Work Text:
The coffee at the local café near Gangnam Station tasted like burnt beans and desperation, but Min Yoongi was not there for the flavor. He was there because his laptop was low on battery, the Wi-Fi was free, and he had twenty minutes to kill before his meeting with an indie record label rep who was inevitably going to be late.
He adjusted his black bucket hat, leaned over his MacBook, and opened a new private browsing tab.
Habit was a terrifying thing. It didn’t matter that ten years had passed since high school. It didn’t matter that he was now twenty-eight, producing music for mid-tier artists, and living in a modest studio apartment in Mapo-gu. Certain impulses were simply baked into his daily routine, right between drinking a glass of water and checking the morning weather.
He typed the URL with practiced efficiency: *linkedin.com*.
Yoongi didn't use LinkedIn for professional networking. He didn't care about corporate synergy, quarter-four revenue goals, or endorsement skills for project management. He used LinkedIn for one reason, and one reason only: it was the only platform where Park Jimin didn't have a private account.
Instagram? Private. Twitter? Abandoned in 2021. TikTok? Hidden behind a cryptic handle Yoongi had spent three months trying to crack before giving up.
But LinkedIn? LinkedIn was public business infrastructure. You couldn't hide on LinkedIn if you wanted to work in corporate public relations in Seoul.
Yoongi logged into his burner profile—an account under the name "Min Seung-ho," featuring a stock photo of a generic potted plant as a profile picture and a bio that read *Independent Audio Consultant*.
He searched the name: **Park Jimin**.
There he was. Right at the top of the search results.
Yoongi zoomed in slightly. Jimin’s profile picture had been updated two weeks ago. He had discarded his soft brown hair for a crisp, parted jet-black style. He was wearing a tailored navy blazer, tilting his head with a smile so sharp it could cut glass.
*Park Jimin*
*Senior Communications Strategist | Global PR & Brand Management*
*Seoul, South Korea*
Yoongi leaned back, taking a sip of his lukewarm iced Americano. "Senior strategist now, huh?" he muttered under his breath. "Look at you, corporate prince."
He scrolled down to the activity section. Jimin had recently liked a post about *Innovative Strategies in Cross-Border Marketing*. Yoongi read the entire linked article, despite understanding only four out of every ten words. He checked Jimin's updated skills. Someone named Kim Namjoon had endorsed Jimin for *Crisis Management*. Yoongi scowled. Who was Kim Namjoon? Was he single? Was he tall?
Suddenly, a shadow fell over his screen.
"You know, if you upgrade to Premium, you can view profiles in private mode without setting up a fake account using a picture of a ficus."
Yoongi’s heart did a violent, terrifying flip against his ribs.
His hand twitched, instinctively slamming the laptop lid down so hard the plastic clattered against the wooden desk, attracting turned heads from three nearby tables.
Slowly, agonizingly, Yoongi raised his eyes.
Standing right beside his table was a man holding an iced matcha latte. He wore a perfectly fitted off-white trench coat over a beige turtleneck. His hair was black, styled exactly as it appeared on the screen three seconds prior. Up close, his skin was flawless, and his eyes held a glittering, dangerous amusement.
Park Jimin. In the flesh. Ten years older, infinitely more expensive-looking, and standing less than two feet away.
Yoongi forgot how to inhale.
"J-Jimin?" Yoongi choked out, his voice cracking slightly on the second syllable.
"Hi, Yoongi-hyung," Jimin said smoothly. His voice had matured, dropping into a richer, silkier tone, but the tilt of his lips was identical to the eighteen-year-old boy who used to steal Yoongi's hoodies and break his heart. "Mind if I sit?"
"I'm actually waiting for someone," Yoongi blurted out instantly, his defense mechanisms firing at maximum capacity.
Jimin didn't care. He pulled out the steel chair opposite Yoongi, sat down, and neatly placed his matcha latte on the napkin. "It's fine. I'll just stay until they arrive. It's been a while."
"Yeah," Yoongi managed, feeling sweat gather at the nape of his neck beneath his bucket hat. "A while. Ten years, right? Crazy. Small city."
