Chapter Text
The first time Jungkook saw the document, he was looking at himself in the practice room mirror.
He hadn't meant to be. He'd been looking at his phone, and his phone happened to be reflecting off the mirror, which meant the screen and his own face were sharing the same square of light. He registered both at once. His hair stuck to his temple. His black t-shirt darker at the chest from sweat. His mouth slightly parted. And under all of that, like a translation, the words PRIMARY ATTENTION ANCHOR in a corporate sans serif.
He blinked. The words didn't move.
The practice room was loud the way it was always loud at the end of a four-hour rehearsal. Someone's Bluetooth speaker was still playing. The air smelled like sweat and the cheap antiseptic the cleaners used on the floors at HYBE. Hobi was over by the door changing his socks. Namjoon was crouched against the back mirror checking his phone with the careful blank face that meant the phone had stopped being good.
Jungkook stood very still and read it again.
The second time, he understood that the screenshot was a PDF page, and that the PDF page was titled ARTIST POSITIONING AND FAN RELATIONSHIP STRATEGY, Q1 ALIGNMENT MEMO, and that the page had been screenshotted from an internal company document, and that the document had a footer with a date and a department code, and that the page number in the bottom corner said 14 of 47.
Forty-seven pages.
They had written forty-seven pages about them.
His thumb moved on its own. He scrolled. He didn't decide to.
The first page he landed on was a table. The table had six columns, one per member, headed with their names like a roll call. The cells under each name were filled with three-line summaries in tight twelve-point type. Under his own name was a row that started with the line he'd already seen in the screenshot. JK. Primary attention anchor. Broad appeal. Highly responsive. Then a second line. Emotional availability has plateaued in last two quarters, consider stress-test events. Then a third. Recommend continued centering for retention metrics.
He read it. Then he read it again, because the first time his brain refused to absorb it.
The second time it landed, and his stomach did the clean dropping thing that stomachs did on rollercoasters, which felt insulting, somehow, because at least rollercoasters had been chosen.
He scrolled past the table. He didn't want to look at the others' names yet. He didn't want to know what they'd written about Jin. He didn't want to know what they'd written about Yoongi. He didn't want to know what they'd written about Jimin, because he had a feeling, sitting in his chest like a held breath, that he was going to find out anyway, and that he was not going to be able to choose when.
Page 16. RISK PROFILE, JEON JUNGKOOK. Two pages dedicated only to him.
He stood in the middle of the practice room and read.
Subject exhibits sustained pattern of low-level acting-out behavior across observation period (2017 to present). Behaviors include but are not limited to: appearance modifications (hair color, tattoo additions, piercing additions); increased risk-seeking content consumption (motorsport, extreme sport, action film); withdrawal from group activity during low-schedule periods; documented late-night unaccompanied exits from residence (security log, multiple); recent acquisition inquiry of high-displacement motorcycle (March, vendor contact intercepted at staff level).
He read vendor contact intercepted at staff level twice.
He had asked, in March, a member of the staff he trusted, what it would take to get a license. A specific staff member, in a specific elevator, in a specific conversation he had thought was private. The man had nodded and said he'd find out. The man had never come back to him about it.
The man had reported the conversation to someone in a meeting room. Someone in a meeting room had typed vendor contact intercepted at staff level and felt good about a job well done.
Jungkook felt his ears begin to ring.
He kept reading.
Behavior pattern is consistent with the artist's documented psychological profile: high-stimulus tolerance, low-stimulus intolerance, externalized expression preference. Pattern intensifies during low-schedule periods and remits during high-output periods. Centering strategy mitigates these vectors by ensuring sustained performance demand. Recommend continued primary-position allocation. JK is functionally dependent on the stage to remain stable. Removal of centering risks rapid destabilization and loss of public-facing asset.
The sentence took the air out of the room.
He read it standing up, and it stayed standing up with him for the first second, and then his knees did something unhelpful, and he reached out and put one hand against the mirror to steady himself, and his palm came away wet from the glass.
Functionally dependent on the stage to remain stable.
It was a sentence. It was nine words. He read it again because nine words seemed like too few words for what they had done. Functionally dependent. To remain stable. They had taken the question he had been asking himself at four in the morning since he was seventeen and they had written it down in his file as a finding.
He had wanted, his entire adult life, to know one thing. He had wanted to know if he was the center because he had earned it, or if he was the center because of the way he was. He had pretended, very carefully, that he didn't think about it. He had pretended that the pretending was working. He had pretended in front of the mirror in the practice room, in front of every interviewer who asked him if he felt pressure, in front of Jimin who had asked him, twice, in three years, on bad nights, the same question phrased gently.
The answer had been on page 16 the whole time.
He had not earned it.
He had been allocated it.
He scrolled.
The next section was titled BEHAVIORAL MANAGEMENT, SUSTAINED LEVERS. A small table.
