“Minnie, sweetie?  Can you come help me cook, please?” She called, lifting her head momentarily from the counter to yell for him. Within seconds she heard the familiar scamper of quick steps pattering down the hall, a small smile sneaking onto her face as they grew louder, the image of her son scurrying down the hallway with his wide-toothed grin forcing a slight chuckle to slip past her lips. It didn’t matter if she was stressed, exhausted, or pushed to the most extreme of frustrations at her husband’s busy schedule. The moment her eyes landed on him, everything went away. Whenever she looked at him, nothing else mattered.

            The door rattled open to reveal her bright-eyed son, beaming ear to ear with the very same smile pictured so strongly in her head just moments ago.

            “Okay, mommy!” He said excitedly, his sea of black hair bobbing up and down as he ran forward and clung to her leg. Taemin hated a lot of things. He was, after all, at the tender age of four, still stuck in the years plagued with frequent meltdowns and tantrums. He hated bathing, a fact incredibly obvious after her nightly struggle to get him in the bathtub to scrub off the mess and dirt he had somehow accumulated throughout the day. He hated naptime, a time so adamantly refused until, tired from all the arguing, he would simply collapse in exhaustion in her arms. He hated going to preschool, crying every morning that he wanted to stay home with mommy, and, according to his teacher, sulking the day away in the classroom with his face fixed in a permanent frown. But for all the things he hated, one thing he absolutely loved more than anything in the world was cooking with her.

             She lifted the boy up in her arms, plopping him down on the counter so she could look at him at eye level. She admired his full, rosy cheeks, his dark eyes and his button nose painted a delicate pink. She refused to believe it was just the love for her child that made her so certain that he was the most beautiful boy in the world. His smile continued to shine, the gap of his missing tooth displayed proudly for everyone to see. He had lost his first tooth just last week and, although he had sobbed nearly hours afterward, he was quite pleased with himself, the loss of his tooth apparently proof that he was a ‘big boy’ now.

            “Stir this for me, please?” She asked, handing him a bowl and a large wooden spoon. He took it eagerly from her hands and began mashing at the contents, laughing and smiling as she looked on. “How was school today?” She asked. His expression immediately faded, changing to his signature pout that he accentuated with a quiet groan.

            “Bad.” He mumbled. “Bad, bad, bad.” He punctuated each word with a smash at the ingredients in the bowl. “I don’t like school, mommy. I wanna stay home with you.” She smiled and kissed his forehead.

            “I do, too, sweetie. But you have to go to school.”

            “Why?”

            She thought for a moment, trying to figure out how she could put the importance of school in terms that a reluctant child would understand.

            “Minnie, what do you want to be when you grow up?” She asked.

            “A giraffe.” Taemin proudly replied, stretching his neck as much as he could in an attempt to prove just how qualified he was. She laughed loudly, placing her hands on top of his head and affectionately ruffling his hair.

            “Other than a giraffe. What you want your job to be, sweetie. You know, work. Like daddy does.”

            “Oh.” Taemin said, pausing for a bit to think. “Maybe… a dancer.”

            “Now if you want to be a dancer, what would you do everyday?”

            “Umm… I would dance a lot.”

            “Right.” She said, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead for his correct answer. “You’d prepare by practicing. That’s what school does. It teaches you things to prepare for a job. Understand?”

            “I guess…” Taemin said, although he didn’t sound totally convinced. She sighed. There was nothing else she could really say on the matter. It was nearly impossible to convince a child that staying locked up in a room for the majority of their day was for their own good. “What about daddy?” He asked suddenly. “Why is he always working? He’s never home anymore.”

            She did her best to smile, but she knew it probably look quite pained. “Daddy’s working hard so we can live in this big house.” She said, although she wasn’t exactly sure who she was trying to convince. “Don’t you like living here?”

            “Well yeah, but…” Taemin frowned and looked at his hands. “He never plays with me anymore… I want him to be home more…”

            She sighed. “Me too, sweetie.” Recently her husband had been coming home less and less, each visit shorter than the last. Wanting him home was not entirely a result of her own desire to see him, though that certainly was a major factor. She mostly just wanted him to take a rest every once and a while. He seemed stressed, overworked. She just wanted to see him relax for once without his job looming over his head.

            “Mommy, when did you and daddy get married?” Taemin asked after a short silence. She perked up, a bit taken aback by the sudden question, before letting out a slight laugh.

