Archive of Our Own

‘Ah shit, I think we took the wrong turn.’

Jinki cups his hand over the tiny GPS screen to shield it from the bright midday sun. He squints at it, as if that’ll make it make more sense. ‘It definitely said to turn left, but… maybe there was a different road?’

‘That thing would be useless even if it spoke Korean,’ their manager grumbles in response. ‘Now I have to find somewhere to turn around. Too bad we’re stuck on this highway.’

There are worse places to be stuck, Taemin thinks. Right now, he doesn’t even mind that his neck is starting to hurt from the way he’s spent the past hour with his face pressed to the window. Even before they left the city, plants were already bursting from every little piece of earth available, ferns and dense shrubs jostling for space while agapanthus splashed purple and white over a lush canvas. Now that they’ve long since left the city’s outer limits, the highway they’re on cuts through the rolling hills of farmland like a lazy river, the grass greener than any Taemin has seen in his life. The sky is bluer, too, clear and empty save for a few long, wispy clouds that trail through the sky like ribbons.

‘Now it’s saying we’re not even on the road anymore,’ Jinki updates.

Manager hyung laughs disbelievingly. ‘Of course it is. Just my luck. Hey, Jinki-yah, can you pick up my phone and call Donghyuck? Maybe his group managed to find the turn-off.’

Jinki does as he’s asked, but is swiftly thwarted. ‘No service,’ he reports, staring at manager hyung’s now-useless Samsung.

‘You’re kidding.’ Manager hyung drags a hand down his face. ‘What was even the point of buying those SIMs— whatever, okay, plan B. Taeminnie, can you see the atlas in the seat pocket in front of you?’

The sound of Taemin’s name pulls him out of the green hills and back into the cramped SUV they rented at the airport, which smells only a little less like cleaning products and more like potato chips than it did when they first picked it up. Taemin rifles past travel brochures and visitor guides to pull out a large, dog-eared book. A map of New Zealand stares up at him from the cover.

‘I found it.’

‘Great, can one of you— maybe Kibummie, can you try to trace our steps back? We started on highway sixteen, I think, and then we turned somewhere before that town…’

Taemin quickly passes the atlas over to Kibum on the other side of the three back seats, eager to hand off the unenviable task of staring at a bunch of lines and foreign place names. Jonghyun leans in to look as Kibum opens the book and flips through pages until he finds a map of the north island.

‘We started there,’ Jonghyun offers, pointing to Auckland at the northern end of the map.

‘Great work, hyung, stellar. Would you like to be in charge instead?’

Jonghyun just grins and shakes his head. ‘You’re our English representative. And haven’t you been to Australia before, too?’

‘Australia is totally different,’ Kibum grumbles, ‘and the family I stayed with did all the navigating. Besides, half of these place names are in the local language. I don’t even know how to pronounce them.’

‘You don’t have to pronounce them, you just have to read them.’

‘I don’t even know what I’m looking for,’ Kibum sighs. ‘What was the place called again, hyung?’

‘The production guy said the farm is near a small town called Wai… or was it Wiki-something… look, I wrote it down, just find this.’ Manager hyung hands a notepad back over his shoulder and Kibum grabs it, frowning at the scrawled name.

Curious, Taemin leans over to look, too, and Jonghyun pulls the map into his lap so they can all scan at the same time, English letters and tiny little symbols all blurring together, until suddenly something clicks.

‘Is that it?’ Taemin asks, pointing to a tiny name on the map.

Jonghyun and Kibum squint simultaneously, and then Kibum makes a small, impressed sound, and Jonghyun grins. ‘Aigoo, good work, Taeminnie,’ he croons, ruffling Taemin’s hair. It’s so dumb, but Taemin has to work extra hard to hide his smile.

‘So that’s where we’re going,’ Kibum says, ‘now we just need to figure out where we are.’

Taemin’s small moment of accomplishment dims as he realises what he just did was the easy part. He watches as Kibum traces a finger down a main highway, branching off into hundreds of smaller roads, like the veins and arteries in Taemin’s science textbook.

‘That name looks familiar,’ Kibum mumbles. ‘I think we passed that town a few minutes before we turned.’ He looks to Jonghyun as if he’ll confirm it, but he just shrugs.

‘I dunno, I wasn’t paying attention.’

