Note: This is the darker installment of this lighthearted fic lol

Oh all places, it would be. Absolutely would be.

Now he was convinced this psychopath was really out to get him.

Key’s puffs of breath faded away as he stopped halfway up the ill and turned in annoyance to his student still based at the parked car, gloved hands shoved in his pockets and eyes downcast.

“Lee!” He called out breathlessly, cupping his mouth. “Lee, what are you doing?”

“Obviously not trudging up that hill,” he shot back.                        

“Aw, come on! Are you serious? So this is my mouthy runt’s kryptonite? There’s nothing but bones and dust out there, kid. You can’t even step foot into a cemetery?” The wind howled, chopping up some of his words. Yet Taemin’s disgruntled reply was somehow crystal.

The youth squared his jaw as he met Key’s eyes meters away. “No. Not in the cemetery where my father is buried.”

The professor’s hands lowered slowly to his sides.

“Oh God….kid, I’m sorry. I didn’t know-

“Yeah. You didn’t. Can we go now? I’m tired of shouting at you.” Taemin turned away, shoulder leaning against the car. He blankly watched his breath morph into white plumes, lines creasing his expression until Key’s jogging form came crashing to his side. The boy flinched at the hand that collided with his upper arm; for support of the English professor’s own old bones, or for comfort, it wasn’t defined plainly.

“I’m sorry,” Key wheezed.  “We don’t have to do it here. Or at all, if you don’t want. I just…hold on…damn I should have taken those yoga exercises with Sulli….whew…okay, what I was going to say was, I wanted you to sit in the cemetery with me for the third prompt about writing a scary story. Thought it would be the best place to get you in the mood. But we can do something else. Take you to my ex-wife’s and let the inspiration brew from her interior design?”

Taemin sputtered despite himself. “That bad?”

A soft, uncharacteristic smile. It was strained and rare, yet it was genuine. “The worst.”

They didn’t speak again until they were back on the road, this time heading to a cemetery Taemin knew for sure wouldn’t creep him out-an old pet cemetery in a field that was unmarked and especially founded for the neighborhood kids who lost their furry, feathered friends. Taemin and his brother were the ones who came up with the idea and found the perfect plot of soft earth for burying. He never remembered crying much, because being together with kids who felt his pain was enough. Nothing but love on those grounds.

“Taemin…”

The boy’s ears stung in surprise. The only other time he’d heard that name from the vile, oppressing lips of his most hated teacher was the first day of school, when the man had taken role. It was childish, but Taemin was hesitant to even turn to address the owner of the gravelly voice. Like he wouldn’t like what he saw.

“Sir..?”

“About what you said earlier, that your dad would kill you if you failed my class…”

“Oh…I didn’t mean my real father. I meant my stepdad.  My mother remarried about two years after my real dad died.”

Taemin chanced peering over anyway, hood obscuring his vision. Yet what debacle he thought he’d see was nothing more than a pale misrepresentation of what he was so used to seeing and what he’d seen. Not quite the hard- at the whiteboard, but not quite the oddly flirtatious guy back in the café.

“It’s not because she was having an affair or that she didn’t love my dad,” he added quickly. Reputation’s sake? “She just didn’t like to be alone. There’s only so much Taesun and I could do to keep her happy…had we tried further, we’d have been tempting .”

“Uh, Lee? With all due respect, ew.”

“I didn’t say we did anything like that! I’m just emphasizing the severity of the situation!” Ah well, the blushing wasn’t all bad. At least his cheeks wouldn’t be as cold anymore…

Taemin turned to the passing Novcember scene out his window; not much snow yet, leaves still abundantly present . “I don’t know why I even opened up to you like that,” he mumbled, as if his mouth was full of something. Perhaps, like the snow he used to eat before his mother convinced him the yellow in it wasn’t pineapple flavor. “What do you care? You’re only going out of your way to do this so I can pass and get the hell out of your class, right?…”

Red velvet gloves dripped the steering wheel; the professor pinched his lips together, his heart suddenly at an irregular beat with the boy’s bitter, unexpected words. Words that sent him into purgatory for reasons he’d reveal at the wrong time and at the wrong place if it wasn’t for his practiced self-discipline for the last four months  “Taemin I d-

“You’re good. Please, just...”

