He was born during a thunderstorm - or at least that’s what he says. 

           “It was pouring, according to my parents, anyway,” he told me. “It was so bad my dad could hardly drive to the hospital. Raindrops a size of a fist, they said. But I was always an inconvenient child.” 

           Inconvenient, he had said, but thinking about it then and now, I quite like the image. The clouds spitting fire like gray-faced dragons, and out comes Lee Taemin, hands raised, or as I liked to imagine, as if shouting to the sky above, “You’re not the only one causing a ruckus today.” 

           When the psychiatrist told me that Taemin was energetic, he had truly meant it. The boy is not just energetic. He is energy personified. He burns hotter than the fire spit forth from the clouds on the day of his birth. He is that gray-faced dragon, sputtering sparks and bounding across skies, taking their limitlessness as nothing more than a personal challenge. Like a thunderstorm, he is, bursting and crackling with pure energy since the day he was born.   

           “I... I talked to Taemin yesterday. Well, he came and talked to me, actually.”

           “Oh, did you?” The psychiatrist leans in. “You seem to talk about him every time we meet. You’ve taken quite a liking to him, haven’t you?”

           I can feel my cheeks burn like fire, but it’s a different kind of fire than the one Taemin exudes with every breath. It is timid, fragile, and touched with the delicate hand of shame. 

           “W-well, yeah... he’s the first friend I’ve made in this place,” I stutter, making excuses for something I may or may not have heard in his tone. “We’ve been talking... and... um...” I find it difficult to continue now that the doctor has placed some seed of mindless apprehension in my mind. But he decides to take over the conversation, and I am more than willing to hand it over. 

           “Does being around him make you happy?” 

           “Oh, yes,” I say, perhaps a bit too quickly. “And when I’m with him... he just shuts up. He can be chattering all day but the moment Taemin steps into the room... he just disappears. Like... like someone’s just sealed him up in a jar. I swear.”

           The psychiatrist’s eyes widen as if someone’s run stark right across his field of vision before he furiously scribbles something on his notepad. 

           “Now is that every time, or just some of the time?” 

           “Oh, every time. It’s a sure thing, really.”

           Taemin’s presence carries a glorious silence I have never had a chance to get used to.  A silence untouched and untainted - as pure as the boy himself. Something as simple as a step is b with peace. Of simplistic and ethereal beauty - of overflowing calm and uncontainable understanding. Him? Childlike awe woven in unmasked serenity. 

           But me? 

           Thick air, tight skin. A musical embodiment of something violent in my breath. Your voice is silk, and my voice isn’t even mine. Unfair, maybe so, but only fitting. You, an angel, and me...

           Just bits and pieces of someone unworthy.

           “If you like... I think I can arrange something for you two.”

           I feel all the blood rush to my fingertips as I look up at him. “What... what do you mean?” 

           “Oh, nothing definite yet, but...” He glances at his watch and tosses the clipboard on the table beside him. “Give me some time. If everything goes well... you should be pretty happy in about a week.” He gives a slight wink and a smile, a smile that has come to mean that their time together is over. After months of seeing each other, they had, intentionally or not, developed a makeshift code of mostly body language and slight movements that was as effective or more than actual speech. 

           “Ah... okay,” I stammer. 

           In a month or two I’d be happy? Even though the idea is foreign, I trust him and silently hope my trust isn’t misplaced. 

           But at this point, happiness is hard to imagine. 

           “Minho? Minho open up!” 

           There are fists slamming the wood of the door - or is it my heartbeat? Maybe a loud combination of the two, or maybe the throbbing in my ears is messing up my sense of hearing. 

           “N-not now mom. I don’t feel well.” 

           “Minho, you’ve been in there for two days straight. You haven’t even eaten! Your father and I are worried about you...” 

           She’s too loud. Shut her up, will you?

           “Mom... I... I’ll come out when I feel better, okay?” 

           A small sigh finds its way beneath the crack in the doorway, then the sound of a few steps in the opposite direction. 

           Hm, she listens well...

           Eight. I am eight years old this year. My birthday was two weeks ago. I had a party, presents, cake, and everything. My parents even bought me that new game I’ve been wanting for weeks. 

