Rome was not built in a day. Taemin knew he was destined for greatness. Or rather, he would make it so. He rode the wave of his mother's struggles due to their poverty, wore her love like a mantle of oblivion; it was just the two of them, and that was how it had always been. When their clothing grew scarce and tattered, Taemin’s dexterous fingers would mend them. He'd craft dresses for her out of the old curtains - somehow he knew how after he pulled the seams of one monstrosity apart (she'd always wondered what had become of that one). He could never take no for an answer. If a path he wished to take happened to be barricaded, he would demand it to accept him until it remonstrated. In this manner, he'd commenced climbing his way to the very top of the designing ladder. He was born with a love for pretty things, and longed to quell the glimmer of yearning that appeared on his mom’s face when they passed shop windows.

Her death was a blow to his ambition. It made him totter where he had once glided with a panther’s grace, made his defiant regard that met the gaze of others directly seek their feet instead...it turned those nimble fingers into trembling, useless appendages. He could only manage one last masterpiece that sanctified the regality he'd always seen in life - that paled in comparison in death...but oh, she was still beautiful. Still the one who'd raised him, been his crutch when he'd had his limbs broken from those who’d belittled his talents and amounted them to homouality. He cloaked himself in his misery and lamented her absence for a great deal of time - until he realized that her denouement should not be his own. Though his loss weighted his footsteps, lent ambiguity to his smiles, even; he forced himself forward. And he achieved.