It doesn't have to be this way, Jinki mused, waiting as time crawled by painfully slowly. Yet, it was going to be over so soon – just a few minutes, and he'd be walking home with his medicine that he didn't need. Soak a little, maybe – he had no umbrella on him.

It was a weird state. He could almost feel the blood circulate in his veins, yet it was such a fleeting moment – only a bat of the eyelid separating a glass of water falling off the edge of the table, knocked over by one careless movement, and a pile of broken pieces scattered all over the wet carpet.

It has to be this way, a fatalistic voice in Taemin's head concluded.

Why did I let him into my house? Why? His face didn't betray a single emotion boiling under his skin, but, oh, how he blamed himself for every single thing. He looked sleepy, a little morose, but inside he was taking himself apart. Why had he agreed to go to that tacky coffee shop with him? Why had he agreed to let his soul be ravaged, be stomped on by a stranger briefly mistaken for a soulmate? A stranger that he had hallucinated before attempting to take his life? A stranger that, having left his life in embers, was sitting in his living room right now in perfect silence, and there was nothing off-putting about him... Not a single hard line, not a single flaw that he could be reduced to in his memory.

And he, Taemin, was getting it wrong over and over again. He always made the wrong choice, said the wrong words... Picked the wrong moments... He didn't love himself at all.

Jinki was bold enough to break the assumed pact of silence by commenting:

“Your place is pretty minimalist. I thought you'd have more stuff.”

Taemin followed his gaze around the room. He'd never thought about that.

“I did have more, but trashed it all in a fit of rage,” he explained matter-of-factly.

Jinki's eyes flickered, his mouth slightly open.

The other sighed.

“Jesus... I'm ing with you. I'm not a maniac.”

“I never said you were.”

You said I was many other things, though.

Taemin was lounging on the couch that he'd picked himself, it was his territory, his refuge from the world, but it was impossible to relax this way. It was as if his very limbs didn't belong to him.

It's gonna be over soon, it is. He's gonna leave, and never come back.

He wished he'd the ceiling lamp that he so disliked – the lighting was too intimate for his taste, and he didn't want anything to be lurking in the ambiguous shadows.

Taemin sat up and looked at the window. The light of the street lamps was shining through the rain drops on the glass.

“It's raining outside and you have no umbrella. What a shame, with your cold and all,” he said with just a hint of deliberate nastiness.

Jinki rubbed his eye.

“I'm not sick. Just drunk. I bought something because I needed a favor from the shop guy.”

Taemin chuckled.

“Got alone on a weekday? That's pathetic.”

“You were eating ramen alone at the supermarket,” Jinki argued with a shrug.

“Yeah, what's wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Each to their own.”

Jinki looked calm – Taemin was growing more impatient.

“It's taking a while,” he hinted, nodding in the direction of the charging phone.

“It's old, I have to wait a bit,” was the unperturbed answer.

The rain became stronger, lashing against the windows he had forgotten to close before leaving his house, and threatening to pour inside the room. Just like his life, the weather was unpredictable these days.

“Did you, um, go to meet that person on the phone that night?” Jinki asked as casually as possible, while Taemin stood up to shut the windows.

“Yeah.”

He went to the bedroom first.

“Boyfriend?”

“That's none of your business.”

“Come on.”

He walked back to the living room.

“‘Come on’ what? Just because I let you into my apartment, it doesn't mean I owe you any answers about my personal life.”

“You know, I thought that our conversation went well last time…”

When Taemin was done there, he turned around.

“I'm glad you think so,” he replied, giving his guest a wry smile.

“…but you're still mad, clearly,” Jinki finished as he raised his eyes to look at him.

Taemin didn't really buy his tranquility – not when he knew what was hiding beneath his own. He crossed his arms on his chest.

“Why, did you do something?”

The tense pause that followed was broken off by the ominous cracking of a lightning that set off a few car alarms.

Jinki locked his fingers together.

“Were you always this hard to talk to?”

A retort followed:

“Were you always pretending to be dumb?”

“I'm not pretending.” Taemin smirked, and Jinki put his hand to his nose, realizing what he'd just said. “.”

“Listen,” he continued. “If you're mad, and we're both here, why don't you just let it all out? What's the point of beating around the bush?”

It's almost as if he wanted to have a fight of some kind. Taemin didn't get the meaning of it all. Even if his insides were on fire, even if, despite all of the trying and getting better, he still couldn't let go – what difference would it make? …

“Even if I were mad, what's the point of talking to you now, when you didn't care to listen when you left?” he asked both of them and no one in particular. “You're the one that got away, so stick to that. Why pick up what you got rid of?”

Jinki kept still; only his fingers moved, tensing up, almost forming a fist – and then relaxing.

