Chapter Text
The practice room lights were too bright. Jimin blinked against them as the music restarted for the fourth time.
“Again,” Namjoon said calmly.
His voice carried easily over the speakers—steady, patient. The kind of leadership that had kept their group together for four years.
Jimin nodded automatically and took his position. The choreography started. Sharp turns. Precise footwork. A quick drop to the floor and back up again.
Normally it felt natural. His body knew every movement before the music even reached it. Today it felt like he was dancing inside someone else’s skin. His timing lagged half a second behind the others. He corrected it instantly.
No one commented. But he noticed Jungkook glance at him in the mirror. The youngest had always been observant. Jimin forced a smile at him when the song ended.
“Hyung,” Hoseok teased, leaning on the wall, “did you secretly age ten years overnight?”
Jimin scoffed. “Please. I still look better than you.”
Seokjin laughed from the corner where he sat with a water bottle.
“Impossible. Hoseok’s ego alone requires at least two mirrors.”
The tension in the room softened. Jimin was good at that. Good at keeping things light. Good at pretending.
Namjoon stepped forward, reviewing something on his tablet. “Break for ten minutes,” he said.
Everyone immediately collapsed onto the floor.
Jimin walked toward the water cooler. Slowly. Carefully. Because if he moved too fast— The room tilted slightly. He grabbed the counter until the dizziness passed.
No one noticed. Good. He poured water and drank it slowly. Behind him, the others were arguing about takeout.
Jungkook wandered over. “Hyung.”
Jimin turned. “Yeah?”
“You okay?” The question was quiet. Too quiet.
Jimin forced a laugh. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Jungkook hesitated. “You looked… off during the second chorus.”
Jimin shrugged. “Just tired.”
It wasn’t technically a lie. Jungkook didn’t look convinced. But before he could press further— The practice room door opened.
Director Kang stepped inside. Every member straightened automatically.
Director Kang smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“Well,” he said smoothly, “my hardworking idols.”
The members bowed slightly. “Director.”
Kang’s gaze moved slowly across the room. Evaluating. Calculating.
Then it stopped on Jimin. “Jimin,” he said pleasantly. “A word.”
Something cold slid down Jimin’s spine, but he kept his expression neutral. “Of course.”
The other members barely reacted. Director meetings weren’t unusual.
Still, as Jimin followed Kang out of the room— Jungkook watched him go.
The hallway outside the studio was quiet. Soundproofed.
Kang walked ahead without speaking. Jimin followed. They stopped outside one of the smaller recording rooms.
Kang opened the door. “Inside.”
Jimin obeyed. The room was dim. Only the desk lamp was on.
Kang closed the door behind them. The click of the lock echoed louder than it should have.
Jimin’s shoulders stiffened. Kang noticed. He always noticed.
“You’ve seemed distracted lately,” Kang said mildly.
“I apologize,” Jimin bowed his head slightly. “I’ll do better.”
Kang stepped closer. Too close.
Jimin kept his gaze on the floor.
“Perfection,” Kang continued softly, “is the reason you debuted.”
Jimin said nothing.
Kang’s hand suddenly gripped his chin, forcing his face up. “Look at me when I speak.”
Jimin’s chest tightened. “Yes, sir.”
Kang studied him for a long moment, then his smile returned, and he snaked a hand around Jimin’s waist. “There’s a sponsor dinner next week.”
Jimin’s stomach dropped. “You’ll attend.”
It wasn’t a request. Jimin swallowed. “…Yes.”
Kang’s grip tightened before releasing.
“Good.”
He stepped back. Just like that, the moment shifted. The director picked up a folder. Businesslike again. “You’re center for the next comeback. Don’t make me regret it.”
Jimin bowed. “I won’t.”
But inside— His hands were shaking.
When Jimin returned to the practice room, the others were stretching.
Hoseok immediately grinned. “Oho, center boy returns.”
