Writing, Taemin insists, is equivalent to possession. 

Fingers dancing upon keys as if pulled by invisible strings held tightly between fingers of a being unseen. Eyes glazed, lips humming, casting out barely strung sentences at an inhuman speed, sentences that, in their haste, seem more akin to one speaking in tongues than any sort of  thoughtful prose. 

A mind? Barely there - or at least not in its true form. It is present and accounted for, yes, but it is dimly lit and overcome with raw emotion, emotion conjured from the depths of whatever cracked and carved crevices that house the demons of delirium, the most accurate word for the spell-like trance that exists when the boy is left at the hands of the presence of poetic license. 

Words. Scattered and incomprehensible while still in the grips of this frenzied state, but most certainly there. The scrawled imitation of ink on his computer screen is impossible to miss, unless his eyes find themselves seized in his sudden state as well. 

This trance leaves as quickly as it comes, leaving behind a sea of text to make up for its brevity. A sea of text that Taemin must wait a moment before he can decipher, his eyes still a bit fogged from the sudden slip in sentience. 

And finally, he reads. Eyes browsing the words he can hardly remember writing, he absorbs the scattered letters and seemingly random words tossed about the page as if they’ve been whipped up by a windstorm and carelessly cast beneath the glass screen. 

They do not flow the way he wants them to. They don’t have nearly the power he has anticipated. They are weak and listless, like dead leaves lifelessly wandering through the air and landing in an algae scrubbed pond with nothing more than a weak ripple. 

Legs crossed and a thin layer of sweat gracing his upper lip, he cracks his fingers once, twice, holds his head in his hands and curses himself for the pages of woeful drivel before him. 

Writing, Taemin revises, is equivalent to a stomach bug. 

~o~

Now, despite what you may think, and ignoring all prior evidence leading you to believe, with rightful reason, that this is truth, Taemin, in fact, does not spend every waking moment at either the coffee shop or at work. There is one additional location our young writer considers home. What’s that location? Why not hazard a guess? It’s fairly obvious if you’ve been listening attentively until now. Well, I’ll tell you. 

It’s the library. 

Predictable? Perhaps. But our young writer has never claimed spontaneity. It doesn’t suit him, and he knows better than to haphazardly adopt personality traits he cannot hope to live up to. The most he can hope for is consistency, so it is consistency he revels in.

He enjoys the library’s intellectual air. It’s musty, filled to the brim with the age nipped and year worn paper fibers that float in the hushed breath of silent patrons. And he loves, more than anything, the array of characters that the library attracts. It is a microcosm of life as he knows it - the age-worn and the fresh, the sprightly and the exhausted, the ones who live and breathe words and text and the ones only there to squeeze out anything resembling an essay to toss into the hands of a surely disappointed teacher. All enclosed in a small area as if displayed for his observation. 

The library is filled with characters. And characters are precisely what our young writer needs. 

Yes, these people may be the end result of years of development. But unfortunately, he does not have the time to meticulously interview each individual on precisely every detail of their budding lives. And that’s where the creativity of a writer undiscovered comes into play - he must invent. 

~o~

“Taemin. Taemin.” 

“Hm?”

“You were spacing out.”

“Was I?”

The restaurant is a roar of noise. A hundred footsteps mixed and mingled into the form of a monstrous stampede. The clinking of metal against ceramic. The scooting of chairs that marks a finished and successful meal. The satisfied hum of an even more satisfied stomach. 

Far off in one of the corners there’s a woman with a daring red splashed on her long and pristine fingernails. She holds her utensils in an awkward fashion. Perhaps due to a prior injury? Or maybe a habit never broken as a young child?

“Yes Taemin. I hate it when you get like this.”

“Like what?”

She’s not a natural brunette. Though the chestnut locks that she has to constantly tuck behind her ear boast otherwise, Taemin can see the raven roots hidden beneath a sea of brown. 

As a child she wished more than anything to be a gymnast. Having been refused point blank by her parents for lessons, told that such an option held no suitable prospects in the real world, she takes training as a task fit only for herself to undertake. So every day she is up, stretching her thin limbs that are not yet molded by the relentless force of age. She leaps, spins, flips with little to no success and twirls until she sees stars against an early morning sky.

Her success dwindles, and in time, her interest fades. But maybe it is not as passive as she initially thinks. Maybe it is driven by something else, something she cannot see, but only feel. Something that is ever-present, looming in the shape of two who have conditioned and trained her in a different kind of way, a way as far from ‘passion’ as any method may be. 