“You think I'm responsible?” he replied in a voice that didn't quite sound like him.

“You're responsible for your part, I – for mine. I was a mentally unstable idiot who fell for a rent boy and thought it was mutual, because sometimes the rent boy listened to his grievances when other people didn't. You ran away when got bad and you couldn't get much more out of me, but that's just business, so nothing personal, right?”

Jinki gave a mirthless laugh.

“Bull.”

“Why, did I miss something?”

“Either one of us hit his head and forgot what really happened, or you left out a big chunk of the story.”

He certainly didn't look so relaxed now.

“What part did I leave out?” Taemin asked. “You giving me for being rich enough to afford your services? You mocking my struggles and the way I felt about my life?”

Jinki sat wordlessly for a moment or two: they both knew what the other was alluding to. But he came to quickly.

“I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘the part where you manipulated me into dropping everything to run to you and listening to all the delirious that got into your head, only to find out that even you don't believe a word of that’, but that would've marred the picture of your victimhood a bit, wouldn't it?”

Interesting.

Last time they had talked, Taemin had rediscovered the joker side of Jinki's personality, not without a faint feeling of surprise. Now, almost like a perfect repetition of some scenes that he'd been suppressing so persistently in his brain, he got reacquainted with the part he'd never really forgotten: Jinki could be cold. He'd been prepared for that more than anything else, anticipating the caustic remarks and the likely twisting of truth, and yet – and yet, he saw him now, seated in his armchair with steely glint in his eyes, and everything he could have used to keep his footing, was slipping away, turning into liquid. A person whose face he'd used to touch to let his soul be purified, was mocking, intimidating him by summing up everything that had haunted him day and night for so long into those dry, vulgar phrases, as if nothing he'd been through mattered.

He needed to distance himself from the noise.

These are just words. They can't do anything.

His medicine would make him feel better, he just needed to wait until it kicked in.

He slid his palms into the pockets of his jeans instead, making a conscious effort to keep his mask of detached contempt from crumbling.

“You're blaming me for recovering from my down moments?” Taemin asked, adding to his voice a note of amusement that he did not feel.

Jinki crossed his legs.

“I'm not blaming anyone. It is what it is.” He was smart enough to know that blaming would be a liability.

“Why not let me keep my ‘victimhood’ intact, then? Do you want a piece?”

Taemin felt that it was too late for withdrawal on anyone's part now. The blood was spilled.

He was smarter than Jinki, he knew. And God knows, he was going to use it. His guest his dry lips.

“I want nothing of yours,” he reiterated, careful enough not to step on that landmine, either. “I gave you an opportunity to say what you wanted to, since everything I heard last time turned out to be an act.”

“It was an act,” Taemin agreed, nodding. “Of civility, where I gave you what you wanted, with the premise that we never see each other again. That agreement only covered one session, and since I never invited you to sneak your way into my house and get nostalgic again, I don't have to be nice to you anymore.”

“And what exactly do you think I wanted from you?”

Taemin shrugged.

“I don't know – a pat on the head? I mean, you showed such generosity, with all the ‘I was unfair to you’ talk and the spectacle of asking about my well-being – I just had to throw you a bone. Too bad your ‘concern’ didn't mean all.”

He decided not to stop at that and added:

“Who knows, maybe you were hoping to make some cash as well?” Now, he wanted to hurt him. “Maybe you are still? If so, you can give me a and go treat your boyfriend to a Burger King or something.”

He knew he'd got him now.

Jinki slammed his fist on the table.

That must've hurt.

“I don't need your ing money, and I'd rather die than touch you again!” he cried, the vein on his forehead popping. “Alright, I came to meet you because I felt guilt, and yes, I wanted to get rid of it! But I was also worried that your dumb might have done something stupid to yourself!”

Taemin saw no reason to keep feigning self-control any longer, either.

“You were late, then, because I could've offed myself a thousand times by then – without you knowing or giving two s, so cut your self-righteous crap! How dare you pretend to care now, when you walked away from me, knowing that I was on the edge with my family falling apart?! I'd been stalking you for weeks like a pathetic maniac, begging you to forgive me for being powerless against my demons, for loving you, for being scared, when my whole bloody life was on fire! I told you I wanted to die and you left knowing that! And now you crawl back to me to ask how I've been doing? I'm swallowing meds and wishing quick death on both of us, that's how I'm doing!”

“You talk about death a lot, but, unlike people with real problems and real responsibilities, you never wanted to help yourself or do anything about it,” Jinki said, talking perfectly in sync with the shadows that had been suffocating Taemin's mind already – the ones he'd been fighting by telling them they were not real, almost successfully until now… or maybe they were real, and other things weren't?

