----replay

"Stop," Chanyeol yelled when another explosion filled Kai's dream. Fire surrounded them and made the air flare. There was no heat, just flickering brightness.

Kai shivered.

"Honestly, Jongin, what's the point of looking at the memory over and over again?" Chanyeol asked and watched another copy of himself that ran away.

"Maybe there's a clue somewhere," Kai said. Another him fell backwards at the sight of the wall of fire in front of him and woke up. Everything around them turned black.

----rewind

The memory began with Chanyeol who told him of an elderly man in his neighbourhood.

"Something about him is really fishy, kind of as if the things he says and his expressions don't match." He shook his arms to explain what seemed hard for him to put into words. "It's like his mind doesn't belong into his body."

"Probably because it wasn't his to begin with," the Chanyeol of Kai's dream said jokingly, but no one paid him any attention.

There was a short break consisting of white noise.

Chanyeol of his memory appeared by himself. "Oh, come on, Kim Jongin," he pleaded. "Don't act like a girl. What could possibly happen? It's just a dream. It can't hurt you."

It was the day Kai had agreed to come with him to have a look at his neighbour's dream.

"I should have stopped you," Kai muttered and looked at the cheerful Chanyeol of his memory. Chanyeol of his dream sighed.

The world around them turned black.

"You know, it wasn't your fault," Chanyeol of his dream said. "I would have gone and told the thing my name either way. I didn't think it mattered."

"Maybe," Kai said. "But I was there. So I should have done something about it."

A little girl appeared. She was the one they had found inside the old man's dream.

"What's your name?" she asked shyly.

"It's a trap," Kai said, but Chanyeol of his memory answered anyway. He had barely told her his name, when the walls of the old man's dream world broke. They stood in the middle of an inferno.

"Naive little boy," the girl said in a roaring voice that filled the air like a million sirens. "Has no one ever told you to be more careful?"

They watched as Chanyeol of his memory panicked and tried to run away. The flames were at his heels.

And then he was suddenly gone. He had jumped into another dream as was his specialty.

The girl clicked her tongue and turned to Kai.

"I will take his body," she smiled innocently. "He opened the door for me. He can't come back, no matter how far he runs."

----error

Chanyeol helped him up.

"There is no clue," he said. "And it won't do you any good if you keep looking at it."

Kai looked at the Chanyeol of his memory who disappeared again. And again and again and again.

"I mean, come on, no matter where I went that day, do you really think I'd stay there?" Chanyeol asked. "This is just you punishing yourself. None of that was your fault."

Kai laughed humourlessly.

"What part of me are you representing anyway? Cowardice? Reason? Because with you around it's only getting worse."

Chanyeol sighed.

"I mean, if I could, I would just go to sleep and forget about all this mess," Kai continued. "But I can't because the real you is who knows where and I'm losing my mind and this is all just..."

The flames at the walls of his dream. They turned white and hurt his eyes in their brightness.

"I need every hint I can get. I need you back or none of this will end."