Chan was swimming in the middle of the ocean, nothing but blue-green waves as far as he could see. He was trying to get somewhere, and had nothing but his own arms and legs to get him there.

No, that was wrong. He was swimming in a wide lake, surrounded by mountains. A tiny village nestled on the lakeshore. He had to get there. Something… or someone… was waiting for him. He struck out, slicing through the water, and it didn’t take long for his arms to burn and his lungs to ache.

Water filled his mouth as his head ducked below the water, and he shot back up, gasping.

It was a man-made pool he was swimming in. Mihn perched on the concrete edge, feet dangling in the water. She had her head tilted to the side, a gorgeous flush on her frowning brow as she hollered, “What the hell are you doing, Channie? You said you’d be here hours ago!”

Chan spat out chlorinated water, his tongue swelling. He had to get to Mihn, because she needed him for something. Because he had promised her something. He couldn’t remember what it was, but he knew it was important. Crucial. Vital. And he’d never let her down.

Chan worked his arms and kicked his feet as fast as he could. Impossibly, Mihn was getting farther away. The pool was stretching, or he was going backwards, and it didn’t make sense. Helpless panic crawled up Chan’s throat as he flailed in the water with his sore, burning, agonized body trying, trying, trying to get to Mihn.

She was a tiny figure on the pool’s edge now. Or was it a river? A waterfall? Chan didn’t know. All he knew was that he was surrounded by heavy, clinging water that dragged at his limbs and stung his eyes and seeped into his nose.

“Wait!” he croaked, pleading with a Mihn who was far away, who was standing, who was turning his back on Chan, and walking away.

“Wait!” Chan whispered, slipping beneath the waves. 

Don’t leave me.

*

*

*

Chan jolted awake with a gasp that quickly morphed into a choked-off groan. His eyes flew open uselessly, showing him nothing but a bright white blur. He tried to rub at them, but only one arm moved, and he couldn’t feel much except the panicked pounding of his heart in his chest. Which hurt.

Blind and panicking, Chan felt around himself using his single arm. Fabric. Lots of soft fabric, and some cold tubes, and a metal frame he was sitting–no, lying on.

The rapid whoosh of blood in his ears was strangely comforting, as wakefulness embraced him and he shed the panic of the dream. He wasn’t in danger right now. He wasn’t drowning, and Mihn was…

The sound of a door opening, rapid footsteps, and a darker blur in his view.

“Good, you’re awake,” said an unfamiliar feminine voice. “Any idea why your pulse skyrocketed just now?”

Chan blinked like he had a life-time’s worth of blinking to catch up on. “A bad dream,” he said. He winced at the sound of his own voice, crackly and dry. He blinked some more and the figure resolved itself into a goblin woman in a nurse’s uniform. 

Her yellow eyes were kind as she nodded. “That’s not surprising. How do you feel?”

“Bad,” he croaked.

She nodded again. “Let me get you some water and the doctor.” She zoomed off. 

Chan slumped against the pillows, horribly lucid. He remembered everything. Being tortured by the poachers. Being shot. He prodded at the center of his chest, looking down at the thick bandages there. He was lucky to be alive.

A breath gusted out of him as he closed his gritty eyes. His memory was spotty after the bullet ripped through him. There were only odd flashes of images, scents, and sounds. He could have sworn Mihn had been there. That she had saved him. That she had cried, and that her tears had touched fangs.

Surely that last part had been a hallucination brought on by blood loss. Mihn would never cry, and certainly not over him. Also, she was human, like Chan. She didn't have fangs. No way.

Chan blinked open his eyes and looked around his hospital room. An IV line dripped something into his veins. His bed sat within an arcane circle glowing against the linoleum. A pair of upholstered red chairs sat outside it, empty.

Staring at those empty chairs, something hot and prickling surged up Chan’s throat and into his battered face. He sniffed to keep from crying, and then winced because of his broken nose. 

Had Mihn just dumped him at the hospital and left? Had Chan screwed up so badly that she couldn’t be bothered to wait for him to wake up? What about his friends? Did no one care to visit him?

The door slid open again, and Chan watched a human doctor approach his bedside. She smiled distractedly, her poofy hair bouncing as she looked between her clip-board and him. The goblin nurse darted out from behind her and handed Chan a paper cup of water. He sipped it gratefully.

“Chan Kurozi, correct?”

“Yes,” Chan whispered.

“Hello. I’m Dr. Pomua. Are you alert enough for me to go over your condition with you?”

Chan nodded glumly. How he wished to be asleep again, where he didn’t have to face the reality that Mihn was gone again.

“Excellent. You were in surgery for 13 hours. The bullet struck you right between the lungs. It shattered two ribs and nicked an artery. Luckily, it missed your spinal column. As I’m sure you’ve realized, your left arm was broken. We were able to set that and begin speed-healing it with some potion injections. The puncture wound in your thigh took some stitches, and will likely be the first injury to finish healing. We also set your broken nose. The swelling should go down soon, though the bruising will likely linger for a good two weeks.”

