Taemin doubted any job was quite as dull as that of a therapist. At first thought, one would view it as a rather scintillating job, he supposed; people were interesting by default and to explore their issues did, in turn, seem to be a task befitting the most curious of souls. However, Taemin doubted severely whether the interest was merely feinted on the part of the therapist. Wide smiles or searching eyes couldn’t hide the vapid sensation of having to hear ​Doctor, I just want to die or My life makes no sense for the hundredth time, often from the lips of those with no such qualms other than a broken relationship or lost job. Patients were fixed in similar routine, bandaged with a gauze of prescription paraphernalia or given a rehearsed speech on how the human mind can negate the sadness if one tries hard enough to allow it. Such ​bull was reserved for those who weren’t really intertwined in thick problems. It was reserved for those who wasted the time of those that were.

 

The therapist was staring at Taemin with a politeness hereditary to the job. His cheeks were sharp and his lips were also, and Taemin found it almost soothing how the curve of the man’s features brought together the face that was so clearly worn from his tiresome toil. His eyes were, inherently, curious, and his skin was pale, delicate, like an ephemeral spring light cast atop the pond of some jovial garden. Even his very posture was welcoming, relaxed against his chair as he balanced a notebook on his knee. A pen was lodged between his fingers precariously as he eyed the younger patient, keen to get him to divulge his many troubles.

 

Taemin remained silent.

 

"Why don’t you take it from the beginning?” the therapist asked, tilting his head coyly. Time seemed to slip by as he did so, quicker than it would in silence. Taemin wondered if a word every second constituted for a shorter minute than quietness did.

 

"There isn’t really a beginning,” Taemin admitted, sprawled against his seat so casually one would only permit such posture in their own home. His long, bony fingers were clasped between the wide gap created by his spread legs, and one shoulder pointed at the therapist, the other turned inwards, his form mimicking a split personality – look left for ​God and right for ​Satan.

“Then start where you see fit,” the therapist offered, eye-contact constant, yet not intimidating. He watched Taemin with something akin to amiable wonder, as if the synopsis to a film he wished to view, or the blurb to a paperback he wanted to read.

 

"There's nowhere ‘fit’ to start,” was the rebuttal given to the therapist, and in response he simply shifted his position. Glasses sat on the edge of his nose, and Taemin observed how the incandescence from the overhead light refracted from their corners. The therapist had said his piece, and now awaited for Taemin to relay his, to give closure to a question that could be asked in no other way.

 

The therapist – one Lee Jinki, a highly renowned bout of efficiency in the field – was instantly scribbling something into the leather-bound notebook, fingertips crooked around his pen as he did so. Taemin pondered over what the man could be writing so soon, possibly candid poetry on the nature of cynicism, for Taemin was a cynic if one ever existed.

 

"And you're here because?”

 

Taemin blinked, taken aback by the question. As Mr. Lee glanced up at him, eyes searching slits beneath the frames, he raised an eyebrow almost impertinently.

 

“I told you,” Taemin responded, jawline clenched as he did so. He didn’t grow affectionate towards attitudes as snipped as Mr. Lee’s.

 

"No, that’s what's wrong with you,” Mr. Lee explained, straightening again and his lower lip, “that’s not why you're here. Tell me why you're here.”

 

Taemin swapped his gaze to the half-shuttered window behind the therapist. It was late-afternoon, mid-Winter, and so even though the outside was viewable, it was as dreary and dismal as the anhedonia-ridden stream of Taemin’s life. High-rise office blocks filtered into the distance, intersected only by radio satellites and the few city-dwelling pigeons. They cried occasionally, these pigeons, a hawk so harrowing not even the traffic below could mute it.

 

"You already know why I’m here,” Taemin commented crudely, curling his lip in distaste. If it was a war of attitude the therapist waged, he'd certainly underestimated his opponent.

 

"I want to hear it in your own words, Taemin,” Mr. Lee muttered profusely, speech the marionette to his desire for knowledge.