Read in order, top to bottom, like the world's worst recipe.
Allowed cry-on-stage moments at quarterly intervals to provide controlled emotional disclosure without off-script vulnerability.
He stopped breathing.
He had cried on stage four times. He remembered each one. He remembered Yokohama in 2019, the second song of the encore, the song he had not been able to finish the bridge of. He remembered Seoul in 2022, after the long break, the line about home. He remembered Las Vegas after his father had been sick. He remembered, most clearly, the one he was least sure about, the one at the end of last summer's tour, the slow song, the bow afterward, the way his mother had texted him the next morning and said I'm proud of you, my baby and he had cried again in the bathroom of his hotel room because the texted my baby was the closest thing he had felt to being held in three months.
They had counted them.
They had decided he was allowed four.
Some of them had been real. He could not now remember which ones.
He scrolled.
Managed tattoo cycle: one major piece per 18-month cycle, locations vetted by stylist to preserve commercial silhouette, content vetted to align with brand voice. Tattoo content provides ownership-of-body satisfaction without commercial impact. Subject has not added an unsanctioned location in observation period.
He thought about the tiger on his shoulder. The skeleton hand. The Korean characters. The one on the side of his hand he had picked out at three in the morning in 2022, drunk on his own decision, certain in the way you were certain about a thing you had chosen yourself.
He had run every one of them by his stylist.
The stylist had said yes. Every time. He had thought the stylist was on his side. He had thought the stylist was the one helping him keep something of his own.
The stylist had been reporting to a department.
The stylist had been vetting locations to preserve commercial silhouette.
He scrolled past the tattoo section because if he stayed in it he was going to throw up on the practice room floor.
Satoori suppression: subject's vocabulary in unscripted Korean is regionally inflected; satoori incidence increases under stress and fatigue. Continued accent neutralization in interview prep is recommended. (Note: incidence has decreased 31% since 2019 protocol, see Appendix C.)
Thirty-one percent.
Someone had charted it.
He thought about the way he had stopped saying 마지막에 the Busan way, on camera, around 2019, because his vocal coach had pointed it out to him with great kindness in a hallway and said Kook-ah, try this one again, like this, just a small adjustment, it sounds prettier this way. He had thought she had been giving him advice. He had thought it had been a suggestion. He had thought he had chosen.
He had been managed.
He kept scrolling because his thumb wouldn't stop.
The next paragraph was longer than the others. It had a different rhythm to it. He skimmed it on the first pass, and then his eye caught on a word two-thirds of the way down, and he went back to the top, and he read it slowly.
Romantic content management: subject's publicly visible romantic affiliation (Park) has performed well as a sustained pair narrative. The Park pairing has successfully absorbed audience curiosity about JK's romantic life over a thirty-six-month observation window, mitigating both real-world dating exposure risk and audience speculation about orientation. The pairing functions as a containment mechanism for adjacent narrative risks and has the additional advantage of reinforcing both subjects' brand. Recommend continued reinforcement, with attention to authenticity markers (organic-coded interactions in unscripted content). Subjects have, to date, opted into the pair dynamic without prompting and have shown low resistance to suggested content. Continue current protocol.
Jungkook read the paragraph three times.
The first time, he registered adjacent narrative risks and didn't understand it. The second time, he understood it. The third time, he understood it and it killed something. Adjacent narrative risks. They meant the risk of him being seen with women. They meant the risk of him being seen with men. They meant the risk of him being seen as anything at all. They meant the risk of him having a life. Jimin had been a containment mechanism for it. Jimin had been a containment mechanism for the risk of him having a life that wasn't theirs.
He thought, with great clarity, that he was going to be sick.
He thought, with the same clarity, don't be sick in this room.
He thought, very faintly, that he wanted, more than he had wanted anything in years, to be in a quiet place where no one was watching him. He thought of the only quiet place he knew, which was his hidden playlist on his personal phone. He thought of the song he had played at four in the morning for a year and a half. He thought of the voice in the song, which he had never seen, which had no face, which sang in a register he had no language for, which had said in English on the last bridge, you can stay if you don't make a sound.
The voice had been the only thing in his life that hadn't been on the chart.
The voice had been outside.
That voice did not know that he was functionally dependent on the stage. That voice had never met him. That voice sang to him at four in the morning and didn't ask him to be a bunny or to be a containment problem or to be anything at all, because that voice didn't know him and would never know him, and the not knowing was the gift.
He thought, in a small fierce voice in the back of his head: that voice is real, and the rest of this is not.
He kept that thought.
He held it under his tongue like a coin.
Jungkook keeps reading. He hits the romantic-life paragraph. He reads it three times. He thinks about the V song. He holds the thought of the song under his tongue.
