Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The time is upon us, I should've been honest

The pain in my heart, I remember the sharpest

It broke like a promise, I've fallen the hardest

Regret is the feeling that lingers the longest

— neverender, Justice & Tame Impala

Actor Kim Taehyung tells us TMI about working on the set of The Violinist’s Wife

Watch here. . .

“This was actually a… a very emotional experience for me,” Kim Taehyung says. He’s perched on a stool with his posture straight, hands idle where they rest between his spread thighs. “I love romance and romance stories, so when I was invited to audition for the part of Shinyoung-ssi I knew right away that I’d go.”

There’s a white backdrop, Taehyung dressed in a brown sweater with three-quarter sleeves and buttons halfway down the front. A fuzzy black mic is clipped to the open, collared neckline. His trousers are tan and fitted. He’s looking at someone off-camera while he says, “Chulsoo-nim put a lot of trust in me to perform his character well; I didn’t want to make him regret choosing a novice like me for such a—beautiful, nuanced masterpiece.”

“You didn’t seem like a novice at all,” an unseen woman replies. “Your performance was incredible; you really embodied Shinyoung-ssi.”

Shy smile curling at his lips, Taehyung bows his head. “Thank you.” He straightens back up, blinks away in thought. “Um… I think… in some ways it was seamless to get into character. The message of The Violinist’s Wife really moves me. To me, it’s about—how it’s never too late to fall in love. And to never lose the part of yourself that’s capable of loving another person.

“Suddenly losing her husband left Eunji-ssi disillusioned about a happy ever after. He was supposed to be the rest of her life, right? But Shinyoung-ssi gives her an entirely new perspective on it. Love is not lost.”

A jump cut, and Taehyung has his arms crossed now, brows furrowed in thought. His hair is parted at the fringe, framing his forehead at both temples. The interviewer says, “You’ve become quite popular since your part in web drama Under One Sky; you worked with big names in the acting world, such as Kim Seokjin-nim, and now you’ve worked with Choi Jiwoo-nim, our country’s melodrama queen. Do you have any TMI about working with her?”

Shy again, he tilts his head, eyes wide. “Ah—yes. Jiwoo-noona is the queen of melodrama for a reason, and I had the opportunity to witness it first-hand.” He pauses to whistle out between his teeth as if in awe, eliciting laughter from staff off-camera. “I knew I had a lot to learn when we started filming, but watching her… I realized I have way, way more work to do to match that level of talent.”

“She’s a professional.”

“Do you remember being in class,” Taehyung adjusts on his stool, “whether it’s high school or university… and someone raises their hand and asks a question that you hadn’t thought to ask at all? Like—you’re on this level,” he untucks one hand to straighten it out horizontally in front of himself, “but they’re way up here,” he lifts it above his head, “so it’s—you don’t even know what you don’t know? It’s like that. She inspired me to work harder.”

“What can we look forward to once The Violinist’s Wife releases in autumn?” the interviewer asks after another jump cut.

Taehyung looks off-camera until she’s through speaking, then addresses the invisible audience. He says, “Love is not lost. Love does not have an age or an expiration date. Love is to be vulnerable and expressing vulnerability is love. Thank you.”

“Thank you so much for your time.”

There’s applause as Taehyung smiles with all his teeth, eyes curving. He bows once, twice, standing up off of the stool. The screen darkens.

Watch The Violinist’s Wife this autumn on. . .

It’s been years of on-off travel and yet Yoongi will never be accustomed to fourteen-hour flights. He’s not sure if it’s possible. By the time his plane lands northeast of Paris, Yoongi’s prepared to rip his seatbelt off and claw his way toward the cockpit, children and elderly be damned.

He’d returned to work with a slew of emails to comb through, summarized conference documents from Yubin, and the greenlight to catch a flight that was scheduled to depart in one week, company allowance at the ready. Being up to his throat in busywork meant Yoongi could keep his mind just as busy, commuting to office nearly every day until his departure. Outside of work, he bided his time preparing to cross the continent.

It was a welcomed overwhelm. There was finding and booking his own hotel; cleaning, tossing out whatever leftovers were in the fridge so it wouldn’t spoil in his absence; packing his clothes, including his laptop so that he could keep working remotely. Then, at night, Yoongi tried to get the sleep he knew he wouldn’t be able to manage on a plane. Jet lag is a bitch.

Yoongi’s plane departs at nine a.m Korean time. When he lands in France, it’s seven again.

Much like Incheon’s airport, Charles de Gaulle is bright and in constant motion. CDG also carries a similar brand of ostentatiousness; its terminals are almost blinding with excess: Lacoste, Fendi, the ever-tenacious Burberry. Yoongi enters the airport from his gate and keeps his head low, pace quick. From here it’s muscle memory: the arduous journey to baggage claim—bobbing and weaving through waves of travelers, luggage, and flight attendants—with his earbuds in; the wait for the conveyor belt to begin spinning, suitcases spat out one after another; customs; then, his second, arduous journey to the shuttle. Overhead announcements are made in French, English, and Chinese; as always, Yoongi depends on his intermediate English to navigate to his terminal. A welcomed overwhelm.

Yoongi’s accomplished this trip a few times over the past five years; he knows how to make his way toward the train. It’s systematic: he and a crowd of passengers take the airport shuttle to the appropriate terminal, 2E. Once there, Yoongi makes a detour to exchange won for euro, going back and forth in his best English with the teller. Airports are notorious rip-offs with their exchange rates but, this time, Yoongi doesn’t have the fortitude to wait for a better option out on the streets. He uses the euro instead of his debit card to buy his train ticket; transaction fees can add up quickly.

It’s going to be a near-hour ride into Paris. Yoongi boards the RER headed to Châtelet.

There isn’t much scenery. Yoongi settles in a window seat and lethargically watches adjacent train tracks, power lines, and graffitied walls pass by. Occasionally, there’s a semi-distant view of suburban homes, a parallel freeway. It’s hypnotic. He can feel his exhaustion like steel has replaced bone marrow. A 14-hour flight straight to an hour ride into the city. At least he’s going to sleep well tonight—if jet lag doesn’t snatch him first.

The train car is moderately full. Families, couples, young, quietly giggling friends that—guessing by their attire—may or may not be here for the same reason as Yoongi. He dozes off to conversation and the monotonous rattling of a train over rail joints.

An indiscriminate time blurs by, and then Yoongi’s train glides to a stop. The carriage doors slide open only once everything stills on the tracks, and Yoongi, shaking off residual sleep, immediately stands and moves along the crowd and toward the closest flight of stairs. Châtelet station is the same bustle as any station in Seoul except it rests in the city’s heart, the platform bounding a stubborn flow of people from its first breath. Above, the mezzanine opens to a shopping center—mostly retail—and a spattering of seating options in the midst of the madness.

Yoongi claims an open spot, leaning his luggage against his hip. He swipes his phone open to the email with his hotel confirmation and its address, then copies the name and glides over to LeCab. Okay… Châtelet is in the 1st arrondissement. Yoongi’s booked his room near the action: ChouChou, in the 9th arrondissement.

For better or for worse, the taxi drivers here are well-accustomed to tourists by now, so it’s a simple exchange—and a quick, ten-minute drive. It's the stop and go of traffic that extends the trip, but Yoongi has always loved to watch the city—its preserved Haussmann architecture everywhere one looks—so he doesn’t mind prolonging the drive to admire it all.

A change in scenery makes it easier to forget himself. Paris is glittering and it’s grime: the arrondissements are their own brand of ostentatious. Even as the taxi drives away from River Seine rather than towards it, Yoongi cranes his neck and peers between buildings, fruitlessly trying to catch glimpses of the Eiffel Tower. He might’ve been able to see when he’d first left Châtelet station, if not for the buildings in the way. Needs a higher vantage point. Yoongi has never had to venture out into the peripheral districts; tangentially, he wonders if the Eiffel tower can be seen even from the city’s periphery.

It’s nearly nine a.m. in Paris now, the sky blue and cloudless. There are waves of pedestrians ambling along the sidewalks and across walkways. Traffic, too, is seemingly endless, cars materializing from every road that feeds into his.

Yoongi’s taxi driver has some news station playing, what sounds like a woman speaking emphatically in French. Chalair Aviation cesse désormais son activité. Tous les vols en provenance et à destination du Royaume-Uni sont. . . They cross over an arbitrary boundary from one district to another, and Yoongi is immediately surrounded by nothing but tall buildings of limestone, wrought-iron, and glass. Everywhere his eyes can reach feels like a scolding. This is a city that’s been demolished, gutted, and reborn.

Yoongi’s hotel also rests in the heart of motion, facing a moderately busy street that empties out into a main road. There are other flanking hotels—then, two Chinese restaurants and a Japanese diner both across and adjacent to ChouChou.

“We’re here,” his driver says once he’s got his hazard lights on. “Need me to get your luggage?”

“No,” Yoongi says. “Thank you.” He takes a peek at LeCab as he pushes the back door open: 25 euro for a 15-minute drive. Fuck airport pick-up surcharges.

Then the trunk is popped from the inside lever and Yoongi retrieves his suitcase. Once the cab drifts back off into the commotion, Yoongi averts his attention.

ChouChou is as flamboyant as he’d seen online: pushing inside from the main entrance, he’s instantly greeted by a mirrored hallway and a slew of naked light bulbs strung along the walls and ceiling, guiding him through and up to the reception desk. There’s an odd mixture of floor cleaner and floral perfume that singes his nose at the first inhale. He makes his way down the hall, sneakers scuffing against the parquet beneath him.

A couple is wheeling their luggage away just as Yoongi approaches, and both he and the receptionist collaborate on their English to get him checked in and provided with necessary information: breakfast time, intra-hotel restaurant hours of operation, the spa room hours, check-out time, how to use his room cards. From there, Yoongi navigates directly to the elevators, taking himself up to his eighth-floor suite.

He doesn’t remember much after tapping his card to the door; his body more or less fails on him right as he hits the mattress. He sinks into the duvet, sleep takes him in fits of unrest and, in his state of unconsciousness, an umbra crawls over him.

In reality, it’s already evening when Yoongi stirs back to life, awoken like he’d been undulating with the stops and turns of a moving vehicle.

His eyelids lift not to an evening in Paris—but to midnight in Seoul.

Yoongi’s mind is still rebooting. Somehow, his body immediately understands.

“I’m sorry,” Seokjin says.

He rolls his nape against the headrest to look.

There’s Kim Seokjin seated in the driver’s seat, his fingers coiled tight around the leather steering wheel. It’s his hybrid car, and they’re here, alone—together. Comfortable as if they’ve yet to know anything different.

Right. Yoongi remembers this one. He finds his voice. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Seokjin makes a rolling stop at an intersection. Street lights chase across his face as he turns to meet Yoongi’s stare. Here comes the next line.

Seokjin says to Yoongi, “You didn’t either.” His careful pause. “Yoongi-yah.”

He did. He deserved the turbulence that had taken him that night. It was a rip tide of placating dinner invitations, the tight-chest bubbling panic, the sword edges that peeled back his skin, slice by slice, and he’d foolishly let it massacre him until they’d returned to Seokjin’s car.

The tide yanked him in straight down its center, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He can still feel saltwater in his lungs.

Wow. This night hasn’t toured through his highlight reel in ages; out of all of them—and there were many that came after this, too many—why is it this one? Why now? Here? Yoongi has his arms crossed tightly, and his eyes have closed again. That was how it was. He’ll fail—again. And again and again. That was how he was: saying nothing, doing nothing, just foolishly hoping and failing at that, too.

A part of him hopes he’ll stay here and never move on, this tempestuous half-year before Seokjin found out who Yoongi really is.

If only within the boundaries of this nightmare, Yoongi will be different. This is bravery without consequences: Yoongi opens his eyes and uncrosses his arms, and he isn’t immediately punished for going off script. Seokjin is frozen though, staring at him, seemingly awaiting the rebuttal that never came because they’d finished their drive in silence—and it might be judgement or it might be pity that’s fired up in his eyes, but it could also be Yoongi assigning a new meaning to an old memory. He doesn’t know where this will lead them anymore. It’s his fault, it always will be. He’ll have to contend with himself forever.

Yoongi faces that handsome, solemn pity and says it all. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you loved me. I’m sorry I let this happen. Hate me, then forget me. If you promise to forget me and that you won’t ever look back, I promise to never forget to suffer.

Jin-hyung. Please—please. Yoongi’s voice somehow reverberates in the space of their car. Please, for now, just let me forget myself.

Nothing follows.

No sink hole materializes to swallow him whole, and no cars pass through the deserted intersection. It’s only Seokjin that sits at the stale-red stoplight, watching him, unmoving, silent. His stony face of maybe-pity, maybe-judgement.

It could also be that this night—faced with his parents’ disapproval—showed Seokjin they would only end in disaster, but he didn’t want to believe it.

That look might have already been his simmering grief.

Yoongi’s eyelids lift to the hotel’s track lights.

Escaping is a futile endeavor; wherever he goes, he brings himself with him. It doesn’t take a fucking quantum physicist to figure that out.

Yoongi genuinely wonders if he’s going crazy.

Everything—sounds, smells, tastes—feels like they’re reaching him after passing through a colander. Shadows play in his peripheral vision only to disappear when he turns to look. His head feels like it’s full of steam. His skin feels hot and sore. He can physically see that he’d muted his chatroom notifications involving either Seokjin or Taehyung, but he doesn’t remember ever doing it. The flight—awful and claustrophobic that it was, with his sore muscles as proof—already registers as an event that happened 1 month ago, not within the past 24 hours.

He’d abandoned his suitcase and carry-on by the door without realizing, and it takes him a few minutes too long to figure out where he is. A part of his steamed brain tells him that it doesn’t care where he is; he has to fight that thought off and win to even start to reorient himself to his surroundings.

He sits at the edge of his bed and thinks, am I sober? I am. I haven’t had anything to drink for at least the past day. Then why do his lips and jaw feel numb?

Yoongi decides to try out old techniques: mindfulness. It’s perhaps the smartest idea he’s had in months. He glances around. Vibrant. His room’s color scheme pays homage to two of France’s national colors, a deep cyan-blue and white; they interchange along each wall, the wainscot panelling, and the doors. The bed sheets mirror a French marinière tee. Then… Yoongi’s eyes track across the room from all angles. A black, garland chandelier hangs overhead. At the corner closest to the balcony, there’s an armchair decorated in velvet upholstery, embossed with jewels; ahead of him hangs a mirror, and beside that is framed artwork. It’s a greyscale photograph. A woman with pencil-thin eyebrows. The placard beneath it reads, Edith Piaf.

Okay. You’re in Paris. You checked into your room. You took a very long nap.

There was something he needed to do right away, and he didn’t. Something important. He should do that while he has the chance. What is it?

He needed to… He’s here for work. This is a part of his job, not a vacation. Obviously.

Since it’s work, the important task must be to update Yubin on his safe arrival.

While he’s at it, he should let Sora know, too.

Yoongi looks down at his right hand, which has been holding his phone. He doesn’t know when he retrieved his phone. Whatever. It doesn’t matter when or how. He finds his KKT chatroom with Yubin, sends her I made it safely, then finds Sora’s contact name and sends, I’m here. See you tomorrow.

Time to get it together. He’s lost enough as it is; he can’t lose his fucking job, too. There’s only one day separating France from the start of couture week.

On Sundays, Paris turns in early. This Sunday is no different than any other, but with the threat of a four-day chaos just around the bend, it feels more like the calm before the storm. Yoongi just manages to make it down to ChouChou’s in-house restaurant for déjeuner before their 14:30 closing—a feat for a man that woke up at 14:00 delirious, lethargic, and bathing in his own sweat. The best he can keep in his stomach is bread with an arugula side salad—and water. Regardless, a win is a win.

After his meal, Yoongi retreats upstairs to soak in his room’s detached tub for an indeterminate amount of time. The faucet weeps droplets into the still water, each splash reverberating against the tiles and back again. He ignores the corner-shadows by keeping his eyes closed.

The indeterminate passing of time to soak (prune) is topped off with another indeterminate amount of time taken to dry off, moisturize with complimentary hotel lotion, and toss on whatever he finds first in his luggage. Not like he remembers ever packing it.

