Jaemin the Icy Prince on Campus - Na Jaemin NCT

32. The Tattoo

Leean and Junnie had gone off to get ice-creams.

Jaemin and Luna's voices drifted to me as I walked away from the bonfire, along the water. 

"So how do you feel about hydrangeas?" Luna was saying. She sounded happy and excited.

"What's she doing?" Jaemin asked.

"Hydrangeas," she said. "What do you think?"

"Huh? What is that?"

"A type of flower. For the wedding."

"Luna," I could hear an edge in his voice. "I don't give a fuck about the flowers."

Silence.

After a while, I heard her say in a stiff voice, "Sorry. I thought with the wedding coming up and all that, we should start planning - "

"Where's Mina going?"

"I'm talking to you about the damn flowers, and you're asking me where Mina's going?"

"I'm going to go get Mina."

"No."

"No?"

"She'll be fine. I need you here."

"I'll just be a minute. It's not safe for her to walk alone in the dark."

"Jaemin." I heard the hard note in her voice. "I said no."

"I have to."

Sand filtered into my bare feet as I trudged further and further away from the voices.

I stopped and turned around. 

He was there. Of course, he would be. He could not keep away. We are bound forever, my flame to his moth, in our eternal dance of destruction.

His eyes were brilliant in the starshine. The waves surged, reflected around the iris edges, warm amber gold from the firelight seeping in around his pupils. But it was not the colour of his eyes that struck me so much as the look in them as he gazed down at me. That flash of recognition. A dizzying, headlong collision. Would we always be like this, staring into each other's eyes years from now, sitting across from each other with different partners at our sides, still held captive, frozen, unable to move forward, suspended for eternity by our forbidden, secret love for each other?

"Mina." He said my name, the way he had always said it, caressingly, tenderly, lovingly, as if each syllable, each sound, that fell from his lips was fragile, infinitely precious. I love you, he had told me. Every time I said your name, I was saying, I love you. All you had to do was listen. 

Here you are, I wanted to say. Here you are, at last. I have been waiting for you, I miss you. I could almost cry with the sheer relief of him being there, beside me.

"Spring?" I asked in a strangled voice. It was such an effort to talk. 

"I know it's soon." He tugged at his collar, as if it had suddenly become too tight. "But does it really matter when?" He looked at me, his face appearing stony, his eyes hard. "Would it be easier if we waited a year or five?" 

But then a firecracker exploded somewhere over the waters in the distance, and I saw his eyes clearly. They were not hard at all; instead they were bleak, and there was something horribly resembling an apology in them. He was sorry that he was getting married to Luna in spring.

"The sooner, the better." I said dully, listlessly. "Is that the game plan? Do it, and move on with our lives kind of thing?"

He nodded. "Yeah." His mouth compressed into a thin line. "That's the game plan. Get it over and done with. Mission accomplished."