(everyone, let's pretend i didn't forget to update last weekend)

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“This box contains all of my favorite photographs,” Key explained as she lifted the cardboard box back into her lap, taking off the lid. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever shown them to anybody. Not all of them at least.”

Taemin let his gaze glide across the object. It was simple, just a box that didn’t look like it could withstand a lot of force. Key hadn’t put any stickers on it and if she hadn’t just told him, Taemin wouldn’t have suspected the box to hold her deepest secrets.

He smiled a bit.

“It’s very…plain. Your style is usually a bit different, don’t you think?”

“Well, I kept it like that in case anyone finds it. Those photos mean a lot to me, I wouldn’t want them to…get destroyed or anything. Of course I have most of them on my phone as well.”

She carefully reached inside the box and gripped a package of pictures, kept together by a thin elastic band which she quickly got rid of.

“I keep the oldest ones on top,” she said as she looked at the first one. “Look, that’s me as a child. I must have been…two I think? You see, I was already cute back then.”

“Shut up,” Taemin mumbled, but internally he was squealing about the picture.

It was true that Key looked absolutely adorable with her fluffy black hair and her pouty lips that didn’t look so different from now. She was wearing a little apron and was laughing into the camera, steadied by a woman Taemin had never seen before.

He frowned, inching closer to the picture to get a better look. The lady was just as beautiful as the child she was holding up and the longer Taemin looked at her, the more traces of Key could he detect in her face.

However, what was even more obvious was her relation to Jongin. They had the same high cheekbones and tan skin, the same full lips. 

This woman must be Key’s and Jongin’s mother.

“That’s my mum,” Key confirmed a second later.

She rubbed across the picture carefully, as if she was gently petting a cat.

“This is the only picture of hers I own.”

Taemin almost felt his smile drop from his face. He had known Jongin for so long that he had almost forgotten what his best friend had told him in seventh grade – his mother was dead. She had been sickly after his birth and had passed away shortly thereafter, so Jongin could barely remember her.

However, Key must have been around three at the time his mother died. Was he still grieving?

“You’re looking all worried, Taem,” Key suddenly pointed out, startling Taemin out of his thoughts. “There’s no reason, though. You do know what happened to my mum, don’t you?”

“Jongin told me she died long ago.”

Taemin’s throat was dry as the desert so he coughed, attempting to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling.

“It’s not really a big deal,” Key said. “She was sick. She’s always been of bad health, at least according to my grandmother, and after Jongin’s birth she didn’t want to take strong medicine. So cancer got her… It happened very quickly, too, I only remember tiny bits of what happened.”

Taemin thoroughly examined Key’s expression, trying to detect a hint of grief in it, yet Jongin’s sibling just smiled tenderly.

“Don’t worry about me, Taemin. I sometimes think it would have been nice to grow up with her, but that’s all. We resemble each other a lot anyway, at least character-wise, so I have a general idea of what she was like. But moving on…”

Key pulled out the next picture and handed it to Taemin.

“As you can see, I’m a lot older here. I must have been around six or seven, and I was mostly living at my grandma’s place.”

She flipped through the bunch of pictures and nodded.

“Yeah, they were all taken there. Look, this one and that one too. Actually, I loved her house because it was really old with lots of stairs and lots of rooms to play in. It’s sad that they decided to tear it down.

“After my mother died, my grandma took care of me most of the time. My father was busy with work and taking care of a newborn on his own, so halmeoni took me in. We really got on well, she was one of my favorite persons ever.”

Looking at Taemin, Key pointed at one of the pictures.

“Look, she always encouraged me to be creative. She was the one to teach me how to sew and knit, and how to cook of course. We would always do things together and she taught me a lot of life skills – and she had a few chickens and a goat, which I loved to death.”

During his story, another smile had bloomed on Key’s face and Taemin couldn’t help but copy her expression. Reminiscing the good memories seemed to make Key happy, and that was all Taemin wanted.

“My hair was pretty long when I was little, so my grandma would braid it after I showered. I was always so surprised when it got all curly – I didn’t understand the physics behind that back then, so I thought she was performing a magic trick or something!”