Seokjin tossed him a towel. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Jimin said easily.
Namjoon watched him carefully. “Director meeting?”
“Just schedule stuff.”
Half true.
Namjoon held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. Back to work.”
Music started again. Jimin took his position. The choreography began. His movements were flawless. Perfect. No one watching would see the problem.
But halfway through the second run— The room tilted again. His chest tightened. Breathing suddenly felt harder. He pushed through it. Finished the routine. And when the song ended— He smiled. Because that was easier than explaining why his hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
Across the room, Yoongi leaned against the mirror. Silent. Observing. He didn’t say anything. But his eyes narrowed slightly.
—----
That night in the dorm, Jimin lay awake staring at the ceiling.
His phone buzzed. A message. From Director Kang.
Don’t disappoint me next week.
Jimin closed his eyes, but sleep didn’t come. He drifted in and out of something thinner than sleep, something brittle and shallow, body half-curled under the blanket while the city hummed faintly beyond the dorm windows. Every time he slipped too deep, he surfaced again with his heart racing, breath caught high in his chest, the remains of a dream clinging damply to his skin.
In the dream there was always a locked door. Always a hand at the back of his neck, his hips, inside his thighs Always that awful split second where he knew exactly what was coming and still could not stop it.
By three-thirty in the morning he gave up entirely. He sat up slowly, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until white pressure bloomed against his eyelids. The room was dim, washed in the faint blue of a charging phone screen and the streetlight leaking through the curtains. Across the room, Taehyung was asleep on his side, one arm thrown over his pillow, breathing deep and even. It should have been comforting. Usually it was. Their dorm had never felt lonely before—not really. Someone was always snoring, muttering in sleep, padding to the kitchen for water, forgetting to charge a phone, complaining about schedules.
Now even the closeness felt dangerous in a different way. Not because of them. Because Jimin had begun to feel like a fracture line running quietly through the center of all of it. He slipped out of bed, careful not to make noise, and took his phone with him into the bathroom. The overhead light was too harsh. He turned on the smaller one above the sink instead.
Then he looked at himself. That was always the worst part. Not the performance of being okay. He could do that. Had always done that, even before debut, even when training was destroying his knees and his voice and his self-worth in equal measure. He knew how to smile under pressure. He knew how to bow, laugh, reassure, straighten his shoulders, say I’m fine in fifteen different tones until people believed him.
But the mirror never played along. There was a fading bruise just below his collarbone, partly hidden by the loose neckline of his sleep shirt. Another darker one along his upper arm. Thin healing scratches high on his ribs. A mark near the side of his neck that had yellowed at the edges but still showed if the light hit it wrong.
He touched none of them. Instead he reached for the concealer in the small basket under the sink, though there was no point at three-thirty in the morning, and stood there like he might be able to paint himself back into someone untouched.
His hand shook so badly he had to stop. He set the concealer down and gripped the sink. “Get it together,” he whispered. The words came out thin. His reflection looked like a stranger someone had failed to feed and let sleep.
His phone vibrated in his hand. For one horrible instant he thought it would be Kang. It was only a schedule update in the group chat. He exhaled so hard it made him dizzy.
A minute later another message appeared, this time from Namjoon.
Call time moved up. Vans leave at 6:40. Don’t be late.
A second message followed from Hoseok:
If anyone makes me alive before sunrise I’m suing
Then Seokjin:
You have no legal standing when you still owe me 12,000 won
Even now, even exhausted and hollow and shaking slightly over a sink, Jimin smiled. That was the awful thing. His life was still full of people he loved. It made the lying worse.
—----
At breakfast, he claimed he wasn’t hungry.
No one reacted at first. That in itself wasn’t strange. Weird schedules meant weird eating habits; everyone in the group had skipped meals at one point or another from nerves, exhaustion, dieting pressure, or plain lack of time.
But Taehyung looked up from the rice cooker with a faint crease between his brows. “You always eat after nightmares,” he said.