As he’s tugging the bottom hem of his top down over his midriff, Yoongi’s line of sight tracks a path across the bed and towards his abandoned carry-on; before he can put any conscious thought into it, he’s packing his work laptop into its bag. His body already knows that, exhaustion be damned, there’s work to do—but if he stays within the four walls of this room (or hotel) for a minute longer, his psychosis will have to attend fashion week in his absence. His skin feels alive and ill-fitted, buzzing like it’s in the early stages of mitosis. There’s a lasting crick in his neck where the porcelain bathtub lip was digging into his nape.

The hotel lotion smells like artificial salt water. He still can’t decide if he likes it or not.

Enough thought-detours.

His phone notifications are on silent; Yoongi braves his KaTalk—(You better not be lying, Sora responded minutes after Yoongi’s last message. Where are you staying??? I’m in the 7th arr i’ll send you the info. U gonna watch me walk for valentino tomorrow, u punk?) (OK, good, Yubin sent back. I forwarded you more booking updates. Check on our Paris girls for me. I’ll give you a call on Monday 9 CEST)—then slips out of his room, calls the next elevator at the end of his hall and, soon after, braves the streets of Paris’ 9th arrondissement.

June in France carries a light humidity to counteract their dry summers, though it’s nothing like Seoul. Back home, the heat and moisture would’ve already had Yoongi soaking through his tee at the armpits. Most of the shops and restaurants have already closed their doors here, too, the remnants from a time of prevailing catholicism.

As Yoongi passes by dark shop after dark shop, he muses over his first fashion week out of the country, his young eyes taking in France’s architecture—not in the form of photos or video reels but in real-time.

He still remembers the initial confusion that wracked him when his first Sunday in Paris ended in inconvenienced dinner plans. Even though it was innocuous in the grand scheme of things, that was his first taste of ‘culture shock’ that he hadn’t thought to prepare for; it’d taken him several more trips to break the cycle of his brief confusion-frustration, those subsequent Parisian Sundays when he’d head out for a late lunch only to realize, once again, that his favorite bakery had already closed by mid-afternoon.

Yoongi’s always been too embarrassed (prideful?) and conflict-averse to show his ignorance (ineptitude?) to others, so instead of asking locals—or one of the veteran models… or their agents—international trips were learn-by-osmosis, also known as: trial by fire. Some lessons are harder to learn than others.

Some lessons he’ll never have the chance to learn again.

Yoongi’s thoughts are shaken up when a cyclist nearly runs over his toes while taking a distracted turn. They’re too busy talking to their bike partner to even notice. Down here, the right side… English.

He pauses to take a breath, then starts again.

This is shit. Paris is a tourists’ honeytrap three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. The city is crowded on any random day but, now catalyzed by haute couture, it feels stuffed beyond conception. All around him there’s endless foot and road traffic.

No one pays Yoongi any mind as he weaves through clusters of pedestrians, the brim of his peabody cap low over his eyes, pace quick. Five stories of weathered stone and wrought-iron balconies pass by from overhead. Haussman blocks, passages, and vacant, luxury-brand storefronts beckon visitors along the city’s webs of alleys and roads.

He already presumed this trip would be nothing but a nightmare of overstimulation, untoward whiffs of urine, and minimal personal space—but there’s also this… unexpected comfort in navigating a city so busy and blinded with anticipation that it doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to pause and look around. He’s nobody. He’s everyone, too.

Years of trial by fire behind him, Yoongi is familiar enough with this part of the city to find his way without clinging to phone navigation. The most central arrondissements are the usual stomping grounds for PFW, so aside from his trips to some wayward sister agency that’d been priced out into Versailles—if one could call it that—he’s seldom ventured out beyond where he needed to be. It isn’t like he’s ever had the time to masquerade as a tourist.

That, and Yoongi likes routine, his father through and through: he picks his two or three preferred routes, eateries, and spots for work or relaxation, then sticks to them until he can take himself there like he’s no different than the locals. He knows if he walks this path long enough, it’ll take him a district over, straight into the hub of fashion houses and overpriced luxury apartments, Avenue Montaigne.

The 8th arrondissement just might beat the 9th out in tourism-induced chaos; Yongi still can’t say for certain. Similar to the other districts, it’d been constructed in a distinctive network of roads—the only difference being that, in the eighth, the roads weave and spool around its axis, the Arc de Triomphe. Yoongi didn’t have to yet set foot in this city to already know the sheer amount of traffic (foot and vehicular) that floods the arc every day… or to already know the sheer amount of panic that would flood his limbic system.

Though it’s not as if this is significantly better, what with having to narrowly dodge a stray bag or shoulder every few steps.

As if hearing his plea, Yoongi is finally rescued by his turn down onto a cobblestone street.

He reaches his destination in time for Sunday apéritif.

The bistro has a cliquish, dive bar feeling. It’s easy to get lost in a group that wouldn’t even know to go looking; this—the patrons too absorbed in their books, computers, phones, or conversation to pay Yoongi any mind when he beelines for a corner round-table—reminds him of those tiny neighborhood bars back home. The ones that manage to scrape by with the patronage of local ahjussis. Middle-aged men and their preoccupation with gossip, alcohol and, most importantly, refuge from their family. Unless you stuck out somehow to them, everyone else save for the staff might as well have been ghosts.

Here, it’s by no means a secluded bar, but the bistro’s tourist customers are just as unnoticeable, as common as weeds—or aged stone and iron.

Yoongi has time to set up his laptop and shed his cap before a waitress swoops by, menu, glass, and carafe of water in hand. Her assumption made by the first glance, she doesn’t bother speaking French. “Welcome,” her flat affect doesn’t give a welcoming air, “Would you like time to review the menu or do you know what you want to order?”

The assumption must be that he is a westerner. He is again grateful to understand English better than he speaks it. “The, uh… crostini plate? Cornichons… and pastis, please.”

“Yes, monsieur.” She promptly picks the menu back up and stalks off. Yoongi vaguely watches discarded cigarette butts re-flatten under her shoe’s soles, then turns his attention to his blinking email tab.

Alright. Enough wasting time. Even if it feels like the world has ended twice-over, he still has a job to do.

Turns out it’s hard to work when your mind keeps playing tricks on you. There’s static zipping through his brain, and the corner-shadows haven’t gone away.

After his second phone call is nearly disrupted by his train of thought rebooting in the middle of a sentence, he discovers that focusing on the task at hand—and, by consequence, not thinking about how he’s ruined his life—gets a little easier with some alcohol. He dilutes his bottle of pastis with water and swallows the glass in record time. Then he polishes off his second glass. Calls their third girl walking haute couture to confirm her arrival. Ends the call once it’s verified that she has indeed settled in the model apartment and they exchange see you soon’s. Finishes his third glass.

He only realizes he’s already gotten through his bottle of pastis after he sends his final email and the phone calls are complete. The crostini plate sits untouched on the other side of his laptop screen.

But… for the first time since this hell of a month began, his head feels light on his shoulders. His lagging thoughts have slowed enough to make sense of them. He can’t see the corner-shadows when the edges of his vision are already a blur.

Why didn’t he do this sooner?

Yoongi orders another pastis, then fixes himself a new glass using the water left in his carafe. One hand wrapped around his glass, he uses the other to retrieve his phone, tap in a number, and then tap again. He presses the phone to his ear.

After two rings, “Kitty,” Sora greets. “Where are you?”

“A bistro.” Yoongi looks out the windows to his right. “It’s already dark in Seoul at this hour… but it’s daytime here.”

“One of the few good things about this country,” she quips. “And I meant which district, dummy.”

“Uh. The ninth. I’ve been—drinking.”

Sora laughs. “I can tell.”

“I finished work. Gotta call Yubin-ssi tomorrow morning. You going out tonight?”

“Absolutely not. I walk tomorrow, and you know the makeup artists here are gonna kill me if I show up with dry skin and dark under eyes and shit. Alcohol bloats you, too. Probably tomorrow night.” He can almost see her pause to take a drag from the cigarette she’s undoubtedly smoking. On the exhale, “You gonna come watch me walk for Valentino or not? It’s at the Jardin Du Palais Royal.” Decent pronunciation.

Right. He forgot to respond to her KKT message. “Valentino, yeah. I’ll be there. Don’t worry.”

“Good. They’ve got me in this gorgeous sheer gown, my ass and nipples all out.”

Yoongi takes a moment to register her response. Then, shoulders trembling in laughter, “Is that the selling point? Are you enticing me?”

“Maybe,” he can hear a smile in her voice. “Half-naked women are a dime a dozen during fashion week, no? If you look a little longer than usual, Jin-oppa doesn’t have to know.”

It takes only a second for his brain to run through the past ten days—then his throat is locking up.

The universe will never let him hold his moment of peace.

That’s right; everyone still thinks… nobody knows. Yet. Yet? Has Seokjin told anyone except Jimin? Is Seokjin still staying with Jimin? Is Seokjin getting rebound dick from Jimin?

“...won’t care either, I’m sure, so don’t worry. He adores you. Calls you Kitty all the time. Stole it from me.”

It feels like a lightning strike pierces through his chest, pops a lung on its way. Fucking—stop.

Yoongi shudders, rasps, “Yeah. Okay, I’ll come find you and your tits tomorrow. Bye.”

Sora’s laughing again, more delighted than the one before; if Yoongi suddenly sounds different, she doesn’t catch it. “Perfect. See you tomorrow. Don’t stay up drinking all night!”

As soon as his phone is down, Yoongi tips the glass against his lips.

Alcohol might be the best sedative. The aftermath isn’t very pleasant, but it still tops any sleep aid prescription, that’s for sure.

Yoongi remembers getting back to his hotel room in one piece and with all his belongings safely on his person; the part he doesn’t remember is falling asleep. Somehow, in the midst of unconsciousness, he wonders if he’d crawled onto the bed in his outdoor clothes. Almost as quickly as the thought passes through, his head goes quiet. It’s dark and blissful for a moment.

Then it’s sometime in the middle of the night when, as if a switch has been flicked on, white-yellow filters in through Yoongi’s eyelids, and there’s no choice but to open them, to find out what it is.

Yoongi’s eyelids lift. He tries to make sense of a familiar view.

It’s… the light fixture on the roof of his—the common room? The fixture with its abstract shape, spun like one, long ribbon. It’s the one back in Seoul.

He’s—

“Yoongi-yah.” Geumjae’s voice. Geumjae’s(?) voice carries on without pause, “Stay where the money is. Money solves most problems. You’re living any man’s dream. If he’s a piece of shit, just quietly save up and move out when he’s out working.”

This again.

Okay, he understands now.

That’s fine. He deserves this.

Yoongi remembers it vividly: that sudden swoop of feeling out of place, like he was lying on a couch that he hadn’t helped pick out, helped pay for, owned. How, suddenly, everywhere he looked he could only find Seokjin’s belongings. Seokjin’s television. Seokjin’s balcony. Seokjin’s penthouse. Seokjin’s hard work and long, harrowing hours on set commodified into a luxury that Yoongi should’ve felt privileged to live in.

Suddenly, he belonged solely to Seokjin too.

Geumjae is saying, again, “Being a kept woman—man, whatever—isn’t productive, but fuck is it an easy way out…” and, again, Seokjin’s couch cushions are swallowing Yoongi whole. He isn’t even holding a phone to his ear in this illusion; Geumjae’s voice plays as if it’s now become his own thoughts.

And, “Should I entertain this?” was the best Yoongi could do. Again.

Kept woman. That title never left, only lingers just one step behind him everywhere he goes. When it lived and died inside his own mind, the thought would arouse him. Sometimes—when Seokjin was huffing and panting above him, flaming-red ears his warning for an impending climax—Yoongi would think, he’s using me for his pleasure, then he’s gonna toss me aside and get ready for work, and the thought would make him cum, too.

But this time, in this memory, it hadn’t been born from him. It wasn’t his to control anymore.

“…but I guess I shouldn’t question Seokjin-ssi’s tastes as long as he’s taking good care of my dongsaeng. He’s taking good care of you, right? Shoulda asked that months ago.”

Seokjin was knocking around in the kitchen. Seokjin’s Yoongi was on his back, on Seokjin’s couch, holding back his rage and his tears. “Hyung.”

What kind of broke whore would fuck up their luxurious life by cheating? A bad, stupid one, that’s who. Yoongi must’ve been a bad, stupid, broke whore. If (when) Geumjae finds out, he’ll probably agree.

Yoongi is going to go back home from Seoul with nothing to show for it but his shame, and his father will undoubtedly say, back already? You couldn’t even do a good job at being a whore. The entire neighborhood will find out he cheated on who was likely the best man he never deserved by the end of the week.

He should’ve told Geumjae to go fuck himself, to go be miserable by himself. It’s not my fault you hate where you are in life. Your girlfriend must hate you for good reason.

Of course he never said that, because Yoongi was and still is a coward. He got off the phone a few minutes later, spoke to Seokjin in a tone that was much more nonchalant than he felt, and then soaked in his rage and shame—by himself. That was it.

That was all it needed to be, because he’s been reliving that day ever since. The alcohol won’t rescue him from this one.

Yoongi wakes up on Monday morning, in Paris.

The Rise of a (Reluctant) Star

Read more here. . .

As Kim Taehyung took the time to greet each waitstaff on his way to the chair perpendicular to mine, he seemed indistinguishable from Lee Byungyu, the character he played in the web series Under One Sky. Taehyung has an honest face, and a beguiling temperament to match. I sat and watched as his presence alone drew the attention of those close enough to feel it—like a bewitchment. Nothing about this felt intentional.

Taehyung agreed to meet me in a cafe just north of the Dongchon Metro Station, in Daegu. He spoke carefully, his accent a blend of a TV-standard Seoul dialect and hints of the Gyeongsang Satoori he’d grown up speaking. At times he would pause to muse before responding to questions that, on their face, weren’t very complex or philosophical.

“I like acting,” Kim Taehyung told me. He stared as if he were trying to convince me, or himself. “It’s fun, rewarding, and scary all at the same time.”

Taehyung was dressed casually, with a black Dior-print top and trousers rolled up to his ankles. He kept the tousled, curly hair that has now become associated with his brand, as new as that may be. “My dad called me the other day and said mom’s been driving our neighbors insane with how much she brags about me.” His smile suddenly became bashful, and he broke eye contact to look down at his lap. “That’s new.”

Taehyung was no stranger to hard work. Born and raised in South Gyeongsang, he spent the first fourteen years of his life helping with tending to his family’s farm—as many tasks that he could manage at his young age—and watching after his two younger siblings. Their only source of income were the fruits and beef they cultivated then sold at the local markets; corners often had to be cut to make ends meet. Most of those cut corners meant very few new clothing, shoes, or school materials for the kids.

He learned quickly to make due with what he had: He would toss his sneakers out only once the soles, backs, or toes were so worn down that they could no longer be salvaged; he wore the same jeans for one too many years, choosing instead to either make them into shorts once he outgrew them, or roll the hems up to his shins; hand-me-downs were the rule, not the exception. There were other skills he developed, too, such as repurposing leftover meat and vegetables into stews. Food was seldom wasted.

Regardless, Taehyung recounted a happy childhood and homelife. There wasn’t anything to want for if he’d never known what it was like to have. With a blinding smile, Taehyung told me, “I loved cooking with my grandmother. I have a lot of great memories of us preparing meals together in our old kitchen.”

The way Taehyung saw life at the time, he and his family loved the quaint Gyeongsang countryside. It came as a surprise, then, when his parents decided to leave it all behind in favor of the city: Daegu.

I asked him if it was new for his mother to brag about him, and if his parents have ever bragged about his accomplishments before.

“I wasn’t a good student,” Taehyung said, “and I didn’t have any career plans.” Not one for mincing words, “We were poor,” he continued. “I was—and still am—good at child-rearing since I helped raise my dongsaengs, and… I’m good at manual labour. So I resigned myself to the idea that, after graduating from high school, I was going to live and die on a farm in South Gyeongsang.”

Up until a YG scout approached him that fateful day, Taehyung never considered working in fashion or entertainment. He never thought he’d move to Seoul, either. The plan was to graduate and return to the farm. But Taehyung and his parents recalled how innately theatrical he’d always been: When he was in primary school he performed in pageants for a cash prize, and later learned how to walk in heels. “He was the prince of roleplay,” his mother told me during one of our several calls, oozing adoration. “I didn’t know any other kid that could put on a show like him.”