And then his thumb keeps moving. He doesn't decide to. He scrolls past the document, into the notifications stack his phone has been silently building, into Twitter, into the trending tab. The first three posts are the document. The fourth post is something else.
He reads three words before he understands what he's reading.
leech of bts
He reads it the way you read a word in a foreign language you have been told you do not speak but you do. His eyes catch on the words but the meaning takes a beat. Leech. He thinks of the small animal. Then he thinks of the cutting compilation. Then he thinks of highly compliant, has historically opted in without prompting. Then he understands that some number of people, in some number of timezones, have already done the work of taking the document's vocabulary and turning it into a weapon and using the weapon on Jimin.
He drops the phone.
It hits the wood at his feet. The screen cracks across one corner.
Hands. On his shoulders. Then on the back of his neck. He has not heard anyone approach. He doesn't know who it is for a half second. He looks up and Jin's face is too close to his face, and Jin is saying something that Jungkook does not, at first, hear.
The first thing he hears is the second time Jin says it.
Kook-ah, look at me, not the mirror.
He looks at Jin.
Jin's voice is quiet and even in the way Jin's voice is quiet and even on the rare occasions Jin is afraid. Jin is, Jungkook realizes very late, afraid.
Jin says, sit down.
Jungkook says, hyung.
Sit down. Floor. With me.
He sits down. His knees do most of the work. Jin sits with him. Jin is still holding the back of his neck. Jin smells like the gum he keeps in his pocket through schedules and Jungkook's body grabs that one detail and holds it like a railing.
Jin picks up the phone. Pockets it. Doesn't look at the screen.
Breathe in. Four seconds. Go.
Jungkook breathes in.
Hold.
He holds.
Out. Six.
He breathes out.
Jin says, don't look up yet.
Hyung.
Don't look up yet, Kook-ah. Look at my knee.
Jungkook looks at Jin's knee.
Jin says, I'm going to tell you something and you are going to keep looking at my knee.
Okay.
Jimin read it too. Park Jimin is in this room. Park Jimin read the page about him and the page about the two of you. He is on the other side of this room. He is not okay. He is also not in danger. He is not going anywhere. You are going to see him in one minute. You are not going to look at him before then. Yes?
Yes, hyung.
One more breath.
He takes one more breath.
Jin says, good. Now look at me.
He looks up. Jin's face is the warm dark of a person who has been in the band for twelve years and has not, in any of them, been protected by being the oldest. Jin's face is tired and a little angry and the careful neutral is a thin layer over something much harder underneath.
Jin says, I need you to know something else. Don't say anything. Just listen.
Okay.
The fans are also reading it. They are not being kind to either of you. They are being especially unkind to him. You are going to want to do something about that. You are not going to be able to do anything about that today. Don't think about it now. Park Jimin can survive Twitter. He has survived Twitter for ten years. What he cannot survive is the next ten minutes if you do not handle them correctly. Yes?
Yes, hyung.
Good. Stand up.
Then they stand up. And then Jungkook looks across the room. And what he sees is Jimin sitting against the back mirror with his hands flat on the floor on either side of him like he is trying to keep the floor from tilting.
And then Jimin lifts his head.
He looked across the practice room at Jungkook. He looked at Jin's hand on the back of Jungkook's neck. He looked at Jungkook's phone in Jungkook's other hand. He looked at the screen of the phone, which Jungkook understood, very late, was reflecting on his own face.
Jimin had been reading the same thread.
Jimin stood up.
He stood up the way he stood up at the end of a stage. Slow. Economical. The way a body moved when it had been trained to be photographed even when it didn't want to be. He brushed off the seat of his joggers. He tucked his phone into his pocket. He looked at Hobi, who had stopped changing socks and was watching. He looked at Namjoon, who had stood up too. He looked at Yoongi, who Jungkook hadn't even seen come in, but who was standing by the speaker with his arms crossed and his mouth doing the still thing it did when something had broken that he did not yet know how to fix.
Jimin said, to the room, "I want to talk to him."
Yoongi said, "Park Jimin."
"Hyung. I want to talk to him."
"Not in here."
"Where else."
"Not. In. Here."
But Jimin had already started walking toward the center of the room, and Jin had taken his hand off Jungkook's neck, and Jungkook had taken three steps without deciding to, because Jimin was walking toward him and he had spent twenty years walking toward Jimin.
They met in the middle.
"Jimin-ah," Jungkook said.
"Don't."
"What."
"Don't Jimin-ah me. Don't do the voice."
"What voice."
"That voice. The one where you sound sorry already."
Jungkook said, "I haven't said anything yet."
"You were going to."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"You don't know that, Jimin."
"Kook." Jimin's voice was low. It was the voice Jimin used right before he was about to ruin something. "I know what you sound like for the first ninety seconds of every fight we've ever had. I know what your face does. I know what your hands do. You were going to apologize for something you don't even know you did yet."