 

Taemin jutted out his bottom lip petulantly, like an upset adolescent, and folded his arms across his chest. Mr. Lee watched him analytically, like he was a rare microbe uncovered for the very first time by the hands of a scientist relative to his class.

 

"Because,” he began spitefully, “my friend sent me.”

 

"Friend?” Mr. Lee pressed, raising an eyebrow.

 

Taemin nodded.

 

Again, with the scribbling, it seemed Mr. Lee’s hands were forced into the very action. No sooner had the pen left his page before another question was carefully embarking the journey from his full lips, his manner remarkably audacious and terribly clear.

 

"Why does your friend think you need to see me?”

 

Pursing his lips, Taemin brushed a strand of his wavy black hair behind his ear, the steadiness of his hands a quality he'd learned to hone to disguise any stretch of nervousness he felt. Though it wrapped his gut in foil, at least the therapist was oblivious – or, so Taemin believed.

 

"I don’t know,” Taemin answered, seeing no need to be opaque with the therapist. “I think he just worries too much.”

 

Mr. Lee nodded as Taemin observed his own hands distractedly. They were slender things - graceful, elegant, poised and dainty. Whereas most men held worker’s callouses on broad palms, Taemin was different, for his skin was soft and he had an odd obsession with lavender hand cream, for it held a lullaby-scent, one that accompanied him everywhere with its mellifluous harmony. It even somehow found its purchase in the office-like room he sat in, maudlin amongst the stale scent of old carpet and must.

 

"But didn’t you just tell me you ‘​wanted to die?'" Mr. Lee commented, rolling his neck slightly. He hadn’t been what Taemin was expecting, admittedly. The younger had been anticipating a balding, middle-classed aristocrat-type, with a shrewd tone and a sharp nose. He hadn’t been expecting a handsome, late-twenties professional, with somewhat fashionable brunette hair and a quaint rosiness to his cheeks.

 

"Sarcasm, Mr. Lee,” Taemin explained cockily. “Hasn’t your job taught you anything?”

 

Mr. Lee smirked then, for it seemed he wasn’t deterred easily. If sarcasm wasn’t his strength, then lacking the mind to offend certainly was.

 

"My job’s taught me to be resilient, Taemin. Oh, and – call me Jinki, please.”

 

Taemin blinked. ​Call me Jinki, please. That didn't assert much authority, and rather likened the therapist to an amiable friend than a professional problem-solver. Raising an eyebrow, Taemin said nothing.

 

"So, this friend,” Jinki started, words measured, mind apt, “how would you describe your relationship with him?”

 

Taemin rolled a shoulder and cocked his head, unbelieving that any of this truly mattered but unwilling to create further friction between himself and Jinki. If it was pointless by definition, providing the knowledge the therapist sought could do him no harm.

 

"Friendly,” Taemin answered dryly, eyes narrowed. He seemed almost the polar opposite of Jinki; whilst the therapist was dressed normally, suitably, with a gracious manner that could woo the nation’s firmest of women, Taemin himself had pierced ears, gaunt cheekbones and unnaturally black hair, which just so happened to match his darker skinny jeans and over-sized denim shirt.

 

"Just ‘friendly’?” Jinki pressed, ignoring the obvious mockery in Taemin’s tone. Though his client was almost twenty-two, his attitude problems were representative of those found in angst-ridden adolescents. The therapist had seen it before, and knew he would time-and-time again. Even grown men grew impertinent if provoked.

 

"Yeah,” Taemin nodded, “just friendly, Mr. Lee.”

 

“Mr. Jinki.” Taemin smirked as the therapist resumed to flicking through his notes, undeterred, manner strict. His world seemed separated from reality, surrounded in border control no half-hearted jibes could pass. The only thoughts that could get through were objective, and as he focussed he chewed his bottom lip. Taemin noticed and watched. Even if he knew Jinki was the type of man to lead a quaint life – for, Taemin supposed a therapist ​had to – the younger still found him relatively mysterious, for reasons he couldn’t place. Maybe it was the about-town attractiveness the therapist flaunted, or the fact that behind every good listener there was also a good talker, who just didn’t have the confidence to speak their piece.

