The first tree falls at 1:34 pm, February 17th. Taemin notes this in the scribbles of the margins, then promptly closes the book, as if the words will jump out at him. It kind of feels like death. Then again, that is pretty much what has come.

They say there is a cherry tree grove in the middle of the city; most dismiss it as an urban legend but had Taemin heard this story when he first came to Seoul, he would have ridiculed the idea. But he doesn't- not because it's not the most implausible claim, but because he knows it does exist.

In fact, he created it.

According to ancient myths, cherry blossoms represent the fragility and beauty of life. Taemin first feels this the first time he dances, the first time, in the secrecy of his room, he turns up the only radio station in their area that plays static-filled pop music and tries to mimic the moves of the idols he is sometimes able to catch on their rusty old television. The music is simple and powerful; it doesn't call to him and ask him pressing questions about taking over the family farm or how he's every going to grow big enough to work in the fields in his father's place. The music simply asks him to be and Taemin is more than happy to comply with sharp angles and smooth lines and pent-up anger melting away.

If only for a few minutes, he's free, until parents come home from the market. And then he's back to soft-spoken answers and how are you ma'am? and i understand

The fragility finally breaks on his eighteenth birthday, when he leaves wth a one-way ticket to Seoul and five years worth of savings from odd jobs.

He looks his parents in the eyes and says, "Goodbye."

He pauses. His mouth opens. The "I'm sorry" doesn't quite slip out.

He supposes it's beginner's luck that he manages to find a cramped apartment with cheap rent next to a studio that has both quality and cheap classes. It's also luck that after his second lesson, his teacher takes an interest in him and asks him if he wants a jobs teaching the younger classes.

"You have a spark in you." The graying man had said. "Don't let that die. Pass it on."

He doesn't, even when it's cold and he lives off 99 cent ramen noodles packs and coffee from the corner shop down the street. Even when he avoids his parents' calls to keep down his phone bill. Even when he just ignores them all together because they've only grown increasingly loud, accusations mounting.

But the disappointment 

The thing is, he makes it (or closer to making it than he ever could have dreamed of). He's scouted one day by a visitor to their studio as a backup dancer. Suddenly, he's on stage and more than that, he's dancing with people who are no longer pixelated and blurry but actual, real live breathing bodies.  He asks music for guidance and music tells him how to best play the shadow to their light.

He goes on tour with TVXQ, he's able to afford a tiny apartment after a year that he can rent out, and he thinks he wouldn't mind living like this for the rest of his life (and he blames this thought entirely for jinxing him).

It's not until he's lying on the bottom of a stage that he realizes how fragile it really is, leg twisted and knee in agnotizing pain. There's blood everywhere and he can't breathe and they're moving him and moving him and Taemin wonders if he's dying.

It's not even the pain that hurts but the way that once he's in the hospital, it's like he's disappeared and become a ghost. Even if his hospital and physical therapy bills are footed by S.M., he doesn't see anyone beyond superficial greetings. He has no visitors or companions. His parents call with I told you so. and You regret dancing now don't you? and he so he lies a bit through his teeth, saying he's alright and he has a bright career ahead of him (and not long hospital corriders and painful physical therapy trying to make his leg right again).

He's released from the hospital after nine months. it's been nine months without dancing. Nine months of hell and waiting and when those days are over, S.M. doesn't call him with another assignment. In fact, they never contact him again

His parents do though, and the questions of "So when are you coming back?" and "Have you failed yet? The farm needs an extra set of hands." and "You know dance is a woman's work, right?" always end up in screaming matches. He hangs up without a word and never picks up the phone again (there's no one else who calls him after all) but continues to wire them half his salary. He visits the studio one day, out of nostalgia, but they've hired someone new, with a kind face and bright eyes. He lifts his arms and thinks of a strong bass line. He gives up before the music even starts.

On rainy days, sometimes his leg still hurts.