The words were quiet. Casual enough that maybe someone else wouldn’t catch the implication beneath them. But Taehyung and Jungkook knew his rhythms better than the others. They knew which mornings Jimin wanted silence and which ones he wanted teasing. They knew the difference between “not hungry” and “I’ll eat later.”
Jimin opened the fridge and reached for bottled water instead. “I said I’m fine.”
Taehyung’s expression softened instantly, not offended so much as cautious, as though approaching a startled animal. “I know. I just made too much.”
Jimin twisted the bottle cap off. “Then Hoseok can eat it.”
From the table, Hoseok lifted his chopsticks. “Finally. Recognition.”
That got a laugh from Seokjin. Namjoon shook his head. Even Yoongi’s mouth twitched faintly over his coffee.
Only Jungkook didn’t laugh. He was watching Jimin too openly, concern written all over his face in the careless way only the youngest could get away with. Jungkook had never learned how to hide what he felt. On stage that made him magnetic. Off stage it made him dangerous to secrets.
Jimin drank half the water in one go and kept his gaze on the counter.
“Come on,” Namjoon said, clapping once. “Shoes. Bags. Move.”
The morning rushed over all of them in a blur after that—stylists, van, schedules, early camera makeup, practiced smiles. Jimin let himself be swept by it. Motion helped. Having ten things to do was easier than having one quiet second to think.
In the makeup room, he sat very still while a stylist worked concealer along the side of his neck.
The woman paused. “Did you bump into something?”
Jimin’s pulse stumbled, he kept his voice light. “Dorm door. Half asleep.”
She laughed sympathetically and blended the edge better. “You boys really are helpless without staff.”
Across the room, Jungkook looked up from where his hair was being fixed. Their eyes met in the mirror. Jimin looked away first.
The day should have been ordinary. A prerecording. Interviews. Dance practice. Photo review. The usual endless sequence of standing, sitting, moving, bowing, smiling. And for long stretches of it, Jimin almost convinced himself it was ordinary.
He was good on camera. Better than good. He knew exactly how to stand under stage lights so he looked effortless even when his bones felt hollow. He knew how to laugh at the right beat in interviews, how to lean into playful member banter, how to soften his voice when fans asked sentimental questions, how to widen his eyes just enough when hosts teased him. He had been built for this, once. Or maybe he had built himself into it.
But the lack of sleep made tiny mistakes accumulate. He missed a cue in the second interview segment. Dropped his in-ear case when staff called them to set. Forgot part of a choreo correction Namjoon had given them yesterday. Nothing huge. Nothing anyone outside the group would notice. Inside the group, they all noticed.
By the time they climbed back into the van in the late afternoon, a quiet strain had settled over the members. Not anger. Worry. But worry in groups like theirs never stayed soft for long. Concern had a way of becoming friction when no one knew what the problem was.
Jimin took the seat by the window. Taehyung sat beside him automatically. Jungkook took the row behind them. Namjoon and Seokjin were in the front, discussing tomorrow’s revised schedule with staff over speakerphone. Hoseok was trying to make Yoongi react to a ridiculous meme and failing.
For five full minutes, it almost felt normal. Then Jimin’s phone buzzed.
A private message.
You’ll ride with me from the company garage tonight. Don’t make me repeat myself.
His stomach dropped so fast he nearly flinched.
Taehyung noticed. “What?”
Jimin locked his screen too quickly. “Nothing.”
“That didn’t look like nothing.”
“Spam.”
From behind them, Jungkook leaned between the seats. “What spam makes you look like you’re about to throw up?”
“Jungkook,” Namjoon warned from the front without turning around.
The younger member sank back, muttering an apology, but Jimin could feel his attention like a hand pressed between his shoulder blades. He stared out the van window for the rest of the drive. City lights bled in long streaks across the glass.