 

"Do you live on your own, Taemin?” Jinki wondered aloud, glancing back up from his notes. For the first time, Taemin saw the glint of a silver band around the man’s finger. He was married.

 

"Yeah,” Taemin answered simply. He'd only elaborate if Jinki requested it, but as things stood, the therapist’s large, curved eyes were still intent on studying Taemin’s wiry form, the way it curled on his seat, gave him an impression of fragility.

 

"That wasn’t always the case though, was it?”

 

"No.”

 

"Tell me about your brother, Taemin.”

 

Taemin gritted his teeth then, for it was a question he'd undoubtedly been anticipating as soon as he'd set foot in the polished building. Therapists had routines, had issues to always raise – relationships, employment prospects, families and, inevitably, the dead. It wasn’t as if the topic rendered Taemin to absolute agony, and nor did it beg him to mute. Rather, it stirred contempt within him towards the asker of the state, the one who dared wander in the dense woodland of his past, to the extent where he would clench his fists distractedly, and roll his long neck with a click.

 

"He died,” was the offering raised for the therapist.

 

Jinki nodded. Surprisingly, this time, he didn't scribble. Instead, he tapped his pen thoughtfully against his thigh, and relaxed his shoulders, Taemin’s brother no-doubt a subject having similar renditions he'd dealt with before.

 

"How?”

 

"Don’t act like you don’t already know,” Taemin spat back, spiteful. The question had caught him off -guard, for Taemin had figured that therapists were meant to be softer with such issues, despite the curiosity inherent to the job. They weren't meant to pry, they were meant to coax, to hew out each answer through subtle conversation, not blatant expressionism.

 

"I do know,” Jinki nodded, unashamed at being caught, “but it's important I hear your version of events, Taemin. This session is about you, not your friend, not your file.”

 

Flinching at the way his name rolled so naturally from the therapist’s caramel tongue, Taemin attached his gaze to the simple lampshade above him, and retold the story like it was a mantra ingrained in him from birth.

 

"A car crash, Mr. Lee. He died in a car crash.”

 

Jinki nodded, and thought.

 

"Why are you asking me this anyway?” Taemin answered, bold in temperament and manner. “Why does it matter? I already know the bull you're going to tell me anyway.”

 

"And what's that?” Jinki murmured, attention dragged from Taemin as his eyes critically scanned the plethora of notes he'd already made. It seemed eccentric, the scrawling, but from Taemin’s position he could decipher very little.

 

"The ​peaceful mind speech,” Taemin rhymed back, words terse as he spoke them, “on how my mentality is in my power and I should trace all my thoughts back and take positive steps in sleeping and diet and rewiring my thoughts and-“

 

Finding Jinki was watching him with a fond attentiveness, Taemin stopped instantly. The therapist seemed near-humoured by his remarks, the fragile birthing of a smile about to break on his full lips. Cocky, proud, yet intuitive – maybe Taemin had underestimated the worth of Jinki.

 

"If you want that bull,” the therapist replied, “refer yourself to my colleagues.”

 

Taemin was stunned as Jinki reclined in his seat, closing over his notebook and sliding his pen beside it. Momentarily, Taemin’s shock was overridden by a deeper misunderstanding that this indicated a finished session, until Jinki crossed his legs and tapped his hands together oddly, youthful handsomeness only accentuated by the strength in his posture. Blinking rapidly at the therapist (who'd all-of-a-sudden developed a candid haughtiness), Taemin allowed the severity of Jinki’s remarks to settle in – both regarding his language and the status of his colleagues. Though Taemin knew on his own behalf there was a strict policy of confidentiality, he cast his mind over whether the rules applied in the court of Jinki also, if any line he spoke to Taemin could be use to berate his career.

 

"Now that your brother's gone,” Jinki resumed, words velvety again, smoother than the petals on the end of a summer-bloom, “do you get lonely, Taemin?”

 

Heavy-handed, yes. Jinki was very heavy-handed.