So he moves on. He does something impulsive- follows his whims instead of his mind. He sells the loft he had been renting out while on tour and in the hospital and uses almost all his savings to a small plot of land in the worst part of Seoul. He supposes he should be worried about gangs and street crime and getting mugged late at night, but he's also fought down a bull with his two bare hands and can aim a shotgun with surprising accuracy.

Living in dingy streets doesn't seem as bad as going home anyways. He spends the rest of what he has on trees to plant, because he's always liked the idea of having his own secret place among the bustling streets, and finds a job at a local bookstore.

It's not ideal, but in the spring, the cherry blossoms bloom, and they feel like they're telling him it will be alright. 

People come and go in his yard and he leaves the gate open for them- couples and schoolchildren and artists and writers. For the first time in forever, it feels less lonely and more bright and he likes to go outside and see the smiles on people faces as they fall in love again under his trees.

He's not really happy and the tiredness still worms his way into his bones when someone passes on the streets with thumping bass beats of mechanical dubstep. He may not have a solid path, but if he can survive day-to-day and with time, he will have survived moth-to-month and year-to-year.

Yes, his blossoms seem to murmur, You will still survive.

His trees were probably lying to him, he realizes, when one day a wizened man in a suit comes up to his door with a clipboard.

"As per the council's decision, your property will need to be removed, as for the general interest."

It's a highway, a new line that will go straight through the middle of his house. Taemin wants to puke.

"It's only a matter of time," he's informed. "Either you sign now and you have a few months to prepare or we come a week before with better warrants."

Taemin bites his lip. "I'll think about it."

"Take all the time you need." The man shrugs. "We already have permission from your neighbors to cut down trees that aren't within your property lines."

The first tree falls at 1:34 pm, February 17th. Taemin pretend that it doesn't feel like a blow to his gut.

Taemin has always liked contradictions- the juxtaposition of his sweatpants and other dancers' skintight leather, the image of falling cherry blossoms against decaying concrete, the way it feels to follow up i love you with but i hate you- but he never expected to become one. His phone book lies open on the yellow pages, the section with lawyers who are way otuside his budget but Taemin can afford to support an entire cherry grove in his backyard. He's all stagnation and indecision against a city that moves too fast and his heart is simultaneously telling him that everything would have worked out had he only worked harder and that he should just give up.

He's five seconds from choosing the latter, picking up a stray ball-point pen to sign his name neatly, as if it's just the electricity bill. The thought of moving back to who-knows-where-anymore doesn't faze him nearly as much when he's strung on sleep deprivaion and self-doubt creeping up the back of his throat.

He's just about to press the pen to paper, when he hears an awkward cough from the shadows.

"Are you really sure you want to do that?"

Taemin gives a start in surprise, recoiling and hitting his wrist against the corner of the table. He curses.

A man steps out of the shadows, head bowed apologetically. Oh, his hair- Taemin is taken aback first by the flowers blooming from the ends of his hair and then by the bark-like, branchy texture of his brown locks..

Taemin shakes his head, trying to get out the image. In all his nights of hard drinking, he never has gotten to the point of hallucination. Maybe his drinks were defective. In his drunkenness, he's half-convinced that this man is real.

The man, on second glance, is tall. His face is strange, in the slightest way that no matter how many times Taemin glances at it, he can't figure out exactly what makes it seem more ethereal than any human's, and every time he shakes his head, cherry petals fall to the ground. There's every reason for him to not be real, except Taemin can smell cherry and spring and sunshine, and he's kind of fascinated by this image. The man opens his mouth to speak in a gravely, earthy voice.

"I'm Minho." 

Great- now his hallucinations are trying to hold conversations. Taemin decides it too late in the night to deal with this and stumbles into bed, thankfully only a few small steps away.

When Taemin wakes, his head is pounding. He raises his head and there's a glass of water and an aspirin pill on his nightstand. He looks up. The stranger is still there. Taemin rubs his temples.

"I can't deal with this right now."

