“Who am I going to stay with while you’re gone, appa?” Taemin asked.

            “Kim Key,” Onew replied solemnly. “Look, that’s him over there.” He pointed to an exceptionally beautiful boy wearing black sunglasses on the other side of the quad. “I think he’s a sophomore.”

            “He looks so sad.”

            “What? You think so? Listen, Taemin-ah, Key-ssi has everything he could possibly want. He does whatever he feels like doing. Girls are all over him all the time, heck, even guys are all over him. He’s rich, talented, and handsome. Why would someone like that be sad?”

            “I don’t know, doesn’t he look like he needs someone to love?”

            “Taemin-ah, nobody likes Key-ssi as a person. He’s rude, and he’s always pushing people around.” Taemin observed Key as he walked across the lawn, literally pushing people out of his path, only to be followed by stares of half shock, half admiration. “He’s the school’s token popular guy who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. I’m sorry you have to stay with him, Taemin-ah.”

            “But what’s so bad about him?”

            “Jinjja, Taemin-ah, it’s like I just explained. He really has no conscience, no sense of caring for anyone. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about him yet. Everyone knows him as Almighty Key because of his self-righteous attitude. Anyway Taemin-ah, I seriously tried to get Shin-sunsaengnim to let you stay with someone else, anyone else besides him, but he wouldn’t budge. I’m sorry. But about that. I think it’s best if you stay out of his way while you’re with him. Don’t bother him; he’s apparently got a really bad temper.”

            “But appa—”

            “Listen, Taemin-ah, Key-ssi’s temper has gotten him into trouble before, and it’s caused other people a lot of problems. There are tons of people at this school who would love to pick a fight with him because of that. I don’t want you to be one of those people.”

            “I wouldn’t fight anyone ever,” Taemin pouted.

            “I know, but if anything happened to you while you were with him, I would never forgive him. Taemin-ah, please, just do as I ask.”

            “But appa, I want to make friends with him,” Taemin protested. Onew looked at him with a fatherly expression.

            “And if anyone can do that, Taemin, it’s you. But I don’t want you getting hurt, okay? Just stay out of his way.”

            “Alright, appa,” Taemin smiled. Onew looked at him suspiciously.

            “You’re not plotting again, are you?”

            “No, appa,” Taemin said. “Can we go get some ice cream?”

            “Taemin…”

            “But Onew-hyung, you’re going to be gone soon and I’m not going to be able to do anything with you anymore!” he whined, flashing his big eyes.

            “Taemin, you seriously can’t do this when you’re with Key-ssi, okay? Don’t try to manipulate him like you do with me. I let you because I love you, but with him it could get you hurt, okay?”

            “Fine,” Taemin muttered.

            “Come on, let’s go get some ice cream then,” Onew smiled. Taemin grinned back.

            “Thanks, appa.”

            Taemin wasn’t a bad kid. He didn’t manipulate people on purpose.

            Well, yes he did. But that was besides the point.

            Taemin preferred to call it persuasion. Or sometimes he supposed it could be called benevolent trickery. At a young age, Taemin found that he was good at getting what he wanted. Really good. He’d been a popular kid at his elementary school; getting people to do whatever he wanted them to without them noticing that they were being used. They weren’t really his friends, but more like his followers. He was untouchable. He liked it that way. And the life he lived was excellent for him. He figured he was sort of like a miniature version of the Key he’d seen that day, pushing people around.

            He also got his parents to do whatever he wanted. And one day he went too far.

            It was the summer, and he was about ten years old. For some reason or another, he could hardly remember why, he wanted to go to Namyangju and spend the weekend there with his parents. “No, Taemin,” they’d said, “it’s a really busy time of year and there are all sorts of drunk people out on the roads. It will be dangerous.” But Taemin paid their warnings no heed, and kept pestering them. Eventually they gave in, and Taemin was excited. They stayed in a nice house for the weekend, eating samgyupsal, walking around the river, going swimming, singing karaoke.

            They’d left the house that evening after singing karaoke to go get some banana milk, since Taemin had asked for it, and he always got what he wanted. Taemin was laughing at a joke his father had made when suddenly everything went black.