            “A long time ago.” She admitted. “Ten years, now. Why?”

            “Hmm…” Taemin said, playing with the spoon rather than using it to attend to his long forgotten task. “I want to get married, too.”

            She widened her eyes in surprise. It was interesting that he was thinking about marriage at his age. “Ah, you do?” Taemin nodded, a shy smile playing at his lips. “What kind of girl would you marry, then?” She asked, curious as to what Taemin’s answer would be.

            Taemin swung his legs back and forth against the counter before mumbling something under his breath.

            “Hm? What did you say Taemin? Speak up.”

            He puffed his cheeks out, an odd habit of his that he seemed to be doing more and more often. “Well what if I want to marry a boy?”

            She paused her work to look him in his eyes, completely shocked by the sudden question. She had never anticipated something like this from her son, at least not at the age of four. It was a bit surprising.

            “Well then that would be my mistake, sweetie. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed that.” She said without missing a beat, kissing his cheek in apology. Yes, it was a bit unexpected. But unexpected wasn’t always a bad thing. “So what kind of boy would you marry, then?”

            He smiled and covered his mouth, speaking between cracks of his fingers. “Handsome, like a prince!” He said with a bubbly laugh. “Or a movie star!”

            “Handsome?” She asked. “And what else?”

            “Umm…” He placed his hands on his cheeks in thought. “He has to be nice. Not a bully. I hate bullies.”

            “Handsome and nice. Got it.”

            “Oh, and he has to like playing Legos with me.”

            She stifled a laugh at the ridiculous comment, not wanting to mock what her son had said with the utmost of seriousness. “Handsome, nice, and likes Legos. That sounds like quite a good choice, sweetie.” She lifted the small boy up in her arms, holding him tightly to her body and brushing his hair out of his face so she could look him in the eye. “Then we’ll have a big wedding for you two one day. You and the handsome, nice, Lego-loving prince. How does that sound?”

            He giggled and buried his face into her shoulder, the light sound making her heart swell. “Perfect!” She swayed him side to side, loving the way the breath of his laughs tickled at her ears.

            “You know I love you, right, Taeminnie?”

            “I know, mommy.”

            “And you know that you’re perfect no matter what, right?” She smiled sadly, heart slightly pained as she realized the troubles he might have to face one day, the cruelty, the potential danger. If the world rejected him, then she at least wanted him to know that she never would. “No matter what anyone says, you’re beautiful, and you are perfect. You know that?”

            Taemin giggled again, the hot breath traveling up her neck and warming her entire body. “I know, mommy.”

            “Good.” She said. She silently wished Taemin could stay young like this forever, innocent and small enough that she could just hold him in her arms and protect him from the unavoidable harshness of the adult world.

            “Hey, mommy?” Taemin said, pulling away from her neck and playing with her cheeks. He pushed and pulled them in his hands, laughing at the funny faces he could create with the quick movement of his wrists. He relaxed his hands on her cheeks as his expression softened into one of sadness. “Don’t… leave me like daddy always does.” He whispered.

            “Oh, Taeminnie.” She said, rubbing his cheeks gently, a slight sadness in her eyes that her son was even thinking about such a thing. “You know I won’t. I’ll never leave you.” Leaving the most important person in her entire world was impossible to even think of. 

            “Good.” He said, smiling ear to ear. “Because you have to come to my wedding! It’s going to be great!”

            And that time, she couldn’t help but laugh. 

            Because as she closed her eyes and imagined her son marrying the so-called “Lego prince”, imagined the bright smile he wore on the altar, imagined the years of happiness and the start of his very own family that would grow and change and live just as hers did, she couldn’t imagine a single thing better.

            “A wedding, huh?” She muttered, rocking Taemin back and forth and rubbing her nose against his cheek.

            She smiled.

            If she could see him be this happy forever, she wouldn’t ask for a single thing more.

            “I guess we’d better start planning.”

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So I guess Taemin found his prince, huh? I wonder if Minho likes Legos... 

Hi guys! Thanks for reading! This is my first ever one-shot. I had a ton of fun writing this. But after the last chapter of BI:2S, it made me extremely sad at the same time. I was never sure of my uality until around age 11 or 12, but a lot of people have said that they knew as early as Kindergarten. This was just something inspired by that thought. 

So, I hope you guys liked this :3

See you on the main story~

-Gelisi