Kibum sighs dramatically. ‘What about you, Taeminnie? You’ll get a crick in your neck from all the sightseeing you’ve been doing, surely you noticed something useful.’

Taemin noticed plenty of things: a thin waterfall, a sheep resting in the shade of a monumental boulder, a horse and its baby with its legs weird and lanky, three pine trees standing alone on a hill like sentinels. Nothing that could help place them anywhere on a map. He shakes his head, feeling sheepish.

Kibum just sighs again, like he didn’t expect anything better. He takes the atlas back from Jonghyun to study it closer, which is easy because their hyung has already lost interest, having decided that Taemin’s hair is far more captivating. Stuck between the car door on one side and Jonghyun on the other, Taemin has no choice but to let him play with it, smoothing it repeatedly with his palm until it lies even flatter than it already was after hair noona had her way with it in their hotel room this morning. Taemin tells himself he’s not cooling his face when he presses his cheek against the window, his breath clouding the glass. He’s just resting.

Suddenly, Jonghyun is leaning over him to write something in the condensation. Three characters, borne from the tip of his finger: SHINee. It begins disappearing before it’s even finished, a lifespan of a single second.

Taemin looks at Jonghyun, finds him grinning. He lets himself smile back.

Next to them, Kibum makes an a-ha noise. ‘Wait, the road goes over a small river here,’ he explains, pointing to a spot on the map. ‘If we passed it, we must have gone over some kind of bridge. Did anyone notice that?’

Surely Taemin would have, right? ‘I didn’t see one,’ he offers, cautiously.

‘Neither did I,’ Jinki adds, and their word together must be enough, because Kibum continues:

‘Okay, then we must have turned before that river, but after that town, and between them there’s only… one road. This one.’ Kibum points to the tiny grey line triumphantly. ‘That’s the road we’re on.’

‘Great work, Kibummie.’ There’s thinly veiled relief in their manager’s voice. ‘I’ll just find somewhere to turn around, and we can get back on track. I hope the others aren’t lost as well— any luck, Jinki-yah?’

Jinki shakes his head again. Manager hyung sighs. ‘Sorry about this, kids.’ He forces his tone brighter, adding: ‘I guess that’s just part of travel, hey?’

Somehow, Taemin doesn’t hate it when their manager calls them that, even though Jinki and Jonghyun are technically adults already. It makes him feel like he’s on a school trip, albeit one that’s taken him further from home than he’s ever been in his life. Still, after hundreds of kilometres and hours and hours in the air, it feels strange to think that New Zealand time is only three hours ahead of Seoul.

‘Hyung.’

It gets Jonghyun’s attention, turning to face him again. ‘Mmm?’

‘What do you think your family are doing right now?’

For a second, Taemin is worried Jonghyun will think he’s getting homesick already, but then all he does is smile, his big, puppy-like eyes crinkling at the edges.

‘It’s like nine in the morning back home, right? My noona is probably trying not to fall asleep in one of her lectures.’ Taemin’s brother is still in high school, so he’s probably in a class, too. Taemin wonders if he’s jealous of his dongsaeng. Taemin probably would be, if it was him. Should he buy a souvenir for him, would that make things any better? They’ve never really bought gifts for each other. Maybe it would be weird to start now.

‘My mom likes to sleep in these days,’ Jonghyun continues. ‘When I’m home she pretends she doesn’t and wakes up to make breakfast, but now that both her kids are in dorms, she doesn’t get up until later.’

‘So she takes after her son?’ Manager hyung chimes in, only a little teasing. They’ve all experienced the struggle of trying to get Jonghyun up in the morning, from Minho lifting him straight out of bed to Jinki’s tickle attacks to Kibum’s no-nonsense thwack on the ass. The only mornings he’s ever awake of his own accord are the ones where he never went to sleep in the first place.

‘Hey, insomnia can be genetic, you know.’

Kibum sniggers. ‘Aigoo, so you’re blaming her for making you short and lazy? Your poor mom.’

Jonghyun’s never done either, which is why the bait bounces right off him. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be working out how to get us un-lost?’ he fires back.

‘Uh-huh, and I just found something that might actually save our asses, so watch your tone.’

‘And you’re just going to keep it to yourself? Come on, what is it?’ Jonghyun’s voice is teasing, but curiosity is already getting the better of him, leaning in to see the map better. Kibum twists it towards him, and Taemin tries to lean in too, but his seatbelt stops him short.

