When Lee Taemin was a child, he cried quite often, as all children do. Not for bruised knees and mindless tantrums - our young writer considered his tears far too precious for such childish endeavors - but for faceless shadows and looming presences, of supposed ‘freedom’ and ‘young adventure’ lost at the hands of a ruthless system of order, to which his scraped elbows could not hold a candle. 

A free spirit, he was, if I may indulge in the cliche. His pursuits held no weight in his world, but he entertained his own ideals, ‘mindless’ as they were deemed to be. 

Bounding legs and knobby knees (he was always a thin child, and even now as an adult his mass was mostly bone), Taemin is a black haired fireball ready to burst, only letting his flame extinguish at night to recharge, wake up, and do it all over again. 

Homework, chores; he hasn’t the time. The term of ‘responsibility’ was one of his own definition, and, in his mind, responsibility was the equivalent of whatever he wanted to do. According to him, it was his responsibility to himself to have fun. And arguing with a child, as you may know, is an enormous and fantastic waste of time. 

Arguing with Taemin? 

Even more so. 

Taemin took any chance to rebel that he could, though most of his attempts were mundane and went unnoticed. A mess here and there, an unfinished dinner (his parents expected him to eat vegetables? Now that, most of all, was solid reason for rebellion), or a stray article of clothing left outside for his parents to sigh over, scrub extra hard and return to his room within the day. He was always stunned to find whatever item left outside right back in his closet the day after. His parents, he decided, were some kind of miracle workers. 

He hates school, clinging to the handle of his door with all his might every morning his parents rouse him from his slumber to head off to the child’s ‘daily grind’. Maybe it’s not school he hates, but the principle of it al. Why should he have to spend hours upon hours in a place he doesn’t want to be? Where does he get to contribute his input? Just because he is young, he has no choice? Taemin can’t help but question the legality of it all, his young mind working overtime to find some sort of loophole. Snow days and summer vacation simply didn’t cut it. 

“Do your homework,” his father calls from the bottom of the stairs, mindlessly watching television while Taemin is creating a hundred worlds from the confines of his bedroom. He wants to sail every ocean there is on a raft he build himself. He has tasted freedom, perhaps once or twice in his short lifetime, and freedom is his mantra - tomorrow, he decides, he will float from his room and out to the sea. (He is miles from any body of water, but he considers that a minor kink in his plan. ‘Desire conquers all’, indeed.) The world is flattened, chipped and mined with the claws of billion year old age. There are mountains, so Taemin will climb them. Caves, so he will explore. ‘If the world didn’t want me to travel,’ Taemin insists, ‘then it would all look the same.’

Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, he will see storybooks come to life before his own eyes. No longer a blurry dream in sleep scattered eyes, but reality. Tomorrow, pictures breathe and ideas lurk. Tomorrow, he will see it all. 

But tomorrow, they say, he must go to school. 

“Taemin! Do your chores!” 

“You’re not the boss of me!” He cries, the only rebellion his tiny body and high pitched wisp of  a voice will allow. 

There are kings and queens and princes and princesses and dukes and earls and he, he decides, has no leader. Because tomorrow he could see it all, earth scathed and cracked and ready for his presence but tomorrow, they say, he belongs elsewhere. 

Well, it seems tomorrow he will be absent for a day, a week, a month, maybe his lifetime. 

For tomorrow, our Lee Taemin already has plans. He must postpone your request. 

Arms folded and a familiar smirk splayed across his face, young, soft, and ready to be aged and roughened with the winds of discovery, Lee Taemin is a seven-year old anarchist.

~o~

“Do you want to come to the library with me?”

Ten pages. One hundred and twenty paragraphs. Three hundred and eighty nine lines. Three thousand five hundred and one words. Nineteen thousand seven hundred and eighty nine characters, one story, countless hours of work, and Lee Taemin is stuck.

Taemin’s mind seems to work in a way that after twenty plus years, he still hasn’t quite figured out. Some days, he swims. His synapses are pulled by a current, thoughts like waterfalls and taps on the keyboard like skipped stones on an ocean front. But other days, like today, he does not move. His allotted eloquence for the day, already much too small an amount than he likes to admit has run dry, and today, he cannot think of any other suitable metaphor for his problem besides ‘a beached whale’. Yes, he decides, he is a beached whale upon intellectual sands. And though Key is, perhaps, not as strong a suitable aid he might need, he will do for now. 

