TAEMIN

Two weeks is still not enough time for Taemin to adjust to his new living situation.

He stretched out his arms and let out a loud groan before sighing at his laptop. For the past four hours, he has managed to read some of his subordinates’ reports and done going through the monthly summary slides that he needs to present to the board of directors soon. Not that he was looking forward to it, though. He dreaded having to meet his mother during board meetings. The only nice thing about those meetings was the chance to meet his uncle, whom he considered more like a family compared to his mother, and the occasional chance to reunite with his cousin whenever he stands in for the said uncle. 

Still, Taemin does his best to prepare himself. He made a mental note to tell G.O that the managers will have to change the color theme of the slides to red. His mother always verbally expressed her distaste for any slides that isn’t in her favorite color; while it wasn’t a big problem, and he could ignore her if he tried, Taemin hated the look on her face whenever that happens, especially when he was doing his presentation. The grimace on her unnaturally youthful face never fails to bring him back to his childhood years. She wasn’t a forgiving woman, and her temper was something he didn’t wish to deal with. Her temper and perfectionism were the attributes he somehow managed to inherit, so rather than being scared of it like when he was a child, he was more annoyed now. Her sour expressions were enough to ruin his whole week, so he wouldn't want to risk losing his mood when he is presenting later.

“Not that things are any better now,” He mused while typing a note to G.O. Thoughts about his mother were never pleasant, but nothing compares to the ache in his heart when he remembered that tonight is another night without Adreanne by his side. It has been two weeks since Adreanne was gone. Taemin felt like his life was thrown out of its axis in the blink of an eye the moment he realized that she wasn't going to come home anytime soon. He felt like he was just existing without any proper purpose. Every second of his free time was now spent thinking about his wife's whereabouts, or turning to work as a means of distraction. Taemin never brought work home ever since he learned to find a work-life balance after about a year of working, but now it's all he does at home. He needed something to make him tired enough to sleep, to make him forget how lonely it is to sleep in a cold king-sized bed; alone.

Suddenly it was already 1:00 am. His stomach growled loudly to the point that he grimaced at how embarrassing it sounded. Taemin’s assistant, Byung Hee or G.O, as he would like to be addressed; has reminded him to buy some food for dinner but the reminder completely slipped out of his mind. In his head, his wife was still waiting for him at home, with his warm favorite foods laid out on their wooden dinner table.

“Here we go again,” He sighed as he scanned the pantry. Standing back a little, he looked at the neatly arranged food stocks in there. His wife did a very good job keeping the pantry organized, although he wouldn’t call her the most organized person in the world. Every food type is on its respective basket on the shelves, just the way he likes it. He reached out for the last packet of ramen; the rest them depleted after he went through an absurd amount of them, before letting out yet another sigh and grumbling when the packet fell onto the floor.

The grumpy man bent to pick the ramen up, halting on his way up when he spotted a familiar object placed on one of the lower shelves. The gold foiled engraving of his wife’s name on the object’s surface caught the dim light of the kitchen, and he realized what it was almost immediately. There was a thick, hardcover book that he knew all too well. Taemin decided to pull the book out of its place and brought it with him to the kitchen where he already had water boiling on a small pot.

After he was done cooking, he slowly touched the leather surface of the book cover. This was a custom-made notebook he gifted his wife for her 17th birthday. Adreanne journals a lot back when they were in high school, so Taemin thought that a very thick book with high-quality papers would be something that she might love. He hadn’t noticed her writing in it for a long time, so he thought that she has stopped doing it. But to put it in the pantry out of all the places in their house….

He smiled when he opened the first page. His barely comprehensible writing welcomed him, although he felt like he was breaching her privacy when he turned to the next page. There was a polaroid picture of them together in the middle of the second page. Framing the photo were pressed flowers that Taemin knew so well the moment he saw them. Those are the flowers that he would randomly bring to her during their recess back in high school. His heart swelled in nostalgia and happiness. He wouldn’t have imagined that Adreanne would keep those little daisies that he picked on their school field. The memory made him smile fondly.

He felt a strong intrusive desire to open up to the next page and start reading, albeit feeling guilt eating him up when he saw the start of her diary entry after a series of picture collages on the first few pages of the book. Adreanne never allowed him to read her diary even after they got married, saying that it carries a lot of 'cringeworthy' things and sensitive information that she would rather not let anyone know. "You can read it when I'm dead," Was what she would say when he said that husbands and wives aren't supposed to keep secrets from each other. Taemin had laughed at her when she told him to not read it without her consent, but he respected that, and would just pretend to open the book mischievously to . He thought that she has stopped writing and journaling since she got busy with work and life, but it seemed that she wrote regularly, seeing that the last entry was written just before she disappeared on him. He browsed through the rest of the pages instead; still contemplating whether to read the entries properly or not, finding more things that made him smile. Movie tickets from her outing with their friends, post-it notes that he wrote her, tickets from the places they went for their dates - these things and more are glued neatly onto the pages. Adreanne is such a precious person, and he felt another pang of guilt for putting her through the things that made them come to this point of life.

He opened the second page again to stare at their picture as he ate his ramen and sent her a text message to let her know that he missed her.

Saturday; 23 March 2013; 2:35 am

Alright. It has been a while (many, many months) since I write here, so I do feel a little awkward. I feel bad, like someone who only reaches out to a friend when I am upset. I am sorry, but I swear can’t help it. Life has been both great and greatly confusing. I don’t want to say that my life is taking a turn into a ‘bad’ one because I have a lot of things to be thankful for, but I think I need to relieve myself by at least writing in here. I feel like I have no one that I think will be able to understand and listen to me properly right now.

