Archive of Our Own

II 

Jungkook: The Incident? 

Jimin: So…The Incident. 

Taehyung: The Incident. 

Seokjin sighs when I ask him about it : Well, it wasn’t exactly a surprise, per se. We’d all seen this coming. 

Busan: Before 

Kim Taehyung [Capstone’s bassist]: Now, if we’re gonna tell you about the band, we have to start from where it all started, and it all started with Jimin and Jungkook. 

Jeon Jungkook [Capstone’s vocalist]: It’s truly a shame that I don’t remember very well how exactly Jimin and I met each other and first started talking. I just know that I was fifteen and he was seventeen and we were at this party. But what I do remember very well is: us at the end of the party, talking and laughing our asses off, and me thinking that I wanted to see him again and again, and to have this person in my life for the longest time.

Park Jimin [Capstone’s guitarist]: Jungkookie tried to hit on me, can you believe it? He was so small back then, smaller than me, for your information, and he had big eyes like this and the worst haircut I had ever seen. So, he tried hitting on me, and it was so funny I thought he was joking, so I naturally laughed it off, but I saw his face drop for a sec when I started laughing, and I knew it was very real and not a joke at all; but then he was laughing too and agreeing that everything was a joke, and I pretended to believe him for his sake.

But I felt so guilty. At that time, I thought I had just broken his heart, so I spent the rest of the night by his side, trying to make him laugh and make him feel better. I discovered then that he was really a nice and funny guy to hang out with. Unfortunately, not one I would hook up with, tho.

Jungkook: I thought I wouldn’t see him again after that night, and the idea of it felt pretty awful; you don’t have to spend more than five minutes with Jimin to be at least a little bit infatuated by him. But I was realistic: I had gone to this party with my older brother, I didn’t know anyone there, and he and everyone else were older than me. It was already a huge thing that I had talked to him. I wasn’t going to push my luck and expect to see nor talk to Jimin ever again. 

So, when I saw him again, not long after the first time at the party, it felt like destiny. I had even heard the bells. 

Jimin: My father has a coffee shop back in Busan, it's really pretty and very comfortable, it has a lot of pictures of me. If you had gone there six years ago, you would have seen pictures of me as a baby, me growing up, me dancing on stage, dance awards I won, my first day at school, my first day at high school, middle school… things like this. If you go there now, it’s all still there, but now there are pictures of me on stage with the band, of the other members, photoshoots, magazines, and our albums hanging around. It’s like his own shrine. His walls are verdicts of his love for me, and I am very grateful for being born around so much love.

Jungkook: I had dance classes in Nam-gu three times a week and often after picking me up, my mom would take me to a nice coffee shop to get some drinks and sweets. It was our little routine back then. 

But in one of the times I went there, I paid more attention to the pictures on the walls than ever before; because the faces in those were kinda familiar. But what were the odds? I heard a bell, someone talking, and then, a voice behind me: “I used to dance when I was younger. Well, I still dance sometimes, but not like back then, I don't have the time.” And when I looked, it was Jimin! With his hands on his pockets and a big smile. It was so unexpected, so I was kinda dumbfounded, you know, just staring at him and asking myself where he came from. And he continued with “Hello, Jungkook”, so I very smartly asked if it was him in the pictures. He smiled and said: “Yes, the owner here has such a soft spot for me.”.

Jimin: He looked even more confused, so I took pity on him and said it was my father's coffee shop and asked if he came often. He said he usually came over after his dance classes, and it was amazing, the improbability of everything: us seeing each other again, him at our little coffee shop, and how we were both dancers. 

Jungkook: At that point, my mother came with the goods she’d ordered, and of course she knew him. She said: “Hello, Jimin, I didn’t know you two were friends!” and of course Jimin knew how to talk to her, and he did it so easily, he does everything like it’s easy, doesn’t he? She told him that I danced too and that I was going to be an idol, and I could've died right there on the spot, but Jimin smiled at me, big and so bright, and asked me to sing to him sometime. I said “I will, next time.” without thinking, without realizing I had just implied we would see each other again, without realizing he had implied it too. 

Jimin: It’s funny how much his mother pivoted in our friendship in just one meeting. Once again, she meddled in the conversation and said “Jimin, you should ask your father for our number, the Jeons, and call us sometime. I heard you’re going to Seoul next year, you’re applying for SNU, am I right? It will be nice for the two of you to have a familiar face there.” 

Jungkook: Before we left, he held me behind a little bit and asked “Are you okay with me calling you? I know it was your mom who suggested it, but I would really like us to be friends.” and said ”That way at least we will have at least one friend there, huh?”, and I don’t know how I agreed because I was so on cloud nine because of everything: he really wanted to be my friend, wanted to call, still wanted to talk to me even in Seoul. It was a silly thing, him reassuring me and asking me if I was comfortable with the idea of being his friend, when everything felt like a dream to me. 

Jungkook: He called me and said “Hello, Jungkook, heard in town that you’re going to be an idol, and I wondered if you could sing to me. Wanna go to a noraebang?”

Jimin: I’d thought about it for some time. I liked him and did want to be his friend, but I didn't know him that well, so what can I do with a guy if I don’t know what he likes? But I knew he probably liked to sing, and I wanted to hear him singing too, so it seemed like a great idea to me. It still could have gone so wrong. But it didn’t. 

Jungkook: I didn’t expect it, I know he had my number and that we’d agreed to be friends, but I think everything felt a little surreal?? Part of me was thriving because I got to talk and befriend the prettiest man I'd ever seen, the other part was panicking because what would we do together? For hours! "What if I say something wrong? What if he rethinks and realizes I’m boring? What if I can’t stop looking at his lips?" Many things could've gone wrong, and I couldn't make a fool of myself in front of him again. The first time I did still haunts my dreams every night. 

Every day until the day we’d agreed to meet was torture, all I could think was “What I am going to wear?” “What am I going to talk about?” “Which song should I sing that won't feel like I’m declaring myself to him?” 

Jimin: When the day came, he was so shy. In the beginning, he was always a bit shy around me. I found it very cute and a little bit challenging, if I am being honest. How could I make him open up to me, how could I get to see what he was like when he felt comfortable? But the blush was so cute, I didn’t want it to end. Thank god he still is a blushing mess around me until this very day. 

Jungkook: When we got to the noraebang, we proposed that each one would sing a song and after that, we would sing together. At first, I felt really shy to sing in front of him, so he offered to close his eyes. It was good for my nerves, not that good for my heart. When you are an introverted kid, you appreciate when other people that are much more extroverted than you get in tune with your feelings, understand what makes you comfortable or not, so Jimin saying he was going to close his eyes for my sake felt incredibly considerate to me. And very sweet too. 

Jimin: When the song began, he started playing around, singing out of tune on purpose, screaming a lot. I immediately broke down laughing because he was so funny. Looking back I think maybe he did it to break the ice between us, to make both of us comfortable. But then I opened my eyes and he looked at me, right at the “Only linger around me, don’t take your eyes off me, fall into my charm” part of the song, and started singing for real. And I know he was singing Twinkle by Girls Generation, but right there I knew nothing would shine brighter than his future. Not with a voice like his. 

Jungkook: I barely knew him but I could bathe in the proud look he was giving me. Ever since I was a kid everyone around me praised me for my vocals. I knew too, that I sounded good, because it was something I had diligently worked on to be good at. But when I sang to Jimin for the first time, the way he looked at me and the way I felt under his gaze made me feel like I had just discovered something very beautiful inside me. Like a gem. 

Jimin: I didn’t know how to sing after him, it still feels very unfair to me, and I said that to him. He smiled, that big smile of his that are all teeth, and said it would only be unfair if we broke the deal. So I had to choose a song and sing. It felt like he was opening up to me a lot after he sang, so I kinda forgot about having to sing in front of a great singer and focused on the warm feeling of getting to know him. 

Jungkook: Jimin had never said anything about being a singer, and it was so unfair to not give me a little prep before. I think I was a really strong kid for not confessing myself right then as soon as he started singing. His voice is so unique, just as he is, and even if he looked a bit shy in the way he was performing, I couldn't even blink. Sometimes I think: "Hearing Jimin sing always feels like the first time". But now I expect it, the way everything seems to soothe, the feeling of floating, the goosebumps. But at that moment I didn't know, so it was like I was caught in a huge tide, the water entering me, and I could feel the song in every part of my body as if I was drowning in his voice. At the same time, it also felt like I was dipping in a really nice bath. And the feeling of falling a little bit in love. Hearing Jimin sing is always like falling in love. But I don't know if this is just me being whipped.

Jimin: After our time at the noraebang was over, we headed to his house and spent tons of hours in his room playing video games. At one point, he even played his guitar a little for me. His family was out, so everything was quiet besides the two of us. It was nice, really nice. You know when you are with someone and you keep thinking about the next time the two of you will see each other? I was so excited about the thought of seeing him again. 

Jungkook: I was freaking out so much the entire time, I almost sent Jimin home early because I was scared one of my parents would come home, or worse, my brother. 

Jimin: After that, we kept seeing each other all the time. Actually, I, personally, usually didn’t have that much time, since I was in my senior year and the Suneung exams were coming, but nothing is prettier and more exciting than the start of a new friendship, and it was wonderful, how much we got along, how our energy and silly sense of humor matched. So, whenever we had some time off, which we did, a lot, since we were on summer vacation, we spent it together. 

Jungkook: That summer we met each other so often that my mum even stopped asking me who I was going out with. 

Jimin: During that summer, Jungkook taught me how to play the guitar. I pestered him a lot so he could teach me. There isn't much he can do to ignore my puppy eyes, and that time wasn’t any different. And if it were, it would be because he was weaker. 

Jungkook: For god’s sake, I think he did it on purpose. Sometimes, his personality can be wicked like this, because nothing was worse than teaching him the guitar, always touching his hands, being so close. I was a teenager in puberty! It was a nightmare. 

Jimin: We spent so much time in his bedroom, sometimes I would spend entire afternoons just laying on the floor, listening to him playing and singing to me. It is definitely one of my best memories from Busan. 

Jimin: Senior year is always difficult, mostly because of the pressure of Suneung and the prospect of college. Jungkook is younger than me so he wasn’t going through it, but he understood. He understood that I had to study even during vacation, the same way he understood that the pressure could be too much, unhealthy even, so he often took me on study dates around town, at the beach, at his house, at my father's coffee shop, parks, libraries, anywhere to help me breathe a little and to get me out of my room. Studying was never his thing, so these study dates consisted mainly of me studying and him taking a nap by my side. But even in these moments, peace was a palpable thing.

Jimin: I knew we were very close, but since I really, really, really wanted to be his friend, I felt like the first sleepover solidified our friendship. I know it can sound silly, but it made me so happy. He asked me if I wanted to stay the night and have dinner with his family; it made me so happy to listen to them telling me all of these embarrassing stories about younger Jungkook while he cringed by my side. Later that night, while Jungkook was showering, his older brother told me “I can’t believe you and Jungkook really hit it off, he was really nervous about talking to you that first time at that party” and “I’m glad you two became friends, I’m glad he has someone like you by his side.” 

Jungkook: We barely got any sleep that night, Jimin kept asking to watch another episode or play another match, and he kept talking as if he didn’t want the night to end. I was dozing off most of the time, but I’ve always been so weak for him, and hell will freeze if I deny another hour of his company. That night was the first night he sang me to sleep, and even with how tired I was, I fought the urge to sleep so I wouldn’t lose any second of him singing to me. 

 By the next morning, after we’d just had two hours of sleep, Jimin was exhausted, with such a huge pout and swollen eyes. He almost dozed off at the breakfast table using his pajeon as a pillow. 

Jimin: When I got home, I slept for the entire day. 

Jungkook: After that night, our families naturally grew closer, knowing that Jimin and I were going to Seoul at the same time, and with how close we'd become, the idea of the two of us moving out together and living together was finally brought up. It all seemed terrifying to me, but I was so relieved at the same time because it seemed awfully obvious. Everything about Seoul scared the shit out of me; even so, the thought of having Jimin with me made everything look easier. 

On the other hand, I already knew around that time that I liked him very, very much, and living with the person I liked and being with him all the time kind of seemed like a very difficult task. 

Seoul: Before

Jungkook: Seoul was too big and scary when I first came here… the buildings were so tall, and there were five lanes on the road. You become really tiny when everything is in such enormous proportions. But I know it would've felt a lot bigger and scarier if I hadn't had Jimin with me.

Jimin: Seoul is just three driving hours away from Busan, so technically it isn’t that far, it's not like with Taehyung, who lived half a day away from here before coming to Seoul, but it still felt like a whole world away. Jungkook and I shared a really crappy one-bedroom apartment, so tiny, so cold and so, so distant from everything. But it was what our families could afford, so it was our home. 

Jungkook: The first few months really took a toll on me, on us. I was away from home in a city that was so big and unwelcoming, wanting to pursue a career that was even less welcoming. I felt so homesick all the time, and Jimin was my world and my best friend but I still felt so lonely. I was a kid, and I often felt a lot like one. There were so many times when I had just come home from school, or from a dance class, and I just wanted to lie down and cry, but couldn’t because most of the time, Jimin was there, and there wasn’t enough space in our apartment to be alone , and it was driving me crazy. 

Jimin: I loved him dearly, but living with Jungkook wasn’t...easy. Not in some of the times. Even if our age gap isn’t huge, and even if he was always kinda mature for his age, at that time he was still a teenager in his high school years and I was at the beginning of my college graduation. The things we were going through weren't the same, the same way our mentality wasn’t. He didn’t know how to share things, nor did he like when I used his stuff. And I’m very good at respecting other people's space, you know? But sometimes he was just…. How can I say this? A pain in the ass. 

Jungkook: I know I wasn’t the best kid out there, and I had so much to learn, mostly about how to interact with other people. I’m glad Jimin put up with me, and even with how much we fought, I'm really glad he stayed by my side. 

 Jimin: But these moments weren’t the majority. Jungkook could annoy the hell out of me, but it was so good. Coming home in the evening and having him ask how my day was, and me asking how his day was, how the auditions were, or what he did at the company. It’s truly an incomparable thing, coming home to Jungkook’s smile.

Jungkook: The period of trying to join a label, and the following period too, it's such a big pressure. I was doubting myself all the time: after each audition, and between the auditions and the answer. If I was good enough; if I had made the right decision coming to Seoul. I missed my family, and for fuck's sake, I was just a child. It was hellish, but thank god I had Jimin at that time. It wasn't an easy period for us, each of us struggling in our own way, but he helped me so much that I can’t return it even if I spend my entire life trying. Sometimes I would come home so late, but he would be waiting for me, no matter if his day had been tiring too. And other times, a lot of the times actually, I would come home so tired that I couldn't even eat, or get up from the floor. And he would make everything so easy for me, make my food, and send me to shower. When I missed my family too much, or when the times were especially hard, we would lay together, sharing the same bed and talking really quietly, and he would put me to sleep, caressing my hair and singing to me.

Jungkook: Not much longer after I came to Seoul, I passed on CCB Ent. Before that, other labels had called me too, but I didn’t want to go to a big label that was famous for being too tight and killing the rights of its trainees without even paying for it. When CCB Ent. finally called me back, Jimin was the first one to know, obviously. That night we cried of happiness in each other's arms and  ordered food and drinks to celebrate. The next weekend, we headed to Busan to celebrate with my family, and even though it had been quite a while since we hadn’t come back to our respective homes, he spent most of the time with me, and kept repeating that it was my time and that he wanted to celebrate it with me. 

Jimin: I was so happy, for days I couldn’t stop smiling like a fool. It was his dream, and I knew better than anyone how much he deserved it, how much he gave himself away for it. I felt like watching the most beautiful story unfold from so close, and it was such an honor, having a small part in it.

Jimin: I blame it on Jungkookie for being so talented, the fact that the time we lived together was so short. It didn’t take long till he was living at the dorms where the promising trainees lived. 

Jungkook: I didn’t want to leave Jimin even if I knew how much it meant, how close I was to debuting, to becoming an idol, something I had always dreamed of. Our home was very far from the agency, so that routine of being a trainee and commuting was killing me. 

Jimin: I was really happy for him, but it felt so bittersweet because living together and coming home to each other was the only thing that was connecting us. He usually didn’t have much time, and when he did, he was so tired. College isn’t that easy either. So, if we weren't living together, when would we see each other? He knew it too, so on the few days we had together before he moved to the dorms, he would come home and despite how tired he was, he would make such enormous effort to be with me, to stay a little bit in the living room watching something together, to delay sleep by a few hours so we could enjoy each other’s presence a bit more. When he’d come home late, I would wait so we could have dinner together and we would eat heavy stuff in ungodly hours like 12 am, knowing his diet didn’t allow it. On those days, we would head straight to bed after eating.

 Jungkook: He made me swear so many times that I would hide a cell phone so I could talk to him, that I would try to sneak out when I could to see him, he made me swear that I wasn’t going to be a little goody shoes. I loved him so much for it that I was almost glad we wouldn’t live together anymore, because I don’t think I could hide it for long after that. 

Jimin: Before moving to the college dorms, I lived at the apartment for a while till the end of the lease. Cried a bit at night because I felt so lonely. At that time, I’d already made other friends in Seoul, and now I had privacy so I could bring people home, which is important when you’re a university student. But after having had Jungkook around, his absence felt so heavy, sometimes I couldn’t bear it. 

But I finally moved to the dorms, and I had so many people around me all the time that feeling lonely couldn’t ever cross my mind. It was so much cheaper, I didn’t have to make my own meals, or commute to classes. I didn’t have Jungkook, but it was still so good. And even better: I met Taehyung.

Taehyung: When the dean told me I would have to share my room  next semester, I wanted to die. I had so much fun having the room only for myself, so I was very ready to hate my new roommate. I’d  watched a lot of American movies so I was really inspired to be a mean teenager to him. But then I met Jimin and realized that I could never do it. How could I ever be mean to such an angel? I remember thinking about it at that time, and all he did was smile at me. 

Jimin: He had these rectangular glasses and a fun haircut and this quirky boxy smile. And he was so handsome I couldn’t even believe it. Worse: he was so nice. On my first day at the dorms, he showed me around, introduced me to other people, and helped me organize my stuff. I was so happy and feeling so lucky. Really, the universe has smiled at me a lot of times, but they have never sent me anything as good as Taehyung. 

 He helped me so much, not only with adapting to the dorms and showing me around. But I missed Jungkook like crazy: he didn’t have much time to call me, even less to meet me. So I had this space in my heart that really ached for him, while Taehyung was creating his own place, making everything bloom in there. It really soothes the pain, feeling something this beautiful at the same time. 

Jungkook: Being a full-time trainee was… well, terrible? I was the first one to move into the dorms, so everything felt so cold and big at first. But it wasn’t that much of a problem, because I didn't have much time to think about it. On weekdays I would wake up at 5 am and exercise by myself, at 7 am I would take a shower,  have breakfast, and go to school. I would come home by 4:30 pm, and from 5:30 pm to 5:50 pm I had language classes, where I would learn Japanese or English. At 6:15 pm vocal lessons, 7:30 pm I could have dinner and rest till 8:15, and then dance practice till 11 pm or later, if I stayed after practice. Which happened pretty often, since I have always been a perfectionist. I would come home late  feeling tired, but I still had to do my homework and study, so I usually slept around 3 am. What I ate varied according to my diet at the time. 

On weekends, I would have free mornings, and vocal and dance practices in the afternoon. Couldn’t have a cellphone, but I hid one, as Jimin had said. Had a free weekend per month, and usually it would mean going home to Busan, or my parents coming to see me. So the only time I had to talk to Jimin was late at night, when we had to sleep, or on weekend mornings, when, if we were lucky, we could see each other. 

But even if I theoretically had free mornings, I couldn’t spend them to my liking most of the time. Eventually, other trainees came to the dorm, and in a way, we were all competing to debut, even if we would form a group later. We would have weekly reviews to see if we were good, if we progressed, gained weight or got skinnier, things like that. Back then, the label could get rid of any of us, so I still used my free time to practice alone and try to be better, be the best . 

I still liked some of the trainees who lived with me, but I couldn’t be real friends with most of them. There were so many people coming in and leaving the dorm that I was basically the only constant. I would meet someone cool, and we would get closer, and then he would move and I would stay. At some point, it felt so exhausting that I stopped trying. 

Jimin: One night I was studying till late because I would have a test that same week and didn't have another time to study. Then, around 3 am, Jungkook called me and  said, with such a tiny voice: "Hyung? Can you sing for me a bit? I can't sleep", and of course I agreed. After that, he would ask me to do it many other times, and he would always sound so tired on the phone. It broke my heart to see him like that and not be able to help him more. 