He watched his former lover's lips, and he felt like he'd lost. He also felt like tearing him apart and watching him bleed.

Didn't he deserve it for hurting him, for making him feel ashamed?

No. No...

He'd continue fighting just for the sake of it.

“What do you mean by ‘real’ problems? Complaining about being poor when you're studying in one of the best universities in the country, even though you blew one chance before? Avoiding your mother that's been nothing but supportive to you? And the ion thing – yes, you had to deal with a few psychos along the way, but I paid you for hanging out, and you are one of the lucky ones if you were able to get out of that without any repercussions! All this time, no matter what, you've also been privileged in one way or another – I wonder if that was at the core of your guilt complex after all! And oh, trust me, if I'd never wanted to help myself, I would've been a pile of ashes in a jar by now.”

Jinki jumped to his feet and stepped closer.

“Yeah, like you ever had the balls to kill the only person you really care about! Are you seriously going to talk privilege to me?! Did you even wipe your own snot until now, or does your driver still do that for you?”

He became way more coherent when emboldened by fury, his gestures got sharp, more expressive. And his face... Eyes steely, almost black, the outline of the lips harder, thinner in tension, the very contours of his face sharpening as the whole feeling of his presence was morphing into something dark, bitter – truly, Taemin should have turned the ceiling light on: his eyes were showing him strange things.

He was curious for a moment: had that stupid boyfriend of Jinki's ever seen that look? No. Because it's likely that he doesn't hate his boyfriend the way he hates me.

Taemin looked deep into those eyes filled with uncovered hatred, and his mouth curved in an ironic smile. It didn't look much like a smile anymore, though, and he knew that he could no longer fake it – when the blade of a knife cuts a little too deep past the skin, there's only so much you can take, and he liked his pain good and controlled.

His mask crumbled, turning into hot ashes as it fell.

“Yeah, nothing reeks of privilege more than hearing your dad slam your mom's head against the wall, getting a mental disorder you never asked for and being controlled every second of your life, knowing that your future has already been chosen for you!”

Jinki clenched his jaw.

“You'd be surprised, but I did, actually. I did have the balls,” Taemin confessed, ultimately stabbing himself in the back, since it was the very single thing that he was not to reveal to the person in front of him in any circumstances.

And, as he did, the fog of rage lifted. He accepted his loss and his voice didn't tremble anymore.

“What?” Jinki asked emptily, even though he'd heard every word clearly.

“To ‘kill the only person I truly care about’... I failed, though.”

Jinki took a breath, seemingly losing his focus as he broke the eye contact. He faltered, fled to the window, where the night sky was pouring its tears between the blinding flashes of white light. The young man leaned on the windowsill for support, slouched. He had nothing to say.

Seconds ticked, and Taemin was again in control of his body and voice – just when he'd finally ceased to care.

“I wanted to cut my veins open – even googled how to do that properly. Went to the sea to end everything, but the driver who ‘wipes my snot for me’ didn't let me,” he elaborated in a new, thoughtful tone of voice, as if he was talking about a semi-interesting book he'd read a while ago. “So, I took a bunch of pills at home instead, but it almost pulled my stomach apart and I let myself be saved. Choking on vomit is not a sweet escape – but then again, maybe I just chickened out as I do...” He noticed that the room was too cold now and turned the air conditioning off. He stared at the remote control in his palm – a stupid, mundane object. “You know what's funny? I actually imagined what you would've told me if you were there that day, and, in my mind, you told me not to do it, that I should wait until I feel better and all... But the real you… you would've shamed me for being afraid – who knew?”

When Taemin raised his eyes, Jinki was still clinging to the windowsill, petrified. He couldn't even be sure he'd heard him, let alone appreciated the irony – so motionless his silhouette was.

“What, are you shaken? No more witty comebacks?” he asked louder, tossing the remote away. “Come on, it's not a big deal... Not like anyone died.”

“How ed up are you if you think that trying to take your life is not a big deal?” Jinki's muffled voice wondered.

“Pretty,” the other agreed.

The guest didn't move at all.

Taemin tilted his head to the side, studying him from the back. Something was off about him. He came closer to figure out what it was, but couldn't quite capture it. He just knew that the atmosphere changed and the thunderstorm was in its dying throes. Another flash – a mute, miserably weak one – of white light made it seem like there was a slight tremble of the shoulders, an almost undetectable convulsion of inner struggle.

“Jinki, are you... crying?” Taemin half-whispered.

He saw Jinki's hand brush over his face quickly.

“I never cry.”

The sound of thunder was far away now, and the water drops were drumming on something instead.

“You're a fool, then.”

Thoughtlessly, he reached out for the other man's arm.

“Don't touch me,” Jinki muttered, shrinking away from the touch as he came back to life.

