The Notebook.

One of the most romantic, tear-jerking chick flicks America has ever invented and it somehow made it here into South Korea. It could pull at the most stoic of heartstrings, the reviews claimed; it could make the manliest of men cry their stone-cold macho hearts out. To me, it sounded like a trap, and I never ever wanted to watch it. But one rainy night, when Key, Jonghyun, and Onew all had their own schedules, I watched it with Taemin. Now, so many think that Taemin may actually like those sappy sort of movies, that he would actually take pleasure in a fictional character’s ecstatic love life without a single yearning for something like that to happen to himself, without the incessant need to claw the protagonist’s face off for always getting what they wanted. Well, they were wrong. He didn’t like them at all, and when he watched them, I know he hated every moment of it.

So, why exactly did we watch it?

We lost the remote, and neither one of us wanted to get up and manually change the channel. Yes, we were both so lazy to the point where we would go through self-torture just to avoid unneeded physical exertion. We were the epitome of pathetic.

But thank God for the remote conveniently disappearing that night.

The reviews were right. It melted my steroid pumped heart ( I’m kidding, I don’t take steroids, just a jab at those infamously dumb as anything athletes. ) and jerked out a tear or two or ten. It did the same to Taemin; in fact, it even made the child sob. I had only seen the boy’s sweet face soaked with tears like that when he cried about missing his brother on the radio show not too long ago. I had the urge to reach over and wipe away the tears, cuddle him against my chest and tell him it was just a movie. But then I realized I was crying too, crying like a baby, so we both just sat there and watched intently. We exchanged no words for the majority of the time, feeling both of our masculinities slowly wither away with every sob, whine, and tear, and figured we best not make it worse by discussing our feelings as well.  

The moment that really mattered in that movie, however, was when the main protagonist met with her lover. They went on a boat ride together, only to be down poured on near the end. A passionate impulse must have struck them, because when they got out of the boat, instead of running straight for the house, they proceeded to grab each other and make out with such fierceness and romance that Cupid would faint just watching it. Normally, if I heard about kissing in the rain, I would deem it to be the stupidest thing ever. You’d probably catch a cold afterwards. But there was something about kissing in the rain that just intensified the electricity that sparked between the two actors, and I quite honestly was very amazed, perhaps even awed.

Taemin was in even more awe than I, however. He was in so much awe that he finally decided to speak.

“Romantic,” I heard him mumble, sunk back into the couch as his red-rimmed eyes stared unblinking at the TV and his still tear-stained cheeks grew chubby as his plump lips turned upward in a small smile. “Don’t you think?” he addressed me suddenly, turning his head so he was looking at me. I blinked, quickly re-directing my gaze on the television.

“Yeah, I suppose,” I half said half mumbled.

“I’d like to know what that feels like some day,” he said, a hint of dreaminess in his tone. “I’ve always wanted to dance in the rain, too.”

I raised my eyebrows, giving the black-haired boy an incredulous look.

“Why the hell would you wanna dance in the rain? You’d look like an idiot,” I retorted bluntly.

“Maybe to everyone else, but I wouldn’t feel like it,” he said calmly, though his lower lip was jutted out in the slightest pout.

I didn’t answer; I simply gazed at him as he turned his attention back onto the movie, a small smile creeping onto my lips without my noticing. To dance with Taemin in the rain would be a dream; to kiss him in the rain would make me feel like I was on Cloud Nine.

But things like that only ever happened in movies, like The Notebook. When would I ever get the chance to ask Taemin to dance? To pull him out into the rain and just kiss him with so much passion he could no longer stand? Never, I never would.

But oh, how I was wrong.