Le jardin de Monsieur Lee

The long lines he makes with his fingers and toes across the water leave rippling lines in the still waters of the koi pond, at first disturbing the fish from their sunny slumber, drifting about in water warmed by the sun as they are spurred to motion, but soon they become used to this new development, this new addition to their day, and slumber on.

Mr. Lee does not slumber. Mr. Lee is strangely, hopefully (or hopelessly) awake.

"Ten," he asks again, as he sits and sorts seeds at the low table, paper doors open to the garden, "why do you keep coming?"

Ten doesn't look up, his eyes still trained on the ripples his fingers and toes leave in their wake.

"Because I like it here," he replies simply. The tips of his fingers trail water, sparkling drops falling through the air as he lifts them to his face. Water dots the skin of his cheek, the tip of his nose, his tongue.

"I'm tasting the dreams of koi fish," he laughs, answering Mr. Lee's unvoiced question.

"What do they taste like?" Mr. Lee, no Taemin—slipping back so comfortably into a younger skin as his old fingers continue to sort seeds—asks, inclining his head. He doesn't sleep much, anymore, and yet he sleeps too much and can't remember his dreams when he wakes.

"They taste like happiness, the sea and me," Ten replies precociously, even though he's rather too old for that. Nineteen is too old to be precocious, right?

Not if I'm sixty nine, Taemin, no Mr. Lee, muses sadly, tucking his thoughts of younger days back into his head.

"Have you been feeding them your dreams?" he asks instead. The surfaces of the seeds under his fingers are at turns smooth and textured. Not all dreams have equal weight.

Ten just smiles, and doesn't answer.