Still, no career plans and the quiet purgatory of life on a farm certainly weren’t brag-worthy. It was unsettling to imagine that, if the stroke of luck that brought Taehyung to Seoul never came to be, his handsome, beguiling face would’ve been lost forever to his family’s farmland.

Before Taehyung broke into acting under Hybe (his current agency), he was recruited by YG and signed on as a model. There was also a time wherein YG flew him out to Paris; the company’s hope was that they’d be able to sign him to a sister agency, consequently expanding their pool of clients.

While this ended up not working out, Taehyung continued to achieve success in Asia, consistently booking editorial, commercial, and catalogue work first under YG—then under Hybe.

What, then, did he want out of life? I asked him about his dreams.

“I’ve never had a dream career,” Taehyung answered bluntly. “I wasn’t interested in work. I’m still not… It always sounded boring to me. But I had—have—dreams of love. Falling in love, being in love, sharing my life with one person… devoting myself to them. I want my job to be all about making my soulmate happy.”

Admittedly, Taehyung’s uncanny likeness to Lee Byungyu (the second male lead of Under One Sky) drew concerns about how convincingly he could perform as a character so antithetical to Byungyu. He wrapped up filming for The Violinist’s Wife by the time of our interview and his breakout role as a young, seductive violin student (“Shinyoung”) was undoubtedly more challenging of a role than any web drama character could be.

Taehyung’s performance—from what could be seen in the movie previews—showed promise, but in such a grueling industry his prognosis would rely on much more than promise: It would all lie on the prowess of his company, the reach of his PR team, his own dedication to his craft and, most of all, luck.

I realized that I was entering uncharted territory. In my work as a journalist, I’ve never had talent admit that they never vied for the job that brought them fame. It sounded like career suicide. Even if an actor had non-career related aspirations, they’d make sure to insert an addendum about wanting to remain in and advance through their industry. There wasn’t a single mention of such from Taehyung.

Instead—as if reading my mind—he posed questions that challenged this very thought. “Does every dream have to be about a job? Why are we called lazy, or immature or… or childish [italicized to depict emphasis] to have other dreams? I love acting, it feels fulfilling and it’s fun. But it’s not my dream. I dream of love.”

He referenced love too many times to not inquire further. “Are you?” I asked him. “In love, that is.”

“It’s fate,” Taehyung said, ever elusive. “I want to feel it all: the ebbs and flows. Heartbreak means it happened. Fate means that it will happen again and again—whether you want it to or not.” Then his bashful smile returned, albeit he maintained eye contact with a confidence that he hadn’t shown since we began speaking.

Taehyung might have come into this grueling industry with reluctance, but he made it clear that he would approach this goal—love, his actual dream—with intention.

It was certainly an interesting belief to hold; we both knew how Under One Sky ended, after all.

Nonetheless, “To hurt and to love. It’s fate,” he repeated.

He would never clarify.

Read the author’s other works here. . .

Now fully embroiled with the fervor of HCW, the city’s detritus and, presumptively, its ‘unsightly’ residents—Yoongi recalls when one of Esteem’s senior, more ‘orthodox’ Parisian clients thought it diplomatic to refer to them as tramps, but only in a hushed voice—have been swept away.

This is an upheaval that’s quintessential of any fashion week: steel crowd control stanchions snaking up to each venue; and packs of photo-videographers either setting up, snapping shots, filming, or merely wandering about in search of their next prey, expensive film gear in hand. The frontliners of the fashion world have been rolling through in waves—models plus-or-minus their managers (which is, of course, dependent on their level of notoriety), socialites, brand ambassadors and influencers, fashion editors, agents, bookers, vaguely curious locals… Yoongi’s eyes track across the piazza. And it isn’t FW without all the unknown faces draped in rented clothes, desperate to be seen…

He runs down his mental checklist: There’s security for individual clients as well as for each venue; hired police; and various haute couture federation members scattered about—the cogs that run this machine.

The A- through C-list celebrities are nowhere in sight just yet—they’ll show up for the photo ops and when off- or on-loading from their SUVs—but their fans certainly are, many of which found loitering around the steel stanchions in hopes that their fanaticism will earn them a five-second glimpse of their idol.

As it often goes, everyone’s too concerned with playing their individual roles to pay anyone else much attention.

Yoongi’s head feels simultaneously muggy and yet more lucid than any other year he’s attended FW. Not for the first time, Yoongi thinks it’s baffling that this is all to gawk at asinine, overpriced clothes. They insist it’s art, no different than perusing through a museum… but sculptures don’t go out of fashion from one season to the next.

Not that he’s fundamentally different—or trying for sanctimony—for feeling unconvinced. This machine, asinine that it might be, sustains him the same way he pays back into it; and Yoongi now welcomes the noise, the crowds and traffic.

It may be the only way to distract him from the escalating hallucinations.

He spent the morning on the phone with Yubin, then with relevant Esteem bookers, which led to coordinating calls between them and the new faces walking shows this week. This was preceded by Yoongi getting up at the crack of dawn after a night of fitful sleep. Soon thereafter, he was knocking back a glass of red wine from the bottle he purchased just before his 9am call with Yubin.

The job was done: their models were either at rehearsals on-time or were preparing to head out. Check, check, check. Phone calls through, Yoongi sat in front of his hotel bed and drank more wine until his hangover fucked off, until his brain was pleasantly undulating inside his skull. Any stretch of time spent in quiet solitude seemed to be the most dangerous; if he stared at the armchair long enough, Yoongi could see the shape of a shadow or a person in his periphery—a young boy?—leaning over the iron-wrought Juliet balcony. This particular shadow-or-boy-person’s back might have been facing Yoongi, or he might have been looking down. He could’ve been speaking. To Yoongi? To himself?

Yoongi didn’t let himself stay long enough to find out.

Now, three hours later, Yoongi stands at a street-corner in Le Marais and quietly observes the bustle. He looks down at his phone when it buzzes in his palm.

Sora. Rehearsals were quick, gonna go work out. You working rn?

Don’t push yourself too hard. Make sure you eat something filling, Yoongi types back. Finished some conferences. I’m on call for now. And per his Valentino invitation the show isn’t until 19:30, leaving plenty of time to kill. Might as well do a bit of lollygagging. He can’t afford to sit still for too long.

It’s HC in Paris, Sora’s message pops up while he’s still in the chatroom. You know better than anyone my health isn’t the priority atm kekekeke. I’ll take care of myself starting next week promise kekeke.

PFW comes second only to Milan Fashion Week in its brutality, the worst stress-test of his cognitive dissonance. So, yeah, he knows this too well… but still. Still, he’d like to cling to the delusion that somebody in this industry cares. But to assuage whom?

A chorus of Valeria! Valeria! Over here—Valeria! Over here! bursts to his right. Yoongi looks up to find several photographers scrambling into position as ‘Valeria’—Yoongi recognizes her as one of the girls signed to Elite—slows down to subtly pose for their camera. The image of a Joro spider comes to mind: toothpick limbs and large, vacant eyes. Tendons in her thighs flex when she takes a step.

She can pose, Yoongi evaluates without awareness. I’ll give her that. No director or photog having to bark at her on what to do. The young ones often need a lot of direction.

Yoongi blinks fast, doing quick math. He must have first heard about her… way back. Way back, when he was a mere intern, and Namjoon had just been signed. He happened to come across her name and photo on some showlist. Which would mean… She’s five years into her career by now, yet can’t be any older than twenty-one.

One of the photogs says, Valeria, merci, merci!, then switches to what sounds like Russian; Valeria smiles with her lips. She responds with one of the few Russian words he can understand: Thank you. She’s walking for Valentino today too, isn’t she?

Yoongi wonders if he’ll still see her booking shows two years from now. He can count on one hand how many of his girls who started that young made it to twenty-four.

His stomach suddenly lurches like a lashing; Yoongi winces and presses a palm to his middle. Don’t go there. His body continues to dole out punishment.

Fuck, he needs a drink.

Yoongi looks back down, shakily taps on his phone. He sends Sora, Let me know if you ever need anything. I’ll be here until Sunday. You know where to find me.

And yet… his mind can’t seem to help it. It tells him—Sora’s been doing this routine for over a decade now. To keep powering on as if it’s nothing year after year, you must have to be a special kind of insane. There are different brands of insanity, though; what kind of sickness does one have to have to let their bodies waste away for a job—and be rewarded for it?

Yoongi must also be insane then, to stand by and watch it happen year after year. He’s just as complicit.

These thoughts continue to carry off without him, slipping from his fingertips and down the rinds of tangency when he tries to snatch them back up; they capitalize off of the chaos—

Insanity is the least of your worries right now. Did you forget already? You cheated. You’re a cheater and a coward. Remember? You betrayed everyone that cares about you; what makes this any different? Of course you’re betraying her too.

—You abandoned Taehyung to assuage your own guilt, as if running away will fix anything, he called you his home, he said he loved you—

Immediately, his stomach lurches again. Yoongi coughs back a sob. No. “Stop,” he shudders, pressing a fist over his mouth. Fuck. Fuck off!

It’s terrifying how quickly his emotions can oscillate from one extreme to another, as if only a technicality separates a breeze from squall—as if any minor inconvenience can send what’s left of him crashing down.

Weak. That’s what his father would say.

Yoongi’s skin is wound taut. There’s a tingling at the back of his throat. Is it that he’s too sober already?

He really needs a drink.

Yoongi stuffs his phone into a leather jacket pocket and stalks off down the nearest street.

He finds his way to Rue des Rosiers.

It’s crowded. That’s a given. Yoongi allows himself to get swept up in it, waves of people constant enough to make him seasick. There are building fronts seething in trailing ivy, with their rectilinear windows, aged brick and stucco; the restaurants are practically boiling over with customers, terrace seating filled to the brim; a few panhandlers approach anyone that looks or sounds like a tourist. Yoongi can’t help his scout-eye, suddenly caught on a pair of tall white girls holding what looks like sweet bread, chatting in French—can’t be older than 18, and they’re at least 176cm. Are they walking any shows this week? Or, are they still undiscovered and waiting to be found?—as they leave a pastry shop. He’s considering the ethics of referring them to Esteem’s sister agency when a mop of chocolate-brown hair steals his attention, and Yoongi nearly trips in his rush to look back.

A group of men split to avoid running into him.

No one. Of course it’s no one.

Yoongi turns back around.

There are people swarming the promenade from every direction; with so much movement and sound, it’s harder to tell what’s real and what is still his mind playing tricks on him. He’s not sure that knowing would even make a difference… but it’s certainly better than sitting in silence, where he can’t blame seeing or hearing things on anyone other than himself.

Yoongi makes a detour into the first sidewalk café he sees.

It’s also cramped and busy, and his rudimentary French earns him one, then two, glasses of Louise Rogue—not that the brand matters save for it being the cheapest out of the options given—that he pays for on his company credit card. Yoongi stands at the crowded bar, up against a wall, while he essentially knocks both of them back, one after another; his head is floating in record time. He squeezes his way back out onto the street.

What is there to do? There’s nowhere to go and nothing pressing until the show starts or Yubin calls him—whichever comes first.

Yoongi pretends that he still has a semblance of professionalism and leaves his ringer on, email chat notifications set to vibrate only. Whenever he’s drunk, ‘Safety’ drops down to last place in his hierarchy of needs, so external reminders are essential to keeping his job. Also essential—Yoongi pats at his pockets—metro card, portable phone charger, show e-invite, all present. And Yoongi was (thankfully) sentient enough to bring mostly unlabeled, black clothes with him. He’s a representative of the agency; wearing name-brand pieces from another fashion house would be a faux pas that he can’t afford to trouble Yubin & co. with.

So, externally, Yoongi is successfully playing the part as a diligent Esteem employee. Internally, the strategy for survival will be to heavily skew his food:alcohol ratio to the latter’s benefit. Most things are tolerable when he’s drinking.

Still, he wants to skip the show, drink the day away instead. He promised Sora he’ll go, so he can’t—but he wants to. Since there’s no way around that, he can’t get too plastered so that he can make it there, but he can’t be too sober or else he’ll catch up to himself. Absolutely can’t let that happen.

He’s good at holding his liquor; a few more drinks won’t ruin his plans. He can play at seeming clear-headed better than anyone he knows.

He’ll go—just a little bit more.

(It’s like trying to hold a cup of water in his hands. Untoward thoughts keep seeping in through the cracks of him.

Yoongi is two more glasses of wine deep when he thinks of Taehyung. He presses his face into his palms and thinks of:

“I mean it,” Taehyung says, “Thank you. Hyung.”

“I’ll ruin my life and blame you,” Yoongi tells him.

He can only look on as Taehyung smiles at him, undeterred by this premonition of future heartache. The memory materializes around that smile: The balcony railing, that aged sunset caressing Taehyung’s cheeks—Daegu, their shared youth, and Taehyung’s foolish, youthful naivety.

Taehyung is seventeen again. His snot and tears are smudged into his shirt neckline. Wayward strands of hair follow along the paths his neck creates; they whip at his face each time the wind howls under the soffit. Yoongi remembers the chill, his prickling skin, autumn howling across his arms and into his throat-hollow.

Here, he’d tell Taehyung to come eat, because their families were waiting indoors, and it’s cold out here as the excuse to end this conversation. He remembers reminiscing over how much Taehyung had grown up, and how useless he felt, faced with the beast of Taehyung’s howling, terrified grief.

Yoongi shouldn’t have said come eat, or it’s cold out here. He should’ve said, I shouldn’t be thinking about you when I’m drunk, instead. He decides he’ll say that. Afterward, he tells Taehyung, “I should be thinking about Jin-hyung. I should be fucking miserable over how I ruined our relationship. And I am. I am. So,” he tightens his grip on the railing. “I don’t know.”

Taehyung says, “You’re here.” What is he trying for? Penance? Absolution? He can hear the question in Taehyung’s voice, which, in the end, is the only thing that matters.

“Why do my thoughts always take me to you? I think about you—all the time. I shouldn’t, but I do. It makes me feel worse. More guilty.” Yoongi squints out towards the decaying sunset. He isn’t sure if he’s remembering this one correctly—sometimes it burned in shades of terracotta, merging into the mountain line; other times it was hazy-yellows and oozing, like butter or egg-drop soup—he was often too distracted by Taehyung, who knew how to steal attention when he stood in front of it.

Yoongi shifts his attention back to Taehyung. “I think that’s why a part of me knew coming to Paris was a bad idea before I even left. I just—I didn’t know where else to go. I ran out of places to hide.”

“You think about what I told you,” supplies Taehyung. “When YG sent me here.”

Taehyung was in France, alone, looking at his future as the rising action in his life-story; Yoongi was alone in South Korea, in an apartment at the outskirts of Seoul, with nothing to look forward to but the end. Nearly six years later, Yoongi’s escape brought him to the beginning of Taehyung’s story. Is that it?

“What if you stayed in Paris? What if—if you signed to a sister agency and you stayed here, back then? Or,” Yoongi licks his lips and tries to breathe, takes it back even farther, “What would’ve happened if I’d given up and gone back home to Daegu?”

“To me.”

“To you. What if I never even left? What would’ve happened to us?” Really: Why did I do this to us? He doesn’t say this one, not aloud, but an effigy can already hear his every errant thought.

Taehyung is watching him. He hasn’t stopped watching him since Yoongi was first transported back here. It’s all Yoongi remembers: Taehyung stood at that one spot and stared into his eyes until he opened the balcony doors and ushered him inside with the rest of their family, ending this memory—forever.

Yoongi isn’t letting them leave this time.

He asks, “Would you have still returned home to the farm? Or said yes to that YG scout? Do you think you would’ve even met that YG scout if I stayed home, and we spent all our free time together like we used to?”

“I don’t know.” Taehyung’s expression hasn’t changed. Taehyung emotes more than this. “What’s the point of asking?”

“Escapism? Torture?”

Taehyung suggests, “Alcohol? Maybe you’re torturing yourself with alcohol.”

“Being sober is torture. This is to make it better.”

