“How is your life as a piano professor?” I asked out of pure curiosity while looking out through the sunbathed window of the heavily air-conditioned plane.

“Quite normal,” he answered lightly. “Just like everybody else.”

“Okay, how is your life as the best piano professor in Korea?” I rephrased.

“Not applicable.”

“Huh?”

Yunho looked at me. “I am not the best professor, and so my life as one does not exist.”

“But you are!” I insisted. “Everybody agrees!”

“Just because it is the status quo does not mean that it is correct,” he explained. “It only makes it appear that way.”

I brushed my tongue over my upper lip. “So you DON’T think that you are the best piano professor in Korea?”

He shook his head. “Never. There are always better people out there. Of course, I agree that I am one of the best, but never THE best. After all, being number one has its gray zones. Everybody could be number one; it just depends on the criteria.”

“Yunho, don’t you do ANYTHING wrong?” I blurted out.

Yunho looked at me, shocked. “Excuse me?”

I bit my tongue. ‘That didn’t come out right.’ “It’s just that,” I stammered, “You always look as if you are in control of everything and that every single detail is going according to your plan. You never seem to make any mistakes! Unlike me! Sometimes I think my head is all wired wrong! There is a blue cable plugged where a red one should go and vice versa! Yours always seem to be in the right place at the right time for the right reason! It’s just so unfair!”

After blinking a few times, the man beside me burst into a laugh that sounded very much like ‘PFFTWAHAHAHA’.

“What?” I snapped, utterly annoyed.

“I’m a human, too,” he managed to breathe out between his incontrollable spurts of laughter. “I make mistakes all the time.”

“Uh huh,” I challenged him, “Name three.”

“One, I forgot to pack soap.”

“That’s trivial!” I cried.

“It is still a mistake no matter how insignificant,” he smiled. “Two, I stutter.”

“No, you don’t!”

“Yes, I do, and I am very proud to say that it has given me a great deal of trouble during my school days. Three, my scars.”

After thinking about it for a moment, I nodded. “Good point!” I giggled. I leaned back thoughtfully. “What do you think is the biggest mistake you have ever made in your life?”

“I was unable to help Yoochun through a rough patch in his life,” he answered immediately.

I said nothing.

“And I am still unable to get you to tell me what is really bothering you.”

I swallowed back a gasp. “I already did. It’s just paranoia and stress.”

“Do not lie to me,” he growled, his voice lowering two octaves. “You have only told me about the supplementary factors that played a part in your frustrations. The main reason has not been revealed yet.”

‘Damn it, why are you so smart!?!’

“As curious as I am, I am actually not too interested in the real reason,” he said. “I am more focused on why you are so determined to keep it to yourself. It must be important to you, I assume.”

‘Obviously,’ I thought. ‘This is the first time I have ever been really in love.’ My last relationship with a girl back home lasted about three days, including the day she broke up with me.

“So now I ask you: why are you not telling me?”

I inhaled deeply and took a moment to think. “The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you’ve become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize that things are not as clear and simple as they first appear. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. As quoted from my favorite comic ‘Calvin and Hobbes.’”

“In other words,” Yunho nodded, “You are having contradicting feelings. You are not sure whether or not you should tell anybody.”

I nodded. ‘He caught on quickly. As usual.’

“Interesting,” he creased his forehead in concentration.

I leaned deeper into my cushioned seat and closed my eyes.

“It is about a love relationship, correct?”

My eyes shot open. ‘How the hell did he figure that out so quickly?!?!’

“Judging by your reaction, I assume it is,” he laughed. “You don’t need to hide something like that from me!”

‘Uh, yah I do.’ I pursed my lips and kept quiet.

Still laughing, Yunho ruffled my hair. “Who’s the girl?”

“Huh? Girl?”

“So you love a guy?” he grinned.

I sat there tongue-tied. “W-What?”

“Is it about Changmin?” he teased.

My eyes opened so wide that it hurt. “W-W-What?”

“It is, isn’t it?” he asked with a mischievous grin.

“NO!” I shouted indignantly. I saw people glancing our way and I blushed.

“Really now?” he gazed skeptically at me. “Look, I am okay with homouals if that is what you were worried about. I have plenty of homoual students.”

“I know that, but the guy I like actually isn’t Changmin,” I scowled.

“Ah HAH, so it IS a guy.”

I looked at my teacher, flabbergasted.