His body already knew what the message meant. The dread had become so familiar it felt less like fear and more like a second pulse, something permanent threaded under the first.
Next to him, Taehyung lowered his voice. “If something’s wrong, you can tell me.”
Jimin swallowed. There was a version of the world—brief, impossible, shining—where he did.
Where he leaned sideways in the van and whispered it all into the fabric of Taehyung’s sleeve. Where Taehyung’s face changed in shock and anger and immediate fierce protectiveness. Where the others found out tonight, right now, all at once, and someone stopped this before it could keep rooting deeper into him.
Instead he said, “You worry too much.”
Taehyung stared at him for a moment. Then, very quietly: “Only when you give me a reason.”
Jimin looked away.
—----
The sponsor dinner was held on the top floor of a hotel that smelled faintly of polished wood, expensive perfume, and money dense enough to make the air feel different.
They were there to be seen. That was the brutal simplicity of it. Be charming. Be grateful. Be marketable. Be memorable in the right ways and forgettable in the wrong ones. Sit straight. Laugh at the jokes. Thank the sponsors. Pose for quiet pictures that would never officially surface and still somehow shape future opportunities.
The group had done this before. Usually Namjoon handled the formal conversations. Seokjin smoothed awkward moments. Hoseok lightened the table. Yoongi watched everything. Jungkook tried his best and occasionally said something disarmingly sincere that made executives adore him. Taehyung stayed close enough to Jimin that they could quietly trade looks whenever the atmosphere got too fake.
Tonight that invisible pattern fractured almost immediately. Director Kang was present. Not seated at their table at first, but moving fluidly between executives and staff, a hand here, a smile there, the perfect shape of influence. He wore civility like another tailored layer. No one looking at him would see anything wrong. Why would they? Men like him were built on that exact miscalculation. Jimin felt his presence before he even got close.
Every time the ballroom doors opened, his shoulders tensed. Every time someone laughed too sharply nearby, his pulse leapt.
Taehyung noticed the third time. “You’re pale,” he murmured without moving his smile for the sake of the table.
“Lighting.”
“That’s not how lighting works.”
Across from them, Jungkook had gone suspiciously quiet.
Namjoon was still engaged in conversation with a sponsor representative, but Jimin could tell by the slight narrowing of his eyes that he was tracking everything while pretending not to. Namjoon missed less than people assumed.
Dinner progressed. Courses arrived and disappeared untouched on Jimin’s plate. A sponsor made a joking comment about idols needing to stay impossibly thin, and everyone laughed because that was the acceptable response. Hoseok made some bright, harmless comeback that shifted the energy. Seokjin asked a question about the sponsor’s charity project and rescued the conversation completely. Jimin kept smiling. Kept nodding. Kept the mask on with such precision that even he almost believed it.
Then Director Kang appeared at his shoulder. “Jimin.”
The entire right side of his body went cold. Kang’s hand settled lightly between his shoulder blades, not enough to draw attention, not enough for anyone else to think twice. Just enough for Jimin to stop breathing properly.
“One of the investors wants a private word,” Kang said pleasantly. “Come with me.”
The table’s attention shifted.
Namjoon looked up immediately. “Now?”
Kang smiled at him. “It won’t take long. It’s a good opportunity.”
Perfectly reasonable. Completely normal.
Something in Jimin’s face must have flickered anyway, because Jungkook half-rose from his chair before catching himself.
“I can come too,” Taehyung offered, too casually.
Kang’s gaze moved to him for just a moment. “No need.”
It was still polite. Still smooth. Still impossible to challenge without sounding irrational. Jimin stood because he had to. The room felt too warm. His collar suddenly too tight. His skin too small.
As he followed Kang away from the table, he did not look back. If he had, he would have seen Jungkook gripping his napkin so hard his knuckles had gone white.
The private lounge off the ballroom was empty. Soft chairs. Low lighting. Floor-to-ceiling windows over the city. It might have been beautiful under any other circumstance.
