(1998)

The sun is slipping away in the horizon. The sky is painted with contrasting shades of orange and violet. A gust of summer blows on Taemin’s face, warm, dry and sticky. Somewhere in the distance he hears the sound of bells of the ice-cream seller chiming away, attracting kids and adults alike.

He has his hands in the pockets of his shorts as he stares at the girl metres away from him, squatting down with her head on her knees. She’s too absorbed in whatever she’s drawing on the sand to notice him there, but he prefers it that way. Half of her face is covered by her hair, caused by the wind, but that doesn’t seem to bother her because there’s a smile on her face.

Just then the girl turns to look at him, and he freezes a little when their eyes meet. He should crack a smile, say hi or do something, anything, because she is gazing up at him expectantly. But six-year-old Taemin is too clueless, shy even, so he doesn’t do as mentioned. Instead he bites his lower lip and keeps quiet.

It is her who breaks the wall between them, or at least tries to. “Hi,” she says, her voice soft. “I never saw you before.”

“Um,” he mumbles. I just came, he arranges his words to form an answer in his head but somehow at that time his tongue feels foreign to him.

“I’m Jinri. What’s your name?”

“Taemin.”

“Nice to meet you, Taemin.” She extends her right hand. When Taemin looks at it he sees that it is covered by dirt and wet sand. After a moment of silent debating, he takes it to be polite and shakes it. “Let’s be friends.”

Jinri smiles at him, and it is one of those blinding kinds. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, probably from the heat. Being so young, he still doesn’t quite know what beauty is, but if he had to define it back then, he would probably say her name.

(2009)

“Taemin, will you help me?”

“I’m a bit busy right now,” he murmurs a reply, not even sparing her a glance.

He’s too immersed in his book so he doesn’t see the pout forming on her lips. Jinri stays there unmoved, kicking the floor with the tip of her right shoe and continues to stare at him. His hair is shorter now, tousled and a little coarse. His baby voice is long since gone. She still remembers well the child he used to be, the one she grew up with. He was never bright and jumpy. Compared to her, he’s more reserved and aloof. Somehow her heart swells up a little.

It takes a while for him to finally to look up, and when he does, her eyes clear up a little with a gleam of hope. “Can it wait?”

It can’t. It’s important. But she doesn’t tell him any of them. It’s not like she can force him to, or even throw a tantrum, especially not in the middle of the library although the place is pretty much. So she just nods and manages a smile. She can wait.

(2002)

“Taemin-ah!” she calls from across the hallway.

When he glances back and finds Jinri jogging down the foyer to keep up with him, he blushes a little and looks around. “Didn’t I tell you to not call me by name when we’re in school?”

“Got it, Taeminie.”

“Jinri, I’m serious.”

“Okay,” she recoils. “But calling you oppa feels so weird. Why can’t I just call you by name as usual?”

Taemin doesn’t answer. Instead he returns his gaze forward and resumes his pace, and inches away from her when she starts walking with him. “Don’t walk too close to me,” he says, sounding more like a command than a favour.

Hearing that, Jinri scowls at him but doesn’t defy his order. She drags her feet while maintaining a distance between them. She cannot understand it then. Taemin is at a sensitive age, and it doesn’t help that he has a small and weak build.

Knowing that he has a best friend of the opposite gender, the boys call him names and refuse to let him play with them. It’s not that he doesn’t like playing with Jinri anymore, but at that age having friends alike is like the centre of the universe.

But although she still doesn’t quite get why he prefers reading One Piece than watching The Lion King with her for the nth time, two days later she shows up in front of his door with a ball in her hand, wearing a pair of shorts, a seemingly new jersey, and a smile that never seems to falter. And when she trips on her foot later and her knee starts to bleed, Taemin quickly rushes to her side and carried her back home on his back despite not being that strong.

