Chapter Text
they’re square in the middle of rehearsing for their second track for the tour when the swamp of dizziness hits jimin, running over him like an eighteen wheeler and he’s left gasping for breath, because something is constricting his ribs and airways.
he stumbles and desperately hopes that he won’t have a run in with the ground anytime soon. in the end, it makes him half a beat slow in the middle of dope’s chorus, and it messes up his flow enough for hoseok to send a concerned glance his way. jimin, however, is able to recover quickly enough and no more questions are asked; fatigue is a dear friend to every one of them, as much as her presence is met with silence.
this is the most tired jimin has been in months. his breaths saw in and out in whispers, screams perhaps, his chest burns, and his eyes are threatening to shutter. even taehyung is taking koala to the next level with arms draped around jimin’s shoulders and face tucked into the crook of his neck. it’s usually comforting, but today the stick of skin on skin—because sweat and body heat and weight—makes jimin’s fingers itch, desperate to claw out of his own skin.
it seems like seconds later, namjoon is calling everyone back for a run through of n.o. jimin can feel his focus slipping as he goes and dammit, it registers to him then that he needs to tumble and there are lead weights attached to his legs. he’s worked with this before though, and nothing should go wrong because he’s gone through the take off a million times just for this sole purpose: even if he’s exhausted, the muscle memory will carry him through—
except when it doesn’t. a part of his leg seems to lock when he lifts off of the ground and the impending panic arrives to seize at his chest, stealing his breath away. it feels all wrong, as if instead of escaping the clutches of gravity for a second, he’s counting down the milliseconds to coming in contact with the earth again.
jimin’s leg doesn’t hold when he makes contact and he lands and goes down down down. blinding pain, fire, or maybe lightning, strikes. an alien and invisible weight presses against his front, hell-bent on stealing his breath. something is bubbling up in his chest. echoes of laughter, screams, tears? he can’t tell which one it is.
the floor feels cold against his cheek, jimin thinks, and he can vaguely make out the sound of someone’s shocked yell. it might be yoongi. it might be wishful thinking. all he knows for sure though, is that if the floor were warmer, maybe he can fall asleep comfortably because black is creeping in at the corner of his vision, and the waves of fire are dull, far away.
“what happened?” the voice is loud, jarring, and whoever it is sounds ready to cry.
i don’t know, he wants to say. his limbs feel funny and he’s not sure if he wants to cry or laugh; there’s still this odd tight feeling constricting his chest.
through all the noise buzzing around, jimin’s kind of proud that he can make out a faint, “i-i don’t know, he just… dropped.”
“jimin! park jimin, can you hear us? are you okay?”
i think. he tries to reach out, tries to catch the edge of a pair of black converse with unwilling fingers. try as he might, the distance refuses to close.
he can hear, jimin wants to say, he wants to raise his hands or speak up, anything really, but his body doesn’t cooperate. suddenly his limbs feel like they weigh a ton and his lips are sealed together.
“you little fucker, stay with us, okay? jiminie? jimin!”
i’m sorry, he wants to say, and would have said if he mouth would just move.
and he is, really. he is awfully sorry about not being able to hold it together until the end of the song. he’s disappointed not just himself, but six other fucking people, and there’s a stage coming up soon and why would his body choose now of all times to give up?
someone who sounds very much like namjoon is shouting for order and some “goddamn quiet” just before jimin loses the battle and slips under.
~~~~
there are stitches gluing his eyelids together; nothing can dissuade jimin from this fact. there’s no way they would be this hard to open otherwise. he pries them open by a crack only to see white layered on white, and the scent of sterile hospitals invades his nose. panic seeps into his limbs. there must be something very wrong with his vision--why is everything so bright--until the focus suddenly kicks in and he realizes it’s a very flat and white ceiling.
jimin tilts his head, wincing as something in his neck cracks. the window is closed, and there’s a vase of wilted flowers sitting by the edge of the bed. whoever is in charge of the room is evidently doing a fantastic job, he thinks wryly, before the ache looming over his thoughts like an ominous cloud settles itself over any other further logistics. go back to sleep, it whispers, lulls, despite the thunderous emptiness.
he’s ready to, eyelids already finding each other, when the doors creeps open reluctantly with a groan.
for a second, jimin thinks it might be a member of bts visiting, and god is he sorry for fainting on them; he really didn’t mean to and apparently it was bad enough that he had to be taken to the hospital.
