So I realize that it has been practically a month since I last updated. So here. I will present you with an unfinished chapter 16. There should be more to this chapter than what was written, but since I feel really bad about taking so long to update, I will upload what I have at the moment. It's not as long as my other chapters, but I guess it will do. Now, I have cut the TaeKai date into 3 parts instead of 2. :)

*not proof-read

After much arguing over pride and debt, Taemin agreed to let me pay for the dessert we were going to have. The night was pretty cool, so Taemin said we could take a nice walk and look around the small district, before heading off to the dessert place. He wouldn't tell me where it was, or what it was called. I learned, from the many times I've hung out with Taemin, that he is a very weird person. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

"It's not noisy here," I mused. "That's a good change."

"You're neighbors with Baekhyun and Luhan, you can't escape the noise." Taemin joked.

I chuckled. Baekhyun and Luhan's volumes don't go unnoticed.

"Do you not have loud and outspoken friends?"

"I have Key hyung." He replies immediately.

"The other barista?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Oh, you will flip once you get to know him. And his laugh… could rival Baekhyun, Luhan's and Chanyeol's." Taemin grinned.

"Now you're just overselling it!"

Taemin laughs. "I'm serious, though. It's the kind of laugh you love to laugh at…?" He tries to explain. "…if that makes sense."

"Kind of, yes." I nod, and we're still walking down the street barely noticing the shops anymore. "We call Chanyeol our happy virus because his laugh is infectious and he always brings the mood up."

"So he's like your group's mood-maker?" Taemin asks.

"Why does that sound weird?" And I find myself chuckling at how the words 'Chanyeol' and 'mood-maker' went together.

"You didn't answer my question."

I shrug, "Mood-maker? I don't know about that. But he's definitely positive energy."

"Why? Is there someone who gives off negative energy?"

"…there's me." I mumble a quiet confession.

Taemin looks at me with worried eyes. "What do you mean?"

I shrug, "I'm not that outgoing, my friends say, aside from when I'm with them, I'm generally a brooding person."

"Maybe you're just an introvert…"

"Maybe…" I shrug once more. "Then again, I love being in the company of my friends. Of course I do enjoy time for myself, but I'd rather be in a room with Sehun or Luhan or Baekhyun or Lay than be alone on most days." I start, and Taemin listens.

"Anyway… I don't really dwell on my personality. My friends and my family seem to like me, people around me tolerate me enough and act civil, that's fine with me." I confess.

Taemin shakes his head and chuckles at my words, "You sound so content with just being… average." He tells me.

"I don't have any ambitions to be great…" I tell him. And by now, our pacing has slowed down to turtle-like movements. Dragging our feet so slow that our steps seem heavy and barely lift away from the concrete.

He is quiet for awhile. I assumed that he's never heard someone like me speak. Someone like me who didn't dream big. Because I liked the simplicity. I liked being normal. Well… if you consider me and my group of friends normal. I enjoyed little things like being with my friends, and doing the thing I loved--which was dancing. I enjoyed playing games and going out and eating good food. I was content with living like that.

Finally, Taemin speaks up and breaks me from my train of thought. "You're the first person I've met who doesn't have any big dreams." He tells me.

I don't know why, but it makes me grin. "Everyone you know want to become rich and famous?" I ask.

"Something like that. But more like, they see themselves making names for themselves in the future."

"You're talking to the guy who didn't want to go to college." I counter.

Taemin laughs. It was the kind of hearty laugh that told me he approved of my sense of humor. That behind the disappointment or waste that he felt towards me having no glorious ambitions, he enjoyed-- appreciated how lightly I took myself. Was that a good thing?

Taemin calms down, and our pacing gets a bit quicker. Still slow, but we can definitely out-walk the turtles.

"But at least you're happy…?" It started out as a statement, I could tell, but ended as a question anyway.

I nod, "I am. I am happy. I am content." I admit.

"…You're a carpe diem-YOLO kind of person, aren't you?" He asks.

I laugh at his choice of words, but I answer him. "At some level, yeah."

"What do you want to do?" Taemin asks me after a brief moment of silence.

"What do you mean?"

Taemin pauses for awhile, thinking. Probably fixing the words in his head to explain to me what exactly he was asking so that I could understand. "Like, if it was okay to do anything you wanted, no consequences, to catches, no responsibilities to worry about… what would you do?" He asks.

I looked ahead, thinking over his question, then along the sidewalk we were walking, I spotted a bookstore, and I could feel my lips forming into a smile.