“Is it? Are you feeling better?”

“Kind of,” Yoongi admits. “That’s the bad part, I think. We’ll see in a few days.”

He concludes that he must be, not-so-subconsciously, chasing absolution and penance at once. It’s not a clean deduction, but people are seldom rational and consistent—certainly not Yoongi. He’s grimy and proud, ignorant and self-serving. There’s a large part of his ‘self’ that he’d like to think advocates for retribution, the ultimate plight being minimizing recidivism; not one without the other.

This means that he, like anyone else, must face equal consequences for his wrongs. Then—when it comes to immoral wrongs—he knows that no one can dole out punishment except himself, and no one can make him feel punished if he wholly rejects it. He must be his own judge and prison cell; he’s decided that his sentencing must be endless emotional suffering.

But—but, there’s always a but—there’s that other, much-larger part of himself that reminds him that he’s not an abstraction, or a philosophy, or a lesson. He can go on pretending for the rest of his life, but it doesn’t change that he’s overtly, permanently, inexplicably human.

Yoongi doesn’t want to live in endless suffering. He doesn’t want to kill himself. He doesn’t want this to be the end, the same way he didn’t want it to be the end nearly-six-years ago. He wants it to hurt less, even if he’s the one who hurt himself. He wants to be given leniency, empathy and kindness, even if—and especially if—he rejects it again and again.

He wants to keep finding new ways to justify his wrongdoings, spin his every action and inaction as ultimately altruistic—and he wants to dodge his own self-erected walls of justice and retribution. He wants someone, something, to break his fall, no matter how unforgiving he is. Desperately, he wants clemency.

“Don’t do anything that hurts you,” Taehyung whispers.

Yoongi looks up. He’s said this once before, five years after this Chuseok day.

Neon colors spill down from the sky, fluorescent blue and green. This stuns Yoongi into momentary silence. It feels like the wind has taken a sharp turn, nipping at him from a new direction, now whistling instead of a howl. The next breeze carries the smell of convenience-store ramyeon.

Yoongi swallows hard, removes his hand from the balcony railing. He whispers back, “I won’t. I haven’t been.” Not yet, at least. He’ll keep bringing up anything and everything to keep his pity party going—and then he’ll run from it. He’s human.

In Paris, Yoongi removes a palm from his face, then picks his buzzing phone up from the brasserie table.)

Yoongi snakes through the path of steel stanchions and into the garden without fanfare. The balustrades are lined with signs indicating it’s a closed event—En raison de la préparation de la fashion week, veuillez nous excuser pour la gêne occasionnée—and, quite honestly, the trek to his reserved, third-row seat is a blur: One moment he’s dodging socialites where they’re separated by the ‘Invitation Only’ and ‘VIP Guests Only’ lines, and the next his ass is digging into a wood bench, guests swarming like Pierpaolo himself knocked over their nest.

His skin still has the too-tight feeling, brain sloshing back and forth with the turn of his head. He’s surrounded by typical pre-show discord, frenetic with hundreds of fractionated conversations and a perpetual state of movement. With less than 10 minutes until show time, any last-minute preparations are left to the production team (that is, contractors and the Maison’s unpaid interns) to discreetly complete. Guests weave through the crowds to find their people or their places. LED light panels burn into Yoongi’s eye sockets when a videographer steps too close.

No one speaks to him. He’s invisible—anyone and nobody—his unlabeled clothes, graciously, allowing him to fade into the background.

At some point the Valentino show begins. He knows it does because, somehow, it sticks in his memory that the runway weaves through Palais Royal’s colonnades, follows beneath the arcades, then circles the grand bassin—the same path where their seating has been arranged.

He’s sure the pieces are gorgeous; those (unpaid) interns didn’t devote thousands of hours hand-stitching each pearl and lace and pure-organza ribbon for them not to be. Pierpaolo has a sharp eye for this genre of fashion—haute couture—it’s one of many reasons Valentino has maintained its position as a major house.

It’s also a given that Sora sells her look well, tits and ass peeking through the silk as promised, legs as long as the catwalk itself. There’s a very low probability that Esteem’s fifteen year-old new-face stumbled into the fabric or rolled an ankle in her heels—if there was, her feet wouldn’t have ever touched ground this far west from Seoul on company money.

Months of preparation heated and boiled down into a ten, fifteen-minute show is executed without error. The product of professionals oiling a well-run machine.

Then the models do their closing walk, Pierpaolo jogs out and bows to his applauding guests—and Yoongi remembers none of it.

“Fantastic as always,” Yoongi squeezes between two publicists and a photog to reach Sora’s corner of the room backstage. Neither celebrity nor a press pass are required when your invitation reads assistant manager for top so-and-so agency—or you know a guy that knows a guy that wouldn’t like you turning away their guy’s guy.

“One down, zero to go!” Sora cheers, her profile to him, decorative pearls flashing beneath her eyes when she smiles. “Gonna enjoy my final twenty-four hours here before Seoul calls me home.” As soon as the four dressers attending to her carefully remove the rest of the accessories, Sora goes to snatch her jean jacket off a stylist chair, tugging it on over her shirt.

The dressers disperse, making way for more backstage guests to weave in. Sora turns to face him.

“Lucky you,” Yoongi says. “I have to be here for three more days.”

“Only walking one show this season while our little fledglings are walking five-plus isn’t very lucky…” Her voice trails off, then fades altogether. She quickly—and unabashedly—examines Yoongi’s face: hair, eyes, cheeks, mouth, back up to his eyes. “You’ve lost a lot of weight since I last saw you. Are you… everything okay?”

Some omnipresent being must have, for once, decided to show mercy, because Sora’s investigation is suddenly interrupted by a magazine editor and their cameraman asking Sora and another nearby model if they can pose together for a photo.

From there distractions keep coming, Yoongi at times getting caught up when Sora introduces him to guests that are important or known for various reasons that mean nothing to Yoongi. But he’s here as a representative for Esteem, so he plays along, cycling through his best English, French, Mandarin—then, rarely but a relief nonetheless, Korean. Sora’s French and Mandarin have improved a lot in the past few years; she’s quick to his rescue when a conversation moves too quickly for his inebriated brain to keep up.

Eventually, the production team ushers out Yoongi and the other stragglers so they can finish closing down backstage. Sora stops to give some of the interns a hug and cheerful merci, merci! on the way. Tu as bien travaillé! She mimes cheek-kisses.

The sky is copper by the time they’re outside. There’s a much-less organized chaos in the piazza in front of the venue, photogs trying to film and steal snapshots; magazine staff, ex-guests and socialites looking (or trying to appear) busy and important; and models scurrying off on foot, motorbikes, and trottinettes to their next show. Names fly through the air.

They flow through several more semi-unknown faces to greet before Sora and Yoongi, finally, settle by a grimy stone wall just outside of the commotion. Sora leans her clothed back against it, pulls out her pack of cigarettes from her jeans. Yoongi stands with his hands balled up in his leather jacket pockets. He squints at the blue carton in her hand. Gauloises Blondes.

“Seriously,” Sora says to her lighter. When the tip of her cigarette burns auburn—then auburn-grey—she flicks off the flame. “You grew your hair out and look like you’re down, like, ten kilos all of a sudden.” Her lips thin out as she takes a drag. The auburn glows. Exhaling, “You walking for a show this season and wanted to surprise me?”

“Nah,” Yoongi says, although oddly feeling caught out. “Too ugly for runway.”

“They love ugly on the runway,” Sora deadpans. Yoongi gives a genuine laugh, but Sora’s still narrowing her eyes suspiciously at him. “Not to be mean, but you look more sickly than half the models here.” And then all levity leaves her tone, “You wanna talk about what’s up?”

No. “Um,” Yoongi’s shoulders sag against his sigh. His eyes drift up towards the outline of mansarde roofs behind them. “Not—really. I’m drunk.”

“I can see that.” Sora dabs ash out onto the sidewalk. “I didn’t notice until we started talking to Youngbae.” She presses the filter between her lips again and remarks, not cruelly but as a mere observation, “You were drunk yesterday, too.”

He isn’t as sly as he wanted to believe, then.

How can he frame this? It’s not that he presumes being honest will forever ruin their friendship—Sora has never shown herself to rush into any decision, especially if she isn’t directly involved—it’s that… It's a lot. A lot to say here, in a busy plaza during the start of HFW; a lot of detail to have to explain to convey depth and meaning; a lot of emotional bandwidth to burn when his brain is already soupy from way too much wine. A lot to do without breaking down—except now with an audience.

“It’s—yeah. Uh,” Yoongi inadvertently sighs again. That dreaded lodged-throat sensation is coming up and he hasn’t even said anything yet. “I feel like shit, yeah. Can’t remember the last time I had a full meal.”

Sora looks off ahead of her. “Yeah? You should’ve stayed home.”

“Got a job to do. Already took too much time off work.” His eyes drift back to the blue carton peeking from Sora’s front pocket. “And I didn’t… I wanted to leave. For a bit. Noona, lend me one?”

Confused, Sora blinks at Yoongi. It takes a second for her to realize where his line of sight is pointed, then she’s saying, while fishing the blondes back out, “You smoke now?”

“It’s this or chew the rest of my thumbs off.”

Sora watches his hands as he takes both the offered cigarette and lighter from her. “Shit, yeah, you’ve been eating them up real good. At this point smoking might be healthier.”

And more therapeutic, Yoongi thinks. “I don’t even remember doing most of this.” More honest than he prepared to reveal, “The past couple of weeks have been a blur. But it’s,” his eyes flicker towards Sora, then bounces away again when he’s caught her looking, “this is my fault. So.” So no need to be more worried than he deserves.

Sora retorts, quieter, “I don’t think fault matters.” Then, before Yoongi can protest this, someone over Yoongi’s shoulder catches her attention and she instantly perks up, waving cutely, “Sunghee-yah! Are you coming tonight?! Yeah! Raspoutine?”

Yoongi busies himself by lighting his cig. The first draw, hold, and exhale isn’t pleasurable, to say the least; his throat and eyes burn, and he tries his best not to embarrass the shit out of himself by hacking his lungs out in front of a veteran smoker. Neither are the second through fourth drags fun—but the effects are quick enough, melting out the knots in his neck. The leaden-skull feeling that was coming back lightens up once more. His movements are rote, drawn from watching his father tear through more than one pack a day for over a decade—that, and from his own curious stint in his late teens before he realized losing his stamina wasn’t worth it.

He exhales hard on the fifth, tips his chin up. The copper-sky has been pressed down by iron and obsidian over the past half-hour, its granules now spitting out between the château rooftops. It’s mesmerizing.

“Has a sweet kinda taste, right? I stockpile these every time I come here,” Sora addresses him, her attention now returned. She wags her cigarette butt to show what she’s referring to before grinding it out on the stone wall and grabbing another from her pack. “Can’t get ‘em in Korea.”

Yoongi’s too much of a novice to know the differences; his father stuck to one brand, the same brand he smoked for a short time, some Esse type. Still, these do have a sweet taste to it, and he’s feeling more relaxed already, so, “It’s good.”

Sora takes the lighter back, lights her new one. “Way more expensive, though.”

“Mm.”

They smoke in shared silence for a moment. Yoongi watches the sky, and Sora watches the piazza gradually thin out.

“Hey, so,” Sora flicks out ash between her boots. “Listen. There’s an afterparty happening tonight, down near the new flagship store on Montaigne. Probably already started.”

Yoongi blinks down at her, his chin still tipped up. “Mm. Yeah? Montaigne?”

“The afterparty for the regular guests, VIPs, whatever. Pierpaolo-nim and his entourage will probably show their faces, suck some dick for custom orders. You know how it goes.”

“I do.”

“But,” Sora pauses, and Yoongi waits while she draws in smoke. She points her quick exhale to the sky. Now watching his face, she continues, “They’re—I think it’s the casting director, ‘dunno all those details—hosting a different,” switching to her most theatrical French accent, overtly mocking someone, “soirée—at Raspoutine. I was told it’ll be a more intimate crowd, ‘n we’re free to bring guests.” She keeps monitoring the expression he’s wearing, like she’s already expecting the answer yet hoping to be surprised. “What d’you think? Sound like a good distraction?”

A client-facing event running simultaneously to the private one, both mere streets away. It’s certainly not unheard of—common, even. Yoongi just isn’t the type to attend any of the events, his sole mission being to do his job…. and to avoid crowds at all costs.

“It’s better than sitting in your hotel all night.” Ever-adept, Sora must have already read his silence as the answer.

But, “You’re right,” Yoongi says to his cigarette’s burning shaft. He wiggles it between his fore- and middle finger until the ash-butt loosens, pinching off. “I’d rather not go back to my room yet, though I probably should.”

“Why should you?” She doesn’t sound shocked by his immediate acquiescence. “You came to the show. Your job is over until tomorrow.”

“Because I drank so much already.” Yoongi laughs dryly, ashamed by the admission but not too sober to stop himself. “Mostly wine. The older I get, the more I feel like my father. Used to not understand why he liked to smoke and drink so much.”

It feels nice to talk comfortably with a friend. He hasn’t done this in awhile. Sora makes it easier, flow naturally, personality mellow in the best and most maladaptive of ways. He’s known her to be someone always prepared to set fire to whatever’s not working, no matter how much she’d already invested, and change directions when asked. Never hyper-reactive, never standing in her own way, never swept off her feet. Yoongi realizes then that this, ultimately, must be the reason why she’s still standing in the mouth of this beast.

Tonight, Sora is facing a new beast, her expression tamed. Her lips look naked without their signature red. “Drinking and smoking are nice distractions. Effective.” She grinds out her second cigarette on the wall, flicking it into a trash pile at the curb. “Not a treatment. A distraction. Your father probably didn’t like it; maybe he fucking hated it. Just didn’t know what else to do with his feelings except to numb them. You mentioned he wasn’t a talker, right?” She doesn’t wait for confirmation. “Same as you. That’s a lot of feelings to numb.”

Yoongi titters, bereft of words. “Well.” There’s no use in lying. “Yeah.”

Sora says, “I thought about this one day. Hear me out. Y’ever noticed how much the French complain about shit? Revolution and—and protest is in their blood. They don’t like something? The whole world is gonna have to know about it by the end of the week.” She and Yoongi pause to snicker. “But the protests seem like they usually give them what they want—at least some sorta compromise. They suffer, but they don’t suffer forever.”

Now Yoongi stares, lips parted, as Sora pushes up off of the wall. “I feel like that’s one thing we have in common with the French: We’ll suffer, but we won’t suffer forever. We’ll moan about it, and then go take the streets and piss everyone in the Blue House off until they listen. Our country survived through so much—occupation, mass killings, wars, like a million government overthrows, corruption… because we tolerate it for only so long.” Firmly, as if Yoongi isn’t already hanging onto every word, “Doesn’t matter whose fault it may or may not be. We’re surviving it.

“I know I’m making a very, very heavy-handed comparison here, so don’t make fun of me. I’m just saying that our survival instincts are strong. That’s it.” Sora steps close enough to pat and squeeze his shoulder. “Let’s have fun tonight—but we’re not numbing ourselves forever, okay? I’m not gonna be your enabler… and you’re not your dad.” She pivots away. Freezes. Pivots back to widen her eyes pleadingly at him. “Also: Tell me what we’re protesting about—when you’re ready! You know I’m nosy! I’m trying very hard not to just beg you to tell me.” She pauses. “Okay. Wanted to get that out. C’mon.”

A response must not be necessary, because once she’s ‘got it out’ she snatches her tote bag from the ground and stalks off, one long stride after another.

A few beats pass as Yoongi stands and, stunned, watches her recede while other pedestrians fill in the new space between them. Men in orange vests walk by carrying traffic control sticks and stanchions.

Heart in his throat, ribs clenched over his lungs—Yoongi blinks quickly, dries his eyes with a palm, then follows her lead.

Yoongi speed-walks and smokes, Sora always three strides ahead. He’s borrowed his second cig from her. Sora’s got her lipstick out of her tote, and is using her phone’s camera to apply red within the vermillion border.

The sky is stained with pearlescent ink; the Eiffel Tower is glittering against it. At its point, the beacon endlessly spins.

Yoongi has stolen Taehyung’s likeness for his next day dream. “It’s always you.”