‘I think there’s a way we can keep going this way and still get to the town,’ Kibum explains, pointing at something on the map that Taemin can’t see. ‘There’s a smaller road a few kilometres ahead, and if we turn onto it, it’s basically a shortcut.’

‘Huh.’

‘Since it’s a small village, hopefully there’ll be service there, too. Then we can call the others and figure out how to get to the farm from there.’

‘Are you sure it’ll work, Kibummie?’ Taemin doesn’t blame their manager for sounding uncertain, his eyes flicking to Kibum in the rear-view. Going even further from the main roads means venturing deeper into the countryside, risking getting even more lost. They could get stuck there forever, run out of fuel or break down, with no phone service to call for help. Maybe they’d have to make a big SOS out of tree branches, or build a fire to keep them warm through the night. As his mind is busy with wild scenarios, another car whooshes past them. Or maybe we could just ask someone for help.

‘Nope.’ Still, Kibum’s casual honesty is less than reassuring.

Jinki tries a more targeted question. ‘Will it save us time?’

‘Probably.’

Manager hyung scratches at day-old stubble, his voiced troubled by indecision. ‘Time is everything with outdoor shoots,’ he muses. ‘The daylight hours…’

For the first time in probably half an hour, Minho pipes up from the very back seat. ‘What if we get more lost and have to turn back?’ he counters. ‘We’d lose even more time.’

His voice is lacking some of its usual spark, no doubt a result of the twists and turns their route has been taking. The rental place at the airport had been all out of mini vans, so the team had to settle for a seven-seater SUV, which saw Taemin, Jonghyun and Kibum squeezed in the middle while Minho got the back. In case he throws up, Kibum had half-joked, that way he’s only a danger to himself. Jinki had offered him the shotgun seat, of course, but manager hyung vetoed because he wanted their leader up the front helping with directions— and maybe also because he knows Jinki wouldn’t mess with the AUX, leaving manager hyung to enjoy his trot playlist in peace. Of course, that didn’t even matter when they all piled in and realised that the cable was missing, so they had to settle for whatever radio station sounded the best, although it hardly made a difference when all the ads and talk bits are in English. At least Jonghyun was too jetlagged to try and lead them all in a karaoke session whenever one of the songs they can recognise came on, Justin Timberlake or Usher or Ne-Yo. Currently, manager hyung has the volume turned down so he can think, leaving them all in a tentative quiet.

‘It’s a good point,’ manager hyung concedes. ‘Whatever we do, we have to do it quickly, ’cause right now all we’re doing is heading in the wrong direction.’

‘Think of it this way, Minho-yah. The sooner we get there, the less time you’ll have to spend feeling like you’re about to puke.’

Taemin can’t see Minho’s face, but he can bet he’s grimacing. ‘I didn’t need a reminder, Kibummie.’

‘Aigoo, well, here I was trying to help.’

‘I think we should take the detour, hyung.’ Jinki’s voice is quiet but serious, unperturbed by the others’ bickering. ‘Even if we turn back now, we’ve already lost a lot of time and distance. And there’s no way of knowing if the GPS will even help us, we already misread it once.’

Manager hyung nods, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. ‘I think you’re right.’

‘I’m with Jinki and Kibummie,’ Jonghyun adds. ‘I think it’ll get us there faster.’

‘What about you, Taeminnie?’

Taemin is surprised to hear his name. He doesn’t even know how to drive, let alone navigate in a foreign country. But everyone is waiting for his answer, like it matters.

‘What Jonghyun hyung said,’ he mumbles. Jonghyun beams at him.

‘Well, I guess that settles it. Kibummie, is that the road coming up here?’

Kibum leans forwards to get a closer look at the road sign. ‘Yep, that one on the right.’

‘Right. Here goes nothing.’

Manager hyung flicks his turn signal on. The windshield wipers start up instead. ‘Fuck,’ he mutters, hastily swapping. ‘As if remembering to drive on the other side wasn’t hard enough.’

Jonghyun laughs. Jinki turns the radio back up. Taemin goes back to staring out the window. The new road takes them through a small patch of forest, sunlight dappling the ground and giving the leaves a bright green glow, before they emerge again into sweeping farmland, where sheep and cows graze idly or sleep lightly in the warm sun. The road is thinner here, with no central markings, just humble asphalt laid over gentle hills. At one point, Jonghyun leans over Taemin’s shoulder to admire the view, his hand on Taemin’s knee.

