Jaemin the Icy Prince on Campus - Na Jaemin NCT

45. Everything

The car pulls up at an apartment block, and he helps Dahee to unbuckle her safety belt.

"Don't bother," she snaps, and slaps his hands away. She opens the door, slams it shut, and stalks away. He turns to me, and says quietly, "I won't be a minute. Don't go anywhere." I nod, and grin at him. His lips twitch, and then he gets out of the car, and goes after her, but she ignores him. Both of them disappear into the building.

In less than five minutes, he's back.

He opens my door.

"Get in front," he says.

"No, thank you." I fold my arms. "I'm very comfortable here."

"Get in front," he growls, "before I drag you out."

I stare at him mutinously.

He reaches in to grab me, I squeal, and I'm scrambling out the other door. I get in the front seat, and he slams the door. He starts the car, and we pull away with a loud crunching of tyres on gravel.

"I hate you." I say conversationally. "You're a jerk and a bully and I hate you."

"No, you don't." He's grinning. He looks as if he's in a very good mood.

"Yes, I do. I absolutely l-o-a-t-h-e you." I smirk at him.

"You talk too much, Kim Mina." He gives me a wicked sideways glance. "Remember what I used to do to make you shut up."

I clam up at once. My breaths are suddenly fractured.

"You're blushing." He is grinning. "Interesting. I wonder why."

"Shut up." I glare at him. He starts to laugh. "It's not funny. Why are you laughing?"

And then he reaches over, and squeezes my hand. And I stop talking. My heart starts to pound.

He keeps his hand on mine the rest of the way. And I let him.

We drive in silence for perhaps twenty minutes. The roads are not busy, but as the visibility worsens the traffic in front of us slows. A long line of stationary red lights blink in the distance, faintly visible through the falling snow. He is pressing on the brakes, slowing the car as it catches up with the jam, and then we stop. He turns on the radio; Seoul has come to a standstill. This is the worst snowstorm in decades, all roads and highways are jammed, the airport is closed. Train and bus services are down; the entire city is blanketed with snow.

"Let's go to my place," he says. "It's just down that road. We can't go on like this."

He raises an eyebrow at me. There's a smile in his eyes.

"I guess I have no other choice, do I?" I mutter.

He grins. "No, you don't."

A driver up ahead leans on his horn, a long mournful beeeeeep, like a foghorn sounding across the hills, and then another takes it up, and another.

"I'm going to turn around," he says. "The snow might be worse, but this traffic is going nowhere."

"Okay," I say. There is a brief flurry of horns as he executes an awkward turn, and then we are making our slow way down the road away from the jam, back along the route we had come.

The snow continues to fall with a soft patter on the glass of the windscreen. "I'm sorry," Jaemin says, glancing at me. "But I'll send you home tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I promise." His lips curve into a smile. His eyes are so tender my heart aches. "You'll be safe with me. You know that, right?"

I turn to gaze blindingly out the window at thousands of snowflakes fluttering to the ground. I press my face against the pane, and the glass blots with blurry patches from the stains of my tears.

I must have dozed; when I wake up, we are pulling over in front of a house.

He presses a control, and the gates swing open. He drives the car in, and parks in front of the porch. He turns off the engine, and we both sit for a while.

He turns to me.

"This is where I stay," he says. "Let's just wait out the snowstorm here."

"Okay." I take out my phone. My heart is pounding, my fingers are trembling as I call my mum to tell her I'm waiting out the snowstorm at a friend's place. I take great care not to mention that the friend happens to be Jaemin.

"Mina." His voice is low. He stretches out his hand, and tucks my hair behind my ear. His brows slant low, as he scans my face. His brown hair is cut short with a few strands brushing his forehead. If I blink, he's the boy with the arrogant smile that I fell in love with all those years ago. The childhood friend that stole my heart. When I open my eyes that image disappears, and in front of me is a man. His arrogance has taken on a sheen of experience. His body has filled out. 

I open the car door, and step out into the falling snow. He follows me silently.

The dark sky, with its smattering of stars, and the thickly-falling snow, have led me to this moment. Everything that came before has led to this, to here, to now. Past and present meld seamlessly into one, and I can see nothing, and no one, but the boy and the man in front of me.

He is all I see. He is all I want to see.

"It's beautiful," I open my palms to catch the snowflakes. I am crying. I am crying for Young Mina and Young Jaemin. I am crying for the cruelty of life that tore their young lives apart. My tears are streaming down. "Have you ever seen anything so beautiful in your life?"

He looks steadily down into my upturned face.

"You're beautiful," he says quietly. "You're so beautiful it breaks my heart."

He takes a step towards me.

"Don't cry, Mina." His voice breaks. "Please, don't cry. I can't bear to see you cry." 

His lashes are damp with ice and tears. There is dark stubble on his face. On the tip of his nose is a powdery dusting of ice, it melts into water before my eyes, and glides down towards the curve of his upper lip. Before the trail of water dissolves between his lips, he bends down and kisses me.

The only thing I know for sure is that this, being here with Jaemin - being able to feel his arms around me, and his lips on mine - is everything.

My body burns where he doesn't touch, and burns where he does.

And a thousand paper kisses from Leean will never equal the feel of Jaemin's lips against mine.

If my life were a book and you read it backward, nothing would change. Today is the same as yesterday. Tomorrow will be the same as today. 

In the book of Mina, all the chapters are the same.

Only Jaemin.