Chapter 5: Not a Sasaeng

I sat up and immediately saw everything: I was not lying on my bed, I’m lying on a cold hard floor of a living room! The sofa, the big flat screen TV in front, the black massage chair, my eyeballs and teeny weeny brain can’t take all the information I’m getting right now.

Then, an intelligent but unbelievable conclusion came up without prior notice:

WHAT THE ACTUAL ? AM I IN SHINee’S ING DORM?!

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I sprang up and aggressively looked around to check if anyone saw me. How did I even get here?

Has my sasaeng instincts taken over my conscious mind? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me that made me go here. I’ve never been this confused in my life. I can’t even remember where I was an hour ago, or a day ago, or a week. I know my name, I have one sister, and I know I love SHINee, but everything else is as hazy as a smog.

My memory, however, didn’t fail me in terms of remembering SHINee’s dorm architecture. I brushed off all those hazy thoughts out my head and concentrated all my energy on my ears.

Hm. I don’t hear anything. I guess no one’s home.

My guts were curling up into a ball; I can’t tell if I’m excited or nervous, maybe both? I started moving from the place I “appeared” from and decided to head to Key’s room since it’s the nearest to the living room.

Tiptoe. Tiptoe. I’m trying so hard to not make a single creak on the hardwood floor. I don’t know what time is it so I thought maybe they’re already sleeping. I reached out to the silver knob in front of his room, turned it to the right and pushed it with minimum force.

Phew. Light floods the room and I see no little musketeer sleeping on either the top or bottom of the double decked bed. But whoah, his room’s blasting of colors and I guess it literally blasted: his crumpled clothes are all placed on the top of the upper bedspace. The top bunk can’t even show his bed covers. The lower bunk was pretty neat with colourful swirls on pink as the cover, he has two white pillows and two square notebooks that sat on top of them. One was covered in shimmering gold and had a lock on it and the other was of peach color with pinkish clouds and a couple of black sparrows. I felt like picking up the peach one but then I thought of respecting his privacy. My index finger found its way to my temple and I contemplated if I’m doing the right thing.

Should I? I should, right? I’m just here for God knows until when.

I found myself inspecting the peach notebook’s cover longer than when I was contemplating to take a peek. It’s pastel but the glossy clouds stood out very well. Nothing less for Diva Key’s taste in things. I flipped through the pages and saw rough colored pencil sketches of runway clothes, both for men and women. Woah, I didn’t know Kim Kibum drew this well and his designs rock: edgy and eccentric. I am in heightened awe.

TV never lied for this one, was the first thought on my mind when I turned to examine his dresser at the corner of the room. He barely has space for another cosmetic product. He also has so many random things in this room; from tiny boxed toys, chibi stickers of himself, stacks of colourful bracelets, SHINee posters during the Sherlock era and weird gifts from fans like dried flowers for potpourri and a pink apron with a bear on its front pocket. His room was too crowded and it was too Key.

I raided Minho’s room next. And it was “balls, balls, baaaalllllsss. Naegen neomu eoryeoun balls.”

No, just kidding. His room smells really... manly. Not a bad manly smell but a smell that you would outrightly recognize as an athlete’s, and no, not athlete’s foot. It’s one thousand times much cleaner and organized than Key’s. I could see his colored dumbbells under his neatly covered bed, his medals and fan gifts on top of his small cabinet and I spotted the wine corks that he uses for drama practices. Being I’m so curious yeah, I looked back and side-eyed to make sure no one was watching me, took one of the corks and put it in between my teeth. I bit it once and by unknown stimulus I bit it too hard that started to crack and it eventually split into half. I hummed a tune so that I go unnoticed, even if there’s no one here, quickly snatched the half cork inside my mouth and returned it in the paper cup like nothing happened. I hummed my way out to Minho’s room and out of my own little embarrassment.

I opened the door near the dining room, I could guess its Onew’s. The first thing that caught my attention when I set my foot in Dubu’s room was a big lock and lock tupperware on top of his single bed. Half opened, I got a glimpse of its contents and what I saw made me let out a loud laugh.

Onew has a whole box of beef jerky in his room! What does he do with all of these? By judging the current position of the box, I think he rushed this morning and hastily grabbed a dozen and shoved them into his pockets. After I recovered from the beef jerky shock that I wasn’t prepared for, I scanned the room in hawk eyes. As they said in TV, Onew shares a room with the manager, but if I run a quick comparison, uri leader’s side of the room is quite hyperactive than that of the right side.