"Is it?" Jimin leaned forward, resting his chin in his palm. His dark eyes locked onto Yoongi's face, scanning him with terrifying precision. "Seoul is pretty big, Yoongi. Ten million people. Yet here we are."
"Total coincidence," Yoongi said quickly. Too quickly. He cleared his throat and adjusted his collar. "I was just doing some work. Production stuff. You know how it is. Busy, busy."
"Of course," Jimin nodded sympathetically. "Audio consulting?"
Yoongi froze. "What?"
"Audio consulting," Jimin repeated, his smile widening by a millimeter. "It's a very noble field. Very mysterious. Especially when practiced by a plant."
Yoongi felt the blood drain from his cheeks, only to rush back in a wave of heat so intense he thought his ears might melt.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Yoongi lied, staring blankly at the closed lid of his laptop. "I was checking my emails."
"Right. Emails," Jimin said. He reached into his leather shoulder bag, pulled out an iPad, and tapped the screen a few times. "You know, Yoongi, LinkedIn is a very interesting platform. It offers a lot of data to its users. Especially if those users happen to have the Premium Enterprise tier paid for by their corporate HR department."
Yoongi stared at him in absolute horror. "Jimin—"
"Let's take a look at my profile analytics over the last ten years, shall we?" Jimin flipped the iPad around and slid it across the table.
Yoongi swallowed hard. He didn't want to look, but his eyes were drawn to the screen like a moth to a flame.
It was a spreadsheet. A clean, meticulously color-coded, incredibly detailed spreadsheet.
*Date | Viewer ID | IP Location | Duration on Page*
"What is this?" Yoongi whispered.
"That," Jimin said cheerfully, "is the access log for my public profile. You see, back in high school right after we split, I noticed a strange account viewing my page every Tuesday and Thursday at precisely 11:45 PM. The account belonged to a certain 'Min Seung-ho'. Oddly enough, the IP address was traced to a residential block in Mapo-gu. The exact same block where your studio is."
Yoongi tried to speak, but his throat had closed up completely.
"Then," Jimin continued, tapping the screen to scroll down, "a few years later, 'Min Seung-ho' deleted his profile. I thought, oh, maybe he moved on. But two days later, a new profile appeared! 'Park Yoong-jae', an independent music editor. Same IP address."
"Jimin, listen—"
"Wait, I'm not done," Jimin interrupted softly, his eyes sparkling with pure, unadulterated mischief. "Eventually, 'Park Yoong-jae' was replaced by 'Audio Consultant Ficus'. And across the entire decade, that specific series of burner accounts has viewed my profile... over three hundred times."
Yoongi buried his face in his hands. He wished the floor of the café would open up and swallow him whole. He wanted to disintegrate into fine dust and float away on the air conditioning currents.
"You knew," Yoongi groaned into his palms.
"Of course I knew," Jimin chuckled. The sound was warm, fond, and utterly devoid of malice. "Yoongi-hyung, you're a brilliant music producer, but you are a terrible stalker. You used your own home Wi-Fi for ten whole years."
Yoongi slowly lowered his hands, his face burning bright red. "Why didn't you block me?"
"Why would I block my biggest fan?" Jimin asked innocently. "Besides, it was useful. Whenever I needed a confidence boost before a big presentation, I'd just think, 'Well, Yoongi-hyung spent twenty minutes staring at my resume last night, so I must be doing something right.'"
"I wasn't staring at your resume," Yoongi muttered, staring down at his coffee cup. "I was... monitoring your career trajectory."
"For ten years?"
"It's a competitive market."
"You checked my page when I got promoted to Manager," Jimin said softly, his playful tone dropping into something far more intimate. "You checked it thirty seconds after I updated the title. And when I posted about moving back to Seoul from Busan last month... you viewed the profile three times in ten minutes."
Yoongi closed his eyes. There was no defense left. He was caught red-handed, stripped of all dignity, exposed as the absolute loser he was.
"Why did you break up with me back then?" Yoongi asked suddenly, the question spilling out before he could stop it.
The playful atmosphere at the table shifted instantly. The noise of the café—the clinking of glasses, the hum of the espresso machine, the background jazz—seemed to fade away.
