Jonghyun and Jinki were standing a few steps away, watching Taemin’s wounds be treated in the ER. His cheek had bruised blue by now though the swellness had subsided a bit. The cuts were nasty but fortunately didn’t need stitches. The doctor bandaged him up, “What caused the cuts?” He asked, “Just asking so we can decide if you need the tetanus shots.”

“Rings…” Taemin whispered, “They might have been gold.”

“Hmm, and it’s been pretty long since your last ones. Let’s have you get the shots just to be safe.” The doctor handed the prescription to the nurse and told Jinki that they could take Taemin home after the shots were given.

“I can’t believe I had to get them on my ing ,” Taemin grumbled as he looked out the window, shifting in his seat in pain, trying to distract himself using the view of the empty, dimmed streets.

Jonghyun and Jinki burst into the laughter they had been holding ever since the nurse had told Taemin to lower his pants and lie down flat on his tummy.

“Shut up!” Taemin shouted in embarrassment, but they laughed harder, making Taemin murmur, “I really hate you guys.”

When their laughter had finally calmed, Jinki looked at Taemin through the rear view mirror, his expression going somber, “Taemin,” He began, “That bastard will pay. One way or another,” Taemin met his gaze, and Jinki spoke the next words, his tone enough to convey that it was a promise, “He will ing pay.”

Taemin woke up the next day to his phone ringing. After checking it once, he left it to ring, his expression growing cold upon reading the caller ID. Jonghyun came to check up on him, and Taemin’s phone was ringing again, pinging with text messages in between. Taemin was sitting in his armchair, reading something, ignoring the phone that was noisily ringing against his crumpled blanket… and Jonghyun understood right away, who it could be.

He grabbed the phone, to block the number but he accidentally landed on the chat screen, “Douchebag,” He whispered to himself as he read over the messages and immediately blocked the number before going over to Taemin.

“Thanks for that,” Taemin whispered, giving him a little smile.

“So what now?” Jonghyun asked, sitting on the ottoman that was in front of Taemin.

“Nothing,” Taemin shrugged, “I just move on… like that piece of never existed.”

“You’re being so easily forgiving–”

“No, I’m not forgiving him.” Taemin’s tone changed, “I’m choosing to not waste any more of my time on a tard like that. Also,” He calmed slightly, “It’s also my fault, that I went forward with him despite understanding the hints. He ing treats people like his possessions. He smashed a guy not because he was trying something with me but because he was too angry and jealous because of his ex, and yesterday–” He took a deep breath, “Yesterday– what a bloody hypocrite–” He paused, trying to calm his anger with a deep breath, “I knew what a jerk he was but I thought I’d deserve what he’ll put me through because I was at fault too. I wanted to forget about Minho so badly… that I chose to close my eyes. I was using Jaeyoon, I was going to end up hurting him… it’s just that he beat me to it.”

Jonghyun remained silent a while before he said, “You didn’t deserve that, Taemin. Don’t you dare think that you deserve bull like that–”

“I know,” Taemin sighed, his voice now stern, “All the guilt I felt towards him disappeared the moment he ing dared to hurt me.”

Jonghyun sighed, gently throwing him the now silenced phone, “So what now?”

Taemin chuckled, “I just told you–”

“About Minho.”

Taemin’s face faded. He lowered his gaze in thought, slowly replying.

“I just move on,” He said, “Like my feelings never existed.”

Minho walked in after another lethargic day at work, finding his mom looking at old pictures. He greeted her and he would have almost passed by, but they were pictures he had never seen… so he sat down instead. His mother looked at him, she was a little sad, a little drunk as well. She usually got like this when she missed his father. Minho hardly knew him so he couldn’t understand his loss, he had been loved so dearly that he never felt his absence… but his mom, who never spoke about him, had some days like these when she would miss him… but even then, she wouldn’t speak about him.

But today… she seemed like she was going to finally speak. She was a little more drunk than usual and he noticed how she shifted closer, as though she had been waiting for some company– for him– so she could talk.

“Do you know why I always taught you that violence is never the answer?” She began, “Because I lost him to it. He lost his life, fighting to the death over trivial titles when there were so many ways he could have fought for it. I stopped him so much–”

Minho hugged her, unsure of what to say. She leaned into him, sighing. She calmed down with Minho’s soft rhythmic pats and chuckled, “Almost fifty years ago, the feudal titles were demolished.” She began slowly, “But there were still some royal families who held onto their titles. They were called Kings by the people who lived on the land they owned. It stayed like that for years, until the democracy became stronger. The politicians became hellbent on taking away even that right of theirs, they were stripping them of their ancestral wealth and land, saying it belonged to the government.”

