#jxw

dividers : @ioveartfilm @chachachannah

[ liked and reblogged on @joshushumi ]

[A/n:- As you can see this is heavily based on THIS MAN album's Last Night song and the audiobook. But not entirely!]

PRESENT DAY — SEOUL, 2:17 A.M.

The streets of Seoul were never completely silent, but tonight carried a different kind of quiet—a fearful one.

Neon lights flickered against rain-soaked pavement, casting long, nervous shadows. People hurried home, glancing at their phones every few seconds.

The news hadn’t stopped for weeks.

A reporter’s voice crackled from a passing taxi radio:

Another civilian collapsed while waiting

for the bus. Medical teams say the victim fell

asleep with a smile. Authorities are calling

him the DREAM PHANTOM!!

IS SEOUL SAFE ANYMORE?

Cameras flashed. Sirens wailed. The city didn’t sleep—because if you slept, he could find you.

And once he did…you lived a memory so sweet, so warm, so perfect…that you never wanted to wake up again.

SEOUL METROPOLITAN POLICE — TF UNIT HEADQUARTERS

The large LCD screen in the briefing room replayed CCTV footage from earlier that night. A woman at a convenience store counter suddenly froze mid-sentence, smiling softly before collapsing on the floor.

Seungcheol slammed a folder onto the desk.

The entire TF team flinched.

"THAT’S THE 83RD CASE THIS MONTH!" he shouted.

The room fell silent.

Four months ago, when Seoul first trembled under the strange wave of dream-related incidents, the government authorized the creation of a covert elite unit—Task Force 0. At its helm stood Commander Choi Seungcheol, 17923rd Battalion leader, a man in 30s known in classified circles as Ghosthound. Four years spent deep inside North Korea as an undercover operative had carved him into a weapon of precision; he single-handedly dismantled an enemy intelligence base and walked out without leaving a single identifiable trace. He was the kind of man who didn’t chase orders—orders chased him.

"People are collapsing in the middle of the day, Woozi muttered, scrolling through his tablet. "All brain scans show identical abnormalities. The same signature… meaning the same person did this."

Lee Jihoon also known as Woozi once worked at Korea’s top Lucid Border Research Facility, a place where scientists studied where dreams end and consciousness begins. He was the youngest lead researcher ever. He authored a classified thesis: "If someone can enter one dream, they can enter all." It was dismissed as impossible. Now? The identical abnormalities in every victim’s brain are the exact phenomenon he predicted—a dreamwalker hopping from mind to mind.

"A person who can enter dreams. That's bullshit!"Joshua added quietly, adjusting his glasses. "You're telling me we’re not dealing with hypnosis or gas. Someone is actively pulling civilians into a dream state."

Joshua Hong, the quiet intelligence tactician from the National Security Planning Unit, who once cracked an international cyber-terrorism ring with nothing but four hours of CCTV footage and a cup of lukewarm coffee! He also can't see the way out in this case.

Mingyu crossed his arms and leaned back.

"So this Dream Phantom guy is basically a walking sleep virus?"

It didn’t make sense to him. Kim Mingyu was used to leading clean, physical operations—raids on enemy bases, emergency extractions, the volunteer mission in Sudan he survived by pure grit. Tangible threats. Tangible targets. But this? A criminal who attacked people in their dreams felt like fighting smoke.

Mingyu clicked his tongue. "Perfect. A mission I can’t solve with a gun."

Xu Minghao, the team’s psychological profiler, whose reports were so precise that criminals often confessed just from reading them, shook his head slowly.

"No ," he said, voice calm but firm. "Viruses aren’t deliberate. This… this is intentional."

He had solved a top-tier case in Hong Kong, dismantling a sophisticated criminal network that had eluded authorities for years—all by predicting behavior patterns no one else noticed. If he said this was calculated, the team knew it wasn’t a fluke.

Seungkwan scoffed, leaning back in his chair. "You mean that creepy myth about some dream-walker messing with people’s memories? That’s real now?"

He wasn’t new to danger. He’d negotiated hostage crises in Busan, intercepted international cybercrime signals before anyone else even knew they existed, and coordinated high-risk operations where a single mistake meant death. Yet this… this was different. Something intangible. Something that didn’t follow the rules he knew.

"Look at the footage," Hoshi whispered, pointing at the screen. "Every victim smiles. They’re seeing something good. Something they once lost."

Kwon Soonyoung—known in both military and intelligence circles as Hoshi, the nation’s most unpredictable strategy analyst—leaned closer. Twice expelled for excessive initiative, twice reinstated because his instincts had saved lives that no one else could, he had learned to trust patterns others couldn’t see. And right now, his gut screamed: this wasn’t random.

“Happy moments,” Dokyeom said. “He shows them a moment they miss so much they don’t want to come back.”

DK wasn’t flashy, but he was precise—the team’s top negotiator and profiler. Years of reading people in crisis had trained him to spot patterns, and right now, he could tell: this wasn’t a random attack.

Chan swallowed hard, "So… is he hurting them?"

The newest member who just joined the tf team this month right after he joined the Intelligence & Investigation Department. Seungcheol said he saw something in him to let him join!

Joshua exhaled. "They’re trapped. Their consciousness is stuck inside their happiest memory. If we don’t wake them up, their brains shut down one by one."

Heewon finally spoke.

"So he’s killing them with nostalgia?"

Everyone turned to her.

She was one of the Interpol’s most elite operatives. When the South Korean Government requested the best officers for the newly formed TF0, Heewon had already been in the middle of a high-stakes mission—her third in the last three months—to bring down a clandestine mental asylum notorious for inhumane human experiments. The asylum had treated her like a lab animal, pushing the limits of endurance and sanity, but she had survived and brought down the researchers. She had returned to Korea only yesterday, after twelve long years abroad.

She sat calmly, fingers laced, eyes sharp.

Woozi nodded. "Exactly. He’s using dreams as bait."

By his side, Vernon moved with a quiet alertness, an experienced field agent and Heewon’s designated partner. He had been assigned as her shadow for the mission, not out of doubt, but because their skills complemented each other perfectly—her sharp instincts, his calm precision. His gaze flicked from Heewon to the footage, reading the subtle changes in the victims’ expressions.

Vernon said, his hand resting near his sidearm, but his eyes never left the screen. “I’ve seen criminals try to manipulate perception before,” he murmured, “but this… this is on another level. If we don’t understand his method, the city will keep paying the price.”