it isn’t. in retrospect, he thinks, he should have known, because there’s no way they would be this quiet. taehyung would be jumping on him with or without doctor consent, all of the hyungs would be berating him as soon as they set eyes on him, and jungkook… actually might be quiet. the point is, however, that the visitor is a pretty nurse in blue who looks barely a day over twenty and incredibly surprised, at that. he wonders if she recognizes him. (on the other hand, jimin’s stopped trying to guess the ages of girls by their face because idol girl groups and everything.)
the nurse comes to a rest by his side and goes through the procedure with him, most of the questions asked involve logic and reasoning or math of some sort. or observation. jimin tries to avoid giving a stare of disdain when he’s asked how many fingers she’s holding up because he honestly doesn’t know what he’s warranted to get that – she’s holding up one finger for heaven’s sake.
“you’re doing well,” the nurse announces with a smile as she jots something down on her notepad. “to be honest,” she says, before pausing to check her clipboard for a name, “park jimin-sshi, no one expected you to wake up after two years. you’re a very lucky man.”
jimin freezes in his spot and tries to sit up, only to find he’s attached to a plethora of tubes and who knows what devices.
he doesn’t understand. it makes no sense, what is she trying to…?
two years? as far as jimin knows, people don’t tend to faint for two years and he feels so uneasy but the first thing that falls out of his mouth is laughter and, “it’s a hidden camera, isn’t it?”
the nurse frowns, stares at him as though he’s grown a second head; as though she doesn’t follow at all, and god is she an amazing actress. if he didn’t know better, jimin just might believe her, but there’s no way, there’s no fucking way that this can be real.
“come on, there’s no way it’s been two years. what year is it today?”
she seems to grow increasingly concerned, but the year she gives is no different from the one he heard yesterday. if his bandmates had wanted to set him up, at least they should’ve gotten a nurse who could do math. instead of just act.
“what day, then?” jimin presses as he curls his hands into the sheets, feeling them crinkle underneath the pressure.
“it’s the seventeenth of october, sir,” she murmurs, her eyebrows almost disappearing into her bangs.
“yesterday was the sixteenth. there’s no way it’s been two years,” he insists. he knows this, and the small part of him almost worrying about brain damage subsides. a little.
this time, the nurse’s voice is very soft and quiet, like she’s talking to a wounded animal or trying to break news that she knows won’t be taken well (same difference, isn’t it?). “park jimin-sshi. i’m afraid… yes, yesterday was the sixteenth, but i have to tell you that you were admitted on the thirteenth of june two years ago. not yesterday… as you seem to be suggesting?”
jimin shakes his head, and he’s asking for the camera again because usually when a member figures out that it’s a hidden cam they stop messing around and this woman is scaring him with the contempt in her eyes like he’s some sort of ridiculous person who’s messed up in the head.
(she’s staring at him like how they would stare at him back in the last years of elementary school, like he’s food for the wolves. he’s not used to such open contempt like this; not used to people looking down upon him instead of hating him for what he does. at least he’s known for something, that way.)
“don’t you recognize me?” he’s asking desperately, gesturing at himself because there’s no way suddenly a nation, a world, at that, can suddenly forget his face or name. isn’t this recognition the very thing he’s worked towards, even if partly, for the past two years? it can’t suddenly all be gone, where is he, what is he? “i’m park jimin!”
the nurse shakes her head slowly, eyes wide, taken aback. “sir? i’ve never seen you before in my life. i’m relatively new here, i was hired… maybe a year ago? you’re probably confusing me for someone else.”
no, he obviously doesn’t recognize her, because that seems to be what she’s suggesting, but shouldn’t she know him?
jimin’s heart drops into his stomach, and there’s something slowly eating him from the inside out; corroding, splitting, and he thinks he wants to vomit so very badly.
“then bts? you must have heard of bts,” he asks, voice rising almost hysterically, remembering screaming fans and oceans of lights in stadiums. he remembers passing lines of fans in the van, and hoseok’s offhanded comment about it. “you—” his voice breaks. “you must have heard of us.”
an audible huff is the response he’s given. “of course i’ve heard of bts—” at this the nurse pauses, as though thinking better of it. she takes a deep breath. “sir, why don’t you calm down a bit and let us update our records and we’ll explain everything to you before we continue? i’ll get the doctor and you can ask her and questions you’d like, because i’m sure she’ll have more answers than me.”
she eyes him one last time before turning on her heels and leaving.
it takes several more minutes, hours, years, for the doctor to finally come in and jimin’s mind isn’t any calmer. the doctor turns out to be a middle aged woman with broad-rimmed glasses perched on a hawk’s beak. everything about her seems sharp – from her cheekbones to her hands to the broken glass in her eyes, jagged and intimidating.
