Regrets

Chapter 24

Taemin still couldn't decide which is better, knowing the exact date of your death or not having a clue at all. Knowing doesn't make things better if Taemin would be honest with himself. Sometimes he wishes time would just stop right at that moment when everything is perfect and the sky is blue and the world is so pretty because Jiyeon is happy and he could tell that he was part of the reason why.

But Yoogeun showing up every now and then reminds him of the reality he was in. That life wouldn't always be full of rainbows and blue skies. That at some point all the good things will have to end. And the little boy had been visiting too often for Taemin's liking, disrupting his peace of mind.

"Yoogeun, it's not that I hate to see you but don't you think you've been visiting too often? Don't you have anything else to do?"

Taemin isn't very happy about the little boy's visits not only because it's surprising to have someone pop out of thin air but also because Taemin hates to think what those visits mean. Sometimes the boy scares Taemin so much and he had all these crazy ideas wherein the boy would suddenly transport him back to where he came from- back to that time when Jiyeon dies- or worse take him to a time when he and Jiyeon never met at all.

"Like what?" the boy asked.

"I don't know. Play with your friends or something."

Yoogeun scoffed as if the idea was too ridiculous for him. "Ajusshi. I'm not a six year old kid who plays around."

Taemin was thinking, 'well you look like one' but he decided not to voice it out although the look on Yoogeun's face tells him he must have an idea of what's going on inside his head.

"I'm a hundred years older than you are ajusshi." The boy added which made Taemin wonder if the boy could also read minds. "Well even if you don't want me around, you really have no other choice. This is my job."

"Following people around is your job?" Taemin wonders if having a job that annoys the hell out of people and doesn't help anybody would give someone a sense of fulfillment somehow because even if it does he was sure as hell he never wanted to have that kind of job.

"Not just any kind of people."

"Miserable, frustrated and remorseful kind of people?" Taemin couldn't think of anything else to describe himself.

"No. Dying people."

"Oh."

~-*-~

Knowing that you're going to die soon is more nerve-wrecking if you have no idea how it's going to happen. Of course being stabbed to death has the highest probability. That was how Jiyeon died after all. But Taemin still cannot rule out the possibility of other means of death. Will it be a car accident? A hit and run? Plane crash? Homicide? Drowning? They say that drowning is the most painful way of dying so Taemin hoped to God it wouldn't be that. Sleeping it off doesn't sound so bad. He heard of people dying of heart attack while sleeping. It sounds painless and easy.

But seriously, if Taemin would be given the choice, jumping off a building sounds like a good plan. Once you hit your head you'll be unconscious and you won't feel any pain. If he's going to die then of course he wanted the easiest way. But he wasn't suicidal or anything so jumping off a 30 storey high building towards his doom doesn't sound very appealing. So he decided to just wait and leave everything to fate.

Needless to say, he's worried about Jiyeon and the implications of his death to her life. He had been there so he knew the feeling of living without a purpose, of missing someone so much that it's too painful. Taemin never wanted Jiyeon to go through all that.