Dr. Pomua read this all off her clipboard. Chan’s mind was reeling, throwing memories at him as she listed each injury. The deafening crash of thunder. The smell of charred savannah grass. The searing, all-consuming pain in his chest. He grimaced as an image of a dead elf and her red-mouthed killer surged to the forefront of his mind. Was that real? Did that mean the unicorns were safe? 

“Your blood loss was considerable, Mr. Kurozi. You are lucky your friends brought you when they did.”

He snapped his eyes to hers at the mention of friends. For once, she was looking at him instead of her clipboard, dark brown eyes swallowing him up.

“M-my friends. Who was it? How…”

A wry smile cracked her stoic expression. “Your demon friend portaled you straight into the emergency room, which was problematic, to say the least. He and a woman carried you in, and my colleague got you into my surgical suite within minutes.”

A woman. A woman carried him. Mihn really had saved him. 

Right?

Chan swallowed, gripped his blanket with one weak hand. His voice came out weak and watery. “Did you get the woman's name?” There was only one name he wanted to hear.

Dr. Pomua shook her head. “I didn’t witness this scene, so this is all second hand.”

Disappointment crashed into him. His memories seemed reliable, all except for Mihn’s fangs and ears. He just really wanted to know what was real.

The nurse chimed in. “I did, though! I heard the demon call the woman…Inji? Ijoo? Something like that.”

“Injae,” supplied Chan wearily, and sank dejectedly against his pillows as the nurse snapped her fingers in agreement.

So Mihn hadn’t brought him to the hospital. He could have sworn he’d seen her out there on the savanna, though. Even now, an image of her glistening face, highlighted by orange firelight and smoke was seared onto the back of his eyelids. That face with fangs and slit-pupiled eyes that reflected light like an animal.

Chan felt a little queasy. A little desperate. “Is it…common for people to see things when they’ve been shot?” Chan asked quietly, rubbing a thumb against the softness of his hospital blanket.

Dr. Pomua nodded briskly. “Oh, yes. And from your injuries, it looked like you’d been in a lot of pain long before the bullet got you. Pain plus blood loss equals shock, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you suffered hallucinations two nights ago.”

So it had been Injae the whole time. Injae who saved him from the poachers and hauled his bloody body to the hospital. Injae who had cried. Or, maybe the whole crying thing had been pure hallucination.

The doctor’s words caught up with him, and he jerked his chin up, eyes blowing wide. “Two nights?”

“Yes. You were admitted two nights ago. You’ve been asleep post-surgery for–” she checked her watch– “31 hours. It is now 8 pm.”  

This was insane. How could time just disappear on him like that? What were the others doing right now? Was Mihn still alone in Anjeon? Had Hanji gone back to his shop?

“Can I call someone? Where’s my phone?” He patted his hip, of course finding only a hospital gown instead of his usual cargo pants.

The nurse said, “You came only in your clothes, which we had to cut off you. There was nothing in the pockets. Your shoes survived, though.” She bent, disappearing for a moment behind the foot of Chan’s bed, then rose, his hiking boots pinched in her fingers.

“Ah,” said Chan, feeling like he’d been dealt another blow to the chest. Without his phone, he couldn’t call anyone. He had no phone numbers memorized. Tears crawled up his throat, and he just wanted to drown in the suffocating water of his dreams.

“You can call, though visiting hours are over, so they’ll have to wait until 8 am tomorrow to bring you anything,” said Dr. Pomua. “Nurse Kija and I are going to change your dressings and make sure everything is healing as it should. I’ll get you a phone after.”

Chan nodded dully and cooperated as the nurse and doctor unwrapped him and peered at his wounds, palpating the flesh around his leg and face and chest. He answered their questions and flexed his fingers and toes. They gave him a shot and slipped a new amulet against his bullet-wound. Their assurances that everything was going as planned and that he should make a full recovery reached him as if through water, mere background noise to the all-consuming beat of his runaway thoughts. 

His mind ran a miserable loop: Mihn was never there. Mihn could be hurt. Mihn was never there. Mihn could be hurt.

“Mr. Kurozi?”

“Yes?” he croaked, still thinking of Mihn.

“Would you still like a phone? We are going to give you something to help you sleep soon.”

Sleep. Sleep would be nice. If he wanted to reach Injae, he would have to search online for the Reserve's phone number, and that just seemed like too much effort for his sluggish mind and trembling heart.

“No phone,” he mumbled, eyes already slipping shut. His body was sore from his eyeballs to his toe-nails, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to care. Not when he’d been abandoned here. Not when he still didn’t know where or how Mihn was.

“Alright. We’ll dim the lights.”

A shot of something cool went through his veins, and then sleep hooked its claws around his throat and mercifully dragged him into the depths.

*

*

*

“I don’t trust you,” said Mihn. The creature before him looked like a griffin, but, in the way of dreams, Chan knew in his heart that it was Mihn.

Chan fell to his knees, dust swirling up to his clasped hands. His tears punched the dust back to the earth, “Why?” he keened. “I love you. I’ll never hurt you.”

Mihn shifted from griffin to the familiar woman Chan had slept beneath for years. She sneered, teeth glinting and growing until they pierced Chan’s throat.

“I’d rather die than ask for your help. You mean nothing to me.”