I spent some nights wandering through Paris and thinking about how it was that rising action right before the climax. My future beginning in a new country. Is that why that song stuck with you, over four years later? Hémisphère?

“I want that,” Yoongi hallucinates saying. “I want so badly for this to be the hard part of my movie. The temporary part of the rising action, like you talked about. I’m being honest. I want to end this with you.” His face twists up in his tears, and he furiously wipes them away. He fits the filter back between his pursed lips. “Didn’t you want that, too? Knowing what I’ve done, do you still want me? I could hurt you the same way I hurt him.”

This time he imagines Taehyung standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, but he’s faced away, his side profile to Yoongi and the tower both. Taehyung is watching their sky.

Yoongi knows what’s coming but is helpless to wait and listen and shatter his own heart yet again:

But I was wrong. I think meeting you again was.

I think meeting you again was.

Meeting you again was.

Meeting you again—

“I know you’re not waiting,” Yoongi’s words fracture around a sob. He wipes furiously again. “And you shouldn’t wait around for me; I won’t let you. But I want you to be. I fucking—I’m evil, because I want you to still want me and wait for me to sort my shit out. Taehyung-ah. This is who I really am. Pathetic.”

Did Taehyung wander through these same streets, too? Is he so cruel that he can’t even be haunted by Seokjin outside of a stray nightmare or two? Did Taehyung see the tower’s sweeping beam of light from this angle? Was he still thinking of Yoongi back then? Has he tried to call or message the silenced chatroom?

Is it truly possible for him to survive this self-inflicted wound?

“You can end this,” Yoongi breathes, picking up the pace when Sora does. “I can change my mind, but—you have the power to take the choice from me.” Save yourself and end me for good.

“Yoongi-yah! Here!” Sora shouts, then makes a sharp left onto a side-street.

Sora is sharing a two-bed, one-bath model apartment by the River Seine with five other girls. She must read the question in his face, because she explains, “No point wasting my money and shitty-ass allowance on a hotel when I’m only here for a night.” She pulls open a wrought-iron door leading into the building’s vestibule, then heads inside.

They take the gated elevator to the fifth floor. It’s a mansarde apartment, functionally built into what would’ve been the building’s attic space. True to purpose, the rooms are dark even with the several floor lamps—although they aren’t on when Sora and Yoongi enter—and it’s poorly insulated. The sole luxury is its level and location: there’s an acceptable view of the Eiffel Tower through the sitting room’s tri-panel, dormer windows. Impressive that they’ve crammed two bedrooms with the square-meters they had—no more than fifty.

Yoongi can’t tell how many of the other models are present. The sitting room has been transformed into a cluttered, disastrous sleeping room: blankets layered on top of one another; pillows rolled up for back or neck support; and tablets, chargers, leather folders, clothes, suitcases, purses, beauty products, and carry-on bags strewn about. Yoongi can hear the muffled sounds of either a video playing or someone talking on the phone inside one of the rooms.

They pass by the kitchen on the way through, coming across a girl with dirty-blonde hair. She’s in a tank top, standing with a spoon and bowl in her hands, chewing drowsily.

“Hi, Mina,” Sora says without stopping.

“Hi.” Mina keeps chewing as her eyes track Yoongi.

Yoongi looks, too. “Hi.”

He walks past the threshold just as Mina begins to smile in greeting.

Sora leads him into the very-narrow, very-cramped bathroom, then shuts the door. She flicks on the light switch; it doesn’t do much to brighten the space. “Serbian,” she explains without prompting. “She’s one of us three adults living here.”

Yoongi looks around. “How old?”

“Twenty. I say ‘adult’ loosely.” She closes the toilet seat. “Sit.”

Yoongi sits. There’s a tiny awning window in the bathroom, too, but the tower isn’t as easy to see from here. The glass pane is cranked open to let some air in. It still smells moldy.

Sora fishes her phone out of her tote before dropping it to the floor. Yoongi waits for Sora to tap at the screen for a moment. When a drum and baseline starts playing from the speaker, she perches it on the pedestal sink and turns to Yoongi. “Okay—you first. I think our best bet is to lean into the sickly look instead of fighting it. We can be Victor and Victoria from The Corpse Bride.”

He blinks up to her scrutinizing each piece of him: eyes, cheeks, hair, outfit. “What are we doing?”

Sora’s already on the job, crouching to dig through her tote. Pulling out her makeup bag, then a mini flat-iron, she muses, “This will be quick since you’re already wearing all black and a leather jacket.” She stops rummaging to look at him. “You’re gonna be, you know. Me. Think Osaki Nana.” Who? “Punk, kinda-goth vibe?” She lifts an eyeliner pencil, wags it around.

His eyes follow along. “Makeup,” Yoongi clarifies aloud to himself. “Alright, got it now.” Fine. It’s not something he wears often—or much, if at all—but not out of distaste. Just from lack of opportunity.

“Yeah?” Sora grins open-mouthed, excitement barely concealed. She wags some more.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Yeah?!” She wags harder.

Yoongi blurts a laugh and looks away, rubs a finger under his nose. “Yeah, yes, okay!”

“Let’s do it!” She stands up. “Gimmie that ghostly little face.”

Sora is in a black-lace slip dress that reminds Yoongi of fancy pyjamas. The bottom hem ends just below her panties, where fishnets begin. It all feeds into her signature steel-boots. Her purse was ‘payment’ from a Dior show she walked over three years ago.

Yoongi decides that he likes how eyeliner and mascara looks on him. Sora is right; he has a sickly pallor about him, soft grey patches beneath his eyes. And, yeah, the makeup paired with all-black lets him lean into Despair as a style and not a disposition.

“We look pretty bad-ass,” Sora tilts her phone to show him as they’re once again walking out on the streets, side by side.

It’s an Insta photo she’s been tagged in, on a fashion photog’s profile. He swipes at the screen. There’s a spray of shots from the same time right after the Valentino show: Yoongi and Sora standing by the wall, Sora smoking and Yoongi with his hands in his jacket, not smoking—yet. Yoongi reads the tags. #PFWxx #ChoiSora #StreetFashion.

“This is what I get for hanging out with models.” He looks ahead again. “Getting caught in photos.”

“They tagged you as Esteem,” Sora snickers.

“Good. For all intents and purposes, I am Esteem.”

“Wait, lemme DM them and remind them you were that one model scout Elle was gushing over.”

“Do that and I’ll tell the tabloids you’re divorcing Kove-hyung for me.”

Sora’s snicker graduates to a cackle. She shoves him. “Asshole! I was being nice!”

“Sure. Gimmie a smoke.”

“Buy your own, you mooch.” Sora goes fishing for her Gauloises.

They choose to walk the 1km distance to Raspoutine. When they arrive, there’s a crowd spilling out into the cobblestone street. With construction on one side and parked motorbikes on the other, the street is nearly rendered inoperable. “This place is a bit overplayed, but they love it. So.” Sora shrugs. “Let me go tell the front my name.”

Yoongi isn’t sure who ‘they’ are, though knows he’s going to find out soon. “Okay.”

Sora disappears into the crowd, and Yoongi finishes his next cigarette at the curb. Rhythmic thumping of music—house?—ebbs and flows with traffic at the door. Yoongi listens absently as the other waiting parties chat in French with a stray English-speaker sweeping in.

Maybe four minutes pass, and no Sora-shaped model resurfaces from the crowd.

Well. He hasn’t checked his notifications in hours, can’t even remember if he felt any vibrations from his jacket pocket. Yubin is gonna need an update. He lets his cigarette dangle between his lips, fishes out his phone to brave KaTalk.

There aren’t any messages from Yubin, but Yoongi still taps a quick ‘Everything went smoothly, talk to you 9am CST’ with the thumb of one hand, the other pinching what’s left of the cig. Once sent, he taps on the non-muted, unread chat rooms at the top of his screen.

Esteem HoSoGi

Hoyeonie

[Instagram Post Preview]

ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

Why am i finding this out on social media??

im feeling left out! I want to be there too!

It’s the post-Valentino photos Sora showed him. Word moves fast. Yoongi feels oddly unsettled.

Sora

ㅋㅋㅋ

I bullied him into coming!

I’ll see you soon! FW was short for me this year!

Most casting directors didn’t want me ㅠㅠ

The kids are prettier and skinnier

Hoyeonie

Whatever ㅠㅠㅠ have fun ㅠㅠㅠ

Yoongi drops his cigarette butt and crushes it underneath his sole. He taps a message.

Min Yoongi

It’s not as fun as it looks

Can’t wait to be home. Miss you!

That is, at least, true.

He checks and responds to other miscellaneous messages, then runs through his emails. Jungye is good, finished her fifth show for today… A woman wearing a high ponytail walks up and lingers by the curb near him. They won’t let us in. She has a phone pressed to her ear. Should we try Duplex?

Yoongi peeks up at the club doors. The crowd has been thinning out—they’re being turned away, likely due to there being a closed event tonight—but Sora hasn’t slipped back out yet. Got caught up schmoozing another fashion VIP?

Yoongi looks down at his phone again. He’s swiped back into KaKaoTalk. He doesn’t remember doing that. His thumb hovers over the chatrooms, pulse radiating into his carotid.

Should he?

He shouldn’t. But he wants to.

Yoongi makes a long, brave swipe upwards; rooms flutter by before it slows, then stops. His eyes frantically skim the screen. Then. Then—

Taehyung: Please at least tell me you’re…

His body’s response to a fucking truncated message immediately solidifies how bad of an idea this was. A chill bursts through his scalp, down to his toes. It rings into his ears, and all sounds instantly tunnel away: surrounding conversations; the muted house music; the woman chatting away on the phone, coordinating plans; the engine-revs and horns carried from out onto the main street. They crumple up into the palm of his mind’s fist, and now all he can hear and see and breathe is Please at least tell me you’re…

First Yoongi thinks, I’m panicking. After this thought rattles him, it’s cue for the rest to come. In quick succession: his heart is going to pop his carotid, he’s going to bleed out in Paris on the first night of HFW, the rats will get drunk off his body, coming here was a mistake, cheating was a mistake, choosing to stay alive is a mistake, he’s a mistake—from his frantic, cursory glance he can see there are unread messages from Kim Taehyung, they’re unread—from how long ago?—he can see—Please at least tell me you’re—

Yoongi jams his thumb into the side button to turn the screen off and looks up. Sora approaches until she’s a few steps away. He asks, “We’re good to go?”

Sora gives a thumbs up. “I ran into Youngbae; she said they have space at their table for us.”

“Cool.” He shoves his phone into his jacket. “Let’s go.”

Security clears them, and loiterers watch longingly as they disappear into the dark corridor. Raspoutine is a quintessential club: dark, loud, crowded. The lights—what little there are—are neon and blood-red, haunting; it gives some of the faces Yoongi sees a demonic impression. Each beat rattles in his chest.

Things move quickly from here. They fight their way to the section with reserved seating, and a flurry of people and drinks are passed around. There must be twenty people occupying a table made for seven—now with two more joining in. That, and they already have several bottles for the table, half of which are empty. A bearded white man whom Sora introduces as Arthur, a publicist for Ellie Saab (“Fifteen years now! Best job in the world,” Arthur shouts at Yoongi in English.), hands him a glass of liquor. He could easily be in his mid-forties.

Yoongi compares the color in his glass to the bottles on the table. Cognac. Sure.

He works on his glass of cognac to help guide him through the waves of new faces. Youngbae is another Korean model and Sora’s work- and non-work friend; she’s signed with Women’s Model Management here, in Paris. Youngbae leans into him to explain, “We waited in so many lines together before we finally talked!” Her finger swings between herself and Sora, who’s currently trapped in conversation with a blonde model from the Valentino show and what looks like the blonde’s male partner. “It’d been, like, two hours of waiting; the line was wrapped around the sidewalk. In January!”

New York in January. Torturous. Yoongi swallows his next mouthful of cognac, shouts back, “I wouldn’t have survived!”

“I still don’t know how I do it!”

A bottle gets passed around, and Yoongi is later crammed in between two women when the one to his right (Marjan?) pours him another glass—it’s more amber-colored liquid. “Cordon Bleu!” she answers the question in his face. “Do you like it?”

Yoongi lets it wet his gums before shouting back, “I do now,” to which she topples back in drunken laughter. Over the lip of his glass, he considers her for the first time since he’s sat down. She’s squeezed into a metallic mini-dress, her arms and back bare. Her legs seem to span the entire table where it’s disappeared underneath it.

Yoongi confirms with her that her name is, in fact, Marjan. Marjan immediately segues into conversation about her walking the Ellie Saab show earlier that day. She was born north of Paris but, “Only half-French,” she says. Her father is from Poland, and her mother was a fashion model. She asks where he’s from and what he does, and Yoongi leans in, free palm holding her thigh, to answer, “Korea. I’m a manager for Esteem.” Her hair, spun in natural spirals, tickles his flushed cheeks.

Marjan tilts her mouth back to his ear, returns, “Loud, but—your voice sounds so deep! Is it?”

“It is.”

They lean back to watch each other smile and laugh.

She introduces the woman on his other side as her friend Alima, a black model from Côte d'Ivoire. Then Sora squeezes in—interrupting Alima’s story about her family moving to France—to whisk Yoongi away so she can continue her endless introductions.

And Yoongi is trying his best. He is. His brain’s got that colander-quality to it again, except all faces are filtering through and melting into a humid, soupy pile at the base of his skull. A stray light refracting from the disco ball keeps blinding him in his left eye. There are cameramen perusing the floor, LED light panels like a spotlight when they scale across the throbbing bodies. A crowd seems to be clambering to get as close to the DJ booth as they can, as if each beat doesn’t already feel like it’s going to trip your heart into arrhythmia even when standing against the back wall. Yoongi keeps getting distracted watching them.

Some casting director is trying to explain her process of hiring for the Valentino line up over cardiac-arrest-inducing electro-house, and Yoongi’s attention is taken when he mistakes a model—who’s just hopped up on a table—for a white greyhound, her limbs translucent and as wide as incense sticks. Horrified, he thinks they let dogs in here? before realizing his mistake. Guilt and embarrassment are why he diverts his attention back to the chatty, drunk casting director from Italy.

This is all to mean: Yoongi remembers very little about these insiders. Sora’s doing a very kind thing—seems deliberate to ensure he doesn’t find somewhere alone to dissociate and is less so about helping him expand his network. Yet, nothing is sticking. His mind has been pounded down into mush.

He may regret this later—but who can blame him when he’s drunk off his ass, shaking from five-plus cigarettes in the past half-hour, and trying to silence all and any urges to read that fucking chatroom.

“...But I have to ignore that voice in my head, right? Because Pierpaolo loves his new faces! And I get it! That’s the nature of the industry! When I casted for Louis Vuitton…”

Yoongi imagines opening a filing cabinet, and with each person, he rummages around to find the least-damp place to put them. There’s… there’s some white man that works with the Haute Couture Federation, FHCM; next, there’s FHCM’s partner, whose work as a developmental director for PFW is “sucking the life from him”, and looks it, too; there’s a young, wet-nosed Parsons graduate that was hired as a designer for a maison directly out of school; some purchasing and merchandising managers who claim to recognize Yoongi from the Valentino show (and whom Yoongi pretends to recognize in turn); many more models… mostly West and Eastern European. All other continents must be out of season this time around. If this is what PFW looks like, Yoongi is dreading the line-up for Milan. Esteem’s bookers have their work cut out for them.

By drink number three and what must be the fiftieth stranger rotating through, Yoongi feels detached from his brain and imprisoned to his body. A pit of nausea sweeps down from his esophagus and into his gut, landing hard. He can’t tell if his eyesight is flickering on and off, or if that’s the strobe lights. A man in skinny jeans—Theo? Ted?—has joined the ‘conversation’ he was having with some American photographer, and Yoongi isn’t even trying to pretend he’s engaged anymore. Terror may overwhelm him.

His thoughts fractionate. He can’t get a full breath in. Did that just happen, or has he not noticed until now? Is it so hard to breathe because of how little oxygen there is in hot, humid air? He needs cold air. Yoongi’s eyes bounce between their faces. Is that Italian? Are they speaking in English or Italian? It’s too fucking loud. He needs these men to stop fucking talking to him.