‘Wah,’ he remarks, his voice full of wonder. ‘It really feels like an adventure now.’

‘Yeah,’ Taemin breathes. There’s not a single car in sight other than their own, not even a house or barn. They could be the only people on earth. The thought is as scary as it is exhilarating.

‘Don’t you think it looks like the Shire?’ Jonghyun grins, his excitement uncontainable. ‘Come to think of it, we’re kind of like a fellowship, too.’

It was on the plane that Jonghyun had discovered that Taemin had never seen the movies, let alone read the books. It led to him insisting that Taemin watch them with him on the little in-flight entertainment screens — they filmed the whole thing in New Zealand, it’s basically research — so they each pressed play at the same time and, slowly, Taemin’s reality of stale airplane air and reheated food and thoughts of how far he was from home were lost to a fantasy world of hobbits and elves, of soaring mountains and dark, dangerous forests. Admittedly, he couldn’t stay awake through the final movie, but he awoke later to find himself draped in one of the complimentary blankets, his movie paused, Jonghyun quietly scribbling in his notebook next to him.

Now that he’s here for real, he has to agree with Jonghyun. If anything, the real thing looks even more idyllic than it did on screen.

Kibum laughs at Jonghyun’s suggestion, but that doesn’t stop him from playing along. ‘In that case, yeonggam would be Gandalf.’

Jinki doesn’t even refute it, just laughs good-naturedly. It proves Kibum’s point better than anything. Even Kibum’s nickname for him predisposes him to the image of an old man, with a pipe in hand and a knowing twinkle in his eye.

‘Minho-yah would be Aragorn,’ Jinki offers, after a moment of consideration.

‘Is he a good guy?’ Minho asks, curious.

‘He’s a ranger,’ Jonghyun explains. ‘And I guess he’s also, like, the king of Gondor or whatever.’

‘Gondor?’

‘It’s one of the kingdoms of men. Aragorn was the rightful heir, but when the—’

Kibum looks ready to open his door and jump out. ‘Jesus, Minho-yah, don’t get him started,’ he groans.

‘You’d be Legolas,’ Jonghyun grins, undeterred. ‘Always acting like you’ve got a stick up your ass.’

Taemin remembers that character from the movies he watched on the plane. He might have been haughty, but he was also the prettiest, with his sharp, elfin features and flowing hair. Jonghyun might have been talking about attitude, but it doesn’t take much to see those physical similarities in Kibum’s face, his features far more defined and harmonious than Taemin’s. He feels a twinge of jealousy.

Kibum’s eyes flash with mischief, the sign that Jonghyun has confidently strutted into the centre of a trap. ‘And you’d be a hobbit.’

‘Yah!’ Jonghyun’s eyes widen, incredulous, and Taemin has to stifle a laugh. Kibum has no such reservations, and neither does Minho, his peals of laughter ringing from behind their heads. Jonghyun tries to defend himself, pointing out: ‘They’re the ones who saved the world, you know.’

‘Okay, I’ve changed my mind. You’d be a dwarf.’

‘What about Taeminnie?’ Jinki jumps in before Jonghyun can form a response, his voice in damage-control mode. ‘I can’t think of one for him.’

It works a charm, Jonghyun’s expression changing to one of contemplation. ‘Huh, that’s a hard one. There’s not really any cute characters…’

Taemin can already feel his face getting hot. He’s not a good leader like Jinki, or brave like Minho, or witty like Kibum, or charismatic like Jonghyun. He’s just Taemin. Cute Taeminnie. People like him aren’t the kind who go on epic quests.

Still, Jonghyun seems determined to include all of them. ‘Well, if I’m Frodo, maybe you’re Sam,’ he suggests. ‘They were the first to set off together.’

Taemin thinks about it for a moment. He and Jonghyun might not have trekked all the way to Mordor, but they did walk home together hundreds of times when they were trainees, sharing food, battling rain, even running from scary guys in the street. Aren’t those the things you do on an adventure?

‘Or maybe you’d be Frodo and I’d be Sam, hmm?’ Jonghyun smiles, his eyes crinkling. ‘You do all the actually hard stuff, I just follow behind and carry you when it gets too much.’ He pokes Taemin’s chest. ‘Your heart is probably purer than mine, too.’

Does that mean he thinks Taemin is innocent?

