INFORMATION
Muse Name: lee taemin.
Occupation: shinee.
Journal: airbags.
Screenname: # spirals upward

Alias: artemis.
Age/Birthdate: 20 / 93/07/18.
Occupation: piano tutor.
Team/Position: IMPACT SPIRAL — racer.

BACKGROUND there's really nothing exciting about taemin's birth, besides that he's one of the statistics of children born to single mothers. it's that classic case, where she thinks love will be forever when he thinks love is just until a prettier girl comes along. when she tells him she's pregnant, he smiles and tells her he's happy. when she comes home from work the next day, he and his belongings are gone. he left the emergency money though.

a young single mother doesn't have a lot of choices in life to keep herself and her son fed. she settles on being a housekeeper, because she actually doesn't mind cleaning and she's actually a pretty good cook. she bounces from house to house but taemin always has a stable home. his mother is often home late and gone early, but she makes up for it as best as she can when she's home. they get a lucky break while taemin's in his last year of elementary school. the family is very very rich and the wife just thinks his mother's cooking is the best. they want her to stay with them, but she wants a real home for taemin. they compromise, she's allowed to bring taemin to work with her when he's not at school. they have a son his age, jongin, that she'll be nannying, and the two boys mesh instantly. they're pretty much inseparable after that. by the time taemin reaches high school, his mother goes ahead and accepts the standing offer to live with the family, in a little building on the grounds they transform into a little home for her.

in high school, taemin and jongin get into everything pretty much together. they're thing one and thing two, the kind of best friends that can be as nasty to each other as they want because there's just about nothing in the world that could break their friendship. it's jongin that gets them into racing. its a rich kid thing, taemin always thinks of it as, until he gets into a car for the first time - before he's even legal to drive - and takes a highway turn at 100 kmph. jongin makes the same turn a little faster, but it's all good. they've both impressed the guys that've come out with them, and that's the beginning of their education in racing.

taemin spends every free moment in any car he can get his hands on. he wins his first race a few months before he graduates -- the reward is the car, a garish orange mitsubishi lancer that felt like his the moment he stepped into the car. taemin graduates by the skin of his teeth but he doesn't even mind, because it means that now he's free to race properly. he and jongin push themselves, push themselves. they race together like they're one person, reading each other's moves like they're their own. they come to a point where as long as one of them wins, it's a victory. they're constantly on each other's flanks, two parts of the same whole. one truly spectacular race ends with the two in the first and second places and an invitation to join impact spiral. they agree right away; taemin hasn't looked back yet.


FACTS
— tutors students in piano in an after school program. it's not great money but there's never a shortage of kids being pushed into lessons so the paycheck is at least constant.

— the lancer taemin first won was destroyed about half a year ago, in a vicious race he didn't win. taemin broke his left leg and a rib, the lancer was totaled. the car he drives now, a lotus evora, is a twin to the one jongin drives; won in a race against a pair of rich european siblings. (the accident is what keeps him from dancing: the leg never set quite right and he's not allowed to exert it.)

— the evora taemin took was originally black, a perfect twin to jongin's, but taemin had it repainted a fire orange because he still misses his lancer. partly the reason he pushes himself to get better is because the chances of owning a car on this level on his own again is slim to none, so he can't really afford the massive damage he's already suffered once.

— taemin's dream car is the ferarri berlinetta. the beast rides on 730 horsepower and goes from 0 to 62 in about three seconds; what's not to love?

— owns a beagle mix named jelly. he's pretty much the closest taemin thinks he'll ever get to having a child and it shows, taemin coddles him to death. thankfully, jelly has a better head on him than his dad. he hasn't told jongin, but he's hoping that jelly and jongin's beagle jam get along and make adorable beagle babies.

— the one who decorated the loft he and jongin share. he's no martha stewart but he has a longer attention span than his best friend, and he actually likes buying silverware and plates and curtains to match.

— has a tattoo on the back of his right arm; it matches the one jongin had. it's a nod to their aliases, and their friendship.

— his mother thinks of jongin as a second son to him, and now and again she comes by their loft to drop off food and do their laundry. she calls him son and spoils him as much as she does taemin, and it makes taemin really proud to have a mother capable of so much love. (she's his role model.)