"Hey, Kai," Chanyeol's impostor yelled when he saw him entering the school gate, and waved happily. Kai ignored him. He didn't want to deal with yet another Chanyeol version, even if it only was his face. "Kai, come on, I'll only embarrass you even more if you don't stop now. I have more than enough memories of you I don't mind sharing with your classmates."

Kai slowed down enough for him to catch up.

"Was that so hard?" the impostor smiled broadly and put his arm around his shoulder to make sure that he was the one who set their pace. When Kai obviously wasn't willing to talk to him, the impostor just cleared his throat and continued, "Well, anyway, my dearest Kai, there's something I'm inclined to ask. You see, my very dear friend Baekhyun told me of that very interesting experiment you've tried."

Kai held his breath. He knew that thing would backfire eventually. The whole idea had been ridiculous, just like something the real Chanyeol would have tried. Kai was slowly losing it.

"And well, I have to admit that it certainly sounds like an interesting idea to try and combine two dreams, but," the impostor grinned, and his face turned into a sly grimace. "You see, it puts me in quite an awkward spot if my friend sees me in a dream, and if I have no recollection of such a thing to have happened. Is that your latest trick, Kai? Do you think you can create a brandnew me?"

"It was an accident," Kai said,  not because he wanted to up to the impostor, but because he had done a grave mistake. It was one thing for the Chanyeol in his mind to follow him into the dreams of strangers, but he should have known that it was too dangerous to pass messages between Baekhyun and his grandmother. They both knew Chanyeol much too well.

But they hadn't given him much of a choice.

---

"It's her birthday, so I wrote her a song," Baekhyun had said. Kai had been about to mention that he wouldn't sing, but Baekhyun had apparently been prepared. He had taken a video of himself and had handed him his camera, explaining that if Kai could send his grandmother his tests and other hand-written documents, he surely would have been able to send a short video as well. That Kai needed to memorize everything he took with him, Baekyhun obviously hadn't realized.

It had taken him quite an effort, but it had gone relatively well. Baekhyun's grandmother had been happy, not only because of the video, but also because she wasn't just visited by Kai but also by her 'silly boy'. She clearly preferred Chanyeol.

If Kai had limited himself to that one visit, nothing would have happened. Whether Baekhyun's grandmother saw Chanyeol or not didn't matter that much, because she had no way of telling anyone.

But then the Chanyeol in his mind just had to have that stupid idea.
"You know, your memory is really scary," he had said when they sat on a bench in Baekhyun's grandmother's memory, watching a past scene of the whole family celebrating her birthday. There was cake, and kimbab, and everyone laughed. As usual in her memory, the sky looked like smoke. "I mean, she said so herself, didn't she? Ever since you became the messenger, she even has pieces of the real world in her dream. I probably couldn't do that."

Kai had shrugged. "It's just a matter of training. Once you have control over your mind, you just need to learn how to make things appear."

Chanyeol had nodded and kicked a pebble that disappeared into nothingness. They had sat at the outskirts of the dream, so everything around them had been a little fuzzy. "I guess that's the reason why I'm here as well." He had looked at his own hand and the way it was perfect and clear. There was nothing vague about Chanyeol's appearance, so it even fooled Baekhyun's grandmother. He was just as vivid as Kai himself.

"I guess, yeah," Kai had said awkwardly, because it scared him to think that his mind could subconsciously create something like that.

"So I've been thinking," Chanyeol had then continued and had put on his old mischievous expression. "If you can do all these things, maybe you can also take a tiny piece of a dream with you into another dream."

Kai had frowned, not yet aware just what kind of craziness Chanyeol had in mind.

---

The young version of Baekhyun's grandmother looked weirdly unstable, a little the way holographic images in old science fiction movies did. She looked like the copy of an old copy of a video taken with a cheap camera.

"Is that really my grandmother?" Baekhyun had asked sceptically. They sat in a messy room that was upside down and that 'looked very much like Baekhyun', at least according to Chanyeol.

The young version of his grandmother had halted her speech with a comical facial expression and awkwardly spread out arms. Like a video Kai could only stop and replay her message. He wasn't the kind of genius who could take her with him, so his only choice had been to memorize her words and her gestures.

"Seriously, Byun Baekhyun," Chanyeol had said angrily. "If you interrupt her again, we won't show you the end of what she said."

"Sorry," Baekhyun had said meekly. "It's just..." He had looked at the figure of the young woman with the bright smile. "She looks so different."

Chanyeol had shrugged. "In your dream you're free to decide your appearance. Although most people just stick with the way they look in real life." He had mustered Baekhyun, who raised an eyebrow at him, and had added, "You're taller in your dream."

Baekhyun had been about to protest, when Chanyeol had elbowed him and gestured Kai to continue.

---

The whole thing had by far not worked the way Chanyeol had probably imagined it. Kai couldn't take parts of dreams, he could just reproduce things he saw.

Still, that itself already felt like a revelation, because that idea had never occurred to him before. His grandfather had told him how to behave in dreams and how to design his own dream spaces. Rather than to form new things, he had always tried to clear his mind of anything that could have bothered him.

But Chanyeol had never followed fixed rules. He didn't have a mentor, so most of the things he could do were based on his silly experiments.

Kai sometimes missed his spontaneous ideas, and the opportunities that came with  them.
It was maybe for that stupid reason that Kai agreed to Chanyeol's plan.

Later he realized that he had got carried away.

He couldn't possibly save anyone, if he couldn't even keep control over himself.

---

"Look," the impostor whispered with a wide grin, and pulled Kai even closer. "My dearest Kai, I know you're not an idiot. You know how this whole dream business works, and, honestly, I don't want to clash with you. You and I could be wonderful friends."

Kai's classmates walked by and gave them an odd look, but the impostor didn't mind.

"So I hope you give up that silly hope that this body's original soul still exists. I'm sure you must have realized that it's much too late already. A soul can't exist without a body, and this body is mine now."

He uttered the words Kai wanted to hear the least.

He didn't want anyone to confirm that suspicion.

"Trust me, I know. I have stolen more than enough bodies like this. I personally witnessed every single soul that withered away. Yes, this soul got away, but where could it possibly go? It takes more than some guts to steal a body, if you're nothing but a hurt soul. And that's what he was when he ran."

"Shut up," Kai muttered and the impostor shook his head in amusement.

"Fine," he said slyly and walked away, only to turn back midway. "But please, my dearest Kai, at least leave the dreams of my friends alone. Whatever delusions you show them are not closer to the real Park Chanyeol than I am."