He turned around, and Taemin watched him stride across the room to the glass-top table, where he yanked the cable out of his phone.

Then, he shuffled his shoes on and left – again. And the door wasn't slammed hard, and no last look was exchanged – because he was done here.

Taemin stood in his now empty apartment, in the silence that he so loved.

It was all over.

Again.

It was so weird that he had been standing there looking out of the window, and now he wasn't?

He sank to the floor, covering his face when there was no one to hide it from anymore. Tears came, too, and they were hot and relentless.

Everything was a blur now except for the feeling of the warm, bare floor beneath his cheek. He drifted off when the tears got tedious, and he wasn't sure if his mother really called him on the phone to ask how he was, or it was only a dream, and he had only heard the sound of his own colorless voice asking, begging her to come, in his imagination.

A few days must have passed – no, it was only about an hour, surely? – before the door lock clicked, light steps approached Taemin, lying curled up on the floor, and someone's hands lifted his head gently to let it rest on their lap.

“Mom. Mom…” he called coarsely.

“I'm here,” her girlish voice answered. “Darling, what happened?”

She pushed his hair away from his face and Taemin opened his eyes.

“He came here. The one I loved before I died.”

“You didn't die, my love.”

“I let him hurt me. Again,” he said, impassive, as if someone else was talking with his lips.

The woman's hand brushed his cheek softly.

“How did he hurt you?”

“With words. They were all lies, but they were true as well.” He looked up at his mother's worried face. “I wish he'd never come... No... I wish I'd never met him.”

Mrs. Lee sighed.

“It will pass.”

“Yes, we're all gonna die one day and all that, but, as everything passes, we do, too. We hurt each other, we lie, we try to heal, and then it happens all over again, and it's over. It's so… tiring...”

Taemin thought more before asking:

“Is it, like, all there is to it? What's all this running around for? You're older, so tell me.”

“I... I don't know.”

“I thought mothers ought to know everything.”

“Maybe.” Mrs. Lee bowed her head, hiding her face from the light. “But I'm not a good mother, I'm afraid.”

Taemin felt for her – this time without the anger that usually accompanied his sympathy when it came to his mother.

“In your defense, I'm a pretty ty son.”

The woman shook her head gently.

“No, don't say that... You're mine, and I love you the way you are.”

She put a light kiss on his forehead, and they fell quiet for a while.

Taemin didn't feel like weeping anymore, but instead a feeling of immobilizing hopelessness wrapped its coils around his heart as the slot machine of his memory hurled at him unwelcome scenes from his pre-therapy life. That always happened after he indulged in another what-if-I'd-never-met-him illusion.

Would he always be this way – unhinged and unhappy for one reason or another? That was easier to imagine than finding the right way (whatever that was) and getting his ‘happily ever after’… Dr. Lee would have said that he was engaging in ‘negative prediction’ or something like that, but he just didn't know how to change the way his brain worked.

“I guess it all depends on what cards you drew at the beginning... It's just that mine were not that good,” he mused aloud.

“Things were never perfect in our home. Sometimes they were terrible, but I wouldn't say that your life was that bad,” his mother argued. The sensation of her fingers combing through his hair was hypnotizing, lulling him. “You had some opportunities that those less fortunate...”

“There are people who suffer way more than me, yes, but I can't see how that is supposed to make me feel better. What kind of person do you have to be to get off on the fact that there are people who have it worse than you?”

That got Mrs. Lee thinking for a minute.

“It might help to be aware of that fact, though. You are cared for, you can do the thing you love...”

“I don't love anything right now, so let's skip that part. You married a major dickhead, I know that it because I was there too, but...”

The movement of her fingers ceased.

“You don't know everything,” she said in a changed tone. He'd hit a nerve, even without meaning to.

Taemin noticed that she was wearing very little makeup now, no flashy earring, no impractically elaborate manicure. She looked older that way, and for some reason it deepened his sadness. He wondered if he'd ever seen her like this before, at all.

He knew what that detached tone meant. Pain.

“I guess so... I'm not trying to invalidate anything, but at least you didn't have the misfortune of being a gay man in a country where you can't go very far if you stay true to yourself.”

“People will hurt you no matter what your uality is.”

“Yeah, but as a straight person you'll never experience this inherent shame that you carry around with you, which only gets worse when you have to choose your lovers from self-hating hookers and married men who make families with people they'll never be attracted to,” Taemin insisted.

Mrs. Lee hesitated before responding to that. And when she did, her barely audible answer was not at all what her son expected.

“I'm not a straight person, though. And as a woman, I have even fewer socially acceptable options.”

Taemin sat up and looked at her with rounded eyes.

“You know that ‘straight’ means ‘heteroual’, right?”