“park jimin?”
he nods hesitantly. she’s writing as well, but her movements are more sloppy and efficient than the nurse’s at the same time, like she’s practiced this a million times before. she doesn’t seem amused.
“what do you remember?” he’s not quite sure how to answer that. what he remembers is actually quite simple and crystal clear – he’s been a member of the seven membered hip hop idol group bts for the past two years, and before that he was a trainee. before becoming a trainee, he was in school and a rather ordinary student, at that.
what is he supposed to tell her? that he remembers the way yoongi’s eyes crinkle when he smiles? the way taehyung or hoseok will throw an arm over jimin’s shoulders the first thing in the morning regardless of their breaths smell? the way namjoon or seokjin’s shoulders hunch when they’re working on something they’re passionate about? the way jungkook’s insults fall like exhalations from his mouth, but never actually sting?
so he doesn’t tell her about the roar of the crowd or anything he can remember from the past two years. instead, he tells the doctor about his family – his father, his mother, and his younger brother. they’re in busan. jimin recounts what he remembers of his childhood and the doctor seems very much appeased by this, and she admits that she’s amazed at how “fast he’s recovering.”
now that he’s woken up, his muscles aren’t anything like how they were before, as jimin finds out as soon as he tries to sit up. he’ll have to stay her for at least a month for rehabilitation, and it’s something he’ll have to carry on even after he leaves the hospital, as the doctor explains.
before she leaves though, jimin’s able to flag her down for a quick question. he swallows thickly when they do make eye contact. “do you have a computer or laptop i could use around here?”
she nods. “there’s an internet station outside, so we could get a nurse to wheel you there tomorrow.”
and oh. his heart sinks. on top of everything, he’s going to be confined to a wheel chair? he’s in this strange world where it seems like he’d returned to the ordinary life he’d left behind, his hyungs, jungkook, and taehyung are gone, and he has no idea what has happened to his parents here.
the doctor seems to realize how crestfallen and confused he is. “you probably won’t need the wheelchair after a few weeks,” she assures him, but the cold feeling won’t release him from its clasp; it’s chilling him to the bone and he wants to wake up. belatedly, he realizes that his hands are shaking, and god does he feel alone when the walls he’s lived behind for the past two years vanish without a trace.
(there’s this unbidden and horrifying idea forming in the back of jimin’s mind that maybe everything he remembers about the past two years is all a dream.)
~~~~
the doctor is kind enough to lend jimin a laptop when he asks for one the next day, in light of the fact that his muscles don’t nearly cooperate enough to get him into the internet station. there’s something so utterly crushing about the feeling of trying to rise and force muscles into a form they no longer remember – every time he tries to grab for a nearby cup, push a button a metre away, it’s an uphill battle.
the strings carrying him upright are tangled and so, so frayed.
it’s with baited breath the jimin types “bts” into naver’s search bar. his heart breathes a sigh of relief when there’s nothing particularly different about what pops up at first, and everything seems relatively the same. there’s seokjin’s pre-debut photo. there’s yoongi’s pink hair that he’d dyed as a dare, not that the public knows (it’s not a bad colour, to be honest), or needs to know.
and it doesn’t change.
panic begins cresting around then, and it only builds the more he goes down. the two pictures are followed by countless ones of namjoon, seokjin, jungkook, and there’s even new v app videos. jimin can see promo pictures from their dark&wild album, can see the pose taehyung had jokingly proposed the day before that he’d actually pulled on the day of the photoshoot.
jimin can feel his breaths coming faster, each trying to catch up to the prior. the panic is fully setting once again and it’s harder and harder to ignore. maybe the nurse wasn’t crazy, wasn’t stupidly ignorant. he’s just not… there.
the v app video that he and taehyung had broadcasted together on satoori, taehyung’s there. jimin isn’t on the thumbnail. it’s with a sense of trepidation that he clicks the video, and there’s already something off with the first few seconds. he’s not lying there with taehyung. he’s supposed to be right beside him and throughout the whole heart stopping five minutes, there’s not a trace or mention of jimin.