Jungkook: Even if Jimin and I couldn’t see or talk to each other much,  he helped me the most. I used to cry to sleep a lot, but after he started singing to me, I almost stopped. 

Jimin: Because we didn’t have that much time to meet each other, I preferred meeting Jungkook alone when we got the chance. But once, when his parents couldn’t make it to Seoul on his free weekend nor could he go to Busan, he slept at the dorms with me. It wasn't allowed, by the way, but I don’t think there is a single person in the world who can say no to Jungkook. So… he met Taehyung. 

Jungkook: Jimin had said a lot of stuff about Taehyung. All the time. So I knew a bit about him beforehand. He seemed nice. Was nice. 

Jimin: I think Jungkook was a little bit jealous of Taehyung, for having to share me with him. 

Taehyung: Oh, Jungkook was so jealous, he hated my guts at the time. With Jimin, he was all heart-eyed and Jiminnie-hyung this Jimin-hyung that, and with me, it was Taehyung-ssi and cold eyes, even though I had asked him to call me hyung. Kinda unfair, but it was so funny, absolutely hilarious. 

Jimin: Taehyung tried to get closer to him, but Jungkook is really closed off when he is around strangers. Before Seoul, I would have said it was because he was a shy kid, but after getting into CCB Ent., he became a lot more reserved, and I don’t think it was just out of shyness anymore. So, even with Taehyung's attempts, they didn’t get anywhere that first night. Nevertheless, I was really happy that my two best friends had met each other. We ordered food, listened to some music, and Taehyung had these alcoholic drinks he hid. He didn't say anything about this, but I think he did it to impress Jungkook. We got tipsy, and soon after that Jungkook said he was sleepy, so we all went to bed. 

It was really fun. 

Taehyung: He wasn’t that drunk and I’ve seen  him drinking tons of times after that so I know he can hold a beer, so I think he just wanted to sleep next to Jimin already. 

Jungkook: I just didn’t trust myself being drunk around Jimin, I didn’t know what I could say without having my walls up. 

But that night Jimin and I shared a single bed, and I was afraid he could hear my heart beating fast because he was holding me so close, and because it felt so good, to be held, to be close. Usually, I would ask him to sing for me when I was feeling sad or lonely, but being with him in that bed, I didn’t feel sad at all. I still asked him to sing for me, though. It was the first time he did it other than over the phone in a long time.

Taehyung: It was so silly of Jungkook to be jealous of me and Jimin that I found it funny. I know not everyone can have a bond like the one we share. Just kidding. Not actually. But they were and are each other's home, no matter how long they’d known each other at the time. For fuck’s sake, they left their hometown together, came to a city where they didn't have anyone besides each other, sharing those experiences creates quite a bond. Jimin and I, we love each other to infinity, but it doesn't mean their love is less because it's different, nor is mine and Jimin’s. There are so many kinds of love in the world, it would be a pity to settle with just one. I'm happy Jungkook grew to understand that now. I'm happy I understand it too.

Jungkook: Almost a year after I’d joined the company, I still didn’t have a group or anything close to that. But, there were other promising trainees that had been staying at the dorms with me for a while then. 

One day, the CEO of the company called me to his office and said they were sending me to the States so I could study dance. He said I would spend a school semester away doing that. He said it like a proposal, but I knew I couldn’t say no even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t. I was so happy because it was such a great opportunity for me to learn, to get to know new things, new places. And even better: the company had everything covered. 

Of course, I was scared, it was another county, in another continent, far away from everyone I loved and everything I knew. But again, it was an opportunity. 

Jimin: When Jungkook told me the news, I ran to the company as fast as I could to congratulate him properly. Even bought a cake. I was so happy, even if it meant he would be staying away for months. It was a huge thing, and he seemed so close to achieving his dreams, and nothing could make me happier than seeing him accomplish that bright future, which I first saw back then in that noraebang. 

Jungkook: They got a little stricter about me meeting Jimin after that because I wasn’t supposed to date. They didn’t believe me when I told them Jimin wasn’t my boyfriend, even if it was everything I'd ever wanted. But it was worth it. 

Taehyung: When Jimin got home that day, he gave me a big smile and shared the news. He was happy, really happy for Jungkook when he said: "They’re sending Jungkookie to study abroad!". But then he hugged me and repeated himself, “they’re sending Jungkookie to study abroad”, with such a tiny voice, because, on the flip side, he was more than just a little sad for himself. That day, I tried to comfort him and to be there for him the best I could, but I’m no Jungkook, so it worked for that time but still didn’t solve the problem. Till the day Jungkook left for the States, and a few days after that, he would come home looking so much like a wet and sad little chick, you know, with his big pout. 

I was heartbroken for him too. 

LA and back to Seoul 

Jungkook: The first few months were just as painful and terrifying as I had imagined. I missed my family and friends back in Korea like crazy, and it was such a different culture, different people, and not my native language on top of that. I had to join a new school, an American school, and my dance classes were also draining. And the food; I dreamed so much about eating Korean food, real Korean food, like my mom’s food. I went a little bit crazy because of it. 

Even so, it was amazing. My new friends were so cool and they took me in really quickly, and I had so much to learn. The more I practiced, the better I felt as a dancer. And there’s another thing I hadn’t expected before going to the US: the freedom. 

Of course, I had someone from the company with me, and still couldn’t eat whatever I wanted, but my schedule was much less strict. I had time to hang out with my new friends and live at least for a little while like any normal teenager. And the best part: I could have a cell phone and use it whenever I wanted to, without having to hide it. You might think of it as such a trivial thing, but it made me go nuts at the time. 

Taehyung: Now, Jimin has the most cursed inner clock, and it got so much worse with Jungkook abroad. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and there was Jimin, having a late dinner with Jungkook, giggling like a teenager on his phone. He used to say he didn’t have many chances to talk to him, so staying awake until late was worth it. The next day, he would wake up fully energized as if he’d slept  for the whole night and not just for a little over two hours. 

Jimin: Since I’d met Jungkook, we had never been so far apart, and even with his crazy schedule as a trainee, we were always still in the same city. Then, poof! He was on the other side of the globe: in a different city, country, continent, and even time zone. I would be in his tomorrow having lunch while he was in my yesterday eating dinner. It was so crazy, we would joke saying I was from the future.

 We talked much more often since he was no longer being held on a leash by his company, but we were so distant. I missed him like crazy, and I know he missed me too, but he was out there, living things I couldn’t ever relate to. Sometimes I felt like he would come back as a completely different person, not wanting to do anything with me. It scared me shitless. But then he would  text, asking if we could do a video call because he missed seeing my face. I never felt insecure while talking to him

. 

Jungkook: My time in the US ended so quickly, but at the same time it felt like I’d stayed there forever. I couldn’t wait to go back to Korea and to my family and friends, but I felt like I still had so much to learn and see, and I didn’t want to say goodbye to the friends I’d made there, nor to the routine I had. I was having these conflicting feelings. So one day, the choreographer who had gone with me, Sung Taeyong-nim, told me that I would have a few days with my family when I came home before having to go back to my duties. I was so happy I couldn’t even focus on my routine from dance classes that day, and when I got home I immediately called my mom to tell her the news. Then I called Jimin, of course. 

Jimin: Around the second half of June that year, I managed to get this data science internship at a new I.T startup. And it wasn’t great: a lot of my coworkers were  asses, and I worked much more than what I was being paid for. But, I was being paid and getting my own money so I wouldn't have to depend that much on my parents, which made me feel guilty all the time. That being said… When I got the job it felt great, and Taehyung and I drank our faces off to celebrate. It was such a night and I was happy and I deserved it, I deserved it so much. 

 But it also meant that when Jungkook finally came back to Korea, and during the time he would spend in Busan, too, I would still be new at the company and couldn’t take any time off to go see him. I couldn’t pick him up at the airport as I had planned because he would land at the Gimhae international airport, not Incheon’s airport, and I couldn’t see him as soon as he landed in Korea nor in the following days. I felt so defeated, because he had spent so much time away and when he was finally a little closer, I couldn’t make it. I hated being an adult and having to work, and I felt like the worst friend to ever exist, and nothing Taehyung and Jungkook or my parents said could make these thoughts go away. 

Taehyung: Jiminnie saying he is a bad friend is… so ridiculous I can’t even wrap my mind around it. Because he is just the best friend anyone could ever want by their side. He is precious like that. If Jimin isn’t made outta love, then he isn’t made of anything. 

Jungkook: It was frustrating, very frustrating, that I couldn’t see him, even if I’d said that it was fine. But I had a great time nonetheless. I received the equivalent of six months or more of love and pampering from my family, and ate that same amount in Korean food. Three days after I’d arrived, Taehyung called me. He said: come earlier to Seoul. 

Taehyung: I was a little bit hesitant of calling Jungkook because he didn’t seem to love me, but it was for Jimin’s happiness, so I would've done anything. He understood what I meant right away even if I had planned to sound a little mysterious so he would wonder what my intentions were, which I found quite disappointing. He said he was thinking the same, of going to Seoul on Friday, instead of  Sunday. 

Jungkook: I asked him, “Do you think we should surprise him?”

Taehyung: I hadn't thought about it because I can’t hide shit from Jimin, but it sounded very exciting, so I pretended it had been my plan all along. 

We talked a lot for those few days. The plan was that I would pick him up from the train station and hide him in the dorms while Jimin was at work. He would come home and boom! Jungkook would be waiting for him on his bed.

 Now, saying it like this sounds very nasty, but it was thought with the purest intentions. 

Anyway, the time when we were planning Jimin’s surprise was the first time that Jungkook was really nice to me, you know, opening up a little, being friendly. And, as much as I liked brat Jungkook and liked annoying him, meeting this Jungkook was really cool. I was excited to be friends with him. 

Jungkook: It was so hard to call Jimin and not say anything, to hear him ask me if there wasn’t any way we could meet before I went back to the dorms and to my old routine, and I had to make up all these lies and see his sad face and huge pout on video calls, knowing it was all a lie. I felt so bad, it was really dreadful, but I made myself visualize how he would look like when he saw me without expecting to, how big would be his smile, if he would scream his little screams that sound a lot like chicks clacking which he does when he is really happy, or if he would do his little jumps. It wouldn't be a lie if I said I had imagined this a lot ever since LA, when I still thought I would see him at the airport. 

Taehyung: For someone who had never hid anything from Jimin, I managed it quite well, I must say. But it was awful, absolutely terrible, having to deal with a sad Jimin without breaking the good news to him. Worse! It was a time when he was coming to the dorms pretty exhausted from work and classes and really needed something to lift his humor. 

Jimin: I think one of the things I really, really needed at that time was a hug. Lucky me, because I got plenty from my roommate.

Taehyung: One thing I hadn’t expected was: Jungkook grew up. Looking back, I really should have expected it; he was a teenager and teenagers go through sudden growth spurts all the time. But I didn't, and it was my mistake. I remember meeting him after just half a year! and thinking: "Jimin is gonna pee his pants" . 

Jungkook: The first thing he said was: “missed me a lot?”, and I told him to hurry up because Jimin would come back from his internship soon and I still had to leave most of my luggage at my dorm before going to theirs. 

Taehyung: For a sec I forgot how close they were, to be so in tune with each other's routine. And that I was talking to Jungkook, who was always craving for his Jimin. 

Jungkook: When we got on the campus, Taehyung made me climb the dorm's balconies to get to his room. I kept saying the dean would let me in just fine, but he said it was for the “thrills” of it, like a maniac. 

Taehyung: I just wanted to see if he could do it. And he did it! Carrying a bag and everything! Like the fucking Spiderman! I was so astonished… he has always been this unfairly athletic. But I felt a little competitive seeing him, and it looked kinda fun, so I tried it too. In the end, it was more tiring than fun, if you ask me. Now, when we got to my balcony, I realized that there wasn't anyone in the room to open the door for us, and if I wanted to enter my room in conventional ways, I would have to jump from the third floor before doing it. It didn’t look fun to me anymore, so our plans to surprise Jimin were suddenly changed from him coming home and seeing Jungkook on his bed, to him coming home and saving his two best friends.

 Jungkook: That moment, I thought: I will never trust Taehyung ever again. But looking back at it now… It sure was an adventure, huh? 

Jimin: I come to my room at 9 pm, tired, turn on the lights, and there they are, looking at me! Waving and everything! I was so surprised, Jungkook wasn’t supposed to come, and even if Taehyung had been acting a little weird those past few days, I didn’t think it would be… this. But I was so happy, so, so happy. I let them both free, but as soon as I opened the door, I jumped on them. I had missed Jungkook so much, and I was so grateful to Taehyung I could die. 

Jungkook: Seeing Jimin again after all these months wasn't as good as I had imagined. It was much better. 

Taehyung: After hearing our story, Jimin said: "I always wanted you guys to get along, but I never imagined that you both would be this dumb the first time you hung out by yourselves."

Personally, "dumb" wouldn’t be the word I would choose to describe us.  No myself, at least. Jungkookie can be just a little sometimes.  

I left them after a while because they needed their time alone. 

Jimin: Seeing Jungkook through video is nothing compared to seeing him in real life. Seeing him that close, getting to hug, smell, and touch him. I knew I had missed him, but I didn’t realize until then how much . I even felt a little stupid, missing him that much because of just a few months. I was laughing like a stupid person too. But I didn’t care, he was laughing as much as I was.

Jungkook: While I was away, I took pictures of everything that reminded me of him, or when something would happen and I thought “Oh, I need to tell Jimin when I see him”, I would write these things on the notes app on my cell phone, making sure I wouldn’t forget anything. So after calming down, we laid on his bed, and I showed him all the stuff I’d wanted to show and tell him during those months. It was worth the wait, seeing his reactions so up close. 

Jimin: It was really silly of me, thinking that Jungkook was going to grow out of my reach. I realized it then, with him showing me how much he thought of me everywhere. 

Jungkook: After this, he asked me, ordered me even, to show him what I had learned abroad. It was so fun, doing something we both loved so much. I felt a little overwhelmed, too, because even though Jimin hadn't danced since high school, he was still so good. He used to do contemporary dance, and the routine I showed him was mostly b-boying; but he still was so quick to learn the steps, and he did it with such grace, even if we were half-joking. He’s truly a born dancer, it amazes me all the time. 

Jimin: Taehyung came a little later when Jungkook and I were both lying on the floor, so tired we couldn’t lift a finger and soaked in sweat. He was bringing us food, then he stopped at the door and said, with his straightest face: I hope I haven’t interrupted anything. It was hilarious, I wished I’d had more energy to laugh appropriately. 

Taehyung: This time, I had some wine hidden. Thought the occasion deserved something fancier than beer, even if the wine was a cheap one. 

Jimin: I’m not one who gets drunk easily, but we were all so happy that night that we got more than just tipsy with just two bottles. 

Taehyung: I remember we were discussing what we would do the next night, and I wanted to pest Jungkook a bit because he was acting like a brat again with me, so I started: “It’s a shame we can’t go to a club because we have a child among us.” He got up from Jimin’s lap so fast and said “I’m not a child”, with his baby pout. 

Jimin: I remember finding it really funny, everything seemed funny. Taehyung continued with “Ok, Mr. Teenager”, and I found the nickname hilarious, but couldn't laugh, because it would look like I was taking sides. 

Taehyung: He said “I’m not a child, I have done and seen enough things” and he looked kinda serious, and for a second I was scared I was pushing him too much, but even so, I laughed and asked, “You did? Like what?”. I don’t know, I thought he would brag about what he’d done  in Los Angeles, but the next second he was kissing me! Right on the mouth!

I kissed back, of course, I’m no coward. 

Jungkook: Taehyung-hyung will tell you it was my first kiss. Just so you know, he’s lying. 

Taehyung:  It was Jungkookie's first kiss! He’s gonna try to hide it, but I really was his first one. 

Jungkook: I’ve kissed plenty of people before him. Not plenty... But enough. Some. A handful, maybe. Two. I really was a shy kid. But that’s not the point.  I wouldn’t have any problem telling people that I had my first kiss with Tae-hyung, but I didn’t! He just tells that to everyone because he’s a twisted bastard.   

Taehyung: It’s truly an honor being a protagonist on such a special milestone for our little Jungkookie. 

Jimin: Taehyungie wasn’t Jungkook’s first kiss, but he really was the first boy Jungkook ever kissed. 

Jungkook: That night, I shared the bed with Jimin, and before sleeping, I said: "I kissed Taehyung". He said he’d seen it, and asked if I liked it. I asked if he didn’t mind, because I was afraid, really afraid. But he looked confused and asked “Oh, do you think I got jealous because of Taehyung? You don’t have to worry, it’s fine.” Gave me a pat on the cheek and sent me to sleep. I wanted to laugh,  cry, a little bit of both. Because to him, being jealous of me wasn’t even a possibility. 

Taehyung: I thought that since  Jungkook and I had kissed, he wouldn't be a dick to me anymore. But the very next morning he was treating me just as bad as always: polite, on the verge of being rude, barely looking at me. It made me really sad, I almost panicked. I thought I was a really bad kisser. 

Jimin said I was being silly and that I am an excellent kisser, his words, not mine, but I still felt like one of these people who drown others in saliva. It was a terrible time for me. But don’t worry, Jungkook and I have kissed a ton of times after that, so now I'm okay, there’s nothing wrong with my kisses, if you’re curious.

Jungkook: I know that past Jungkook was being a dick, I know it very well, but I was so jealous. Because to Taehyung, it was so easy to kiss me, like it was nothing, he acted like this afterward, like kissing was a thing he does with everyone. And when I asked Jimin if he was jealous, he immediately thought I was asking if he was jealous of Taehyung, so I put these two pieces of information together and concluded that kissing was probably a normal thing to do between them. So I acted a little bitter with Taehyung because of that on the next day. 

I think things kinda added up because they lived together, were the same age, and shared the same kind of things, with college and stuff. They could go clubbing after a hard week of classes and I wasn’t even old enough to drink, was still in high school, couldn’t go out on most days, and on top of that, had just spent six months away. 

So the day after the kiss, I wasn’t the best version of myself. At least I could blame the hangover, not that they believed it.  

 Jimin: I thought Jungkook regretted the kiss and didn’t know how to act around Taehyung anymore. And kind of around me, too, but after lunch Taehyung left to meet some friends of his and then things got better. But it ached a bit, that I couldn’t spend more time with both of them together. 

Jungkook: Taehyung stayed away for the rest of the weekend and I knew it was my fault. The selfish part of me was a bit glad that Jimin and I had a good time on the other days nevertheless. After dawn, on Sunday, Jimin went to the bus station with me, and while we waited for the bus, he started  talking really seriously to me. He said he didn’t know why I was treating Taehyung badly, not after I’d  seemed to have warmed up to him, but that he, Jimin, would really like that we at least tried to get along. I knew I was the only one not trying anything, and that Taehyung always treated me nicely, even with all the pestering. And then he said, “Taehyung usually doesn’t bother with this, but yesterday it really seemed to bother him. I know you’re a nice guy, and you’re always so kind, so you wouldn’t do it on purpose, right?”. And I was really, really ashamed of how I acted. 

Jimin: I was mostly talking about the fact that Jungkook left Taehyung thinking he was a bad kisser. 

Jimin: One day, when I was going to work, Taehyung sent me a text that said: "Guess who I’m with". And next thing, he sends me a photo of him and Jungkook at an internet cafe. It was no surprise that if they both became friends, they would act like nerds like that. They are so similar, I always thought they would take no time at all to be friends. But even if it had taken a while, it really made my heart all big and warm that they were trying. 

Jungkook: About two weeks after I arrived in Seoul, my vocal lessons were canceled because my tutor fell ill. I had free time when I usually didn’t and didn’t know what to do with it, but then I remembered what Jimin had told me, so I gave it a try. 

Taehyung: I was really surprised when he  texted asking if I wanted to meet. I asked if he was hitting on me, and he told me to forget it and that he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I didn’t forget it and told him to meet me at an internet cafe, because I knew we both liked it, and if we were playing we wouldn’t have to talk too much. 

 That was a terrible idea. He absolutely crushed me in every game we played and, you see, usually, I am the cocky bastard who crushes others. 

Jungkook: Taehyung is a terrible loser. 

Jungkook: I always liked loving Jimin, it is such a good feeling, being in love. So I didn’t care if I never acted on these feelings, because just loving Jimin was enough for me, feeling the butterflies, being giddy after seeing him, after talking to him. I still liked it, but I realized that Jimin wouldn’t like me back anytime soon, so I couldn’t  keep just living with my feelings: I had to move on. 

I had realized, too, that I had distanced myself from other people, but I think it came a lot from the fact I was in this industry and nobody felt solid enough to cling to. But maybe I also did it based on some sort of unnecessary fidelity that I had to Jimin.