Yoongi looks down at his glass. He also needs to stop drinking. Maybe he’s sick and panicking because all the shit he ingested has finally caught up to him. Yoongi looks back up. The men are still blabbering. He frantically assesses his surroundings. No. No, it’s not just that. It’s also…

Please at least tell me you’re…

It’s also that Taehyung wanted to hear from him. When did he write that? How long ago? Yoongi didn’t get the chance to see when he’d written that. Is he still writing?

Please at least tell me—

I’ve always loved you.

Do you still mean that?

“Yunki! How long will you be in Paris?!” The American is now breathing hard against Yoongi’s right temple.

Yoongi makes a sharp U-turn at the mouth of his last mind-trap, and parts his lips to answer the guy. Then his stomach lurches—violently. He has no idea what’s about to come up, words or vomit.

Never mind Seoul or Daegu: The last place he wants to end up is in the emergency room of a foreign country.

The American is starting to look worried. “You heard me?” he shouts.

He needs to go.

“One moment,” Yoongi says. Or, he thinks he says. Either way, he’s already taking off.

Yoongi lets his body carry him through the crowd. New irritants come to overwhelm him: demon-red ambiance, sweat, cigarettes, a stray whiff of overpriced perfume. The beat is chattering his teeth, and somewhere on the perilous battle across Raspoutine, he realizes he’s no longer holding a glass of liquor.

Did he finish it? He hopes he didn’t. There’s no place nearby he could’ve set it down in the past few seconds, so the only explanation is that he’s dropped it. Yoongi remembers doing neither.

Horrifyingly, it’s a reprise of his first day in Paris; time is being recycled. There’s the wondering if he’s finally gone crazy, now with people and cameras to memorialize it forever. Then, his senses are being filtered before reaching him. Corner-shadows, steam in his head, vomit in his throat. Thoughts bursting through, melodramatic, an endless spiral: Am I losing my fucking mind? Am I going to die in this shithole? If I survive this, I promise I’ll never drink so much again. Just don’t let me die this way. Not in fucking Raspoutine.

Yoongi’s being fed his own recycled thoughts and feelings, yes, but, again, he’s not alone—and instead of falling onto a bed, he shoves his way down a less-crowded corridor and quite literally stumbles into the arms of the half-Polish, half-French woman. He’d seen a vaguely familiar head of curls and, unconsciously, his body must’ve decided to follow it.

“Yoongi,” Marjan greets, nonplussed. There’s only a sliver of green left in her eyes, her smile wide where it thins out her lips. “Are you looking for Sora?”

“No,” Yoongi says before thinking of it. But, “Is she back here?”

“She was,” Marjan tells him. “I think she went outside to smoke with Cong.”

It takes Yoongi some seconds to process, then translate, what he’s been told. Cong… the Chinese model signed to IMG? “Okay,” his mumble is immediately drowned in the noise. “No, I don’t… I wanted—”

His stomach lurches again, this time some bile spilling out into his mouth. A few moments later, he’s bent over a toilet in the compact women’s room, Marjan threading her long, thin fingers through his hair as he retches and fantasizes about lying down in a bed—any bed will do.

The bathroom reeks of stale cigarettes, flavored nicotine vapor, and piss. There’s a group of svelte women squeezed into the space in front of the sinks, talking in French while they share two e-cigs.

Nauseous and nose already highly sensitive, Yoongi’s next inhale is followed by another fit of retching. He watches through his tears as amber-brown vomit deposits into the toilet bowl. Maybe he should go ahead and die in a shitty club.

“Kotku,” Marjan coos. Her fingernails feel orgasmic as they scritch into his scalp. “Shh. You’ll feel better soon.” Her accent feels like a comforting scritch, too.

“Drank too much,” Yoongi gasps, surprising himself that he’s still cognizant enough to speak another language. “Sorry.” He spits out the rest of the vomit in his mouth.

“I know, I’ve done it too. It’s okay. Get it out.”

Yoongi tethers his sanity to her gentle shushes and shhh kochanie, you’ll be finished soon while he’s victimized by the cycle of nausea, prodromal gagging, tears, and then emptying out his stomach. It goes on for longer than it should, likely because every breath in comes with the awful cigarettes-vape-piss stench.

By the time the waves of nausea are no longer followed by vomiting, his gag-induced tears have progressed to tears of shame and distress. He leans back against the stall wall, Marjan now leant against the one parallel to his, space so narrow that his and Marjan’s long legs are intertwined. Marjan reaches out to flush the toilet.

Yoongi gasps, “Sorry,” over and over because he doesn’t know how else to convey his gratitude, and doesn't have the proficiency to do so even if he wanted to.

Thankfully, there’s a lot that cannot be conveyed in words but can be felt; that, and Marjan is communicating through her non-native language, too. “It happens,” Marjan says. She flushes twice, for good measure. “It happens. Kotku, come wash your mouth.”

There’s something deeply comforting in her passing, it happens. It might be that he’s already been left raw, defenseless to any show of affection now that he’s shared this moment with her. Without judgement or a show of feeling burdened, she scratched at his scalp and helped wash away his—a stranger’s—mess. He’s inconveniencing her.

Still, Yoongi clings to this show of mercy and to her, letting her guide him through the gaggle to reach the sink. No one is visibly perturbed by a man in the women’s room, perhaps because he’s being accompanied by a woman—or because they’re models and are accustomed to the presence of strange men while they’re in various states of undress. They carry on laughing as Yoongi, with Marjan’s placid direction, rinses his mouth. He splashes water on the lower half of his face, Marjan stroking his hair back, tucking the overgrown bits behind his ear.

This feels so nice. Why does this feel so nice? He chokes out a quiet sob, then immediately washes the evidence away. Marjan is still stroking his hair. When was the last time a woman touched him so sweetly? When he had a girlfriend, which was back in high school? His mother doled out physical affection as if it were a limited resource.

He stares into the stained sink and thinks: Is he being mothered by someone undoubtedly younger than him? She can’t be older than, what, twenty-two international age? He’s her oppa and she’s here coddling him when she should be celebrating another PFW of her career.

Yoongi looks up from the sink to examine her in their reflection. She has a long, narrow face, like the entirety of her body. Her eyes and nose stand out, large and pointed to attention, in contrast to her thin lips. She’s taller than him in her slingback heels. Her pale hair blends in with her pallor. Aside from maybe concealer, mascara, and lip gloss, she’s bare-faced, subtly gorgeous, the archetype of a runway model.

Marjan notices him watching her through the grimy mirror, slows her hand-strokes and stares back.

Yoongi feels woozy. He’s still plastered, too; he’d started drinking first thing that morning and, honestly, never stopped. So it’s no wonder his body has had enough and is in protest—and it’s no wonder he, still-drunk and woozy, watches her lips as he asks her, “How old are you?”

Marjan’s smile spreads across her face, viscous-slow, as if she’s reacting to a question he hadn’t asked. Her eyes somehow look much darker than they did when they were at the VIP seating; it’s not making much sense to his mush-brain.

“Nineteen,” she says finally. Even worse than he thought. He mourns the loss of her touch when she stops stroking his hair to go fishing through her mini-satchel bag—Prada, likely another ‘payment’ for walking their show some past season—producing a tin of mints. She pinches one, then giggles when he opens his mouth for her to plop it on his tongue. She complies.

“I’ll be twenty-five soon.” Yoongi sucks on the mint. “In Korea, you’re one year older every new year.” Well—unofficially, since the government now aligns with international aging practices but, culturally, it’s not something that’s going to go away so soon. It’s too much to explain though, and even as drunk as he is he knows Marjan doesn’t give a shit.

“So?” Marjan pops a mint herself, then tucks the tin away. “What does this mean?”

So. “So…”

Yoongi shifts his jaw side-to-side, tightening his grip on the sink lip. He looks at them in the mirror. There’s makeup smudged underneath his eyes, streaks of black rivulets faded from his washing of his face. His hair, dull and limp, has already fallen loose where Marjan tucked it back behind his ears. Startlingly, he looks more sallow between the both of them. Sora was right; nothing about him gives a show of health or wellness.

Women rotate in and out as the seconds drag by. Yoongi’s been surrounded by shadowed, far-off faces all night.

Marjan’s isn’t so far-off anymore.

Marjan raises her eyebrows at him expectantly. “Feel better?” she asks, instead of the question he can read in the purse of her mouth. She adjusts so that a brunette woman can stumble up to the open sink beside them. Sorry! This woman haphazardly dumps the contents of her tote into the filthy bowl. Where is…? Drunk—or high.

Yoongi swallows hard. “Yeah. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. It happens. Want something to settle your stomach?”

“You’re beautiful.”

Unlike her calm intonation when speaking, Marjan’s laugh is boisterous and straight to the point: it starts, then stops. Yoongi knows that now because, here, he can hear it instead of merely watching her body react.

“Thank you,” she says, gentle like she means it. Then, as if reading his mind, “Your voice is deep.”

Dumber still, “Matches my hands.” Marjan looks down as Yoongi lifts them, spreading his fingers out to exaggerate the size.

She doesn’t have a retort ready this time.

It’s silly. It’s all so silly and embarrassing and Yoongi may die from pure mortification if it doesn’t work; with how fast his heart picks up and goes racing through his ribcage, he really may go into cardiac arrest, perish right where he stands. But he doesn’t. At least, not tonight. Death doesn’t have the chance to meet him before Marjan does.

She arrives in a slow tide of hands and mouth. Yoongi is there to catch her, one palm at her waist, the other following the curve of her bare spine.

What Kim Seokjin Should’ve Done

Summary: The Gwangsan Kim family has been known as one of Gwacheon’s most prolific families since the conception of KimS Group, their family-owned conglomerate. As each generation passes, KimS Group appoints a new chairman through patriarchal succession, and the executive board is replaced with a new generation of men. That is, until Kim Seokjin, second son of the chairman, would make a brave aberration.

Read more here. . .

The men in Kim Seokjin’s family tree have all contributed to the KimS Group (KSG) conglomerate in some fashion, whether by inheritance or filial duty. Seokjin’s father, he told me, was a stickler to the traditions that laid the foundation for our modern society: Primogeniture. All thriving societies have strong patriarchal roots, Kim Seokmin told Weekly Kyunghyang in their December 2xxx publication. Although this statement was met with mild controversy at the time, pro-men's rights activists within the corporate ecosystem easily drowned out the noise.

“Kim Sook Distributions [KSD] supplies the meat and produce for my hyung’s [Kim Seokjung] restaurant,” Seokjin told me, his eyes skimming across the pamphlet he was holding.

The same pamphlet, an advertisement for KSD’s services, sat in front of me. KSD is a food distribution company, founded by Seokjin’s father’s grandfather, Kim Minjae, in the 1940s; but it hadn’t undergone significant expansion until Seokjin’s own grandfather decided to create a family-owned conglomerate in the 1980s. This conglomerate was given the moniker we know it as today, KimS Group.

Compared to the few but mighty networks of conglomerates that make up more than 70% of South Korea’s GDP, KSG isn’t large and their influence isn’t vast, their businesses localized to a couple of districts in the greater Seoul region. KSG also hasn’t been an established conglomerate for more than three generations, making it one of the youngest amongst its peers. Regardless, KSG is a powerhouse in its own right: KSD, now a subsidiary, supplies food to hundreds of restaurants, hotel chains, and the kitchen department of regional corporations. KSD alone makes up 30 to 40% of KSG’s annual profit.

“They [Chairman Seokmin and Seokjung] decided to invest more into the food industry. My dad recently told me,” Seokjin lowered his voice in a theatrical rendition of Kim Seokmin, “‘It’s simple! [The food industry] is never going out of business because people need food to survive.’” Seokjin laughed brightly. “Electronics? As long as we have a phone, we don’t need anything else; we just want it.” I couldn’t tell how much of his explanation he was still borrowing from one of his father’s several lectures. I soon learned that there was much more wisdom Seokmin bestowed upon Seokjin and his older brother, Seokjung.

Half a decade before Seokjung was born, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was amongst the five ministries that were relocated to Gwacheon. This development eased the path for Chairman Seokmin to develop professional relationships with ministry officials and their families, most notably high-ranking civil servants within the Food Industry Policy Bureau and its accompanying Office. It is also notable that, following their careers as high-ranking government officials, three former cabinet members were then hired on as either executives or upper management for KSG’s subsidiaries.

Throughout the mid-90s and into the early 2000s, suspicions began to arise regarding Seokmin’s presumed influence on policy-making. This conflict of interest would only serve to shine yet another spotlight on ongoing governmental corruption. However, these allegations were never proven in the court of law—or definitively within the court of public opinion—and, importantly, third-party lobbying wasn’t made illegal until 2015 under the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act. Until the law passed through the parliament, ‘unofficial’ bribery, such as wedding gifts and holiday money, was permitted by law.

But there were many ways to gain influence when you had a budding chaebol looking to compete in South Korea’s oversaturated, hyper-competitive market. Seokmin regularly donated to nonprofit foundations that were formed by his prior and current business partners, operating under lobby group Federation of Korean Industries (KFI). These non-profits included food banks, soup kitchens, and food distributors that supplied meals for orphanages across the country.

The question of corruption remains an enigma—one that may not ultimately matter, given the rampant corruption that has existed long before Seokmin’s father set his sights on status or wealth via forming the family conglomerate.

KSG has grown exponentially over the past several decades. Chairman Seokmin continues to refute any claim that he sought a position in the National Assembly, or that he has ever been politically inclined at all. Despite these protests, rumors amongst Seoul’s consortium persist to this day.

*

Kim Seokmin was 37 years old when he married Lee Doyeon, the 24 year-old daughter of KM Financial Group’s (KMFG) then-chief officer of consumer protection. They married in a luxury Jung-gu hotel owned by KM Assets, KMFG’s subsidiary group, and not-a-year later, their first child, Kim Seokjung, was born.

Lee Doyeon was the eldest of three children—and the only daughter to businessman banker Lee Hyosung and model Na Kyeongnam. Born and raised in Seoul, the farthest away she would ever live was in Gwacheon with her newly-wedded husband, in-laws, and her two children, once Seokjin was born three years later.

Within their neighborhood’s upper echelon, residents have often gushed that Doyeon’s second son inherited his mother’s beauty and charisma. Doyeon, too, inherited these traits from her own mother.

Doyeon began modeling at four years old, booking editorials, commercials, and printed ad work up until she retired at twenty-five so that she could “focus on being a full-time mother”. This was what she told the press, who’d shown up—seemingly unannounced—on her wedding day. It was revealed later on that her decision to retire was strongly encouraged by her mother-in-law, who’d done the same when she had her children—and that it was her mother-in-law who’d called the press. “Boys need their mothers,” her mother-in-law once told Korea Style columnist Kwak Myeongsuk.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone with anything scathing to say about Doyeon. Her family describe her as well-mannered, precocious, and diligent; her peers call her the ‘archetype Seoulite’: beautiful, high-class, and from a good family. As a teenager, she maintained a top-ten spot in her class throughout all three years of high school, attended a math hagwon five days a week, and took private harp lessons every weekend. She earned a two-year art degree from Konuk University—the same university Seokjin would go on to attend twenty-seven years later—but would never use it. She never needed to.

Doyeon was a devoted young mother. She seldom if ever sent the nanny in her place to drop off or pick up her sons, instead insisting on doing so herself. She threw birthday parties for her sons every year at their Gwacheon estate, inviting their classmates and families. She and her mother-in-law cooked breakfast and dinner every day with the assistance of their housekeepers. She hosted bible study with the other stay-at-home mothers in the neighborhood, attended her sons’ school fundraisers and charity events whenever she was able, and ensured that her sons attended study-abroad programs. She enrolled them in numerous hagwons throughout the year, whether for math, science, English, or the arts. It was what she and her husband, in their youth, also withstood.

Kim Seokjung would go on to perform his duties as the eldest son: preparing for his inheritance and for his inevitable ‘promotion’ as vice-chairman of KSG.

In contrast, Seokjin followed Doyeon’s footsteps in an uncanny manner: He was a top-ten student all three years of high school, learned English during a study-abroad in Australia, attended hagwons five days a week, took private piano lessons on the weekends, and had snowboarding lessons every winter.