maybe the videos with him are just somewhere else, he reasons, breaths sawing out in harsh, uneven whispers, and he can’t help it. his hands are frozen as he clicks the next link. he just hasn’t found them yet, jimin tells himself.
yet three hours later, all his search results have yielded him is the fact that bts is clearly described as a six membered group who debuted in 2013. their leader is still namjoon, seokjin is the visual, tae is a vocalist, jungkook is marketed as the maknae rapper and the thought almost makes jimin want to laugh, except the sound gets caught in his throat. jimin scrolls down farther. yoongi is listed as the second last group member, and then there’s—
jimin’s hand is shaking so badly by the time he clicks on the link to a search on jin hyosang that he nearly misses. the last time jimin had heard of him or seen him for that matter, it had been three years ago when everything the elder had owned was moved into boxes.
jin hyosang was supposed to walk on the same path as the rest of bts, but he’d left hours later, as did jimin’s plans of getting to know that hyung better after debut. yet, what all the pages on the internet are pointing to is the fact that hyosang-hyung didn’t leave. he’s still in bts. somehow. there’s an odd ring to his name now, bts’ kidoh, and so alien from what jimin is used to.
~~~~
“did you know hyosang’s debuting?” seokjin asks with far too much enthusiasm after a three hour long dance session and jimin doesn’t know how he’s even standing when even hoseok – who is an absolute god at dancing by the way and don’t ever let jimin hear otherwise or else – lies flat against the ground with taehyung sitting on his back.
“get off,” hoseok’s muttering, not that taehyung’s actually paying attention, and not that hoseok actually minds.
jimin nods. he did see the article on naver before he’d left that morning, and there’d been talk of a new boy group debuting a little earlier in the month.
“topp dogg’s jin hyosang,” seokjin murmurs, mulling the name over in his mouth, like he’s trying to physically taste the sounds or at least commit it to memory. jimin is almost tempted to ask if it tastes good, but on second thought, forgoes the notion. that’s just weird, and he’s not on taehyung’s level. yet. “or rather, kidoh. top dogg’s kidoh.”
“what the fuck was he thinking when he came up with it?” namjoon chimes in, having come in just in time to hear the tail end of that thought.
seokjin levels him a dry look, and namjoon stills. jimin would be scared too, when seokjin-hyung’s looking at him like that, yeah.
“what were you thinking when you came up with rap monster?” seokjin shoots back.
“er, bad timing?” namjoon shuts the door again delicately as he sees himself out. “i have something to… finish recording anyway. uh. anyhow so. yeah. have fun.”
“ohhhh burn!” someone stage whispers, but the whole group on the ground immediately goes silent as soon as seokjin casts a glance their way too.
~~~~
jimin comes home at one in the morning on a wednesday night, only to find the light in the kitchen is still on. the autumn chill has had more than enough time to flush the summer’s suffocating head out, and he rubs his hands together, trying to find the feeling in his fingers. it isn’t unusual for someone to be up at one—taehyung’s midnight food runs aren’t unheard of, seokjin cooks or reads well into the night when he’s stressed, and yoongi and namjoon occasionally have their bursts of manic inspiration.
“jimin?” someone calls from further in the dorm, soft and half asleep, but there’s no way that can be anyone other than yoongi.
“yeah,” jimin murmurs back, exhaustion making his voice come out scratchier than intended. depositing his scarf on the couch none too gently, jimin yawns. he’ll take a shower tomorrow in the morning, ugh. “what’s up, hyung?”
more like, why are you up, but yoongi gets it and jimin almost goes in for the hug or at least some annoying clinging. it’s the solemn, thoughtful and deep thing that yoongi always has going on when he writes that stops him.
“couldn’t sleep,” yoongi finally says after a long moment of silence, of staring at jimin as he rummages around in the fridge for something to drink, searching in vain for presumably the last bottle of the milk drink he had claimed to stash away at the back for dire emergencies such as this. “jungkook found it this morning if you’re looking for the drink.”
jimin slams the door closed with a groan; it barely makes a sound. screw smart designing, if he woke up the jungkook along with the rest of bts, he’d have hell to pay for but at least it’d be pay back. of some sort. alright, maybe not, he thinks. he’s not that evil.