Both Key and Taemin laughed before the older went on, “I think it’s pretty clear that my grandma means a lot to me. I still take care of her grave even though she died six years ago.

“Also, a little fun fact, since I spent most of my childhood in a rural era, I speak a different dialect from Jongin. I picked up the satoori they spoke in where my grandma lived and sometimes it comes out when I’m mad. Nini claims he doesn’t understand me when I’m trying to insult him.”

“That’s so cool!” Taemin told her. “I never thought that would make a huge difference.”

“It does, though. Jinki knows a bit of it too because he also stayed at my grandma’s place often. Do you know why we’re friends?

“Well, our mothers were close even before I was born and afterwards, they would always meet up and let us play together. Jinki-hyung was my first ever friend. That’s why I don’t call him oppa even if I feel more like Key – I’m just so used to him being my hyung.”

Suddenly, Taemin really wanted to know if Key called Jonghyun oppa then, but he didn’t dare to ask. Instead, he kept listening as Key talked on and on about her childhood and the funny things she had experienced.

“I was eleven when my grandma died,” she started after taking out the second batch of photos. “It was a really hard time for me and shortly afterwards, I started questioning…things – my gender and all.”

Taemin had already suspected that the conversation would take a dark turn soon – Key’s childhood couldn’t have been only sunshine and rainbows. Actually, from what he had gathered so far, he knew she had been through a lot.

“I don’t know what triggered everything, actually,” Key continued, but her voice was a lot softer now. “One day I just started to think that I didn’t feel like a boy…not always at least. It sounds cliché if I say this, but halmeoni always encouraged me to do what I want. So when she was gone and I didn’t have that anymore, I suddenly realized something was wrong…that I was different.”

“And did…what happened then?”

Taemin could hardly muster up enough courage to ask, too scared of disturbing Key. When he had finished talking, she turned her head to look at him and though her eyes weren’t filled with tears, they resembled deep dark ponds that didn’t seem to have a ground.

“Well, it’s hard to say. I wasn’t very comfortable in my own skin, but I didn’t really know what to do about it. I kept denying it for quite a while, a few years – two or three maybe? Yeah, that must be it.”

Key put the photo she had been looking at aside in favor of a new one, which she handed to Taemin after a few seconds. Surprised, he realized just how happy she looked in it. She was skinny, a bit scrawny even, her face was dotted with freckles and her hair no longer than an inch. The person standing beside her had to be Jonghyun. He looked pretty much the same as now, although he had probably been even shorter back then.

Taemin smiled fondly – he was hardly able to put his arm around Key in the picture, but Jonghyun still looked determined to hold her.

“I’m honestly so grateful for Jonghyun,” Key confessed as she got closer to Taemin to observe the photograph. “He helped me the most of all people. I already had a crush on him back then but I pretty much pushed it to the back of my mind, since I didn’t really need another thing to deal with.

“Jonghyun-hyung is a really gentle person. He never tried to coax me to tell him anything, yet I still ended up spilling all of my secrets and he listened to them while smiling. I was thirteen when I finally realized that I wasn’t a boy. I guess I must have had a mental breakdown back then, because I shaved off all of my hair on impulse. My dad was so mad at me.”

Again, Key touched the picture gently.

“It looks funny, doesn’t it? I came to Jonghyun crying and he told me he loved my hair. Then he took me to his home and I stayed the night. Sometimes I really question if he’s an angel or something like that. I don’t know what would’ve happened that night if he hadn’t been there. I was ready to…give up…”

Key trailed off and Taemin was left with a hollow feeling in his chest. Though Key’s statement had been very vague at the end, he felt like he didn’t need her to elaborate. The meaning behind her words was clear enough for him.

Taemin wanted to say something. He wanted to tell Key he was sorry for what she had gone through, wanted to comfort her somehow, but the words never left his mouth.

His thoughts were spinning as he wondered how things were looking now. His reaction to finding out Key’s gender must have upset her terribly. Taemin had hurt her so much by making her believe he would turn his back on her the moment she was revealed.

Looking at those photographs was a very painful task because Taemin knew how much hurt was hidden behind them and how much more hurt he had caused.

