Jaemin the Icy Prince on Campus - Na Jaemin NCT

43. Drowning

The cold breeze from the open doorway is chilling, as we say our goodbyes.

"Why don't you stay over?" Junnie says. "You can always go home tomorrow."

"It's fine," I smile. "I'll just call a Uber."

"You're coming with us." Jaemin says curtly. Dahee frowns. She folds her arms across her chest, not saying anything.

"I'll be fine," I say politely. "You'd be going out of your way to send me home." 

"I insist." He's scowling. "Just get in, and stop arguing." 

Dahee rushes to open the back passenger door for me, I almost want to laugh out loud. Does she think I want to usurp her seat next to him?

I slide into the backseat. She gets in the front seat. She doesn't seem very happy. She's quiet, subdued. She doesn't want me with them. She had planned to drive back with him alone. I wonder if she's sleeping with him. Whatever. I don't care.

I wave goodbye to Jerry and Junnie, and we're off.

The snowflakes are pattering the road; they look like frosted sugar.

I try to figure out where to sit. I don't know if I should sit directly behind Jaemin, in the middle, or behind Dahee. Anywhere I sit, I'll feel him. He's everywhere. Everything is Jaemin. 

Dahee tries to talk to him, but he doesn't respond. After a while, she subsides into silence. 

"I'm going to take a nap." Her voice is sullen. "Wake me up when we get to a convenience store. I need to buy some stuff."

He nods. She props her head at the side. After a while, she starts nodding.

Thirty minutes pass.

My feet hurt. I kick off my high heels. I lean forward to whisper in his ear, "My feet hurt. Can I stretch them out a bit on the console?" He goes very still, and then he nods.

I prop my feet up on the console between Jaemin and Dahee. He glances at me in the rearview mirror, and his eyes feel like they're hands, running over every inch of me. He holds his stare for no longer than two seconds, then looks back at the road.

I hate this.

I have no idea what's going through his head. 

I'm still staring at him in the rearview mirror, trying to figure him out, when he glances at me again. I look down at my phone, a little embarrassed that he caught me staring at him. But that mirror is like a magnet, and my eyes are drawn back up to it. The second I look into the mirror again, so does he. I look back down. Shit. This drive is going to be the longest drive of my entire life. I stare out the window for three minutes, then I look again.

So does he. 

I smile, amused by whatever game this is we're playing. 

He smiles, too. 

He.

Smiles. 

Too. 

Jaemin looks back at the road, but his smile remains for several seconds. I know, because I can't stop staring at it. I want to take a picture of it before it disappears again, but that would be weird. He lowers his arm to rest it on the console, but my feet are in his way. I push up on my hands. 

"Sorry," I say quietly, as I begin to pull them back. His fingers wrap around my bare foot, stopping me. 

"You're fine," he says. His voice is low, intimate. 

His hand is still wrapped around my foot. I'm staring at it. His thumb starts to move, stroking the side of my foot. My toes clench together and my breath halts in my lungs and my legs tense. 

It is deliberate. 

I know his hand caressed my foot, brushing it with feathery, gossamer strokes, before I pull it away.

I slip on my heels.

I chew on the inside of my cheek, and then I lift my eyes to his in the rearview mirror. 

He is smiling at me, but his eyes have changed. They are no longer shuttered, or indifferent. They are filled with that familiar flare in their dark depths. I love you, he had whispered to me with those eyes, his hands tangled in my hair, his face flushed, his mouth swollen from my kisses, You're mine. You belong to me.

I drag my eyes away from him, my heart fluttering in my chest, beating like butterfly wings, and look out the misted glass window at the falling snow, the soft lights and the golden lamps, and the ghostly illuminated signs appearing from nowhere, shining out through the cold, wintry darkness. 

We're driving past a gas station, and then houses, and then fields and telegraph poles. The roads are dusted with white. I look up in wonder at the dark sky above, the flakes spiralling down. I can't remember the last time they had a snowfall this heavy in Seoul.

Seoul, in all the years I've been away, has been constantly changing. It's never the same from one day to the next. A shop opens here, a pub closes there. Buildings spring up, a supermarket sprawls across a piece of wasteland and apartment blocks seem to seed themselves like mushrooms, thrusting up from the sodden earth and the broken concrete overnight.

Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. He told me that once, his eyes hard and bitter. Love isn't life, Kim Mina. Don't wear your heart out for a jerk like me.

I don't try to justify what I'm about to do.

I just let go of the present, let the current tug it from my fingers, and I let myself sink down, down into the past, like a body falling into deep water, and I feel myself drowning, the waters closing over my head as I sink, and I don't even care.

You're wrong, Na Jaemin.

Some things never change.

Some things stay the same.

Like my love for you.

You are the man I have loved since forever.

You are the man that I still love.

I lean back in my seat.

I smile back at him.