So, on this new journey of mine, I had decided that I needed to open up. Not to everyone though, because the entertainment industry still sucked.

I had a lot of thoughts for a boy who didn’t have any time at all. 

But that’s how I got to get closer to Mingyu. 

Kim Mingyu [Seventeen’s member, Jungkook’s ex-boyfriend]: To me, by that time, we were already friends. I had his number and we were in the same classes and we ate together, even. So one day in September, after summer break, he was telling me about all these things he wanted to change in himself, like making new friends and stuff, and I stopped him and asked “Are we not already friends?” and he had such a look on his face, he stared at me so confused. He said that maybe it was because what he thought about friendship was different, and I joked, asking what it took for him to consider someone as a friend: "A kiss?". And he said, “well, I kissed the last guy I became friends with.”. And then we were both embarrassed: him because he said he kissed a boy, and me, because I had just discovered the boy I had a little crush on kissed boys and his friends. 

Jungkook: I thought: that’s it, I’m not telling anything about myself to anyone anymore! The first time I tried to open up, I ended up saying too much and outing myself. Mingyu told me later that he was trying to say something after my confession, but it looked like he couldn’t and he was just really red and opening and closing his mouth as if he were asphyxiating. I was on the verge of an attack too, so when the bells rang to go to class, I left running. 

Mingyu: It was really hard to catch him after that because he tried so hard to avoid me. I tried to send him notes during class and he pretended he didn't see it! I had to wait till classes were over to finally get to talk to him, and it gave me time to think about what I would tell him to let him know that I didn’t find anything wrong with liking men and that he didn’t have to worry. 

Jungkook: Once classes were over, he pushed me into a corner and blurted out: “If you have to kiss to be friends, you can kiss me, too.” Then he put a hand over his mouth and started stuttering, saying that wasn’t what he was going to say.

Mingyu: Now I was the one wanting to run, and he was laughing so much that everyone was looking, and if it took too long Dokyeom would show up too, and ask what was going on, and if he knew then the rest of my members would know too, and it would be the end of me because they don’t forget any humiliation. But he stopped laughing and said he had an hour free and asked if I wanted to eat something. 

Jungkook: We shared half of a hamburger because we were feeling like rebels, but not enough to eat something with as many calories as a whole hamburger and risk it showing on our weekly evaluations because he was a trainee just like me, and he is even more of a coward. We didn’t kiss, but I felt like I had just made a real friend there.

Here enters Kim Seokjin and Min Yoongi

Jungkook: That wasn’t the only time when I bent the rules after coming back home. Since I had this whole project of opening myself up, I was getting attached to the other members at the dorm, mostly the ones who had lived with me for longer. So when Yugyeom, a trainee with the same age as me, called me to go to a festival where upcoming indie bands would perform, I said sure. He said he would get me a fake ID  “just in case”, and I felt so cool. 

Taehyung: Jungkook sent me a selca of himself with the worst pair of glasses and a fake ID saying “who is the kid now?”. I laughed so hard my tummy hurt, then showed it to Jimin. 

Jungkook: So, on the day we had to sneak out, I was so nervous but pretended to be cool, because Yugyeom acted like he did it all the time, and he probably did. And it was so easy? Just as easy as sneaking out of my house to meet Jimin, back in Busan. The festival was held in Seongsu-dong, the same neighborhood where we lived, so we went there walking. It was an open space that seemed a lot like an abandoned parking lot, with a stage in the back, where some cover band was playing Akmu. On the streets, just outside, there were a lot of food stalls. I could smell tteokbokki in the air mixed with whatever the people in there were smoking. 

It was quite dark and cold, and earlier that day Yugyeom and I had to do a really hard dance practice routine. On any other day my bones would have been like jelly, but that night, I felt like anything could happen. Like I could do anything. 

We ate and looked around, talked to some people. Yugyeom did most of the talking, because he already knew a few of them. So, by that time, the cover band had already left, and when I stopped to really pay attention to the new song that was playing, it was so good, like, as good as music from a professional band. The vocals were good, but the instrumental was on another level. I felt like I had to see it from up close, so I made my way to the front of the stage. 

Kim Seokjin [Capstone’s drummer]: Two days before the festival, a friend of mine called me and said “Seokjin-ah, our drummer hurt his hands and we’re supposed to play at the festival, but we can’t without the drums, please, please cover for him”, and it made me really angry because two days is such short notice. But since I’m a really nice guy, an amazing guy, you see, I accepted it, even with so little time.

He said he would pay me in cash and for anything I consumed at the festival, too.

Jungkook: Even though the drum is usually on top of a platform, most people still don't focus enough on the drummer, who is at the back of the stage; just on the vocalists and sometimes on guitarists and bassists. It's a shame, because they're missing out on a lot. But it is impossible not to focus on Jin-hyung when he’s playing. You just can't see him on a stage, sitting behind a drum, and not have eyes for him only, because he fuckin owns the stage even while sitting, even if the whole place is dark. It's a lot, having so much charisma, enough to grab a tight hold on the public even in the position that least interacts with the crowd. So, when I saw him playing that night, I couldn't take my eyes off him. I said to Yugyeom: "I want him in my band", and he said, "Jungkook, you don't have a band".

Seokjin: I think I did an amazing job playing that night. I had a lot of people coming to see me, praising me, after the performance. I deserved every bit of that, but it still felt very nice. Later, when I was enjoying my free food with Yoongi, this boy came to me, with thick eyeliner, a big nose, and a plug earring. He said: "I’m thinking of forming a band". I said “good”, because that wasn’t my problem. 

Jungkook: Earlier, Yugyeom had told me Seokjin wasn’t the official drummer of the band, just a substitute, and I was so amazed; because even without being a member in the band, it was like he owned the group. So when I saw him a few hours after his performance, I didn’t think before going to him and talking about my new band. His reply was discouraging, but I continued with “I want you in that band.”. He laughed. Another man, shorter, appeared from behind him, saying “At least tell us your name before inviting him into such a commitment.”

Min Yoongi [producer, ex-manager, currently the band’s best friend]: He bowed 90º, apologizing. That boy sure never did anything by half. He told us his name and said he was a trainee, suspiciously forgetting to say his age, but anyone could tell that he was younger than us. So young that he shouldn’t have been there. He was calling us “ssi”, so I told him he could call me and Seokjin-hyung by “hyung”. Hyung started arguing with me because it wasn’t my decision to make, but he was just being annoying.

Seokjin: I asked him who the other members of the said band were, and he looked me dead in the eyes and said “till now, only you”. I couldn’t believe that kid, at least he had the decency to look a bit flustered.

Jungkook: Seokjin-hyung didn’t seem to be interested in joining my band, so Yoongi-hyung laughed it off and said it was just that he liked  acting like an old person. Yoongi was very interested in talking to me after I told him I was a trainee. He told me that he himself was a producer and gave me his card, asking me to sing for him one day. I felt like I had just been recognized by a very cool person, and it gave me such a proud feeling, my fingers were aching to call him right away even if he was still in front of me. We talked a lot about music, for so long that we even moved to a restaurant nearby, because we couldn’t stay in front of the food stand forever, with tons of people passing between us. Seokjin-hyung paid for everything. I found this very cool and nice of him too. 

Yoongi: I realized something that day, and it proved itself true the more I got to know Jungkook: he acts as if he has just fallen in love, and the person he’s in love with loves him too, and he knows, and suddenly the world is a better place, and every little thing has its own magic. I was amazed by that, how he looked at Seokjin-hyung and me like we hung the moon in the sky, how he looked so happy just for having dinner, for talking about music, which is something he loves so much, and I admired him immediately because he was really genuine about that. 

Seokjin: At some point, we were talking about how it was like to be a trainee, and he started venting about his schedule and how tiring it was. I felt bad for him, while also feeling incredibly glad that I never returned SM’s call after the audition. 

Jungkook: It felt too soon when Yugyeom called me asking where I was, saying we had to go home, but I still walked all the way back home feeling like I was walking on clouds and that hundreds of paths had just opened up to me that night. And they did, really. 

Jungkook: Spending time abroad, meeting Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung… I think those things made me wake up, somehow, and realize how unhappy I had been until then. Before that, I didn’t have time to think about it, really. I would wake up and have duties and by the time I went to sleep, I was too exhausted for anything else. And for me, it was all worth it because I had a goal, and that's why I was doing all of it. But I went to LA, and I had time, I could breathe, and I came back to Korea and everything felt too hard after  seeing the more humane alternative. 

But even so, I was doing it because I love music, I love to sing, and I wanted my voice to reverberate. Then I met Seokjin-hyung, who was a feral performer, and he was free. And Yoongi-hyung, who loves music till death and talks about it with such passion, and this love doesn’t make him sick. They  showed me that I can love something without having it kill me. 

I talked to mom. I had to call her because I wouldn’t make it to Busan anytime soon, so we couldn’t have this talk face to face. She said that I knew it better, because it was about my happiness, so whatever I chose, she would support me, but that I just had to be sure of it, because it was a big decision. And if I wanted to drop everything, she would be waiting for me in Busan. 

I hadn't realized until then, that leaving the company would also mean that I had to go back home. I love Busan, I really do, and loved it in the same way back then, but it just didn’t feel like Busan was the place where I should be. The idea of coming back home felt too much like losing. 

After we hung up the call, I was really struck by how much I was loved, and even if being loved is an amazing feeling, sometimes it feels so heavy, because there are people who trust me, trust anything I would choose, but what if I don’t live up to this trust? What if I make the wrong choice and keep making them, what if I ruin my life? How long will they support me after I mess up? 

Sometimes we don’t want to be trusted, don’t want to be adults. Sometimes we want people to make the hard choices for us. 

Jimin: One day, Jungkook called me after school, saying “What if I quit this?”. I asked what ‘this’ meant, even if I had an idea. He said “This, this idol thing”, and proceeded to tell me about going out in the middle of the night and meeting those new hyungs of his. I knew he wasn’t the happiest, being a trainee, I knew it was so hard that it hurt even me, who was only watching. Even so, Jungkook wanting to quit surprised me. He said he wasn’t sure yet, but after hearing him talk for a while, I knew he knew too well what he would do. And I trusted him a hundred percent on that.

Jungkook: I talked to Mingyu too, asked if he would ever consider it. He said that not at that moment, not when he was this close to debuting, but that this wasn’t a life to live when you’re not sure, because a lot of things are at stake. 

So eventually, I scheduled a meeting with the CEO of the company, Choi Chaebeom sajang-nim. The time came too soon, and I was so nervous. I remember my hands were sweaty when I sat to talk to him. When I said I was having second thoughts about being an idol, he listened to me well, and it was going more smoothly than I had expected. He said he understood me, that it sure was a hard life. 

I felt optimistic for a bit. But then he asked his secretary for a copy of my contract, and read a clause that said if I gave up before debuting, I would have to pay back the amount of money they invested in me; the housing, the food, my school, clothes, the classes I had to take: vocal lessons, dance lessons, language classes. And, of course, my time in the US, where everything they had paid for me, they paid in dollars. 

It was like the ground under me had disappeared. This hadn't seemed relevant when I signed the contract because, to me, I would never give up, but now that I wanted to, I would have a debt so huge that I didn’t want to even calculate the total amount. He saw the dejection on my face and proposed to give me a month or so to think about it.

I asked if I could spend that one month away, since I didn’t want my debt to grow. Choi Chaebeom sajang-nim accepted, but told me that I wouldn’t be getting paid for that month. 

Choi Chaebeom, [ex-member of the k-pop group Desire, CEO of CCB Ent.]: Giving extra time away wasn’t something I would do for any trainee, but when you have a Jeon Jungkook on your hands, you have to be extra gentle so he won't leave. 

Yoongi: One night Jungkook sent me a text asking if we could meet, and it seemed pretty urgent, so I sent him my address. We had been talking a little since we'd met, he was a cool kid, but I had never expected to see him at my door with what seemed to be all of his things, saying: “hyung, I think I just got a huge debt.”

Jungkook: I don’t know what made me search for them instead of Jimin back then. Maybe because it would be a hard deal pretending to the dean at Jimin's dorm that I was only passing by when I was carrying all my stuff with me, or maybe because they had way less expectations on me than Jimin, so it didn’t matter much if Yoongi-hyung and Seokjin-hyung saw me at that moment when I was so lost. Or, because I was sure Jimin would understand me right on the bat, and I wanted someone to hear my story and just say “You’re so fucked”. 

Yoongi: Seokjin-hyung made him a cup of tea and we made him sit on the couch. He told us the story like it was something that had happened to another person; like when you’re so in shock that reality hasn't hit you yet, he was like that. 

Seokjin: After he told us, Yoongi took a deep breath, and I said: "You’re so fucked". And he started laughing! Poor thing had gone crazy. Yoongi told him he could still think it over and if he wanted, he could go back, because he had time, but despite having been on the verge of a breakdown since he came into our house, he looked at us dead serious and said no. 

Jungkook: I had finally decided what I was feeling and what I wanted. Before, I didn’t have the time to even realize how frustrated I was, and to me, being an idol was everything I could ever do. But since that night at the festival, when I put the thought of being in a band on my mind, being an idol was not even close to what I wanted. So with debt or not, I wasn’t coming back. 

Seokjin: Yoongi decided that we all should sleep, and the next day we would think about it again with fresh minds. I always thought one day Yoongi would bring a cat or a dog home, or that I would do it, but had never, in my entire life, expected him to bring a random kid. I remember that when I went to bed I was so astonished! You know, I didn’t even know the kid and suddenly he was living on my couch. 

Jungkook: I didn’t think really, what I would do the next day, or the next few days, and where I would sleep then. But I never expected to live with them. On the first night, I called Jimin and my mom. Jimin said that I could always live secretly at his dorm, and he was serious about it. Mom asked if I was sure if I didn’t want to go back to Busan just for a few weeks, if I needed money, and such. I, myself, had my own money that I had saved up until then, and I didn't plan on staying there for much longer, but the days passed one by one and I didn’t even notice. 

Yoongi: Things went really smoothly with Jungkook there. I never would have expected it because Seokjin-hyung and I are both introverts and we value having our own space. But it was so easy to adapt to Jungkook, and for him to adapt to us. 

At first, hyung was all talk about me adopting a kid without telling him beforehand and shit like that, but on the morning after Jungkook came, the two of them were joking as if they were made for each other. On the second morning… I think? Hyung woke up early, which he never does, and went to the living room screaming at Jungkook that just because his life was falling apart it didn't mean his grades had to, so he had to go to school. Then he made Jungkook’s breakfast and lunch and took him to school in his car. It didn’t surprise me at all. 

Jungkook: It had been quite a while since someone took care of me like this, I think I smiled from ear to ear all the way to school, like a fool. And because hyung is so damn funny, too. At lunch, I proudly showed my homemade bentō to all my friends. 

Jungkook: Yoongi-hyung and I talked a lot. About my future. Sometimes Seokjin-hyung would join too. I knew what I wanted to do: to be in a band, make music, and have Seokjin-hyung be my drummer. But besides that, I didn’t have anything. And I was so frustrated, not even a week had passed since I moved there, but I grew more anxious with every passing second.

Yoongi: It didn’t take long before Jungkook was comfortable enough to ask if his friends could pay him a visit. I think it was a week after he came? He would usually leave to meet them, but he said that Jimin wanted to meet the guys who were sheltering him, and that Taehyung was just curious. I usually get a little uneasy before meeting someone new, but I was so pressed about meeting Jimin because Jungkook talked about him all the time. 

 In some weird way, I felt like I had to impress him somehow. 

Jimin: I think I loved Yoongi-hyung and Seokjin-hyung a little bit even before meeting them, just because of how well they treated Jungkook, how they took him in without even knowing the boy, and how they helped him. When Jungkook told me about the bentō box, trying to keep it cool but failing to hide how happy it made him, was when I first fell for them, I think, and I fell deeper the more he told me about their daily life together. 

So I was really on my nerves before finally meeting them. And later I realized I didn’t have to be at all. I know now how shy Seokjin-hyung is, but back then I would never have been able to tell by the way he would go out of his way to make us comfortable, telling us jokes, some even at his cost. And Yoongi-hyung would always make sure that everyone was fine, in his own, quiet way. He even made us dinner, and it was so delicious that I remember it even after all this time.

It all made me really happy because I saw how Jungkookie was in excellent hands, and because I was making excellent new friends, too. 

Taehyung: They were so nice, at first I really thought they were a couple, not just because they acted like they were in their 70s and had been married for the past 50 years, but because Jungkook always talked about them like they were one and the same, you know. Not Seokjin and Yoongi but SeokjinYoongi. But when I asked if they were dating, Yoongi-hyung looked at me like the idea was so absurd, and Seokjinnie started fighting him at the bat, asking why he’d made that face and saying that he was “ too much for him, by the way”. I smiled through it all, because it proved my point that they looked like an old couple. 

And because if they were both single, I would have a chance with them. Jungkook had never said they were this hot. 

Jungkook: The thing about living with these hyungs is that they were very frugal. Not because their things were cheap, but they didn’t think of buying extra stuff for an apartment where originally only two people lived. So everything was thought to accommodate only Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung: there were only two chairs to a very tiny table in the kitchen, and only one loveseat to sit in at the living room. That loveseat was my bed, by the way. They only had more than just a single pair of glasses and dishes and cutlery because their parents would sometimes visit. It was fine since they weren’t ones to have people coming over, but with the two of them, me, Taehyung-hyung, and Jimin, there was just nowhere for all of us to sit, or to have dinner. 

Dinners on the center table and fights to decide who would sit on the loveseat became a very frequent thing. 

Seokjin: I knew all about Jungkook’s massive crush on Jimin because this kid isn’t subtle at all, but seeing them both together was a whole different thing. It was cute at first, the way both of them were always making sure the other had everything they needed, the way Jungkook always went overboard to make Jimin laugh, how they touched each other every minute. I had noticed it since the first time I met Jimin and saw them together, but this never changed, even with all these years. In fact, they became more disgusting by the second. 

I won't mention the weird ‘Jimin-ssi’ and ‘Jungkook-ssi’ running inside joke they have. I think this is some kind of weird roleplay of theirs. Another thing they still keep from years ago.

Jungkook: At some point of the night, when we’d all had our dinner and everyone was having soju, except for me, because Seokjin-hyung “wasn't keeping any criminal” and ordered me to wait until I was an adult to drink before his presence, even with me saying I could hold my drink very well, me and my future became the subject. We talked about what I wanted, the band, and what I would do to form one when I had no plans at all. 

 I said I had one plan, and that was: Kim Seokjin. Because he sure was gonna be my drummer. 

He laughed and said that I didn’t need any alcohol because I was already drunk with just soda. 

Yoongi: Hyung ended up agreeing that if Jungkook managed to find the rest of the band, he could be a temporary drummer. Just till he found someone to fill the place, nothing permanent. We’d had this talk, Seokjin-hyung and I, a few nights prior, when I asked him the same thing and he said that “of course, he would help for a while”, but first he would deny it just to see Jungkook’s stubbornness. 

Jimin: I guess the alcohol made me a little bolder and more honest with my feelings, even if I had barely had any drinks, because I had never thought about being in a band till then, but when Seokjing-hyung agreed to join, I blurted out: "I can play for you, too, just the way you played for me, back then". 

Seokjin: At first I thought he was flirting. 

Taehyung: When Jimin drinks, everything he says is so flirty, I don’t think he fully understands how much of a seducing machine he is. 

Yoongi: But Jungkook understood him well and sounded really serious when he said, “No”. Jimin tried to play it off, smiling as if he were joking, but I could see the hurt and surprise in his eyes when Jungkook refused it. 

Jungkook: My life was a mess as it already was, and even if I wouldn’t take any other option, I knew that I’d done a very impulsive thing and put my future on the line because of that, but I couldn’t make Jimin, of all people, do the same. Not with almost zero guarantees that things would work out in the end. 

Taehyung: Now, things got kinda weird after that, and while Jimin acted like he was fine, I could see through his bullshit and tell he wasn’t, so I pretended that I was drunk and sleepy and told everybody we were going home. 

I had hoped that Jimin would tell me what was happening on our way back, but he was quiet the whole time. 

Jimin: It was so… unexpected, him saying no to me. I’m not entitled enough to expect he will always agree to everything I ask, but refusing like that? In a way that didn't leave any room to argue? Why would he do that? What did I do wrong? Was it the way I said it? He didn’t want me around with his new thing, with his new friends? I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that, and I was so frustrated! If it were just because I wasn't a good enough guitarist to be in a band, he would've said so, and in a better way.

 The whole way to the dorm I was fighting the urge to just go back to the apartment and ask what had happened. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep with it anyhow, so when Taehyung snuck onto our building through the balcony of a friend of ours, I stayed behind and called Jungkook, because I knew he would be awake too.