“You probably don’t want to hear Jonghyun’s and my entire lovestory, do you?” Key suddenly said as she flipped through more of the pictures. “It’s boring anyway, so here’s the short version. I had a crush on Jjong, he supported me and helped me when I couldn’t accept myself.

“One thing led to another, he asked me out when I was 14 and I said yes. Look, this picture was taken at his place that day. You know, when I was younger I used to be scared of meeting my girlfriend’s – well, my future boyfriend’s parents, but I knew Mama Kim loved me. See, that’s her!”

She handed over another picture of a woman who was smiling at the camera wearing an apron.

“She’s also really important to me. Mama Kim is one of the kindest women on earth and she accepted me without a hitch. Same goes for Sodam-unni, Jjongie’s older sister.”

Key giggled as she went through the leftover pictures, occasionally stopping to look at a particular one for a few moments.

“Jonghyun-hyung and Sodam-unni also bought me my first ever wig,” Key said as she showed Taemin a picture of herself with long hair. “They told me they had bought it on a flea market, but I later found out Sodam gave up two of her monthly paychecks for me.”

“The hair looks pretty,” Taemin commented, feeling a bit shy when Key smiled at his compliment. “I’ve never seen you wear it, though.”

“It’s really good quality, that’s why I’m a bit overprotective. I keep it at Jonghyun’s place and wear it when I’m there, mostly when I’m having a really bad day and feel like I need it.

“You know, when I feel like a girl, I hate going to school because I have to pretend to be different the whole day. I can’t really express myself the way I want to, but there are good and bad days.

“You probably don’t remember the first day of school, but I decided to stay at Jjong’s home. I just felt like and Mama Kim is always really kind to me, so I skipped school that day.”

“I do remember, though,” Taemin butted in. “Jongin…lied to me. He said you didn’t go to school with us, only Kibum.”

His cheeks turned red when he noticed the mistake he had made.

“Of course, I still thought Kibum and Key were two different persons back then!”

“Isn’t it confusing?” Key asked in a sincere tone. “I’m really sorry I fooled you. It must be weird for you to think of me…as Key right now.”

“Actually, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.”

Taemin frowned a bit. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but now that Key had reminded him of it, he realized that his new knowledge didn’t make much of a difference. The person in front of him was Key, even though she looked like the boy he had come to know as Kibum, but that didn’t really confuse Taemin.

Astonished by that new realization, he met Key’s gaze again.

“I didn’t think it’d be that easy, honestly, to think of different pronouns and all. But I think what most people don’t realize is that it hardly makes a difference. And it doesn’t hurt you to accept your feelings, either. I think the people who are hostile towards you are just stupid, hateful s.”

“Jjong also keeps saying that,” Key said in a thoughtful tone. “I try to remind myself of that fact, but it’s hard sometimes.”

Suddenly, her lips formed a smile and without a warning, she stretched out her hand to pat Taemin’s head.

“You’re really precious, Taem, did you know that? I don’t know how I was ever worried about your reaction – you’ve been the kindest, most accepting person. Thank you so much.”

Taemin got flustered.

“You don’t have to thank me,” he stuttered. “It’s…as I said, it’s really not a problem.”

“Then, can we continue our plans?”

There was a hopeful gleam in Key’s eyes and even though Taemin didn’t know what she was referring to, he nodded enthusiastically.

“Of course!”

“Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

“Uhm…not really?”

“Gosh, Taeminnie, you’re gonna be my death.”

Key ruffled his hair fondly.

“Before all that stuff happened, we wanted to see each other regularly. It would be a pity if we stopped hanging out now that there are no secrets between us, wouldn’t it?”

“Indeed it would,” Taemin smiled. He meant it.

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okay, bad news: i'll go on a trip to berlin tmrw (yEET) but i won't return until sunday evening so i won't update this weekend either. i hope you can wait a bit longer for the new chapter (at least it's not a cliffhanger right).

also, xiumin is enlisting on my birthday (in six days) and that reminds me i haven't written for my exo fanfic in months, why am i like this.

anyway, i hope you have a good week, and a good next week too!