Kang closed the door behind them. Jimin stopped near the center of the room. “There’s no investor, is there?”
He asked it before he could stop himself. Kang’s smile thinned, not vanishing so much as sharpening. “You’re getting bold.”
Jimin dropped his gaze instantly. “Sorry.”
Kang walked slowly around him, not touching yet, letting silence stretch until it became its own kind of pressure. “You embarrassed me last week.”
Jimin’s throat tightened. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No?” Kang asked mildly. “You were distracted. Hesitant. Unpleasant to manage.”
Manage. The word sank under Jimin’s skin like something barbed. “I said I’m sorry.”
Kang stopped in front of him again. “Do you know what happens to idols who become inconvenient?”
Jimin said nothing. He knew this script. He hated that he knew it. The threat was never loud. Loud threats were crude. Kang preferred quieter methods: the implication of replaceability, the
suggestion that one person’s silence was the only thing standing between the group’s current life and ruin.
“You’re talented,” Kang said, almost gently. “Very loved. Very profitable. It would be unfortunate if your instability started affecting the team.”
Jimin looked down at the carpet.
“There are trainees who would kill for your place,” Kang continued. “Boys with cleaner attitudes. Stronger gratitude.”
Jimin’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “I understand.”
“Do you?” Kang stepped closer. “Because lately I’m not sure you do.”
The next part happened in fragments Jimin would later remember by sensation rather than sequence: the pressure of being crowded back a step into the wall, the smell of expensive cologne turning his stomach, the cold edge of fear rising too fast to contain, Kang’s voice dropping low and intimate in the ugliest possible way.
Not graphic. Not loud. Not visible from outside the door. That was part of why it was so devastating. Kang was skilled at leaving a person enough space to feel complicit in their own silence.
When Jimin flinched at the touch that melted from waist to hip, Kang noticed immediately. When Jimin’s breathing changed as he breathed goosebumps down his neck, he noticed that too.
“Look at you,” Kang murmured. “Already shaking.”
Jimin hated that his body always betrayed him first. He stared at a point over Kang’s shoulder and tried to make himself blank, small, compliant, finished. His pulse was deafening. His chest was beginning to tighten in that familiar, dreadful way. The air felt thinner with every second.
“Stop,” he heard himself whisper.
Kang went still. Jimin realized too late he had said it out loud. Something dangerous shifted in the room.
“Excuse me?”
Jimin’s vision blurred at the edges. “I—I can’t breathe.”
He didn’t mean it as defiance. That was the terrible truth. It was not bravery, not resistance, not even refusal. It was simply the body reaching its limit before the mind could keep up.
Kang stared at him for one beat too long. Then a knock sounded at the door. Both of them froze.
Another knock, firmer this time. “Jimin?” Taehyung’s voice.
The sound hit him with such force it was almost pain. Kang untangled his leg from its place between Jimin’s thighs, and stepped away at once. By the time the door opened a fraction, his expression had rearranged itself perfectly.
Taehyung stood outside, face polite but eyes sharp. “Namjoon-hyung asked if everything was alright,” he said.
The lie was obvious. Namjoon would never have sent him that directly. Not without good reason.
Still, it gave everyone present something acceptable to stand on. Kang smiled. “Of course. We were just finishing.”
Taehyung’s gaze moved to Jimin.
It caught on everything in a second: the rigid posture, the uneven breathing, the way Jimin wouldn’t fully raise his eyes, the color drained from his face.
“Hyung,” Taehyung said softly, “they’re asking for a group photo.”
Another lie. A rescue.
Jimin seized it immediately. “Right. Sorry.”
Kang’s hand caught his wrist for half a second before he could pass. Not hard. Not enough to leave a new mark. Enough.
“Remember what we discussed,” Kang said.
Jimin nodded because he could not do anything else. Then he walked out.
Taehyung fell into step beside him without speaking until they were halfway down the hall. Only then did he say, in a voice thin with restrained alarm, “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t do that.”