“how’s your writing going?” jimin chooses to ask instead, dancing around the counter to the table with all the grace and finesse of a drunk elephant.
yoongi shrugs, chin propped atop his fist on the table. he looks just about ready to fall asleep (again, potentially, or rather, more than likely). “it’s coming along, i guess?”
“i guess?” that doesn’t sound all that promising in all senses of the phrase, in terms of progress and more, because yoongi has this tendency to run himself into the ground at the sight of any imperfections.
“it’s just, there’s verse here that sounds as awkward as hell,” yoongi admits quietly, hand carding through his hard, hard enough that jimin wants to wince from the pull. it’s dyed hair, it’s fragile, and it can’t be good. “i wanted to make some progress on it by the end of this week and it’s not coming along. at all. i know namjoon says you can’t rush it the creative process, or whatever crap he always spouts, but…” he shrugs, the gesture half frustration, half helplessness. “it’s worked before, for me at least.”
jimin knows that feeling, of understanding where he should be and where he is; he knows of understanding his potential but coming away blank as to how to reach it. he wants to tell yoongi that yes, he understands, but it isn’t a sentiment he expects will be received well, especially when jimin knows no one is rational at one in the morning.
“but that’s not the important thing right now.”
and at this, jimin shoots yoongi a confused look, because yoongi not getting a part of his song is usually a very, very important matter. yoongi beating himself up over something he can’t help is a very important and pressing matter. yoongi shakes his head, now standing fully upright and probably would be intimidating if he wasn’t squinting (it’s the expression that jimin has always found made him look years younger, and pretty cute, not that he’d admit it alive).
“what i meant to ask, is why are you home so late?” yoongi’s pointing an accusatory finger in his direction, but it’s not cutting or rough in the way he gets when he’s really worked up. “you weren’t at the studio, were you?”
is there a way to somehow redeem the situation? jimin knows yoongi doesn’t like it when any of his members are deemed “pushing themselves too hard” by his standards. yoongi has already made his viewpoint very clear on where staying past midnight for dance or vocal practice past midnight outside of when it’s necessary falls. he’s also a hypocrite when it comes to working and himself, but every time jimin tries to bring it up, it’s brushed off.
“erm, probably not, hyung?” jimin tries for his best and brightest smile. well, the best given the circumstances anyway.
“bullshit. where the fuck would you stay until one?” yoongi scowls slowly, and he does have a very good point.
“maybe. i might’ve been at the studio,” jimin admits begrudgingly, slowly. he doesn’t meet yoongi’s eyes.
yoongi sighs, slumps in on himself now that he doesn’t need to exert himself much more than that. “why are you working yourself over like this? we don’t have a schedule now.”
jimin sighs; he doesn’t need this lecture, doesn’t want this lecture from yoongi of all people. he doesn’t need anyone nagging after him, he thinks. it’s definitely not because he doesn’t want yoongi, of all people, to see his imperfections. “fine then. i’ll go to sleep now.”
neither of them move. the silence is clogging, choking, and this is his cue to leave, thinks jimin dimly. he should be going now, and yet why isn’t yoongi saying anything? snapping would be the most likely outcome, but jimin dares to hope for concern every now and then, for anyone to ask him if he’s okay, if he’s holding up. maybe he just shouldn’t hope in the first place—crushed expectations sting like shoving a burning thorn in the side.
yoongi shoots him a tired once-over, soft and subdued, before leaving first. he ruffles jimin’s hair on his way out—it’s sudden and it’s not what jimin is expecting at all. he fights off a shiver. his touch is warm, that fact not surprising considering the air conditioning that had finally been fixed a month prior, but the lingering heat don’t leave even when jimin places his hand where yoongi’s had been minutes before.
it feels nice, he thinks. kind of like the warmth of the summer rays on clear days, close and intimate and comforting, and he doesn’t want it to end.
