When he opened his eyes she stood before him, bathed in sunrays. And when he closed them back again her clothes were gone. She was closer too, much closer. The scent of coffee and bread stayed on her fingertips, the tattoo of a floating seagull soared across the left of her chest.

He smiled at the vision and she smiled back at him, tilting her head adoringly.

Her hair cascaded like strings of jasmine suspended from the ceiling. Her cheeks bloomed like a pair of roses bathed in dew. Her starry eyes looked at him and only him. It inflated his pride like nothing else. Her soft edges, her quiet lips, her radiant presence—it eclipsed everything else in the room in the house in the world.

He leaned back in his chair and sighed with satisfaction.

A photo album flipped open in the corner of his sight as her feet moved forward. Photographs of her spun like a short story unlike anything he’d ever whirled out of his own head. Snapshots of her lashes, blurred images of her laughter, low-lit sihouettes of her sighs. He’d title it ‘Minjung’ after her, because what else described her better than her own grace, her own beauty, her own fragileness? She leaned across his　writing table with her elbows digging into folders of manuscripts. He craned forward like a thirsty prisoner.

When their mouths touched his thirst only bellowed louder.

She shimmered before him, her existence poured all over his face and shaded him from the sun. Her fingers strayed into his hair and walked along his scalp to his crown, massaging circles there. And slowly he felt himself age back to his youth. Slowly he felt his strength his vitality his years trickle back in his arms. They pulsed with power when he reached to grasp her waist and pull her closer across the table. She giggled and bit his bottom lip mischievously.

He giggled with her.

When his tongue slithered down her neck she slithered into his lap. Her thighs trapped him in a hold of silken plump skin. He pinched it and felt his pleasure pulsate up his spine. The pills of his sweater tickled his torso when she awkwardly pulled it off him. The pearls around her irises and the coral of her teeth stained his wrists with red circles that wouldn’t rub off with soap. The sea in his head swilled as she hummed his name—not ‘grandfather’ or ‘sir’ but his name. Taemin. Like she needed to pronounce everything that made him.

The poetry wormed out in the air with his breath. In large rolls of sensation, in tiny utterances of love. Her hips undulated against his, her blush coiled like mist under his touch. He kissed her again then: the curve of her chin, the flower of her lips, the dent of her philtrum, the slope of her nose, the moon of her forehead. He kissed her and her feet pointed out, his fingers glided along her calves straight to her ankles.

She let out a content exhale, just like when he ducked his head under her shirt and blew on her sweaty flesh.

He lifted her up to the desk and caressed the roundness of her rear. She moaned at the ceiling and clawed at his chest, where a seagull identical to hers flapped its wings. He filled his lungs with her sweet fragrance… gentle cherry blossoms and something else. Something tender and breakable. He timidly touched her between her legs but she brought their foreheads together in encouragement.

He lay her down after swiping away the papers and pencils and ink. They crashed to the ground and stain the flooring. He didn’t need them. All the poetry in the world was before him, in the form of a heartbreakingly beautiful girl who stared at him the way he stared at her. But perhaps life is cruel to create. Cruel to mislead. Cruel to show you dreams of happiness.

"Haraboji," she called for him. His eyes snapped open. The distances returned. He looked at the back of his hand, the wrinkles and discoloration taunting him much like the filled notebook on his desk. "Haraboji… you said you wanted me to go to the post office…" Minjung pouted and held out a dozen thick envelopes. "You got a lot of fanmail~" she grinned.

Taemin clearned his throat. “Ahm, yes… why don’t you leave it here. I’ll—I’ll read it later.”

She happily nodded and walked away. He cursed his life for being so empty of her.