(2020)

It is 40 minutes past ten in the afternoon when Taemin finally checks his phone. Already knowing too well by then how late he is from the promised time, he doesn't have to rely on his imagination to guess Jinri's infuriated face.

The restaurant is no longer receiving any customers by the time he arrives although he mentions the reservation he made on his name.

"Your guest has already gone back, Mr Lee," the maître d’ informs, sounding a tad sympathetic.

“I see,” he murmurs.

Truth be told, incidents like this have occurred one too many times. Just as much as she probably is sick of it, Taemin is getting tired of apologizing as well. Still, he dials her number and listens to the ringing tone as he waits for her to pick up, but she doesn’t, and he doesn’t try again. Quietly he types a message to her. I’m sorry, it reads. Nothing more than those two words, because really, there is nothing else that he can say to her.

He doesn’t receive a reply. He didn’t expect to.

(2013)

If one were to liken the state of Jinri’s room that evening to something, the best comparison would be a shipwreck.

Clothes are scattered all over the place. She can’t even see the sight over her bed linen anymore. But it’s not like the chicken prints which she thought was the cutest thing in the world is the most important issue right now. It is the outfit coordination of her choice that matters the most at that moment. She has to look good today.

In her whole life, this is not the first time for her to be going out with Taemin. They have gone out together countless of times before. But this is the first time for the two of them to go out together and actually consider it as an official date. Jinri smiles to herself at the thought of the word.

After spending more than a decade together, having witnessed each other throughout every stage of growth spurts, Taemin finally came to terms with his feelings for the only friend he’s had since childhood that he concealed away (or at least tried to) in the deepest corner of his heart. And when he finally asked her out properly, not as a childhood friend wanting to hang out together, but a young man who gets a fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever she sends him a smile, Jinri couldn’t be happier.

At last she decides on a flannel shirt paired with a tee underneath and a simple black skirt, not wanting to look over the top. Her phone buzzes when she’s reapplying her lip gloss, and she answers it within seconds upon seeing the name flashed on the screen.

“I’m sorry.” He’s just beginning, but her heart already drops. “Something really urgent came up. I’ll make it up to you later?”

It sounds more like a statement than a question. Although she can’t hide the disappointment she feels, Jinri doesn’t even try to argue back. “Sure,” she whispers into the phone.

(2024)

It’s dark when he gets home. He assumes Jinri has gone to bed. After all it’s already late, and they both have lost count of the amount of time that he comes home in the early hours.

The door creaks a little and Taemin slips into the house as quietly as he can. He doesn’t fumble in the darkness for too long before his hand finds the switch to the turn the lights on because it’s already becoming a routine. It’s empty on the dining table so he shuffles to the kitchen and produces a box of leftover pizzas from the previous nights out of refrigerator. He doesn’t even reheat them up.

As he washes the food down minutes later with a can of beer, there’s this nagging voice in his mind that wonders if his relationship with Jinri is just like the pizza―cold, stiff and lost its taste.

(2015)

Taemin pops the question casually over the kitchen bar when they are having breakfast together at her place. Once in a while he drops by before going to work, though ‘dropping by’ isn’t really a suitable term because her small one-bedroom apartment is on the opposite way of his office. She never pointed that out, only smiling at his thoughtful gesture in gratitude.

“Say, Jinri,” he begins, his gaze fixated outside and she sees the detailed outline of his sharp jaw. “What do you think of days like this?”

She can’t figure out the kind of answer he’s looking for, so she shrugs while nibbling with her toast. “It’s nice, I suppose.”

“Do you wanna get married?”

His sudden question takes her surprise, because even after all these while, from the seaside near their hometown where they first met to their childhood homes and to this merciless city of Seoul, she’s never sure of his feelings because Taemin hardly shows any. “What?”

He turns to her then, and with a soft smile gracing his lips he takes her hand in his. “Marry me, Jinri. I’ll be good to you,” he promises.