Jungkook: After Taehyung-hyung and Jimin-hyung left, Yoongi-hyung, Seokjin-hyung, and I started cleaning the mess left behind. The entire time they talked about light things, about how was finally meeting Taehyung and Jimin, how fun they were, but I could tell they were looking at me weirdly, not in a bad way, per se, but like they wanted to know what happened, but didn’t want to pry. I was glad, because my heart felt so heavy ever since Jimin had looked at me like a kicked puppy, and even if I kept repeating to myself that I did what was best, I was so guilty, and sorry, because I could have said it better, and not in front of everyone. 

Then he called me. The first thing he said when I picked up the phone was “What’s wrong?”

Jimin: He just said: “I’m sorry.” I had so much pent-up frustration till that moment, and part of me was thinking I had gone crazy because everything felt too much, and if I had to look at things objectively I would think I was overreacting. I knew I was, but I couldn’t change my feelings either. But I think I have some kind of curse on me, because every time I hear Jungkook’s voice, something inside me softens immediately. That time wasn’t any different, so all I could do was whisper a weak “what happened?”.

Jungkook: I told him that I’d risked enough for me, that he had so much , he was in the middle of college, and already had an internship. His life was going the right way. I didn’t want him to take any risks because of me, or to also put his life on the line. Especially if it were out of pity.

 In the end, he asked “that’s just it?” and when I said yes, he said that was bullshit. I got irked and said that bullshit or not, I still didn’t want him to do it. 

Jimin: Then fuck everything I said about his voice softening me because it was past midnight, I was in the middle of campus, and I still screamed at my phone “good luck with your fucking band of just one then!” and hung up. Then sneaked into my building and spent the following hours venting to Taehyung about it.

Taehyung: It was really naive of Jungkook to think Jimin would choose anything other than Jungkook in any scenario. 

Jungkook: My hyungs were by my side during most of the call, and when I filled them in on what had happened, Seokjin-hyung laughed a bit and said: “he sure is lively, huh?”, agreeing with Jimin. So he got serious and said that it wouldn’t hurt to consider it, "You can see it as a trial, you may like to think that I am a definite member of the band, but I am not, and Jimin doesn't have to be either. If things don't go well for him, he can always leave. And, do you really have the guts to tell Jimin you don't want him in your band again?", and if that wasn’t enough, Yoongi added: "Despite the risk, do you really not want Jimin in the band? Because from what I know, I can't see you not wanting Jimin in any aspect of your life." 

And fuck, they were so right; it was embarrassing, especially that last point. 

I was incredibly glad to have them, too, because once again they were helping me beyond what I deserved. I told them that, and Seokjin-hyung said he was naturally a good soul, and Yoongi-hyung told me to stop being silly, because he would gladly help anytime, and then he told me to sleep. 

Taehyung: On the next day, Seokjin called us to have lunch at their house. Jimin isn’t a morning bird, but he still woke up before noon on a Saturday just to say he wasn’t going and that he didn’t want to see Jungkook. He is a hell of a petty guy, so it took me a lot to convince him that he should go, not because of Jungkook, but because of himself, because we’d heard a lot about Seokjin’s cooking abilities and I would die if I skipped the opportunity to eat his food. Eventually, he accepted, but said he wasn’t going to say a thing to Jungkook, and kept repeating it all the way to their house.  Which was a bigass lie. 

Seokjin: When I open the door, there is Jimin with this huge pout, looking like he is ready to fight. It was cute, but intimidating at the same time? I don’t know how he does this. I thought “well, Jungkook best be ready because he is going to have his ass beaten”. Taehyung still looked unfairly beautiful, if not more, during the day. 

Jimin: He told me to get Jungkook, who was playing in his room, which wasn’t suspicious at all. I said I had no interest in talking to Jungkook, because I didn't, I was still super mad at him. He said I didn’t have to talk to him, I could just go there and sit quietly and punish him with my silence so he would see how hard I was ignoring him. It was such silly reasoning but I’m not a very reasonable guy all the time, so I went with that. 

He screamed at my back: “No funny business in my room”, which nullified everything he’d said before. 

Taehyung: When Jimin was gone, Seokjin turned to me and asked if I could help him prepare the food because he was kinda late on it. Well, I’m a mess at cooking anything, but I wasn’t going to tell him, because I had this whole scenario in my head where he would see how bad I was at cutting vegetables and would romantically teach me how, while hugging me from behind and holding my hand over the knife. 

It didn’t happen, unfortunately. He had already cut everything he needed for the chamchi-jjigae and asked me only to wash the lettuce and prepare the rice. No romantic vegetable-cutting involved. 

Seokjin: I didn’t know how to be with Taehyung alone, because he was so beautiful and lively, and I was kind of afraid to make a fool of myself in front of him and then have to keep seeing him. But I had just sent Jungkook and Jimin to my room, and Yoongi wasn’t home, so I couldn’t leave him alone in the living room. 

Taehyung, however, wasn’t afraid at all of making a fool of himself and kept pouting and complaining about how he wanted to cut things and how I had already done everything before. I still have no idea why the hell he wanted to cut vegetables. Even so, I was a little dumbfounded with how easy it was to talk to him, how he acted like we had known each other for so long. While I was waiting for the tuna to cook, he sat on one of the counters and kept telling me stories about how he had met Jimin and later Jungkook, and all these crazy stories about his uni student life. Even if I hadn't been willing to talk, he could've managed a whole conversation by himself, because he has this habit of just saying anything that crosses his mind. But I was willing to talk, and I was happy to learn how our personalities really matched together, how it was easy to make him laugh. He has such a beautiful laugh, and an even more beautiful smile, in that quirky boxy shape. 

Taehyung: He was so funny, and charming, and I learned that day how sexy a man cooking is, like, when he rolled up his sleeves, suddenly the kitchen felt so hot. And I’m not the best around new people, but with him it was easy and I talked like the words were flying out of my mouth, and the whole time I felt like I was a bit in love. 

Seokjin: To be honest, when Jimin and Jungkook joined us, acting all lovey-dovey again, I was a little disappointed.

Jungkook: Seokjin-hyung is the best friend one can have, but sometimes he is such an asshole. The kind of asshole who sends your best friend, the one who you recently fought with, to the room where you are without warning you. 

When the door of hyung’s room opened, I ignored it because I thought it was him and kept playing, but after some time I thought it was strange, that he had entered the room, hadn’t left, and hadn’t said anything. So I looked and there was Jimin, sitting on the bed and sending daggers to me with his eyes.

It was a terrible start. I had wanted to talk to him and apologize since the talk with Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung the night before, and now he was there and I had fucking ignored him for a few good minutes. 

I sat with him on the bed, said “Jimin”, he turned his face away and said, “I’m ignoring you.”

Jimin: He laughed at my face! I couldn’t believe it, it made me so mad that if I hadn't been ignoring him, he sure would have listened a lot!

But then he took my hands, said “Jimin” again, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Jungkook: I explained again why I didn’t want him in the band, said more, said that I was afraid of one day waking up regretting everything I’d chosen and not being able to turn back, that I didn’t want him to be afraid of the same thing. That it was so scary, to be on this project when I didn't have anything substantial and everything depended on me. Seokjin-hyung would help but he said it was just for a while, and after that? So my drummer was temporary, and I didn’t have a bassist or a guitarist. And I loved Jimin for wanting to help me, but I needed him to be sure because it was his life and my life on the line.

Then he hugged me.

Jimin: He seemed a lot like he needed a hug, so I hugged him. And he held me so tight for a while. When we moved away, I took his face in my hands to make sure he was looking into my eyes when I said “I want to be part of this band, I want to do it for you, of course, but I’m making this decision for me too.” 

Jungkook: So he said: “We came here together, right? Makes sense that we do this together, too.” And I couldn’t believe how many times I could fall for Park Jimin all over again.

Jimin: There's something that everyone goes through when in college: meeting someone that’s better than us. Not just one, but lots of people, better, smarter, that would be a much more skilled professional than you ever could. And then you think "what am I doing here? Is this really what I wanted to do?" And oh, it's not a nice feeling, not when it stays with you no matter how much you study, how many nights you lose sleep, and then your hair is falling, and your skin is just shit, and you still are not the best, not even close. On top of it, you hate your job, too, and you think “is it for this kind of job that I’m giving so much of myself?” So, when Jungkook says he wants to form a band, and when he needs members for that band, you say you want to join it too. When he says that you need to be sure of it, that you don’t need to do it for him, you say “of course I will ”. 

 I had to choose between living a life thinking I was a failure or living a life where Jungkook looked at me like I was a miracle, and between the certainty of the first and all the chances of the former going wrong, of course I would choose Jungkook’s gaze. Some can say it took a lot of courage, but sometimes I think it all made me more of a coward, how fast it was for me to chicken out of my past life. 

Yoongi: Jimin tends to forget that it takes a ton of courage to give something up.

Jungkook: After Jimin and I were done talking we helped put the food on the table, then Yoongi-hyung came and we started eating. In the middle of lunch, Taehyung said: "I want to be part of a band too!”. I was so tired with the whole situation I had just gone through with Jimin that I just asked if he played any instrument, to which he replied, with the proudest smile, "Yes, I'm great at trombone!". I couldn’t believe my ears, and we all looked dead serious at him, except for Jimin, who gave him a huge supportive smile. And just then, after almost a minute of complete silence, Taehyung added, "and I can play some bass too." 

Taehyung: To tell you the truth, I'm not great at trombone. I was trying to learn at that time, but quickly gave up after some complaints from the guys who lived next to us at the dorm. I just wanted to mess with Jungkook a little. 

Jimin: Taehyung playing the trombone is the most cursed thing that I have ever listened to, but I wasn't going to say anything when he said he could play. I am a great friend, you see. 

Yoongi: I knew they were all friends and stuff, and I didn’t want to be the party boomer, but if Jungkook had just dropped something he spent years of his life building, he’d better think everything through, about forming a band with them because they were friends, about how playing guitar and bass as a hobby and as a job is different, and whether Jimin and Taehyung would really dedicate themselves to it. I told them that back then, because I thought it was all going a little recklessly. 

Taehyung: I took that to the core and as a challenge, I thought “I am going to be so bassist , the best bassist, there won't be any other bassist more bassist than me.” 

Jimin: I understood he was looking after Jungkook, but it hurt a little, he thought that I was doing things by halves and that I took this as some kid play because I was Jungkook’s friend. Because I am Jungkook’s friend, I gave everything I had to this band. I still do. 

Jungkook: He also said that he was thinking. Thinking about the band and about the debt, and that the fate of both of these things could be solved at the same time. And “All it takes is Jungkook going back to his old label.”

Seokjin: He did such a pregnant pause after that, and it wasn’t the right time to do it, that dramatic asshole. 

Yoongi: You see, it is much easier to produce and to promote a band when you’re signed to a label, and if they started independently and with one of the members having a humongous debt, it sure would be hard to find the money to do things appropriately. But Jungkook was already signed to a label, and if he stayed there, he wouldn’t have to pay any debt, so what we had to do was to sell the idea of the band and get the rest of the members signed there. 

Jungkook: He said that if Choi sajang-nim weren’t interested in keeping me, he would've dropped me at the bat and taken the money, not given me more time, much less time away without working. It was all pretty reasonable, and just like that, over lunch, I had my band, and the draft of a plan for my future.

That was now our future. 

Taehyung: I was excited about having a plan, but I’d heard enough shit from Jungkook about CCB Ent. to not be too excited. 

Where’s My Everything?

Yoongi: Somehow I became a kind of manager to them. I asked myself “Why am I doing this? I barely know them.” every time I was doing some job for them. Taehyung and Seokjin-hyung had their own instruments, but Jimin had left his guitar in Busan. He knew how to play it since Jungkook taught him, but had neglected practice the harder his routine got, with school and work. So I rented better instruments to them, professional ones, so they would get used to it and sound better. Rented a space for practice too, in the same building I had my studio. 

We had a tight deadline because Jungkook and the CEO had agreed to meet again in less than a month, and before that, they had to practice to become better, work together as a band, and have at least one song so we could sell the idea of the band. 

And I kept repeating to myself “Why am I doing this?”. When I told this to Seokjin-hyung,  he laughed and said he asked himself the same all the time. But it was fun, he was having fun.

And indeed it was. 

Jungkook: Things were moving and I hadn’t felt this excited in so long. Even when I was a trainee, things felt so stagnant. I was never still, but even so, nothing would go anywhere. But now everything I did seemed like a big step. 

We usually start a piece of music by composing the instrumental, with everyone writing their own parts individually and later the lyrics. But that first time, we, as a group, had decided to compose our first song together, so we had to wait some time for Taehyung-hyung and Jimin-hyung to get better. The time felt too tight, but Yoongi-hyung said that even if we couldn’t create something that sounded good, he had tons of stuff on his computer ready, so he could give it to us if we needed it.

It sounded so cool. I asked how we could ever repay him for everything, and he said that I could do that when I became a filthy rich rockstar. 

So, while the other members were busy, I showed some of the lyrics I’d written to Yoongi-hyung, and we discussed which one of them would be better to record. We asked the other members’ opinion and hyung and I refined the lyrics to their final form. I felt happy with the choice because the song was about something I had been feeling for quite some time.

Jimin: I had classes in the morning and the internship in the afternoon, because I couldn’t give up everything till we got the contract. I would leave the place where I worked and go straight to the studio where we practiced till later in the evening. It had been quite some time since I’d played the guitar, so I had to get all the calluses back again. Then, I would come home sometime after midnight and do my homework.

You can say it was…tiring. But I got to know a bit how Jungkook  felt. 

Jungkook: The next weekend after we became a band, Taehyung’s family came to Seoul to see him and he decided to take the opportunity to tell them the news. My parents already knew about all of it, but Jimin's parents didn't, so we went to Busan so he could tell them. And I would get to see my family, too.

Jimin tried to pretend it was all fine, but I could see that he hadn't gotten any sleep the night before and that something was troubling his mind. So, on the way to Busan, I rested my head on his shoulder and started talking about how I was scared of seeing my parents for the first time since I'd dropped everything they fought for me to have. 

Jimin: Jungkook isn’t one to start personal conversations or to talk about his feelings, so it was really easy to read through him and understand that he was doing it so I would feel comfortable enough to talk too. This kid. 

I wasn’t really afraid, but I was. I don’t know how to explain, I always knew my parents would support me in whatever I chose, and that they only wanted me to be happy. I know it all and knew it back then too. 

But I also know that having a child in a big university like SNU is a reason of joy and pride not only to my immediate family but to my whole family: grandparents, uncles, aunties. Even if they all supported me, it wouldn’t be easy for them to accept. I knew I was giving up on too much. 

Jungkook: On the train, we also made a plan: Jimin would send me a text before the Talk began so I could go to his house, some time later, to interrupt their conversation. This way, Jimin would have an excuse to leave the room if things didn’t work out. A great way to avoid proper communication. 

Jimin: Nobody can resist Jungkook, much less resist younger Jungkookie when he was much cuter than he is now. So I knew for sure that if my mom saw him, she would stop everything to properly greet him in the house. 

Jungkook: Even if I'd started talking about my troublesome thoughts only to encourage Jimin to talk about his, I was kinda nervous myself too.

After I got home, I greeted Mom and Dad with a deep bow, said that I was sorry for being a troublesome kid, that I was sorry for giving up something they'd helped me so much with, and asked for them to continue trusting me, because I was going to make them proud one day. 

They helped me get over it and told me to stop being silly, because they were already proud of me, and nothing would change it.

I cried a little bit… A whole lot, actually.

Afterward, they talked my ear off saying I was crazy for staying with people I barely knew, and “Why didn’t you go to Jimin’s?” “Why didn’t you ask us for money to stay in a hotel?” “What if they were bad people? What if they had bad intentions?” “Who are their parents?” “Where are they from?” “What are their branch families?” “How can you overstay the courtesy by living on other people’s couch?” 

Then my mother called Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung to apologize for the bad manners of her kid, offering to pay for my stay at their house. She asked if I wasn’t causing any trouble, and invited them to visit Busan someday. Then she called their parents too.

During every call, I remember my ears were burning with shame. I was mortified thinking about hyungs' reactions when I went back to Seoul. I knew that I would never see the end of their teasing and I wanted to hide and die already. 

Jimin: As I knew, I shouldn’t have been afraid at all. 

My parents listened quietly as I told them what I wanted to do, and why I wanted to do it. They listened quietly as I told them that I was sorry for not bringing pride to the family with my decision. Then they hugged me, really tight, one from each side, and my mom said “It wouldn’t be a reason for pride at all if you were in a big college while feeling unhappy with it. Rather, it would bring us shame, because how could we, as parents, let our son feel like this?”. My father said: “And we watched you on stage all your life, we aren’t even a bit surprised that you want to continue on with it.”

So when Jungkook came, I was crying and on my knees thanking my parents for giving birth to me and raising me and loving me as they do. He came when I was in such a situation. 

Jungkook: His younger brother opened the door for me and wordlessly pointed to what was happening in the living room. When I saw Jimin and his parents hugging on the floor, I said to his brother that I would come back later. Then I walked some houses down the street, and when I saw he'd closed the door, I came back and sat on the sidewalk in front of their house, waiting for the time when Jimin would need me.

Some time later Jimin came, sat by my side, with his face all puffy from crying, and said “My mom saw you from the window and called you into the house already or you'll die of hyperthermia. She made hwachae too.” 

Jimin: When we were entering my house, I asked if he wanted to sleep over because I was feeling a little sensitive after crying so much. I didn’t tell him this part, of course. But he agreed immediately, and said he would just call his mother. 

This time, I was the one who played the guitar for him. 

Jungkook: When we went back to Seoul, both of us were carrying double the bags we’d taken to Busan. And all of them were packed with food. 

Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung went crazy when they saw the amount of food my mom sent us. Seokjin-hyung told me that I must go to Busan at least every weekend. I told this to mom, she laughed and said he was a wise kid. Wise, can you believe it? I never told this to hyung because it would boost his ego too much. 

Jimin: When I came back, I decided to drop out of school and the internship, but I thought I could at least wait for the end of the month while living at the dorm with Taehyung and having all my meals in the university restaurant. And I had to wait for the payroll too. 

While I waited, I kept thinking what a shame it was that Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung’s apartment only had one sofa. 

Seokjin: I used to work part-time in a coffee shop on Mapo-gu because apparently being a superbomb drummer doesn’t pay your rent, so I'd decided to serve the dreamy barista cliché. So, one day I was working when I saw Jungkook and another guy coming in, still in their school uniforms. Jungkook looks at me, I look at him, and he tries to walk away, but the guy with him is huge, you know, and is very confused, so before they can leave, I scream Jungkook’s name on top of my lungs. Of course, I wouldn’t let him get away from me when he seemed to be hiding something very juicy. 

This was the day when I met Mingyu.

Yoongi: Jungkook started bringing this friend of his over from time to time. At first, it was only when Seokjin-hyung wasn’t around, because of something that had happened when they first met, and Jungkook can be a hell of a petty child. He and Mingyu seemed very…cozy together. Kind of a mess, too, all blushing and stuff. 

Seokjin: I just hoped that they would have some luck with it because I liked Jungkook better than wanting him to pin over two different people. 

Sometimes I just wanted them to at least hold hands…it was really painful to watch. 

Jungkook: We finished composing the song by the middle of the second week. The first time we played the song altogether I was so happy I could cry. We were all like this, smiling at each other like a bunch of crazy people. 

Jimin: After we finished, we stopped smiling at each other, and then Taehyung started with the bass again, and Seokjin-hyung followed him, and we played it again, and every time the song finished we played it again and again. It was the best, the fucking best. 

Seokjin: Yoongi tried to play it off, but I saw his eyes water a bit. 

Taehyung: I already knew it was all too real. When I was composing my bass part, I kept thinking, it’s so cool, I’m in a band, this is so cool . But when we were at the studio, playing and having a blast, I felt the coolest. I could kiss someone on the mouth right then and there, but I didn’t want to stop playing. 

Yoongi: They still had a lot of room for improvement, but all the time I was listening to them I couldn’t stop being amazed at what we had created, not only the song but the whole band. 

Jungkook: After we left the studio, we went to eat barbecue at a nearby restaurant, and Yoongi-hyung insisted on paying for everything, even knowing that we all eat a lot. Much more after playing like we played that day. Seokjin-hyung still didn’t let me drink, but I had lots of fun nonetheless. 

I also realized that this was the first time we ate all together like that, outside of the apartment. 

Taehyung: The members went home long past midnight, but Seokjin-hyung and I stayed behind. We'd had a few drinks, and we were kinda touchy all night, and then we were finally alone and I was so nervous. 