So she gives up. Because a dream half realized is an existence half-formed, and a half-formed existence is worth nothing more than a meager laugh and a passing glance, according to the looming figures that watch her every move, nothing substantial in the art of living a life one can only label as ‘pretend’. 

So she grows. 

“You know. Spaced out. It’s impossible to talk to you when you’re constantly distracted.”

“I’m not distracted.”

After the duration of a nap she is somehow thirty-four. The family business is under her thumb. 

Living, she has realized, is about synchronization. 

You stand onstage with your similar bodied partners, and you sway your arms in time with theirs. You move your feet, strained as they may be, and you turn your hips to music that seems wholly unsuited for your own tastes. You dance. Not for any purpose, but only to fall in line with the quick stepping and nimble footed dancers whose painted smiles look far more natural than your own. 

She has grown. She has matured. Her hair is pulled up in a tight bun that she has deemed the only hairstyle suitable for her particular prestigious position. Her feet ache in the dress code approved heels that strap her feet like chains, but her dance hasn’t finished yet. Not quite yet. 

She has lost the childish gleam in her eye and has breached the untouched realm of the ‘adult’. And she has learned, through years of discovery that held none of the adventure that her childhood grasped in a mere pinky or two, that adulthood is nothing but one giant game of make believe. 

“And so I told him that unless he couldn’t make the commitment, I wasn’t going to waste my time. I mean - Taemin? Taemin? Are you even listening to me? You’re not, are you? Potato. Old people. Farts.”

Heavy. A heavy heart in an otherwise vacant chest, a pain nipped breath expelled from two lungs suddenly incapable of anything but a gentle puff of wind and a rasping wheeze of an exhale, and a feeling of solidarity in the unnamed cafe just two blocks from his prison cell of an office building. There are no oceans allowed there. 

Come living, leave listless, and breathe when you’re able. But chances to do so in the midst of frenzied steps comes fewer and fewer as the music drums on. A beat here and there until  you’re not sure what’s your heartbeat and what’s the unrelenting time signature of a pain-filled waltz. But a dream unrealized is a dream wasted, is it not? 

And unused thoughts, the worst of all. Thoughts of no use are the littered garbage that stain the pristine and white fabric of society’s untouched dress. 

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Taemin sighs. He pushes his plate away and watches the black clad woman drift out the door, her feet so firm on the earth it almost seemed like they’d slip right through. 

Dance on, mind you, it’s your job after all. Your steps are slow, your movements are fading. Dance on, like you should. But what can your endurance withstand? 

“Let’s go.”

~o~

The library holds a calm air incomparable to any location Taemin has visited in his lifetime, though the admittedly short span of such a time may have quite a bit to do with his opinion. However narrow the experience available for him to draw upon may be, it suits his needs quite well. 

Bodies in unison and bated breath. Bitten tongues and watchful eyes perusing, willingly or not, scans of text that Lee Taemin cannot help but envy for their concrete and accepted existence. It’s an existence still a dream imagined, a dream unrealized. A wasteful stain on a floating white fabric. A wish, a hope, and a man leaning upright against a worn library chair. 

His limbs are as willowy as his eyes are deep. Pupils dipped in black and leaking forth onto the pages before him, like spilled ink dripping on letters and blurring them into inconsistent incomprehensibility. Hair tossed to the side, raven strands cut short enough to expose the small ears about his well defined jawline. His expression is like steel. He is unmoving, uncaring, blank as his unblemished skin. Whether he is emotionless or absorbed in the book before him, Taemin is unsure. 

Fingers slipping between pages and mouth twitching slightly with every glance, he is fascinating to Taemin’s watchful eyes. And he is unknown. 

There is no story flitting about his scattered mind. No words occupying his skull. No ideas. No movement. 

Nothing but white silence and empty pages. 

You dance, if you have to. A dream unrealized is a waste of thought, indeed. Step in time. Count along, if you must. 

But the man’s dark eyes and scattered smiles don’t spout a beat for calculated steps. They speak a story, a series, an epic - but a story Taemin cannot hear. Not yet. But he is determined to listen. 

One, two, the beat marches on. Will you fall in time, our dear boy? Or will you move along?

------------------

A/N - sorry this took so long. Busy life. Updates will be more frequent from now on. Hope you liked this chapter! And I wonder who the strange man is?

I want you guys to know that this is as much of a fic as it is a collection of thoughts. This is a fic where I truly write whatever I please in order to communicate a story. That doesn't mean that everything is random. Every single thing written has a purpose. I am just exploring different methods of storytelling, and being less straightforward in my writing so I can experiment with different ways to explain ideas. 

Feel free to say hello on tumblr or twitter. 

See you soon!

-Gelisi