Jungkook felt his back go straight. He felt, in a way he had not felt in years, his shoulders go down.
He said, "What did I do."
Jimin laughed.
It was a small, terrible laugh, and Jungkook recognized it because it was the laugh Jimin did right before he hurt someone on purpose. He had heard Jimin do it twice in his life. Once to a stylist who had told him he looked tired. Once to a fan who had grabbed his arm at an airport.
Jimin said, "What did you do. Kook. What did you do."
"Yes, Jimin. What did I do. You walked over here. You're standing in front of me. You said you wanted to talk to me. Talk to me."
"Don't call me hyung."
"I didn't."
"You were about to."
"I wasn't. Jimin."
"Then ask me a real question."
"I am. I'm asking you a real question. What did I do."
"You read the document."
"Yes."
"What part."
"What do you mean what part. All of it."
"You read the part about me."
Jungkook's mouth went dry. "Yes."
"And what did you think when you read it."
"Jimin."
"Tell me, Kook. Tell me what you thought."
"I'm not."
"Tell me."
"I'm not going to."
"Yes you are," Jimin said. "Because if you don't tell me what you thought when you read the page about me, you are going to think it for the rest of our lives, and I am going to feel you thinking it for the rest of our lives, and I would rather hear you say it now than carry it for another ten years."
Jungkook looked at him.
He looked at him for a long time.
He looked at Jimin's face, which was the face he had known the longest of any face in his life. He looked at the slight downturn at the corners of Jimin's mouth, which Jimin had always hated and which Jungkook had always thought made him look kind. He looked at the eyes that had cried with him at the dance academy at nine, that had laughed with him at midnight after a concert in Singapore at twenty-one, that had looked into his at every age of his life and had been the steadiest thing in any room.
He thought about the line in the document.
He thought about adjacent narrative risks.
He thought, in a way he had been trying not to think for two years, did you know.
He thought, did the company tell you they were going to use us this way, and did you agree, and did you not tell me.
He thought, did you ask me to date you because you wanted to, or did they ask you first and you said yes because being chosen by them felt like being chosen at all.
He thought, Jimin-ah. Hyung. Min. My oldest friend. Did you ask me, or did they ask you first.
He said, voice gone flat, "What did the page say about you."
"Don't make me say it."
"I'm not making you. I'm asking you. What did it say."
"You read it."
"Tell me what you read."
"Kook."
"Tell me what you read, hyung."
Jimin's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
He said, "It said I was a complement."
"Yes."
"It said I absorbed."
"Yes."
"It said I had been useful in adjacent narrative risk mitigation for thirty-six months."
"Yes."
"It said I had opted in without prompting."
"Yes."
"It said the company was pleased with the arrangement and recommended continued reinforcement."
"Yes."
"And what," Jimin said, "did you think when you read that."
Jungkook said, before he could stop himself, "I thought maybe they asked you first."
The practice room went very still.
Jimin's face changed.
It was a slow change. The kind of change that happened on a face when the person had read the sentence on the first hearing and was reading it again on the second hearing and was beginning, on the third hearing, to understand what was being said.
"You think," Jimin said.
"Jimin."
"You think they asked me first."
"That's not."
"You think they came to me with a plan and said Park-ssi, would you like to date Jungkook for thirty-six months, it would do wonders for our adjacent narrative risk profile and I said yes thank you, ma'am, where do I sign."
"That's not what I."
"That is what you said. That is exactly what you said. I asked you what you thought and you said maybe they asked you first. In what universe is that not what you said."
"Jimin."
"You think I sold you to them."
"I don't think you sold me to them, I think you. I don't. I think."
"What, Kook. What do you think. Say it."
"I think you maybe knew what they wanted before I did. I think you maybe were okay with it before I was. I think when the company suggested we lean into a pairing for the brand, you said yes to that meeting before you said yes to me. I think the order of things." He stopped. He couldn't finish. He started again. "I think the order of things has been a question I have not let myself ask for two years and the document gave me the words."
"The document," Jimin said. The single laugh again. "The document."
"Yes."
"You are using the company's document to attack me."
"I'm not attacking you. You asked me what I thought."
"That is attack, Kook. Reading me the document back to my face is attack. You are quoting the people who wrote about me as highly compliant absorption material and you are saying yes, exactly, here is what you have been. You are agreeing with them, in front of the hyungs, in front of Yoongi-hyung, in a practice room, on the day they published it."
"I am not agreeing with them."
"You just did. You just told me you think they asked me first. You just told me you think I have been complicit. You just used the document's logic against me. In a practice room, Kook. On the worst day of my fucking life. You think they asked me first. You think I have been managing you."
"I didn't say that."
"You said the order."
"The order isn't the same as managing."