Under the box of beef jerky lay his midnight blue bed cover which still had creases; an outline which again told me he got up a little late than normal that he didn’t get to fix it. He had a side table with a medium sized powder blue lamp, a book named “We Love a Funny Leader” atop his mini laptop, and a pair of spectacles. I didn’t know Onew needed reading glasses; so his “old man” nickname had material evidences, too. Cute little white bunny slippers peeked under the bed and snatched all my attention. They look really fluffy so I slid them on my own bare feet and felt the fabric sending little tickles on my sole. He had a small bookshelf at the edge of his bed. Although majority were novels, he also had books about history, politics, English and even Algebra.  This is what a real genius’ room look like; Jonghyun should learn from Jinki and stop believing everything he finds in Wikipedia.

The weirdest thing that I saw in Onew’s room was the stuff pasted on his wall. Against the pale yellow paint, there were about ten sheep stickers that were pasted to look like then were following a wavy line.

Don’t tell me he counts them before he sleeps?

The most unexpected room was no doubt, Onew’s. I stepped out his room while gently shaking my head and smiling like an idiot.

My next stop, however, is the room I’ve been dreaming to see since time immemorial. I took a deep breath, grabbed the door handle to JongTae’s room and to intensify the thrill, I had my eyes closed and I stood in front for like one minute. The door creaked as I pushed the door open together with my eyes. The light was turned off so I had to paste my body on the wall and search for the light switch like a lizard trying to catch a bug with its limbs.

Click. And there was light.

Two beds occupied the left and the right part of the room, covered in plain mint green and sky blue respectively, both spick-and-span. I can tell Jonghyun’s side because he has his own photo framed on the wall; that vain man. As much as I wanted to approach my bias’ bed, I had to check on Taemin’s side, too, since to me, he’s the most mysterious member. I really don’t know what to expect.

Nothing was on the bed so I decided to look under it. I squinted my eyes to have a better view of the things under his bed.

“Ahhhhh!” My shout echoed in the room.

I saw a green head with eyes popping out and gooey jelly-like thing coming out from its nose, his expression looks pained. Why the heck does this person have a freaky mask under his bed? Taemin, this kid, aish, I almost had a heart attack. He also had a stack of Fairy Tail, Naruto and One piece manga, spread unruly like he reach for them and read them every night. I spotted his little handwriting on what I guess as his part of the cabinet. As I got closer to the lower part, with squiggly tiny flowers around it, it read, “Taemin is handsome”.

Facepalm.

I then opened the cabinet and a t-shirt fell on my head.

Hmm. It smells so good; a citrusy, refreshing smell. I looked up and saw a mountain of clothes that I think are to be sent for laundry. His hanged clothes looked neat but below I saw some of his socks of different colors but I spot that some don’t have the other pair. Taemin is magic hands indeed. On the middle part sat a medium-sized bible, he even has some sticky paper on it so I bet he still reads this. Despite being known as a devil child full of mischievous acts, I think Taemin still keeps his faith intact and really like that in him.

My nervousness for the next cabinet that I’ll open spread like wild fire all over my body. I flung it open like some present that I’m too excited to open on Christmas Eve and to my surprise, it seemed like a perfectly normal one. It was not that messy and his home clothes are folded nicely, too. He had a dozen of notebooks and some boxes on the bottom of the wardrobe, so I decided to lift the one on the top.

Awwwww. He kept a lot of polaroids of his sister and him posing with different emotions on their faces. His noona is so pretty and goofy like uri Jonghyun; their sweetness made me smile a really sunny one. My eyes caught a glimpse of the black box next to the polaroid box and something was written on it.

Ne-neki ne-ko. Neki neko? I struggled to read his squiggly handwriting.

A lump formed on my throat and every memory of Jonghyun’s coldness rushed back so intense that it almost knocked me out of consciousness. I lifted the lid and saw all my gifts: lined up on red felt paper and it seemed that it was a custom-made box since the variety of sizes was snuck-fit. The earring, the four coins, the chocolate bar’s wrapper, the cap and the “Jonghyun-on-a-box”.

I swallowed the lump that was still stuck on my throat when I saw the nickname that he gave me not too long ago. Am I happy? Am I sad? All I know is, I half skipped to Jonghyun’s bed, lied down and hugged his Neki-neko box. My eyes feel like pricked from the stingy air surrounding me, my shoulder slumped in either relief or disbelief and the bed sheet getting wet by the falling beads from my eyes, the light flickering as I do so.

“Blaughhhhhhhh. Hahahahaha” A loud burp interfered the surge of emotions that I am currently having. It sounded like it came from living room.

“I can do better! Blaaauuggggghhhhhhhhhhh. Hahaha” Taemin? They’re back?

Sh*t.