Water. Vast amounts of water everywhere and anywhere he looks. It is odd to say the least. Why isn't there sea life and why can't he see a floor? Most importantly, why isn't he running out of air? This is all so strange to him. "Maybe if I swim around for a while," he thinks and forces his body forward. He cups his hands and moves his arms out and around to his sides, swimming forward slowly at first, but then at a steady speed. He still doesn't see anything. It was like in movies when someone shows up surrounded by water and they are seemingly unconscious and nothing but their body is seen.

But he does see something in the distance. It looks like a dot at first, but then it starts moving toward him rapidly. It scares him honestly and he doesn't know why he was trying to swim away from it, but he is. And he couldn't swim away fast enough because as soon as he was able to get his body moving again, the thing he seen as a dot is now in clear view.

It's another person; a male with seemingly white hair that would be blonde had they not been completely under water. He is rather attractive too now that his face can be seen and he wonders, just briefly, if he can breathe just as fine too until his full body comes into view.

A tail... This man has a tail... Is he a fish? His eyes fall to the warm reds and gold shimmering scales that moves slowly beneath the man and he reaches out to touch them, but startles when the man screams at him in return. Maybe this guy wasn't one for personal space invasion? He holds his hands up to show that he gets the point and the man smiles at him. He reaches his own hand out, but then pulls it back only to point to his mouth. "Tao," he mouths and then points to him.

Is that his name? Tao? He looks at him, curiously, and patiently waits for an answer. "Sehun," he mouths in return and Tao's eyes turn to crescents. Sehun watches as Tao reaches down to pull a scale from his tail and looks at him confused when he places the scale in his hand. Tao closes Sehun's fingers over the scale and gives him one more smile before swimming off in the direction in which he came.

•

"Oh Sehun," his mother yells from downstairs. "If you do not hurry up with that room that should've been done an hour ago, I will send your friends home."

Sehun rolls his eyes and shoves the last of the garbage he's been collecting for no good reason into the garbage bag. It's his fourth garbage bag since he started cleaning his mess of a room and he was rather proud of it. It gave his room character or as his mother would so kindly put, "it looks like the your father calls 'art'." She doesn't like the art his father makes, not even a little bit. It partly has to do with the popularity he gained from it, but it is mostly because he left her for a college student that admires him as an artist.

"Sehun, I'm not going to tell you again."

"I just finished with the last of the garbage, mom," he yells back at her while tying the last garbage bag up. He was frustrated at the yelling earlier, but now he is just annoyed by it. This always happens when his friends come over. His mother makes him clean his room spotless, all the while yelling at him, and eventually she makes them go home because she claims it to late for him to go out. But she can't do it this time because it's summer.

Summer means he is free to stay out longer than he would be allowed on a school night. Summer means middle of the night trips to the woods to camp overnight and laugh at one another's fretting over every odd sound. Summer means not having to abide by strict school year rules because your mother doesn't want you ruining your chance at a good education and a better job than what your father has. Summer means no worries. Summer means fun.

"Are you actually finished now?" asks his friend--Kim Jongin--from the doorway. He looks around the room and makes a sound of surprise when he sees cleanliness instead of a disaster. "You must really want to go on this road trip, huh?"

Sehun opens his bedroom window for the last time and heaves the garbage bag out of it. "Yes, you , I really do. I've spent eleven months saving up for this trip and now that I've got the money for it, I don't intend to let it waste away in the cookie tin I keep it hidden in."

"We are only going down to my friends house on Jeju island. That's hardly something to save up that long for."

"You say that now."

"If you guys don't hurry up, we won't get there until tomorrow morning."

That is Sehun's other friend Hongbin. Unlike Jongin who is shy, but overly confident in his appearance, Hongbin is loud, but not confident enough in his appearance. Hongbin is the oldest of the three by a year. He is eighteen and capable of driving without being accompanied an adult. That saved Sehun and Jongin on many occasions. However, he is in the same year as they are due to mental health issues last year with his last girlfriend.

There wasn't much to what happened, but Hongbin refused to talk about it. "It's not something that I like to think about," he would say and that was the end of the conversation. Sehun didn't pester him about it and went on without knowing what truly happened.

"Grab that duffle bag for me," Sehun orders Jongin and reaches over to the other side of his bed for a suitcase packed with his clothes. Jongin mumbles under his breath, but does it anyway and leaves Sehun's room. "See you in two weeks, Daisy~" Sehun bends down to kiss his pet cat and quickly leaves his room.

