58 and 59 went up at the same time so don't miss out on Dream!

#59 – Destiny

He had never believed in destiny – until he realized how complicated his life path had to have been in order to allow them to have ever even met.  With almost 50 million people in Korea, and one living in Seoul and the other in Daegu, and not the same age – there was no practical way for them to have ever met.  It took all of the right conditions to come together – and maybe a little help from fate. 

*****

“Taemin!”  A shrill call echoed up the stairs, “Did you do your homework?” 

The elementary school student sighed and clicked off the TV he had been watching.  He was trying to figure out how a group did a certain dance move.  He wanted to try it at his audition this weekend.

“I’m doing it now!” he called down stairs, plopping himself down into his desk chair and staring at his math workbook. 

He glanced up at the calendar that he had posted on his wall.  Crossing out the days with big red-marker Xs until this Saturday, circled in the same bright red.

Two more days.

He had begged his mother for months to let him do an audition. 

“By why do you want to join an agency?”  His mother had asked.

“Don’t you just want to be a normal kid?  You won’t have time to see your friends or maybe even your family.” His father had added.

But he had kept at it, imploring them to please, at least let him audition.

“What are the odds that I will be chosen anyway,” he mumbled at the end of one of their fights about it.

His mother had looked at her son, so heartbroken, that she finally agreed.  “Fine, just the audition though.”

*****

“So how’d you do?!” One of his friends asked as they walked to a snack shop after school.

It had been a week since the audition and they were asking every day.

“I don’t know yet, they said that they would call.”  Taemin shrugged. 

It had felt great to be performing.  To hear the people cheering around him, even if they weren’t cheering for him.  He had just let the music flow through him and danced as hard as he ever had before.

Then they had made him sing. 

Thathad freaked him out.  If the decision was based on dancing he might actually stand a shot at passing, if they based it on singing – well, his voice wasn’t anything special…

Taemin waved goodbye to his friends and walked into his house to find his mother sitting at the kitchen table, clutching her hands around a cup of long cold coffee.

“Mom…?” Taemin asked slowly, sliding into the chair directly across from her. 

“You passed…” she said slowly, as though still processing the information.  “SM called, they want you to become a trainee.”

Taemin leapt from the table, whooping for joy. 

*****

Taemin fumbled his way through vocal training, wishing that he could be in a dance room right now. 

“No Taemin.  If your singing doesn’t improve then SM is going to turn you out.  If it’s just your voice changing, well, we can deal with that, but this is just lack of effort.  You’re not practicing your vocals hard enough.”

The vocal trainer tore into Taemin, making him feel about two feet tall. 

He did try, but he just didn’t know what he was doing wrong, or how to fix it. 

The trainer moved on to the next student in the row who had a smug smile on their face.

They sang better than he did.

He tried to comfort himself by saying he danced better, but SM produced singers.  It wasn’t a dance company.

Taemin promised himself that he would try harder. 

He wasn’t going to get thrown out of SM, not if he could do anything about it.

*****

What a God-send, Taemin thought, staring up at the older boy on the roof. 

Taemin hadn’t wanted to embarrass himself in front of others so he went up to the roof to try and practice singing there.  He had been dismayed to see another boy already up there. 

He turned around, not bothering to wait to be yelled at to go away.

“Wait!” he heard as his hand closed around the handle.  “You don’t have to go,” a kind voice said, “the roof is big enough for both of us.” He smiled at Taemin and it put the young boy at ease.

“Are you sure?” he asked, “I need a lot of practice…”

“Maybe I can help!”

And the boy, who Taemin later learned was named Lee Jinki, began to give Taemin lessons.  Rather than just tell Taemin that it was wrong, he explained what Taemin was doing, and what he needed to do to correct it.

Taemin had improved quickly.  He still wasn’t the lead vocal, but he didn’t think that he was going to be kicked out any time soon.

*****

A shock had run through the male trainees.

SM had promoted the group Super Junior with the idea that they were going to change members every year.  Many of the boys had been tapped and had started trainee and preparing with members to debut as the next edition.

But they had all just been told that that plan was being scrapped.  The members of Super Junior were going to stay locked at thirteen, and they were now going to be permanent members.

Taemin wasn’t training to be a part of the massive group, but he could see the shock and disappointment on the faces of the boys who were.  Their shot at stardom, the reason that all of them work so hard every day, had just been taken away.  They were all left to hope that fortune would shine kindly on them again.  That SM would allow them to join a different group.

Taemin redoubled his efforts, wanting to appear just as polished and ready as these other boys. 

*****

Taemin winced as his voice cracked again.