"It is. The order is exactly the same as managing. If they asked me first and I said yes and I asked you and you said yes because I asked you, then I managed you. That is the structure of management. That is what the document calls it. That is what the document is about. I managed you for the company. That is what you are accusing me of. Look me in the face and tell me that isn't what you said."
Jungkook said, "Maybe it is what I said."
The room stopped breathing.
Jimin said, in a register so quiet Jungkook could hear the air handler again, "Okay."
"Jimin."
"Okay. Then I'll say what I read."
"Jimin, please."
"I read the page about you, Kook."
"Don't."
"I read the page about you and I read functionally dependent on the stage to remain stable. I read risk profile and I read acting-out vectors. I read centering strategy mitigates these vectors. I read removal of centering risks rapid destabilization. I read the table where they listed the levers."
"Jimin."
"I read managed tattoo cycle. I read allowed cry-on-stage moments at quarterly intervals. I read satoori suppression. I read all of it, Kook. I read every word."
"Stop."
"And do you know what I thought."
"Hyung."
"I thought, maybe they're right."
The cold thing in Jungkook's chest stopped being a blade and started being a hand around his throat.
"I thought," Jimin said. "Maybe they're right. Maybe you do need the stage. Maybe that is the whole architecture of you. Maybe everything I have ever loved about you is the management plan working. Maybe you are the soft boy who blushes at compliments because they coach you to blush at compliments. Maybe you are the bunny because they need a bunny. Maybe the boy who got his hand tattooed at three in the morning in 2022 was on a schedule, and the boy who cried in Las Vegas was on a schedule, and the boy who asked about the motorcycle in March was on a schedule. Maybe if they didn't put you in the center every quarter, you would burn this building down and not be able to tell me why."
"Jimin."
"Maybe that's all there is, Kook. Maybe under all of it there is nothing. Maybe I have been dating a containment plan."
Jungkook said, voice gone almost too small to hear, "Park Jimin."
Jimin's face did the ugly twisted thing it had not done in eighteen years.
"You started it," he said.
"I started it because you asked me to."
"I didn't ask you to call me complicit."
"I didn't call you complicit. I asked about the order."
"The order is complicity."
"It's not. It's an order. It's a question."
"It's not a question, Kook. It's a verdict. You said maybe they asked you first. You said it because you have been thinking it. You have been thinking it for two years and you let me cook your meals and sleep next to you and tell your mother I love her, for two years, while you were thinking it. You didn't ask the question. You sat with the answer. You sat with the answer for two years and let me sleep next to you anyway. I don't know which is worse."
Jungkook said, "I sat with the answer because I didn't want it to be true."
"That is not better."
"I know it's not better."
"It is so much worse."
"I know, Jimin."
"Don't Jimin me."
"What do you want me to call you."
"Nothing. I want you to call me nothing."
"Hyung."
"Don't."
"Hyung. Please. Min. Please. I shouldn't have said the order. I shouldn't have said it like that. I shouldn't have said it today. I shouldn't have said it in front of."
"Stop apologizing."
"I'm trying to fix it."
"You can't fix it. You said the worst thing you could have said and you can't take it back. You don't get to fix it. You don't get to say Jimin-ah I'm sorry I didn't mean it I love you and have it go away. You meant it. You said it. You said it in front of Yoongi-hyung. You said it in this room. You meant every word and the only reason you wish you hadn't said it is that I'm not letting you out of it."
"Min."
"Don't Min me either. Min is what you call me when you want me to be soft."
"You are soft."
"Don't tell me what I am, Kook. You read the page about me and you decided what I was at the same time the company did."
"I didn't."
"You agreed with them out loud."
"I asked a question."
"You used the document's logic, Kook. The document gave you the words and you used them. Do not pretend with me. I have known you for twenty years. I know exactly what you did. You read the page that called me compliant and you let yourself believe, for the first time, that I was. You let yourself believe it because they gave you permission. They gave you permission to think the worst thing about me and you took it."
"I."
"Look at me."
"I'm looking at you."
"Did you take it."
"Hyung."
"Did you take it, Kook."
He couldn't answer.
He couldn't answer because the answer was yes.
He had taken it.
He had taken the words and used them. He had sat in this room and read the line about the order of things and he had thought, with relief, that he finally had permission to ask the question that had been at the corner of his eye for two years. The document had given him the permission. The document had said here is the vocabulary, here is the framework, here is the way to ask the question you have been afraid to ask. He had taken the vocabulary. He had used it on Jimin. He had used it on Jimin today. He had not put it back.
He had done the thing the document wanted him to do, which was to use it.
He had let strangers in a meeting room hand him the knife.
He had used the knife on his oldest friend.
He felt, very faintly, the room beginning to tilt.
He said, "Yes."
Jimin's face went still.
"Yes what."
"Yes I took it."
"Say it."
"I took the words and I used them on you."
"Why."