Seokjin: You see, I’m not one to stay out a few more hours, usually I’m one of the first ones to go home, but when the guys announced that they were tired, Taehyung, who was resting his head on my shoulder, looked at me with his puppy eyes, and what could I do? I said I was up for a few more drinks in one of these pubs that uni students go to and he smiled at me as if I had just given him the best gift ever. 

I’m not a big fan of pubs either, you know. 

Taehyung: We danced for a bit, but it was just an excuse to be close, to touch. It was like we both were testing how close we could get: hands on his shoulders, hands on hips, hands on necks, hands touching chests, then lips on lips, and we were kissing, and oh god, it was good . I'd dreamed about those lips of his ever since I'd met him. Afterwards, he said “you know, I hate pubs.” and I said, “what about taking me home, then?”

Jungkook: That day, I was sleeping on my couch when two bodies fell over me. They seemed drunk, and then they rolled to the floor laughing. I said: "I'll let you two fuck on the couch if you let me sleep on your bed today, hyung”. Seokjin-hyung said “fuck off” and went to his bedroom with Taehyung-hyung laughing after him. 

At least I tried. 

Jimin: We started recording the song two days after that, and everything felt so professional, so Huge. We couldn’t do everything on the first day because Seokjin-hyung had to work, so it was just Jungkook and Taehyung with the vocal part. 

Like, for as long as I've known Jungkook I know how good of a singer he is. But hearing his voice isolated gave me real goosebumps. I was shocked, like “Is this my Jungkook?”, but “Of course he is, he is a natural, born to be there.”. I was really amazed. 

When Taehyung was in the studio booth to do the backing vocals he looked so cool too. I filmed everything to show him after, and I still have the records. 

Jungkook: I went home after I finished recording because I had tons of homework to do, so I had the house all to myself.

When Yoongi-hyung came some hours later, he was carrying some huge bags and asked me to help get the things out of the box and set them down. Then he went back to the hall and got another huge box. When I was in the middle of putting the parts together, I realized that I was setting up a chair.

I took the second box out of the bag and saw what it was: a portable bed. 

I felt really silly because I started crying really hard because of it, and Yoongi-hyung just patted my back saying it was nothing, that I didn’t have to thank him for it, and that he was sorry that the house didn’t have enough space for a real bed. 

But he does that all the time, he keeps going out of his way to make things for me, for us, like it is nothing. With the band, he produced the song, helped compose it, helped with the lyrics. Rented things, too. With me, he and Seokjin-hyung let me, a stranger at the time, live for free on his couch; he made me food, he helped me with my homework, and helped me when I was feeling too much. And he does all these things  as if it’s nothing, just something you should accept without thinking too much about it. 

Yoongi: It just didn’t make sense to keep him sleeping and eating on the couch. 

Seokjin: At that point, I had lived with Yoongi for so long, and I know he loves his works and has always been very passionate about them, but I can tell when he is really involved in something, you know, those times when he has to be reminded to eat, sleep, come home. And he was like this with ‘Where is My Everything?’. I kept sending food to his studio and calling him, nagging “You have to eat, or you won’t have any strength left to keep doing music. Don’t forget you’re overworking yourself for free.”

Yoongi: Hyung kept texting for proof that I'd eaten, demanding pics of my plate to see if I ate enough, it was ridiculous, really. 

Jimin: One day when we were all rehearsing, Taehyung stopped and said: “Why can’t we perform it live?”. I think he grew bored of just rehearsing the same song, he likes keeping things fresh. 

Jungkook looked like he thought it was a good idea, but then he frowned, changing his mind quickly like this, and reminded us that we couldn’t do a show with just one finished song.

It gave Taehyung the biggest pout, my poor baby. 

Taehyung: And Seokjin said “Well, if we open someone’s show we don’t need to have a full setlist, just two songs, more or less, and we can try doing some covers. But we still have a tight agenda”. I remember thinking I could throw myself at him, he really looked like some sort of hero.

He asked us if we really wanted to do it, because we would have a really short time. We all said yes, of course, so he said he had these friends who were gonna  perform in a bar in Itaewon, and he could talk to them to see if we could open the show for them. 

Jimin: We all were so amazed at him, like “woah, hyung, you’re the best!”. After that, we couldn't get anything done. All we did was pretend how it was to play to a real crowd. 

Seokjin: I had played to crowds larger than the one we would get at the show plenty of times, but it was fun to role-play a bit with them. 

Taehyung: On the very next day he confirmed it with his friend! It was so unbelievable. 

Seokjin: They owed me a favor. 

Jimin: But we still had one problem. 

Jungkook: The band didn’t have a name yet. 

Once, we were discussing how we should be called and Seokjin-hyung kept saying it should be “Kim Seokjin”, and Taehyung-hyung joined the joke and somehow everyone was doing it, so we kept calling the band Kim Seokjin.

Seokjin: I think it’s a great name, a lucky name at that, and everyone would know at the bat that the famous handsome drummer Kim Seokjin was part of the band so it would be a huge move to promote it, you know? Just the perfect name. In my opinion, we should have kept it.

 Jungkook: We thought about a lot of names, and all of them were silly variations of our initials, like: ‘JJST’ as in Jungkook, Jimin, Seokjin, and Taehyung; ‘KKPJ’ for Kim, Kim, Park, and Jeon, things like this. When Seokjing-hyung’s friends called and asked what name we would use, hyung ended up saying KSJ.

It was ridiculous but we had been calling ourselves Kim Seokjin for some time so it made sense. We laughed so hard when he told us, Jimin couldn’t stop laughing. 

Jimin: It was hilarious, I was already looking forward to introducing ourselves as KSJ.

Taehyung: I loved it, it was a funny name. 

Seokjin: The best one we ever had.

Yoongi: They deserve each other, for fuck’s sake. 

Jimin: Not long after the song was fully ready, Jungkook called the CEO and scheduled an appointment. On that day, only he and Yoongi-hyung went to the CCB Ent. building, but we all were a bunch of nerves. I had already dropped out and left my internship and was living on the couch where Jungkook used to sleep before. So Taehyung, Seokjin-hyung, and I stayed behind at the apartment, waiting. 

Jungkook: Before we entered the building, hyung said: “I'm here to help you, but it won't work if I do all the talking for you, so you'll have to fight for it, ok?” I knew that and I was terrified because of it, but I still was feeling much more reassured than if Yoongi-hyung weren't with me.

Yoongi: Poor kid was shaking the entire ride to Seongsu-dong. I was very nervous myself, too; by that time, I had given up trying to explain to myself why this project meant so much to me, but besides the emotional attachment, I liked the song, liked the meaning of the song,. And liked especially that Jungkook was basically giving the CEO a callout song about him. The guts he has.

Jungkook: Climbing the same elevator, walking through the same corridors, greeting the same people. Nothing had changed, despite everything I'd felt and lived through during that one month away. Everything felt so… mundane? And weird. Before, I thought I would never go back there, and there I was, doing the same thing the way I'd done plenty of times before. But this time I had Yoongi-hyung by my side, and Seokjin-hyung, Taehyung-hyung, and Jimin-hyung waiting for me. That changed plenty of things. 

Yoongi: Everyone greeted him so happily, people really seemed to really like Jungkook there. I wasn’t even a bit surprised, it was nothing unusual, everyone seems to love Jungkook everywhere. 

Jungkook: Choi Chaebeom sajang-nim was nice. He asked how I’d been, if I had made up my mind. I said I had, and that I'd decided that I wanted to stay in the company, but not as a trainee to be an idol, but to be in a band, and that I already had my members, and that they were irreplaceable. I told him we'd made a song, then gave him the demo of “Where is My Everything?”. He listened to everything attentively without interrupting me, and when I stopped talking, he looked at Yoongi-hyung and asked: “And who are you?”

Yoongi: We'd been so nervous I'd forgotten to introduce myself! 

Jungkook: He bowed ninety degrees, then apologized, introduced himself, and said: “I’m their manager and producer.” The manager part was a surprise; of course we'd joked about it, but I didn’t think he would officially take the post. He continued with “You invested a lot in Jungkook, and you know better than I do that you have much more to gain with him and this band than with him paying that debt. And even if you still have doubts, they’re playing at a bar in Itaewon next weekend; if you watch them play, you’ll be a hundred percent sure.” 

I had goosebumps, he sounded so cool. 

Yoongi: He smiled and said he would listen to the song and discuss it with the other executives and call us back soon enough. He also said he was anxious to meet the other members because Jungkook had found himself a very interesting producer. 

My legs were shaking terribly after we left, even if things seemed to have gone just fine. I was so shaken up that when Jungkook and I went to have lunch at Seongsu-dong Galbi Alley I even let him have a cup of soju. 

The Itaewon Performance.

Jungkook: Our next days were mixed with anxiety because of the company, because of the show, because someone from the company could be at the show. 

 We spent a whole day thinking which song we would play besides ‘Where is my Everything?’. If it would be a Korean song or a foreign song, if it should be from a popular band, or if we should choose based on how easy it was to play, because of the tight schedule. 

We had decided to learn the basics of a few and choose the one that made us sound better. It felt like we had to do so much with so little time in our hands. I barely got any sleep. 

Taehyung: On the weekend before the show, Jungkook’s parents came to Seoul and took all of us to go shopping for clothes, even Yoongi-hyung, who wouldn’t even perform. He tried to pay for himself, but Jungkook’s mom didn’t let him pay a single penny, saying it was their present for our first show. They paid for our lunches too. I felt all warm inside, being cared for like that by someone who wasn't  one of my relatives. It felt a lot like we were a family. 

Jimin: I always had a fun time with Jungkook’s parents, but that afternoon was so fun, seeing Seokjin-hyung, Yoongi-hyung, and Taehyung around them, trying to look docile. Picking clothes was fun too. Jungkook’s mother made all of us pretend we were on a runaway, parading the looks we chose, and we had to vote if it was good or not to perform with. Poor Jungkookie almost passed out when Taehyung called him sexy in front of his mother and she laughed, agreeing. 

Seokjin: Besides the new clothes, they'd brought us so much homemade food that  our fridge was packed when they left for Busan, and they kept repeating that “It’s nothing, with all you’re doing for Jungkook.”. She also hid some money in the apartment so we wouldn’t be able to refuse taking it.

Yoongi: Spending time like that with Jungkook’s parents made Jungkook’s personality make complete sense. Of course he is the way he is when he grew up around such nice people, and with so much love. 

Jimin: Although we’d all been looking forward to it, the time for the show came quicker than expected. Of course we were excited  to perform; it was the first time for most of us, after all, but I didn’t feel a hundred percent prepared and kept shaking, afraid I might do something wrong. What if I made  a mistake on stage? I told Seokjin-hyung about it, because he was much more experienced on that, and he said, to all of us, that we “Should keep it a secret, don’t ruin my image around, ok? But I’m afraid like this every time before performing, I don’t think I ever felt like I was totally prepared before going on stage. It’s part of the fun of it, right? The adrenaline.” 

I know for sure Seokjin-hyung is a scaredy-cat. He is afraid of bugs, heights, ghosts, and many other things, and he’s very much unable to face the fear he feels for these things. But anyone who saw him before that show, or any other show to be honest, would think he is an adrenaline junkie. 

Jungkook: I kept telling myself we would be just opening a show, it wasn’t even ours, the people out there weren’t there for us , so I didn’t need to be so pressed, right? But I'd felt a lot like I was walking towards nowhere, or that I was stagnant on the path in which I wanted to run. I trained and trained and trained to be an idol, and felt like I was training for nothing because I couldn't apply what I was learning anywhere. But finally, something was happening, and it would happen right then. I felt unprepared, I felt terrified, I felt fully charged, I felt like my life was finally beginning, all of that at once. 

I was shaking so much backstage, I couldn’t tell if it was fear or eagerness, or both. 

Taehyung: The bar was a dark place, and most of the first floor was taken by the dance floor, and the tables and chairs and the bar itself were set on balconies with a view to the ground below. I don’t know if it was because of the low light, but it felt very intimate. It was a good place to have our first gig, I thought. But I was still terrified. 

Jungkook: I had this funny thought that if I weren't playing, I couldn’t even be there since I wasn't old enough. 

Seokjin: I wanted to sound cool to Jimin so I said cool things to him, but I was feeling so jumpy for that gig, more than I'd felt in so long. I couldn’t put my finger on why I was feeling like that. I told myself that it was because their feelings were rubbing on me, but Yoongi said that the difference between this gig and the past ones was that this one mattered to me, even if it were a little one.

He was right, of course, he usually is, it’s unnerving. 

Taehyung: We played the cover first and “Where’s My Everything” next. I think I will remember that day till the day I die, but if you ask me to describe everything I felt then I am unable to. But it was fun, I never would've guessed something could be so fun.  

Jimin: I felt so powerful, being on stage. It wasn’t like this even when I used to dance, because I would usually  have choreography and the crowd would be quieter, more reverent. But now, I moved freely with how the song made me feel at the moment, and the people who were watching us were screaming, dancing, and singing along. It was unreal, nothing I'd ever experienced before. I felt so… happy. Like my heart could explode at any moment. 

Jungkook: We started with a well-known song so we could build the hype of the crowd and keep it even when we performed our song for the first time. It worked so well, and even without knowing the lyrics they vibed with us while we played “Where is My Everything?”. And by the time we sang the chorus for the second time, they shouted back at us: “Where’s my life? Where’s my soul? Where’s my happiness?”. It was a huge thing, the band playing like we'd never played before and the crowd singing and dancing to our song, this song that was born from our own work. I was so sure that I'd made the right decision when I chose to be in a band. That night, I felt like I could rule the world. 

Seokjin: I think I’d never had this much fun at a performance before. 

Yoongi: I was so proud of them, just beyond words. Watching them perform to the public was such an experience, from the point of view of a friend and of a spectator. They were a little bit uneasy at first, but you can’t deny the power in Jungkook’s voice, him being shy or not.

Everyone was hypnotized by their performance, and even if it were Jungkook's and Taehyung's first time on stage, they had phenomenal stage presence . All of them did.

Jungkook focused a lot on Jimin, not to the point he neglected the crowd a bit, but you could see he would always go to Jimin every time he felt uneasy or didn’t know what to do. I think to Jungkook, Jimin was the closest thing to a home in this new, unfamiliar place. 

It became a habit of his, on their next shows: getting closer to Jimin every time he felt uneasy, interacting with him more, touching him, his clothes.

 On and off stage he always seeks Jimin for comfort, so it was only natural. 

Taehyung: Backstage, Jimin ran and jumped on Jungkook’s back, hugging him with his legs and arms. Of course, Jungkook was ready to catch him, as he always is. 

Jungkook: Jimin whispered: “Thanks. Because of you, I’m feeling all of these things, so thank you.” And I'd thought just a few moments before that I couldn’t feel any happier. 

Seokjin: Sometimes they can get really sappy. 

Jungkook: After the main show ended, for the encore, Seokjin-hyung’s friend called us back on stage, and we did something similar to a jam session, all of us, improvising something like a mashup of our songs. It was surreal, like we were the only ones there, just having fun, in front of hundreds of people.  

Taehyung: I thought I was in High School Musical or something. 

Jimin: After I left the stage, my legs were shaking so badly. I couldn’t believe I'd managed to do that like it was nothing. 

Taehyung: When Yoongi-hyung greeted us, he said “This was just an opening gig, but I feel so happy, like it is my capstone”, and it sounded so cool, so I asked what it meant, and he said it was something like one's greatest achievement or the best part of something. And it sounded even cooler, so I said we should be named after it. 

Jungkook: So this is who we are, Capstone. 

 Choi Chaebeom: We had already made our decision before going to watch their performance, but they sure made an impression that day. 

I couldn’t believe how much of a gem Jungkook had turned out to be, not only on stage, but in songwriting, too. And on top of that, if he weren't a musician, he could leave all the talent scouts from the company unemployed. We'd looked up the other members before the show and saw that Seokjin was a respectable drummer on the indie rock scene despite not having a band yet, and we saw with our own eyes that he lived up to his reputation. But Taehyung and Jimin, who were just college students, were such a surprise. They weren’t the best on the instruments they played, but their charisma and stage presence would overwhelm anyone. 

And better: they were all handsome. We could see how much their faces had potential to sell even in that dark place. 

The song was catchy, really good, with relatable lyrics, mostly to the youngsters around their 20s, when life seems to have failed them. So in moments like those, in shows, it is easy to sing together. 

I know very well where Jungkook’s inspo came from, but I can only raise my shoulders at it because it gave birth to a very good song. 

Jungkook left the company for a month and came back offering me something as precious as gold. 

Yoongi: Choi Chaebeom sajang-nim met  us backstage, smiling at everyone and greeting the members he hadn't  met before. He praised our performance and invited us to dinner. 

We all knew what it meant. 

Jungkook: But before we left the place, he said that we should take a picture of ourselves at that moment. I felt a little confused, and he said it was because we looked like real rockstars. So I looked around and it was true, we were all soaked in sweat, our makeup blurred, our hair disheveled. We were a mess, but very cool nonetheless. 

Jimin: I was really grateful he gave us the idea of taking the picture. I was so high because of the performance I hadn’t thought about it, but I would never forgive myself if I didn’t keep a photo of the five of us after our first show, hugging and smiling. 

Seokjin: We went to a very fancy-looking restaurant, in a private room. The night  felt like it couldn’t get any better. 

Yoongi: The CEO said to Jungkook: "You can have your band and your producer, but you will have another manager, too, and your band will undergo  a period of training before debut. If the band doesn’t go well, you debut again, but solo. And if you don't want it, then you still have your debt, and it will grow with the expenses of the band." 

Seokjin: All executives are really nasty people. 

Jimin: It wasn’t like he gave Jungkook a choice. 

Jungkook: I still got what I wanted: the band. And I knew for sure we wouldn’t fail so the other options didn’t bother me, I wouldn’t need them. So I was happy. We were all in. 

You know me too well: 

Jungkook: I still had the prospect of the debt, I still had to be a trainee, but now I was living with Jimin, Taehyung-hyung, and Seokjin-hyung in a new dorm at Seongsu-dong. My band had a label, and an amazing producer and part-time manager by our side. The trainee life was still hard, but not as hard as the one to become  an idol. I didn't have to worry too much about my shape, didn't have to go through crazy diets, didn't have to dance till I felt my bones melting. So, I was much better. 

We met Hoseok-hyung too, and that was the best part. 

Yoongi: Jung Hoseok is an excellent professional. 

Taehyung: Yoongi-hyung had such a huge crush on Hobi ever since the start, you wouldn’t believe it.

Jimin I saw him blush twice! And all Hoseok-hyung did was smile!

Seokjin: I thought I had seen it all when Jungkook came along and Yoongi started babying him like crazy, but when we met Hoseok, the boy was immediately smitten! A blushing mess, it was what he was! If you’d told me about this, I wouldn’t have believed you, I would say “My Yoongi? He would never!”. But I saw it with my own eyes, we all saw it, you know.

Jung Hoseok [Capstone’s manager and the band’s best friend]: My first impression of the boys? I thought they seemed like a lot of fun! I’d listened to their single and watched their performance  when the company guys offered me the job and I was immediately crazy to meet them. They were so good at performing,  and I really loved the song. I wanted to show it to all my friends even if I knew I shouldn’t because the band would release it in the future. And when I got to meet them, it was better than I had imagined! They were so nice, much more than you could've imagined. I co-managed them with Yoongi-hyung at first and he was crazy for the guys, like, he would do anything for them, it was so nice to see. I am a hardworking guy myself, but I wanted to double my efforts to prove myself worthy of them!

Taehyung: We all joke around about Yoongi-hyung, but it was just Hobi’s natural effect, he made me feel all warm inside too. I bet you blushed talking to him too. 

Jimin: Our dorm had a little hall, a living room, a little kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. Taehyung and I shared a room, and Seokjin-hyung and Jungkook shared the other one. We all live in a bigger apartment now, but at that time it felt so big, much bigger than the little dorm room I shared with Taehyung and the apartment  I used to live in with Jungkook, which was far away from everything. We could walk to the company building, and there were tons of really good street food around, and these really cute cafés. 

I felt so happy. I had a band, I got to live with Jungkook and stay with Taehyung again, and now I had Seokjin-hyung too! I would wake up and Seokjin-hyung or Jungkookie would be in the kitchen doing our breakfast, we would come home tired and play silly games to decide who would get to use the bathroom first, we would rest in the living room all together till late at night. 

Jungkook: It felt really mind blowing to me that I had a bed, a whole real bed to myself, I couldn’t believe it. And a room! It wasn’t just to myself, but at least it wasn’t the living room. It was like a dream.