They were an overall private family, saying enough to the press to maintain relevance but without ever divulging too much. Most of the information I found concerning their interpersonal relationships were pieced together from various interviews prior to and in the years following Doyeon’s retirement. No matter their career field, these are the types of questions women are asked most often.

In a circle of high-society families—wherein everyone more-or-less matched in wealth and lineage—reputation is the ultimate currency. Scandals are squashed by throwing money at anybody with morals loose enough to sell; secrets are kept by filling a vault of your own, saving them for a rainy day; and those who bravely step out of line are promptly shoved back into place with vaguely masked threats made over luncheons, conferences, fundraising events, or dinner parties.

Considering the stakes, it’s no wonder that the Kim family’s secret vault remains impenetrable.

*

Hallyuwood Actor Kim Seokjin is strikingly handsome. Although he was quite animated during our interview—similar to the cadence and behavior he presented on the screen of a phone, TV, or computer—there always seemed to be a conscious separation between him and I, like we were standing on opposite sides of a frozen lake. We both knew it was there, but I was the only one looking down.

When prepping for this interview, I’d spent months reviewing every available video, article, interview, and social media post to find anything new about his life, and came up (mostly) short.

There are facts that everyone already knows about Seokjin: He was a child-model-turned-actor when in late adolescence, behind compared to what is typical for actors; his career had exponential growth when he was still attending Konuk University for his Film Studies degree; and his momentum hasn’t slowed down even once since then.

Before I could sit down and speak to Seokjin himself, Seokjin’s manager pulled me aside and gently reminded me of the Off-Limits. “Seokjin-nim doesn’t discuss his dating life. Any controversial topics about religion, politics, or rumors are strictly barred; if you bring these up in any way, we will leave immediately.” That might have been the fourth time I was given a ‘gentle reminder’ in the month leading up to this day, the first three coming via phone and email. But I was—and am—accustomed to toeing the lines. Trying to maintain steady work amongst all the riff-raff of “Hallyuwood” is no easy task.

I also knew that, depending on how much was considered Off-Limits, there was a risk that we’d have to call off the interview entirely. But I’ve never been deceptive about the work that I do, nor have I ever had the opportunity to do so; even the most cursory search on Naver will reveal my entire catalogue of opinion pieces. As a society columnist, I have a penchant for following industry news, high-society melodrama (including scams, theft, and corruption), and socio-political events. Journalism is an endless balancing act, one that I feel I’ve nearly mastered: I’m not one to criticize or demean, but I don’t fawn, either. Hybe of all companies should’ve known this about me.

I asked Seokjin’s manager, “Do controversial topics include his family?”

“Questions about intricate family dynamics outside of what’s considered standard, all rumors, and any past and current controversies are included,” his manager confirmed like he’d recited this spiel hundreds of times before.

It was still too vague to discern. I knew that I would have to cast my net wide with my questions, and see how things progressed in real time. “OK. I understand.”

It occurred to me only halfway into the interview that, if it were left up to Hybe alone, I would’ve never made it past the receptionists’ desk. Seokjin was the one that persuaded management to accept my interview request.

We sat in one of Hybe’s conference rooms, chaperoned by Seokjin’s manager, his PA, and a representative associated with Hybe’s PR team. Seokjin had just returned to campus from a 6-hour film day for his then-drama.

During the interview, I carefully prodded further about his brother’s business.

“Seokjung-hyung and my father are looking into opening another location north of the river,” Seokjin told me. He seemed at ease speaking about this. “He’s—my hyung—been managing the Gwacheon one since they opened maybe ten years ago? Wow. I think it’s been a decade now! But he recently onboarded full-time managerial staff so he can focus on expanding.”

The birth and rise of Seokjung’s restaurant, KonSoo, is mottled with a lot of technicalities and grey areas. Its public-facing timeline is: KonSoo was first established in Gwacheon by Seokjung, and while its operations reaped the benefits of KSG, born by a hefty investment, it isn’t an official subsidiary nor is it overseen by a holding company. However, when closely reviewing publicly available filings and piecing together my own timeline of events, a slightly different picture came together.

KonSoo was ‘KS Steakhouse’ before either Chairman Seokmin quickly lost interest or, more likely, the finances hadn’t worked out cleanly. A half-year after it was declared a business on paper, the listed owner was transferred from Kim Seokmin to Kim Seokjung. Then KS Steakhouse became KonSoo.

And, again, while it’s true that KonSoo isn’t directly connected to the conglomerate, there are still several points of entanglement: Seokmin pumped a one-sum investment into Seokjung’s restaurant while operating as the chairman of KSG; KSD, an official subsidiary, supplies all food products through a deal whose stipulations are still not publicly available; and Kim Seokjung, as the eldest son of standing Chairman Kim Seokmin, will inherit the family conglomerate once Seokmin steps down. Therefore, any distinction between the two entities is murky, perhaps by intention.

What isn’t murky is Kim Seokjin’s absence in all of the documents I reviewed. Instead, I found his name elsewhere: in articles, magazines, billboards, advertisements, online publications, and the opening and closing credits of films and dramas. Seokjin discussed his family business like he was squinting at it from an arm’s length away, detached in a manner that could be intentional just as easily as it could’ve been inadvertent. It was hard to tell with him.

The names of major shareholders are public knowledge, as required by law, but those holding less than 5% of company shares aren’t required to be disclosed as such in a company’s annual reports. Therefore, without solely trusting in Seokjin’s word—or trusting that KSG has been forthcoming in its filings—there is no objective way of knowing his actual stakes in KSG.

I asked him: “Did you ever consider being more involved in your hyung or father’s businesses?”

“No,” Seokjin answered easily. “I’m not serious enough to be a businessman. I think I was lucky to be born as the second son. If I were any luckier, I would’ve been born a daughter.” He laughed easily at his self-deprecation too, grinning at me like we were in on the same joke—a joke that might’ve been about either his (alleged) immaturity, or how the genetic gamble of life granted him his freedom (again, alleged).

“You don’t think you’d be a good fit? Or learn to take it seriously?”

This time the answer didn’t come as easily. Seokjin thought about it for a moment, then told me, “I don’t think that’s something you learn to be able to do; you just do. I listen to their talks over dinner and it’s so mind-numbing that I genuinely think I black out for a moment.” His next laugh was indistinguishable from the last. “But I never find myself blacking out when I’m at casting calls, or doing table reads, or—even when I have to perform the same scene five times in a row because the director wants to get it just right. I never had to learn to take acting seriously. That’s the difference for me.”

I asked how his father felt about his career decision, and if there were any hard feelings. I could tell that this question alerted Seokjin’s manager, who began to spring into action until Seokjin, the undeterred one, beat him to the punch.

“Is he happy about it? I don’t know if I could use the word ‘happy’... I’d say he was mildly disappointed—in the beginning.” I hadn’t asked if his father was ‘happy’ but, understanding that this was his extensive media training kicking in, I didn’t object to the framing. “He told me something like… even if I didn’t want to enter the family business, that’s all right, but acting wasn’t what I should’ve done.”

“What did he think you should’ve done?”

“Politics. Or, I should’ve gone to law school. He said since I’m handsome and a good conversationalist, I would be great in either field.”

“That’s true. What do you think?”

“As my father, he only wants a stable future for me, which I understand. Acting isn’t notorious for its longevity!” His laughter became tighter and more restrained. “But now that I’ve come so far in my career, he’s more pleased about it. I know he’s still hoping for the day I change my mind, though.”

“Do you think you ever will?” I pressed.

“I don’t. I chose this, and I’m happy I did. I don’t think it’s productive to have regrets; we make choices, and those choices have consequences. If I had to go back in time and do it all over again, I would make the same decision.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well.” Seokjin shrugged. Easily, “This is what I should’ve done, because I did it.”

Read the author’s other works here. . .

Yoongi’s parents would never have a daughter, but they had two sons. Growing up, it was as if each parent assigned themselves a child, and it was this assignment that determined their role in the household: Dad took on Geumjae, so Mom was left with Yoongi.

Geumjae and Yoongi’s personalities deviated as early as primary school. Yoongi was less volatile, never boorish, never too proud to not apologize. He was obedient, a quick learner, and accepted his punishments quietly. When depression dampened the majority of his mid-adolescence, its accompanying shame made him recede inwards rather than out, seldom brooding in a way that inconvenienced rules and order. Most of all: Yoongi hated little more than troubling his parents.

So, there was no daughter to stand in as a buffer between Yoongi’s mother and her mother-in-law—but, raised in a family of poor laborers, she was already an expert at working with what she had: Yoongi’s role became clear pretty quickly. It might have been a bonus that Yoongi wore his mother’s face, fragments of his father reprised in his own chest, limbs and shoulders.

Teen-aged Geumjae saw ‘trouble’ as a rite of passage into manhood. Their father and grandfather reinforced this way of coming-of-age with their endeared laughter, their pride ringing through whenever Geumjae would out-drink them at the dinner table, whenever he talked brashly of his romantic conquests, whenever he was scolded by his mother for hiding cigarettes in his room—when he kept playing with his baseball in the house, kept leaving his used dishes on the countertops, kept kicking his shoes off haphazardly no matter how many times he was reminded to straighten them up before you walk inside! He learned that boisterous, headstrong boys made great leaders from his father and his father’s father; it was what they’d learned from their own fathers, after all, and look how they turned out?

Yoongi still remembers the quiet conversations his parents would have in the common room, when he was in junior high and they thought he wasn’t listening. His mother’s anguished, when you tell Geumjae ‘it’s alright’ after I tell him to stop smoking, you’re just reinforcing his behavior. You’re teaching him to not respect his eomma. You’re making me the enemy!

His father was seldom rattled by anything, so easy-going that any breeze could whisk him off—so easy-going that he often flew his wife into a rage. Nonplussed, his answer would always be: Boys and girls can’t be raised the same way, Hajun-ah. You don’t understand because you don’t have brothers. Let him be a boy.

Hindsight allows Yoongi the grace he didn’t have at the time. Geumjae wasn’t a bad person; he was yet another son that wanted his parents’ approval. He was a product of his upbringing too, his behavior reinforced by the once-boisterous and -headstrong boys who saw themselves repurposed to create him.

So performing what pleased their father was Geumjae’s own means of survival. Yoongi’s was to learn the expression on his mother’s face.

Survival was contingent on this performance: He learned to cook, to separate the clothes by color, to bring the laundry in when the forecast warned of rain, to sew, to clean the crevices of each room after mopping, to prep their pickled dishes to eat in a few months, to run errands without much direction, to play the piano—to do what Geumjae and his father couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Otherwise, there was only one woman to do everything, and all the ‘man’ slots were taken. The grimaces, the weary exhaustion, and pallor his mother often wore—drifting about their home like a supporting character in her own play—was inescapable. Why did it seem like Yoongi was the only one watching? Or—was it just that no one else cared?

It was early in life that he decided he wouldn’t fight it, that he’d embrace his role until it dressed him. (His mother’s first, real disappointment didn’t come until Yoongi would make a decision all on his own: skip college, flee to Seoul.)

So—before he left Daegu behind—Yoongi was useful, and he was responsible. His mother didn’t hold him or cuddle him past the age of eight or nine. At times she would stroke his cheek, give him hugs on special occasions—but she mostly fussed. Fluffing his fringe, fixing his uniform collar, brushing dust off his sleeves and crumbs off his lap. Allowing him the rare comfort of laying his head on her thighs or shoulder while she sat in the common room, working on something handy, like peeling bean sprouts. She loved by fussing, because her parents loved by fussing. Yoongi grew up to believe he didn’t need love in any other way.

But it’s not true.

It’s never been true.

Yoongi understands that now.

He loves the touch of a woman. He wants to be held, even as he weakly resists. Tonight, he nearly cries each time Marjan strokes her fingers along his scalp and down his nape just-because—no fixing, no fussing, just unadulterated affection for affection’s sake—while he kisses her lips, her skin, her thighs, her clit.

“You’re so sweet,” Marjan coos, sounding awed. That might make him cry, too. “That’s good.”

He loves when she sweet-talks him in her mother tongue; there can be no truer show of affection. He hates this filthy bathroom, but he loves her smooth skin, and her white-blonde eyelashes, and her neat fingernails. Her perfume, the smell of nicotine on her fingertips, of sweat between her legs. He loves how she sings in her throat when he laps at the seam of her pussy, his fingers hooked to pull the gusset of her panties aside, get a better view and taste of her. She keeps bucking into his tongue until he pins her down against the stall. Yoongi makes Marjan come twice; he’s rewarded with two hot palms running down both sides of his face. He’ll remember this about tonight more vividly than anything else: her touch.

Yoongi turns down her handjob offer, too drunk to reach full-mast, then waits as Marjan takes a piss.

His head is pounding. He wants nothing more than to go to sleep. It’s only been a few minutes, and the rush is already wearing off.

Back out in front of the crowded sinks, Yoongi watches blearily as Marjan fishes a tiny baggie from her purse. It takes him ten seconds too long to realize that it’s coke in the baggie, and five more seconds—after she’s already sniffed it off of her pinky nail—to realize that she’s just taken coke. He’s not sure how he’d managed to forget about this part of partying, during fashion week, in a foreign country. He blinks around the bathroom as Marjan sniffs a few more times, leans back up, and fumbles with the bag some more.

“You want?” Marjan offers him a bump from the space made by her thumb hooking around her pointer finger. She doesn’t seem to notice his rattled composure. Laughing, she clarifies, “It’s not shit for once.” Maybe she’s misunderstanding his perturbed stare.

Yoongi entertains the idea of saying no. He’s ingested enough substances for one night. He’d just promised any higher being out there that he’d stop fucking up his body if they spared his life. If this gets back to someone in Korea, he’d lose his job, face jail time. Not that it will get back—but it can. South Korean models do this all the time, though, their careers and criminal record intact. But he’s no model; he’s a representative of his agency…

Marjan is beginning to look worried that she just made a severe miscalculation. “No?”

“Sure,” Yoongi says.

It’s the best 20 minutes he’s had in years.

Suddenly, none of his bullshit matters. Marjan is holding his hand. He can’t believe beautiful women like Marjan exist! Women-like-Marjan see something about him that’s worth their affection!

His mind leaps around, crashing into new thoughts before clambering to its feet again. He’s going to work it out, it, abandon it, set it all on fire and start from the bottom-up. He’s going to have the best three nights in Paris—what a fun, horrible city!—quit his job as soon as he gets home, go work at a gay bar and hope he’s still cute enough to make good money, maybe start a price-locked blog about fashion insider gossip. He’s going to make it. He’s going to leave his mess behind him and get through it—whatever it is.

The next few hours pass like he’s watching someone’s daydream playing inside his own mind—and the someone looks vaguely like himself—interspersed between quick detours for another (and another, and another…) bump until Marjan runs out. Before each detour, he and Marjan finally return to the club floor, limbs wrapped up in one another as they sway mindlessly, letting guests knock them around. Every physical sensation is the easiest to keep track of—his nose running; his jaw muscles feeling tight; his headache throbbing like a rubber band has been strapped around his skull; the webs between his toes and fingers feeling sore from him incessantly rubbing them together, unable to stop himself for more than a few seconds at a time; feeling more and more overheated, and anxious, and progressively worried that something is wrong but can’t figure out what.

Regret hits him almost immediately after his final high peaks, then crash-falls. Fun’s over as soon as it started: Marjan is out. When will they make coke that lasts longer than three fucking songs per hit?

The night drags him along, and Yoongi’s crash-fall keeps getting lower. And lower. And lower. He loses Marjan somewhere, then picks up Sora somewhere else—and then he’s outside, keeled over against the club’s outside wall, barfing again, battling waves of nausea. There’s nothing left in his stomach to eject, except maybe bile.

Sora’s standing beside him, one hand stroking his back, the other holding a cigarette. He remembers her voice sounding far-off when she asks him, kind yet undeniably sarcastic, “Think you’ve had enough?”

“Yeah,” he gasps. The pavement, covered in his nearly-translucent vomit, is a blur of watercolor as he stares down at it. He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket.

What time is it? What the fuck has he done? Yoongi croaks out, “I’m so sorry.” He ruined her night, didn’t he? His gasps progress into full-body, sputtering sobs.