 

"Why would I get lonely in a world full of people?” Taemin responded curtly, hoping his riddled pathway would upset the directions taken by the therapist. It was mid-afternoon, and Taemin was tired, and the dismal wallpaper surrounding him did nothing to spur his moods. Were the abstract art pieces of anything more than dashes of colour maybe they could have sparked his continued elation at such meetings, but the works on the walls were even less coherent than Jinki’s unique manner

 

"Because those people aren’t around you.” Jinki met Taemin steadily now that he hadn’t his notebook to distract him, and it seemed his voice had become less clotted with the pretences of false divinity he'd first displayed. The therapist wasn’t a healer glorified in pretence, and Taemin was only just beginning to snag on to such facts.

 

"They're around me enough,” Taemin muttered back, grovelling for his few remaining strands of dominance. Suddenly, things had become more personal, the three’s-a-crowd imposter of the notebook shutdown for the remainder of their meeting.

 

​"They isn’t all-inclusive, though, is it?”

 

"I don’t know what you mean.”

 

"I mean,” Jinki explained, resting an elbow on the arm of his chair, “that those around you… You want them away because they aren’t the people you wish to have by your side. Am I correct?”

 

"Hah, no.”

 

"So it is all-inclusive? There's not one person you want in your life?”

 

Taemin paused, mind trying as rusted machinery to jolt into action, and shrugged a slender shoulder. Such dismissive gestures struck firmly with the therapist, as he chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully, a reoccurring motion Taemin kept picking up on. The therapist was a habitual creature, and Taemin imagined he probably migrated for Winter and stocked up his acorns whenever he could.

 

"You're not doing this right,” Taemin decided, extracting a slight chortle from the therapist, “you should be taking notes and giving me progress-charts or sleeping-plans. You shouldn’t be digging where you’ve no right to, Mr. Lee.”

 

"Oh, I've every right, Taemin,” the therapist disagreed, eyeing the younger with a glint almost playful. “It's my job, after all.”

 

"Well, you're clearly not very good at it,” Taemin revoked. “All  you're doing is poking me over and over with stupid questions.”

 

"And what did you want me to do? Before I can help you, I have to know you.”

 

“Read it off your notes, you seem to have plenty.”

 

Quiescence halted the proceedings as Taemin glared lowly at Jinki, lip slightly jutted and shoulders sunken. Intimidation not scaring him easily, Jinki returned the stare with one of his own, until Taemin became quite uncomfortable and had to retract. Such eye contact was only reserved for events of a coquettish nature. Saddled against-his-will beside a pretentious therapist provoked Taemin to little other than aggravation, however he hadn’t stopped himself in relishing the large irises of his companion, the way they were flecked in an alluring transience of hazel and gold. Stiffening at the evaluation, Taemin riveted his thoughts to the red carpet beneath the chairs. It was faded, having expounded every ounce of life years ago.

 

"Taemin,” Jinki addressed, tone lilted in a caressing warmth, “you don’t have to be aggressive with me, you don’t have to hide yourself. You're here because I already anticipate you to have problems, and if I already know, then there's no need not to share. I'm not as oblivious as others. You're here for a reason.”

 

Though every inch of his body, from sinew to marrow, thought crudely of Jinki’s cautious endorsement, Taemin couldn’t help but feel somewhat comforted by it. Glimpsing back at Jinki, he could have sworn there was almost concern evident in the therapist’s eyes – that was, until, Taemin remembered that ​concern was another attitude the therapist was required to display for his pay-cheque. Just as his knowledge on Taemin’s life, it was false.

 

"I'm here because my friend sent me,” Taemin replied stubbornly, “and there's no other reason.”

 

"Your friend sent you, Taemin, but you didn’t have to come.”

 

The revelation tethered Taemin’s nerves to a snapped fence-post as he considered Jinki’s insights. Whilst in many ways the observation was true, Taemin ​did have to darken his doorstep, for he'd never hear the end of such mischievous denials if he didn’t.

 

"You friend, Kim Kibum,” Jinki spoke, having memorized the name (much to the surprise of an increasingly-bewildered Taemin), “what does he mean to you?”

