Jaemin the Icy Prince and Me - Na Jaemin NCT

62. New Year's Eve

I am sitting up, leaning against the wall, the window behind me, using the last light to write.

Everything is quiet and white, and there is feathery frost on my window pane.

I blink, and I can almost see the winter fairies flitting about, and I fancy I hear the faint fluttering of their gossamer wings amid the soft pattering of the snow on the frosty ground.

Jaemin and I went to a New Year's Eve party tonight. It was hosted by a friend of Jaemin's, and we had a pleasant time. We left early, because Jaemin said it was getting too crowded, but I think he just wanted to be alone with me somewhere on our own.

He wrapped an arm around me, and drew me into a half-hug as we waited for a cab, murmuring, "Careful," as a car zoomed past me, and kept his arm there, but really, I knew he just wanted an excuse to hold me.

A cab stopped finally, and we got in. It pulled out into the wintery night, and soon, we had left the fairy lights behind us. The bright lights of buildings and gas stations and houses and street lamps whirled past us in a blur, and up on the tracks in the distance, a train sped silently past us into the darkness of the night, blurry faces peering out from behind misty, fogged up windows, bearing them onward to some unknown destination. 

The snow began to fall, pattering lightly against the chilled windows, silvery in the frosty dark. 

I grabbed Jaemin's arm, and said excitedly, "Oh Jaemin, look - it's snowing."

"Is it really?" he said, looking out of his window. 

"We should be out there," I breathed. "I want to feel the first snow on my face. Let's get out and walk. It's too lovely to be cooped up here in a cab."

"It's freezing cold outside," he said drily. "Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?"

I turned pleading eyes on him, and he sighed.

The car pulled to a stop next to a park. He rummaged in his wallet to pay the driver, but I had already tumbled out, flitting light as air over the grassy carpet that stretched all the way to the tall trees beyond, standing straight and silent, like shadowy sentinels of the night. 

The cab pulled away into the darkness. I stretched out my palms, and caught the white snowflakes, fluttering down over the turfs of grass and the woods, sprinkling them with a sheen of misty silvery dust. Silvery wisps of the soft and pale moonlight sifted between the trees and scattered at my feet, shattering into a hundred million twinkling stars, and I could feel the silky moonlight on my skin. I was in my very own magical snow globe world,  where Time stood still, and I was afraid to speak or move for fear that all this wondrous beauty would crumble to fairy dust at my feet.

He was so close that I could see his pale face, the puffs of his breath mingling with the cold night air, and the snowflakes powdering the silken smoothness of his hair.

"Make a wish," I said. "Wish for anything you want upon the first snow, and your wish will come true."

I shut my eyes tight, and wished.

I opened my eyes. He was standing next to me, gazing down upon my face, so close I could see his wisps of warm breath pool like puffs of fluffy white clouds between our faces, feel them brush and stir, feathery-soft, upon my chilled lips. 

"What did you wish for?" He asked me softly, looking at me with a slight smile on his lips.

"I wished that we would always be together, forever and ever."

"What did you wish for?"

"I wished," he said, with a wicked little glint in his eyes, "that I could kiss you now, and every day, for the rest of my life."

We looked at each other in the falling snow, and the trees sighed and the leaves rustled. 

He bent down to me and kissed me. 

I could feel the rapid beat of his heart, taste the coldness of his lips. All around us, the snow was falling in sheets, like stars, twinkling and shimmering, powdering the ground beneath us like frosted sugar, and filling the dark trees. It clung onto his eyelashes, sprinkling like tiny little fragments of glass upon his lips. 

I stood on tiptoe, wound my fingers in his hair, and kissed him back.

We broke our kiss, breathing hard, our warm breaths mingling in the frosty air. I looked up into his pale beautiful face, and felt a surge of love. 

"You are summer sunshine on a cold winter's night," I whispered. "You are my life, my very breath."

"If I am summer sunshine, then you are stardust and moonshine," he said quietly, looking steadily down into my upturned face.

"Why, Na Jaemin, since when did you become so poetic?" I murmured.

"Since I fell in love with you," he said, still in that low, quiet voice. "Because of you, I have become a poet."

"Who knew there was a heart here?" I said softly, spreading my fingers on his thudding chest. "What happened to that icy prince that was once you?"

"This heart only knows how to beat for you," he whispered, laying his warm hand over mine. "This heart only answers to you. This icy prince only melts for you..."

We strolled home slowly from the park, hand in hand, his long legs lifting high in the snow, our dark shadows merging into one across the driven snow. We reached a square, and there was a whole bunch of people gathered there, a hundred, maybe more; in the middle of the square, there was a grey stone tower, and the clock right at the top of the tower was striking the hour of twelve. 

We joined in the countdown with the rest of the revellers, and started to chant. 

10...9...8..7...6...5...4...3...2...

And when we reached 1, everyone burst into wild applause and cheers, and started to sing aloud, at the top of their lungs, the familiar strains of Auld Lang Syne.

He turned to me, and there was snow in his hair and on his eyelashes.

"Happy New Year," he said softly. "I love you."

"Happy New Year," I said, smiling back at him. "I love you."

He bent down, and kissed me sweetly, tenderly, and I kissed him back.

And I thought to myself, I love him, I love him, I love him, and my heart just exploded with my love, and I stopped breathing; it felt like something was breaking inside my heart, but it wasn't from pain - it was from love; an overwhelming abundance of pure, true love...