Seokjin: I’d been used to living with Yoongi for so long that at first it felt really weird, not having his quiet presence around all the time. But it wasn’t like living with the other guys was bad, I have tons of fun living with them till today, and it’s like each of them has something that matches with a part of my personality, you know? Don’t tell any of them that I said it, but it’s like every one of them is my soulmate, including  Yoongi and Hobi. 

It’s weird, even if I’ve always been handsome and had lots of people around me, growing up I never would’ve imagined that one day I would have so many close friends to call the half of my soul. Thinking about it like this makes me really happy. 

Yoongi: I like to have my own space and my quietness too, but after Jungkook and hyung moved out it was just... like one of those moments in the middle of the night when you're the only one awake. Sometimes it's too quiet. And a little lonely too. 

Taehyung: I started to feel… less than happy. With Seokjin. 

I fell for him stupidly fast. Jiminnie often says  that I’m a bit in love with everyone, so if I had already dipped my toes in the water, it's only logical that I would dive right away. You don't do things by half with Kim Seokjin, loving him is no exception.

But whereas  I was already in love with him, he didn’t even treat me as a friend. It made me so sad. Every time we spent together it was just about sex, and of course, I loved the sex, but I wanted to laugh with him and talk to him, too. And feeling him distant when he was always so nice and warm to everyone else made my heart ache every time I saw him. 

Sometimes he would go to Yoongi's and spend days there and all he would do is send a text on the groupchat of the band telling us he was sleeping there. I understand very well that sometimes he missed living with Yoongi, and Yoongi-hyung missed living with him too, but it wouldn’t hurt to just talk to me and say he was going out.

Jimin: Taehyungie tends to feel things intensely so it was no surprise that everything he felt about Seokjin was multiplied by a thousand, mostly since he started living with him, was in the same band, and saw him every day.

Seokjin: I liked Taehyung, of course, but I didn’t know how to act around him. How to be a friend and also someone who casually slept with him, what he would expect from me, what would happen if I crossed some line or went overboard. I kept thinking that if I made a mistake it could affect the band’s dynamic, and I was afraid of ruining everything. 

So keeping myself distant was just me being cautious. 

Yoongi: One day Taehyung came to my apartment, a little drunk, and said “If you tell this to Seokjin I’ll hunt you in my dreams” very terrifyingly, you see, and started venting about him to me and talking about this idea for a new song. 

It was weird having to hear someone complain about your best friend, but the draft of the song was really good, so we started to work on it. Drunk or not, Taehyung is a very talented person. 

We took creative freedom and escaped a bit from the  Taehyung-Seokjin topic and made things a little more dramatic. It ended quite well. 

Taehyung: On the next day Yoongi-hyung made me breakfast and told me to have a talk with Seokjin. I said I was afraid that if I talked to him he wouldn’t want anything to do with me anymore, and hyung said that it would kill Seokjin to discover he was hurting someone, especially one he cared for. 

It made sense, but it didn’t make me any less afraid. 

Seokjin: Taehyung went to my room one morning and showed me the draft of the lyrics, then said “Here. I wrote this with Yoongi-hyung yesterday.”. It was a very good song, and the part about wanting me all to himself made my heart flutter a bit, but most of it broke my heart, so I asked “Do I make you feel cheap? A filthy soul?”

He hugged himself and looked so fragile, and I wanted to touch him, but I felt like anything I did could hurt him. 

He said: “Just a bit.”

Taehyung: I explained to him what I’d been feeling, that I was hurt, I said: “I love you so much that I can’t pretend being around you doesn’t make me feel anything”. 

Looking back at it, it felt a lot like a movie scene, but at that time we were both crying, and he hugged me and kept repeating that he was sorry for making me feel like that. 

Seokjin: Taehyung always shone brighter than anything, so learning that I was making him feel less amazing than he was made me realize how dumb I’d been all this time trying to be cautious.

I made a vow to myself that I would never make him feel like he was cheap again, that I would make him feel like he was made only with the most precious things in the world. 

We talked a lot after all the crying, it’s crazy how easily things work out with a little bit of communication. Never would’ve guessed. 

Jungkook: I couldn’t sleep in my room for three nights in a row after they got their shit together. 

Jimin: It was such a 180º turn. One day the three of us were drinking, Taehyung, Jungkook, and I, and Taehyung was looking so sad and pouty, but then he suddenly left for Yoongi's house without saying anything. The next day he jumps on my bed with the biggest smile saying he is a committed man, and his lips now belong only to Seokjin-hyung and to the ones who ask very nicely.

He said I could get to kiss him if I asked ‘pretty please’, and asked me if I was super happy for him. As if I wouldn’t be the happiest man on earth watching his smile. 

Seokjin: Time really flew, and Jungkook was already graduating from high school. I knew him only for a few months then but it felt too much like I’d watched him grow.  Everything really made me all emotional. At the ceremony, we all sat beside Jungkook’s family, except for Jimin, who had to go to Busan to watch his own brother's graduation, which was held just the day before.

Yoongi: It felt a little bittersweet because everyone knows how much Jimin means to Jungkook, so his absence was really loud. Even so, we were all happy. I felt silly because my eyes were watering watching the ceremony when I had just met Jungkook. I asked myself “when have I become so dramatic?”. But I looked to my side, and there was Hoseok, who’d known Jungkook for even less time, openly crying and filming all the ceremony just as if he were his mother. 

Jungkook: After the ceremony, Mingyu and I sneaked into an empty room. I’d already been feeling so nostalgic before he said it was our last time there. We were sitting on the floor, side by side, and by then, we were already used to holding hands, so we were talking like this when he came even closer and told me, with a really low voice, that he would be debuting that year so we wouldn’t see each other as often, but he didn’t want me to vanish. 

I was never someone who had tons of friends, nor someone who feels easily comfortable around everyone, but it was so easy to befriend Mingyu even from the start, and I’d enjoyed every second I spent with him till then. 

So, sitting there, on my last day at my old school, with my born family and  my found family waiting for me, with him by my side whispering things to me… It made me feel a lot of things,  and I couldn’t name every one of them, but what I knew for sure was that I didn’t want Mingyu to vanish from my life either.  

Mingyu: I always thought I would be the one kissing him first, but he beat me to that. Damn…he is really competitive, but I am too, so, on our second kiss, I kissed him harder. 

Jungkook: He asked, “So does this mean we’re dating?”. I knew very well that I had feelings for Jimin, so despite liking Mingyu too, and what we had, I couldn’t lead him into a relationship if he were unaware of that. He smiled and said he wasn’t dumb, “Of course I know, you talk about him all the time. But it is fun, right? Us. Let’s keep having fun like this, later we’ll think about the difficult things.”

He made it sound so easy, and I like it easy, so we stayed there for a bit more before going to meet our friends.

Hoseok: They tried to be nonchalant, but it was so obvious they had just made out, everyone tried to pretend they didn’t notice, but it was so funny. 

Yoongi: I didn't know what to think about it, because they had always seemed like the kind of people that work much better as friends than boyfriends. But Jungkook looked happy, so I was happy for him. 

 We all talked for a bit with Mingyu and the other trainees he would debut with. He was going to debut within a group of thirteen boys, so it felt like a multitude when we gathered. 

Taehyung: Mingyu’s friends were so loud, and so funny. When Jungkook’s family returned to the hotel, they started making fun of Mingyu immediately, so of course, we teased Jungkook too, we couldn’t stay behind. 

Hoseok: Despite being all shy by the teasing, he looked really happy, sounding all giggly every time he said something. 

Yoongi: Eventually we split and went separate ways to have late lunch and celebrate by ourselves. When we arrived at the designated place we were eating, there he was: Jimin at a table, holding a cake. 

Taehyung: It was my idea! 

Hoseok: I filmed everything. Jungkook was so happy, Jimin barely had time to put the cake aside before Jungkook jumped on him. 

Jimin: I woke up early and flew to Seoul instead of taking a  train, left my things at the dorm, dressed myself prettily and bought a really pretty cake and went to the restaurant Taehyung told me to go to. I was so sad because I couldn’t make it to the graduation ceremony, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I lost everything about his special day. He had been there for all of my special days.

Jungkook: It was like the day couldn’t get any better. 

Seokjin: And then Jimin learned the good news.

Hoseok: He is really good at pretending, we could barely  notice he was affected by it. 

Taehyung: I hope he forgives me, but it was so fun to watch him listening to everything, because he was clearly making a great effort to smile and act all happy. By the end of lunch, he couldn’t hide the huge pout and kept lying, saying he was just tired from the trip. 

Jimin: What I didn’t get is how things escalated so quickly that they were dating when I barely knew that Mingyu guy? Jungkook almost never told me anything about him, and I thought he told me everything!

He would just name-drop Mingyu in the middle of conversations and that was it. It was like “Hyung, I’m becoming friends with this guy at school.”, and “when I was doing my homework with Mingyu”, and “I’m sorry, I’m just about to leave home to meet Mingyu, can we meet a little later?” and “Oh, hyung, I have already watched this movie with Mingyu, but I can rewatch it with you if you wanna!”. Sometimes he would say he was with a friend, but wouldn’t say he was with him, and why the fuck keep this a mystery? Am I  by any means his wife and is Mingyu the mistress he’s seeing secretly? 

He never said anything about liking him, never said what this Mingyu was like, what he liked, and why was I the only one who didn’t know anything? 

I knew I hadn’t been  there when they all met him, but Yoongi-hyung and Seokjin-hyung knew him from way back then. Seokjin-hyung even packed his lunch sometimes! And they aren’t Jungkook’s best friends, I am! So why didn't I know?

Was Jungkook ashamed of me? Was I really his best friend? Did he not want Mingyu to know me? Was he hiding me? 

I might sound like a lunatic now, but these were really serious thoughts I had back then, it even made my stomach hurt. 

Taehyung: Jimin was losing his shit. By that time, Jungkook and I had already switched rooms, so I was sharing a room with Seokjin and he was sharing the other with Jimin, but that night before we went to sleep, Jimin kicked Jungkook out, saying he needed the night with me to align his chakras. 

He vented a lot, asking repeatedly why Jungkook didn’t trust him. But eventually, I convinced him that it wasn’t like Jungkook to have long talks about the guy he might like and that Yoongi and Seokjin only knew Mingyu because they lived with Jungkook when the two started to hang out.

It was all true, but I knew Jungkook very well to know he was purposely avoiding talking about Mingyu to Jimin because it would be weird to talk about the guy you like to the other guy you also like. 

But I wouldn’t say that to Jimin, of course, I might be a little crazy but I’m not insane.  

Jungkook: Jimin kicked me out of my room out of nowhere saying he needed a sleepover with Taehyung, but the next morning I went there to grab something and they were sharing Jimin’s bed! They didn’t even use my bed so why did I have to move to another room? They were always so weird. 

Yoongi: A two-bedroom place started feeling too big for only me, and it was very far from the company also. Since I was signed to CCBE as a producer and had my own studio in  their building, they rented me a smaller place in Seongjeong-dong. It was new, and like everything new, it felt strange at first, but the place was more modern and a lot closer to work than my old apartment in Changjeon-dong. So it really came in handy.

Because my old place was quite far, I usually was the one going to Capstone’s place, not the other way around. Only Seokjin-hyung came by frequently because he still considered the place as his. So when I moved to somewhere closer, all of them started coming over at the most unusual hours of the day and most of the time without any notice! 

They’re lucky I’m a night owl because if I weren’t they would be frequently locked outside when they come to my house at 2 am. 

Taehyung: Yoongi-hyung was producing lots of bops; word started going around that he had Mida’s touch because everything he touched turned into gold. 

It was everything he deserved, becoming big like this, he is so talented, isn’t he? But he still was part of our band, and still pretended to be our manager with Hobi-hyung. 

When the company gave him a new apartment, the furniture he asked for was for at least five people: five chairs, a big couch, and two armchairs in the living room. So he even prepared the house to accommodate us. It makes my heart go all soft for him, thinking about this. 

Jungkook: We were trainees for another two years before starting to work on our first album, which meant I was a trainee for four years. Which isn’t a lot of time compared with other trainees in other companies, but it still felt like I’d lost my teen years to it and was now starting to lose my early twenties. 

Jimin: The company was much more focused on debuting and promoting their boy group than on us, and even if this meant we had a lot of freedom, it also meant we didn’t have much incentive on our own projects as a band. It made me a little worried about Jungkook: if he hadn’t dropped the opportunity, he would have debuted in that group too.

Jungkook: At first I was a little bitter about it, not because I wanted to be in that group, or because I regretted my choice, but because I once again felt stagnated. At first, I understood that Taehyung and Jimin had to improve on their respective instruments to be at a professional level, but time started stretching and stretching and it made me really restless. Even if I focused on getting better, there was a limit to what I could do. 

Jimin: During the time we spent as trainees, we studied our instruments and even had vocal classes, too. And some language studies. Jungkook had more free time because he was ahead in most of his classes since he’d been taking them for longer than we had. So he wrote a lot and made some covers and logs on youtube. The higher-ups of the label encouraged it because it’d  be good for us if Jungkook had his name around before our debut. 

  We also started learning how to play other instruments. It started with Taehyung wanting to play the drums because Seokjin-hyung looked cool doing it and he wanted to spend more time with him, not that he needed an excuse for that. Then, hyung took the opportunity to practice  playing the piano more, though he already knew how to play. I started learning the bass, and Jungkook started learning how to play the drums too. This way, we’d all be able to take each other’s role in the band. We weren’t that good enough to switch places on our first album tho, so the only song on Windup without the original formation is ‘My Hair Is Green ’, in which I switch places with Jungkook. 

Jungkook: So, around February 2017, we started putting together our first album. By that time, we had a lot of lyrics and melodies and songs almost ready. We started having meetings to discuss how we wanted the album to be, how we wanted it to sound, which songs would fit better, how many songs, the visual concept, and stuff. It was tiring and we had tons of stuff to think about, but when I wasn’t dead tired I was so happy, because I was so close. 

 Seokjin: Jimin is really good at writing melodies, so there were lots of times that Jungkook wrote the sweetest and most romantic things to Jimin’s melodies, and we all had to pretend that he wasn’t writing love letters to Jimin using his sounds. Like, when Jungkoook wrote “What sort of thing will I say that makes you laugh when our eyes meet again” in 눈이 마주쳤을 때 everyone in the world knew damn well he did it thinking about Jimin except for Jimin himself, it was absolutely ridiculous.

Taehyung: When Jimin saw the translation of the lyrics of ‘I Wanna Be Your Everyday’, he said to me: “It looks like Jungkook really loves Mingyu, huh?”. It took everything in me to not laugh out loud. He’s a very smart man, he went to SNU, for god’s sake, but when it comes to love he can be really dumb. 

Jimin: When we were thinking about the songs that would be part of the album, Jungkook showed us ‘My Hair Is Green’ and said: “What if Jimin sang this one? The tone is high, I think it fits him the most”. I was a bit afraid, because I usually sang only for him, or did background vocals, so to be the lead vocal, it was something entirely new.  

But when I was recording, I wasn’t afraid at all. I had so much fun doing it. Of course, I over-thought it later because I wanted it to be perfect, but even so, I still couldn’t wait to perform it live, to jump around the stage singing, to have all eyes on me.

Yoongi: I remember this day when it was raining a lot, and because of that we were hanging out indoors at my place, and then Hoseok came and Taehyung said “I thought it was supposed to rain all day, so what about this ray of sunshine that I’m seeing?” 

Jungkook: Hobi-hyung became all flustered. We all laughed and it became a frequent joke between us, calling him sunshine, but I know it was much more of an endearment trait ever since the beginning. Every time we saw him we greeted him with “hello, sunshine” and then said what we needed to say. Later, Yoongi-hyung wrote a song about it, and “Hello Sunshine” made it into Windup.

Jimin: Like the other songs in our first album, ‘Hello Sunshine’ is upbeat and kinda funky and of course it’s a bit flirty. We had lots of fun all around the process of making this song: during that day when Taehyung first called Hoseok-hyung sunshine, during the jokes that came after it, all those times we hung out which are described into the song, and while we were recording it, playing it. It’s a song that brings a lot of happiness, that kind of happiness that makes us feel like we’re young. I think it fits our bright manager perfectly. 

Taehyung: I don’t know if it was Yoongi’s intention to make the chorus sound flirty, because he denies it till to this day, but who is he fooling? We all know very well that he was blatantly flirting with Hobi-hyung through the song because we were all flirting with Hoseok those moments the song were inspired by.

Taehyung: Yoongi-hyung helped us produce all of the album's songs. I thought that we had it all from the start because we had our own Midas. 

Hoseok: They were so focused on their music, it always gave me chills to watch them working on it. They usually joke around a lot, they’re really laid back people, but when they’re working, it’s like their life is on the line. They look really handsome, if I’m being honest. I see them at the studio and think “I could marry one of these guys, one day.” And I really could.

Jungkook: We debuted on the 13th of June of 2017.

Seokjin: After that, things became really hectic: promotions started, we had to do radio shows, magazine interviews, and real quick appearances on tv shows. Quick because we weren’t all that.

Taehyung: One day we were getting ready to do a shoot for a small magazine and there were people doing our makeup, hair, and clothes. I told Seokjin-hyung and Jiminnie that I felt like a real rockstar, and Seokjin said: “Dear, we just became one.” 

Jimin: I learned quickly that I loved being pampered.

Jungkook, on the other hand, can’t be quiet for his dear life, so the people who do his makeover have to be real fighters, poor souls.

Hoseok: They were selling just fine, nothing extraordinary, as expected from  their niche of music. But some time before their first solo concert, an idol from a famous group listened to one of the band’s songs during a live, and he even mentioned Jimin! Said he’d met him backstage of a music broadcast and he was really nice, so he listened to their songs and loved them. He talked about us really shortly, and we hadn’t  seen it at the time, but in the next few days, the views on the music video  of ‘ Where’s My Everything?’ increased significantly. We were all shocked seeing it, fame really is a powerful coin, right? 

Taehyung: Jimin’s kindness really does wonders. 

Jungkook: It was so crazy, just a few words from Taemin and we had the name of our band trending on MelOn searches for days. 

Jimin: Everyone bought me  food and drinks for the following weeks. I had the time of my life. 

Jungkook: The first time Seokjin-hyung was recognized on the streets he came home telling everyone about it, bragging that we were talking to the famous Kim Seokjin, drummer of the famous band Capstone. 

Ever since then, when we go to a different place he asks the people working there “Do you know Capstone?”. It’s really embarrassing, we all pretended not to know him when he first did it. 

Taehyung: It’s adorable.

Seokjin: You see, with my looks, it’s common for people to stop me on the streets and ask if I’m a famous idol or actor. Tons of scouts from entertainment companies had stopped me and asked if I wanted to try being an idol before. But, for the first time, people stopped me and asked if I were Capstone’s Seokjin. They recognized me for who I am and for what I do, not for my looks, and it really hits differently, you know. 

Jungkook: We had our first solo show. It was a two-day show held in an arena with a capacity of four thousand people. I remember we went there to rehearse and it felt so big and empty. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that the people who were going there were coming to watch us perform, to hear our songs and hear my voice, on top of that. I had such an adrenaline rush I felt like I could jump from a plane without parachutes just because of that feeling. I told  Jimin and he laughed and said that he got it, but I didn’t have to go that far.   

Seokjin: Jimin asked Taehyung to help him dye his hair mint green one day before the show. When Jungkook saw Jimin’s new hair, I could see the fear for his own life in his eyes. 

Jungkook: I had only seen Jimin with blonde or dark hair before, and this itself is enough to kill a man, but seeing him with mint hair felt like he wasn’t real at all. Poor me, I still didn’t know that later he would dye his hair pink, blue, and tons of other colors. Not that I can handle any of them right now, either.

Jimin: The night before the first show I couldn’t get myself to sleep, so I asked Jungkookie if I could sleep with him and slipped onto his bed. He held me almost immediately and I felt so warm and comfy all around, and even if I’m not the best at relaying my problems to others I still told Jungkook that I was afraid, afraid of making a mistake, of people hating my voice when it was finally my time to sing, and other things. We talked for a really long time, laying there like that, and then I asked if he could sing for me since I always sang for him. And he did, of course, and I couldn’t remember I had a single worry while he was singing, it was calming like that. 

Taehyung: Jungkookie this, Jungkookie that. Jimin always talks about Jungkook and his memories with him with such love, even when he is talking about what he felt at a time when he supposedly wasn't in love with him. I have never said that to Jimin because I find his obliviousness very endearing.

Jimin: We heard the crowd before seeing it. I thought I was going to piss my pants. 

Yoongi: I knew they’d all been anxious before the show, but you couldn’t tell while seeing them perform. They looked like the big deal. I watched them on that first show and couldn’t believe this band had been born in my living room. I was so proud I wanted to say to everyone around me that they were my friends, and that I’d helped produce the song, by the way, but nobody would listen to me because they were all busy enjoying the show. 