 

"Not much,” Taemin mumbled, the hatchet closed in his cage. The therapist had an impressive way of making his patients docile, by length of his dulcet speech and saccharine gestures.

 

"And you two are just friends? Nothing more?”

 

Taemin frowned then, for Jinki must have known Kibum to be a man, and in a world chocked by conservatism and immorality, he hadn’t expected the therapist to be untainted by such misgivings. Jinki harnessed an open mind, and that was something Taemin rarely encountered. In lieu of the mild relief this gave him, Taemin hunched his shoulders, upset at the idea that this could provoke more questions to his status – a status involving Kibum that he could barely graze on with others.

 

"Ah,” Jinki nodded, handcuffing Taemin’s quietness to the prison bars, “I'm guessing then it's complicated.”

 

Again, Taemin just stared, leg beginning to jitter with an erratic nervousness. Prodding, probing, prying and prising – Jinki was good at knowing where the issues festered, how the wounds were born, and how woefully they'd been bandaged.

 

"When did you and Kibum become a couple?”

 

"We aren't-“ but the words fell short on Taemin’s lips. Truth held to account, they ​weren't a couple, but their situation was too sordid to explain to a man as well-meaning as Jinki. Taemin felt the filthy undergoings of his twisted relationship could only serve to tarnish the ‘sinless’ blessings obtained by the therapist.

 

"Then, when did you and Kibum become friends?” Jinki pressed, hoping to sate his search for an answer in lighter terminology. A fly caught in a jar, Taemin jerked his form, movement barely noticeable, and fondled the roots of an answer.

 

“A few months back. He used to be a regular at the place I work.”

 

"And you work where?”

 

Taemin’s eyes glossed to the floor again.

 

"A club.”

 

"Ah, I'm sure you have a time of it there,” Jinki commented, all-of-a-sudden slipping into the realms of amicable small-talk. Such defined contravention in speech jarred Taemin’s confidence further, as Jinki mumbled the afterthought, “I used to work in a club too, when I was your age. Actually, it's where I met my wife.”

 

Taemin bit down the temptation to belittle the therapist as he imagined the man tending the bustling drove of club-goers in a dark, emphatic hive, that buzzed given all the life within. Such mundane employment didn’t seem to suit Jinki – but, then again, Taemin supposed everyone had to substantiate for life’s barrage of bills somehow.

 

"What's the work like?” Jinki asked, leaning forward. Now his demeanour had shifted to that an old friend would carry, only lacking the competitiveness over who led the best-life in the aftermath of their school-years.

 

"Long,” Taemin admitted, awaiting the inevitable response from Jinki, were he adaptive enough to make it. Any insightful therapist would chime a serenade of ​And I suppose Kibum made it easier or more interesting or ​more bearable.

“And I suppose Kibum made it better though, didn't he?”

 

Clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, Taemin stifled a sigh. A cut above the rest, potentially, but it seemed Mr. Lee was just as predictable as any other bound-by-twine therapist. One could never completely ignore the rules, after all, even if they wanted to shatter them.

 

Saying nothing, unwilling to divulge anything more, Taemin returned his attention to the oak desk in the room’s corner, furnished by nothing but a calendar that still portrayed the summer months of the previous year. Knowing he wouldn’t get an answer and resolute in his ideas, Jinki ruffled his brunette hair casually, observing the younger keenly. He had features too ethereal to back the copious underline of make-up around his wide eyes, and a long neck, the skin there whiter than any Jinki had ever seen.

 

"Do you enjoy your job, Taemin?”

 

A stunted laugh, and then the rhetoric, “Who enjoys their job?”

 

"Let me rephrase,” Jinki muttered, voice broadened mildly by Taemin’s blunt humour. “Are you coping with work? Any job comes with responsibility, after all.”

 

"I'm coping fine,” Taemin answered succinctly, knowing it was a query he'd have to look at in some way, even if not viewing directly overhead.

 

"You don't find it monotonous, too routine-like?”

