Part VIII (463 words)
The Revelation

“Your text was—”

“I didn’t send it.”

Jinki raised an eyebrow.

“Really, it wasn’t me. It was my friend, Kibum.”

“Oh?”

Taemin nodded profusely, staring at his clasped hands that rested on the table, ears red. “Yes.”

“Okay.” He could feel Jinki staring. “That’s… disappointing.”

With those words hanging in the air, Taemin’s heart started pounding wildly against his ribcage. “Please don’t… say things like that. Isn’t there a line doctors aren’t allowed to cross? Especially with their patients?”

Jinki chuckled. “But I’m not a doctor, and you are not my patient. You even said that yourself.”

Taemin’s cheeks were burning so hot that he felt as if they would melt right off his face. “I just want help,” he finally mumbled, sinking lower into his seat. How did everything escalate so far? He was not ready for a personal relationship―he could not even handle his own self, so how could he let someone he loved share that burden? With Jinki, as long as their connection stayed platonic, he could confess everything; yet at the same time, something deep inside him yearned for more than that. “I’m tired of being afraid.”

All of a sudden, the atmosphere in Jinki’s office changed drastically. The masseuse sat up straighter and Taemin could feel those intense eyes probing him again, wanting him to look up. He chanced a peek, relieved when he saw curiosity on the elder’s face and nothing else.

“Afraid of what, exactly?”

For some reason, as he looked into Jinki’s searching eyes, Taemin gained courage unidentified to him before. “Afraid of a lot of things to be honest―I’m afraid to sleep, afraid to open up, afraid to tell anyone, afraid of being alone, but mostly... afraid of the dark.”

There was no judgment in Jinki’s expression. “You seem fearless now,” he mused.

Taemin bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t feel scared around you.”

“Why is that?” He sounded surprised.

Of course he is, Taemin thought to himself. Who wouldn’t be? “I really don’t know.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, only the faint sound of their breathing filling the space between them.

“You’re afraid of the dark.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how it started?”

Taemin closes his eyes, once again transported back into that car, the water filling his lungs and constricting his breathing, the consuming darkness and the hands that ensnared him, the feeling of being so completely and utterly alone….

He did not even realize he was hyperventilating until Jinki was kneeling in front of him, rubbing soothing circles into his lower back.

Taemin’s heart leapt out of his chest at the proximity, and suddenly his trouble breathing was no longer because of the recollection, but the man in front of him.

What’s wrong with me?