"Because they gave me permission. To. To think it. I had been thinking it. I had been thinking it for. For. A long time. And they wrote it down and it felt like. It felt like the words were already in the air. So I said them out loud. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry yet. I'm not done."
"Okay."
"I have one more thing."
"Okay."
Jimin's voice dropped to a place it had not been before. It was very quiet and very even, and it was the voice his hyung had used at twelve when his Tamagotchi had died, the voice his hyung had used at sixteen when his mother had told him he was getting too thin, the voice his hyung had used at twenty-two on the worst night of his life, and Jungkook recognized the voice and could not bear the sound of it.
"You have been the center for eight years," Jimin said. "Eight years. And I have been a complement. I have been the soft boy. I have been the one who absorbed. I have done the variety shows you didn't want to do. I have answered the questions the staff didn't want you to answer. I have sat next to you in the photos. I have laughed at your jokes louder than your jokes deserved. I have stayed in the frame when you wanted out of it. I have done it for eight years, and I have been jealous of you, Kook, in a small ugly place I have never told anyone about, and I have hated myself about it. And today they wrote down why."
"Hyung."
"They wrote down that the only reason you are the center is that the alternative is you being a problem they cannot manage. They wrote down that you are not the center because you are the best. They wrote down that you are the center because of your risk profile. Which means I have spent eight years being eaten by jealousy of a boy who was being given the center as crisis management. I have spent eight years competing with a leash. And now I find out the leash was the whole of it, and the soft boy underneath was not the prize, the soft boy was the containment, and I have been the containment for the containment. And I read it and I thought: fine. Fine. Then I have spent eight years for nothing. Fine. Then everything has been a humiliation I didn't know I was inside of. Fine. And then. Then I walked over here. And I asked you to tell me what you read. And you told me. And you used the company's vocabulary on my face."
"Hyung."
"Don't call me hyung."
"Hyung. Please. I shouldn't have."
"I told you, you don't get to apologize. Not yet. Not today. I am leaving this room. I am calling my mother. I am going home. I do not want to hear from you. I do not want to be touched. I do not want to be looked at. If you text me I will not answer. If you send Hobi-hyung to my apartment I will send him away. If you come to my apartment I will not open the door. I do not know how long that will last. It may be three days. It may be three weeks. It may be longer. You will not contact me to find out. You will wait. Yes?"
Jungkook said, voice almost gone, "Yes."
"Good."
He turned around.
He walked across the practice room. He did not look at Hobi, or at Namjoon, or at Jin. He looked at Yoongi for one half second on his way past the speaker and Yoongi did not say his name. He pushed the door open. He went through.
The door closed behind him with the soft heavy thud all of HYBE's doors made, and the sound was the loudest sound Jungkook had ever heard.
For a long time, nobody moved.
Then Hobi, very slowly, like he was approaching a wounded animal, said, "Kook-ah."
Jungkook did not respond.
Hobi said, "Kook-ah, sit down."
Jungkook said, "Hyung. I."
"Sit. Down."
He sat down on the floor in the middle of the practice room. He did not remember choosing to. His body simply went down. Hobi came over and sat down next to him on the floor. Hobi did not put a hand on him. Hobi knew, the way Hobi always knew, that being touched right now would make him detonate the rest of the way.
Namjoon walked over and crouched. Not the leader crouch. The older-brother-with-a-kid-on-the-floor crouch.
Namjoon said, "Kook-ah."
Jungkook said, "Hyung."
"You're going to be okay."
"Don't say that."
"I won't say it again."
"Hyung."
"Yes."
"I said the worst thing."
"You said a true thing in the wrong room at the wrong time. Both things can be the case."
"I used the document's words on him."
"I know."
"They handed me the words and I used them."
"I know."
"Hyung. He's never going to."
"Stop. He's going to be many things. You will not solve those things by sitting in this room and replaying them. Yes?"
"Yes."
Jin came over and sat down on the floor on Jungkook's other side. He took the phone gently out of Jungkook's hand. He pocketed it. He did not say anything.
And Yoongi, who had not moved through the entire fight, walked across the practice room slowly, like a man crossing a field after a fire. He stopped a few feet from where Jungkook was sitting. He did not crouch. He did not sit.
He said, "Get up."
Jin said, sharp, "Yoongi-ya."
"Hyung. I have him. Get up, Kook."
Jungkook said, "Hyung, I can't."
"Yes you can. Get up. Come with me."
"Yoongi-ya," Jin said again.
"Hyung." Yoongi looked at Jin. His face was the still thing, but the still thing had gone past still and into the place Yoongi went when he had decided something. "I have him. I'm taking him out of the building. You handle Jimin. Namjoon-ah, you handle the company. Hobi-ya, you handle whoever needs handling. I have Kook. He's coming with me."
Jin held Yoongi's eyes for a long second.
Then he said, "Okay."
Yoongi reached out a hand. Jungkook took it.