 

"Everyone’s life is routine-like,” Taemin returned, as if he were subjecting the therapist to the obvious.

 

"True,” Jinki nodded, dressing the revelation in no decadent elaborations, “but not everyone sees it that way. For example, I wake up every morning, make work for nine, leave at five in the evening and have dinner with my wife. I do that almost every day, Taemin, constant, like a clock.”

 

"But clocks don’t realise they tick,” Taemin interrupted, “I get it.”

 

"No,” Jinki contravened, “they do, it's their purpose, after all. They just don’t see that as a constant loop, rather a series of small steps they take in order to complete that loop, that ​routine. They don’t look at the bigger picture, like most people. We just work towards our next target without taking them all in, just like how my next step will be to go home. I'm not thinking that I'll do it tomorrow, or that I did it yesterday, just that I'll do it today.”

 

When Jinki had finished, Taemin resisted the insidious urge to roll his eyes.

 

"Was that meant to be something profound?” being the cold dish he served, prompting Jinki into shrugging a shoulder carelessly.

 

"No, not really. Things are only profound if the audience see them as such. I can’t make you see my words that way, Taemin, only you can.”

 

"Well, I see your words as rehearsed,” Taemin replied truthfully. “I see them as just about the same ​bull you serve every other client you get, Mr. Lee.”

 

Again, Jinki appeared unfazed. He simply removed his glasses and lay them to rest on the arm of his chair. Without the spindly frames, Taemin could get a full scope of just how handsome the therapist truly was. If he were any other man, Taemin would concentrate on flirtations or dirty fancies, but it was Lee Jinki, the pretentious therapist, and so any attraction was struck dead in its chrysalis, never to emerge.

 

"So, do you think everyone is the same, Taemin?” Jinki asked rather politely, long eyelashes fluttering as he made his remarks.
 

"I'm sorry?” Taemin shot back, the question appearing as an anomaly in the otherwise retrospect-centric ideals of their discussion.
 

"Do you think everyone is the same? I'm curious, for you did just generalise the entirety of my clients, after all.”

 

"I didn’t generalise ​them," Taemin cut back tersely, slightly aggravated at the therapist’s taut approach, “I generalised how you treat them.”

 

"And yet you’ve sat here with me for no-more than fifteen minutes,” Jinki revoked, “with the impression that I transform all those who walk through my foot with the same, well, ​bull."

 

"You do though,” Taemin upheld, unwilling to back down from what could have been an argument under different shading. “You do and you know it, Mr. Lee. I know how therapy works, I know-I know the steps you all take, and they're almost the same for every person who comes. They won't tide with me, I hope you know that.”

 

"Tell me, Taemin,” Jinki mused, tone refreshed as if he was abandoning that qualm, “do you believe a teenage girl fretting over her exams is the same as a grown man who wishes to jump off a bridge?”

 

"No,” Taemin muttered, “no, I don’t, Mr. Lee. Everyone isn’t the same, I didn't say that, but I believe every teenage girl who has come in here stressed over her exams is the same, every man looking to end his life is, and that you fix them in the protocols for each scenario. Give the teenage girl a handsome smile, trip-up memory lane and some about, I don't know, working hard (but not too hard) and remembering to calm her mind. The man? Get him pills, a place in an institution, and shut him up so that his mind will eventually force out the pain. It's all the same, Mr. Lee. It's all the same.” Realising the tangent he'd fallen victim to as soon as his ventilated exhalation ended, Taemin almost blushed, unsure of confronting the therapist; would it only serve to briskly tighten the attitude of Jinki, or was Taemin himself conveying idiocy over a subject he had no knowledge on? His snarky confidence that gnawed sharper than any great-tooth was the mouth of his downfall, and it often swallowed Taemin whole. However, when he glanced up, Jinki was just observing, a melancholy thread in the dim room. Faintly, his lips twitched.

 

"Do you think you're different, Taemin?”

 

Taemin frowned, furrowing his brows, for the first time considering one of the therapist’s questions.

 

"No,” Taemin answered, shaking his head. “I just don’t think you’ve designed the protocol for me yet.”