           Eight years old. That’s still young, I think. My parents tell me I’m big now, but I don’t feel like it. My arms feel small. They’re so much thinner than my dad’s are. They look like twigs when I hold them up to his. I want to play with him like we used to. I want my legs and arms to be big like his are. 

           “What... what do you want? Why can’t I leave this room? I want to leave.” 

           Minho, come on now. I want to spend some time alone with you. 

           “I’ve been here for days. I want to go eat. I want to go play with my dad.” 

           You know why you can’t do that. 

           My parents say I’m big, but I don’t think so. Grown-ups have a lot of responsibility. My mom and dad both go to work in the morning and come home at night after I get off the bus from school. They drive me places all the time. And they pay bills. My dad says bills are what you pay every month so you can have electricity and other stuff. 

           “Why won’t you let me out? You’re being mean.”

           Minho, you don’t understand. 

           The only thing I do is go to school but it’s not so bad. Mom and dad already finished school and college. They do a lot on their own. They have a lot of free-will. My mom taught me that word. That means you do what you want. 

           I don’t keep you here to be mean, I keep you here to protect you. Everyone else? They want to hurt you, Minho. I just want to keep you safe. You only need me, okay?

           “My mom and dad don’t want to hurt me. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

           Minho, you’re still young. You don’t know things like I do. 

           My parents say I’ve grown but I don’t see it. They mark my height on my door every year and maybe I’ve gotten a little bit bigger, but I still feel so small. My mom and dad have responsibility and free-will, but I can’t even leave my room. 

           My mom and dad do things that they want, but I can’t even make him go away.

           I do this for your safety. I do this because I worry about you. Do you understand?

           I lean my head against my walls - painted green, my favorite color - and nod. “I... I understand.”

           My parents drive and pay bills and go to work while I sit in my room alone. 

           They say I’ve gotten bigger, but I haven’t grown at all. 

           “-ho. Minho.” 

           My eyes flutter slightly and I shift slightly in my bed, trapped in a delicate still somewhere between dreams and reality. What was that? A voice? Whose? 

           “Minho, wake up.” 

           Long brown hair spilled over two thin shoulders. The bed slightly curved from the weight of bony knees beside my hips. And a voice that carries all the gentleness I’ve ever heard delivered in the form of just three words. 

           “Taemin?” I find the bed with my palms and hoist myself up before rubbing my sleep fogged eyes with the heel of my hands. I can see much more clearly now - past the mask of night’s black shield and into the eyes of a boy I see not only when he is in my presence. “What are you doing here?” 

           Taemin shrugs and places his hands in his lap, his feet tucked neatly beneath him and his hospital gown wrapped, much to my displeasure, below his knees. “I was bored.”

           I’m tempted to ask just how he got here, but I already know the answer. He snuck out. His carelessness knows no bounds - leaping up on my bed after knowing me a matter of days - but I can’t say that I mind. 

           “You’re supposed to be sleeping. It’s not exactly meant to be entertaining.” 

           “I suppose...”

           Taemin flips over to his stomach and lets his chin rest on his hands as we share a moment of silent eye contact. There is that same slight grin resolved in his pink lips, that infectious smile that I can’t help but return, the two of us sharing slight laughs in the midst of a room more akin to a prison than anything else. Nothing has sparked it, nothing has triggered it. This interaction, this moment of simplistic bliss, is all it takes for me to laugh off my troubles, for the heavy shackles that used to bind my movements to just disappear.

           You, moonlike elegance and starlike eyes, but me...

           “The psychiatrist said... he’d ‘arrange’ something for me. For... us. Something that would make me happy.”

           “For the both of us?” Taemin asks, tilting his head to one side. 

           “W-well yeah. I was telling him about you. I- I mean, how we became friends,” I stammer. I haven’t felt this kind of shame in a while. Such powerful embarrassment? Until now, I have never had the need. It’s painful, fire tinged and slightly numbing, but it is refreshing. The sign of an interaction I’ve been deprived from for far too long. An interaction I’m not quite sure how to define. 

           “So what do you think he meant? Maybe he wants to - ”

           “I don’t know. I hope so.”