“I’ve read about that in the History textbooks back in school.”

“They had already taken away a lot then, but sometime after you were born, they had issued a decree to have our home vacated.”

Minho blinked, “Mom…” He broke away from her, eyes wide, “What–”

“And trying to save our home, he brashly attacked the auctioneers, the officers came at him, and that’s how your father lost his life.” She took a sip from her wine, “And I left after that, drifted here and there until I finally settled here. With a government job.” She sighed, “Ironic.” She looked at her wine glass, “This one’s bad. I spilled everything.”

“Okay, wow… so you had no plans of telling me this, ever?”

“It’s a ridiculous background in this day and age.” She just shrugged, getting up and wrapping up her pictures, “People would laugh if you tell them that if feudalism still existed, you would have been a prince.”

Minho couldn’t really argue against that. And seeing him silent, his mom laughed.

Minho loosened up a bit then. “Were you just pulling my leg?!”

She continued to laugh for a bit before she hummed, “Maybe? Maybe not?”

Minho sighed, leaving it at that. True or not, it was something in the past and now irrelevant. Anyway, it sounded like nothing more than a drunk tale. He laughed to himself softly… but his cheer faded when he suddenly remembered a certain set of words that Taemin had spoken.

“I could have overlooked, um, everything about you and said yes...had you been a ing prince.”

Minho felt his heart dip suddenly, he had been keeping himself from falling back into that pit, it had been barely working… and it had come undone, out of nowhere.

If everything had been fine between them, Minho would have told him about this. He would have repeated Taemin’s words to him, watched him react. After having a good laugh out if it, he would have taken the chance to be serious then, to really ask him out.

Only if everything had been fine between them. Only if nothing had changed but his heart.

But nothing was fine between them… and everything, everything had changed along with his heart.

He could be anything and everything in this world, but what he wished for was going to remain what it always have and always will.

Wishful thinking.

Minho stepped out later that evening, unable to stay confined within walls for long. He needed air, he needed to distract his senses, so they wouldn’t settle on the little things that reminded him of Taemin. He had planned to go to his gym using the longer path but his feet had taken him to the community park in the neighborhood instead, towards the cluster of rocks where they always sat. He was walking slowly towards it, watching the orange glow spread into the skies. But he stopped short when he was closer because, on those rocks, someone was sitting. Wearing a black hoodie over ripped skinnies. He knew to whom those set of clothes belonged to. He could even tell from the silhouette he could see against the onsetting dusk… that it was Taemin.

And in that one moment of seeing him devoid of everyone else around them, just them alone, just his own thoughts and feelings clouding his every sense, he knew that the one before him, basking in fading sunlight had always been the center of his world.

Of a world, he wished it truly existed and was not just in his mind. A world in which they were just like this, just the two of them, with only their feelings to worry about and nothing else. A world in which Taemin held the same thing he did. A world… in which fate wasn’t so against him.

He truly wished it existed. If only, it could, even for a moment. Within this moment. If only time could just stop here, at this very moment.

But he knew it couldn’t. He wanted to just let it out, everything that had been overwhelming his heart, but he knew he couldn’t. So he decided to turn back, but Taemin had straightened up, spotting him as well… and hence he continued to walk and stopped a few steps before him, “Hi.”

“Hey,” Taemin answered, his voice was a bit dull, and Minho tried hard not to think that it was because of him.

Minho, after a lot of thinking, finally walked ahead and sat beside him. Taemin didn’t move away, but he didn’t say anything as well. The silence stretched out between them, awkwardly, painfully. And despite how it weighed upon him, Minho couldn’t help but try to take in his presence from the corner of his eyes, overwhelmed by his scent, the scent of his white musk cologne and roses mingling and adrift in the air. He couldn’t help but gaze at him, at how his hair was disheveled, peeking out from the hood, at how soft and pretty the black of his eyes was behind that frame, at how adorably his hoodie sleeves ended just near his knuckles and at how he was worrying his lip between his teeth, gazing off somewhere else, at how he had gathered himself in that one spot, making himself seem so delicate.

He wanted to remember him like this, his true self, how beautiful and endearing he was, especially when he wasn’t trying at all.

“Jaeyoon…” Minho began, “He seemed nice.”

Taemin took a while to answer, “...he is.”