“I know, and I've never been truly attracted to a man in my life. I am what nowadays people call ‘gay’.”

The woman's serious expression left no room for doubt as to whether she knew what she was talking about.

“And here I thought that we have something in common,” her son joked when his mind scrambled out of the stupor his mother's sudden confession had caused.

Maybe it was an illusion, but it seemed that her cheeks had turned a faint shade of pink.

“We do,” she said timidly.

Taemin nodded.

“Right.”

He resumed his previous position and Mrs. Lee caressed his blue hair again.

“Do you have a lover?” he asked.

“Not for a very long time.”

“But, you had a girlfriend before?”

“We were never ‘official’, but... I guess I did. We were in love.”

“Tell me about her. Was she hot?”

The woman smiled.

“She was to me. She was intelligent, funny, had the biggest smile I'd ever seen. Her mind was so clear and bright, she was never ashamed of the way she was, never torn apart by the same doubts that I had... She was way more confident than me.”

Taemin knew everything about the kind of vulnerability she was talking about, so he understood.

“She didn't grow up in your family, though.”

“True. Maybe she was naive... We were best friends in college, and no matter what she told me later, I think I fell for her first. I liked spending time with her and admired her in my own quiet way, and there was this inexplicable warmth that I felt in my heart when I looked at her...” Her eyes glazed over as the memories carried her away. “Being in love with another girl was unheard of at the time, and I wasn't sure what was going on with me… why she was always in my thoughts and why I didn't want to let go when I held her hand.”

“Did you confess to her?”

“Not for a long time, no. I wasn't even sure what was going on in my brain for a while. But I noticed the way she sometimes looked at other girls and it wasn't the usual way to look at your peers...”

“Like she was checking them out?”

Mrs. Lee laughed.

“I guess that's what you call that. Sometimes a student in our group would come to class in a new dress or with a new hairdo, and she would... I don't know. She'd give them that lingering, dreamy look for a moment or two. Like a child who saw a basket of candy on the top shelf, if it makes any sense.”

It made perfect sense to Taemin, even though he would've picked a less innocent comparison to describe his own fascination with the same .

“Yeah, she wanted a piece,” he translated, amusing his mother again with his bluntness.

“That habit of hers made me awfully jealous and I caught myself wishing she gave me that look, too.”

“She didn't see you that way?”

“It's... hard to say. Sometimes I had a feeling that there was something there, and at the other times she treated me like I was her little sister.”

“That's a bummer. But in the end, you got what you wanted?”

“I did,” she said with a shy smile.

Taeyeon was lying on her best friend's bed, her foot tapping along to the rhythm of a new pop hit playing on the radio. Eunsook, sitting on the floor in front of her desk, was busy finishing her report that was due next day, and Taeyeon, having nothing else to do, flipped through the pages of a Japanese fashion magazine from the stack of books by the bed. Her friend wasn't exactly a fashion lover herself, and it was surprising that she had such a vast collection of volumes littered with pictures of girls posing in miniskirts of the week and advertising some new bright eye shadow. Not that Taeyeon complained – it was very much her type of read and her style of clothing – now that she was free from the obligatory grey knee-length pleated skirt and the even greyer knit vest she'd been confined in – and hated with a passion – for years at school, colorful miniskirts and cute dresses were the new uniform of her own choice.

She saw a lovely wool dress of blue color, perfect for the season.

“Hey, nerd,” she called, and her friend turned around, a bit annoyed by the interruption.

She was wearing her unnecessarily big reading glasses (“I like to have a full perspective”, she shrugged when asked about it, and one could only conclude that she did love her books) and she was holding a pencil in her hand despite having another one tucked behind her ear. Taeyeon chose not to tell her.

She flipped the magazine around for her friend to see what she was looking at.

“How about this?”

Eunsook shrugged.

“I like her nose.”

“No, I mean the dress. This style would look good on you.”

But she was not impressed.

“Nah,” the girl replied curtly, going back to her writing. “Dresses and skirts are for warm weather, and I prefer having my bum covered for the next five months.”

“That's such a strict approach to fashion.”

“Smart one, too.”

Taeyeon raised her eyebrow.

“So, I'm dumb for not covering my bum?”

“No, your bum's okay. I guess my style is just more practical, health-wise.”

She mentally said goodbye to the rejected dress and continued turning the pages.

“If you're so practical, why are you always so late with the assignments?”

“Because I know I'm gonna nail them anyway.”

“Were you as tardy and smug in high school, too?” Taeyeon .