Jungkook: It was so different from that first show when we just played the opening, this time everyone in there was there for us, they knew and sang along to every song we played, they screamed our names. I held myself to not just stage dive right then because I knew it would be too much for a starter.

 But what a night. What a night.

Jimin: I’d never felt so powerful as when I had all eyes on me, following everything I did. People were affected by my moves. I was holding them all in a tight hold and it felt like I was invincible.

Yoongi: That show was when it really started, the Jungkook-and-Jimin-on-stage Thing. It was as I said before: Jimin was Jungkook’s home in a new, strange place, so it was only natural for him to orbit around Jimin. It started really innocently, like staring at him while singing the love songs, or dancing around him while singing upbeat songs like ‘ Madkid’.  

Seokjin: If Jungkook wanted to keep his undying love for Jimin a secret, he really shouldn’t have sung “And baby, life is just an intermission when you go away” looking at him dead in his eyes. 

Jungkook: I think the night before that night put me a little more on edge than usual.

Seokjin: At the ending ment we were all emotional, tearing up a little bit, you know, but Jungkook was the one crying the most, he had to take a lot of deep breaths to be able to talk. And to be honest, it was kinda adorable, all of us stopped crying just to coo at him.

Yoongi: Crying like that wasn’t really expected from the vocalist of a rock band, but Capstone always was too  honest with their feelings from the very beginning. From the crowd, I could see everyone felt just as emotional as the band, just as happy too. Some people there didn’t know their whole story, didn’t know how hard Jungkook fought to debut and to debut with them, but they still cried with him just as if they knew everything. Even from the start he could connect so well with the crowd, it’s amazing. 

I cried a little bit too, I was so proud. I still am.    

Taehyung: At the encore we kept playing and playing and repeating the same song so the show wouldn’t end, and we were so into it, and the crowd was too. Everytime the song ended the crowd kept asking for more and more, so we just didn’t stop. I was still feeling  just as energized as in the beginning of the show, so I could keep going for hours, and I could see in the other members' eyes that they felt just the same. Everything felt so exhilarating, I felt at the very top. We played incredible shows after that, to much bigger crowds, but the feeling that first show gave us was incomparable. 

Jungkook:  Right there, on the stage on our first show, I couldn’t believe how much I’d been made for it, because damn me if I wasn’t born to be on a stage. 

Jimin: The next day we played at the same venue and the crowd got bigger, with all the seats sold out, and I could see faces from the day before in the crowd again, like, oh my god, they're back! They saw us and got back to see us playing again because they liked it so much. I couldn’t believe it.. And at the end we kept playing and playing and playing just like the day before all over again.   I felt so, so happy, I felt as if my entire body was made just of happiness.

 Seokjin: Those were the days, we all felt like kings.

Jimin: The following months we did a mini-tour around South Korea, performed at festivals like Busan Rock Festival, Ssamzie Sound Festival, Zandari Festa, and such. It was crazy to perform at festivals that I used to go to when younger, and to be on the same lineup as artists I looked up to while growing up. We even got to know foreign artists there, it was amazing. 

But our own shows were still the best, knowing that everyone there was there for us, and seeing the crowd getting bigger and bigger with each performance. 

Jungkook: Playing at Busan Rock Festival really hit me because I used to go every year, and after I met Jimin we used to go together if we both had free time, so playing with him there made my eyes wet a little.

Park Sungjin [main guitarist, vocalist, and leader of the pop rock band Day6]: I hung out with them at Zandari Festa a lot and I remember seeing Jungkook and Jimin together all the time. They were always side by side, had their own internal jokes, and couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, basically. But it isn’t unusual for me to see two male friends being close, so when I see… I dunno, a hand on a thigh or a man grabbing another man’s ass I just laugh it off. When I saw Jimin dancing slowly with his back glued to Jungkook’s chest and Jungkook’s hands on his waist, I thought “well, they must be very close friends.”

But when we were  all drinking later that day, Jimin kept taking food from his plate to put on Jungkook’s, and when I saw Jungkook dropping honorifics with him for the ninth time, I had to ask Taehyung if they were dating. He laughed at it, and just said “They seem to be, don't they?”. 

That didn’t answer anything and I kept thinking they were boyfriends till I discovered much later that Jungkook was dating an idol.

Jungkook: I remember this one time when we were performing at these festivals around the country, and Seventeen had just made a comeback and were promoting their second full album Teen, Age . So I was busy and Mingyu was busy, and we couldn’t talk often. Days would go by with just a few texts before going to sleep and not a single call. And there was this day when I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw some cute videos of Mingyu and his fans at a fanmeeting and I thought, “Carats are seeing my boyfriend and talking to him more than I am”, and this thought startled me. 

For some part of me, this realization felt really painful. It wasn’t jealousy, you see, but the thought that I knew him personally and my relationship with him was much more than a parasocial one, and even so I still wasn’t able to keep in touch with him, to show him that I cared for him, like they were doing. I knew, I always knew even from the start that it would be like that, because it isn’t easy to date someone from this field of work, but it still ached. On the other hand, I realized that I’d been too focused on everything else that was happening around me that I hadn’t even noticed it before, how absent he was from my life. And this just didn’t feel right, because things weren’t supposed to be like this, right?

That night, I texted Mingyu saying that carats had the right to call him their boyfriend more than I did, and he joked saying he was fine being polyamorous. 

Mingyu: At some point that night Jungkook texted saying “I guess I’m doing a terrible job at being your boyfriend”, and I discarded it as a joke because we’d been joking about it, and I just played along; but I should have known better, because I know Jungkook is such a dramatic ass and doesn’t just say things like this. 

Hoseok: We could see Jungkook growing more confident with each show. He would interact more with the public and be sexier, using his looks as a weapon a lot. 

And he was becoming more confident with Jimin on stage, too.

Yoongi: He wasn’t just looking at Jimin while singing romantic songs, he started sharing mics, pulling him closer, holding Jimin’s clothes…

Hoseok: Well... being gayer. 

Song Minho [main photographer of Capstone’s tours]: Jungkook jumps and runs around the stage so much, it is almost impossible to have a picture of him still. He’s always jumping on speakers and climbing the scaffoldings around the stage. It’s funny, watching the security guards always running behind him because he often does something dangerous with stage elements. 

The only time when he is quiet is during the moments he shares with Jimin: sharing a mic, pulling him closer, or just singing to him, looking in his eyes. 

Taehyung: Between ‘ Windup’ and ‘ Zenith’ , Yoongi-hyung stopped being our manager. For a while he’d just pretended to be and I know it’s because he wanted to be in the position to nag at us all he wanted. 

Yoongi: I knew they were in good hands and being taken care of, so they no longer needed me. And I love them, I really do, but god forbid me if I spend all my life being their babysitter. 

Seokjin: Jungkook eventually broke up with Mingyu, too.

Yoongi: It was sometime after their period of shows ended, at the beginning of 2018. Well, we all saw it coming, really.

But Jungkook ended up devastated, nonetheless. 

Mingyu: Jungkook would never break my heart on purpose, but I was still heartbroken.

 I said I could wait for him to love me, but the time just never came. And it’s really tiring to wait for something, and wait, and wait, and have your hopes up for so long and not get anything in return. He liked me, and I know it, but it wasn’t the kind of love I needed from him. Meanwhile, he was around the person whom he loved all the time, and on the internet I would see people talking about them, talking about how close they seemed to be, and I knew very well that this person was the one who he truly loved. 

So… a really painful experience.  

Jungkook: I tried with all my might to love him as he deserved to be loved, but it seemed like all my love was going to another place, no matter how much I fought against it. And if I am being honest, I don’t think I fought really hard to stop loving Jimin, and it made me feel guilty for so long, during and after my relationship with Mingyu. I was childish and dumb and very guilt of everything that made our relationship go wrong, and it ate me alive, to know I hurt someone who was made to be cared for, because all Mingyu does is care for others. 

He deserved better than what I could give him at that time, he deserved the love he is receiving now from the members of his group.

Taehyung: Mingyu and Jungkook breaking up did surprise me because anyone could see that Jungkook was trying. Some time between the end of our Windup mini tour and when we started working on Zenith , when our agenda and Seventeen’s agenda coincided and we all had free time, Jungkook would always be nowhere to be seen, spending most of his time with Mingyu, going out early in the morning and coming back really late at night or not coming back at all, for two or three days. He bought gifts, prepared surprises for Mingyu and all the cheesy stuff. The pictures they took together on their dates were amazing, too. Both of them are really good at working with cameras, taking photos and modeling, it’s so unfair. I was dying out of jealousy watching it because I wanted a cute and nice photoshoot date too. 

Around that time he didn’t seem to be awfully in love, but those days he looked like he was happy.

Jimin: Jungkook never told me why he and Mingyu broke up. I wanted to be there for him, but he wouldn’t let me be. And it was always like this, he could talk to me about just anything, but Mingyu was something off limits. I understood him, but I didn’t understand why he pushed me away after their breakup. Even if he didn’t want to talk about his ex, he was still my friend, but he didn’t act the same as before, suddenly he was so distant? And I didn’t know what to do, what had caused it, why it felt like he was so far away. It was like he had just broken up with me too, and it wasn’t fair. 

Seokjin: He’d hurt Mingyu so he thought he should hurt himself too, and he did it by pushing Jimin away. I think it was because of the guilt he felt, because loving Jimin was what stopped him from loving Mingyu, so he shouldn’t enjoy Jimin’s company, right? It was painful to watch, because no matter what we said, he wouldn’t admit he was doing it, he kept repeating that he was alright, that nothing had changed. For those who watched from outside, they were acting like normal friends, but acting like normal friends  was never their thing; so when they stopped being all gross with each other, when Jungkook stopped with the loving eyes towards Jimin, it’s when you knew something was very wrong.

Taehyung: I really hated Jungkook a bit at that time. I know he was hurt and everything, but Jimin was being hurt too, and he was in the dark because he couldn’t understand a thing. And you know what? He wasn’t at fault, so why was he the one being hurt? Why was one of his best friends acting all strange? He didn’t deserve it, and talking about it now makes me mad all again. Jimin’s a saint for not punching Jungkook, he really is.

Jungkook: I slept at Yoongi’s for a while during that time, because it felt bad for my health to sleep in the same room as Jimin. Lucky for me that Yoongi-hyung had kept my portable bed.  

Yoongi: I sheltered his sad ass for a while for the sake of him being sad and needing some space and time to be sad, but after some time it became really tiring to have my friends depressed and suffering all around. 

Jungkook: So, one day, hyung said: “I get that you’re feeling guilty for making Mingyu sad, but I don’t see how making other people sad will help, because I’m pretty sure Jimin isn’t all happy about this situation.” 

Yoongi: It looks pretty obvious, but sometimes you need someone to say what is right on your face for you to be able to see it. 

Jungkook: I felt so guilty, again, because part of me knew damn well that Jimin was suffering, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it, because hurting Jimin is all I never wanted to do, and yet I was still doing this very thing. I was ashamed too, so I was afraid to face him again, and how could I even explain to him? What would I say, “I love you so much that every second with you feels like I’m being rewarded for something, but I don’t feel like I deserve any reward and because of that I kept myself away from you”? Or “I love you so much that there isn’t any space left in my heart to love other people, and because of that I hurt someone that is very dear to me, so I don’t deserve to feel loved by you even if you don’t love me the same way I love you”?

I’m lucky and very undeserving of Jimin, because I didn’t need to say any of these things.

Jimin: One night, Jungkook got home really late. I hadn’t been asleep yet, because my sleep schedule is a mess, so I was awake when he entered our room, sat on the floor next to my bed, and whispered “I’m really sorry.”. And there was so much in those words, and he looked so sad, and it was very late, and I missed him, and I felt like he was there with me again, the old him, not the cold version that I was dealing with, so I just asked him to come to bed to sleep with me.

Jungkook: He said “Don’t do that again, ok?” and asked if I needed him to sing to me before sleep. Of course I did.

Jimin: After this, things went back to normal, somewhat. Jungkook still didn’t talk to me about Mingyu, didn’t say why he’d acted weird, but it was like we all silently agreed to pretend that that time hadn’t happened and that we shouldn’t talk about it anymore.

Taehyung: Seokjin participated in King Of Mask Singer to promote our band and to show that everyone in our group could sing well, including our drummer. He did so well, everyone fell for his voice and fell even harder when he showed his face. There were a lot of comments saying that they shouldn’t put a mask on him or hide his face ever. My mom recorded the show and for months she showed it to everyone who went to her house, saying “look at my son, he is so handsome, isn’t he? They say he has a silver voice, don’t you agree?” 

When Seokjinnie heard about this his ears, face, and chest and even the tips of his fingers became so red I was afraid he would explode.

Taehyung: When we started making the preparations for ‘ Zenith’, our second album, Jungkook showed us the lyrics of ‘ Sorry’ . He said it was a little different from our previous songs and asked what we thought about it. After reading, Seokjin asked “Is this about Mingyu?”. I looked at Jimin right at the time, he was incredulous. 

Jimin: I thought I could very well rip my hair off. The song is about guilt and breaking someone’s heart, and how could Jungkook ever think “Maybe I’m defective or maybe I’m young” and “Maybe I’m bad natured, or maybe I’m dumb”? He would never be bad natured. And why did Jin-hyung know it all, but I, again, didn’t know a thing? I knew he didn’t talk about Mingyu, but why did this rule apply only to me?

But I was tired of fighting over this topic, so I let it be.

Taehyung: Jimin came to my room, locked Jinnie out, and ranted for a long time about it, about Jungkook not telling him things, about the lyrics of the song, he even asked: “Do you think Jungkook and Seokjin have something going on?”. I laughed and said that I would know if Seokjin was sleeping with Jungkook. But yeah, he was thinking about all sorts of things. I understood him, it’s frustrating to be left out of something. I didn’t know what had happened but I could imagine it had something to do with Jungkook loving Jimin to death, but Jimin didn’t know about that, either. This part, at least, was on him, because Jungkook always wore his love for Jimin like a second skin. 

 Seokjin: As we talked about the album, its theme, and whether ‘Sorry’ would be included in it, ‘ You Know Me Too Well’ came to the table. When we agreed to put that song on the album, Jungkook asked Taehyung if he wanted to sing it since it was his song, but Taehyung said: "Nah, there's no need, I don't think I could, and I don't feel that way anymore." Things were going really well for us, but I still felt relieved hearing him say that. I think I fell for him all over again. 

Taehyung: It made me thrilled to have a song written by me on the album, tho. 

Jungkook: For this album, we had a bigger budget, as the company invested in us more, in clothes, promotions, music videos, stuff like this. We designed the cover of the album, just like we had for our first, though this time Taehyung drew it, and not me. It felt like the start of a nice ritual, having our members doing it. 

We would do a showcase for our comeback that was going to be live streamed, too, so people outside of Seoul and around the world could watch it. The tickets were sold out two weeks before the concert, and it felt so unreal, us being sold-out artists. 

I still couldn’t believe that we were making it bigger, that people had hopes for us, that fans were waiting for our songs. Better, I knew then for sure that there wasn’t any chance for the company to drop us and make me go solo.

Seokjin: Jungkook gave his sweat, blood, and tears for this band. All of us did, actually. I didn’t think I needed to keep reminding him and the other guys that we deserved everything that was coming, but I still did it because they kept acting like we didn’t. 

Taehyung: This time while promoting the album we had more screen time on TV shows, even performed on most of them, participated in famous variety shows like Men on a Mission and Running Man, got interviewed by magazines not small at all, and even shot for Rolling Stones! And, the best part: we did the puppies thing with Buzzfeed. I thought this was the greatest perk of being famous, getting to be interviewed about our music and relationship with each other while playing with doggies. “We’re making it big”. 

Jimin: Our second tour  included just cities in South Korea and Japan at first, but some time later, it was expanded to other countries in Asia, a few countries in Europe, the USA, and Brazil. We kept repeating to ourselves “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.” while even bigger things harder to believe kept happening to us. I think half of the time we were in disbelief and the other half we were amazed by everything.

Hoseok: As the tour started, Jimin and Jungkook got bolder by each show. One night in Daegu, Jungkook held Jimin’s waist while bringing him closer and I thought I could faint from stress because of it. Another time in London, Jungkook held Jimin’s leg as if it were his guitar. On the next night in London, he sucked his fucking ear .

 I couldn’t bring myself to be bothered by it, because I thought I had seen it all. 

But then the second night in Paris happened, and I think it was the romantic aesthetic of the city, but Jungkook was possessed. Jimin was wearing a head microphone and Jungkook had a hand mic, so Jungkook decided to just not use his own. He approached Jimin from behind, held his face towards him, and started singing using Jimin’s mic, really close, while holding him from behind. I was really afraid they were going to kiss on stage, I was fearing for my life.

Jimin: Of course I knew I was attracted to Jungkook, just fucking look at him and you’ll  get why. But I thought our banter on stage was just Jungkook’s stage persona, because he never acted anything  like it offstage, so I never thought too deeply about it and just went with it. 

But when he held my face and sang using my mic on that show, I thought he was really crazy, really crazy, out of his mind, because I could very well have had a boner right then and there, and then what? 

He was singing with his lips really close to mine, and one of his hands was holding my face while he looked at me right in my eyes. I could feel his breath and every word coming out of his lips, and everything felt so hot. I didn’t have a single thought in my head because everything just turned  blank, and my legs felt like jelly. I don’t know how I managed to keep playing during all of that, but I did, and because of that I think I was the MVP of that show. 

Seokjin: We often see our fans joking about how Jungkook looks like he’s making love with the mic when he sings, and we joke about it between us too. But when Jungkook and Jimin are singing together and when they share the mic…it looks like they are making love to each other . Right in our faces. And well… I'm not really into voyeurism.

Taehyung: Don’t tell Jimin that I said this, but he just fooled around so much during the second tour because he needed to relieve some of the building-up tension he got because of Jungkook’s antics on stage. Every time the show ended and we would celebrate somewhere he would disappear with someone in the first hour and I just know it was because of Jungkook. I joked about it to him a few times and I swear to god he growled at me. Don’t tell anyone I said that either. 

Jennie Kim [rock critic at the Rolling Stone magazine]: I have been following their work ever since their first album and I have always liked their songs, but at first, I thought the members were doing some kind of queerbait; you know, these kinds of things are quite in vogue recently. But when I finally watched them live, I realized that there was no way in hell they were pretending a single thing. You just can’t pretend to have that kind of chemistry, it was like the air between them was different. And not only between Jimin and Jungkook, but  Taehyung and Seokjin too, they looked at each other as if they were ready to jump at each other and fuck at any moment if it weren’t for that drum between them. But everyone knew about these two, Taehyung and Seokjin never did a thing to pretend they weren't together.

Taehyung: Well, we are four boys who like boys, so of course we would kiss each other and do other things, eventually. I think the only ones who hadn’t  kissed each other by that time were Jimin and Jungkook and Jungkook and Jin, the former because they have this weird brother/brother relationship, but I still think their time is coming one of these days. I have kissed Jungkook plenty of times, Jin, obviously, and Jimin obviously too, because have you ever seen those lips? I just realized that I might have a thing for juicy lips. This is so fun, right? Talking to you like this, I keep talking and talking non-stop and discovering all these things about myself, it's almost like therapy.

Anyway, we all had kissed Yoongi and Hobi-hyung too, so we just thought that sooner or later Jungkook and Jimin would be the ones finally touching lips, so we waited, and waited, and waited.

Yoongi: Years went by and sometimes I thought they were just fooling us pretending they hadn’t done anything yet, but Jungkook isn’t a good actor to be able to feign that much pining. 

Hoseok: There were lots of times when they blurred the borders of friendship off stage. There was this one time when we went to a club after a show in Los Angeles, and Yoongi-hyung managed to join us there. I’m a moody drinker, so I was resting for a bit on the bar with Jinnie-hyung and Yoongie-hyung while the other members danced. And the way they were dancing, we couldn’t even take our eyes off them. Actually, everyone in the club was staring because it was…

Yoongi: …Obscene. 

Hoseok: ...So hot. 

Taehyung was dancing between Jungkook and Jimin and they were like, impossibly close. Jungkook had his hands on Jimin’s ass and was kissing a side of Tae’s neck while Jimin sucked the other side of the neck, helding Jungkook close by his hair. It was a vision, really. I saw them kissing the skin the other had kissed just before. 

When Taehyung kissed Jimin and turned around to kiss Jungkook next, I thought Jimin and Jungkook would be the next ones kissing too, but it didn’t get anywhere, unfortunately: after some time Jungkook disappeared and Seokjin took his place. 