Yoongi pulled him up.
He did not let go of his hand. He pulled him toward the door, and Jungkook walked behind him, and as they went past Hobi on the floor, Hobi said, very quietly, "Kook-ah."
Jungkook stopped.
Hobi said, "He didn't mean don't contact me forever. He meant don't contact me right now."
Jungkook said, "He said the way he said it to the fan in the airport."
"He did. But the airport was a stranger. You aren't. He'll remember that. Yes?"
"Yes, hyung."
"Go with hyung. I'll handle him."
Yoongi pulled gently. Jungkook walked.
The stairwell at HYBE was the only place in the building that did not have a camera. Every idol in the building knew this.
Yoongi opened the door. They went in. The door closed behind them with the soft heavy thud, and the moment the door was closed Jungkook bent at the waist with his hands on his knees and tried to remember how breathing worked.
Yoongi did not say anything. Yoongi sat down on the third step up and waited.
When Jungkook could breathe again, he sat down next to him.
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
Then Jungkook said, voice gone hoarse, "Hyung."
Yoongi said, "Mm."
"They said I was functionally dependent on the stage."
"I know."
"They said it like a finding. Like. Like a doctor."
"I know, Kook-ah."
"They charted my tattoos. They counted the times I cried. They tracked my satoori. There's an appendix. There's an Appendix C."
"I know."
"They wrote that they intercepted me asking about the motorcycle."
Yoongi said, after a beat, "I didn't know about that part."
"It was in March. I asked one of the staff. The one with the. With the glasses. The young one."
"Mm."
"I thought I was asking him."
"Yeah."
"He told someone."
"Yes."
"Hyung."
"Mm."
"I don't know who's been mine."
The silence after that one was different from the silences before it. Yoongi did not fill it for a long time. He sat on the third step and looked at his shoes, and the silence around them in the stairwell was a silence that was not waiting for words, and Jungkook understood, somewhere very far down, that Yoongi was not going to lie to him.
Yoongi said, finally, "Some of them have been yours."
"Who."
"Jin-hyung. Joon-ah. Hobi-ya. Me. The four of us have been yours. The rest of it I can't promise. You will have to find out, Kook-ah. There is no way to find out from this building. You will have to leave this building."
Jungkook said, "Jimin?"
Yoongi was quiet for a long time.
He said, "Park Jimin loves you."
"That isn't an answer, hyung."
"I know."
"Was he."
"He was both, Kook-ah."
"Both what."
"He was yours, and he was theirs. Both. At different times. Sometimes in the same week. He didn't always know when he was which. He still doesn't. He will need to find out too. You can't find out for him. He can't find out for you."
Jungkook said, "Hyung."
"Yeah."
"I used the document on him."
"I saw."
"Hyung."
"Yes."
"Was the document right about him."
Yoongi looked at him for a long time.
"Some of it," he said. "Some of it is also wrong. Some of it is the kind of right that doesn't help anyone, which is the worst kind. But yes, Kook. Some of it about him is true. The same way some of it about you is true. They have been watching all of you for ten years. They are not stupid. They are very intelligent and very precise. And what they did with the intelligence and the precision is what they did. Both can be the case."
Jungkook said, "Was it right about me."
"Which part."
"The part about needing the stage."
Yoongi's face did the soft thing it did about Jungkook that he did about no one else.
"Kook-ah," he said.
"Hyung."
"I am not going to answer that question for you."
"Hyung. Please."
"No, Kook-ah. I am not going to answer that question for you. I am not going to answer it because if I answer it, I answer it. The answer doesn't get to be mine. It has to be yours. If I tell you you don't need the stage, you will need it more. If I tell you you do, you will hate me. You have to find out yourself. And you cannot find out in this building."
Jungkook said, "Hyung. I don't know how to find out."
Yoongi took his phone out of his pocket. Opened it. Tapped twice. Held it up.
Jungkook looked at the screen.
It was a flight itinerary.
Two passengers. Seoul to Paris. Departure: two days from now. 11:55 a.m.
"Hyung," Jungkook said.
"Don't talk."
"Hyung."
"Don't argue."
"I'm not arguing. I'm asking. Why."
Yoongi looked at him for a long second. His face was tired. His face was also doing the soft thing again. Jungkook had pretended for years not to notice it. Noticing it had always made it stop.
"Because," Yoongi said, "you cannot stay in this building. And I cannot let you go anywhere alone."
"There are three other people who could."
"All of whom work here. All of whom they can call. All of whom they have leverage over. I have a friend."
"You don't have friends."
"I have one. He doesn't count. He's mine."
"Where."
"Paris."
"For how long."
"A month."
"A month, hyung."
"You have nothing to do. You have just blown up your relationship. You are about to blow up your relationship with this company. They are going to spend the next four weeks managing you. You are not going to be present for that. You are going to be in a country where they cannot reach you. And when you come back, you are going to tell them how the next ten years of your career are going to go, instead of letting them tell you. That is the plan."