~~~~
jimin has regained nearly full control of his body nearly two months later, and it’s deemed a miraculously fast recovery. teenage wonder, nothing short of the stories jimin sometimes sees in passing on naver would boast, and if he somehow lands himself on the internet again, it’d be for none of the reasons he’d want. the doctors say he should be thankful, that he’s had astounding good fortune, and jimin wants to do nothing short of laugh in their faces.
he’s either insane or been the victim of one of the multiverse’s most colossal jokes, because he’s not sure if patients in comas are supposed to recall so much of what they dream. there’s little holes of course, but there’s also novels’ worth of memories, of shared tears and sweat, of breakdowns. hell, he remembers when he first got introduced to bangtan, down to the little first impressions, and that’d been years ago. shouldn’t that count for something? anything?
it’s with a certain sense of relief and disappointment that jimin finds out about his parents. yes, their names are still the same. yes, they live in the same address they lived in within the other life, and yet that’s the only thing that is still familiar, the only thing he can still call them “mom” and “dad” by.
to say that they live in the building would be a bit of an exaggeration, because they do a lot of their work overseas, and the bread in the fridge has expired a month ago.
“you can take the apartment, jimin,” the woman—his mother?—says. “we’re out on a business trip but we’ll be back in another week or so, and we’d been thinking about selling the old thing anyway. it’s a bit small and old, but at least it’s something.”
“thank you so much,” jimin says, the words that stumble out of his mouth all too formal, and all too fitting. the apartment is more than enough space, after sharing his life with six other boys for years on end. the apartment will never be enough, after sharing his life with six other boys for years on end, only for it to all—
end.
“ah, no need to thank your mom,” she says with a short laugh. humorless, really. “dad and i would love to visit you soon—” he hears no sincerity, no ounce of real meaning, except cordial regret. “take care of yourself, okay?”
jimin nods, plasters on a smile, and remembers she can’t see, that no one needs to see. “of course.”
he hangs up.
~~~~
the only redeeming feature of having a place all to himself again is that jimin is slowly rediscovering what the word privacy means. the first thing he does is go outside to buy something to eat, and it’s so different to be able to go outside with no eyes following his every movement. jimin comes back an hour later and takes a shower. he wonders why having nobody to fight for the spot in the washroom makes the whole endeavor so dull.
there’s no need to worry about when he can take a shower, if he’ll be able to squeeze one in before eleven at night. there’s no need to worry about accidental run ins in less than ideal conditions, which usually translates into either being drunk, asleep, or lacking clothes. if someone had asked jimin a month before, as to whether he’d like moving out of the dorm, the answer would have been an enthusiastic yes.
and it isn’t like jimin isn’t happy in any shape, way, or form. no longer having to live hounded, like a specimen primed for showcases around the clock allows every step he takes to be lighter, even if jimin occasionally still glances over his shoulder when shopping, because just in case.
the problem is not that happiness won’t arrive, but that the ache won’t leave. it starts just below the hollow of his heart, pounds and flashes when times are inopportune, when jimin is trying to sleep or think. that’s when its ugly head would rear, remind him of what used to drive his life, be his life; of what used to be in the ache’s place before winter arrived and stripped the buds before they could form.
it’s through his parents’ connections that he’s able to get a job at a nearby cooperation working as an accountant, and he hates every minute he has to set foot in the building. never in his life did he work towards a goal such as this, and jimin can’t help but think he’s taking up someone else’s life.
and every day, it’s monotonous in a way it had never been at bighit. wake up. get dressed. arrive ten minutes late for work. get coffee for the boss. number crunch. have the report finished by three. go home. rinse. sleep. repeat.
jimin feels like throwing up when his coworker, a young woman who seems to be roughly his age brings up bts during her break. he bumps into her arm as he attempts to slip by her to his cubicle, and the countless “sorry”s are tumbling out of his mouth before he even processes what happens. she spares one sideways glance and returns to planning her excursion with her friend as though nothing happened, while jimin stands bowing beside, silently screaming for anything—a yell, a smile, a nod?
he stumbles his way out of the room numbly, finds his way to the bathroom, feet acting on muscle memory alone. he proceeds to lose the entire contents of his stomach down the toilet, knuckles bleach white against white seat, which, he thinks chuckling mirthlessly as he wipes his mouth, is probably how significant he is to the rest of the world right now.
~~~~
maybe park jimin is a masochist. that must be it, because he finds himself in a record store in downtown seoul slapping down 25,000 won in exchange for the white edition of bts’ most beautiful moments in life pt.1 exactly two hours after his work is finished, mouth still burning from the phantom taste of bile.
that night, jimin goes home and listens to every track on repeat for at least five times. there’s an odd feeling of comfort knowing that all of the songs jimin knows exists in this universe somehow, even if the chances seemed so ridiculous at first.
even if the world has forgotten about park jimin, there is no way his friends would.