Kibum scoffs. ‘Not a high bar.’

Or maybe it’s that.

‘What the hell—’ Manager hyung’s exclamation grabs everyone’s attention, and their bodies are thrown forwards as he steps on the brakes. They all lean towards the window, curious to see what caused the sudden stop.

‘No way,’ Jonghyun laughs.

‘That might be a problem,’ Jinki deadpans.

Kibum sighs. ‘This seriously cannot be happening right now.’

‘What’s going on?’ Minho’s voice is urgent, eager to not be left out.

‘Cows!’ Taemin exclaims, overcome by a mixture of surprise and wonder.

Sure enough, the disturbance belongs to three cows, reddish-brown with large splotches of white, standing in the middle of the road. The simple fence that should have been keeping them off the road has collapsed in one place, and now the cows appear to be enjoying their newfound freedom, sniffing at the asphalt and swishing their tails as their friends on the other side of the road look on with curiosity.

‘What, on the road?’

‘Yep, and they don’t seem interested in moving.’ Manager hyung tries creeping their car forwards, but the cows seem utterly unthreatened by their presence, like this is just a regular Monday for them. Manager hyung lays on the horn, and it’s enough to make Taemin jump, but two out of the three cows don’t even react. The third just slowly lifts its huge bovine head to stare in their direction, its eyes big and round and mild-looking. It’s almost like it’s calmly asking Hey, what was that for?

‘I— I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,’ manager hyung says, helplessly. ‘I don’t want one of them to freak out and hit the car.’

Suddenly, Jinki is opening his door. ‘Hey, what are you—’ manager hyung starts, but Jinki has already slipped out of his seat and is slowly approaching the cows.

‘Hey, Taeminnie,’ Minho’s voice is hushed and hasty behind Taemin’s head. ‘I really need some fresh air, can you let me out too?’

Taemin had already made his decision when he saw Jinki getting out. Without really knowing what he’s doing, he’s jumping out and following Jinki around to where he’s leaning on the front of the car, watching the cows. Some have taken a brief interest in him, swinging their heads in his direction before going back to sniffing at the ground. Minho joins them, looking pale, but grateful for the sun on his face and the wind in his hair.

‘What’s the plan, hyung?’

‘I stayed on a farm for a bit when I was a kid,’ Jinki says calmly, delivering that fact like it’s the most normal thing in the world. ‘They had a few cows. They don’t really understand cars, but they usually understand people waving their hands about.’

He steps forwards, stretching his arms out wide like a bird. ‘We’ll just try and guide them around the car,’ he explains. ‘Minho-yah, can you watch out for oncoming cars?’

As Jinki gets closer to the nearest cow, who’s starting to take a little more interest in him, Taemin realises he should probably be doing the same. He holds out his arms, tentatively stepping closer to another cow, trying to form a line between himself, Jinki, and the car. They’re so big, he realises, much, much bigger than the biggest dog he’s ever seen— if he stood next to this one, he guesses their shoulders would be around the same height. Its ears, longer than his hand, waggle back and forth, and its eyes are the size of chestnuts. Its nostrils are so large he can hear its breathing from where he’s standing, a steady, raspy whoosh in and out.

Over by the car, he hears another thud as the door closes. Jonghyun is hovering tentatively by the side of the car, watching with wide eyes as Jinki steps closer, waving his arms gently. ‘Hey, Cow-ssi,’ he tries, making Minho giggle at the honorific. ‘Cow-ssi, please move.’ He claps his hands once, and that seems to trigger something in the cow, and it starts placidly heading down the road, towards the side of the car that Jonghyun is standing on. He tenses, looking almost nervous. It’s an expression Taemin doesn’t see on him often. He feels the corner of his lips quirk up into a smile.

Jinki’s now noticed him, too. ‘Hey, Jonghyunnie, you can’t stand there,’ he explains. ‘She might be too scared to go past you.’

‘She?’ Jonghyun’s voice is a little higher than normal.

‘Yeah, she. See for yourself.’ Sure enough, all three cows have pink udders. Taemin feels dumb for not noticing it earlier.

‘Oh, right.’

When Jonghyun still doesn’t move, Jinki tries again. ‘You can come stand behind me, Jonghyun-ah.’