Jungkook stared at him.
He had known Min Yoongi for twelve years. He knew the version of Yoongi that had already decided. He was looking at that version now.
He said, "Who is the friend."
Yoongi said, "Kim Taehyung."
"I don't know him."
"I know."
"How long have you known him."
"Thirteen years."
Jungkook stared.
"Thirteen. Hyung."
"Mm."
"You have had a friend for thirteen years that none of us have ever met."
"Correct."
"How."
"I'm not going to explain that in a stairwell."
"Hyung."
"Kook-ah."
"What is he like."
Yoongi looked at him.
For the first time since the meeting, Yoongi's mouth did something that was not flat. It was not a smile. It was the thing his mouth did when he was thinking about something fond.
"He's a lot," Yoongi said.
"That's not an answer."
"I know."
"Hyung."
"You'll see."
"Hyung."
"Kook-ah," Yoongi said. "Two days. Pack one bag. Don't bring your work phone. Don't bring your stylist's number. Don't bring the contract clothes. Bring whatever clothes make you feel like a person. Bring your personal phone. Bring the playlist you listen to at four in the morning. Bring nothing else."
Jungkook said, "How do you know about the playlist."
"I have eyes."
"Hyung."
"Two days. Yes?"
Jungkook said, after a long, long second, "Yes, hyung."
Yoongi nodded once. Put his phone back in his pocket. Stood up.
He said, without looking at him, "Kook-ah."
Jungkook looked up.
Yoongi said, "What you said to Jimin in there."
"Hyung. Don't."
"I'm going to say it."
"Hyung."
"You weren't wrong about the order, Kook-ah."
Jungkook stared at him.
"I'm not saying you said it kindly. I'm not saying you said it at the right time. I'm not saying he deserved to hear it on the day a corporate document called him compliant in front of half the internet. He didn't. He deserved to hear it on a Tuesday in a kitchen, six months ago, when you should have asked. You didn't. So you said it today. That's bad. But the question itself was not a bad question. Yes?"
Jungkook said, voice barely there, "Hyung."
"Yes?"
"Yes, hyung."
"Good. Get up. Let's go home."
Jungkook got up.
He followed Yoongi down the stairwell to the parking level, and he kept his head down going past the cleaning staff, and he got into the back of the company car, and Yoongi got in beside him, and the driver did not ask why Yoongi was riding with Jungkook instead of with the rest of them.
The driver pulled out of the lot.
Jungkook looked out the window for the entire ride home and did not speak, and Yoongi did not speak, and at one point Yoongi reached over and put a hand on the back of Jungkook's neck, the same place Jin had put his hand earlier, the same dry warm weight, and left it there for the rest of the drive.
That night, in his apartment, Jungkook did three things in a specific order. He did them slowly, because he could not have done them quickly.
He stood in his bedroom and looked at his closet for twenty minutes without taking anything out of it.
He went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water in three swallows and threw up most of it ten minutes later.
He sat on the floor next to his bed, took out his personal phone, opened his hidden playlist, the one labeled with a single black square emoji, and pressed play on the song he had played the most times in the last year. A song by an artist whose face he had never seen. A folk song with an upright bass and a voice that sounded like the inside of a chest cavity.
The voice sang in English. The voice sang in a register Jungkook had no language for. The voice sang:
you can stay if you don't make a sound, you can leave if you don't look back.
Jungkook lay on the floor and listened to the whole song with the lights off.
When it was over, he played it again.
When it was over the second time, he picked up his phone, his personal phone, not the work one, and he texted Jin.
hyung. yoongi-hyung is taking me to paris.
Jin replied in eleven seconds.
paris? for what?
He stared at the message.
He typed: for a month.
Three dots appeared. They appeared for a long time.
Then: ok kook-ah. that's good. you call me when you land. and when you wake up. and when you can't sleep. and when you eat. you don't have to talk. you just have to call. yes?
Jungkook typed: yes hyung.
Then he turned off the lamp. He lay on the floor next to his bed in the dark with his phone face down on his sternum, and he played the song one more time.
The voice sang:
you can stay if you don't make a sound.
He closed his eyes.
He did not yet know that the voice belonged to a man whose door he would walk through in seventy-two hours. He did not yet know that the man in question had been a fan of his for nine years. He did not yet know that the man in question had, two months ago, watched a paparazzi photo of him getting his skeleton-hand tattoo in Seoul, and had put his phone face down on a kitchen counter in the Marais, and had said to the empty apartment, in Korean, oh, I'm in trouble.
He didn't know any of it.
He just lay on the floor and listened to the voice. The voice said you can stay if you don't make a sound.
And Jungkook, on the floor of his apartment, did not make a sound.
But he stayed.