It'd been the same every year, as far as he could remember. The towns were tipped in their myopic neon, blinkering like the tails of headlights, caught as fragile diamonds between the silken sheets of night. The noises were those of a muted excitement; chatter, laughter and a joyful verbose he could no more understand now than he did when he was younger, yet it clamoured in the air, almost as poignant as the mid-December chill. Breath condensed to white and fingers stiffened blue, and in every eye was some ardent spark – whether of happiness, worry or apprehension, he did not know. It seemed to fluctuate with the person, an ephemeral emotion clasped limply as sand. He found it strange how so many people could feel such contrasting things. They were assaulted with the same festive sights, the same wintry scents – and yet they differed, each and every one of them, merely varying parcels wrapped in the same paper.

Jinki blinked as if under the mirage of an epiphany. It vanished as quickly as it had sprouted.

“Sir- your coffee.”

The urgency in the young woman’s voice was palpable as she nudged the take-out coffee closer to Jinki, the steadily-growing queue behind him shuddering with cold and frustration, laundry on a line blustered by breeze. His trance broken as soon as her sharp voice slit through the night, Jinki nodded, near-stunned in countenance, and reached across for the cup.

“Yes- sorry- thank you,” he stuttered. Embarrassment proliferated across his cheeks like glossy snowfall, and the woman merely raised an eyebrow, unwilling to engage any further in conversation with the man who had somehow managed to transcend within the space of thirty seconds into a reality no-more hers than the bright stall she served at.

She folded her arms, pursed her lips, and Jinki slipped back into the bustling market.

He'd never loved Christmas. Unable to fathom the customs of jagged trees and lavish presents and jolly red gift-bearers, and even less a fan of the unceremonious get-togethers and familial obligations, Jinki had found the entire season somewhat of a mundane chore; the commercialised skin of over-priced presents and the sheer idea of accommodating the narrow streets with offers seemed to him a definite discourse from the true meaning of Christmas – whatever that actually was. Unfaithful as he'd become and lonely as a sinner, Jinki figured he'd misplaced it somewhere.

Despite this, one thing Jinki did love came in the claustrophobic, cacophonic form of the Christmas market. It bustled yearly, a throng of vibrant vendors and confused customers, caught in the cadence of crowds like notes in a highly strung orchestra. Everywhere one turned was a person; everywhere one looked was a stall; everywhere one stepped they were sure to only just miss the toe of another. It was hectic, busy, a violent onslaught that rattled the senses in the sounds of Christmas carols and the scent of mulled wine, and Jinki loved it. He loved the vibrant buzz that pulsed as if the city’s own metronome, the way the market breathed with light and life. He loved watching the young escape their stresses and the old escape their boredoms, and the way in which nothing was ever still – the lights constantly glittered, the stalls were constantly stocked, the crowds were constantly enraptured by the slightest of paraphernalia. The place moved as if a yawing boat, and Jinki sat at the helm, obliviously wretched in his ardour.

He didn’t feel so alone in the market, for wherever he looked, there were people. People who laughed, people who cried, people who lived life as was fit – by seizing the chances they didn’t know they'd seized, and riding the wave of their aspirations.

Taking a sip of his coffee, Jinki side-stepped to avoid a small, enthralled child, who tugged his mother by the sleeve of her grey coat with such wry enthusiasm that it perked a smile across his lips. They vanished with the crowd and he forgot them, but Jinki didn’t forget his own winsome smile, as he continued to observe the market-place, cold, but not painfully so.

The smile forgot Jinki as soon as he rounded another corned, cup tepid against his thick black gloves, the night a gauze imprinted by the silver-lights.

Ahead of him, a couple stood – a man with his arm wrapped loosely around his girlfriend’s slender waist. They grinned remarkably, pointing together at a stall selling scented soaps, a spectrum of shades, ranging in their artisan beauty. The man murmured something softly into her ear, and she laughed, playfully swatting his arm. Jinki passed them quickly, careful not to stare. He could no more hate them than he could an injured dove, and yet they stirred his gut with nausea, paled his face to ash, and allowed the breeze to drag its skeletal fingers through his greying brunette hair. They were young when he was not, they were joyous when he was not, and they were together when he was most definitely alone.

Jinki shook his head. It was childish, such a notion.

He finished his coffee with a swift sip, and stuffed the cup into the nearest trash-can, jamming his hands into the pockets of his long black coat as soon as he'd done so. Burying his nose into his striped scarf, Jinki strolled some more, idle now in his intentions. Elbows bustled him as if a carrying wind. A chill lanced through his spine and carved into his gaunt cheekbones. It was getting late, and the night was losing its empathy. Sighing, Jinki began to make his way towards the exit gates.

It'd been the same routine every year for the past ten, and Jinki assumed every year for the next. He would wake, alone, and he would work, alone. Memories would blur his vision like hazy halations and he would remember them. He'd remember their smiles, their gifts, their laughter and their comradeship, for they would always visit him on that day, they always had. Now, Jinki didn't know where they were, didn’t know if they'd faded in the public eye just as he'd done, didn’t know if they'd been so readily forgotten, discarded as phantom litter, spectres that had once been more than illusive. He didn’t know if they'd forgotten him, either. Jinki barely knew a damned, only that it was his birthday, and, for the tenth year in a row, he was alone.

