Author's Note: Hey u gaiz. A few things:
- That fic I hooked you up to a few chapters ago (fanfic of WFM)? IT'S A MULTICHAP NOW JIF21DOIREFJKL
- …My Hwoarang is so shit now. Seriously I can't even JFSR properly. /competitive, gameplay-knowledgeable bitching
- Iiiiiiiiiiiiii go back to Uni in less than a month. –FUCKING CRY- XD
- So yeah… I has a big, fat ugly writer's block on everything. 8D Its so awesome (not) XD
- ENJOY! :3

Chapter Twelve: Haunted

Everybody dreams.

Dreams are an expression of the unconscious, be it in an imaginative sense, or a subconscious message. They're a succession of thoughts, images, sounds, ideas, emotions, anything that the mind experiences during sleep. Dreams cannot be coordinated or chained by the dreamer, but they can often reoccur, giving a nightmarish, haunting sense to them – a bad dream. Sometimes, one cannot remember a dream, for better or for worse. Other times, they are unforgettable.

Xiaoyu had the same dream she'd been having for the past year – Jin choking her to death, and then being quite pleased about it – and then she would wake, drenched in sweat, exhale sharply, look at Panda who was still sound asleep, and then curl up in a little ball. She would vehemently try not to fall asleep only to drift away again, and whatever dream she had then, she wouldn't remember, no matter how happy it was. The next day would be almost like a blur, with only little spikes of happiness, and then she would fall into the same pattern again.

Her friends at school would ask her 'Xiao, what's up?', because her zombie-ish nature really made them worry; and she would merely shake her head and feign a smile, insisting that nothing was wrong. She would then tell them of funny things that happened during the past tournaments and ask about that new single that KAT-TUN released. They'd eye her for a few moments more before proceeding to blurt on and on about that band, and numerous others; and she would fall away into silence, haunted by those nightmares.

Miharu had not been able to remember any dreams for years, pinning it to 'unimportance', to which Jinrei would shake his head and remind her that dreams, no matter how improper or stupid they might actually be, are in no way unimportant. If she concentrated hard, sometimes she had memories of her and Hwoarang, other times she had memories of her and her brother drawing all over the walls when they were very young. No matter what, though, whatever she could vaguely recall, they were only like little wispy threads that barely lasted for more than two seconds, and they were always memories.

It upset her more than she let on. A lot of her friends around her were having these unspeakable, evil nightmares, and she herself had none – or, she had one, and then was unable to remember it under any circumstances. It made her worry more so that there was an evil threat approaching, an oncoming storm, and she couldn't see any of it or have any idea what was going on. She learnt to ignore it, but, sometimes there were instances where she'd wonder.

Jinrei's dreams, which he did remember, had been strong and terrifying for the past few months, growing more and more sinister with every day that passed. He dreamed of a beast that possessed a thunderous roar and glowing red eyes. This same beast, though, felt bound, and he was incredibly angry. It was this anger that shook the aged man to his very core. It was these evil, power-hungry driven thoughts that made him wonder what he was doing here, trapped and helpless – and he wondered if it was inside Jin. He wondered also if everybody in the world dreamt of Jin – he knew, of course, of his granddaughter's worries.

Within about a month of these nightmares, he noticed that he'd begun to hum an unfamiliar tune. Where it came from, he didn't know. Why he began to hum it, well he wasn't sure of that either. It was little segments at first, and then eventually a full song, repeating over and over again. He noticed a few others around the area were beginning to do it also. He approached one of Xiaoyu's school friends and inquired whether or not she knew the name of that song and where it was from. Sadly, he didn't know, but he felt it was tied to his dreams.

Unlike a lot of his friends, though, Seong-Hada had pleasant dreams. They were dreams of all of his friends being happy and laughing, which was something he sorely missed. He'd then turn away from them and resume cooking hamburgers for them, and impatiently waiting for the milkshakes to be done also. In his mind, in his world, there was no Jin, and there was no sadness. There was only happiness – and in the real world, until such bad things went away, he'd promised himself to always smile.

He thought to himself that if he kept smiling, then his friends would be happier and stop worrying about those haunting eyes and what not. He hadn't seen them himself, but from what he could hear from his friend's, they weren't anything to be happy about. He remembered seeing Xiaoyu come to the dojang once after school because she wanted to hang out, but her expression made him bite his lip, and he spent the whole day trying to make her laugh by tickling her. It eventually worked. Now if he could only get everyone else to smile with him like she did on that day.