            He wasn’t sure how long it had been when he woke up. It could have been an hour, but it could have been a month. The nurse told him it was about a day and a half.

            “I’m very sorry to tell you this,” the doctor had said solemnly after Taemin had been asking for his parents when he’d woken up, “but your parents were killed.”

            Time stopped. A shroud of guilt fell over him. He knew immediately that it was his fault. Why had he asked them to go to Namyangju? Why did he feel that banana milk was so important?

            The doctors and therapists and nurses all tried to explain to him that it wasn’t his fault. But all Taemin could hear was “your fault.” He hated those words. Every time he heard them it was like a knife ripping through his heart. It was then, and it had been ever since. He still hated those words.

            For a week he sat in his hospital bed, stuck between a horrible mixture of grief and guilt and confusion. He endured the deafening thunderstorms that kept him awake every night, reliving his last moments with his parents. From then on, thunderstorms were a trigger for those memories. He hated it.

            And then Onew came. Onew was his thirteen year old somehow relative. His father’s brother’s ex-wife’s son or something along those lines. They weren’t related by blood, but his mother and Taemin’s mother had been best friends, so Taemin knew their family at least a little bit. Onew sat by Taemin’s bedside every day while his mother talked to doctors and nurses and therapists and lawyers about all the technical issues of whatever was going on.

            He took care of Taemin. He would bring him orange juice (since Taemin had lost his taste for banana milk). He would read him stories (A Frog’s Life Cycle was the one Taemin always asked to be read a second and third time). He would sing him lullabies, and his voice was like an angel’s, which let Taemin drift slowly and peacefully off to sleep without worrying that something would happen while he slept, because he knew that Onew would be there when he woke up.

            Taemin moved to Seoul with Onew and his mother. And there, he was a completely different person from the person he’d been before the accident.

            He knew what loneliness felt like. The dark nights, lying awake in that god-forsaken bed, hearing the booming thunder, and knowing that there was nobody there to comfort him, thinking that nobody would ever come to comfort him, was the worst feeling in the world. He didn’t want anyone to ever feel the way he felt that week.

            And so he became friendly. He was nice to people, he took care of them when they were alone, and he used his skills in manipulation to get people to like each other and be there for each other. He still didn’t really have any friends, because he was the quiet, detached type, but he was happy because he was able to make other people happy.

            Taemin was smart, and he skipped his first year of middle school, so he was able to enter college early. But he’d had problems since the accident, including anemia and severe asthma, which ended up getting a little better due to medications, but excessive exercise could still trigger an attack. So he lived at Onew’s dorm room for the first semester, because it was extremely close to the campus and he could still live with Onew and be healthy.

            Onew was an avid scholar of Japanese, however, and he was given the chance to spend a semester in Japan, free of charge. He couldn’t pass something like that up. Taemin knew it. So he cheered Onew on, secretly terrified of what was going to happen to him when Onew had left, even for the semester.

            And then when Taemin saw Key, found out he would stay with him, he suddenly didn’t feel so scared anymore. Key was like a grown up version of the person Taemin used to be: someone who thinks being alone is great until their life comes crumbling down around them. Key needed help, and most of all, he needed someone to care about him and for him to care about.

            It sounded like a fun project for Taemin to start working on. 

A/N: OMO, 16 subscribers already and I haven't even posted the chapter yet? You guys are the best ♥ I hope this meets/exceeds your expectations. Anyway, I don't know when/how often I'm going to update this story, but I already have chapter 2 written. Except...I just realized that it contains spoilers for Things I Never Knew I Wanted...darn it...well I'll either change it or you'll have to wait until on or after April 4th to read the next chapter...hmmm, what to do...

Anyway, don't forget to read Things I Never Knew I Wanted for the full story! And comments are greatly appreciated :)

@Karijaemin: I'm glad you're excited, unnie!

@WickedThunder02: Kekekeke yay~

@caline: Yay indeed!

@SugarPopFiction: Eeeeee thank you~

♥ Exie