•

An hour they've been on the road now and they have had to stop sixteen times for Jongin to pee. Sixteen times and now they are at the seventeenth stop. "You have the bladder of a damn baby, Jongin!" Hongbin yells from the car which startles Sehun awake from the same dream that he had the prior morning. He looks around before sitting up and stretching. Hongbin looks back at him apologetically and cuts the engine. "Sorry about cutting your nap short again. I'm just really irritable without a full eight hours of sleep and Jongin's non-stop need to piss is not helping whatsoever."

"I wasn't having that great a dream anyways," he says tiredly while reaching for a bottle of water sitting on the floor behind Jongin's seat. "Don't worry about it."

"Was it the dream about that guy with the tail?"

Sehun nods after drinking half of the bottle. "He gave me two of his scales this time after I let him play with my legs. It was the strangest thing."

"None of your dreams are normal, Sehun."

"I expect no different honestly."

Hongbin looks over in the direction that Jongin seemed to go and groans. "That made me need to go now too." He gets out of the car and looks in through Sehun's window. "You need to go too or are you good?" Sehun shakes his head and holds up his thumbs. Hongbin gives him a short 'okay' and runs off toward a cluster of bushes.

Sehun is left sitting there with only his thoughts to keep him company. It's Not a bad thing really because he enjoys the silence, but he can't seem to stop thinking about Tao and the scales of his tale. And just thinking about the scales themselves makes his hand hurt. But thankfully he doesn't have to think about it long because both Hongbin and Jongin come back to car.

"I'm just saying, Jongin, that you need to stop drinking so much water. You cannot possibly be that thirsty."

"Well, excuse the hell out of me for feeling thirsty all the damn time, hyung!" Jongin shouts while slamming the passenger's door. He huffs and angrily puts his seat belt on with Hongbin following suit. "I can't help it and I can't help having to get rid of it all either."

"Maybe if you slept like Sehun back there," Hongbin retorts and starts the car again, "we wouldn't be wasting time stopping to let you empty your baby sized bladder."

"It's not even seven yet, hyung, calm down."

Hongbin pulls out onto the road and begins driving again. "Shut up and go back to sleep, Sehun."

Sehun pouts slightly and lays his head back down on his makeshift pillow. He should've known better than to try to get in between these two while they were going at it. He's never able to calm either of them down and one, if not both, always end up telling him to shut up or to stay out of it. And this time, like many others, he does, and goes back to sleep.

♥

It's the same body of water again. The endless amounts of nothing but water. He's getting angry, but he can't seem to scream or yell or even speak. What did he even expect when he is under water? Is he going to see Tao again? He already seemed to know that answer before Tao appeared in the distance.

Something seems different about about him this time, though. He isn't swimming toward Sehun, but rather Sehun is swimming toward him. As he gets closer, Tao appears to be struggling with something. Rope is it? No, not rope. A net. Tao is struggling with a net. When Sehun reaches Tao, Tao is wriggling and tugging at the thick net that fishermen use to catch fish. Sehun was confused for a moment, but then he realizes what is happening.

Tao is being caught. Is it intended or an accident? He doesn't know. All he does know is that Tao is in trouble and Sehun can't help him. Even when Tao screams for him to help him, he doesn't. He doesn't do anything. He can't do anything.

•

Sehun wakes up with a start and forces Hongbin to pull over. Once he does, Sehun comes flying from the car and immediately vomits onto over grown grass. He hears Hongbin come up beside him and begins to rub his back while he continuously brings up everything his stomach was holding. He stopped shortly after when his stomach no longer had anything left for him to bring up. Hongbin handed him water to rise his mouth out while Jongin shoved mints in it afterwards.

"I didn't know that you get car sick," Jongin says tiredly.

"He doesn't," Hongbin answer for him. He orders Sehun to drink more water after the mints melt away only after he makes him sit down. "Was it bad this time? The dream, I mean."

"I don't know what it was," Sehun answers after finishing off the rest of the water. "He was tangled up in this net and I thought that he was being caught, but I don't know. I just woke up feeling utterly sick that I didn't help him. It felt that real...."

"Some dreams can feel that real."

Sehun looks up at Hongbin and swallows hard before putting the rest of him in the car. Hongbin just sighs and shuts the door. Jongin gets in the back of the car rather than the front and Sehun silently thanks him by resting his head on his shoulder. "Wake me when we get there, yeah?"

Jongin nods. "Sure thing."

Author's note:

Hello~ I know... Another fic that I'm going to take far to long to update... I don't have anything to say in my defense because I won't update y of my fics as fast as you guys want me to. It's hard not having a computer to update on. I only have a tablet... Sorry. Anyways, this was something new that I wanted to try. I'm still working on the details and whatnot, but I'd figured that I'd give give you a small first chapter. This fic won't be greatly edited, but I'll try my best. I hope you guys enjoy~