Jimin kept walking.
“Jimin.”
“It was nothing.”
Taehyung stopped moving.
That made Jimin stop too, because he couldn’t keep walking away from him without making it worse. The hallway was quieter here. Music from the ballroom reached them only as a dull pulse through the walls.
Taehyung stared at him. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I’m tired.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
Jimin shoved them into his pockets.
Taehyung’s expression changed—hurt flashing briefly through the worry. “Why won’t you let me help?”
The question landed too deep. Because help would require truth. Because truth would spread. Because Kang had spent months teaching him exactly how much damage one person could do by becoming difficult. Because shame was a structure now, not a feeling. Because a part of him had started to believe that surviving quietly was the same thing as protecting the others.
Jimin looked down. “I just need a minute.”
Taehyung’s voice dropped further. “Was he touching you?”
The world seemed to stop. Not because the hallway changed. Not because anyone appeared. Not because some dramatic revelation split open the night. Because someone had finally put shape to the terror, and once spoken, it could not be entirely taken back.
Jimin felt himself go very still. He couldn’t answer. That was answer enough. Taehyung inhaled sharply.
For one second raw fury crossed his face so openly it almost startled Jimin more than the question had. Taehyung, usually so gentle, so warm, so instinctively soothing, looked suddenly young in the worst way—young and furious and ready to break something he didn’t yet understand.
Then he saw Jimin flinch at that too. Immediately, the anger folded inward.
Taehyung stepped back half a pace, hands lifting slightly in surrender. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry.”
Jimin swallowed hard. “I’m not—” The words snagged. “I’m fine.”
Taehyung shut his eyes briefly, pain clear in the set of his mouth. “You need to stop saying that.”
Jimin couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.
From the ballroom entrance, Hoseok leaned out and called, “If you two are having a dramatic breakup, do it after photos.”
The timing was absurd. The tone intentionally light. A rescue of a different kind.
Taehyung glanced that way, then back at Jimin. “I’m not dropping this,” he said quietly.
Jimin managed a weak, brittle smile. “You say that like you ever win arguments against me.”
Taehyung’s eyes filled with something far worse than frustration. “Not if you keep lying.”
They made it through the group photo somehow. No one outside the members noticed anything. That was the cruel efficiency of idol life: there was always one more camera angle, one more smile needed, one more public version of reality to maintain. But inside the group, the temperature had changed.
Jungkook stood too close for the rest of the evening. Yoongi said almost nothing, but his gaze kept moving toward Jimin and then away, as though filing pieces together in silence. Namjoon didn’t ask questions in public. He never would. But his calm had sharpened into full alertness. Seokjin’s usual humor was gentler, more deliberate, meant to stabilize. Hoseok kept trying to raise the mood and landing a little short, because even he could feel there was something underneath all of this that wasn’t normal stress.
When they finally returned to the van, Jimin expected relief. Instead, the second he sat down, the adrenaline wore off. He started shaking so hard he had to hide his hands under his jacket.
Taehyung noticed first. Of course he did. “Jimin—”
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
Namjoon turned in the front seat. “What’s going on?”
Too many eyes. Too little air. The van suddenly felt sealed shut. Jimin bent forward, elbows on knees, trying to breathe around the vise tightening through his chest.
Jungkook was immediately over the seat again. “Hyung?”
“I’m fine,” Jimin repeated, but the words dissolved into a strained, uneven gasp. That was enough.
Namjoon’s voice changed at once, dropping into the calm, steady cadence he used in genuine emergencies. “No one crowd him. Window.”
Yoongi cracked the nearest one immediately. Seokjin handed back a bottle of water. Hoseok, for once, was silent. Taehyung moved closer but not too close, one hand hovering uselessly near Jimin’s back like he wanted to help and didn’t know if touch would make it worse.
“Look at me,” he said softly. “Not them. Just me.”