Key nodded meekly, tired eyes focusing on the distracting road.

They arrived at the field about twenty minutes later, after the professor had stopped to fill up his tank. Taemin was about to make a snarky comment about that fact…let it die when he thought about it, the fleeting thought that the teacher did really care enough about his grades that he was using money he probably didn’t have. He was actually about to offer to pay him back, maybe do something more than just buy an extra pack of sushi from across the street to show his reluctant gratitude; however, the idea left him altogether in the form of a grimace when he and the older man met eyes over the roof of the car before they were about to climb in. He didn’t like the weak smile on Kim Kibum’s pastel pink lips, nor did he like the way it stirred something foreign inside him, a something that didn’t amount to how much he didn’t like his stepfather and yearned for his own or another…a something that he often felt for pretty girls, yet not really.

He knew what it was, but a  branding iron for his tongue was forged, allowing him to stubbornly, wisely keep it all in-unbeknownst to him, just like the man with flakes in his flying brown strands, who’d his lips and offered, “Living alone has its perks, I have to say. Don’t have many expenses, don’t have other mouths to feed. Feels good to afford to splurge once in a while…”

 As they rolled off back onto the street, all he mostly felt was unwanted pity. It didn’t help.

“It was…poignant. Your overtones of loyalty and innocence really accentuated the somber, yet warm, nostalgic feel behind the embodiment of you and your brother as the children. …I find it most memorable, Lee.” Key stood from the tree stump, patting Taemin’s knitted head as he faced north, to head back to the car. Truthfully, his was too numb to stay out there a minute longer and he wanted to beat the rush hour traffic. Just as truthfully, he probably would have stayed out there as long as the doe-eyed young man wanted. “This goes against my training as an educator, basing my analysis of your drabble off of my emotions more so than my literary eye…but I will be generous, and give you an A for this. Original and just as disturbing as it was meant to be.”

Silence, except for the wind. The rustling of the nearby forest of oaks. (Arborous; wooded)

“I also wanted you to be mindful that your work with me now will not be in vain, in reference to your actual grade. Consider this homework extra credit towards your final grade.” His chuckle was carried away with the unrelenting wind. “Along with a curve on your final exam, I’m sure this will be a redeemer. You’re not too bad when it comes to grammar so no real worries, yes?”

Taemin nodded guardedly. He continued to stare at the tiny lump of earth in front of him until the sound of footsteps on high grass faded away.

He’d written a drabble about a bunch of stupid kids who’d watched Pet Cemetery and conjured up some spell with a local crazy, a teenage witch-wanna be, to bring their old pets back to life. The pets were brought to life indeed, but the children quickly realized that rotting flesh and ghoulish barks and meows only meant these zombie animals weren’t their pets, their friends anymore; just a hoard of mindless, stinking corpses. The end was written so as to leave the tale open, and the part before the ending was cringe worthy in that there was an overload of angsty screaming, foolish attempts to fight the zombies off, and a cheesy attempt at romance thrown in there between the teenage chick and one of the shorter, dorkier kids-who was also female, as a twist.

It wasn’t something he was proud of. And it certainly didn’t mirror how it was for him, Taesun and the other kids back in the day. They were more of an accepting crowd when it came to their dead pets. They knew between whatever afterlife they individually believed in, the animals would be dispersed there for eternity. Only a distant memory in the hearts of their owners would link them to the mortal world.

It was real .

Just like the day his father…

Taemin sniffled, got up and steered himself towards the car. The frustrating wetness, the evidence, was smeared away roughly.

“I haven’t had company in a while,” Key rasped in his direction as he slid into warmth and mint and the remaining fumes of raw fish and wasabi. The older man was smiling that stupid, feeble smile again, making Taemin wish he would just turn back into Creulla Deville’s son or whatever. He didn’t need this right now, and expressed so with a nonchalant grunt.

“You’ll be my first guest in over three years,” the professor whispered next.

And Taemin disintegrated just a little. Just a little.