"I want to travel the world." I admit. "And dance. I would be happy dancing every day, and I would be really happy if I saw the world. Not everything, cause I will miss home too much, but enough to experience different cultures and stuff, y'know?" I tell him. 

Opening up to Taemin came naturally to me. I never hesitated when he asked me questions on the most personal levels.

"…wouldn't that be considered a dream?" I ask him, after he didn't respond. I looked at Taemin's face, then fixed my gaze on his eyes, ready to communicate. We were having a conversation, but we all but took glances at each other during our whole walk. Taemin stopped walking, as did I, and looked right back at me. He smiled.

"It is a dream." He says, "But it is not one of self-glorification. Which is a breath of fresh air."

I chuckle, "Do you want self-glorification?" I asked him.

We continued walking as he answers, "I want to be a well-known chef, if not around the world, in Korea." He tells me. "I want people to say, 'I want to eat the food of Lee Taemin.'"

"Well, doesn't everybody?"

"Not you."

"Because, I don't know what I want. It all comes down to I don't know what I want to do for a living…" I say.

Taemin bites his bottom lip, I noticed it at the corner of my eye. He didn't need to be so nervous. Talking about college wasn't so uncomfortable for me anymore.

"Maybe once I start college, and find that I am good at something other than dancing, maybe that's when I'll say, I want people to know Kim Jongin… the best… I don't know, architect in Seoul. Or the Kim Jongin, the guy who built Lotte's new theme park." I say.

And once again, Taemin is laughing.

"…you're really entertaining, you know that?" Taemin says.

I laugh at that, "Not really." I say, "But I'm glad you think so."

"Yes. Because my opinion of you is very important." He was teasing, but he didn't know how right he was.

Taemin and I have been walking around for more than 15 minutes, before I ask him if we were near the dessert place.

"We could have passed it and you wouldn't even have noticed." He teases me.

"Did we?" I asked. Genuinely curious.

"Maybe."

I roll my eyes. But before I could complain or answer back, Taemin is already grabbing my wrist and dragging me along the sidewalk.

"Let's take a photobooth photo!" He was saying.

I groan, not in a rude way, and mumble, "Photobooth again?"

Taemin slows down, "Why? You don't like photobooths?" He asked me, slowing down to a walk. I match his pace.

I shrug, "I'm not really the type to go around taking photos…"

"Even if you go to like Jeju or Hong Kong or something?"

"…okay, well, I do… cause I like to remember…"

"Exactly! I want to remember today, so we shall take a commemorative photobooth photo!" Taemin interrupts me.

I shake my head and chuckle, "Alright, alright. But Sehun will get jealous." I tease.

"And why is that?"

"Because I only take photobooth photos with Sehun!"

"AHA!" Taemin exclaims, pointing an accusing finger at me. "So you do take photobooth photos!"

"…a lot when we were in middle school. Got sick of it." I admit.

"I promise no more photobooth photos after this one! After all, this is the first time we really hung out aside from Dream Tea…" Taemin reasons.

I nod, "Point taken."

Even though it was only the two of us inside the photobooth it was still really funny. Taemin kept saying I looked like a child who spilled his ice cream or something because I would smolder at the camera. Not just frown or scowl. Smolder.

"Is that supposed to be something?" He's laughing when he looks at the first set of prints.

"No!" I look over at the photos. "That's how Sehun and I are supposed to look cool."

"You're trying too hard, stupid!"

"That's the point! It's not supposed to get us anywhere."

"Are you trying to repel girls?"

"At the time, we were!" I laugh, admitting some of the things my best friend and I did.

Taemin looked at me with an expression that was all too amused.

"Middle school girls were mean, okay!"

"Aww! Was Kai bullied by wittle girls?" He teases pinching my cheek. I swat his hand away.

"No! They were very violent when it came to me and Sehun and Chanyeol, all bossy and demanding and angry and stuff."

"Really, now?"

"Stop making fun of me."

"I wasn--"

"I can see it in your eyes, Taemin. You're totally making fun of me."

Because Taemin thinks I have the facial expression range of Kristen Stewart, we ended up taking a hell of a lot of photos, mostly to prove that my face does have expression and won't crack when I smile. It didn't stop him from laughing at each print, though.

"Can we just go get dessert now?" I grumble.

Taemin laughs, "Okay, okay."

"…I'm still paying, right?" I asked slowly.

"Since you let me laugh at you," Taemin says holding up our prints, "Yes, you can treat me to some expensive Italian dessert."

I smirk. Were the words 'expensive Italian dessert' supposed to scare me? No way in hell.

Challenge accepted.