Jonghyun nods, slipping along the side of the car and almost gluing himself to Jinki’s side. When Jinki claps again, the cow moos, low and deep and surprisingly loud, and Jonghyun laughs nervously. She must have been calling to her friend, because the second cow follows her lead, plodding behind her in a slow chorus of hooves on asphalt.

When Taemin looks away from the others and the two cows, he almost jumps. The cow he was supposed to be guiding has somehow managed to sneak up on him, despite her massive size, and is regarding him with gentle, inquisitive eyes. Taemin is transfixed, watching as she noses closer, sniffing at him like an oversized puppy. He holds out his hand, and her warm breath washes over it, her whiskers tickling his palm. He smiles, rapt.

‘Yah, Tae-yah!’ Kibum yells at him from a rolled-down window. ‘Don’t go playing Snow White, the cameras need you in one piece.’

Neither Taemin nor the cow pay him any mind. Suddenly, her tongue is darting out to touch his hand, pink and warm and weird, and Taemin laughs in shock. ‘Woah, she licked me!’ he shouts, his smile splitting his cheeks.

‘You must smell nice,’ Jonghyun grins. He could talk, he’s the one who’s always telling Taemin that he smells like a baby, whatever that means. Maybe that’s what inspires Minho, who laughs and suggests:

‘Maybe she thinks you’re her baby.’ Right, because Taemin definitely hasn’t heard that one a million times before.

Whatever she thinks or thought, the cow has apparently finished her investigation, and she slowly turns to follow her two friends down the road. In the end, they don’t need much guidance, and wander nonchalantly past the car as if it was their intention all along. Maybe it was.

‘Right, quickly, back in the car,’ Jinki hurries them along as soon as the cows are clear. ‘Before they change their minds.’ They pile back in as quickly as they can: Minho, Jonghyun, then finally Taemin. Manager hyung doesn’t waste a second, taking off almost before Taemin can even shut the door.

‘Don’t ever do that again,’ he warns, but his voice doesn’t carry any real anger, only a rattled edge. When Jinki just smiles apologetically, he laughs in disbelief, shaking his head. ‘You guys almost gave me a heart attack. What if you got hurt? Those things were huge!’

‘Hey, it worked, didn’t it?’ Kibum points out.

Jonghyun laughs, a loud bark. ‘Says the one who didn’t even leave the car.’

‘Says the one who practically used Jinki hyung as a human shield,’ Kibum fires back. ‘At least I know my strengths.’

‘Point is, we could have been stuck there for ages,’ Jinki diplomatises.

Manager hyung sighs. ‘You’re right, as much as I don’t want to admit it. We could have been really screwed just then.’ He runs a hand through his hair, laughing to himself. ‘Well, that’s one thing I never expected to deal with on this job.’

‘Hey, hyung, how come you never mentioned you worked on a farm?’ Kibum asks, already moved on.

‘It didn’t come up,’ Jinki replies, in his simplistic, Jinki way. ‘And it wasn’t actually a farm, just a house with some rice fields and a couple animals. It was managed by a nice grandpa. We drank a lot of barley tea together.’

Kibum laughs. ‘Yah, hyung, how did you end up as an idol? You could have been a farmer.’ His question starts off as a joke, but there’s a genuine curiosity in his voice. Taemin can’t help feeling curious, too.

Jinki only smiles. ‘I could ask you the same thing. Daegu’s a long way from Seoul.’

It’s true for all of them. Jonghyun doesn’t talk much about his childhood, but Taemin can tell from hints and glimpses that his family didn’t have much, that his mom had a hard time raising two kids on her own. Minho had dreams of being a soccer player, and everything lined up to make it come true— the only thing he lacked was the blessing of the person who’d inspired that dream in the first place. Kibum spent hours and hours on the long train ride from Daegu to Seoul, waking up and going home in the dark. And Taemin was just a kid who liked to dance, who drove his family crazy with his Michael Jackson DVDs and his disinterest in school. Somehow each of them ended up here, as a team, on the other side of the world, in a country where Taemin’s willing to bet all of their rookie award trophies that hardly anyone has even heard the name SHINee.

Sometimes, even Jinki’s simplest words have the ability to settle a tender quiet across the whole group. Kibum stares out his window, so Taemin doesn’t know what expression he’s making when he recalls: ‘I spent so much time on that train, just watching the same scenery every day.’

‘You never dreamt we’d make it this far?’ Minho offers.