Jimin tried. His vision kept jumping. Taehyung’s face blurred then sharpened then blurred again.
“In for four,” Taehyung said. “Out for six. Come on.”
Jimin took a broken breath. Again. Again. The panic didn’t leave all at once. It never did. It receded in humiliating increments, each one making room for the next wave of exhaustion underneath. By the time he could finally sit upright again, he felt scraped raw from the inside. No one spoke for a while.
Then, very carefully, Namjoon asked, “Do we need to go to the hospital?”
The question should have been simple.
Instead shame flooded so fast Jimin almost choked on it. “No.”
“Jimin,” Seokjin said gently, “that was not nothing.”
“I said no.”
The sharpness in his own voice made Jungkook flinch.
Jimin shut his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m just tired.”
Silence again. Then Namjoon, after a long pause: “Alright. Not tonight. But this conversation isn’t over.”
Jimin nodded because he had to. Beside him, Taehyung stared straight ahead the rest of the drive, jaw tight with the effort not to say what was burning visibly inside him.
Behind them, Jungkook wiped at his eyes when he thought no one would notice. Yoongi noticed anyway. So did Jimin. It made him feel worse than the panic.
—----
Back at the dorm, he escaped to the bathroom before anyone could follow him. He locked the door, sat on the closed toilet lid, and pressed both hands over his mouth. His body hurt in a dozen places at once. Old bruises. New tension. Headache behind the eyes. The strange hollow ache that came with hunger ignored too long. The aftershock of panic still running in weak tremors through his muscles.
But that wasn’t what broke him open. It was Taehyung’s question in the hallway. Was he touching you?
Not because it was wrong. Because it was true, and truth spoken kindly was somehow harder to survive than cruelty.
There was a knock at the door. Not loud. Just once.
“Jimin?” Jungkook.
Jimin closed his eyes. “Go to bed.”
“No.”
Despite everything, a strangled laugh nearly came out of him. The youngest’s stubbornness was almost offensively sincere. Another pause.
Then Jungkook said, quieter, “I know you’re lying.”
Jimin leaned forward, elbows on knees, forehead against clasped hands. “I know.”
There was no answer for several seconds.
When Jungkook spoke again, his voice was shaky in a way that made him sound much younger than he usually did. “Then why are you doing this alone?”
Jimin’s throat tightened so painfully it almost felt like another panic attack starting. Because he didn’t know how to stop.
Because the silence had become routine. Because even now, with people outside the door who loved him, he could still feel Kang’s hand catching his wrist and hear the even, deadly softness of his voice. Because saying it aloud would make it real in a new way. Because part of him still believed this had somehow become his fault through sheer failure to prevent it.
He couldn’t say any of that. So he said nothing. Eventually, the footsteps retreated. Jimin stayed where he was for a long time after.
—----
He was almost asleep when the nightmare took him. This one was worse.
Not because it showed more. Dreams rarely did. They were built out of fragments—the sound of a lock, the humiliating closeness of someone stepping into your space and deciding that space belonged to them, the animal certainty of being trapped.
He woke with a violent jerk, breath tearing out of him. For one disoriented second he didn’t know where he was. Then the dorm room sharpened into place around him. His blanket tangled around his legs. The dark.
The familiar shape of Taehyung bolting upright in the other bed. “Jimin?”
He was shaking too hard to answer.
Taehyung was beside him in an instant, stopping just at the edge of the mattress as if remembering all over again that touch might be the wrong choice. “Nightmare?”
Jimin nodded once.
Taehyung reached slowly for the water bottle on the nightstand and held it out. “Can you drink?”
Jimin took it with clumsy hands. Water sloshed over his knuckles.
Taehyung pretended not to notice. For a while neither of them spoke. The room was quiet except for Jimin’s unsteady breathing and the distant hum of the air conditioner.
Finally Taehyung said, very softly, “You don’t have to tell me everything right now.”
