As Taemin walked through his apartment late that Thursday night, tired from spending hours perfecting the choreography with the new girl group that his company was going to debut the next day on a music show, Taemin’s eyes searched for his wife.

She was laying down on their small couch, barely awake watching the tv in front of her, half a bowl of popcorn next to a large binder filled with worksheets and lesson plans for her kindergarten class on the table in front of her.

“Why are you still awake? It’s really late,” Taemin asked as he looked at the big clock above the television. Two thirty-seven in the morning.

“Don’t worry, I fell asleep at nine, just woke up half an hour ago for no reason...go to bed you look exhausted,” Naeun said worriedly to her husband as she got up to lightly brush her thumbs over the bags under his eyes. He allowed himself to be pushed into their room and sat down on the edge of their bed as she removed his tracksuit jacket.

Taemin rolled his head around and rubbed the back of his neck as his wife gave him a light back massage, “If those girls make a mistake tomorrow I might have a heart attack” he chuckled.

“I take that to mean you trained them hard until they got it perfect?”

“Yeah, but you know what they’re like, they might train for months, but once they get in front of those crowds for the first time, all of a sudden they’re tripping, crashing, and everything that we worked so hard for goes down the drain.” Feeling the knots form in her husband’s back, Naeun hugged Taemin’s neck, her hand reaching down to rub the skin over his heart as she pressed her cheek against his.

“Hey, it’ll be alright, these girls are professionals, the best of the best, they’ve trained for years for this, and even if they do mess up somewhere, you guys work for the biggest entertainment company in all of Korea, they will have the most successful debut of the year.” Taemin lifted one side of his lips in a small smile, he grabbed his wife’s wrist and turned his head to give her a light kiss on the cheek.

“Now tomorrow’s an important day for you and I got class in a few hours, go get ready for bed.” With that, Naeun got up to clean up the living room and turn off the lights.

Sighing from the sudden loss of comfort, Taemin entered the bathroom. He the lights and began brushing his teeth; he looked at himself in the large mirror in front of him as he brushed, inspecting the same face that one decade earlier caught the attention of talent scouts, scouts who later on offered him an opportunity to become an idol star.

His mouth became full of foam and he had to stop to spit the contents of his mouth, he heard Naeun enter their room, one minute later she joined him as she was removing her makeup with a wipe. He moved aside so that she could prepare her own toothbrush. As she began brushing, he rinsed his mouth, then washed his own face. He dried his face and took a few steps back from the sink, leaning back on the wall watching his wife as she went through her own night routine. The tiny bathroom, in the small humble apartment was perfect for the two of them, not to mention cheap, which was important considering their kindergarten teacher and assistant choreographer salaries.

However Taemin didn’t complain, both of them knew someday SM would promote him to an actual choreographer position, he was already being assigned tasks like being solely responsible for practices with the groups and his choreographer hyung frequently asked him for help in creating the dance routines. Taemin was extremely content with his current life, thinking once again about that day when he was just a prepubescent boy and he rejected the offer of one of the biggest companies of the time, at the time it was silly and immature for him to do so as his only reasoning was his intention of pursuing a girl free of the strict dating bans enforced on trainees. A girl he never even talked to before but just saw one day in the hall of his middle school, the same girl brushing her teeth in front of him now, ten years later.

Naeun looked up at the mirror and caught Taemin’s gaze; holding her gaze, he walked up behind her and back hugged her, unable to stop his grin at her cute bare face. He closed his eyes and lowered his head to her pulse point inhaling that feminine scent that fitted Naeun so well. Taemin wasn’t naive, he sees her put on that perfume and recently started paying for it himself, it was mass produced like any other perfume, but whenever he smelled it he would only think of her, he absolutely loved her scent. As a matter of fact, he still took the scented female bear she gave him when they were dating, with him whenever the groups would have large scale tours overseas.

Naeun yawned, Taemin lifted his head to see the reflection of her tired watery eyes; he grabbed her hand and turned off the lights, leading her back to their bedroom.

Naeun wrapped her arms around Taemin’s neck as she laid her head on his chest. Taemin couldn’t sleep, one arm bent underneath his head as he stared at the ceiling.

“Um, no baby, not tonight… too sleepy,” Naeun mumbled with her eyes closed as Taemin’s hand went under her shirt to touch her .

Taemin smiled, “I wasn’t going to, you know in a couple of months it’ll be our ten year anniversary of dating. If you want to do something for then like a vacation, we should start saving now.”

Taemin felt her hand move so that her palm pressed on his cheek to turn and see her eyes looking directly into his, “Can you just try to be here on that day?”

Taemin’s eyes softened, it seemed like the groups in his company were always on tours or preparing for promotions in other countries, and when his hyung would be needed to stay in Korea, they would send Taemin in his place.

Taemin took her hand from his cheek and gave it a light kiss, “you don’t know how much I miss you when I go.”

Naeun smiled, “So how do you cope?”

“I hug that bear that you gave me, I call you, I look at those polaroids that you gave me, but even that won’t be enough on our anniversary if they want me to go…”

“So then what would you do?”

“I’ll come back to Korea for you,” Taemin said confidently with a small nod. Upon seeing Naeun’s look of uncertainty, he hugged her.

“No matter where I go, my heart stays here with you. Thank you for staying these last ten years by my side. I love you.”