Jimin blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in tone. He looked down at his matcha latte, tracing the rim of the cup with a manicured fingernail.
"We were eighteen, Yoongi," Jimin said quietly. "You were moving to Seoul to chase music labels and living on instant ramen. I was staying in Busan, terrified of holding you back, terrified of being left behind, and completely clueless about how to communicate like an adult. We fought every single day for three months."
"You ghosted me for two weeks and then sent a text saying we should stop," Yoongi recalled, the memory still carrying a faint, dull ache.
"Because if I saw you in person, I would have begged you to stay, or I would have ruined your chance to leave," Jimin replied, looking up to meet Yoongi's eyes directly. "It was messy. We were kids."
"I hated you for six months," Yoongi admitted softly.
"I know."
"And then I missed you for ten years."
Jimin’s breath hitched slightly. The sharp, corporate composure he had worn like armor since walking into the café began to crack, revealing the softer, vulnerable boy Yoongi remembered from their teenage years.
"If you missed me," Jimin said, his voice barely above a whisper, "why didn't you just text me? Why the fake LinkedIn profiles, Hyung?"
Yoongi let out a self-deprecating laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. "Because texting means admitting I failed to move on. Texting means opening a door when I didn't know if you even remembered my name. On LinkedIn, you were just... doing great. You were successful, you were moving up, you looked happy. It was safe. I could see you were okay without interfering in your life."
"You idiot," Jimin said, though there was zero anger in his voice.
"What?"
"I updated my profile picture two weeks ago because I knew you'd look at it," Jimin confessed, a subtle flush appearing on his own cheeks now. "I've known you were checking up on me for ten years, Yoongi. Do you know how many cafes I've visited in Mapo and Gangnam over the past month, hoping I'd 'coincidentally' run into a guy wearing an oversized black hoodie and a bucket hat?"
Yoongi stared at him, bewildered. "Wait. You were looking for me?"
"I paid for LinkedIn Premium specifically to track your IP address logs for ten years so I could figure out where you were!" Jimin blurted out, throwing his hands up in mild frustration. "Who's the real stalker here?"
Yoongi blinked once. Twice. Then, a slow, gummy smile broke across his face—the first real smile he had shown all day.
"You spent real money on LinkedIn Premium for ten years just to track my location?" Yoongi asked, his confidence rapidly returning.
"Shut up," Jimin muttered, suddenly looking very interested in his straw. "It was a business expense."
"You're insane, Park Jimin."
"And you've been monitoring an Audio Consultant ficus profile for a decade. We are both deeply unwell."
Yoongi laughed—a real, deep belly laugh that made his chest feel lighter than it had in years. The heavy weight of ten years of silence, distance, and miscommunication seemed to evaporate in an instant, replaced by the familiar, comfortable rhythm they had always shared.
"So," Yoongi said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. "Kim Namjoon?"
Jimin raised an eyebrow. "What about him?"
"He endorsed you for Crisis Management. Who is he?"
Jimin burst out laughing, covering his mouth with a hand. "He's my boss, Yoongi! He's forty-two and married with two kids."
"Good to know," Yoongi said smoothly. "Just keeping my network clean."
"Unbelievable," Jimin shook his head, though the smile never left his face. He checked his watch, then looked back at Yoongi. "Are you actually waiting for a meeting?"
"The guy is twenty minutes late," Yoongi said, checking his phone. "He's probably not coming."
"Good," Jimin said, standing up and grabbing his bag. "Then close your plant profile, put your laptop away, and buy me dinner. You owe me ten years of missed meals."
Yoongi didn't hesitate. He shut his MacBook, slid it into his backpack, and stood up.
"Where are we going?" Yoongi asked.
Jimin offered him a bright, blinding smile—the kind that crinkled his eyes into tiny crescents, exactly like it used to.
"There's a great place around the corner," Jimin said, reaching out to lightly tug on the sleeve of Yoongi's jacket. "I found it on Google Maps. But if you want, I can send you the link on LinkedIn."
Yoongi rolled his eyes, but as they walked out of the café together into the crisp evening air of Seoul, he didn't let go of Jimin's hand.