‘Of course I dreamed it.’ The confidence in Kibum’s voice is so trademark Taemin could almost laugh, if he didn’t already know how sincerely Kibum means it. ‘It’s the coming true part that’s so strange.’

‘It’s because you’ve already moved on to the next one, right? The next dream.’ Jonghyun grins. ‘What does Kim Kibum dream of now, when he looks out the window?’

Kibum’s defences don’t come down that easily. ‘Who gave you permission to look at my dreams?’ he asks, faking a scandalised expression.

‘Do I need it? Are they age-restricted?’ Even without seeing it, Taemin knows the look that goes with that voice, the way his eyebrows raise and his smile curves suggestively. He turns away.

‘Yah, not those kinds of dreams, pervert.’ Kibum bats him away, but Jonghyun's just given him the perfect excuse. ‘Since you’re so eager, tell us yours first.’

When Taemin looks back, Jonghyun’s smile has gone helplessly shy. ‘You all know already,’ he says, looking around. He pauses, but like always, he can’t hold his excitement back: ‘To write my own stuff. To perform it, let people listen to it.’

Taemin wants it for him, too. Right now, his music lives in his laptop, scrawled in exercise books, in the headphones he passes to Taemin after he’s supposed to be asleep, as if Taemin could offer him any useful advice. All he ever says is: It’s perfect, hyung. One day, if Taemin has any say in it, he’ll hear it from more than just the four of them.

‘I want to do a concert,’ Minho adds, his eagerness palpable. ‘By ourselves. A chance to show everyone what SHINee can do.’

‘Mine is a tour,’ Kibum reveals, now that it’s safe, or maybe just to one-up Minho. ‘Not just Korea. To meet fans from other places, too.’

‘What about you, hyung?’ Jonghyun asks.

Jinki smiles, the same one as always. ‘I’d like to do this for a long time.’

They all nod, approvingly. Each suggestion touches on something they’re often too cautious to voice out loud: the future. When you’re a trainee, a rookie, there’s just two worlds: before debut and after debut. The concept of that second world getting bigger, becoming something more than just the past year in all its chaos, is hard to comprehend. You sort of run out of time for dreaming.

‘And Taeminnie?’

And yet, their dreams are all hanging there, in the unceremonious, stale air, fragile and bright and real as the light that streams in from outside. They’re all looking at Taemin, expectant, but all he can think about in this moment is how much he wants, more than he ever should, more than could ever be realistic or reasonable. All of them, all their dreams, for SHINee and for himself, too.

‘I kind of want everything,’ he confesses.

Concerts, tours, albums, songs, stages, practice, practice, practice. He wants it all, wants the stars in the sky and all the words in Jonghyun’s notebooks and the undying attention of a whole stadium, wants to dance until he passes out and wakes up and does it all over again, again and again and again. He wants it the way he’s never wanted anything else before. Where they are now is just the beginning.

He wants it all so much that he’s scared, scared that they’ll tell him that he’s dreaming too big, that he’s only setting himself up for disappointment. He holds his breath, waiting on judgement.

Jonghyun’s grin splits his face.

‘Hear that, guys? We have to make Taeminnie’s dream come true.’

Taemin smiles, too, and for once, the future doesn’t feel so scary.

Before long, manager hyung spots a road sign indicating that they’re close to the farm they’ve been heading for this whole time, and everyone in the car breathes a collective sigh of relief. Jinki can finally call the rest of the team and confirm that they made it there safe, and now all they have to do is follow suit. The closer they get, the more restless everyone becomes, laughing and teasing and pointing out everything they see, even the most mundane: another herd of cows, properly fenced this time; a tractor coughing smoke into the air; a small black dog weaving through a sea of wide-eyed sheep. An unnameable feeling leaps in Taemin’s heart when, to his surprise, he spots a glimpse of ocean shining flat and silver in the distance, and they all oooh at the sight of farmland rolling down to meet long, empty beaches, the ocean stretching out beyond them.

