NCT : The Dream Lab

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After drowning in the Han River, Taeyong isn't himself anymore. He falls ill, behaves oddly and is obsessed by the power he holds in Stage 5. On his side, Johnny, a scientist whose reputation isn't to be made anymore, detects a huge blast of the electromagnetic waves he had been tracking down for years. He doesn't hesitate a second to fly to Seoul and quickly finds out that the waves were emitted by a human being. After bribing the hospital secretary, he finds Taeyong's address and he promises to find solutions to his problems. He contacts Mark, a brilliant student in biology and neurophysics and together, they found the NCT Lab in a renovated warehouse.

After creating the secondary humans, Taeyong's state keeps on deteriorating to the point that he makes another NDE. Mark tries to save him with a serum he barely experimented but was prevented by Jaehyun's sensational arrival. Jaehyun has premonitory  dreams about people he meets during the day and detains the secret of the Jalja serum that was originally designed to prevent him from having heavy, tragic premonitions every night. The serum also works on lucid dreamers and allows them to choose when to enter the Neozone and when to get true restful sleep. That saves Taeyong's life. Quickly, a strong friendship builds up between Taeyong and Jaehyun, which creates tensions with Johnny who feels that his big project is threatened.

Taeyong's NDE was very special : it dilated time in the Neozone, which means that people from any time-loop can empathize with him and be granted access to his imaginary world. Consequently to this, Chittaphon arrives in the Neozone in unbelievable circumstances, and explains to Taeyong how to give other people access to the Neozone. It includes the consumption of opium. Johnny and Mark are extremely reluctant to this method and don't want to rush the process, but Jaehyun secretly gives his agreement to try out on him.

This is the last straw for Johnny, who goes back to Chicago in order to sort his thoughts out. His stay is prolonged because one of his relatives is pregnant.

Around this time, Jaehyun welcomes a strange patient in his cabinet who affirms someone is voluntarily tormenting his dreams : Taeil. The doctor quickly understands that there is something more to that case, which incites him to introduce Taeil to the lab. The reactions are wary at first and after quick tests, the Neos come to that conclusion : Taeil must bring the person whom he suspects for them to solve the mystery behind his nightmares. That person is Doyoung, the boyfriend of his deceased best friend, Jinseo, whom he secretly loved romantically. Taeil decides to blackmail him audaciously: both of them were involved in the murder of that girl's killer, so he threatens to report their crime to the police.

Doyoung eventually deigned to go to the lab and be examined by Mark. They realise Taeil and Doyoung's brains are indeed connected, but couldn't guess how. It happens that the mental bound between both men is a song that Jinseo wrote for Taeil, inspired by a melody created by Doyoung. Meanwhile, Jaehyun and Taeyong convinced Mark to attempt the Empathy process with the help of opium. Unfortunately, it doesn't go well for Mark, who wakes up trapped in a strange cage, his body clamped by the most awful yet unexplainable feelings. He wakes up completely shook and the day after, when he was running special errands for Johnny, he faints in front of a curious building. There, some hidden memories from his early childhood are unlocked. He dreams of his 3 year-old self in a sinister orphanage, saved from the beating of his guardian by a tall and sarcastic teenager named Jisung. After escaping the cage, Mark briefly meets Chittaphon, who is confronted to the same problem.

After he wakes up, the directress of the building, now a retirement home, shows him documents that prove he was the victim of human trafficking between North and South Korea during the Great Famine of 1995. Mark is deeply marked by this revelation and chooses to take the Jalja serum until further notice.
When they wake up in the Neozone again, Taeyong and Jaehyun realise that something is wrong : they are locked in a cage that makes them live their most traumatizing memory. Once they're released from the cage, they find themselves in a mysterious temple and they visibly can't escape before they have "opened their eyes".
Unwilling to relive this every single night, the Neos decide to take the Jalja serum until they find a solution to the glass cage ordeal.

In the meantime, Johnny hires a new technician who has very precious knowledge about high tech devices. The problem is, this technician, Yuta, was homeless because he was scammed by a woman and didn't speak proper Korean. The Neos don't welcome him very warmly, but Taeyong takes him under his wing and tries his best to teach him Korean. This upsets Jaehyun irrationally. He gets awfully drunk after an argument and breaks himself an arm after falling down the stairs. When he comes back from the hospital, he has this strange, heartfelt conversation with Yuta where he admits having romantic, and hopelessly  unrequited, feelings for Taeyong.

Doyoung helps Mark solve the mystery about the Musical Cognition and they experiment it. Doyoung discovers Mark's most intimate worries and apeases his fears by modifying his nightmares positively. This experience brings them a lot closer. Short after, Mark decides to go back to Toronto to clear the things left unsaid about his adoption with his parents.

Taeil, who has that bad habit to listen to the doors takes his own initiative to find a way to Empathize without opium. After weeks of personal researches, he turns himself towards religion and call all the monasteries of the region asking for information about the 7th sense. One monastery has what he is looking for : a manuscript from the 19th century written by a monk called Ten. The manuscript explains how to get out of the temple in which they are locked and Empathize without opium. The Neos take this new hint very seriously and try to send Doyoung into the Neozone.

Normally, the Neozone is accessible to the other lucid dreamers only when Taeyong is asleep but the temple didn't follow this rule so Chittaphon remained locked in the temple for weeks alone, reliving his worst memory on repeat. The head monk of the monastery where he sought refuge noticed a change in his behaviour. Chittaphon, known as Ten in the monastery, confided his worries to him and together, they go on a mystic pilgrimage where Ten must face his fear in the most gruesome way.

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Helloooo !
I hope everyone has been doing well. ☺️
Here is the resume of what's happened up to this point !
I'm very excited to start publishing new chapters again !
Please, don't hesitate to give me your feedback about this story !