Why did he ruin his life?

Sora keeps him steady on their walk back to the model apartment.

Yoongi is back on the toilet lid—Sora wiping his face with a damp washcloth—when he decides that he might as well continue to ruin her night. Can’t get any worse than this.

He tells her, “We broke up.” Sora looks him in the eyes, her hand slowing. “Seokjin-hyung and I,” he clarifies.

“Shit,” Sora says. Her face is already bare, freshly washed when Yoongi was fumbling through stripping down to his briefs. She picks back up her task of cleaning his face. “Wow… I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Don’t feel bad.” Yoongi closes his eyes so she can rub what’s left of the eyeliner away. “Was my fault. I cheated.”

This time, her hand completely freezes. “Shit. Wait, what?”

His throat suddenly feels too tight to breathe through. His voice falls to a whisper, words quivering. “I’m not joking. That’s why I—I said to not feel too bad.”

It’s quiet. His ears are ringing, it’s so quiet. They can hear city-sounds through the bathroom’s open window but, inside this apartment, nobody stirs. There were two girls sleeping in the sitting room when they first stumbled inside; other than that, it’s hard to tell if anyone else is present aside from his shame.

Yoongi won’t blame her if she chooses to abandon him in the bathroom. He won’t blame or resent her, because he’d leave himself in this fucking bathroom if he could.

That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt like shit. With this aching hollowness, it might hurt even worse than what he’s already put himself through—hurt more than if she decides to admonish him instead, reciting back every untoward insult he’s already been tossing into his own eyes for the past decade of his life, like his nightmares have been born from his infidelity.

Sora isn’t leaving. Like modeling, she chooses to stay even when he thinks she shouldn’t. Instead, she eventually returns to herself, starts cleaning him up again. “First,” her voice is lower now, “don’t tell me what to do.” A smirk plays at her mouth when it wrenches a titter out of him. Then, more seriously, “That’s not like you. What happened?”

Well. Isn’t that the question of the month? He inhales shakily. “I might cry some more,” he warns.

“The only person that that bothers is you.”

Yoongi tells her, “Nothing. Nothing happened. He’s—we were fine.”

Sora runs the cloth along each under-eye. “Doesn’t sound like it. Yoongi-yah,” she looks him in the eyes now, their faces a breadth apart. Softer, “Really. What happened?”

Yoongi isn’t lying. He doesn’t believe he’s padding the truth, either. He thinks ‘it’ started almost six years ago, long before Kim Seokjin stepped into Esteem and captured Yoongi with his beautiful face. It was Daegu that set the ball rolling—but it really wasn’t until…

“I met Kim Taehyung again.” Yoongi’s bottom lip trembles in his horrible confession. He turns away from her and from his shame, furiously wipes at his eyes.

Fuck. Okay. It’s out there now. Someone knows.

Someone finally knows, and he trusts them—he wants to believe he does—so he can finally stop doing a terrible job at hiding the carnage.

Sora’s arm drops down to her hip. She’s still crouched over him. She watches him for seconds that pass by like minutes. “Oh, wow. Min Yoongi.” It’s said so quietly that he can barely hear her. His tears won’t turn back off.

“I know. I know—I’m,” he chokes on a sob, pressing his forearm across his eye sockets. “Fuck. This isn’t—self-pity. Promise. I’m. I deserve—this.”

They simmer in more silence. Yoongi knows he’s being watched, and he absolutely refuses to see what face she’s wearing. He doesn’t have to see it to know it’s disgust. Just leave me. Go.

“That’s not you,” Sora repeats, quieter.

“I know.”

“Do you love him?”

Yoongi wants to ask: Who? He gives a feeble attempt but, without permission, his sobbing suddenly crescendos, wracks him hard enough that he keels over, lungs collapsing into his chest. Sora’s palm coming to rest onto the crown of his head only makes him unravel further.

“There’s a lot I should’ve done differently. Before Taehyungie ever… came back into my life. I should’ve talked to Jin-hyung about how I felt a lot sooner.”

“About feeling lonely?”

Yoongi nods, sniffling. Yes.

“He’s a really busy guy.”

“It’s not an excuse. I’m—not making excuses for betraying him. This is all my fault.”

Facing Yoongi, Sora folds her legs across the bed. She’s occupying the only other bedroom. “I don’t think you’re making excuses.”

He stares at her thin, baby-blue sheets, at the star patterns stitched on her socks. “It’s my fault. All of it. I didn’t talk to him. If we couldn’t have—if there was no way to resolve our issues… I should’ve broken up with him. But I—I hurt him. And Taehyungie.”

“And yourself. Whether you think you deserve it or not.”

Yoongi pulls the duvet tighter around his trembling body. The room, like every other room in the apartment, isn’t insulated, and he only has Sora’s borrowed tee and pyjama pants to keep him warm. “That doesn’t matter right now.” He keeps blinking, fighting the tears back before they ruin this again. How has he not run out of tears?

“It does. You still have to live as yourself no matter what you’ve done, so it matters if you’re hurting, too.”

He keeps his eyes fixed on her starry socks.

Hindsight is useless, because he can’t redo dating Kim Seokjin and meeting Kim Taehyung again. It’s useless, but he makes himself nauseous with the if-thens, anyway, holding them under his own nose: If he stopped and rebuffed Taehyung right after he admitted that he thought they were dating as kids, then Yoongi wouldn’t have taken things this far. If Yoongi didn’t tell Taehyung he could have anything he wanted—that he wasn’t too late, because he was; they were too late—then he wouldn’t be here right now. No?

No. Being unabashedly honest with himself, his problems pre-dated their reunion. His worst mistake was already primed to happen by the empty spaces in his relationship, the same empty spaces he felt like a sink hole in his chest. He never wanted to admit he wanted—needed—more from Seokjin. He wanted to be self-sufficient—to appear self-sufficient. He wanted to find the solution to his own problems so that he wouldn’t inconvenience Seokjin, masquerading this weakness as a strength.

He has to be honest: Yoongi felt so lonely that it made him ill. Admitting that would’ve shattered the illusion that he was the dependable, calming, amorphous revolving door that Superstar Kim Seokjin fell in love with. He convinced himself that once Seokjin saw through him, he’d find Yoongi an inconvenience—and he’d leave. So, all on his own, Yoongi decided that he needed, desperately, to remain as Seokjin’s version of Min Yoongi, even if it left him vacant and longing for the rest of his life.

But—when comparing the risk of being honest versus his decision to cheat, one option was undeniably better than the other.

He ran away to Seoul only to repeat the past.

Sora nudges her toes against his shin. Yoongi sits and watches it happen.

“Listen. If I cheated on Kove-oppa,” now Sora tilts her head down to get into his line of sight, short hair cascading down from behind her ears, “would you tell me that I deserve to self-harm? Or… that I should just stay miserable forever as my punishment?”

This prompts Yoongi to look at her, taken aback even though knows where this line of argumentation is headed. “No.”

“Okay.” Sora sits back up. “Why are you treating me better than you’re treating yourself?”

Because I hate myself, and I like you. Yoongi doesn’t say that. He only stares back at her, unable to find an acceptable rebuttal in the few seconds that her silent frowning allows him.

Once it’s clear that there’ll be no answer, “Honestly? In the end, you’re the only person whose forgiveness you need. You’re the only person that has to live and die with yourself—nobody else. No one wants to live with someone they don’t like.”

Is it something he wants? Of course not—but here he is regardless. Yoongi confesses, “I don’t want to either. I just…”Don’t know how else to live? He can’t piece words together fast enough to finish the thought.

There’s a beat of silence. The floorboards creak from somewhere next door.

Sora slaps his arm down before he’s even realized he’s got a thumb back between his teeth. “Stop that. There’s nothing left to chew, you man.”

Yoongi exhales wetly in an attempt to laugh. “Sorry.” He curls his thumbs into fists.

Sora steps off of the bed, going to rummage through her tote bag she left on the floor. “I’m not going to tell you what you did was shitty, because you clearly already know that. And I also already told you that I’m not going to help you self-harm.” She produces a lighter and two cigs, then goes to open the tiny bedroom window. “If you’re looking for that, go on one of those chat boards and tell the netizens you cheated. They’d be happy to tell you to kill yourself a thousand times over.”

Another wet exhale-laugh. “If they knew on who… They’d gladly send me propofol and a used needle.” And he may gladly follow through with it. He doesn’t say that part, either.

Sora settles onto the edge of the bed, near where he’s sitting at the foot, and hands him a cigarette before lighting them. With the room dark save for the glow of her phone, city-light pollution pierces the whorls of smoke as they climb to the ceiling.

She takes a quick drag of her cig, then exhales. “You need to forgive yourself,” she says. “It’s your only choice. You can’t undo cheating.” She reaches for her ashtray on the nightstand, setting it down between them. “A lesson learned means you don’t do it again.”

Yoongi lets himself enjoy his first two drags in silence. He stares at the amber cigarette tip, murmurs, “I won’t. I won’t do it again.”

“I know you won’t,” Sora tells him. Automatic, as if there’s no question, no debate. “You know how I know? I know you. So I know this—cheating—isn’t you.”

A sense of familiarity comes over him, like he’s experienced this once before. Yoongi looks up.

Sora’s already looking back. Somehow, her expression isn’t shrouded in disgust, and she doesn’t look ashamed. “That’s why the only choice is to forgive yourself. If you care more about me than you do yourself, then do that for me. Alright?” Somehow, she’s still able to look him in the face, her eyes gentle, as if Yoongi hasn’t exposed himself as the scumbag he truly is.

He thinks of—Forgiveness? Doesn’t she remember Seokjin? Doesn’t she like Seokjin? How can she ask a cheater to forgive themselves, after meeting and knowing and liking the victim? This time it’s Yoongi that reflects the question back: Now knowing all of this—why are you treating me better than I treat myself?

Don’t forgive me. Just as it crosses his mind, he realizes that she’s right; not-so-subconsciously, he really was seeking external fodder for more self-flagellation, internal reservoirs running dry, and tried to find it in her. An odd, lost sensation pours into his sunken-chest.

“I’ll.” He’s fighting back tears and losing. “I’ll—try.”

Jin

We need to talk to wrap some things up. Heard you’re at PFW so let me know when you’re back in Seoul

Namjoon

Are you ok? Hobi hyung and I are worried about you. Gimmie a call when you get a chance, please

Taehyung

Please at least tell me you’re okay. That’s all I’m asking.

Taehyung

I don’t know if you still want my honesty. Or if you want to hear from me ever again. I know I did a horrible thing but your silence hurts so much

Taehyung

It feels like Daegu is happening again. I have all of you for a few months, get stupidly attached, and then I lose you. Maybe this is our fate

Taehyung

I want to respect your wishes but im worried.

I know it’s creepy im so sorry but i stopped by your job and they said you’re not in the country. I just wanted to know that you’re safe. Sorry.

Taehyung

I’m probably blocked so you’ll probably never see this but that’s fine. I still get to say what I’m feeling without the embarrassment of knowing I’m being ignored. I’ll think of it like therapy for me

I need to get this off my chest before I let you go. There’s so much I still never got to say. Let me be selfish one more time

There’s a climax scene in under one sky where Ehyun-ssi and I are standing on a bridge with our phones open to the love app. If you didn’t watch the entire season, the point was for Ehyun’s character to prove that she was finally in love with Byungyu because in an earlier episode she installed a block on her app to not alert anyone if she loved them back. She did it to spare both Byungyu and Minki’s feelings. Except later on she asked an app developer to bug hers so that she could choose whose app she rang. Once it’s bugged, it can’t be undone

Taehyung

She chose to ring Byungyu’s app and called him to meet her on the bridge. He goes running to meet her at the same time she’s running to make it to the bridge

When they both see each other from far down the bridge, she asks him to not come any closer. The climax point is when she is the one who steps close enough for their alarms to finally ring each others.

It’s a really emotional moment. They’re both tearing up and then Byunggyu runs to hug her

Taehyung

Im not explaining it super well. i think it’s a moment that has to be watched to really appreciate it. I think Ive seen it like 50 times now. It makes me cry every time.

It kinda felt like i was falling in love with Arin while we were filming and all my emotions came out during that scene. We really did film on hangang bridge. I really got into the moment, and it felt like the cameras and staff and everyone disappeared because all i could see was Arin

Taehyung

I wasn’t really falling in love with Arin though. I was seeing you in her

Arin has a freckle on the bridge of her nose and on her cheek like you do. Her skin is white like yours, and both of you look like a cat.

I took some time to think about it and i realized that I’ve been looking for you in everyone. Jungkookie was right, I like to date athletes. I like deep voices and men with soft faces that are always taking care of others and making sure they’re ok.

Taehyung

It felt like i kept looking for you so much that one day i didn’t have to anymore because there you were. You didn’t seem real when i first saw you in pairing room. I really thought i was hallucinating

It was like fate.

Losing you again and again may also be fate but i didn’t want it to be. I told myself that now that i found you, i wasn’t going to lose you again

I was so blinded by my goal that i became selfish and hurt other people. I betrayed seokjin hyung’s trust so badly without a second thought because i only saw you. im reflecting on that now.

I meant it when I said i love you. I don’t dream of being an actor or model or living in seoul. I dream of love

Taehyung

I dream of you

Taehyung

Almost every night.

Taehyung

Some dreams feel so real i could cry of happiness. Sometimes you’re in my bed or in my arms. Sometimes we’re kids in daegu again. Sometimes we’re adults in south gyeongsang

Waking up is the hardest part of every day. I still see you in other people. I look up and try to remember that no matter where we are, we’re sharing the same sky

Taehyung

I’m childish and selfish

i promise i will reflect on the pain my childishness has caused you and seokjin hyung

Taehyung

Sorry. Before i let you go, let me be childish one more time

If our fate is to meet and lose each other over and over

I’ll look forward to the moment we see each other again. I pray that it comes sooner than 5 years from now.

Yoongi steps outside so that his sobs don’t wake Sora up.

Taehyung is already mirroring him when Yoongi rolls onto his side. Lying on a foreign bed in a foreign country, they face each other.

“I’m a shit person,” Yoongi tells him, “for feeling happy—that you didn’t forget me. Even if it—it hurts so much. A part of me feels happy. I’m sorry.” He reaches out until their fingers nearly touch, palms facing up. Taehyung doesn’t move or speak; he only stares.

Yoongi’s imagination can never get Kim Taehyung just right. His eyes are never big enough; his lashes don’t curl up as high; his beauty marks never align in that perfect diagonal: waterline, nose-tip, lip, throat. He doesn’t look like he did on the night they lied in bed, Taehyung’s bed, just like this—when Taehyung, ever-unguarded, stared into Yoongi’s person and whispered, You make me really happy, like it was meant to be a sacred confession and not what he already wore on his face. Yoongi captures his likeness, but nothing more.

That Kim Taehyung feels elusive now. Yet, in that moment and every moment that came after, Yoongi never felt so tethered. The year scurried into the air as he passed through it, but his body remembers each high, every low. It remembers this.

Yoongi tells him, “It hurts so much I could die. It feels like my heart is going to stop. I wonder if Jin-hyung feels the same.” Or he might’ve already realized that there’s not much of a difference with me gone. They hardly saw each other in the past 2 months; he might as well have been a ghost that kept Seokjin’s place clean.

No, that’s still too petulant. He knows it is.

Yoongi’s grievances may have been warranted before he cheated, but they aren’t now. More than that: it’s unfair to question Seokjin’s love. If he hadn’t wanted a relationship with Yoongi, he’s headstrong enough to have simply ended it.

This spiral has to end here; Yoongi’s thoughts have been doing nothing but circling the drain of despondence and, regretfully, Sora is right: He either survives this, or he dies. Frankly, he hasn’t decided which is preferable yet—his mind and body still on high-alert for one more hardship to sweep in, no matter how insignificant, and make the decision for him—but he’s alive right now, still living with himself, and what use is self-awareness if not actualized?

His living-plans will be provisional—until something better comes along.

“When I get back,” Yoongi says, “I’m going to meet him. We’re going to finish things for good. I’m going to sort myself out.” He pulls his hand back to his chest, away from not-Taehyung. “I’m going to let you go.”