Butterflies / part 2

Taemin believed love is an illusion, a magician’s trick on the scene of life. When you found out the secret behind it, all the excitement and joy were gone.

Therefore, it was hard for him to think he could love. Not the love he had for his family, pets or music.

But he did love.

He loved the boy that gave him his first kiss. He loved the girl he secretly dated for three months before high-school began. And he loved his favorite rockstar, at times, more than any other person in his life.

But it wasn’t until Jongin that he looked back and realized he must have confused love with something else.

He loved the boy’s kisses, not him. He loved the girl’s motherly attention, but not her. He was obsessed with the musician’s passion, with how raw emotions poured out of his voice and with the melodies he composed, not him.

Until Jongin, Taemin didn’t know what love truly is.

Until him, everything was smoke and mirrors.

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Taemin didn’t have a lot.

His family had always been at the bottom, but as years passed, so had their wealth. Still, next to everybody else, Taemin always had the ugliest and oldest clothes, but at least he was clean. His mother made sure that he never left the house until his hair was perfect and his skin glowing and his hands pristine and feet didn’t stink. His brother sometimes shared his personal belongings with Taemin, including his collection of CDs he bought by saving up on his pocket money and gift money.

Taemin always looked up to his brother the most.

He also wanted to grow up fast, go to work and help his family, but as years passed, he understood that it wasn’t as easy as it looked. He also missed on a lot of activities that required money and he could not afford cram school, so he often had to study twice as hard compared to everybody else.

Every year, the school organized a one week trip for students to enjoy. It wasn’t all fun and games since they sometimes ended up in camps with adults forcing them to volunteer or do a military like training.

Taemin’s family never afforded any of those trips. Year after year, he had to hear his classmates talk about the trip for months to come.

It was fine.

Taemin didn’t care. Not even when he really wanted to fit in with his classmates, really wanted to have more friends, really wanted to be popular just for a day – but dreams were never that easy within his grasp.

Sixteen years old and on a bus, looking out the window and with his headphones in his ears connected to his pocket – because he had no mp3 player or iPod, and his phone was too old to play music – Taemin tried not to show exactly how ecstatic he was to finally be going on a trip with everybody.

He had a feeling that his parents made an exception that year only because last autumn his best friend, Jongin, had pulled a deadly prank on him – an accident, of course, Taemin never for once blamed him for anything. The details were still fuzzy, but Taemin somehow ended up on the ground in front of the school building. At first, he felt nothing, adrenaline rushing him to his feet. Pain surged through his body and he collapsed again.

He remembered being taken over by an ambulance and falling asleep on the hospital bed after they ran some routine checks, remembered when Jongin came over and brought his teddy bear and if the medicine hadn’t made him so sluggish, he might have begged him to stay by his side for the rest of the night.

Taemin glanced down.

Jongin sat next to him, hood on and leaning his head against his body, arms and legs crossed, asleep. Seeing how Jongin’s head shook lightly with the bus, he wondered what would happen if he moved too abruptly. Would Jongin wake up or fall flat on his face on the floor?

He erased those thoughts