He plops back down and falls back asleep.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Minho's voice is melodic, syllables flowing out gently. Taemin buries his head under the covers.

When he wakes up, his bedroom is empty, and Taemin breathes out a sigh of relief. But he's spoken too soon because- yeah, there's a stranger in the kitchen who looks awfully familiar.

"It's too early for this." Taemin groans and reaches under the cabinet for a lukewarm can of beer.

"Are you sure you want to drink that?" Minho asks, raising an eyebrow while turning back to the stove.

"Who are you? My mother?" He gumbles and chugs it.

Taemin's still not sure whether MInho is some long-term hallucination or some strange spirit after his soul and sins, but he never approaches the man. He wonders if he ignores it long enough, if Minho will just disappear.

But Minho goes everywhere with Taemin- to the library, to the diner, even to the bathroom (although at least he stands outside the door, to Taemin's relief). He's a presence that's so constant and quiet, barely noticable at times, but Taemin's fairly certain that he goes completely unseen (except for him). His suspicions are confirmed when Minho stands beside him in line at the grocery check-out and the cashier doesn't try to flirt with him as she does with all the male customers.

"Are you going to be like this forever?" Taemin asks exasperatedly when they arrive back home.

"I suppose so," Minho nods with all seriousness. "I don't have anywhere else to be after all."

"Oh," Taemin says, question hanging off his tongue but he swallows like he hasn't been desperately avoiding the question "Why are you here?" and Minho seems equally willing to ignore it.

"I'm the spirit of the cherry tree." Minho explains. "And I can't seem to move on. There must be some wrong I must right before I can pass."

Minho smiles and Taemin has to ignore it because at night he thinks of the ugly stump in his backyard that they're coming to remove soon and Minho doing who knows what and he gets a pull at his chest. Taemin quietly picks up a broom to sweep the next round of fallen cherry petals out of the apartment.

Minho asks about the contract the day after. It's not that hard to bring up - it's lying in plain sight and Taemin has been glancing in half-consideration every day.

"You planning on signing that?"

Taemin avoids Minho's eyes.

"Are you?" Minho repeats smoothly.

"Probably," Taemin sighs. "It'll happen one way or another. It's just a matter of putting things off until later. That's how life works. "

"But do you want to do it?"

"Of course not."

"Then I don't see why calling those numbers would hurt?" Minho asks, voice hesitant but eyes are woody and certain as he nods towards the phone book.

Against his better judgement, Taemin does. It doesn't matter right? He reasons, So it doesn't even matter what I do.

He hangs up the phone three calls later, blood boiling.

"They're just cherry trees," the woman had remarked. "They add little value to anyone's lives. It's difficult to get people to care about things like that."

Taemin seethes. Of course there are people who appreciate and there are some people who visit his grove and need it as much as he does. He sees it in the way couples make up at the bench under the trees and steal kisses when they think no one is looking. He sees it in the way an old man looks at the picture of his deceased wife in a locket and smiles. He sees it in the way people's eyes soften and the line of their shoulders relaxes.

When he gets back home, Taemin pulls out a phone book.

"You do care." Minho asks, a smile in his voice.

"You want me to help you save your yard of cherry trees?" The man laughs, a sharp yip like the bark of a small dog. "Can't say I've had a request like that before."

"But I like the spark in your eyes, kid. You make a good case. I can work with public need and appreciation. Get me some signatures. Get me first-hand accounts. Get me a petition. I'll see what I can do."

"How much?" Taemin asks haltingly.

"I don't work for free you know," Kibum's eyes sharpen and Taemin's stomach drops. But the older man's face relaxes into a laugh, rounder and less biting than his previous one. "Nah, don't looks so terrified kid. Maybe some small fees here and there- it's not like you're trying to sue the city or anything." Kibum snorts. "It's been a while since I've done pro bono anything."

Taemin thanks him and closes the door slowly on his way out. Kim Kibum, attorney. For the first time in many, many years, a small seed of hope begins to plant its roots. He even grins as he leaves the building. It's kind of exhilirating, he thinks, to put up a fight.

