Chapter Nine

Author’s Note: This is the first time it felt like it did in writing the original, so maybe I’m getting my groove back? I hope it didn’t take too long… Or maybe I feel most comfortable writing about them at school hahahaha. Sorry the last chapter was so short :(

Taemin had the morning off. He didn’t have any schedules or people putting make-up on him or telling him to someone he wasn’t. He wanted to be the old Taemin. He knew there was only one spot that would do that for him. He slowly started to walk the all too common path that he had walked for years with different people. The sidewalk, the shops, and ghost memories, and the terrors. He reached the gates of his old school. He ran his ran across the stone walls as he walked along. Walking through the gates and into the courtyard. The hallways smelled and looked the same, but the aura was bitterer. It was like a sour taste in his mind as he saw Minho walking with Sulli in a class room, the lunch room where he saw himself being tripped by Jay, the nurse’s office where Kai had washed his hair. It all seemed like a book he had read, and not something he had lived through.

Taemin passed the class where he told Kai that he was going to Juilliard. The spot in time where he changed history, his history which he thought was set in stone. He should have learned that the present was never cemented. Minho was right, he was naïve. It was weak. It did lean of people too much. That was why he always fell.

Taemin kept walking until he found himself in front of his old dance studio. It was Minho who inspired him to dance and Kai who pushed him to excellence. Taemin smiled and saw that his stereo was still in the corner. No one had touched the dance studio since he left, or at least it didn’t look like it. Taemin sat in the corner where he had sat with Kai the day he found out he was accepted to Juilliard. He let a breath out. It was ironic it was like it was before he had met Kai in school. He was with Key, Jonghyun, Onew, and Minho. Minho was with another girl and ignoring him. It made him laugh at loud.

“Taemin, is that you?”  he jerked his head up to stare right into the eyes of Kai.

Kai.

Kai.

Kai.

K a i.

“Kai…what are you doing back in Korea?” Taemin spoke as if nothing had happened. As if everything all those hours of desperation had vanished. As if Kai still loved him.

“I could ask you that.” Kai didn’t move from the doorway.

“I came back, I had nothing keeping me in America. You know that.” Taemin could hear the roughness in his voice and hated it.

“You should have stayed.”

“I didn’t want to”

“Why are you here?”

“It is my dance studio.”

“It is the schools,” Kai said calmly.

“No one used it but me”

“Am I a no one?” Kai asked quietly.

“No, you were everything. But as we learned we can’t share a dance studio can we? Can I claim this one? You claimed the other one, that only seems fair” Taemin asked in a whisper. “Why are you here?”

“I came back to Korea.”

“I see that.” Taemin hesitated “How is Exo?”

“Fine.” Taemin nodded, he knew Kai didn’t want him to ask anything else, to let him in any farther. He wanted to be able to say ‘Kai I’m happy for you’ or ‘I understand and I want the best for you’ but he couldn’t. At least not yet. What he had learned is that the pain lessens over time. But as he had recently found out, it never goes away. These two boys seemed to haunt him. Mind, body and soul. Their fates intertwined. He was living him life in black and white. Anything and everything reminded him of either Minho or Kai. He waited until he could see color again. Until something wasn’t just black or white, Minho or Kai.

“Can you leave please? I want to be in my studio alone.” It hurt to see Kai. Not hurting. Not in pain. Happy with his life. Taemin felt territorial. Was this how Kai had felt in Juilliard and he hadn’t noticed? This insignificant feeling of unable to control nothing? Taemin wanted control again. He wanted Kai out of his dance studio, because if he stayed he would drive Taemin out, and Taemin needed this studio. Needed it as much as he had needed Minho, needed Kai, needed Key, Jonghyun and Onew.

“You can’t throw me out, this is a public building”

“Please.

Get.

Out.

Can’t you do this one thing for me.

Please.

Get.

Out.” Taemin felt the tension in Kai’s body and he could hear Kai’s internal battle going on in his head.

“We should talk.”

“Not now.”

“No, not now. How can I….how can I contact you?” Taemin started to panic. It was like a horror movie, playing in his mind. He couldn’t give him his phone number or get a call from him or have his number. He was too weak.

“I’m working at SM, leave a message for him there. They will make sure I get it.”

“You don’t have a….a cell phone, something more personal?”

“I’m working at SM, leave a message for him there. They will make sure I get it.”

“Okay, I understand Taemin. Look…nevermind, when we talk okay?” Taemin just nodded he needed to remember to breathe. “I’m going Taemin.” He heard the door close. He waited a minute before he broke down.

Why.

Why was he never good enough? Was he too ugly? Too fat? Too stupid? Why was he never good enough? Minho didn’t want him and never had. He wanted the thin and beautiful Sulli or Yuri. Kai didn’t want him he wanted the good looking, thin, and handsome Myungsoo. No one ever wanted him. He had dancing. Dancing loved him. Dancing could never leave him. He turned the stereo on and blasted it. Dancing. Maybe, maybe if he wasn’t so ugly, wasn’t so fat, wasn’t so stupid someone would come to love him. Maybe he just didn’t deserve to be happy.