           I don’t want to say it out loud. If we’ve already materialized the idea, and it turns out to be wrong, I’m not sure my heart can take it. But we’re both thinking precisely the same thing. The second floor. For the both of us. 

           And just the thought, just the image that I know too little about to create, and can only speculate through means of imagination alone, is enough to make me shake with anticipation. 

           “Hey, Minho?” 

           His eyes are a bit downcast. It’s an unusual sight. I’ve never seen them not sparkle as they usually do, and I can’t help but worry when I see them, a dull imitation of their former beauty. 

           “Yeah?”

           “What... what scares you most about being here?” 

           I purse my lips together. His question is unique in the sense that it is an assumption. He doesn’t ask if I’m afraid to be here because our experiences are shared. My feelings are his feelings, and his feelings are mine, bound by the mutual hatred of an identical experience. 

           He knows I’m scared without asking because inside, he is terrified. 

           “Honestly...” I say, turning on my side to look at him. He’s spread out next to me, his brown hair dusting over the pillow as he rests his cheek beside my own. I both love and hate how comfortable he is able to make himself in my presence. I love it because of his ability to behave in a manner uniquely his own without fear of judgment. I love it because I can see him at his most natural, thin arms splayed across the bed and his crescent shaped eyes smiling in tune with his equally gorgeous lips. But I hate him because I can’t do the same. Because I live in a perpetual state of the uncomfortable - bound by fear and chained with worry. 

           But I hate, most of all, that he seems to trust me. 

           And that, more than anything, is something I am not worthy of. 

           “I’m scared that I’ll make my parents worry.” 

           Taemin lifts his head suddenly, an expression of wonder fixed on his face. 

           “Are you close with your parents?” He asks excitedly. 

           “Ah... yes, very.” 

           Taemin’s eyes light up. “Really?” 

           “Um, yes.”

           “Wow...” He kicks his feet behind him and grins against the pillow. “That’s great.” 

           I blink at him a few times in silence. He’s so amazed by something so simple. It doesn’t seem quite right. I decide to change the subject rather than pry on the matter. 

           “What about you?” I ask. 

           His expression darkens once again as he ponders the question, and I decide right then and there that I love the way he looks when he thinks. His lips crease together at the seams, his eyebrows knitted and nearly meeting in the middle in concentration. 

           “I’m afraid... I’m afraid that I’ll never leave,” he admits slowly, savoring each word on his tongue before letting it reach Minho’s ears. “That... I’ll live my lifetime in here. And no one will remember me. No one will even remember my name.” 

           A shared experience. An identical existence. He and I are more alike than I previously thought. 

           Taemin’s fears are precisely my own. 

           “I...I won’t.” 

           “What?” 

           I trace my fingers up his arm in an unconscious touch. Something inside me just wants to feel him, to let my hands linger on the boy who feels just like me, yet is much purer than I could ever hope to be... 

           “I won’t forget you. So... you don’t have to be scared.” 

           He closes his eyes briefly, and when he smiles, I know that what I’ve said is truth. 

           That innocent tipped smile, that playful glance so strong behind his brown painted eyes...

           Forgetting? 

           It’s impossible. 

           “Thank you, Minho.” Taemin whispers. But his words only make me feel hollow. How can he thank me? Is it because of his ignorance? Because of what he doesn’t know? 

           I want to thank him instead, but before I can, he is asleep beneath the tentative touch of my hand on his shoulder. We’ll certainly get in trouble for this later, but for now, I don’t want to think about that. I just want to enjoy the warmth, his warmth, as long as time will allow it, short as it may be. 

           He was born during a thunderstorm, he had said, and if I was ever skeptical, I certainly believe it now. Scattered and sparking, he descends from the sky, followed by a hot summer’s wind and a curtain of warm rain. 

           And I’m left outside without an umbrella, dripping, wet and awestruck in the wake of a gold showered storm. 

-------------

A/N- Finally, an update! You guys will have to forgive the slowness. I'm still recovering from my hospital stay and I'm not as up to writing as I used to be. I'll get better, though. Anyway, hope you like the chapter, and the next one will come soon. 

Fun fact: I handwrote the first half of this chapter while in the hospital. 

-Gelisi