same, but his face had been unfamiliar.

"Don't you like to dream?" the boy had asked and had seemed very oblivious of the fact that Kai wasn't normal.

It was maybe exactly because Kai's dream hadn't seemed to be particularly special, that he hesitated. Shyness was probably the wrong word, but it had taken him a little aback that someone like him didn't notice a difference. That was maybe also the reason why his sister walked through his dreams as if it was no big deal. Despite his ability he probably just was perfectly average.

"Dreams tire me out," he had finally said, and the boy had nodded as if he understood. Kai had known that kind of behaviour. He himself had entered more than enough dreams in which people had explained the most ridiculous things to him. To them everything made sense, it was their mind after all, so he had got used to acting as if he, too, understood what they meant. For the boy it must have been the same.

The boy had looked around, probably not very impressed by Kai's mind's lack of detail and imagination, and had been about to walk out of the room, like a customer who had realized that a shop didn't sell anything he wanted. Before he had a chance to leave though, Kai had shut the door, and barred the windows.
It had been little more than a small gesture to demonstrate that his world was exactly the way he had wanted it to be, but it had thrown the boy off balance enough for him to jerk around in surprise.

Kai had tried hard to surpress a smile at the boy's panicked expression, when he said, "This isn't a public space, you know?"

----now

The last thing he saw before he fell asleep was the giant vinyl bag of the person who stood in front of his seat inside the crammed subway train. Various noises and the smell of sweat filled the air. It was summer again, and the train felt like a refrigerator full of barely edible food.

The first things he saw of his dream were the empty train and the blank sky outside. There were no people, no noise, no smell. He was about to close his eyes again, when someone next to him said, "Come on, Jongin, this is a train. What's the point of falling into a deep sleep here? You'll just miss your stop."

He opened his eyes in shock. He knew that voice. He knew it much too well.

But it wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

"What's wrong?" Chanyeol asked and snorted at the weird expression Kai must have given him.

His barriers didn't hold, and part of the world outside started to sink in. In the distance he heard the rumbling of the train and the chattering of the people around him. Next to him someone must have yelled something into his phone. "Don't make me tell you again. I will sue you if you don't return that money to me," he heard. At this rate he could wake up any minute.

"What the hell, Kim Jongin?" Chanyeol asked and looked around as the ghosts of the real train passengers started to appear. The man who sat in his place in the real world held a newspaper in front his chest. "I thought you were good at this."

"You're not real," Kai said and stared at his hands. They were shaking.

Chanyeol shrugged. "So?" he asked and sounded amused. "I'm not the one who summoned me. You're the one who wants me here."

How?

Why?

He was in control over this. He knew how to make sure that he wouldn't see anything in his dreams he didn't want to see.

That Chanyeol next to him wasn't the real one, he wasn't the one he lost. He also wasn't the one who had taken his place.

He was not more than a ghost, an idea Kai had made up in his mind, a virus in his system.

"Isn't 'virus' a bit of a harsh word?" Chanyeol frowned, and Kai forced himself to concentrate on the noises and the smell and the cold air of the train's air conditioning. He forced himself to wake up.

"I mean, this is totally not my fault," Chanyeol said meekly.

And Kai woke up.