Yunho shrugged. “Hey, what did you expect from somebody with a degree in Law? I’m good at getting information.”

“So I’ve noticed,” I muttered.

“Well, now that I know the root of the problem,” he started off haughtily, “It’ll take me only a couple of weeks to decipher who the lucky boy really is.”

‘And by then, I’ll be on the plane heading home.’ “You have better things to worry about,” I muttered while stretching in my seat for the first time in six hours. “So please don’t trouble yourself with such petty matters.”

“Anything concerning you is not a petty matter,” he merely responded. “Well, I gave you three of my flaws. Name yours.”

“I am the master at screwing up.”

“Screwing up what?”

“Everything.”

Yunho frowned. “Why do you think that way about yourself?”

“Because I am a terrible person,” I averted my eyes.

My professor grabbed my jaw and twisted it until our faces were three inches apart. “Never say that about yourself, Jaejoongie. Especially in front of me.”

I gulped.

“Nobody is perfect,” he mumbled, loosening his grasp. “Please be serious now. Name three perfectly legitimate flaws about yourself.”

I sighed and rubbed my chin. “I at English literature. I am a stuttering expert. I don’t eat my vegetables.”

“Okay,” Yunho chuckled. “That’s three. What is the worst mistake YOU made?”

‘Falling in love with you,’ I was tempted to respond. “There was this one time several years ago when I really wanted to buy something for my mother for her birthday. I was twelve then and my father was very strict when he said that I had to stay at home to study everyday after school, so it was impossible for me to get a job to earn enough money. Moreover, it would have been really pathetic to ask my mother for money to buy her a gift, right? So I resorted to doing peoples’ homework for them.”

“How much did you charge?”

“Five dollars a month per subject.”

“Your payment is much too low for somebody like you,” my professor remarked.

“That’s what my sister said,” I grumbled.

“It must have been difficult.”

“It was,” I admitted. “I had to work for an extra three hours everyday, especially since most of the assignments were essays. Anyways, I finally saved up enough money to buy my mom a bouquet of flowers, a really nice journal, a stuffed teddy bear, and a nice box to put it in. When her birthday came, I snuck out of the house at six o’clock in the morning to bike to store, but since it was really too early for a night person like me, I crashed into a fence on the way and cut up my arm really badly. It was worth all the trouble, though: I was really happy to see her eyes light up during breakfast when she opened my gift.”

Yunho smiled.

“My mother initially thought I got the money from my dad, but then I had to be a and told her the whole truth. The light in her eyes disappeared and a look of disappointment replaced it.” I sighed. “You can imagine how that would hurt a twelve-year-old.”

Yunho nodded understandingly and placed his hand on my thigh.

“I received a long lecture and my mother did not talk to me for a week. My father became even stricter after that as well.”

After a few silent moments, Yunho burst out laughing. “That’s your biggest mistake? Trying to get something nice for your mother?”

I pouted. “What’s so funny about it? I ruined my mom’s birthday!”

Yunho kept laughing while I sat there making a total fool of myself. He then squeezed my hand. “It is almost pitiful how innocent you are, Jaejoongie.”

“My mother was really mad at me,” I insisted. “She told me that I would get expelled from the school and would ruin my straight-A student reputation if anybody found out. She was also furious at me for sneaking out of the house so early in the morning and yelled non-stop about how distressed she would have felt if I got abducted or something. She also saw my arm that afternoon and cried because of it. She was sad all through her birthday because of me.”

“Did she like the present you gave her?” Yunho asked, ignoring my complaints.

“I think so. She was really happy until I told her how I got it for her.”

“Then you did nothing wrong.”

I widened my eyes. “How so? I did something totally unethical! I forged peoples’ homework! For money!”

Yunho grinned. “Even if you broke rules and disobeyed your elders, your intentions were good. That’s all that matters. In fact, if I had a son like you, I would have been quite proud to know that he would do anything just to make me happy for a split second.”

I froze.

Unbeknownst to him, Yunho gave me a peace of mind that I had not experienced for quite some time. I realized that I indeed did something unprincipled by buying my mother a birthday gift, but it was only because I loved her too much. I also realized that falling in love with Yunho was not a mistake either; it was just the way it was.

After all, love should never be a mistake, especially if that love is true.

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Yay! An update!
Comment when you have time.
I actually did that for my mother's birthday.
... Never doing it again.