It’s just that, it feels weird when someone who is the closest to you is turning into someone you don’t know at all. I don’t want to get into the details because I am afraid that maybe this whole thing is just a huge assumption of mine. I don't want to imagine things and scare myself. Maybe I am just misunderstanding him. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe Taemin is transitioning into a person he needs to be to be someone great at his job, and that puts a lot of pressure on him. I would be extremely stressed if I were him too! He’s doing great things, and as his wife, I should try to understand him better instead of thinking about my feelings too much. So it’s me, right? It’s not him. I am still trying to adjust myself to this new shift. It’s making me quite uneasy but I swear I am trying my best to push any negative feelings away.

Anyway, compulsory life update! A lot of change is happening in my life. I am now an official author under a publisher I have always wanted to work with. I am a long-time fan of their books and writers, so it’s a huge honor to finally be able to publish my book (and future books) through them. My first book did so well (I still can't believe this) that I was offered to be their author (I still can't believe this too). I still dream of working as an educator, but I guess that will have to wait. Taemin is still not fond of the idea of me working. At all. He thinks it’s unnecessary.

I mean, I understand where he’s coming from. He said he can provide for me, and our conversation about me wanting to try my luck at being a teacher (even at the neighborhood kindergarten, believe it or not) would drive him tense, or even angry sometimes. In the end, I just stop talking about it to him. I don’t like it when he gets angry, it drains me because all I want to do is make him happy. I know that we don’t need more money than what he earns right now, but it’s a bit frustrating that he refuses to acknowledge the fact that I don’t want to work for money. I mean, the royalty I get from my books and the income I get from selling my paintings are also more than enough to support both of us if we live a simple life, but still. Teaching is my dream career so I want to be able to do it at least once. It’s a bit hurtful when my husband is reluctant to support me in this pursuit.

I love him so much but God, I do desperately hope that he could understand me better sometimes. Key Oppa joked about me being Taemin’s trophy wife when I confided to him about this, but what trophy wife? I am not even up on the shelf for him to show to anyone. 

Oh, I hear someone at the front door. That must be Taemin. It’s almost 3:00 am. I just hope he’s not drunk again.

Talk later, I guess. Thank you for listening. I'll come to write more often, I promise.

Adreanne

Monday; 25 March 2013; 1:00am

Dear Diary,

Taemin returned home early today.  I was surprised but overjoyed indeed. I baked him his favorite dark chocolate brownies and we sat in our backyard, having a quiet tea time together. I love moments like this, especially now that it’s not an everyday occasion anymore. He was silent but that doesn’t matter. His being able to finally sit with me like this is enough. We watched a stray cat play with a dried leaf under the tree in our backyard. The kitty tossed and turned funnily, and I laughed when he tumbled backward. I looked at Taemin and expected him to laugh too, but he didn’t. He just stared at it blankly.

I cant’t help but feel pity for him. What plagued his mind is incredibly worrisome, I guess, to the point that he’s unable to even smile at things that would once make him giggle like crazy. I wonder what is he thinking about. He’s just right beside me, but for some reason, he feels so far away. The wind blows gently and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume on him. I do not know what is he going through right now, and I wanted to just sit on his lap and hug him so tightly to comfort him. He loved it when I do that. Taemin was never the one who puts his words and feelings out on his sleeves, so I used to get frustrated whenever he refused to tell me about his worries. Only after a year of marriage that I manage to understand that loving Taemin means just being there for him with a hug, always. He appreciates that the most whenever he’s not in a very good mood after work.

But I can’t do that now. There’s something that stops me from touching him like how I used to. He seemed distant, and I feel like I can’t reach him. I gathered my courage and touched his clenched knuckle on the armrest instead.

He looked at me, just briefly, before looking back at the cat with a small smile. “He seems to have a lot of fun peeing at our tree” was his first lengthy sentence today after "I'm home" when he joined me in the backyard and "Thank you" after I poured him some tea. I offered him a smile and was thankful that he makes an effort to talk. Naturally, I asked him if he was okay and he said he was. He said he was just tired.

I lifted his hand and planted some kisses on his knuckles and fingers. I thanked him for his hard work and what he does for the people in his life. The cold metal surface of his wedding band touched my lips. I still feel giddy inside whenever I remember that my name is etched on the inside of the ring. His skin smells like my hand lotion. The one I put in his work bag. I wonder if he uses that at work and misses me sometimes.

My husband would beam at me and return the gesture whenever I kiss his hand. The Taemin who sat beside me didn’t. He just gave me a small smile and caressed my hand with his thumb, before pulling his hand away to drink his tea.

When it gets dark and the cat jumped out of our fence to leave, we went inside. Taemin helped me clear the dishes and I couldn’t stop myself from embracing him from behind although I was honestly a bit scared to do that. I missed him so much. He tensed but relaxed soon after, leaning his weight slightly against my body.

“Do you love me, Taem?” I asked him timidly. It's embarrassing to ask questions like this. This was a question I have never asked before, and I never thought that I would do it. Taemin used to playfully ask this all the time when we were younger, and I find that I need to take a moment to organize my answer. It’s simple, but it’s also very complex somehow. The mischievous Taemin didn’t want a simple “Yes, I love you”. He wanted something like “I’ll use your last name to the end of my time” or “I’ll kill the roaches for you even if I am deadly scared of them”. He loves it even more if I just kiss him whenever he asks the same question.

He just chuckled and rinsed the soap suds from the glass cups.

“Is water wet, yeobo?” Was his answer.

I don’t think that is what I wanted to hear, but I’ll settle for it anyway. He spends the whole evening doing work in his home office, and I am still here in mine after doing some proofreading on a chapter of my book. Whatever it is, I hope he’ll feel better soon. I miss my Taemin a lot.

Adreanne

Currently unemployed and am desperately trying to improve my English - so I decided to rewrite this fic!
Thank you for reading <3