Baek wished he was as optimistic as his newest student. He worried too much about the dreams he could recall, and as the blue-haired youth would say to try and distract such troublesome thoughts, 'it'll give you more wrinkles, and you don't want that!'. There was a foreboding feeling in the pit of his stomach, like Jinrei – the two men had discussed these feelings before and both concluded that nothing good could come of this war or of this feeling. He dreamt of scarabs and beetles that liked to crawl over muscled flesh.

There was a particular dream he had, once, where he woke up on a cold floor. There were some blue light sources – he was extremely tired and was unable to tell what they were, all he knew was that they were blue – and he could hear music echoing throughout the area, like the sounds of drums and chanting. He stood to his feet and surveyed the area, rubbing his arms because of the cold, and, curious, investigated the room further, seeing stone stairs ascend opposite him, and knowing that there was an open door behind him.

When a dark growl rumbled through the area, he exhaled sharply and continued to look around for even the smallest bit of movement. The wind suddenly picked up, shutting off all of the light sources – he realised now that they were candles – and closed Baek's only known exit from the room. Not knowing any other way to go, he climbed up the stairs, hearing more than the growling now. There were little shrieks and some cackles; and he placed a hand on the door in front of him, opening it slowly and sticking his head inside.

What he saw was a monster. What he saw after that was a bright, glowing red, charging straight towards him, towards his head – and then he woke up. He paused for several long moments before going to immediately make himself some tea to settle down. He nearly spilt it several times, but once it was in his system, he relaxed slightly and decided to tell Jinrei the next day, which he did. Jinrei told him that he had similar dreams, as did Julia Chang. He hadn't been the same since then. He constantly made sure his students were okay, looking over them, analysing them for how they were feeling and so on – the main three noticed this and frowned.

When Lars wasn't working, he was leaning against a wall and looking down at his boots solemnly, hating Jin and everything he'd done so far to everyone in the world. On extremely tired days, his eyes would shut for just a moment, and then a moment would morph into ten minutes. The imageless sounds that danced behind his eyelids for those ten minutes had something in his stomach stir, and it forced him to wake to his current, unhappy, routine-driven and otherwise, or seemingly, meaningless life.

He could hear the sound of drums echoing through a cavernous space. He could hear heavy breaths, fists colliding, screams, panicking, shackles, chains, an unidentifiable sound, and the pitter-patter of feet as they ran away from this heavy source of dread. He didn't share these dreams with anybody, and merely kept them to himself. The Swede would eventually down a coffee – his own, makeshift fika paus – and get back to work, and the sounds would fade away until the next time he took a small nap. It was then that those drums would return, haunting him, until he found himself tapping his bicep in the same rhythm.

Jin's dreams were strangely controlled. Where as the others had the dreams come to them, he essentially 'made' them. He would dream of war, he would dream of bloodshed and macabre horror, and he loved every moment of it. The real Jin, though, was of course sickened by these images and could do little to erase them from his mind. He simply had to put up with them, no matter how hellish they were or who they involved, or what happened to them.

What Jin noticed that Devil did not notice was that in every dream, out of the corner of his eye, there was a beast, watching and lurking, with glowing red eyes. Every time he tried to turn his head and follow the beast, he was in the other corner of his eye. The entire process was frightening and frustrating – he could barely see the face, but he knew that the beast had a long head and scaly skin. He thought for a few moments also that there were fangs, but he couldn't be too sure. He wished he could see the beast as a whole, instead of allowing it to continuously haunt him.

Razer's dreams were ruthless and unpredictable, sparing for those red eyes that she'd heard from others. She recalled a dream where there just millions of blinking red lights in the shape of eyes, sprinkled like stars amongst a black background. Whenever she looked directly into a pair of them, she could vaguely see the reflection of herself, an immediate wall behind her, and chains dripping around the area. She could also hear chanting and drums. She usually managed to wake herself before the music presumably crescendos.

She remembered another dream where she looked into a different pair of eyes and saw Hwoarang lying dead on the floor again – but rather than seeing the Ground Zero floor, it was the floor of the Gargoyle's Perch, which was Jin's throne room; she also heard herself scream from a year ago. She woke up from that one so fast, sweaty and shaking and absolutely freezing, and Jin hadn't noticed. She immediately went down stairs to cry and hyperventilate and be reassured by Angel that that was never going to happen again, ever.

Where as others such as Asuka, Steve, Christie and Lei had mixed dreams – dreams of family, dreams of friends, horrid nightmares and so on and so forth – Hwoarang could barely sleep. He was haunted by his own ideas and his own reflections rather than actual dreams. The dreams he'd have when he would doze off for a while had been normal so far – a memory, a want – it was his conscious thoughts that had him set in such a daze. He'd stay up many nights, just thinking – until one night he'd exhausted himself and finally drifted off and fell into a haunted dream.