Being a boy sometimes. 

His vocal trainer just sighed and told Taemin to try it again.

With his voice changing, Taemin’s singing had gotten even worse.  He wondered how long this would last.  Because until his voice settled, there was no way to gauge how it would sound for singing and how it would harmonize with others in a group, and there was no way that he would be placed in a group if they didn’t know what he would sound like.

Taemin took a swig of water and swished it around his mouth before swallowing it.

Please be done soon, he begged as he opened his mouth to start singing again.

*****

But he had been placed. 

His voice had startled to settle enough that SM felt confident in placing him in a group, as the main dancer. 

What if his voice had taken longer to change?  Would he still have been able to be a part of SHINee?  Would he have been placed in some other group?  Or not at all?

Taemin couldn’t imagine being in any group but SHINee. 

He would muse over these would-hes and what-ifs from time to time.  Because it would have been so easy for them to not come together.  If his changing voice had kept him out of SHINee, how would he have ever met Kibum and been able to get to know the man.

Or what if SM had gone through with changing out Super Junior members as they had originally planned?  Kibum had been tapped as one of the boys to enter into the rotation.  Even if Taemin was still in SHINee, there would have been no ‘SHINee’s Key’ to play Umma to him.

Or what if Jinki hadn’t been up on that rooftop trying to get away from everyone to practice.  What if they boy hadn’t been so nice to let Taemin stay, even helping him although trainees competed against each other for spots on teams.  Jinki didn’t have to do any of that, but he did.  Taemin could have been kicked out of the trainee program.  It happened all the time.  Kids don’t turn out to have the ability or stamina or temperament to handle the trainee and idol life, so SM sends them packing.  Taemin very easily could have been gone if his singing hadn’t improved.

Or what if his whining never worked?  What if he never managed to convince his parents to let him audition?  He wasn’t like Minho, he wasn’t cast on the streets.  He had to seek out the audition and work for his place as a trainee.

Taemin watched Kibum silently from across their apartment.  The man was pouring over a pair of schedules, trying to find a moment in the midst of SHINee’s latest comeback for the pair to actually go out on a date.

It would have been so easy for the two of them to have never met.  All the odds were against them.  Everything just had to fall in the perfect way, things had to be just so, to allow them to even be aware of each other’s existence.

Taemin wondered what his life would have been life without his Bummie. 

It seemed a bleak place.  Kibum was air and sunshine to Taemin, he was the reason for everything.

Would he even know that he was missing something? 

He would be like a man who could not see color.  He could get by in the world and no one would outwardly know that anything was wrong, and not having known anything else, he himself would not know what he was missing, but that vitality of life, the extra polish, the brightness in a dull world, would be lost. 

Taemin walked over to Kibum and hugged the man from behind, placing a light kiss on the crown of the rapper’s head.

“I love you Bummie,” he whispered.

Kibum reached up and hugged Taemin’s clasped arms in one of his own, leaning back slightly into the embrace. 

“I love you too Tae,” he murmured before throwing his pen down.  “I can’t find anything…”

Taemin knew without looking that the man was now wearing a pout on his face.

“So, we’ll make it work.  Even if it’s watching a movie on our phones in between shoots.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Taemin nodded, but the other man could feel that movement because they were so close.  “Do you know how lucky we are?”  Taemin asked after a moment of silence.

“What do you mean?” Kibum asked, tilting his head back to look up at his boyfriend.

“What are the odds that we would ever find each other?  I mean think about it, how did Kim Kibum from Daegu and Lee Taemin from Seoul manage to find each other?”

“You’ve been letting your mind wander again…” he joked, pulled out of the embrace and standing up with the schedules in hand.

“Well yeah, that’s fair…but have you ever thought about it?”

Kibum placed the schedules back on the fridge, under a magnet with a picture of Yooguen smiling at his last birthday party.

“Sometimes…” Kibum wondered.  “When you were in the hospital, I remember wondering if it would have been better for you if we had never met…”

“Bummie…”

Kibum rolled his eyes and turned around, “Not seriously…just, it’s one of those things that runs through your head when you see someone you love hurt.  You try and think of anything that you could have done to make the difference, and somehow everything will manage to be your fault in your head…”

“I wouldn’t trade it, none of it…” Taemin said, once again embracing Kibum in a hug, and this time Kibum used both arms to hug him right back, laying his forehead down against Taemin’s shoulder. 

“We are lucky, I am lucky.” Kibum mumbled, raising his head and placing his lips next to Taemin’s ear.

“I found you.”

SO - what do you think?  Let me know!