Jinki reached the entrance gates just as a fresh batch of visitors became distilled by the multitude of sounds and directions, clasped by the authentic Christmas craze, latching onto every beating heart of the season as best they could. Their eyes widened with their expectations – a feeling Jinki understood, though could not replicate – and they dispersed with eager awareness, dots on a canvas lathered in paint. Jinki watched as he wove through them, determined to not get lilted by the tidal flux of people, twisting sideways to avoid the shoppers in their frenzy. He had a home to get to, he had a bed to lie in, and he was colder than the weather allowed now that his spirit had dampened.

He broke through the crowd and out onto the pavements of an urban city-street, breathing like a body just saved of asphyxiation. By simply leaving the market, the mood had suddenly changed, and everything had quietened to a gentle pulse. The silent trail of cars were still, and the few gentle drifts of snow that fell were calm in demeanour. The high-rise buildings were bedecked in light and the latest Christmas-chart contenders played softly in the distance, as if from a radio submerged in water. It was so acquiescent, so blissful, so calm. He remembered how, years ago, walking the streets would have been a difficulty. People would have recognised him, even in a face-mask and hat – SHINee's Lee Jinki, an enigma of a man indeed. He'd never responded to Onew back then, only by his real name. Onstage, in SHINee, that was Onew. But strolling down city streets, offstage and relaxed, that was Lee Jinki. It had aggravated fans, but Jinki supposed that was okay. It certainly was now. Onew was long since gone; Onew was just a name; Onew was just a memory.

It took Jinki fifteen minutes to walk home. His apartment was a small, penthouse suite in one of Seoul’s most quiet urban subterfuges. It wasn’t pompously lavish nor bedecked in a swathe of luxuriance, but it was comfortable and costly, given its location, and most of those who occupied the neighbouring apartments were likewise in temperament to Jinki himself – private, subdued, quiet, tame. He'd always imagined living in the countryside following retirement, but having come as soon as it did, Jinki had found he couldn’t leave the cosmopolitan buzz of the city. His career had been so hectic and his life so fragile that the loneliness and isolation accompanying a country-side existence was so foreign to him that it seemed wrong. People needed people, Jinki believed, and he'd have even less of them in the country.

The foyer was dimly lit and unparalleled in its ghostly emptiness as Jinki took the stairs, slowly and methodically dragging his frame, lethargy beginning to set in. He didn’t know whether to blame the years for his tiredness or the fact that he was an early-riser, but now, at the age of forty-four, he supposed it was a culmination of both; he may not have been old, but he certainly wasn’t young, and his bones, muscles and sinew were beginning to reflect that with each stir of tension, each pang of protestation. As a young man, he'd been active, he'd been fit – but now, whilst still retaining a slender physique, he was much more inactive, much more accustomed to sleeping than dancing, to sitting than running, to eating than fasting. Jinki rubbed an eye, reaching his floor, and removed the keys from his pockets. This corridor too was empty, fetid in the scent of age yet hospitable as a hotel, the walls a calming purple and the lights a mood-lit orange. For a moment, Jinki stood, collecting his thoughts as the keys hung limpidly between his crooked fingers. Unscrewing his eyes, he slotted them into the door.

The quiescence was broken by the most uncertain of voices.

“I can't believe I found you here.”

Jinki froze, his body stiffened, and in that moment, everything became stoic and vague. He recognised that voice. He recognised that voice.

Memories came back to him like the inevitable setting of sun; he saw music and laughter, hardships and peril, hard-work and guilt, the good times and bad. He heard a plethora of songs and caught the cloying scent of cologne – tasted the bitterness of failure and the sweetness of success. His heart chewed his ribcage and spat at his lungs, gnawing his flesh until it burnt cold to the touch of his clothes’ fabric.

He recognised that voice.

Ten years had changed Jinki, and it had also changed the man before him. He was slender, elven, with thick black hair and rounded eyes that seemed to pierce into Jinki with every emotion the human body was capable of. His full lips were pinkish and somehow trembled, soft against his pale skin, a skin that had become older, now, less gentle. Despite the age visible around the crooks of his eyes, he was still invariably handsome, swallowed in a black coat, just as Jinki was, as if two men attending their own funerals. The man blinked, in a stasis of shock himself as his thick eyelashes fluttered, gauging the aged man before him.

“Jinki,” he whispered. The frailty of his voices stirred Jinki’s emotions. He was weak, he was empty and this wasn’t real. Jinki blinked, lips parted, the words hitching in his throat before he could speak them.

It had been ten years, and yet now it felt like no time at all. His conscience played a melodrama and his body became wracked by the presses of guilt and time. The man before him was so similar, yet had changed more than words could evidence. He was older, of course, but as ethereal as ever, and all Jinki wanted to do was embrace him – yet he couldn’t, something was stopping him, everything was stopping him.

“T-Taemin?”

The visitor smiled, a brilliant, brilliant smile, and nodded slowly, his eyes ridged in the watery bridge of tears.

“Long time, no see, hyung.”