“Yup,” Eunsook nodded, tapping her chin with the tip of her pencil. “But I wasn't always this way. When high school started, I was tardy and smug on accident once or twice,” she started explaining earnestly. “And after that I just had to stick to my line, you know. Because if I'd suddenly reverted to being my true punctual and modest self, people would be asking, ‘So, which is the truth? Do we even know the real Eunsook? Do we even know our real selves?’, and that would've messed with people's brains big time. So, I had no other option but to adopt my new personality, born out of people's expectations – but mostly out of the unselfish motive to help them keep their mental balance from collapsing.” She turned around. “Ya know?”

Taeyeon blinked at her for a few moments, her face long.

“You piece of cow poop!” she cried indignantly when her brain finished processing her friend's nonsensical tale. “Why do I have to listen to your ridiculous rubbish every time?!” She threw a Spearmint at her.

Eunsook giggled.

“There's your answer. You listen.”

“Other people would never put up with this.”

“Yeah, and I wouldn't enjoy their company much.” She picked the gum off the floor and unwrapped it. “Thanks!” she cried, her eyes turning into slits as a self-satisfied grin brightened her face.

“Don't talk to me anymore,” Taeyeon grumbled, hiding her face directly behind the picture of a white poodle on the back cover.

“That's what you get for distracting me when I'm studying,” Eunsook answered with a chuckle.

A haughty sniff was heard from behind the magazine.

“Is it even possible to distract your smart and mighty brain? Oh, and did I mention that your brain is smart and mighty?”

“It's pretty smart, but I still write gibberish when I think of you.”

Taeyeon snapped out of the banter mood as a strange warmth spread over her cheeks. She was glad her face was hidden from view now.

“Really?” she asked, her voice sounding even higher than usual.

“Well, see for yourself: ‘A few Western elements are present in the architectirureal ensemble of the 18th century palace’.”

Taeyeon peeked from behind the pages.

“Something wrong with that sentence?” she asked innocently.

Eunsook gave her a concerned look.

“I can see now the destructive effect of my ridiculous rubbish. I apologize.”

Her friend let her write in peace for another fifteen minutes or so, until she looked at a battered electronic clock held together by blue tape (Eunsook was not an alarm-clock kind of person) and pouted.

“If you'd written the thing earlier, we would've been outside by now.”

“Michiko hasn't called yet,” Eunsook argued.

That single phrase proved to be a death sentence to the butterflies fluttering in Taeyeon's stomach, and she dropped the magazine to her lap.

Don't say anything sarcastic. Don't say anything sarc-

“Right, how could I forget about your flawless, fragrant and ‘cute teeth’ Michiko? We can't so much as take a single step without her now!”

decidedly wasn't her friend today.

“She is quite fragrant: she gave me a bottle of this really cool toilet water and–”

“It's called ‘eau de toilette’,” Taeyeon corrected her friend impatiently, flipping the pages with needless vigor. “Although I'm pretty sure it's perfect, like everything she does… I bet her animal socks never stink, she's never said a swear word in her life and she never has periods!”

“She does have periods – she told me how to make a special miraculous tea that helps with the cramps, and she's actually taught me a few awesome Japanese slurs last week.”

“How ‘shocking’.”

“I can see that you don't like her much,” That's a gentle way to put it. “But I honestly don't get it since she's so nice.”

“I'm just wondering - can she, like, stop trying so hard to be every geek's ideal girl for a second? That act is so getting old.”

Taeyeon raised her eyes to find her friend watching her in calm disapproval.

“What?”

“I sense a lot of pent-up stuff coming out here.” Eunsook removed her glasses, and a look of confusion flashed across her face as she picked up the pencil that had dropped from behind her ear. “Which is a shame, because I believe that Michiko is a genuinely sweet person who's just trying to make some friends abroad.”

She got up to spray the plants on the windowsill with water, and Taeyeon rolled her eyes while she wasn't looking.

“Exactly! Is she, like, a spy undercover?”

“If so, then she's been spending too much time making delicious cupcakes and sewing buttons on everything to be good at her spying job.”

Taeyeon sighed, remembering that blueberry cupcake that Michiko had given to her last week, and it almost had made her cry because it was that delicious.

“She has many hobbies, and she's good at them, too,” she said with a defeated air as her eyes fell on the watercolor landscape painting that Michiko, being the gifted creator of it, had presented to Eunsook on Chuseok. Then her focus shifted to the brown clay jug that sat on the desk, hosting a few wooden rulers, brushes and a goose feather among other similar items, and the contrast between its crude form and somewhat clumsy design, and the airy, translucent execution of the watercolor hit her senses like a hammer. “Unlike other people who should do everyone a favor and give up on trying to make things…”

“Are you kidding?! I love my jug!” Eunsook cried, hugging the aforementioned possession of hers protectively. “It reminds me of the Paleolithic earthenware at the History Museum that I love so much, but I totally prefer this bad boy because I can actually hug it and it was made by my best friend and not some ancient tribe who wouldn't give a damn about my birthday. And you painted it yourself, too – a gift doesn't get more awesome than that!”