The road they take up to the farm is bumpy and rough, but the relief Taemin feels when he can finally stretch his legs at the shooting location was worth every second. The shoot passes in a sunny, lazy haze, and when the photographer doesn’t want him Taemin is free to explore the farm on his own, peering into dusty barns and giving Kibum heart attacks when he decides to test out the red bicycle he found lying near the stable. Of course, the old man who runs the farm doesn’t speak a word of Korean, and neither do the young men who help him, but his sun-worn skin and warm, gap-toothed smile grant him an unmistakable friendliness. Taemin finds himself wishing that he paid more attention in English class when he watches Kibum communicate with one of the farm hands, a man with straw-blonde hair and freckles thrown across his face. The things he does catch only make him more confused, like when the man gestures to the sheep they’d been watching and says, you, which, isn’t that a pronoun? Is he calling them sheep? It takes Kibum translating that that’s apparently what they call a female sheep in English before any of them understand, and Jonghyun’s laughter quickly fills the air, because: Jinki hyung, your first kiss is back!

Somehow Jonghyun, a Seoul native since birth just like Taemin, manages to look at home in the flannels and farm boots the styling team picked out for them. The only time the image slips is when the photographer asks him to get close to the horse they brought out for photos, and his nervous laughter slips out from between his perfect idol smile and makes the rest of them collapse with laughter, while Kibum teases, Don’t worry, hyung, they said he doesn’t bite!

Later in the day, when the sun dips closer to the horizon and their shadows grow taller on the ground, the shoot ventures further out into the farm, the photographer saying something about letting them go wherever they want. Dry grass crunches underfoot and low, twisted branches are just asking to be climbed, and the whole team holds their breath when Taemin walks out onto a tree that fell across a small creek, but the photographer loves it. Minho teaches him how to skip rocks across a lake, his hands running over the pebbles in search of the perfect one, pressing it into Taemin’s palm, laughing when it disappears under the surface with a disappointing plop. It just takes practice, that’s all, he reassures Taemin, so sure of it that Taemin has no choice but to believe him.

The last golden rays of sunlight ignite flyaway hairs as they head back to the car once the shoot wraps, windswept and sun-warmed and pleasantly tired, in a way Taemin hasn’t felt in a long, long time. The ride back is quieter, watching pink-orange-purple fill up the canvas of the sky, before it fades to a dusty twilight. Taemin feels himself fading in and out of consciousness, drifting off once or twice before startling himself awake when his head bumps the window. He hears Jinki laugh gently from the back of the car — he convinced manager hyung to let Minho sit up front this time — and say something to Jonghyun about maknaes being maknaes. Jonghyun chuckles back, and the last thing Taemin remembers after that was his head being guided onto Jonghyun’s shoulder, which was warm, like the sunshine was still in him.

‘Taeminnie, wake up.’

‘Wha-?’ When Taemin opens his eyes again, the outside world is dark, and the interior lights are on. He hears a door open and shut, the crunch of footsteps on gravel.

‘Pee break,’ Jonghyun explains. ‘Do you need to go?’

Taemin lifts his head from Jonghyun’s shoulder, stiff, face going a little red at the thought of how long Jonghyun must have put up with his weight. ‘Um, yeah, actually—’

‘Everyone else is going, might as well,’ Jonghyun adds, giving Taemin a gentle nudge. Clearly that includes him.

Taemin finds the door handle and stumbles out into a quiet, warm night. He blinks, adjusting his eyes to the darkness, heads for Minho’s faint outline a few steps from the car. When he looks up, though, he’s stopped in his tracks.

‘Woah.’

Jinki quickly joins them, Kibum and Jonghyun, too, until they’re all stood there, necks craned, each of them suddenly at a loss for words. Above them, stars cover the sky not as solitary dots but as a whole sea of lights, immeasurable in number, unmatched in brightness. They feel so close, as if Taemin could reach out a hand and touch them, wave his hand in an arc and sweep up whole galaxies.

‘No light pollution,’ manager hyung explains from behind them, a rugged appreciation in his voice. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, out here.’

‘Is that— the Milky Way?’ Minho asks, gesturing to the band of light that stretches like a river across the whole sky.

‘Looks like it,’ Jinki agrees.

‘You mean we’re literally seeing our own galaxy right now.’

‘Yep.’

‘What the hell.’

Kibum snorts. ‘Poetic, Minho-yah.’

‘I’d like to see you do better?’

‘Hey, ask Jonghyunnie hyung, he’s the one who writes stuff about the moon.’

‘No moon tonight,’ is all Jonghyun says. It’s true, Taemin realises. Just stars, millions of them, billions, one for every person on earth, at least. He wonders which one is his, which is Jonghyun’s, Jinki’s, Minho’s, Kibum’s.

SHINee, five stars from the universe.

He hopes they’ll keep shining.