Jimin stared at the blanket.
“But something is happening,” Taehyung continued. “And whatever it is, it’s…not good.”
The gentleness in his voice nearly undid him.
“You’re not eating,” Taehyung said. “You barely sleep. You keep covering bruises you never explain.” He swallowed. “And tonight—”
He stopped himself. Jimin’s fingers tightened around the water bottle.
Taehyung lowered his voice even further. “I’m not asking because I’m angry at you.”
That was the first crack. Tears burned instantly behind Jimin’s eyes, humiliating and hot. “I know.”
“I’m angry at whoever made you feel like this.”
That was the second. Jimin pressed his lips together so hard they hurt. Taehyung sat with him in the dark, shoulders tense with held-back emotion.
“I don’t know the full story,” he said. “Maybe you’re not ready. Fine. But at least let us stay close, okay? Me. Jungkook. Namjoon-hyung. Any of us. Stop going off alone when you don’t have to.”
Jimin’s chest ached. The request sounded so small. It felt impossible anyway.
Because Kang was careful. Kang chose moments that looked reasonable from the outside. Meetings. rides. corrections. sponsor obligations. career opportunities. Private words. Professional concern. Nothing dramatic enough to expose itself without Jimin helping it into the light.
And Jimin still didn’t know how to do that. After a long silence, he whispered, “I’ll try.”
Taehyung looked at him then, really looked, as if measuring the honesty of that tiny answer.
It must have been enough, because some of the strain left his face. “Okay,” he said.
He stood to go back to bed.
At the last second, Jimin spoke again. “Taehyung.”
He turned. Jimin could not make himself say the real thing. Not yet. But he managed, “Don’t tell anyone about it. Please. Not until…”
Not until what? Until it got worse? Until it became undeniable? Until he broke badly enough that someone else would have to drag the truth out of him because he still couldn’t offer it freely?
Taehyung’s face tightened with conflict. “You’re asking me to keep a secret I already hate.”
“I know.” Another long pause.
Then Taehyung nodded once. “For now.”
It was not an agreement. Not really. More like a temporary surrender. He went back to his bed, but neither of them slept much after that.
—----
The next morning, Jimin was the last one to emerge from the room. He had makeup on already. Too much for breakfast.
Seokjin looked up from the stove and frowned. “Why are you fully concealed before 8 a.m.?”
Jimin reached automatically for casualness. “Because beauty doesn’t rest.”
Hoseok pointed with his chopsticks. “That one was bad enough that I know you’re covering.”
A small laugh moved around the kitchen. Even Jungkook smiled faintly. But Namjoon was watching the line of Jimin’s collar where the concealer ended just a little too neatly. So was Yoongi. Jimin took his place at the counter and forced himself to eat half a piece of toast. It felt like chewing paper. Still, Taehyung noticed and said nothing, which was its own kind of tenderness.
For ten whole minutes the morning almost held. Then Jimin’s phone buzzed.
He looked down.
Need you in early tonight. Alone.
No name necessary. No threat spelled out. It didn’t have to be. Jimin’s appetite vanished completely. Across the counter, Jungkook went still. He had seen the change in Jimin’s face. Again.
Namjoon set his mug down. “What schedule got added?”
Jimin locked his phone. “Nothing. Just staff.”
“Show me,” Namjoon said.
Too fast. Too direct. The leader mask slipping just enough to show the man underneath, already alarmed.
Jimin’s pulse kicked. “I said it’s nothing.”
The room went silent. Everyone was looking at him now. Not accusatory. Not angry. Worried. And somehow that was worse.
Jimin took one step back from the counter, then another. “I need air.”
He was gone from the kitchen before anyone could stop him. Behind him, chairs scraped hard against the floor. And in the space he left behind, the group’s concern finally changed shape. Not into certainty. Not yet.
But into something far more dangerous to silence than suspicion: the beginning of resolve.