 

"And Kibum,” Jinki pushed, voice laden with the salt a sea’s worth of wonder provided, “is he different, too?”

 

"Kibum’s normal,” Taemin answered. In his voice was regret.

 

The boat of conversation yawed less violently for the next while. Jinki would hoist the sail to ask and Taemin would puncture its fabric with long, ragged nails. Never were the questions as personal as they had been, and at times Taemin found he almost lost himself to the notion that he'd known the therapist for longer than his worth. Accidentally, a clause would slip from his parched lips before he had the candour to hide it, but the therapist rarely curtailed their boundary of trust to explore such depths, and instead focussed on drabble that seemed, for all intents and purposes, pointless. Taemin found that, after an hour, he’d told Jinki the name of his favourite book, and had admitted to being a fan of bright colours, though not one to don himself in them often. The therapist himself had laughed, raised awareness on his guilty pleasure for the flamboyancy of pastel pink, and had even offered Taemin a compliment on his hair – something rare, though never sought after by the younger. Despite earlier tensions, comfort had subsided over the therapist and the client, to the extent that they had almost forgotten the wayward bellows of time.

 

"So,” Jinki sighed, face flushed in a friendly glow, “this is the first of our sessions, Taemin, and not the last, provided you return. Was it what you expected?”

 

Opening his mouth to speak, Taemin stopped. It seemed no therapy had been done, and his mind was just as convoluted and entrenched in dysphoria as it had been upon his entrance. Nothing had alleviated the equilibrium of dread and paranoia, and Jinki’s understanding had piqued in the first few minutes of their session, to remain understated and lonely when discarded so ruthlessly. However, in his mind, there was an odd ​something – a pecking something, a subtle ​something, a wary ​something that remained as a ​something – that almost compelled Taemin, clutched the strands of black hair that framed his smooth face and buried his head in the garden of Jinki’s therapy. Jinki wasn't trying to heal him, no, but he was trying that odd little ​something Taemin couldn't quite define.

 

"No,” Taemin answered wholly, “no, Mr. Lee.”

 

"Do you want to see me again?” Jinki arched an eyebrow then, toying with the leg of his glasses. He was a cunning therapist, and Taemin knew he hadn’t unearthed the tip of his many methods. Mindless chatter that verged on invasive only sedated the evasive culmination of everything within Taemin, only led him down the pathway of trust and transparency. Jinki was nice, it seemed, but knew his game well, and, given the presence of a ​something and his own intrigue, Taemin couldn’t help but want to take another session, to see if he could unravel the therapist’s threads even further.

 

"Yes, Mr. Lee. I'll see you again.”

 

•••

 

A/N howdy! So, yeah, um, yeah o.o I'm unsure what this is and if I'll even continue it, so I'm going to ask a favour… I'd really love if you guys could tell me if it's worth continuing or not. I've various other stories already (two SHINee novels, a SHINee one-shot collection and an EXO poetry collection so I'm busy okay TvT) and this story was only really a small thought that sparked and got angry so I had to shut it up >_< but is it worth continuing? Because, if not, then I can shift my focus back again to those things and forget this pointless drabble… but hey, Ontae (internal rhyme woot :3) so yeah. Basically this will be six parts, each therapy session, so it isn’t that long, I've just a lot on my plate with regards to writing so I'm hesitant to throw myself into another project, particularly if people aren’t enjoying it xD so yeah, let me know ^-^

 

Also, if any of those I am mid-conversation with are reading this… please know I'm not ignoring you guys, I've just had a long few days (laughing~) so I would be conversation right now… I STILL LOVE YOU THOUGH OKAY <3

 

So yeah. Thank you :3 I hope you like this. But it's unedited, and actually the prose is super weak, right? Idk, reading over it i almost feel like the grim reaper came along and the life out with a straw... It's not good, so I'm sorry, idk... Even for me and my usual ty things it seems bad omfg this world~ I can't, basically x.x

 

Laughing, laughing, always laughing~ TvT thank you :3