Tonight, instead of playing company to the cans of beer he's taken out of the fridge and is steadily ignoring, Taemin has a stack of papers on the left and a bundle of envelopes to his right. He doesn't know how to persuade people or make them care. All he can do it write and write and write about how much he wants his cherry grove to stay and mail them to every person in the neighborhood, every person who's sent him an inquiry or thank-you note over his cherry trees. He keeps a stack outside his open gate, begging to be taken. (His gate has always open and until he started watching, Taemin never realized how many people wander in and wander out with dreamy smiles curled on their lips.

"It was painful to be cut down." Minho says the stamps. "Dying hurt, but you know what hurt more? Coming back to life."

His phone rings one Saturday afternoon. This time, he picks it up.

"Hi, mom?"

"Sweetie! Oh, we've been so worried..."

Taemin holds his breath, as his mother rambles about their new farm hand. The new stock of sheep. The neighbor girl has gotten married and she half-jokingly teases him about his love life, or lack thereof. He keeps his criticisms inside when she begins wonder when he'll come back.

"Well, we were also thinking of taking a trip to the city this fall! Of course, your father's taken a bit to convince, but it's been years since we've seen you, honey, and it'd be such a fun adventure!"

Taemin smiles.

"Bye, mom. Love you."

They go to the backyard one day, with a new sapling, planted far enough from the perimeter that there'd be no reason for anyone to cut it down quite yet.

"To make up for the lost one?' Minho asks quietly. To make up for me?

"It's white cherry blossom." Taemin responds, not quite ignoring the question but not addressing it either. "It'll be a nice contrast against the pinks."

Minho smiles at the underlying implications- that the tree will have years and years to grow and flower, that it will have all the time in the world to flourish, and Taemin grins hugely. In all his time with Minho, Taemin's never seen Minho smile, and the way it unfurls, slowly and softly like a blossom seeing the sun for the first time. takes his breath away. He's forgotten how it feels to be surprised by something so purely beautiful.

There's a lot about Minho that reminds Taemin about things he's forgotten.

The first time back in the studio, it's hard: he's out of shape, his muscles soft, his grace rusted. But his body doesn't forget the thump of the bass or the count of eight or the way that he can turn his body from a spark to a burning inferno to smothering embers in a matter of beats. Despite the power and fervor he sends into his moves, it doesn't break him down; it builds him up, plants energy and hope and somehow, even calm, into his bones.

Minho hums, breaking Taemin out of his reverie. 

"You're really something you know."

Taemin smiles, and turns back to the mirror.

"So are you."

When he looks back, forty counts later, Minho is no longer there.

Today, he doesn't sit in his house and surreptitiously watch others come into his yard to admire his cherry trees. He goes out and he listens to a man talk about his honeymoon with his deceased wife in Japan; he listens to high schoolers complain about school work but their eyes are light and weightless; he listens and listens and listens to the trees and the stories they tell.

His garden may have been made on a whim. But, Tamin thinks, this is worth fighting for. For the first time, he doesn't feel so alone.

"They're going to have to turn it into a park, you know? There's no other way to save it- it's the only loophole in the law."

"Yeah."

"And you don't mind?"

"Not really. It's for the best that it's not just mine anymore."

A laugh. A pause.

"You're really something, you know that?"

"So I've been told."

In the end, he has to move. He has no place to go but the first and last place he'd call home, so he slowly packs his bags. Even if he's realized that clocks never tick as slowly as they seem, Taemin has time, more than enough- to dance, to discover, to love again, to have purpose. Taemin sits down quietly in a compartment, pushing up the shade to glance and the trees and hazy summer sky as the train speeds through the country side. This time, he feels not exhilaration but a slow, sated kind of satisfaction.

When he opens his backpack to get his phone and tell his parents I'm back, he finds a single cherry blossom resting in his bag. Taemin smiles. He doesn't need forever. He just needs this.