“do you think we’ll ever debut?” taehyung had asked jimin when the two were curled together on a cloudy day in february, before the idea of life as an idol had seemed within reach. “sometimes it just seems like—it’s unattainable. we’re being told that we’re working towards this thing, and you have examples being held up in front of you, but what does it actually amount to?”
yoongi, who jimin had thought was asleep on the other end of the couch shifts, cracks open an eye with immense effort, hand reaching out towards taehyung’s hair lazily (he misses). “we’ll get there one day. all seven of us.” he blinks, both his eyes are now open and he’s the most serious he’s been in weeks. “it’s a dream, but it’s not unattainable, you know?”
jimin merely grins until his smile shatters and clutches taehyung tighter; if he tries hard enough, he forgets where one of them ends and the other begins.
~~~~
nothing changes in the next month or so. jimin has reports to hand in, adult responsibilities to attend to, and he spends whatever free time, whether it be commuting to and back from work, or the weekends where he doesn’t have overtime to catch up on bts promotions.
the unthinkable—the expected, jimin thinks, thinks back to seokjin holding back tears and a dead silent room—happens on a sunday night when jimin logs into naver, pulls up the news, and is greeted by the glaring head title of “kidoh of bts announces unexpected departure from group”.
it’s enough to give jimin pause for a few moments as the news digests. there is no way the rest of the group can be taking the news well, not from what jimin knows about them, or perhaps not, a tiny nagging voice, venomous, whispers in the back of his head. what do you know about bts, park jimin?
everything and suddenly nothing, he realizes, feeling chilled to his bones. all the warmth in the world in exchange for winter and what has jimin done to deserve it?
(all the hopes and dreams of other trainees you had to step on, maybe that’s what. do you really deserve to be happy, park jimin? what makes you special? isn’t bts doing perfectly fine without—)
he throws the brakes on that train of thought; he doesn’t need to go there, not now. a member leaving is never illustrious business for any idol group, and part of jimin wonders what drove kidoh to do such a thing. the limelight? the lack of privacy? dispute with the company? but bang pd-nim is nice and he’d—he’d…
what would he do?
it’s another dead end, simply because jimin has no idea of how their ceo would react or had reacted to the news.
that night, jimin goes to sleep praying the universe will right itself; that bts will be fine, and most of all, that he will be fine.
~~~~
what happens in the next week is a blur and how it starts is this:
bts continues their tour without kidoh.
bighit, to promote, is hosting a private fanmeet of sorts for anyone who has bought their latest album. a grand total of ten winners will be selected within korea and given a special pass that will allow them to enter backstage and see how the whole process is set up for bts’ concert in seoul.
park jimin buys another album for the sole purpose of attaining the code that will allow him to enter the concert.
what happens next is this:
park jimin returns home on a friday night and checks his email, as per routine. it’s stupid, he knows, because who does he expect to contact him? his mother. right. it happens once every month, if he’s lucky, and she prefers to call anyway. and as per routine, jimin selects all the emails he doesn’t need, the advertisements, and moves them into the trash bin because somehow the spam detection service sucks shit. he doesn’t even know why he still uses the platform anymore, maybe he should--
wait.
hold up.
why is there an email from naver? the title glares at him just as he clicks on the trash icon and jerks away, as if tasered: “congratulations.”
for what? for having the most abysmal day in the history of humankind, for somehow landing himself into this situation through god knows what means, for making it through one more day without wishing--
jimin pauses. maybe he’s getting ahead of himself. realistically, it’s probably just a congratulations for signing up. it could be the title of a promotion. you can never be sure (and don’t raise your hopes, don’t do it, the voice in his head snarls).
it’s not like he can help it. the last occupant of pandora’s jar wells and festers up around the iron fist he’s sure he clamped around his heart. the contest, it whispers. you entered in the contest and you’re lucky.
his treasonous fingers hover over the link to the trash. click. the email now. click.
~~~~
to: [email protected]
from: [email protected]
congratulations!
you’ve been selected as one of ten winners of naver’s behind the scenes contact with bts.
in order to attend, please:
1) have the attached ticket printed out and ready to present on day of concert.
2) arrive three hours in advance and enter through back doors as indicated on map.
3) bring photo identification.
4) be aware that cameras or any type of video recording device are not permitted.
the artist engagement session will be thirty minutes in length. we hope to see you there!
attached: 1 file
download / view