Then, Taehyung, Jimin, and Seokjin-hyung disappeared together. 

Taehyung: Jungkook is a coward. 

Jungkook: Of course I was afraid of making a move on Jimin, the first time I’d done it was still fresh on my mind and I couldn’t bring myself to be vulnerable to rejection again. I know it’s stupid and everything, because it happened the very first time we interacted and things had changed a lot between us in all these years, but I still thought about it everytime I considered doing something about Jimin. 

And I still didn’t think of myself as someone who deserved to be loved by him, to have my love reciprocated, even with Mingyu repeating time after time that I was being nothing but stupid because of it. We really don’t have control over our insecurities, do we? 

And , I was afraid that he didn’t love me the same way I loved him. Of course, I could see he was attracted to me, but I knew it better to know that just having sex with him wouldn’t do any good to my heart, and this border was one that I didn’t want to cross thoughtlessly.  

Jungkook: One day, after the show in São Paulo where the crowds sang  every word of our songs with us, even louder than us, and the encore lasted as long as it could, Jimin hugged me really tight and said “A few years ago, that night at the noraebang when I first heard you singing, I thought that you would have the brightest future, and that I wanted to be there to see it and be part of it, even if a little bit. But it’s not just a little bit, is it? I couldn’t imagine back then that I would be at your side now, that your bright future would be the same as mine, but I’m living it now, and I’m really happy because of it, because now I know, and I’m really grateful. So thank you, ok?” 

Jimin: Jungkook said: “I wouldn’t be able to do anything if I didn’t have you with me”. And I felt my heart flutter a little bit. I asked myself if he felt it too.

Taehyung: Jimin and Jungkook were so obsessed with each other, everyone knew it, even they knew it, but it looked so obvious to them – that they had to be obsessed with the other, that they had to love each other —, so Jimin, at least, never spared a thought about it. The same way you probably never stopped and reflected about the fact that you have a leg, he never stopped and reflected about what this love he felt meant. 

Seokjin: Taehyung gets all sappy while talking about them, it’s really funny. 

Taehyung: You see, often I feel like I am part of a weird polyamorous relationship with them. I think it's part of the nature of my relationship with Jungkook and Jimin. Jungkook and I have our banter, but it always ends in some soft way, like we can bicker a bit, but it’s fated that at the end we’ll be playing and smiling at each other. And with Jimin, well... we’ve been terribly disgusting ever since we laid eyes on each other; so frequently we have domestic moments like: I am laying down and Jimin comes to cuddle me, and Jungkook comes soon on his tail, and hugs my other side, or when the three of us drink together, or after a really tiring band practice and we all end sleeping on top of each other… things like this.

And because I have kissed them both multiple times, too. Oh, oh my god, I just realized that before kissing each other, they shared multiple indirect kisses through me. 

Jimin: During that tour, I eventually accepted my feelings for Jungkook. I came to the thought that instead of a heart, I have a little bird inside my chest. For a while, it was just a baby birdie, so when I first saw Jungkook singing, or when we face-timed each other while he was abroad, when he held me that night before our first show, or that night in São Paulo, this little baby tried to bat its wings and fly. It was really light, because the bird didn’t know how to do it yet, so it did a gentle sweesh, sweesh, and I could feel just a little bit of it, but couldn’t understand its meaning. But it grew, eventually, as it was meant to do; so when Jungkook was too close, or even when he was just his usual self, keeping a hand on my back, massaging my neck, passing me the food even before I asked for it, calling me Jimin-ssi with a huskier and lower tone, its wings were big and heavy and did badum, badum, badum inside my chest and I couldn’t ignore my not so little bird of a heart anymore, could I? 

But knowing that I was madly and desperately in love with Jungkook didn’t mean I was ready to act on it. 

Taehyung: I think one of the reasons that made Jimin and Jungkook take all this time to do something about what they felt was all this history they have. It’s really hard to gather the courage to change something that is so constant in your life. For years and years you have something in this exact same way, so you don’t even know where to start changing. It’s easy when it’s new because you don't have anything to change, like, with me and Jimin, all it took us was a "you're the most attractive man I have ever seen" and "funny thing is: I was thinking the same about you" and "I really want to kiss you" and "I don't know what is stopping you"  while we were drinking together just a few weeks after we’d met. 

And with him and Jungkook, they weren't always like that. For such a long time feeling attracted to Jungkook wasn’t ever an option to Jimin, so I get that when it happened it was such a foreign feeling he didn’t know how to act on it, or how to name it.

And of course, the Mingyu thing. 

Jimin: I had to watch Jungkook singing ‘Sorry ’ every night of the tour like he was feeling the feelings of the song for the very first time, and I kept asking myself if he was really over it, even if any other time he seemed like he was. And, of course, Mingyu showed up here and there during the tour. If they had broken up in such a bad way to have Jungkook writing that song and pushing me away and being all sad for weeks to months, how would they be acting all cuddly together? 

Mingyu: Jungkook showed me ‘Sorry’ even before the song was released. The first time I heard it it hurt a lot, but on the second time I laughed out loud and thought “He is so dramatic”. It all hurt like crazy at that time, but it wasn’t so deep to make him think he wasn’t a good human being. I said that to him, that he should forgive himself because deep down it wasn’t his fault.

But it’s a really great song and I felt fantastic to be the muse of a song this good, even if its context and the feelings in it weren’t any good. 

We didn’t stay friends immediately after the break up because I couldn’t, but it was good being around him again after some time. I’d forgotten how great it was to be his friend. 

Hoseok: It happened on the last day of their tour, back in Seoul. The day when it happened was just like any other day, nothing unexpected had happened: the weather was just as forecasted, everyone was acting all disgustingly cute as always, the preparations before the show went smoothly like butter melting on a hot pan. It felt like an easy day to be their manager. I was happy, I was satisfied, and I couldn’t see what was coming. 

Yoongi: Usually I watch their shows from the crowd, to feel everything just as everyone else in there, because being part of the crowd on their shows is such an experience, and I loved it every time. But I have an old injury on my shoulder from an accident I had some years ago, and that day it was hurting a lot, so I thought it would be safer if I watched from backstage.

I don’t know if it was a good idea or not. Because of it, I had a full view of what happened. 

Hoseok: They were playing just as usual, you see, and Jungkook and Jimin were acting all weird and clingy just as usual too, but while singing ‘ You Know Me Too Well’, Jungkook sang “ filthy impetuous soul, I wanna give it to you / Oh, just to see what you'd do / Cause I'm so drunk on you” holding Jimin close by the neck, and Jimin stepped closer and sang back “baby, you're all that I want / I want you all to myself” though he didn’t have solo lines on this song, and they sang “oh, but you know me too well” together.

Yoongi: At some point while singing, Jimin stopped playing, and the rest of the band stopped too. It was all silent like we couldn’t believe what was happening, because Jimin and Jungkook were singing just too close to each other, so close that when it happened nobody could really see who was the one who moved first. 

Kim Bora [Capstone’s fan on a Naver article about the Incident]: Fucking finally.

Jimin: I remember feeling his lips on mine and his hands on my neck and I asked myself “So it’s like this?”. And it was heavenly, really.

Jungkook: I think till then I’d been climbing nonstop, and I enjoyed the path, but that time, on that stage, kissing Jimin, finally, finally kissing him, I really felt at zenith. Since then I've felt at the top of the world.

Yoongi: I was just glad I wasn’t their manager anymore because I would have a ton of things to deal with. 

Hoseok: As their friend: congrats on being gay! As their manager: why in the name of God did they have to have their first kiss in front of thousands of people in a conservative country? I saw my career flashing through my eyes. 

But I was really happy for them, still.

Seokjin: They were full-on making out, I blushed!

Yoongi: I hope they fucked too, at least.

Taehyung: I know for sure they fucked. 

Jungkook: What we did after the show is no one’s business. 

Jimin: Oh, we definitely fucked after that. Multiple times. 

▶

Namjoon left the place where he had just finished talking with Jimin. He sighed, asking himself where things had gone wrong. He’d made tons of worse interviews in his career, but even if it was nice to talk with the members of the band, they just kept talking about their history and their love for each other. The article was about the rising popularity of k-rock among other genres of Korean music, and he would have to do a real miracle to be able to work with what he had. 

“Joonie!” Hoseok called, waiting for him in front of Yoongi’s car and opening the back door for him. He had this heart-shaped big smile directed at him, and it took all of Namjoon’s might to sound grumpy when he said “You traitor” while entering the car. 

“You said I should do individual interviews with them so they wouldn’t be distracted by each other, and I did it, and they still got distracted by each other. You two too.”

Yoongi smiled from the driver’s seat, “I didn’t say they wouldn’t be distracted, I just said they wouldn’t be as easily distracted by each other. You’re lucky, you haven’t seen them together yet, they can’t keep their hands to themselves for even a sec.” 

Namjoon stared at Hoseok’s hands massaging Yoongi’s neck and Yoongi’s hands on the manager’s thigh. 

“Like the two of you right now?”, he asked. 

Hoseok stared at him through the rearview, locked eyes with him, and looked absolutely wicked when he asked with his sweetest voice: “Are you jealous, Joonie?” 

Then he smiled, big and bright like the sun, and said: “Well, you can always schedule another meeting with them to get what you need, right? Lucky you, you’re high school besties with their manager.” 

“I think they were all  flirting a bit with me.'' Namjoon said after some time.

Hoseok laughed loudly, “Oh, they definitely were.” 

 ▶▶l

What’s the Zenith point to a Korean rock band? 

Spoiler: Having love, success, and friendship intrinsically together. 

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Kim Namjoon

10/13/2018

This is how it starts: 

A boy meets another boy in Busan. One of them wants to be an idol, the other one, a computer engineer. They don’t go to the same school, nor have the same friends or age, but they still meet each other again. And keep meeting, again, and again. Eventually, those Busan Boys become each other’s best person. 

Although their future seems to have nothing in common, they start it together: both boys go to Seoul, a new place where everything feels unfamiliar, except for each other. 

The boy who wants to be an idol has luck in his dream and eventually goes to a place a little far from the second boy. But the second boy doesn’t stay alone: he meets someone from Daegu who is bright and warm and who makes him feel less lonely. 

This first boy no longer has that much luck: he is running, just like time, but nothing seems to change, and he feels lonely, too. He doesn't have a warm Daegu boy to himself, yet. He goes even farther from home, to somewhere that looks like another world: another country.

He goes... he comes back. 

And when he comes back, he sees a Seoul boy on stage and realizes what he really wants to do: to be in a band. He meets this Seoul boy, and meets another boy from Daegu, and this is where his life starts to change.

He gives up on being an idol and starts fighting to be in a band. Even if these new boys barely know him, they shelter him and help him with it. 

And he doesn’t feel lonely anymore. 

His dream of having a band eventually becomes the other Busan boy’s dream, too. Because they've been in it together since the start, haven’t they? 

Eventually, all of these boys gather and start doing what they were made to do: music.

The first song, the first show, the first album. The tours and the success. The second album and then they make it even bigger: sold-out shows all around the world, photoshoots and interviews with the biggest magazines out there. 

Their love for each other all through the way. 

This is a story about Capstone. 

About Jungkook, Jimin, Taehyung, Seokjin, and Yoongi, also.

Between the first and the twelfth of september, I sat with the members of the current hottest Korean rock band Capstone and talked about the rise of Korean culture around the world, claims about the westernization of k-artists, their latest songs, their upcoming album, and of course, their love story. 

They talked to me as if I were their long-time-no-see friend who needed to be filled in about all these events that happened with them during the time I was away. Just like with a friend, they welcomed me warmly, in a way that made it so easy to get comfortable, with all the jokes and their silly flirty way. 

 Before interviewing them, their manager advised me  to keep them in separate rooms, so they wouldn’t be distracted by each other's presence. Though I followed the advice, they still managed to divert their attention to each other, as if they’re physically incapable of not doing so. As a journalist, it made my job a little harder, trying to get them to stay on the subject. As a human being, and maybe as someone who’s becoming friends with them, I found this trait really endearing, and it was a true honor to be trusted to hear their love story.

I’m a known skeptic, but it’s hard not to believe in soulmates and people meant to be together when you get to know them because of the way all of them complete each other’s sentences even in separate rooms, or the way they can make absolutely any topic be about one of the members of the band.

To foreign eyes, the four members of Capstone can seem very different from each other, but looking closely you realize they’re just different parts of the same puzzle: each of them completing each other in their own way. 

Min Yoongi — a friend of mine from some years ago, Capstone’s former manager, their producer and best friend, someone who never raises his voice, but whose love reverberates magnificently — talks about the time when Jeon Jungkook, 21, Capstone’s main vocalist, came to his door with everything he had after dropping his dream of being an idol, and the time when the band was formed around his center table in the apartment he shared with his best friend Kim Seokjin, 26, drummer of Capstone. 

Yoongi: “It contradicts itself a little, the way I feel about it. I become a little incredulous every time I think that a band that was formed in my living room has their face on buildings at Times Square and in other places around the world, but another part of me knew that, obviously, they would make it big. Have you ever listened to their songs? To their voices and how they play? This part knew that if I looked with enough attention, I could see it coming ever since that time when Jungkook, at sixteen and wearing thick eyeliner, asked Seokjin-hyung to be part of a band that didn’t even exist yet. You can’t feign that much determination, right? There’s no way a kid like that wouldn’t make it big.”  

Even if you don’t know anything about Capstone — if you haven’t watched the news, or seen the videos online about what they were up to these days —, you would know just from this start how much love surrounds their very existence. And it’s only natural to talk about love with Taehyung, 25, Capstone’s bassist. When he was talking about Jimin, he said "If Jimin isn’t made outta love, then he isn’t made of anything.", but the same can be said about him: the way he talks about the other members, his voice, his smug face and boxy smile. Everything about him screams "loveable". 

So, love and Taehyung seemed like a topic that walked hand in hand, and because of it, the love life of the band became a subject very soon.  Even if he’d talked to me lightly till then, he became — almost — very serious when I asked about the aftereffects of Jungkook and Jimin’s kiss on stage at the ending show of the Zenith tour in Seoul, and how is the dynamic within a group where everyone is pretty much in love with each other?

Taehyung: We’re four boys who love boys, so I think it was only natural that somewhere along the way we ended up falling for each other, right? Have you seen their personalities? I don’t think I ever stood a chance. That being said, our love is who we are, and it’s who we always have been, and you can see it very well if you follow our work, if you watch our videos, listen to our songs, see us on stage. I don’t think Jinnie and I ever did a thing to hide we’re dating. 

So, it’s a package, and you can’t have it otherwise. Our lyrics are written by a boy to another boy, so if you don’t like who we are, then you have nothing to do with our band. It’s like this thing Jungkook keeps quoting, that Kurt Cobain once said: ‘If you're a sexist, racist, homophobe, or basically an asshole, don't buy this CD. I don't care if you like me, I hate you’ .

 It can sound pretty harsh, talking like this, but it’s the truth, right? Fortunately, the feedback for the kiss was much more positive than negative, mostly just “finally”, and that’s pretty much what we all felt. So generally speaking, it was good, good to see them finally making a move on each other, and good to see our fans loving our love.

 It could be much worse, at least we’re not in k-pop.

But love is not only the one we receive from others, it’s also the one we give to ourselves. When I sat with the members, all of them told me about the beginning of the band, and how they grew into it. Jimin, who is known for the love he gives to others, was a part of Capstone many years before the idea of a band even existed, and he and the others told me about insecurities they had since the beginning.

How was the path from the boy from years ago who dropped out of SNU because of the fear of failure, of being mediocre, to the boy who played guitar late at night till his fingers bled before considering himself good, to the Park Jimin I met: the one I saw on stages who acted as if he owned them, and the one who sat across of me, saying all of these things about himself, doing one of the most self-confident acts: laying himself bare to strangers?

He laughed.

Jimin: I don’t think I ever thought of myself as brave for doing that, but I guess it’s easier to find courage in others than in yourself. 

Actually, I struggled a lot to accept that what I do is worth it, that I’m worthy of the praise I get, that my work is good as it is. Being a perfectionist often means constantly re-evaluating your work and thinking “I could have done this another way, better” and doing it all over again from scratch until it becomes somewhat good. But it never does, and you always think no this is wrong, that is wrong, I can do better, I can do better, I can do better. It seems hellish, it is hellish, much more so if you’re in the art branch, where the “good” is often  relative. And I’ve lived like this for so long, since I was a dancer, actually. 

But I’m trying to be more laid back now, to accept that things are good as they are. And it doesn’t mean that I’ll stop improving. But it means that I’m good enough as I am right now too, that I don’t have to bleed myself to be worthy. 

Kim Seokjin, 26, Capstone’s drummer, is someone who is easy, in lack of any other words to describe him. It’s easy to have your attention caught by him — he is worldwide handsome, after all —, and it is infinitely easy to be around him. He is polite and very humble, and even if he is older than I am and much more famous, he treated me warmly, praised my work and asked me to speak to him casually as soon as we met. During a lot of times while talking with him I felt as if I were his friend, and not a journalist. 

We talked about the humongous success of Korean music among the Western public, and the claims of westernization of Korean songs to approach the Western crowd. These claims began with the huge success of the k-pop group BTS across the world, and now we can see these same comments about Capstone. Despite treating the allegations with disdain, he spoke against them passionately. 

Seokjin: It’s ridiculous, to the point that it’s laughable, to think that we can’t make it if our songs reflect who we are and our culture. And even if we aren’t singing in Korean, we still are Korean boys. A song can’t erase this. 

If you think that music is a product and what we do is sell this product, it's only logical to want it to be sold all around the world, right? You don't call Samsung out for investing in Western countries, nobody says "our technological industry is westernized because Samsung has fabrics in the US", right? 

But if you think of us as musicians, and the people who listen to us as people who love us and whom we love back, it also makes sense that we wanna be loved all around the world. Who wouldn't want to? Thinking that there are people in Brazil, Chile, Angola, and many other countries who listen to us, who think about us with care, why in the world would this be a bad thing? And once these people dedicated so much of themselves to us, it's only fair that we think about them too, that we go to their countries, make a little bit of effort so our work can be easier for them to access and understand.

Jungkook, the youngest and the first member of Capstone, is the one responsible for writing and composing most of the songs of the band. He is shyer off stage and has lots of mannerisms because of it — touching his ears, scratching his neck, avoiding eye contact, being constantly in movement, are one of those — but when talking about his music, he is just as bold and passionate as you can see in any of their shows. When he eventually opens up, it’s to act all about his age: a little laid back, funny, and quite endearing, to be honest. 

In "Where's My Everything" and in other songs of your first album, Windup , you guys expressed anger towards a situation, a system. Later, in "Sorry" and "You know me too well" from your second album, Zenith, the anger you felt was towards yourselves. But zenith means the highest point reached in the heavens by a celestial body. How was the development from the hate toward something external to us,  directed to the world itself,  to the self-hate you expressed in those songs in Zenith ?  And how could it represent the name of the album? 

Jungkook: That’s a good question. Well, I don’t know if it was growth, or if I can call Zenith a more mature album, but to me, at least, what happened was that I was young, younger actually, and when we’re young we start to see the world and start realizing the bad in it. First, we’re children, and we’re protected, or should be, so what we see of the world is a sugar-coated version of it, but when you gotta see it with your own eyes you feel tricked, and angry, of course, because it is not what they promised that it would be. It is ugly and so unfair, so of course, you want to fight against it. 

But eventually, I realized that the ugliness in the world exists inside me too, that as much as I was hurt by Others, capitalized, I could hurt others too. It’s a terrifying realization.

But though I felt so many hurtful things and sang about them, the album is not only about that. The name of the album recalls the greatest point of something, and I don’t think this peak of being is something that must be exempt from sadness or other “ugly” feelings. You’ve watched “Inside Out”, right? You’re in your healthiest state of being when you’re allowed to feel everything. I admit I felt everything in a bit of a dramatic way but I still stand by every bit of it!

What can we expect from the next album?

Jungkook: I’m feeling even greater than I was during Zenith, and every member of our band is madly in love, so just you wait for even sappier songs than I gave you before. 

When I finally asked what was the moment that had felt like zenith to them, Jungkook replied: “The final concert of the tour. We were back in our country, and I was on the stage with my best friends singing to people that I love and that love me back. And, of course, the kiss. I think till then I’d been climbing nonstop, and I enjoyed the path, but that time, on that stage, kissing Jimin, finally, finally kissing him, I really felt at zenith. Since then I've felt at the top of the world.”

After the interview ends, Jungkook jokes that the readers will find it boring. “Who wants to read about a rock band just saying good stuff about themselves?" he asks, without realizing that while talking about the band and how it began, they told us a whole story of love.