Key sighs his usual song of unique disinterest and slight agitation while picking at his fingers, not even sparing a moment’s glance of thinly pulled eyes in Taemin’s direction. Today, he’s not worth as much of a glare. He wouldn’t waste the few calories he’s consumed in that day to expend his energy in such a useless manner. “What is so special about the library that you seem to live there?” He scoffs, hardly believing that a place that houses nothing but books and silence (Key’s nemesis) could possibly be a place for someone to willingly go.

And, in a sense he’s right. For Key has phrased his question in a manner slightly off - it’s not what’s there, but who. 

“Nothing. I just need to do work.” 

Key is a busybody. And Taemin is far too shy to admit his true intentions to him.

His own act of social rebellion. A child, as always. 

~o~

What do suicide, gluttony, and homouality have in common?

Well. 

Our young writer has never been the religious type anyway. 

~o~

Key talks. 

I apologize. That’s a bit misleading. 

Allow me to rephrase. 

Key’s tongue is a storm and his words like whirlwinds. His mind is a collection of finely tuned gears that spin in a way Taemin’s mind does not. Next to Key he feels himself inadequate. Taemin, for all the oceans stored inside his brain, is woefully incapable of keeping up with Key’s speech. Taemin is silent while Key is a whirling flourish of words. Key’s voice is the paint of masterpieces, and Taemin, our quiet Taemin... 

He is just a statue. 

The two are both human, but they breathe different air. They must, for the end product that they spit back out is far too different to have been from the same source. Key breathes the warm summer air that carries a thousand whispers on its back, while Taemin loves the wintered silence of a muffled storm’s hum. 

His lips may not keep up with Key’s, but he is content. 

For the best listeners are always the best writers. 

So, ears perched to gather tidbits and pieces of stories and tales, Taemin listens. 

~o~

Ivory fingers, slim wrists and a silver wristwatch on a tapered arm. 

A slightly crooked grin paired with just slightly crooked teeth - the most endearing smile our young writer has ever witnessed. 

Legs like tree stalks and arms like rope.

And the scent of a man Taemin just cannot decipher. 

His worlds and his conjured experience does not apply to this nameless library-goer, and it drives him to near insanity. 

While Taemin’s speech is limited, his mind never stops. He may not move his lips but his worlds speak for themselves. A hundred creations in the blink of an eye, a thousand backstories in a mere breath’s time. 

But when Taemin glances over at the mysterious man with, if his observation is as keen as he thinks it to be, a taste for the classics, he has not a single space to retreat to. 

Taemin has no story for him. 

And this time maybe it’s not a story he wants - but a reality.

He sighs and closes his laptop. Like a bolder wedged between some dried up valley, he has not budged a single inch from his three thousand five hundred and one word count taken days ago. 

As he stands to leave, just one of many books he hauls everywhere wedged between his elbow’s crevice slips to the floor. 

“Steinbeck?” 

His voice is like a laugh, and for a minute, Taemin is so caught up in the sound that he hasn’t processed that the two short syllables are in fact, directed at him. 

“O-oh,” he stutters. “Yeah.”

The man smiles, and all the stitches that have somehow managed to keep Taemin’s arms and legs sewed to their sockets simultaneously fray. 

“You have good taste.”

“Th...thank you,” Taemin mutters, retrieving the book from the web of slender fingers that kept it wrapped in place. Without another word, he scurries out of the library in a manner he knew nearly seconds after his exit he would live and relive in painful, nauseating shame for at least a month afterward. 

He had been caught off guard. His voice was intoxicating. Like something Taemin has never heard before. Though it’s just one tone it still sounds like a song. Just a few words and Taemin is an addict. 

Could you shoot up with words?

Taemin silently prays there is a way. 

He holds an age worn white covered book to his nose to cover a teenage grin, sparked by the sudden rush of childish rebellion he feels pitted deep within his toes. 

That voice, and the owner, if it was possible, had become just another beautiful sin Taemin wanted to add to the list. 

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

Aaaand I finally updated. Sorry for the wait. I had most of it ready to go and then a hurricane hit. Oops. 

Some of you are saying this story is confusing. If you're confused, all I can tell you to do is just reread. It will make more sense. Also, if you're here just to see the relationship between Taemin and Minho develop, then the stuff you're confused by won't really matter to you. It's just characterization. 

Thanks for reading, as always! 

See you soon. 

Gelisi