I don’t know where to start. So I’ll just go with the middle, in media res, the , or whatever you’d like to call it. It had been one month since the end of summer. It was thus one month into my relationship with my boyfriend: Lee Taemin. Despite the second semester of the school year starting without a hitch, without even a moment’s rest, for the both of us, he always made time for me. 

I didn’t notice any particular change in him at first. He was just as calculative with his questions and answers as always. He was just as straightforward with his opinions as well. But he wasn’t just merely “attentive” anymore. 

To be quite honest, he spoiled me. 

From the way he’d choose to study when and where I studied, to how he would always walk me back to my dorm room. All the up to the front door. All the way inside. Not letting me out of his sight for a single second when he could avoid it. As though he was scared I would run away from him, he’d always pull me in breath-stoppingly close when he hugged me — leaving my lungs gasping for air each and every time he let go.

He’d come to watch me dance early in the morning before his classes began. He’d just sit in the corner of the room where there was no possible way he’d be in the way at all. He’d just watch me, acting as the almighty controller of the play and pause button. He always liked to skip past the happier songs, the more uplifting songs, in exchange for the slow ones. Maybe he has a thing for ballads. I never asked, too caught up in that look of pride he’d always give me while he was just sitting there, watching me. 

And then he wore those glasses; those thick brown frames. Because I liked it, he wore them even when he didn’t need to. Even though they weren’t “cool” looking or “stylish.” Even though children would make fun of him when we left the campus for lunch, he’d only smile. Head tilted down, cheeks rising upwards, smile hidden as a result. Though, sometimes, he’d flash it at me. With squinting eyes as his black-colored fringe, having gone too long without a proper cut, fell into his eyes, he’d smile. 

He’d hold my hand, lead me down the street by his side, and his smile would get even bigger. 

This was his last semester at the University before he left for Europe. 

Sara opted on not saying anything about it. 

I decided I wouldn’t either.

It was during our second month when I noticed the change he’d undergone — and not just in his attentive manner. We were sitting on the bench in front of that large, green patch of grass — our bench. Where I first chanced a seat and caught him sprinting from one building to the other. That red scarf I haven’t seen since winter covering our legs, those thick glasses he’s still wearing, warm milk in two thermoses, white and black in color, beside us, we sat there. 

In contrast to the first time we sat here together, I wasn’t afraid to look at him. 

All I did was look at him as he droned on about how his mentor, his professor, here at the University praised his recent paper. I watched him gesture excitedly and smile freely. He was happy, and I was happy for him. However, when it comes to talking about this professor, bringing up the topic of his soon-to-be departure from Korea was inevitable. So, as he had done many times before, he avoided the topic.

He changed the topic without reason. 

The first change I’ve noticed in him is that he gets scared now. The future, laden with uncertainty, makes him fearful. He avoids it. He pretends he doesn’t know about it. He plays both innocent and ignorant. He fakes it for my sake, because the feelings of another person are something he’s grown to distaste hurting. 

So, while holding back for me, he suddenly said, “It’s getting colder much earlier this year, isn’t it?”

I hummed in agreement, keeping my eyes on him. Searching for something. For anything, really. I didn’t find it in his expression as he suddenly leaned towards me, his features blurring as he laid his head onto my shoulder. He snuggled into me, causing me to laugh as his hair tickled at my neck. He readjusted himself at the sound, causing me to laugh again. 

Causing him to smile. 

After a moment, after he became comfortable, after my shoulder relaxed under his weight and I laid my head on top of his, he shifted his hand onto my lap, saying, “May I hold your hand?” 

We had had a heated discussion about the difference between “can” and “may” prior to this — two days prior, in fact. “Can” denotes ability, while “may” denotes permission. He “can” hold my hand if he wants to as he has the ability to do so. He “may” only hold my hand if I give him permission to utilize his ability to do so. After I had asked him, “Can I have a drink?” while pointing to his thermos, and he said, “I don’t know, can you?” seemingly singing to a teasing tune, we ended up spending a good thirty minutes of study time going off on the previously aforementioned tangent. 

I don’t know why I remember this. I don’t know why I remember many things. I don’t know a lot of things in general. It was just one of those everyday moments I hadn’t been able to experience since spring. It just made me smile now as I pressed my palm into his, spreading his fingers with my own, conquering the expanse between each one. And he let me do it, as I said, laughing for the third time, “Of course, silly.”

Filling every gap between my own, he commented, as if in passing, as if the idea had suddenly sprung to the forefront of his mind out of seemingly nothing at all, “It feels nice.”

My eyes went wide as I internally questioned if I had heard him wrong. If I was just hearing what I wanted to hear. If I was merely finding — out of my own fear — what I had been searching for one-sidedly, all on my own.

But he repeated it, as though the wave of his previous realization hit him again and he couldn’t help himself, “This feels nice.”

I don’t know exactly what he meant. I couldn’t even begin to parse the meaning of that simple phrase. But that wasn’t the point. The point is that he said it. Lee Taemin just solved the scientific equation of: why do couples hold hands? 

Their hormones drive them to pursue skin-on-skin contact? Sure. They do it because it’s an expected, familiar, and accepted gesture to commit? Of course. They do it because it just feels nice? Because there’s this almost therapeutic effect it has on the human psyche? On our very state of mind? On our emotions? On our feelings? On our hearts? The Lee Taemin of one year ago wouldn’t have even entertained such a gray notion. 

I don’t know if he knew exactly what he was saying at that very moment.

All I know is that I kissed him, and it felt nice.

What happened next was a blur, as though reality had turned into fantasy.

Like a dream, I was staring up with half-lidded eyes at his bare, streamlined shoulders that seemed to shimmer underneath the moonlight that poked through the curtains of the otherwise dark room. Wild shadows danced cross his shoulder blades. My fingers went reaching out for the dancers, blunt nails digging into skin, casting shadows of my own. A ragged breath hit my face and my facial features clenched in reflex as it carried in it a low, guttural moan. 

Feather-like hair tickled at the crook of my neck before a heavy weight rested itself there and bit down into my skin. I gave a sharp intake of breath in response before, through my parted lips, it escaped, comforted by the rocking of skin against skin. And his skin got closer, closer as his arms gave in and his body came crashing down onto mine, his elbows now holding him above me. 

From his pink tinted lips came a sigh. A sigh that hit the nape of my neck and set my ears aflame. A sigh that carried with it one last movement of his body on mine. My fingers tensed, dragging themselves upwards to weave through the back of that pile of soft, black feathers, a sudden pressure somewhere I couldn’t see. And the shadows danced, danced across his face as he pulled back, the pressure coming to a stop. 

The shadows danced somberly. 

Danced across his nose, his lips, his jaw, his eyes. 

His eyes gazed down at me, dark, coated in words, in sentences, in phrases I couldn’t read. They gave me the urge to speak. And I did. I whispered his name, I whispered his name as I still drifted in my dream-like state, being held there by the weight of his body on mine and his hair that tangled through my fingers. 

For some reason, for some reason I didn’t know, that made him tense. The shadows no longer swung drunkenly across his face. The began their wild dance once more.

This must have been a dream, because he whispered my own name back before I felt a bed of feathers press down against my forehead and soft, dewy skin moving against my lips. His own lips. His own lips that engulfed me, threatened to take me, to eat me whole, before the comfortable rocking began again. 

But he had already taken me. Today, as I once more gave into that “Yes,” he had taken me. He had engulfed me in him. I was caught — completely and utterly. This wasn’t a dream.

This was real. This was our reality.

This was the first time I tripped over Lee Taemin.

And I fell hard.