Taeyeon looked up at her sheepishly.

“Really?”

“Of course, silly.” Eunsook sat next to the girl on the bed and looked her straight in the eye as she said: “Look. You are my best friend, and I am yours. We belong to each other.”

Taeyeon didn't even want to hear the rest. It felt like her hand had a mind of its own when it moved down the blanket to where Eunsook's was, as if the need for a moment of closeness with her was such an integral part of her physical being that it didn't need to be confirmed by conscious thought.

Eunsook's fingers naturally closed around her palm, held it tight as her lips went on explaining how no one could affect their friendship from the outside, how Michiko was just this one cool friend that she hoped that Taeyeon, too, would grow to like, etc. etc. But the other girl was thinking about the temperature of her body, her velvety voice and her silky long hair, and reveled both in the excitement and the pain their closeness brought – she felt good, but she didn't know what was going on at all.

What's wrong with me?

Meanwhile, Eunsook threw a bucketful of ice water over her head by saying cheerily:

“I mean, I don't mind when your boyfriend tags along. I doubt we'll ever be besties, but pheromones are a thing and I respect that. You guys wanna be together.”

Of course.

Taeyeon let go of her and leaned back against the wall, shutting down. It's all just too complicated.

By the time when, finally, Michiko arrived, they had been waiting by the door of the theater for a while – she was always 10-15 minutes late, and always apologized for it in such a charmingly self-deprecating way that only a monster in human skin would be angry at her. And how was it possible? Certainly not when her small, doll-like face was buried in a big green fluffy scarf, and the lace on her pink skirt, peeking from under her big-buttoned autumn coat, fluttered as her shiny little shoes clickety-clacked up the stairs at the entrance. Not when her long eyelashes fluttered and she giggled at Eunsook's awkward puns. Not when she was the walking ideal of gentle and sweet femininity that pulled off every single one of her quirks without any effort at all.

Eunsook gave her that look when she was skipping towards them in hurried little steps, and Taeyeon saw that. Another little splinter got chipped off of her soul and fell into the abyss.

It was always somebody else.

“So, she had a thing for her?” Taemin asked.

Mrs. Lee shrugged.

“I guess she liked her in one way or another... Maybe she wasn't quite sure herself. And she was a good girl, Michiko. I ran into her in Kyoto a few years ago – she's such a busy woman now. No buttons or cute patterns anywhere near her – it even made me a little sad,” she confessed with a melancholic laugh. “Even then, in the past, I knew there was nothing wrong with her, but...”

“You still hated her guts.”

As always, Taemin read her thoughts. After all, their minds worked similarly in many ways.

“Yes... until I realized that there was no point.”

“When was that?”

As soon as that question dropped from her son's lips, Taeyeon felt the damp, earthy smell of a late autumn forest, and the wind that was strong enough to untie her hair and slap her face with it, but not to distract her completely from the hungry growling in her stomach, as she trudged uphill, her boots slipping dangerously on the rain-sodden grass. The picture she had dared to extract from some forbidden, painstakingly guarded vault in her memory, was so vivid, so lifelike, it took her aback for a moment.

Not being one to enjoy sweating and ruining her clothes ‘for the team’ – she wasn't one to enjoy being in any kind of team in the first place – Taeyeon had never wanted to go on that ridiculous trip, and she'd been very vocal about it, too (as vocal as such private person could be, anyway).

“‘Come on, it's gonna be fun, it's not even that cold,’” she panted, mimicking her best friend's excited promises. “‘We'll be together’. Sure.”

But mostly, she was just swearing low under her breath, and so heartily that, if her mother had heard but one word of that stream of curses, she would never be able to look at her daughter the same way again.

A normal all-women university student would be excited if it was announced that they were free to bring their boyfriends along to the trip and would have looked forward to all the smooching under some bug-infested tree and spinning the bottle, but even though Taeyeon had fancied herself to be a lot of things, ‘normal’ wasn't one of those. She was out of town with her friends and her current, moneyed boyfriend, and lots of games and songs (she mainly hoped for some sausages) by the fire awaited her – and she was pissed. While to her peers it was an adventure, a party for their youth, to her, it was being rained on, having to poop in the bushes, longing for her shower – and, as for now, being teamed up with the very person she couldn't stand for all the wrong reasons, which made it impossible to even enjoy not being able to stand her.