Jinri stares up at him into his deep brown eyes. His words strike a chord within her. A promise of a future together with him is everything she ever wished for, so she returns his smile and nods. “Okay.”

(2027)

They’re fighting again, and it doesn’t take a genius to start wondering how they managed to last this long putting up with each other.

A string of profanities comes out from as she complains about him, picking on every single thing he did. It’s like a volcano has finally erupted and spilling out its content after decades of keeping mum, more silent than a statue.

There has been a similar fight previously, happened some years ago when he told her that he quit his job to start a business of his own. She was enraged, asking if he lost his mind because not everyone can do business and not every business turns out a success. “I’ll make this work, Jinri. I promise I will,” he told her then. And now he’s telling her the opposite. Taemin has gotten himself in a huge debt and his partner has run off with all the money. Of course she’d be angry.

“I told you!” she spits. “I ing told you!”

 His fingers are tight over the steering wheel. “Shut up, Jinri,” he mumbles curtly, gritting his teeth.

“Shut up? You’re telling me to shut up now?”

In that moment he can’t help but recall the Jinri he used to know―gentle, soft spoken Jinri who smiles at everything he says and does and follows him around everywhere he goes like a small puppy who has lost her mother even when he tells her off. He glimpses at the woman next to him, thinking what on earth happened to that Jinri, and wondering if he played a part in causing her to turn out this way.

His eyes soften up a little. “Jinri…”

It happens too quickly―the blaring sound of horn, the blinding lights, Jinri shrieking next to him, and before he even manages to register everything he sees her hands pulling the steering. They start turning over and when he opens his eyes later, he’s sitting upside down with her, suspended behind the safety belts.

Seeing her unconscious with blood dripping down her head, he panics and shakes her awake. She winces when she does, and she glances up at him. “Taemin-ah, are you alright?” she asks.

He only nods, though he’s not sure if she could see it. Her face has reddened so much and she struggles to keep breathing. His hand travels to find hers. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out through his blocked throat.

She sends him a pained smile. “You’re always sorry.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers it again, because really, nothing else is there for him to say except for those same old words that he has repeated too many times in his life.

(2028)

Taemin staggers down the sidewalk, a bottle of soju in his hand and a crushed heart on his sleeve. Surrounding him are a combination of noises made up of the latest pop songs coming out from speakers put up by the stores, people slurring out the songs in the most distasteful way, vulgar words and clamours made by some drunkards.

He’s not drunk, they are. He survived the crash, Jinri didn’t.

He thinks it’s a little unfair that she abandons him like this, especially since they were in a middle of a fight and they never finished their conversation. It’s also unfair that she never told him about the budding new life she was carrying inside her, and that he only found out when the doctor announced both their deaths.

And now he sees her face everywhere. Her voice haunts him wherever he goes, whatever he does. Sweet, sweet Jinri who always looks upon him with a smile tugging on her lips.

Taemin takes a large slug of the soju before tossing the bottle away, and hears the sound of glass smashing into wall. Maybe that was his heart, but either way he doesn’t really care.

The vision of her grows blurrier as the alcohol starts taking over his conscious mind. It doesn’t matter. It’s what he wanted anyway―reminders of the countless promises he never fulfilled slipping away from his memory.

(2003)

“Taemin-ah,” she calls his name softly from behind the big pillow she’s hugging that almost covers her entire face. He thinks she has been crying a bit.

They’re watching Peter Pan, as a change from her beloved The Lion King because it’s a compromise she agreed on if she wanted him to stay and watch the film with her instead of going off to play Game Boy with the kid next door.

“Hm?”

“You won’t go away, right?”

“Go away where?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “Like Wendy, you won’t leave me behind, will you?”

He chuckles. “Why are you likening me to Wendy? I’m not even a girl―”

“You won’t, right?”

She looks up at him then with expectant eyes and he gazes over at her soft features, looking so fragile as if she might break anytime soon. He smiles. “I will never leave you, Jinri.”