Aphrodite was pensively gazing out his kitchen window, while leaning on a tiny table and holding a cooling cup of tea between his hands. The oversized shirt and ripped skinny jeans, the shabby apartment, the cheap cup with bits chipped off the rim all reflected what could be seen in the young man’s eyes; the tired ran bone-deep.

“Key, I think I want to abandon my God status.”

Athena, the fabulously dressed diva sitting across from Aphrodite, nearly choked on his tea when that statement registered in his mind.

“Taemin, are you nuts? Why the hell would you want to turn human and die? Did you not see what happened to Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Junsu when they decided to foolishly throw everything away? As your fellow God, I forbid you to even think such morbid thoughts!”

The young man turned his gaze towards his companion, and met Key’s weary gaze.

“Key, no, Athena, look at me.”

“I am!” The feline-looking God uttered in protest.

“Damnit, Athena, really look at me! Look around you! LOOK AT ME!”

Key realized at that moment that he had stopped seeing Taemin for who he really was a long, long time ago. Instead of the ever youthful and happy, rosy-cheeked Aphrodite who always surrounded himself with beauty, he was looking into the exhausted eyes of an emotionally battered young man living in a cramped dump.

“What happened to you, Taeminnie?” came a broken whisper.

A jaded bark came out of the young man before he took a sip of the lukewarm beverage and uttered, “Taeminnie died of heartbreak.”

“When?”

“Feels like eons ago; I’m just the shell that’s left to take a message.”

Athena felt guilt hitting him in the stomach like a wrecking ball. Where has he been all these years, decades, possibly centuries that his precious friend managed to end up so jaded? Why hasn’t he, Key, noticed that something was wrong with Taemin; it was Key who thought himself as the best friend and self-appointed umma of Aphrodite. Where had he gone wrong?

“I am looking at you properly now. Can you tell me what had led you to this terrible conclusion?”

Aphrodite looked out his window at the snow and dying nature again, and with a sad sigh, uttered, “When I was born?”