Like many open-hearted and well-meaning people of her type, Michiko was full of useful advice, and she shared it with her bubbly enthusiasm and slight Japanese accent even when it wasn't necessary (a.k.a. too often). Taeyeon already knew that dry twigs burned faster. No, she wasn't going to break brunches off trees, even the dead ones. And yes, she was familiar with the difference between tinder, kindling and firewood, because she wasn't a child and had had some experience of her own, for God's sake, and–

A pained scream reached her from behind and she turned around sharply.

“You're kidding me,” she muttered wearily, letting her collection of twigs fall to the ground: she had to go and be the savior for the one she wished she didn't have to deal with at all.

Long story short, Michiko slipped and twisted her ankle, and couldn't walk to the camp by herself. Taeyeon, with her slightly smaller figure, had to be her support and guide. While the limping girl showered her with apologies and gratitude, the intensifying rain did the same with water, and it was impossible to put their hoods on, and, before they reached the clearing where the tents were set up, the twilight was thick and they were both cold and dirty from face-planting together on the muddy ground a few times. Michiko had grown quiet, and there were tears standing in her eyes from the pain and fatigue, but she wasn't complaining, and the sight of Eunsook rushing to her with a worried expression to see what was wrong didn't provoke the typical pang of senseless jealousy: spending a half an hour full of suffering and misery with someone had its own bonding power, and Taeyeon truly felt for her non-rival from overseas.

After leaving the victim to medically qualified hands, she went back into the woods to get her twigs, or whatever remained from her supply after the sky-water attack – mud on face and clothes and all. She didn't know what she was doing anymore: for some reason, she felt like her team buddy's trauma was in some way her fault for being so annoyed with her attempts to help, and also the sight of her boyfriend skewer-fighting with his friends like he was ten years younger than his actual age had made her want to punch him in the nose. But she didn't want to get into that, so she made her way back down the road of previous torment like some hopeless zombie in well-coordinated clothes.

When Taeyeon finally dropped on the ground beside the fire and was awarded for her self-sacrifice with a bottle of cool beer, there was not a single molecule in her body that didn't hurt.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the bottle from Eunsook. “How is Michiko?”

“Resting. Professor Min gave her a pill and Soohee made a prop for her ankle, so she's gonna be well, I hope.”

Taeyeon nodded.

“I hope so, too.”

Eunsook was looking at her without saying anything. She gave up.

“I didn't trip her or anything – I'm not a maniac.”

“Never said you were,” her friend said quietly. “I think you…”

Taeyeon coughed: the charred sausage she had greedily sunk her teeth into was a little too hot and she washed it down with more beer.

“What?” she asked, because Eunsook hadn't finished her sentence. The answer came not in the form of words, but in the look her friend was giving her when she raised her eyes.

It was that look – that one special look in which speechless admiration came together with warmth, and gentleness, and longing. And at such moment – when she had finally given up on trying to pull off the ‘staying attractive in the nature’ thing and accepted her lot, which was sitting on the ground in her previously new and now ripped jeans with her ruined hairdo and likely some ketchup and grease on her face!

Taeyeon didn't understand it at all, because there were other girls who had managed not to turn into absolute mess in the first couple of hours of their trip, and Hyeri was singing ballads to the guitar in her clear and ringing voice, but... but it was her that Eunsook, who looked so at home in her flannel shirt and trucker hat, with her long black hair tied in a ponytail, so clean and well-rested compared to her inane BFF, was watching with those glistening, tender eyes. She didn't understand it, and she didn't want it to stop, ever: Taeyeon must have done something right, and the only person whose approval mattered to her, was happy… at least until Dungwoo jumped out of the darkness, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away, because apparently his tongue was feeling lonely in his soju-flavored mouth. Just when Eunsook had parted her lips to say that important thing on her mind.

“And that's when you knew?” Taemin asked, because his mother fell silent.

They were lying on the floor now, at a distance comfortable for both of them.

“Almost. I mean, in my heart, I already did, of course... But the brain is slower.” She raised herself up a bit to check the time on the Blu-ray player and ‘oh’ed. “It's so late already, I lost track of time...”

Taemin felt his heart shrink in the all-too-familiar feeling of the ancient fear: she was going to get up and leave him, and he'd be alone again.

“Do you have to go?” he asked, gulping.

“I think you need some rest.”

His pulse quickened, the old machine of despair and regret coming back to life.

“No, stay and tell me more about your love,” he said, locking his fingers around his mother's thin wrist. “Please.”

I'm scared. I'm vulnerable. He hurt me, the young man's eyes were whispering, without any chance for that confession to be uttered out loud. The woman read that message right: on many occasions, she'd seen the same look in her own eyes when she'd studied the damage done if not to her face, but her soul, in the bathroom mirror at their old house. So, she stayed, and lay back down by her troubled boy's side.

He calmed down, and pushed the thinking, and forgetting, and relapsing of the aftermath, a little further back.